Temporary People

by Steven Gillis

  Davi’s large brown buddha face was wet with sweat as he tried to comfort me. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “But that’s just it.” Word of Emilo’s protest had already reached Teddy who ordered his soldiers to remove him from the street. Rather than toss him in jail and be done however, a different strategy was imposed, a plan to make a mockery of his effort. As we entered the Plaza, I could see Emilo up on the makeshift platform the soldiers had constructed that morning. The wooden stage was set on the north side, Emilo there in a metal chair, his t-shirt and jeans removed, replaced with a green zoot suit and black fedora. His image was projected onto the movie screen, the white threads running through his lips, his eyelids and ears clearly visible. Dancing girls in flapper skirts and sheer white hose kicked in a row behind the chair and across the stage.

  Davi parked his car close to the platform, near to where Mical Delmont, Ryle Naceme, Josh Durret and Don Pendar were already standing. The Plaza was an open space, shadeless with shops at the perimeter and Teddy’s enormous screen on the far east side. People passing through the Plaza stared at Emilo and hurried off. The dancing girls skipped to the music crackling from an overhead speaker, an old recording of ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ playing loudly. A maninatruck worked the remote controlled cameras mounted overhead. I ran from the car and climbed up on the stage, called to Emilo, “It’s me. Can you hear? Emilo, man,” I felt in my pockets for something to cut the strings.

  “We tried,” Josh called from below. “He won’t let us.”

  “Come on, Emilo,” I squeezed his arms, did my best to get him to his feet. “It’s ok. Davi’s brought his car. There’s no soldiers. We can leave any time.”

  Instead of standing, Emilo pulled away, shifted his weight and locked his hands beneath the chair. “What are you doing?”

  He tightened his hold. I leaned closer. “Listen to me. This won’t work, this thing you’ve done. Deaf, dumb and blind, I understand, but don’t you get it? Teddy wants people to think he did this to you. He brought you here to confuse everyone, to have them believe stitching your face was his idea. The point you want to make, Teddy won’t let you. It’s over. Come on.”

  Emilo shook his head, his features altered to a rag doll state. I stood over him and repeated,

  “What good does it do for you to stay when no one knows what really happened?”

  He reached for me then and touched my hip.

  “Sure. Me, yes. But I can’t very well explain to everyone.”

  Emilo again, made as if he was typing.

  “It won’t work. Emilo, listen to me.”

  Don Pendar approached the stage from street level. In khaki shorts, his long legs thick like walking sticks, his features abrupt and angular, cut across the bone. A disciple of Emilo’s, such extremes as this were a sweet crystal rush for him. He waved his hands and said, “It has to work.”

  I knew better than to reply, bent down to Emilo and said, “Listen to me.”

  “He knows,” Don Pendar again, tapping the stage. “We should all stitch our faces and sit beside him.”

  “And after that?” I couldn’t resist, turned and stared toward the front of the platform. If he was the enemy I might have known what to do, but Don Pendar was a friend, his youth and innocence a bad combination, like pouring nitroglycerin on a bowl of shredded wheat. A professor at the University, hired just before the coup, he was working on a series of articles covering Bameritan culture and the history of revolution which he planned to turn into a book. For some time now he came to speak with me, intrigued by my passivity, the role I played in founding the NBDF, in the War of the Winds and Bameritan Samaritan, about Gandhi and my tower, and how was it I actually believed anything could be achieved without rebellion.

  “Crazy,” he said when I tried to explain. We sat at night over drinks and debated the many ways to sustain a free and democratic Bamerita. Well read, he offered endless quotes from William Mackenzie, Sun Tzu, Minni Arcua Minnawi and Subcommander Marcos. “If we let him stay,” he argued again. “If we stay with him.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then?” he seemed genuinely perplexed by my question. “Then Teddy won’t win.”

  His reply made no sense. “What does that mean? Won’t win what? How does Emilo staying in the Plaza accomplish anything?”

