An Ounce of Practice

by Zeilig, Leo;

  I owe 99% to the work of the Society of Liberated Minds in Zimbabwe, no doubt about it. The Society was my touchstone, bedrock and concrete founding floor. We used to say, ‘We are not tall, but we stand on the shoulders of giants.’ And still I have so much to learn – and so do you, Viktor. Since coming to this Dark Continent I’ve continued to read most of Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, but also reread Cabral, Fanon and Biko. If apartheid prison taught me anything, it was how to study. Those six know more of revolutions – the whole process – than anyone else.

  I’ve now spent two solid years – in a sense – rereading EVERYTHING. Hence my verbosity and outpourings to you! It is both timely and apt. This is the most important work of our lives NOW.

  I can only say in conclusion – you may not be the only comrade coming to live here – I know we are still cogitating on that, but there are many good options. For yourself – as I have known you as a comrade and friend – I DO think it makes a lot of sense to live around with me, away from your privatised hell, if you can afford it. Your daughter too can come and stay and we can bring her up together. Obviously I’d be delighted if you were to be here. We must never underestimate the revolutionary power of children, to grasp the essential, to fight with ferocity, for the revolution. Our power and impact would be RENEWED.

  And from our conversation at university it sounds like you need a break – and, if a com like you, a cadre of importance, does not have a regular place away from domestic misery, you may break. I have seen it happen. So I want you to know that it would not go astray for you to know that, come whatever, you have a solid old friend and comrade here. It’s good to know such things and enjoy them when you’ve taken a knock. You stand by me and I stand by you. Isn’t this what we understand by communism?

  I have been drugging my sleep almost continually for years, a mixture of sleeping pills, antihistamines, alcohol and sex. I haven’t told anyone this, but if I wake in the night I not only can’t sleep but I start to despair – which is close to fucking total. And the worst part of the despair? Defeat. I fear that we have been defeated so often that we won’t ever be able to win. So this thing I offer you – solidarity – as I have done for a long time now, is not an act of imagination. NEVER. It’s just the simple solidarity of SHARING. We share the pain, the torment, the fucking hell of it all.

  If you have £530 per month, no further bills, you could come and live here – in this hostel where I stay. You will have what you don’t at the moment, with this situation you’re in, namely ME.

  The battle commences in days, at the latest in weeks and the epicentre in London is our university. Together, Viktor, we can observe and study the fundamentals AND put into practice our plans.

  All the best to you, friend, yours in struggle always,

  Tendai

  *

  From the house there was the din of voices, laughter, shouts of argument, one over the other, each trying to be heard. Biko tried to make sense of them. It worried him that his cadre, these brothers and sisters, were making this noise when they needed rest, when they should be planning and sleeping. This was the moment when anxiety flooded him. As usual it made him irritated, and his frustration turned on Anne-Marie for provoking his doubt, for making him question. He knew there would be violence tomorrow, and in some senses this violence would have been triggered by him, his decisions and his agency. But he also knew that nothing moved in Zimbabwe without violence. With this one fact, the whole of physics had been rewritten to account for the peculiarity of Southern African underdevelopment: from the Limpopo in the South to Kariba in the North, the law now stated that uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless external violence is applied to it by ZANU-PF. Students would be bloodied, even hospitalised.

  Biko tried to locate the cricket in the garden of the squat that kept him awake at night. He could hear it now, loud and angry. He moved around the dry, dirty garden with the unwatered tree and dying plants. Words from the house reached him. Eleanor’s, the most determined voice: ‘Say there is a low turnout, which might be a possibility. I want to sacrifice my blood meaningfully, for a revolution which is going to be a success. Better to die defending an idea that you know will eventually become a success than to continue for an idea that will not succeed at the end of the day.’

  At the end of the day, Biko repeated softly, smiling to himself. The chirping became louder when he stood still. The cricket didn’t hear him coming. Seeing the small black shape on the ground, under the tree – so damn small, but what a noise, what capacity – Biko hesitated, then bent quickly down and scooped it up in a handful of dry earth. He felt the insect twitch in his hand as he walked to the wall at the back of the house and threw the ball of soil hard, over the neighbouring house, into the sky. Tomorrow is going to be the start of something – a new start.

