My God, what frustration. I was overcome with a horrible desire to scream and run, two of the things prohibited to me in this courtroom. She knew that I would have to travel the length of the aisle that separated me from the door more slowly. She took advantage of that time to create an insurmountable distance between us. I followed her out of the courtroom. But outside there was only an old porter. The man was between the massive stone columns that supported the building’s archway. He was sitting in a small wooden chair that contrasted strongly with that gigantic frame of marble columns and stairs. I asked him if he had seen a tall women dressed in black. He told me that he had. I asked him what direction she had gone in. The man made a tired gesture with one arm, as if he was tossing down a card, and he said lethargically, ‘That way.’
‘That way’ was all of London.
I tried to review the events that evening. I had plenty of reasons to feel guilty. Sooner or later Amgam had to appear at the trial, to offer support to Marcus. Why had I not realised before? Surely things are much easier to understand than to predict. It was also obvious that what I had done would keep her away from Marcus for the rest of the trial. I was even less proud of that. And there was an even more depressing aspect that had to be added to all that: it didn’t take a genius to know that in those moments when she had stood by the door she was sending me a message. It would have been very easy for her to run away as soon as she had seen me approach. She hadn’t. She had chosen to establish a dialogue. She wanted to show me her refusal. I had presented her with my credentials. And I had requested a hearing, and she had denied me one: ‘Please, I don’t want you to come near me.’ That was her sovereign opinion and who was I to question it.
I spent the night sitting on the bed, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. And now a painful and honest confession: sometimes, as strange as it may seem, love and altruism move in totally opposite directions. In my case, at least. Or is there someone who thinks that my love for Amgam didn’t rival Marcus’s? Who ever said that love is pretty? Love is, above all, powerful. Love can distort our ethics just as an iron beam, so solid and hard, bends in a furnace. Rationally I wanted Marcus to be declared innocent. Of course I did. But a part of me was crying out for him to be executed. No one knew her as well as I did, no one else could get close to her with more knowledge of her situation.
Amgam was an extraordinarily intelligent creature. She had surely learned English by now. To speak it and read it. There could be no one more interested in reading the book than her. So, then, what was the exact reason for her categorical refusal? Had she not understood that I was offering her the kindest, warmest hand?
Maybe she had understood it, in the end. Maybe she was the only being on the planet that understood the feelings that moved the keys of my typewriter. And maybe precisely because of that, she refused to speak to me. Beyond security measures, perhaps there was an added reason for which she kept that distance: to show me that she was Marcus Garvey’s woman, not mine.
Imagine that the love of your life is hiding under a billion stones. There’s nothing worse. Or there is: that she lives around the corner and doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.
A fortnight after it began, the trial against Marcus Garvey started to heat up again. There were more exciting witnesses called and, most importantly, we were getting close to the end. On the last day the crowd was so packed together it was as if we made up one impatient body; a pinch on one arm was felt by all the other arms. Unlike the first day, I had come very early and I sat on the first bench, right in front of the railing that separated the public from the court proceedings.
It was written in the stars that this would be Edward Norton’s great day. I still admire the way he had manoeuvred to ensure that, on that day, all the mirrors were in position to reflect it. The press was there, the public was spirited, and the prosecutor was long defeated. He wasn’t incompetent, not by any means, but from the first session he made me think of a boxer who had been promised that he would fight against a midget and finds himself in the ring with a titan. In one of his desperate attempts, he had been forced to resort to Casement’s statement. My God, what a lame ploy. Casement had indeed been a brilliant diplomat. But here fortune played on Marcus’s side. Casement was Irish, and two years earlier, in 1916, he had been one of the leaders of the Dublin revolt. Once he was arrested, to destroy him definitively, they had discovered irrefutable proof of his homosexuality. No one wept at his execution. With that record, and in 1918, what English court would have taken Casement’s opinion into account? The war had reach its climax and the patriotic atmosphere was so fervent the colours of the Union Jack could be seen everywhere, even in restaur ant butter.
Norton was waiting to bring Marcus to the stand. He condensed it all into a single question.
‘Mr Garvey, what estimation does Mr Roger Casement deserve?’
Marcus was melodramatic enough to hold himself back for a few seconds, containing a broadside, and then he exclaimed, ‘The same that any traitor to the Empire deserves. He should rot in hell until the end of time.’
Hats flew through the air. And in the midst of the euphoria, Norton moved towards the judge, with a hand raised holding up the thirty-seven (‘Yes, indeed, Your Honour, thirty-seven’) petitions for voluntary conscription that Marcus had presented since the war had broken out, all systematically refused by the military administration. Of course, Norton had advised Marcus to present all those petitions because he knew the army would never accept the petition of someone awaiting trial for murder. But it was very impressive seeing Norton handing those papers over to the judge in a masterstroke as excessive as it was unnecessary. In theory he should have handed them over to a porter, who in turn would have placed them in the hands of a secretary, who would have made sure the papers got to the judge. But it was Norton’s triumphal march. Who could deny him that? Anyway, even if only to keep up appearances of convention, the judge banged and banged with his gavel, on the verge of losing his patience.
