by Zeilig, Leo;
Biko’s stomach turned. He wanted to say something. Instead he stiffened against his father’s arm. ‘That’s it,’ Emmerson said, ‘that’s it, boy, rage, fight against us. That’s the way.’
Chapter Seven
Viktor wasn’t sure who Tendai had become in his life. They had barely known each other three years ago but now saw each other at the university every day. Tendai spoke to him with the most intense intimacy – about Viktor’s crisis, his own, the situations in Zimbabwe, in England and the world. There was a mystery to his appearance, Viktor believed, that seemed esoteric – as though this tall, strange, brilliant man had arrived in his life to solve the riddle of Viktor’s existence. So, entirely typically, Viktor’s understanding was both deeply egotistical – Tendai’s arrival, his very purpose, was for Viktor’s elucidation – and sexist, he would only realise years later. Only a man, like Jack, like his father, like bloody Verdi, could play the role of liberator and hero.
Tendai recognised his own intensity in Viktor. His next move, he decided, was to ‘liberate’ Viktor from his destructive obsession with his partner and child. A man must be freed. Only action, movement, could trample the long grasses of distraction.
‘Therapy? Antidepressants?’ Viktor flinched, wishing for a minute that he had not come to find Tendai, reading in the autumn sun, his feet resting on his cart. ‘This is the privatisation of your despair, of everyone’s. This is the thing that is making you sick. It is the source of your paralysis. Of your inaction. Even the brutal, soul-crushing poverty in Harare, in Cape Town’s shanty towns, provides a rudimentary, imperfect collective cushion for humanity’s need for recognition, Viktor. But your life here,’ Tendai circled the air in front of him, then looked hard at Viktor, ‘is in the pit, the rancid hole where you live.’
Viktor sighed. ‘It’s not that bad, Tendai.’
This was Tendai. One minute harsh, violent even in his analysis, his criticism relentless, and the next minute emollient and loving, ridiculously caring. His emails were like this too – written almost by another person, a sort of apology for anger and honesty. His caring contained practice and his words always spoke of action. Where most people finish a sentence with a full stop, Tendai finished with a solution: a telephone number, an instruction to move, to call, to travel, to act. A fucking order.
Recently Tendai had become convinced that his days of speaking to Viktor were over. His advice had not dislodged his friend from his predicament. Someone else had to work on him – tell him how it was, speak the truth of the world and get him moving again. And the only person he knew with a clarity of movement that equalled his own was Anne-Marie. Like him, she was a refugee from the continent’s crisis, from fifty years of political failure and the long, slow death of the emancipatory promise of the sham of independence. Tendai believed that she understood, at least as clearly as he did, what life required.
‘Speak to her, goddamn it, she will tell you about things,’ Tendai had said finally, exasperated. His feet were now on the floor – ready to stand his ground against Viktor’s objections.
‘But why?’
‘Because she is my friend. She is clearer about life than anyone I know – you’ll never find a better comrade of humanity.’
Viktor leant hard on the railing, letting the ledge of the wall take his weight. ‘So I should speak to her like a therapist, like these quacks you hate?’
‘Goddamn it, just speak to her, man – about your bloody website, whatever it’s called, Refutations. Interview her for Refutations if you like. She lives in Africa. She can be another one of your Third World Exhibits, your Honourable Blacks. Learn something.’
‘It’s called Mutations, Tendai. The website is Mutations.’
Tendai was silent. He regretted speaking so harshly. Automatically he started to compose the email he would send later to Viktor.
*
Rosa was asleep in the back of the car they had hired for the weekend. An article on Mutations, one of Viktor’s own, ‘Jouissance as Political Agent’, had gone viral after Slavoj Žižek had responded to it. Žižek had hated it, but the advertisements on Viktor’s blog – an unfortunate necessity – paid per impression. It was a windfall.
He floated home, above the pavement, half-expecting to be recognised in the street. Picking Rosa up from the nursery, he swung her in his arms, left her pushchair empty and folded in the hall and carried her with her face pressed against his, giggling and chatting as they walked home. He told Nina and received a kiss, planted wet and warm, firmly on his lips.