  Chapter Nine

  Even when he was with Rosa he had started to think about Anne-Marie, and with Nina she had become his salvation. She was wherever he went in the routine of their life together: when he cooked, tidied his daughter’s room, washed her at night. And in bed with Nina as well. Too exhausted and bored to make love, lying with the covers between them, Viktor thought of Anne-Marie’s grainy image on Skype, her wide, open face, her laughter, which held no doubt or hesitation. In the images of Anne-Marie that he had found on Google she was speaking at conferences, in donor seminars, professional, assertive and impossibly, irresistibly foreign. And then there were the photos she’d sent him, weeks ago.

  At the end of their first call, Anne-Marie’s face barely lit, the connection unusually clear, she had said, ‘It seems a pity to leave it here.’

  Viktor swallowed hard, rushed to agree. ‘Yes, a pity. Maybe we could exchange numbers and set up another interview.’ This pretext for another conversation was thin. ‘We could work more on the articles and interviews we spoke about.’ But why exchange numbers? Why fucking telephone numbers? Viktor thought afterwards. It was practically nineteenth-century – yet, oddly, it seemed more appropriate than exchanging emails or following each other on Twitter. It was intimate.

  On his way home after the first call Viktor had hurriedly sent Anne-Marie a text, unable to stop himself, his fingers slipping on the phone, composing, deleting, retyping. Very good to make this connection. Fascinating. Delighted to hear about Zimbabwe’s jambanja. Soon. V. Even with the casual veneer of a text, the immediacy of his message was obvious.

  For a few moments Viktor had felt guilt-stricken, full of the agony of duplicity, the knowledge of what was going to happen. Then his phone buzzed.

  Anne-Marie had texted back immediately. Likewise, Viktor. Impressed with your knowledge of the struggle. Let’s Skype again soon. In the meantime this is for you #BlackWoman. Then, inexplicably, with no forewarning, she sent a photo of herself – taken in the flat in the seconds after the call. With a pale, naked bulb above her, she stood resolute in a brightly coloured flowered shirt and dark skirt, her hair plaited and twisted on her head.

  This was enough to burst Viktor’s reticence. Stumbling, he texted her as he found his way out of the university to the tube, his head bowed to the phone that seemed to pull him forward, draw him through life, along the pavements, across roads. In five minutes it all came out. He told her about Nina. His crisis. His daughter. His dilemma. Bemused and excited, Anne-Marie, after a pause, spoke of her own situation – and so in fifteen minutes they revealed everything to each other about their lives. Their connection was a strange, instantaneous twinning of London and Harare: frustrated and unquenched love in the Global North and South.

  This had been weeks ago, and now their connection was established. Fixed.

  Viktor sat back from his desk, stretched, clicked on his mouse, opened Facebook and hurriedly sent a message to Nina that he was working late with one of his classes. It was already dark, and the lights flickered on automatically in the shared office. He pressed send.

  His phone rattled slightly with an incoming message.

  Sor
ry Vik. Can we do the call later, or text, the connection is terrible and it will only FRUSTRATE us? AM x

  Viktor hurriedly replied. What did she mean? Frustration because they couldn’t consummate the desire to see each other, to see each other’s flickering, sepia faces on Skype? Or just the frustration of intermittent disconnection?

  The dialectic was playing itself out – Anne-Marie’s evening was ripe with change, the possibility of rupture.

  At the end of the meeting tonight Anne-Marie was going to tell Nelson that she wanted a break. She wore her black heels and a suit jacket over a long, billowing skirt, her breasts pressed against the shirt buttons. She mouthed the words to herself as she drove with slow, careful purpose from town into the avenues. I travel too much, Nelson. It’s no good how you turn up without warning, expecting sex, and after two days we separate without plans. If I am going to carry on with the Society of Liberated Minds, we need distance. She could see him already, with a slight smile, his head cocked to the side, listening to her, and then the arguments and charm that he would command into a dreadful stream of persuasion.