And now I need to interject. I still didn’t know it, but the trial was won before it began. How? Norton was a member of one of the most exclusive clubs in London. Even though he was a man without great fortune or influence, it wasn’t hard to understand why they would admit him. Someone like him had it written all over his face that sooner or later he would become a part of the patricians’ circle. In the same way that a letter can be addressed incorrectly, sometimes fate makes mistakes too, and an individual is born in the wrong house. But letters eventually arrive at their destination, and men to their destiny.
In that club the most affluent society members established relationships and did business with the excuse of playing billiards or enjoying a glass of malt whisky. Norton was a member, and so was the judge assigned to the Garvey case. I am not alleging, not in the least, corruption. That wasn’t Norton’s style. On the other hand, the club was governed by unwritten rules that no one wanted to break. Since it was such a private place, where only the elite were admitted, the barristers from the large firms and the judges in charge of their cases often crossed paths there. In those cases they would politely avoid each other until the end of the trial.
One day Norton ordered one of his cognacs. He felt the need to sit at a round table with a four-hundred pound chandelier hanging over it. But when he noticed that the judge of the Garvey case was sitting in one of the chairs, he turned tail immediately. He didn’t have time to get very far.
‘Ah, Norton!’ said the judge. ‘Sit with us, please. I understand that professional discretion distances us. But I am told that beyond law you also write books. And since our companions at the table won’t stand to hear us talking about legal rubbish, I don’t think anyone will reproach us for talking about literature, which is the highest written art humanity can devote itself to, after jurisprudence.’
All those present, including two lords and a Member of Parliament, applauded by clapping two fingers together, which was how the members of that sel
ect club applauded.
‘I imagine that everyone has had the pleasure of reading our Mr Edward Norton’s excellent work,’ said the judge.
And during almost twenty minutes he devoted himself to sustained praise of the book. Norton understood it as a coded message that Marcus would be absolved. The judge was even more explicit; when it seemed that he was finished, he continued to expound on a case of legal philosophy.
‘Dear sirs, are you familiar with the case of the Greek plank?’ There was general negative murmuring among those present and the judge continued. ‘It is an old dilemma faced by the Greek courts. Imagine a shipwreck on the high seas. Only two sailors survive, floating helplessly on the waves. They find a wooden plank. Unfortunately the plank can only take the weight of one of the two men. The shipwrecked sailors fight and finally the stronger overpowers the other and kills him. What sentence should that sailor receive?’
Norton knew the answer. But he stayed silent. The judge was in no hurry to make it public, and he sipped his whisky, very slowly.
‘The are places, sirs, where the law has no place. There are acts that are beyond human jurisdiction,’ the judge continued. ‘Our laws can ask that men be honourable. But no law can demand that a man be a hero.’
He paused again. He took in a breath and said, indignantly, ‘And now let us imagine the case of a man who has to struggle in coordinates beyond morality, beyond geography. And let us imagine, in addition, that his acts save the human race from a threat more serious than smallpox or German artillery. Should we condemn him for the fact that in that conflict two comrades were lost?’
The judge settled back into his armchair. According to Norton, he looked up at the club’s ceiling the same way Moses might have looked up at the clouds when Yahweh gave him the tablets. And he said, ‘I can tell you, and I don’t mind saying it publicly, that while I’m judge no man will be condemned for an act of that nature.’
And those seated at that round table applauded enthusiastically. Could there be any doubt as to what the judge was referring? Since that day Norton only had one goal: to shine in the public sessions, so that Marcus’s absolution would be a huge professional success.
Norton explained all that to me shortly after, as we were leaving the courtroom. But at that moment, while the judge pronounced the famous phrase, ‘And the accused is free to leave this instant,’ our joy could have resulted in a catastrophe. The book had cost me so much effort, Marcus being freed had seemed so improbable, that I couldn’t help jumping over the railing that separated me from the dock.
‘Oh, Marcus, my boy!’ I said, taking his tiny body in my arms.
I hugged him, and in doing so I realised that I had never before hugged him, that it was the first time I had had any physical contact with him. My leap had taken the two policemen guarding him by surprise. But they didn’t stop me. They couldn’t, in fact. Marcus was a free man and whoever wanted to hug him could.
Many feelings, many of them contradictory, came together in that embrace. What are we men? A point in time and space. And in that point of time and space, so small and so twisted, in that point named Marcus Garvey, many things that affected me came together.
I wanted to believe that my inner struggle with the writing of the book had had a purpose that went beyond the literary: obtaining Marcus Garvey’s freedom. But, objectively, that success distanced me from Amgam. It didn’t take a genius to imagine what the couple would do next. If I were in his place I would flee to some tranquil island, where contact with other people was sporadic enough that no one would ask too many questions about Amgam’s skin and eyes. Yet I wasn’t upset. While I hugged Marcus I realised that the happiness I felt at having contributed to freeing him was greater than the sadness I felt at losing Amgam. And I said to myself that perhaps, in the end, the book had another objective besides freeing Marcus: making its author into something better than he was before writing it.