  “André’s right,” Davi sat on the hood of his car, his plump legs folded beneath him, his round belly pressing against his white Beecher Island short sleeve shirt. “Now is not the time for puffing out our chests.”

  “We’re his friends,” I pointed back at Emilo. “We can’t just leave him here and wait for something else to happen.” The moment I said this a jeep sped into the Plaza and three soldiers jumped out.

  Dressed the same as Emilo in zoot suits, black shirts and white ties, their rifles now Tommy guns, their boots were covered by yellow spats. I was knocked from the platform to the street. The music changed to ragtime, the dancing girls kicked up their legs while the soldiers grabbed Emilo on either side, his wrists and ankles tied to the chair, his boots and socks pulled off. A long brown feather was removed from inside the shirt of the largest soldier who came around in front of Emilo, turned his head and spoke directly to the camera. “So you thought you’d get away with it, did ya?” He delivered his line as if already in the middle of a scene, and bending over began tickling Emilo’s feet.

  I saw Emilo clench his jaw, straining not to laugh. Tears slipped through the stitching of his eyes, his body shaking and bobbing up and down as he drew his lips in hard against the threads. The second soldier stood behind the chair, wiggling his fingers beneath Emilo’s arms. I shouted along with the others while the third soldier raised his gun and drove us back. “Buddy, Buddy,” the first soldier shook his head, tossed away the feather and replaced it with a silver hammer. “Did you really think?”

  I cried out, unable to do more, watching as the soldier took aim at Emilo’s right foot and brought the hammer down.

  My father’s house is a half mile from the Plaza, just east of the University, a mile south of where I live. Don Pendar hurried with me across Havarine Avenue, asked several times if I’d seen enough. “Now, André? Now?” He danced out in front of me, the question predictable. “Your best friend.”

  “My best friend would want me to keep my head.”

  “Use your head is more like it. If you understood history.”

  “I do understand,” I found myself arguing more than I wanted. “Our response to Teddy can’t be rash.”

  I listed then the recent demonstrations in Bolivia, Nigeria and Venezuela, Tbilisi, Georgia, Argentina and Nepal, where nonviolent populist movements brought about social and political change.

  “If those are your examples,” Don Pendar interrupted. “In the countries you name the crisis is ongoing.”

  “That’s not true,” I grew more adamant. “There’s a dialogue between the governments and the people. Open democratic elections are in the works.”

  “Assuming that’s the case,” again Don Pendar waved me off, “there’s still no dialogue in Bamerita. And no democracy.”

  “None of which gives us license to commit violence.” I tried a different tact, threw out the names of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, the Maoist guerrillas in New Delhi and the NLD in Myanmar, warned Don Pendar against treating anarchy as a panacea, a comment he was also quick to reject.

  “We’re not anarchists. It’s not anarchy when the government is illegitimate. Are you forgetting already?” and here he pulled from my own pocket the bloody cloth I used after the hammer crashed through Emilo’s foot.

  The first blow had shattered bone, Emilo’s toes, medial and lateral cuneiform all splintered and driven into the wood. The second blow flattened his left foot, brought pieces of pale white cartilage poking through the skin, pulverized like brittle sticks in a fleshy sock. Twice more the hammer fell. The dancing girls abandoned their kicks, covered their eyes and mouths in actual horror while the two remai
ning soldiers turned their heads. On the screen Emilo was shown locking his jaw, struggled against the ropes, his head snapping back until his shoulders arched and pitched, and unable to hold out any longer he wailed. The threads in his mouth split his lips into four meaty sections, the pink flaps ripped and dangling, his eyelids torn and bloodied as we looked on.

