The Bat in the Jar

February 23, 1987, Chicago, night.

Inside the Chicago Grand Theater, Miss Tina had just finished a dazzling, lively ball. She gently stroked her fur stole and took the chauffeur’s hand as she stepped into a luxurious sedan. When she returned to her lavish apartment, a handsome blue-eyed man wrapped an arm around her waist. Tina said, "Our ball has only just begun, hasn’t it, Mr. Wayne?"

Moonlight streamed in through the window. Those beautiful blue eyes were shrouded beneath the shadow of his brow ridge, and his handsome profile captivated Tina. The man turned around. It was Bruce Wayne.

On an ordinary afternoon on February 20, 1987, Schiller woke up in bed at Falcone Estate. He had not forgotten that before traveling to Marvel, he had been resting in a guest room at the Godfather’s estate.

Mornings in Gotham were never sunny, but dawn always brought Schiller a special kind of inspiration. While having breakfast with the Falcone father and son, the professor found inspiration once again and swiftly refined it in his mind.

"What do you think Gotham’s future will be?" Schiller asked Falcone.

Falcone shook his head and said, "If you had asked me that forty years ago, I would have told you this city was beyond saving. But now, I would say this city does not need anyone to save it. This is what it is, and this is what it will always be…"

"Do you think Gotham needs a new order?"

"Many people have asked me that, but all I can say is that any effort to make this city better will ultimately come to nothing. No matter how impassioned and noble its beginning, it will end in emptiness."

"Why is that?"

"You’ve asked the crucial question, but I do not know the answer."

The Godfather lit a cigar, and smoke slowly drifted outward. He said, "Over these forty years, it is not as if I have never seen resolute revolutionaries, or saviors with morals as lofty as saints. There are so many people in this world. There is no shortage of one or two good men or heroes, determined to save this city."

"They came to Gotham with that belief. You have to admit that even when you know they will fail, their determination still leaves you deeply shaken."

"Perhaps you find it laughable, but I truly was changed by such people. Many might think that if that were true, how could I have become Gotham’s Godfather? How could I have become the biggest mobster in this Mafia city?"

"But it is precisely because I saw those things and lived through that era that I know good people cannot save Gotham. Heroes cannot either."

"Then where are those people now?"

"Most of them are dead. Some of the luckier ones escaped. Those who do not belong to Gotham will eventually leave Gotham. If anyone remains, then that person must have belonged to Gotham from the start."

"Is there someone like that? Where is he?"

The Godfather seemed to lapse into memory. After a while, he made the sign of the cross over his chest and said, "I swore to the Lord that I would keep his secret."

He did not give Schiller a clear answer, but Schiller already knew whom he meant.

The next day, Bruce was called into Schiller’s office. Schiller almost never summoned him on his own initiative, so Bruce was curious about what Schiller wanted.

They sat on opposite sides of the desk, just as they had when they first met. Schiller asked him:

"Have you ever, even for a second, thought about saving this city completely?"

"Of course I…"

"I mean after you had fully and soberly understood this city’s true nature."

Bruce opened his mouth. Schiller removed his glasses and looked directly at him. "I think you have already realized that this city does not need saving, and that it cannot be saved at all."

"So what? Are you trying to persuade me to stop doing this? To stop being Batman?"

"Of course not. I do not care whether you are Batman or not. I only want to know whether you truly want to save Gotham."

"What is the difference?"

"Are you sure you became Batman to save Gotham?"

Bruce fell silent.

"Let me put it another way. If there were now a possibility of bringing a new order to Gotham, would you be willing to make an effort for it?"

"Although I have this suspicion now, I still cannot be certain. What exactly is this city’s nature? Why did it become like this? And is it truly beyond saving?"

"Falcone once told me that many people had worked to save this city, but none of them succeeded. Most were buried here, but some remained. They merged into this place and became part of Gotham."

"Who was he?"

"The only priest at Gotham Cathedral. I think you can go meet him, then come back and give me your answer."

Bruce shook his head. He felt Schiller was being rather inexplicable.

But he was genuinely interested in Gotham’s past as well. This city held too many mysteries for him to explore.

At first, his goal had been simple. He wanted revenge against every criminal. But after learning some of Gotham, he felt that he ought to save the city too. Then, after learning more about Gotham, he felt that the city did not need to be saved.

And now, he had learned about Gotham all over again and discovered that the city seemed impossible to save.

Just as Schiller had said, Gotham was like a book that could never be finished. It held endless riddles, and every time you read it, you gained a new understanding.

When Bruce arrived at Gotham Cathedral, the priest welcomed him warmly. The old priest looked to be over seventy. To be honest, there were few ordinary people in Gotham who lived to such an age.

