Temporary People
Page 13
The rats are disturbed by the rustling of my chains as the guards toss me back in my cell. I fall with my legs bent and head bowed. The men upstairs are no longer chanting and I can only imagine what the guards have done this time to stop them. I crawl on my knees, roll over and lean back against the wall. What a mess I’ve made again, provoking the others without ever thinking. What was the point? What did I expect to happen? Why couldn’t I ignore their early chants and just stand in the center of the floor and be still? What was wrong with showing defiance and non-cooperation by actually resisting and not causing trouble for everyone else for a change? I wonder about this, am trying to decide when the door overhead opens and a yellow-white light shines down.
The air fills with a smell of soap and after-shave. My lungs are confused, and coughing, I shield my head as my cage is unlocked and the light in the Captain’s hand covers me. He sets the lantern outside and enters my cell. His keys are on a large ring he tosses near the stairs. I say nothing, continue to watch as he removes the pistol from his holster and surveys the space inside my cage. With his left hand he holds the pale blue cloth in front of his mouth even as he talks. “Please,” he points his pistol, gives his narrow shoulders a lift, surprises me by tapping the chain between my wrists. “Go on,” he waves toward the open door of my cell and out toward the keys.
I hesitate then drag the chains and step outside, move past the lantern and to the stairs. The Captain remains behind. I sit and unlock the irons around my legs, consider the possibility of my leaping up and slamming the cell door shut, locking the Captain inside. And then? If he doesn’t shoot me and I make it upstairs, how will I escape? The Captain seems to know what I’m thinking, gives me a few seconds more then says, “You see, you are capable of restraint.”
He comes from my cell, tucks the blue cloth into his pocket, takes the keys and undoes my wrists. “What am I to do with you?” He steps back, kicks the chains away, gives a weary sigh as if the issue is a torture for him. “You weren’t supposed to get the others all worked up. I was expecting you to know better. Now I have to start again.” He motions me to stand. His teeth are yellow, his breath sour as if some vile illness resides in his gums. I want to say there’s nothing to start, that everything is over, but it’s clear this isn’t what the Captain believes. He puts me back in my cell, closes the door, lifts the lantern and climbs the stairs. “What now?” he repeats, shakes the light and gives another sigh, only to stop halfway up and answer his own question with, “Not to worry. I’ll think of something, I’m sure.”
I sit for hours after the Captain leaves and try to imagine. The threat is beyond me, is nothing I can guess, and still I can’t stop thinking. The darkness inside my cell is venal. In Yeravda Jail, Gandhi wrote how he used his imprisonment for worship, referred to his cell as his ‘mandir,’ his temple in which he concentrated on forms of self-improvement and training himself to feel happy. Such horse shit, I’m convinced now. Gandhi in prison took lime juice and honey after 4:00 a.m. prayers, wrote and read and what sort of confinement is that? “We must make the best possible use of the invaluable leisure in jail,” he wrote and wouldn’t that be easy if I was somewhere other than underground in a dirt walled cellar with a bucket full of piss?
I’m again upset with myself for feeling this way and am in the process of trying to regain my strength when the silence above at long last gives way and I hear familiar noises, thumps and echoes, heavy objects dragged and men with hoarse, impatient voices barking. This time as the door at the top of the stairs opens, the light shined down is brighter than the Captain’s lantern. I turn away, hear a key unlocking my cage while something hard is jabbed into my side. “Move back!” a guard aims the light. The door is relocked and the soldiers return upstairs.
When I open my eyes, rings of yellow and white novas burn in front of me. I stare out, my hands outstretched, unsure what has happened. “Who’s there?” I call.
The voice is not what I expect. “Mr. Mafante?”
Confused, I don’t believe at first, am certain I’ve misheard and will be attacked at any moment. “Who is it?” I move further into the rear of my cell where I crouch in the dark and hope to hide.
“It’s me, Mr. Mafante. Over here,” fingers are snapped. “Mr. Mafante? Are you there?”
The voice is clearer now, unmistakable. I begin moving toward the sound, reach for the click-click-snapping, find Daniel’s arm as he grabs my sleeve and greets me with a sudden and mad embrace.
Leo Covings knew what he needed, up to a point. He’d found his beginning, had his middle, but not quite his end. To create the perfect final scene, he require inspiration. Already bits of footage had appeared in several countries on TV, the ambush at the main warehouse mixing the perception of news with a movie trailer tease. What fascinated viewers was the hook, the promise of real events unfolding in a feature Leo swore to finish soon. This was the problem, how to complete what he started, keeping everything real and not real, life imitating art imitating life, the revolution that was and wasn’t his to shape in and away from the pre-scripts of Teddy Lamb.