  The man inside the truck called, “Cut! That’s a wrap! Perfect! Perfect!” The soldiers left the stage while the r est of us ran to undo Emilo’s arms and legs and carried him to Davi’s car. Don Pendar reached for my elbow as I wiped Emilo’s face with my handkerchief. “Let them go, André,” he pulled me out as Mical and Josh jumped into the car and Davi prepared to drive to the hospital. “They have him now. It’s alright. We need to talk.”

  A quarter mile from my father’s house, we approached St. Murced Cathedral where a wedding had just taken place. The bride and groom were out front, cheered by their guests, everyone singing and laughing, giddy in their celebration. At first no one noticed the soldiers coming from behind the church and entering the crowd. Don Pendar and I stopped and watched from the opposite side of the street as the soldiers spoke with the guests and made them hand over envelopes with cash intended for the new couple. Wrapped gifts were carried from inside the church and loaded into a jeep. A dozen street urchins stood off behind a cannonball tree, eager to beg for coins, but seeing the soldiers they stayed away.

  Don Pendar was already three strides into the street before I could run and grab his arm. “Wait, wait,” I redoubled my grip, dug my heels into the pavement, said “Let me,” followed by, “See here. This is a church,” and pointing up at the Cathedral, did my best to draw the soldiers’ attention.

  I spoke with false authority, said “There’s a wedding taking place. You can’t steal these gifts.” As I did this, Don Pendar broke from my hold and lunged toward the watch one of the soldiers had snatched from a member of the wedding party. For his effort he received a blow to the head. A cut opened above his eye. I jumped in between, just as the soldier prepared to hit him again, and identifying myself, hoped my name might mean something, only the soldier was young and unsure. “Mafante? Mafante?”

  “That’s right.” I repeated, “You can’t,” but my appeal produced a hard shove and an order to, “Move off!”

  Don Pendar made as if he was about to start up again. I caught his sleeve and tugged him back across the street. “What were you thinking?”

  “You shouldn’t have stopped me,” he gave this as his answer.

  “No? And if I didn’t? What did you expect would happen?”

  “More than this,” he wiped at his cut with the back of his hand. I dismissed his bravado, told him, “You’ve been watching too many old movies. You’re not thinking clearly. Did it ever occur to you the soldiers might not appreciate your interfering? What if they shot the bride and groom in retaliation for your meddling? You do realize there are others around. You can’t give into the first foolish impulse that comes to mind. There are things to consider beyond your adrenaline. You’re being irresponsible. The consequence of your actions can’t be reversed.”

  Don Pendar waited until I finished, and taking the already bloody handkerchief I handed him, dabbed at his cheek, turned and walked backwards in order to face me, lowered the cloth and used his index finger to trace the welt he received when struck. “You’re right, André,” he said. “There are always consequences, for whatever we do or don’t do each time.”

  My father is a large man, built along the lines of a heavyweight wrestler, stout through the chest and belly, with thick calves and massive thighs. He remains our patriarchal presence, his mind as keen as ever, the articles he writes and advice he gives those who come and seek his counsel top drawer. Age has nonetheless diminished much of his strength, his health at seventy-four is suspect. After my mother died, my father’s diet gave way to meals of sweet yams, Ho-Ho’s and canned sardines in a mustard sauce. “At my age,” he said, “it’s important to find a certain comfort in all forms of sustenance.”

  He called Don Pendar over as we came into the den, asked “What happened to your face?” The welt on Don Pendar’s cheek had star ted to color, the blood clotting around the gash. I explained about the soldiers at the church and my father sighed, “For once it’s good you have a hard head.”

  The den in my father’s house is lined with books, the shelves stacked to the ceiling, a wheeled ladder he can no longer use pushed to the left. Texts out of reach are retrieved with a long wooden pole, the books tumbling down and remaining in piles after they’re read. My father sat in his leather chair, the sides of him spread out like a magnificent old walrus. Word of what happened to Emilo made its way quickly through the capital, bringing more men to fill my father’s house. Such meetings were common now, the frustration and anticipation of dealing with Teddy palpable, a matter I feared of no longer when but how.