But that’s enough about what I was feeling. When the judge declared Marcus’s innocence a clamour of joy spread throughout the room. And since I had jumped over the railing that separated me from Marcus, the crowd didn’t think twice and they followed me. My exuberance was interpreted as a licence to imitate me, and everyone wanted to touch the hero of the day. The problem was that the enthusiasm provoked a human avalanche. Remember that the room was packed, so packed that hundreds of people had followed the last session from outside. The trial had ended and the doors were opened. But instead of the people inside leaving, the ones outside rushed in.
All that enthusiasm had created a perilous situation. It was like a landslide, all the people in the room were leaning on us, the ones furthest in. There were only four porters in the room and a couple of policemen protecting Marcus. What could they do against a tide of bodies? The judge banged and banged his gavel. What an absurdity! The gavel was a perfect representation of judicial power. Now that no one was willing, or able, to obey it, it was utterly insignificant. What was, after all, a judge’s great sign of authority? A wooden implement that couldn’t even crack nuts.
We were becoming more and more crushed against the wall. If someone didn’t intervene, we would die suffocated by the pressure. Even the large desk the judge sat behind while presiding over the sessions overturned under the advancing human tide. Marcus, the judge and I ended up on top of that massive overturned piece of mahogany furniture. It sank among the bodies like a deflated lifeboat in the middle of a shipwreck, and we were fortunate to be able to clamber up on top. All around us were drowning bodies shouting for our help, too tightly pressed together to even move an arm. I realised that the people at the rear of the courtroom didn’t fully understand the risk. They kept pushing with the blind obstinacy of sheep. We were all acting like irrational beasts. All of us? No.
When a hecatomb seemed inevitable, a voice was heard above the others. It was Norton. He wasn’t talking, he was singing. I couldn’t believe that someone as sober as him would do such a thing as sing in the middle of a crisis. He was reciting the national anthem and my astonishment grew even more. Norton was singing ‘God Save the Queen’ in the midst of an ocean of bodies!
He knew what he was doing. The first one to join him was a large woman, the one who usually crocheted. Then a young man, who had surely learned the words during military service. Norton moved one arm as if he were rowing, encouraging everyone to join in. It worked. Slowly the furious throng stopped, and the agitated crowd turned into a choir. The danger wasn’t so much the crowd itself as the crowd’s movement. The singing forced us to stop. Everyone was singing. Including me! To my surprise, my throat swelled and I sang ‘God Save the Queen’ with a passion I had never before felt for God or the monarchy.
Marcus was standing on the tipped-over table, higher than everyone and in full view. He was the point of reference for every eye. The muscles in his face were squeezed tightly and he was crying his eyes out. The danger vanished like an exorcised demon leaves a body, evaporating completely. I admit that tears fell from my eyes. Because at that moment, that packed room was much more than a room for the administration of justice. It was the place where a thousand people had poured out their most noble sentiments. There were men, women, children, young and old. There were the curious who had come to kill some time. And among the curious, there were rich people and poor people, saints and drunks. There may even have been bored German spies. We were all united by a song that represented something more than British monarchism, much more. We were all singing, and our singing declared that man’s most honourable instinct is his protection of the weak. That day, the weak had won an unforeseen victory over the biggest forces in the universe. I became so emotional that I almost wiped my runny nose with the wig of the judge, who was sitting by my side.
Once the last note was heard, Norton raised one hand. He clambered upright on the table, hugged Marcus, and I think he was reading everyone’s thoughts when he said in his brilliant and concise style, ‘Now we must leave here peacefully. And once we get home, whe
n we close the door behind us, we will rejoice in having come back better citizens that we were when we went out.’
And, thus, everyone left the room with the same serenity they might have felt leaving a cathedral after services. Norton, Marcus and I waited a little while longer for the room to empty. Then we left together. When we were at the door of the building, before walking down the enormous marble steps, we said farewell to Marcus. I couldn’t help asking him what he planned to do with his life.
‘The world is very big and I am very small. And now that I’m free I would like to travel around it a bit,’ he said. And he added candidly, ‘After all, it’s the world I saved, isn’t that right?’
Norton and I laughed. Marcus waved and went down the immense steps on his little wiry legs. I knew that those little legs were taking him to her. No one had ever been more envious. I turned my head.
I remained at the top of the stairs for a few minutes more. Norton told me the story of the club and the judge. Then we said goodbye. While he was putting on his hat, I heard Edward Norton at his coldest and most rational. The idea of singing the anthem had been his, so I congratulated him for having saved us.
‘It’s all a question of style,’ he said. ‘And that is the useful part of anthems: they are magnificent tools of group cohesion. In the case of an emergency they can turn urban beasts into docile flocks.’ With that comment he pulled on his hat and walked down the stairs. ‘See you later, Mr Thomson.’
Pandora in the Congo Page 34