Katima had heard all the worst rumors about the American director and assumed they were true. “I suppose you must be wondering what I want,” Leo passed the corporal who sat guest-like in the kitchen, walked into the front room where Katima was drafting letters. He came to see her, he said, “Because you are now the tie that binds.” He told her what André had wanted, how it was too soon to know which way things would turn out. “Despite a rough start.” He spoke about his film, about Teddy and his movie. “My movie,” Leo wanted her to understand. “What if I told you I don’t know what’s going to happen? And if I don’t know, then Teddy can’t.”
He said he wanted her to help, that “This is why I’m here, to work with you on the end.” He stood staring through his hands, framing Katima’s features while he described the process for creating a final scene. “It’s like adding bees and snakes to a jar and letting nature take its course. I want to see what happens once we put the pieces in place.” Leo moved closer, could tell he had her attention, however much she wasn’t sure that she could trust him. He came from the shadows, said “Listen, listen,” was eager to discuss an idea he had.
A few days after Nick and Anita arrived, two more men came to the house and disappeared with Kart and Tobias upstairs. When the four of them left a short while later, Nick asked and was told only, “It’s boys night out.”
Dinner was a mix of brown rice and beans. Nick ate with Anita in the kitchen. Since their arrival, Kart kept them busy with minor errands and chores around the house. Nick asked questions, looked for clues of things to come but mostly Kart kept him in the dark. Upstairs later, he sat on the mattress with his back against the wall and removed his boots. “It isn’t that I don’t like him,” he said of Kart. “It’s just that I know his type.” “What type?” Anita dropped down on the opposite side of the mattress while Nick tugged off his socks and stretched his toes. “He’s predictable, is all. What’s the Warren Zevon song?” he decided on this as a point of reference. “He’s just an excitable boy. He’s like those graduate students back in the States who are always ready to protest something without really knowing what’s going on.”
“But this isn’t the States.”
“Right. That’s what I’m saying. There’s no such thing as a harmless rant here. All pseudo-revolutionaries become the real deal.”
Anita folded her legs in and pulled off her shoes. “At least Kart’s trying to do something.”
“What’s he doing? I mean really?” Nick slipped off his pants, stretched his left leg until his bare toes touched Anita’s knee, testing her mood, relieved when she didn’t jerk away. The one window in the bedroom was covered by a tan cotton curtain, the breeze shifting the material forward and back. “Its easy to get caught up in things,” he said. “But you can’t confuse effort for progress. We need to be sure what’s going on is not just a lot of loud noise.”
“Is that what
you think this is?”
“I don’t know. What does Kart tell you?”
“When?”
“When he talks to you.”
“He doesn’t tell me anything,” Anita reached for Nick’s foot and squeezed his arch. “He asks what I want. He says there are things I can do.”
“What things?”
“To help,” she pushed Nick’s foot off and climbed to her knees, stood to undress. Nick wrapped his fingers around her ankle. After so many days he still hoped Anita would change her mind and agree to speak with Dukette but this hadn’t happened. She was stubborn, impatient, entrenched. He looked toward their duffle, where the one book he brought with him, Hern’sAnthology of Modern Poetry, was tossed. A gift from his mother, Nick was not initially a fan, but she convinced him Blake and Keats and Auden were the best companions when away from home, and he found in time this was true. He recalled parts of, ‘O Tell Me the Truth about Love,’ and “Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian/Or boom like a military band?” He thought of Auden’s ‘Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love,” and wished Anita would come back and settle down beside him.
“I just think it might be best,” he mentioned again the American Consul, only Anita stopped him, annoyed. “If the Americans wanted to help my father they would have done so by now. If we go to him we’re stuck. He’ll want to know things we can’t tell him.”
“So instead we do what?” Nick wanted her to explain specifically so he could argue in turn, say that war gave license it was true, but to what end? “What about your father?” he tried again. “What would he say?”
“Nick, don’t.”
“I’m just asking.”
“My father’s in jail. That’s where doing things his way got him. He trusted the wrong people and Teddy crushed him. I’m not going to do that. It’s bad faith.” This was her father’s mistake, ignoring obvious truths. “It’s false assumptions that let everyone down. Listen,” she didn’t want to fight anymore, came tired and lay beside Nick on the mattress. “Let’s talk about it in the morning. I know what you’re saying. I do. We’ll discuss it tomorrow, I promise.”
Nick slid closer along Anita’s side. Tired, he shut his eyes, told himself it was enough for the moment, and soon fell asleep. In the dark, Anita got up and went to the window where she waited for what Kart said would happen. Just after 1:00 a.m., a blast lit the sky, loud and jarring, sending a sea of colors soaring, followed immediately by the wail of sirens and alarms. Nick woke startled. Anita looked at him for a second before saying, “It’s alright. It’s nothing,” and turning away again to face the flame, “Don’t worry, go back to sleep.”