In Gotham, no one taught children to help old people cross the street, because there was no one to teach the children, and there were no old people.

Before the pulpit, the priest smiled as he held Bruce’s arm and said, "I have long heard of Mr. Wayne’s great name. Of course, forgive me for having nothing better with which to receive you. This cathedral is far too old, after all, as old as I am."

"Look, these tables and chairs are practically falling apart. I wonder whether some kindhearted soul might replace the Lord’s pulpit with one that does not need bricks under its legs…"

Bruce was all too familiar with such words. He made the sign of the cross over his chest and said, "I do not ask the Lord to bestow grace upon me. The Wayne construction crew will conduct a thorough renovation of the cathedral’s interior, making His kingdom clean and new. All shall be for the Lord…"

The old priest seemed very pleased. When Bruce began asking him about the past, he had no intention of concealing anything and frankly recounted his experiences.

"I came from an ordinary family in England. I served in the church in my youth, and in order to let more of the Lord’s people hear the Lord’s gospel, I came here."

"Originally, I settled in a small town on the East Coast. But I heard Gotham was not bad, so I came here."

"You may find it hard to believe, but Gotham really was not bad back then. Because of the docks, it was fairly prosperous. There were many people, living conditions were decent, and, oh yes, the gangs were only just getting started then. There were not many of them in total."

"At that time, there were still ordinary people here who carried dreams in their hearts. They wanted to establish order here and grow alongside this city. Of course, that was what I wanted too."

Then the priest’s voice grew deeper and deeper, echoing through the empty cathedral. The multicolored light spilling from the stained-glass windows high above seemed like tunnels through Spacetime, and the priest’s voice seemed to follow them back to that era.

"There were many people like that then. They were ambitious and believed this was a golden coast, a new San Francisco. There was some chaos at the time, but everyone thought it was only the ordinary growing pains of a developing city."

"A young missionary, carrying a Bible in his arms, came ashore with the fleet. The story of my journey across the world was not nearly as dramatic as people imagined, but quite a few people here were still interested in me."

"Of course, I spread the faith here, helped everyone as much as I could, and mediated overly intense conflicts and disputes among the gangs. Almost everyone was willing to show me some respect."

Hearing this, Bruce began to see the priest in a new light. This old man from Falcone’s era seemed to have once held a place in Gotham as well.

In this Mafia-ruled city, you could eat carelessly, but you could not speak carelessly.

No one would dare fabricate such a story and claim that every gang had to show him respect. As far as Bruce knew, Falcone was the only person with that kind of influence. If anyone else dared boast like that, his corpse would be thrown into the sea the next day.

Yet the old priest spoke as though it were something insignificant. Bruce could hear the humility in his voice. He thought that perhaps this old man from Falcone’s era had once possessed the same prestige as the Godfather.

But now, they were utterly different. Falcone had become the Godfather admired by all of Gotham, while this old priest guarded a crumbling cathedral where perhaps not a single believer came to pray for days at a time.

Bruce had always been quite curious about that dim, yellowed era, like a faded photograph. Just as people always imagined the glory of their fathers’ generation.

The story Falcone had once told him about the docks had revealed the turbulent rise of the Mafia during that chaotic era.

But now, in this vast, empty cathedral, what the aged priest revealed seemed to be another face of the city in those days.

"When I came to Gotham, the war was still far from over. Isolationism was prevalent here, but the lower-class civilians felt more fear toward the war. They could not understand how, on the far side of the Earth, everything had suddenly descended into chaos."

"I began spreading doctrine here. I believed faith could bring peace to people’s hearts. At first, I did rather well. You see, many English people had not yet withdrawn from here at that time. They would invite me to their estates to hear my sermons. I spent nearly every afternoon that way."

"At first, the small gangs only wandered around the docks. Few could even reach the inner streets. I met Falcone then, though there was no Falcone or Twelve Families at the time. Perhaps all of Gotham could not even have produced twelve respectable gangs."

"This place was still essentially a colonial economy then. By accident, I began dealing with the gangs. They saw that I had connections to wealthy people from England and hoped I could serve as an intermediary to help them expand their influence."

"I did not want to become involved in those whirlpools, but I had no other choice. If I had to choose, I chose the one with the brightest prospects: Falcone."

"Later, many people began to realize that Gotham was not as good as they had imagined. The wealthy people from England gradually began withdrawing, gathering instead in other places that were more prosperous and held greater potential."

"The main legacy they left this city was that estate district and this cathedral. Through my persuasion, they jointly funded its construction, and I became the only priest in this cathedral."

"What happened after that? What happened next?"

"When the upper class that maintained a stable order suddenly left, those who filled the gaps in that structure became the ones with the most bullets in their guns. Falcone and his Twelve Families were such people. They struggled for a while, then took over this place."