  My father folded his hands across his middle. Ali arrived as I was in the kitchen getting ice to put on Don Pendar’s cheek. (Anita, my daughter, was in America this past year, completing her graduate studies.) My son has sandy hair, curled and brushed back from his eyes. His frame is thin. A teacher along with his girlfriend, Feona Dumarre, at All Kings Middle School, Ali wore jeans and sandals and a t-shirt with a quote from Lincoln: “Whatever you are, be a good one.”

  Recently, as fallout from Teddy’s failed economic policies continued to gnaw away at our collective center, children half-star ved and far from home, orphans and runaways, flocked to the capital, seeking food and shelter. Teddy called the children road rats, quoted the writings of Jefferson: “It’s not the duty of gover nment to extend charity.” “It’s not the duty of government to extend charity.” Soldiers were ordered to chase the children from our streets, the Plaza and parks and alleys between our shops. Last month Ali and Feona began sneaking children into All Kings at night. Food was gathered in a daily scramble, the gymnasium used for sleeping until the day students ar rived. “You have your mother’s way of doing things,” I told my son. “You have her sensibilities and stubbornness. You and your sister.” Those who knew Tamina told Ali the same. “You have your mother’s eyes. Her laugh. You have her look within you.”

  Ali joined me in the kitchen, asked about Emilo, wanted to know details. I set the tray of ice down, filled a glass with water. My hands, I realized, were trembling. Ali took the tray and began dumping the ice into a plastic sandwich bag. “What now?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You think?”

  “Something, yes,” I sipped my water, heard through the open kitchen door Gari Charuf, Zak Frazor, Jeri Fulan and Moriz Schwin joining the others. By the time Ali and I returned to the den, Don Pendar was in full riff, addressing the group.

  “What we need is to coordinate our attack with those already in the hills and work our offensive from the inside out.” Half the room bobbed their heads. I handed over the bag of ice, waited for everyone to settle down. “An attack is certainly one possibility,” I began my scramble, was thinking of Emilo, and of Katima, of history repeating and what any sort of redundancy would mean for us now. “I agree the time has come,” I gave them this, spoke as if there could be no doubt, then said, “But there are better ways to deal with Teddy than starting a war.”

  “Come on, André,” Ryle Naceme cut me off. Zak Frazor whistled loud. Moriz Schwin groaned, while Don Pendar held the ice against his cheek and waved his free hand in a circle. “We’ve been all over this before.”

  In past meetings, it was true, for some time now. “So much the better,” I glanced at my father for support. “We can get down to details then.”

  Gari Charuf, the ex-union official, insisted we not waste our time, though Edd Heff and Jeri Fulan, the chemist, said “Let’s hear André out.”

  “It won’t work,” Moriz Schwin stared at Ali. I tapped the top of my father’s desk gently until everyone looked back at me. “Not only will it work, it has worked, just recently in Venezuela and Nig
eria, and earlier with Gandhi in South Africa and in Ahmedabad, and with Alina Pienkowska in Poland. If you understood history,” I couldn’t resist repeating the slight Don Pendar used earlier, and described in detail what Gandhi called ‘hartals,’ said “All things considered, a national strike is our most effective strategy.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Don Pendar set the bag of ice at his feet. “What good is a strike if Teddy still controls the army?”

  “That’s just it. That’s the whole point,” I grew nervous but pressed on. “A strike makes the army irrelevant. If we stick together, there’s nothing Teddy can do.” I listed then our supporters, the workers at the factories and canneries, truck drivers and shoremen, shopowners and farmers all canvased in the weeks before and ready to strike. I mentioned again the expediency with which Gandhi organized his first hartals, how he, too, encouraged everyone to stick together and the success he had. “If we shut down the sale of raw materials and manufactured goods, the trade of fungible produce and exporting of our ore, bauxite and tin, we can neutralize Teddy’s power and drive him out of office.”