  Cars and minibuses swerved around potholes, the drivers pressing hard on their horns as if navigation was commanded by sound, not sight. Despite her effort to drive, Anne-Marie heard Nelson’s voice, tuneful, eloquent; she saw his hair bundled carelessly in a plastic band, his whole body moving, dancing to his words, declaiming dictatorship, each sentence delivered with a shrug, his hands flat, palms up, reaching into the room, serving his sentences, asking his comrades, the flat, the room, the country, for benediction. He would speak to Anne-Marie in the same musical cadences and tell her that they were meant to be together. As she got out of the car her heel got caught in a pavement grille. She balanced on one foot and bent down, prised out the heel, dusted the shoe free of dirt. I won’t be able to do it. I need him. I fucking need him.

  *

  Nina felt pleased with herself. There had been progress. They had been text-messaging while Viktor was at the office and they had somehow managed to communicate – free from having to stand in front of each other, the barriers of frequency, the contempt of household familiarity. Rosa was occupied on the floor of the lounge, her pens and paper out, bent over in concentration, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth.

  Nina went into the kitchen, calling to Rosa that she had ten minutes before she had to change into her pyjamas. Only then would she be allowed to eat with Daddy when he came home late from work. Concentrating intently on her stick-figure drawings of her friends and the family, the radiant, hallucinogenic sky, the arch of an impossibly beautiful rainbow, Rosa didn’t answer.

  For now, Nina felt cleansed. Happy, even. She leant over the oven, opened the door a crack. Hot, scented air bellowed up. The meal would be perfect. She would get Rosa ready for bed. Nina would have a shower before bed and brush her teeth, and then they could make love. The thought of holding Viktor in bed for the first time in weeks, his thin, stringy body pressed hard against her, made her stomach jump. She smiled.

  ‘Darling, please pack up and put on your PJs.’ There was a flash of something in Nina’s head. Déjà vu? She couldn’t find the memory. She pulled the plates out of the cupboard above the sink, placed the glasses on the work surface. Nina heard Rosa humming something to herself as she walked past the kitchen to her bedroom.

  Suddenly the memory came to her clearly. She saw herself leaning over her homework at the kitchen table, thirty years ago. Her mother had come in and there was lightness in her movements. Her father was cooking, his back to the door – he was wearing the kitchen apron. Nina didn’t want to disturb them, so she kept her head down, focused on her project, and pretended to be invisible. Her mother went silently up to her husband and curled her arms around his waist, stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the back of the neck. Nina was embarrassed and pleased. She lowered her head even further to the page.

  In the kitchen tonight she could smell her father’s cooking. How was that possible? Had she really cooked exactly the same meal – the apple crumble, the boiled potatoes, the lamb chops? And the love? The love was the same as well. The way she felt for Viktor, remembering her parents. Why had she been in such a rush for Rosa to clear up? She should have left her. Nina called into the corridor, ‘Darling, Rosa, when you’ve changed you can continue drawing if you like – until Viktor’s back from work.’

  *

  The demonstration was a stunt. Students, cleaners, security guards and union members had occupied the university lobby. Some wore costumes: top hats, badly fitting suits, overalls and dungarees. The revolving door spun, depositing people into the performance. The entire hall, in all its marble, polished brass and varnished wood, throbbed to the beat of drums as the players took their places for this parody of the university. Fat-cat executives, VCs, deans and professors – a detail that appealed to Viktor – in pinstriped suits ordered the cleaners, who knelt on all fours, to scrub the floor. The drum, beating slowly, conducted the action.

  Viktor recognised the cast: the cleaners, Rejoice, Moreblessing, Patience, bent over like dogs. The fat cats and professors were played by the graduate students Gary and Wayne. The lift opened, emptying more students and sympathisers into the reception hall. Others stood clapping at the side, taking photos or filming the scene on their phones.