I sit with Daniel against the bars, our feet beneath the blanket as the rats are active. We hear them scurry, shoo them off when they sniff too close. I ask about my family, my father, Katima and Ali, Emilo and the others, Bo and Cris and Feona, but Daniel has nothing new. “I was hiding,” he tells me, and describes those first days following the attack at the Port, how “They came for us, the soldiers and police.” A detention center was set up at the Stadium, hundreds of people ar rested, a list posted and more names added by the hour. “I managed to avoid them for almost a week but eventually they found me,” Daniel said. a “An American soldier brought me in.”
We sit for some time and talk. Everything is dark. Finally a bit of sunlight passes across my small window and I stare closer at Daniel. His black hair is longer now, falls over the right side of his face. His cheeks are whiskered, his beard shorter than my own. I notice he has the usual bumps and scabs and bruises, though nothing of consequence, which comes as a great relief. I want to know more, all that has happened since his arrest, who has he seen at Moulane and what if anything has he heard? Instead of answering, he says, “Why, André?”
It’s the first time I can recall his referring to me this way. His tone is wrenching and I think initially he’s asking me to explain about the Port and why things went the way they did. I begin to apologize, my guilt in need of forgiveness, I say, “You’re right. I should have thought things through more clearly. Daniel, I’m sorry.” But he isn’t listening, is asking instead, “Why have they brought me down here?”
I think at once of the Captain’s threat, just as the door at the top of the stairs opens again and three soldiers come down. The light they carry is not as bright as before. I can see them enter my cell. The first guard pushes me aside, shouts at Daniel, “Visit’s over.” They grab his arms, re-lock my cage and disappear upstairs.
Hours pass. I wait for what I’m not sure, listen to every sound coming from above. At one point two new guards bring me water and a bowl of greenish-brown corn meal. I look for Daniel, ask nervously if they know where he is. The guards caw back at me, flap their arms like foolish birds, cup their hands to their ears and laugh, “Who? Who?” More time passes. Alone again, the waiting itself becomes a form of torture. Late that night a fresh light is shined down the stairs. I shield my eyes as two more guards approach my cell and shove Daniel back in on top of me. We both tumble as the door is relocked. The guards vanish, leaving the lantern behind.
Daniel stands in the half-light, his hands cupped against his middle, his shoulders sloped as if some great force is pressing down. I move quickly toward him, say his name, ask several times, “Are you alright?”
He turns away, not answering at first, moves toward the bars, sinks against them with his legs extended and his arms still cradled in against his belly. The lantern allows me to see his face gone pale. I kneel in front of him and ask again, “What is it? What’s happened?” Daniel repeats my question as if he, too, is trying to make sense of it. “What exactly?” and unfolding his arms, he shows me the knife.
Katima agreed to wear the costume Leo gave her. At the south end of the University, she walked down the center of the grassy common, past Bolano Hall and the graduate library. Leo filmed her alone at first, framed against the sunrise. He used his own old Keystone Bel Air camera. Later, when more people came, he planned to have his crew shoot the scene with state-of-the-art equipment, but for now he wanted simply to get a sense of what was there.
“What I have is this,” he pulled several pages of notes from his back pocket, a series of half finished dialogues, things to get people started. He explained how the end of his film had to resonate with the sort of integrity and spontaneity he couldn’t predict, and asked Katima, “Tell me, what do you imagine?”
Teddy had his own idea for the final scene. “Picture this,” he sent for Leo, cupped the American’s elbow. Dressed in combat gear, with stars and boots and pistol polished to such a shine the light as he walked sparkled off his stride, he said, “What I want is a battle on the beach. I’ll lead the charge, like Rommel in the desert. As fierce as Patton. As inspired as Washington crossing the Delaware, by George!” as Outside the capital, the fighting had continued for weeks, drawing closer again back to the city. Teddy unhinged, put his faith in the magic of movies, insisted the finale be a spectacle. “If we get it on film, us winning the war, that will be that. There will be no disputing. The last scene should be of us returning, having smashed the rebels, the streets lined with people singing and dancing and cheering wild.”
A movie scene, for sure. Leo said he could create the visuals no problem, “But this isn’t what our film’s about. John Wayne and Audie Murphy, Randolph Scott and Gary Cooper, Tom Hanks looking for Private Ryan. It’s all been done a thousand times and what’s the point?”
“The point is in Bamerita now I am John Wayne,” Teddy waved his pistol which may or may not have been a prop. “If it’s something real you want, we’ll do it. We’ll set the stage and make it happen. All we have to do is get the rebels to the water.”
“This Teddy thinks,” Leo told Katima, shook his head at the suggestion. “What sort of movie?” he frowned again. “What revolution ever ends so neatly? Even as a fiction, this is a bad one.” He explained his plan once more, said to Katima, “I’ll set the scene and let you make the ending happen.”