He took them away that weekend to a place he’d hired in Norfolk, a guest house. He and Nina made love in the long, narrow room, which held a kitchenette, bed and cot, fridge, microwave and a single book: Literary History of East Anglia. Rosa babbled in her cot at the end of their bed, laughing with them as they came.
‘I suppose that’s called a ménage à trois,’ Viktor said.
‘Viktor, that’s terrible,’ Nina teased.
In the morning they chased the retreating tide on the long beach, their feet sinking into the sand, the sun flashing on and off through the clouds. Rosa was drunk on the space, the great expanse, the undulating blond dunes spread out like a reclining naked body. They rolled down the sand mountains and forgot the city. Viktor held Nina’s hand as Rosa played in the sand.
‘We adapt, don’t we,’ Viktor said.
‘What do you mean?’ Nina asked as they ambled, zigzagging, along the beach.
‘I mean we adapt as a species to beauty and horror. We got used to the killings of the First World War; life in the trenches became almost routine to the soldiers after a few weeks.’ Viktor swept back his hair.
‘Oh, Viktor.’
‘No, listen,’ Viktor lightened his tone. ‘But we also respond quickly to beauty – and this,’ he opened his arms, ‘the sea, clean air, hope. The possibility that we can live differently.’
Nina took his arm, pulled him to her. ‘Yes to beauty. Thank you for bringing us here, Viktor, darling. Maybe we should move out of the city, get away from the trenches and killing and let Rosa run on beaches.’
Rosa slept noisily as Viktor drove. An hour from London Nina turned her phone on, her face lit up by the white glare. They saw the grainy vision of the city in the distance; the tops of high-rise blocks shimmered into focus as they reached the summit of the motorway, then went out of view, lost as the night choked and blurred the horizon. In the darkness the fields on each side of the road fell away, leaving only the motorway.
Nina laughed as she read aloud from her phone. ‘Listen to what Jo sent me. “Dear Nina, I can’t begin to thank you for your wise advice and calm counsel. I miss having you nearby, your positive, loving presence.” That’s nice, isn’t it?’
‘Lovely. Isn’t it interesting that all your friends and family see you as vivacious, dynamic and wise?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That you’re a very good friend, wise and positive. Of course, in our intimate relationships we are always so much more.’
When they arrived Rosa thrashed in Nina’s arms, resisting her forced removal from the car to the flat and bed: the expression of their collective resistance against the return home.
Viktor folded his clothes, turned back a corner of the duvet and got into bed wearing his saggy pants and vest. He picked up his bedside book.
‘She’s down.’ Nina came into their room, stood at the foot of the bed and removed her clothes, letting them tumble onto the floor. ‘Isn’t it interesting how you don’t see me as wise and vivacious?’
‘What?’ Viktor looked at Nina over his book, his head spinning with words from his novel.
O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire,
but I know how to inflame a cunt.
‘I mean, you said my friends and family see me as wise and dynamic, but you don’t.’
Viktor felt his stomach rise, pass his chest through his lungs, squeeze into his throat. He didn’t answer, but tried to concentrate on the page.
I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania, I make your ovaries incandescent. Your Sylvester is a little jealous now? He feels something, does he? He feels the remnants of my big prick. I have set the shores a little wider; I have ironed out the wrinkles.
After a minute he filled his lungs and spoke. ‘I didn’t say that. How can you think I would have said that? I was saying the opposite.’ Viktor lifted the book so it covered his face.
‘I think you shouldn’t be reading that book in the house – it’s disgusting.’ Nina leant towards him, snatched the book and straightened herself to read aloud. ‘“After me you can take on stallions, bulls, rams, drakes, St Bernards. You can stuff toads, bats, lizards up your rectum. You can shit arpeggios if you like, or string a zither across your navel. I am fucking you, Tania, so that you’ll stay fucked. And if you are afraid of being fucked publicly I will fuck you privately.” The book is disgusting and misogynistic!’ She threw the book at him. It folded and the spine hit his shoulder.