"Falcone and I were once very good partners, because I knew he was different from the other gangsters. He wanted to forge a new order here. Though it was a violent order, it was still better than no order at all."

"I did everything I could to help him. I thought the Mafia was merely a temporary replacement for the upper-class building blocks that had been removed, and that one day Gotham would return to the right path."

"But I did not expect everything to spiral out of control. After Falcone and his Mafia families took over this city, it began to become a true capital of crime. The twelve gangs spread into one hundred and twenty, then one thousand two hundred. In the end, this became a city where everyone was a gangster or criminal."

"Evil spread here, and I was powerless to stop it. I knew Falcone might have felt the same. Many people believe he was the chief culprit behind Gotham’s decline, but I know very well that is not The Truth."

At last, the priest raised his head and looked around the cathedral. He said, "There are not many buildings left from that era. I am grateful they left me a place like this, somewhere I can take shelter."

"Then why do you not leave? Even if you cannot return to your homeland, you could at least go to a church in Metropolis. There are quite a few clergy there, and they live rather well."

The priest said, "You do not understand. I did not merely witness how evil infected this city bit by bit. I had long since become deeply trapped within it as well."

He made the sign of the cross over his chest, murmured a few prayers, then said, "The greatest lesson I learned through this process was that this city will only accept those who belong here. Those heroes who truly wish to save this place will eventually leave, because they do not belong here."

"Then why is all of this happening?"

"I do not know. But I have always believed that my choice back then was not wrong. Falcone and I are alike. We are guardians of this city, not its destroyers."

"In your eyes, the Godfather may be a success. He ruled Gotham’s underworld for forty years. But I know, and Falcone knows, that we are both failures. All we can do is weave an unstable order in the Abyss of evil to preserve ourselves."

The priest shook his head and said, "But unfortunately, I am only an ordinary man, merely one who has lived longer than others. What I understand is not even as much as Falcone understands. Or perhaps Falcone does not know the real answer either."

As the sun gradually sank, the shadows of the cathedral’s tables and chairs stretched longer and longer. The light cast by the stained glass began to flow over Bruce.

At last, the old priest said, "All I can do is remain here and guard a patch of His kingdom. And after I die, this patch of pure land will vanish as well, like the countless hopes that have vanished in Gotham."

"Of those people from back then, only Falcone and I remain. We are both old. Perhaps when we both go to meet our Lord, the last remaining order in this city will cease to exist as well."

"Do you think it is possible to establish a new order?"

"Countless people have worked toward it, but all of them failed. Falcone succeeded in a small part of it, but only delayed things for a while. Perhaps no one can delay it any longer."

Accompanied by the old priest’s sighing voice, Bruce sank into thought once more.

Whenever he heard these historical stories about his hometown, Bruce could not feel the wistful nostalgia of a traveler returning home.

Because Gotham’s story, from beginning to end, reeked of absurdity and despair. Nothing that happened here had a cause, and nothing had an outcome. Even those who had lived through that era could not explain it clearly.

On this mysterious journey to explore Gotham’s history, the pieces of the time machine were always jammed by fragments shrouded in mist. Whenever Bruce wanted to repair that battered old projector and uncover The Truth within it, all sorts of forces stopped him.

As Bruce walked out of the cathedral, he began considering the question Schiller had asked him. The priest’s answer was that this city likely had no chance of gaining a new order. Once the old generation had all died, this place would sink entirely into darkness.

He suddenly came up with a strange metaphor, yet it felt remarkably fitting.

All the evil born in Gotham, and all the criminals living here, were like grains of salt sprinkled from a saltshaker.

It was a saltshaker that would never run empty. The person holding it calmly poured out gleaming grains of salt, like a patient angler preparing bait.

Having only just come of age, Bruce had learned a truth earlier than most from his professor, Falcone, and the old priest.

Gotham had not become what it was through simple natural evolution. His goal of taking revenge on criminals might never be fulfilled. Gotham could never be completely saved, because the saltshaker above Gotham would never be empty. Crystalline grains of salt brimming with evil drifted in on the wind, like the fine rain that never ceased over Gotham City.

But this did not leave Batman feeling defeated. Instead, it gave rise to ambition in him far earlier.

Batman had no desire to keep circling those grains of salt scattered like alms, like a foolish fish swimming around bait and hoping the current would wash out enough scraps to fill its stomach.

What he wanted was to crush that saltshaker directly. Or rather, just as he had done to Louis—appear behind him like a bat, let Shade envelop the smug person holding the saltshaker, and make him tremble in fear of the bat.

Then take that saltshaker, along with every grain of salt inside it.

If this world was destined to have a saltshaker that held all criminals, then that saltshaker had better belong to Batman.

And it had to belong to Batman.