  Tendai stood unchanged by the reception desk in his BCW uniform, his lapels ablaze with badges and stickers, a megaphone to his lips. ‘What you can see before you is a typical day at the university. The cleaners, those on the floor, ordered, bossed, bullied by the men in the hats, to clean, wash, scrub, so your university, this centre of learning and civilisation’ – Tendai spat the words out – ‘is in perfect, absolute cleanliness, but they do it on poverty wages.’

  Viktor skirted the performance. The impromptu audience, two lines thick, watched confused. The security guards stood stiffly, speaking softly into their collar radios and waiting for their orders. Viktor made his way to Wayne, who was handing out leaflets: CAMPAIGN FOR THE LONDON LIVING WAGE. EQUALITY FOR ALL MEMBERS OF STAFF. Then the same words written in Polish and Spanish and, for effect, Shona. Campaña por un salario digno. Kampania na rzecz płacy. Mushandirapamwe nokuti muLondon mhenyu mubayiro. Kuenzana nokuti nhengo dzose netsvimbo. Wayne divided the leaflets and handed a bundle to Viktor.

  ‘Now take the man wearing the suit,’ Tendai continued quickly, changing tack. ‘He is the vice chancellor. His name is Rory Reynolds and he earns £160,000 a year. He has private health insurance and subsidised accommodation. He works a three-day week.’ This information was all true.

  The crowd pushed their way forward, jostled to reach the stalls. Those further back craned, stood on their toes, peered at the stage from the circle, the upper circle, the balcony.

  Viktor saw the lift open and shut. Suddenly Terry, the union secretary, was standing in the foyer: Viktor could make out his squat, broad body, his red face, the upturned nose, the exposed, flaring nostrils. Terry shook his head to the beat of the drum.

  ‘This man, this fat cat, the VC, prides himself on outsourcing the cleaners to BCW. The dirty work is carried out by fat cat number two.’ Tendai pointed with his free hand at a performer, who spun round, showing the audience a figure two printed on an enormous raffle ticket pinned to his back. People laughed.

  Terry continued to shake his head, standing motionless in the lobby.

  ‘This man is Peter Green, another pig,’ Tendai said, pointing to Number Two. The audience laughed again. ‘He is friends with Rory. They went to the same school. Peter is the chief executive in charge of BCW. He earns more than £300,000 per year, plus benefits. It would take Patience thirty years to earn this, but she will be dead long before that. So have you got it? Rory contracts Peter to exploit Patience. Okay, man, now you’re getting it. So when you shit, it is Patience who cleans the bowl. Do you now see how the circle is completed? Rory, Peter, Patience and you complete the circle. Seal the pact. All of you are human beings; only Patience is
a slave, and Peter and Rory are masters. Just like you – some masters, some slaves. Only you know who you are.’ Tendai paused. There was nervous laughter. ‘And for those of you who do not know, or who have yet to find your rank, you need to decide whose side you’re on.’

  Terry’s face shone red and swollen. His ears twitched. He walked around the inner circle of the production, along the stage. As he approached Tendai, Viktor could see that his body, his shoulders, his entire self, his ontology, vibrated with disagreement. Terry reached towards Tendai and put his hand out for the megaphone.

  Viktor felt a surge of satisfaction. He’d been so close to missing the protest. If he had, he’d never have grasped the relations of oppression, the connections between Patience, Moreblessing, Peter, Rory; between the union, the university and his own work, the PhD; the hegemonic structure of meaning, power, oppression and this, this circus protest, this vaudeville act. Everything was linked, everything came together, the disjointed activities of his life united. Viktor opened his notebook, blood pounding in his ears, and scribbled.

  *

  The peculiarity of this call, on this night, was that Viktor managed to conduct two conversations, two utterly distinct communications, with two different women, demonstrating a capacity to separate himself that bordered on pathological. And he succeeded. Though he did not mark this night as a turning point, that early autumn evening in the quiet of his university office, that simultaneous, frenzied conversation with two women, was the start of the rupture that followed. The adjacent conversations were held with Anne-Marie, in her messy, bleak apartment in downtown Harare, and with Nina, as she prepared their meal in the flat that they rented with their daughter.