‘It’s one of the last century’s most important novels.’ Viktor breathed in, took the book and found his page.
‘You shouldn’t leave it around where Rosa could find it.’
‘What? Rosa’s a baby, how will she read Henry Miller?’
‘God knows how it’s affecting your thinking.’
‘It’s literature.’
‘Misogyny, not literature.’
‘I’m not having this conversation.’ Viktor continued to read.
I will tear off a few hairs from your cunt and paste them on Boris’ chin. I will bite into your clitoris and spit out two franc pieces ...
Nina came up to him, put her hand on the top of his book, and pulled it down.
‘How would you feel if I said: isn’t it interesting how all your friends and colleagues think you are so smart but I know that underneath you’re not? That I know you’re unoriginal and simple.’
‘That’s a low blow, Nina.’
‘Well, how do you think it made me feel? I just want you to understand.’
‘Congratulations on making me feel terrible. Is that what you wanted?’
Nina left the room. Viktor heard the water from the shower, the rattle as the curtain slid along the rail. He turned the book over, put his hand on the cover, tried to steady himself. Cunt, he muttered, you are a nasty fucking cunt, Nina.
Nina let the water slam against her body, stream through her hair, crash and fall over her shoulders, run down her breasts.
Viktor reached for the antidepressants, pressed out the dose, threw the two pills to the back of his throat and took a gulp of water. He waited for the dizzying rush of sleep. We drug ourselves to survive the relationship, he thought. A whole life spent in a single lie – avoiding each other, anaesthetising against the pain of having to be together.
Viktor thought he could hear Nina crying in the shower. He muttered to himself, powerless, pathetic, Miller on his lap and his throat dry. Our survival depends on drugs, separation in the week and TV. Why don’t I have the courage to name it, have it out, leave her? Why don’t I have the firm, resolute guts of Miller? To fuck and move on? Use my dick to guide me through life, to iron out the creases of existence, to fuck cunt after cunt? I don’t take my writing seriously enough, I don’t have his confidence, Miller’s cocksure certainty in his art – his wilfulness, his anger, his agency to make, create, to delineate a path through all of the cunts.
Nina was talking loud enough for Viktor to hear. ‘I have the power to change. I see my patterns and choose to make changes.’ Through the sound of the water he heard her repeating the words a counsellor had taught her to relieve the pressure, to focus on herself: ‘I see my patterns and choose to make changes.’
It’s no good, Viktor thought, tears choking him, his face twisted. The cunt is no solace. He was not Miller: his feelings, his sadness, his sensitivities were visible on his skin. He could not get out. Nina was completely right, about Miller and him and this age-old male pact of misogyny. Through the haze of anger, through his hurt, Viktor could see it; he could see himself. He swung his feet off the bed, put a hand on the wall to steady himself and felt the drug spread and stretch inside him, extend through his body. He made his way to the bathroom.
Chapter Eight
Viktor felt feverish. He dropped his pen, felt his heart race and put his forehead into his hands, resting his elbows on the desk. Sucking in deeply, he could smell the room, the office, the dust, the evening, for the first time. Slowly, he resumed writing.
Under this dialectic we are crushed by the normal course of events, by daily life. The weight, the pressure of existence, the contradictions and confrontations, mean that we are gradually, inevitably destroyed. Like all living things.
Viktor had five minutes to write before he was due to connect to Anne-Marie. Since the strange email Tendai had sent to them both ordering their connection, they had spoken on the phone briefly. Then, strangely, they had started to text each other and send messages on Facebook. The smokescreen for their connection was collaboration on a series of short articles and interviews for Mutations, intended to expose the deceit of Mugabe’s left turn, his rural support base and the programme of land reform. Anne-Marie was an insider, a cynical practitioner of microfinance, rural grass-roots development and self-help for women. She worked for Rural Lives, a Southern African NGO funded by USAID – or, as she had said on their first call, ‘We call it US-CIA. They are an arm of the US government, but we take their money and try not to follow too many orders – we refuse to carry out open assassinations.’ She had laughed loudly.
Viktor read his words again. Should he read them to her? Already he knew that he was thinking about her too much – that the lines had become blurred. Viktor focused, forcing his pen back to the page, to the copy he was writing for the website.
But Mutations, this site, our project, does not refer to the personal mutation and dialectic that creates and destroys each of us, from acorn to oak tree to extinction. We mean the radical mutation of political action and movement.
‘Fucking hell,’ Viktor said suddenly, aloud. ‘It’s too bloody scholastic. It’s not a chapter in my PhD.’
*
Comrade (wrote Tendai),
Apologies for sending you these electronic letters, but things need to be said – today more than ever. And you need to hear them. So I have written a short message on the latest stage, as I see it, of the capitalist offensive and revolution and how capitalist society as Marx wrote cannot ‘exist without revolutionising the instruments of production and thereby the relations of production and social relations ... and all their train of ancient and venerable prejudices’.
I offer – confidentially, for your eyes only, so don’t post it on your website – a flavour of the shifts, changes, refounding landscape of politics around us as real revolutions clarify, open eyes, awaken and alert as yet unknowable numbers of people. The point? This is to help revolutionaries express and organise the coming revolt.
Please take my advice, as my friend, and for now – keep your counsel, watch, listen, read with refounded critical concentration and attention to what is going on. The cuts will test us as never before. Immense social forces – capital and the trade union bureaucracy – are moving against our interests. All that was apparently solid is about to melt into air and a whole new period is about to begin – not only here on this miserable island, but across the West and in Africa, despite all non-working-class layers attempts to freeze-preserve, maintain and secure the old status quo.
I understand that things are as unstable at the moment for you as they are for me. When you’ve got yourself some sort of base/stability, there is a great deal of good news. I may even be able to get you a room wh
ere I am staying if you finally decide to leave your wife and daughter. (I can do this with consummate ease as I am the bane of the multinational management here – they have never seen such ferocious, unapologetic blackness in their lives.) But for now, my dear friend, weather your storm and think of the BIG fundamentals.
Remember, you command great respect among so many – your website could be an instrument for reaching and reviving those who have been beaten. But we need to be patient. As Lenin put it, ‘Sometimes, there are times when it is good to NOT be in the lead, shaping things, but to be watching, observing, learning. Have the spirit to recognise when something new – a change – must be wrought in reality and in ourselves. Until then, learn, accept that we don’t hold sway.’ When was that? Early 1917. He was absolutely correct, though he underestimated the progress of the change a bit. So regard this as no originality or presumption on my part – it is Lenin’s!
Though, thinking about it again, you have the opposite problem: you tend to sit back and observe too much, so you should discount this lesson from Lenin.
However, in a few weeks, much will have been clarified, and much of it by reality itself.
At university last week you asked how my life is. You said you detect that I am wholly alive, vibrant with activity, contacts – in Africa, which I maintain on an almost daily basis – and that my learning curve is flying off the radar. And in this observation, com, you are correct. Some time ago I abandoned all my other reading, the poetry, the novels and other researches, and from the start of the Tunisian revolution on 17 December last year with my then-lover – who had to return to Botswana – I have been following events obsessively. Sadly, my Botswanan lover left also with her expertise in social media and her ability to record and download the entire cycle of revolutions in our time.
I have spread this information to hundreds of contacts and comrades, in the UK, Europe and in Africa. Real revolution ALWAYS refounds our ideas by a period and process of CRISIS. This is what we are now living through. So yes, as a result, not only have I had the incomparable privilege of forty years as a conscious revolutionary, though for twenty of these years I was under the illusions of Black nationalism – a necessary stage for all conscious revolutionaries from Southern Africa. For ten years I entered a harder school of isolation, and in the last decade I have been active in small groups, but numbers are growing – now my abilities are taking off as never before. I have never known anything like this political vantage point in my mind.
