Half the Day Is Night

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  “Ms. Ling gets off at five—”

  “It won’t take long,” the man said. He sounded as if his first language was Spanish.

  “Would you come with us?” the woman asked. She was tiny, with a narrow face in which all the muscles and ligaments stood clearly on the bones, just underneath skin so dark it almost looked blue under the lights in the parking. “There is a place up the street, a restaurant.” She leaned forward and the shiny black plastic crucifix she was wearing dangled between them, the Christ twisted in exaggerated agony.

  “Are you with the bank?” David asked. No, not the bank, where had he seen her?

  “I think it would be more comfortable to talk elsewhere,” she said.

  “Perhaps we could talk here,” David said. “I would be late.” He thought of the handgun in a sling underneath the seat. He had thought it was foolish when Tim showed him.

  The man looked at the woman, she lifted her shoulders fractionally. The man sighed and pulled a paper out of his jacket, opened it on the hood of the Skate and leaned on the car. “Is this your employer?”

  The paper was a copy of the im that had appeared in the newspaper after the funeral: Mayla in her black dress, looking off the page.

  The hood of the car was flexed under the man’s weight. “Please do not lean on the car,” David said. The man straightened sharply.

  “You do not mind if we speak French?” the woman asked. Her accent was clearer in that language, even in falsetto. “It is much more private that way.”

  He didn’t mind. (But he did, she was trying to use him. “We are the same,” she was saying. When he did not even know who she was.)

  “Your employer’s family came to Caribe before the ‘liberation’.” She said “liberation” fastidiously, her teeth delicate white. “The liberation was supposed to free this country, but the unemployment rate is now higher than it was when Bustamante took power. The housing shortage is more severe than ever, and the construction of the new sixth level is progressing so slowly that by the time it is finished we will need even more housing than we do today. And do you know why? Because of the corruption of high officials who pretend to buy first rate materials and pay labor, when in fact they buy third rate materials and create phantom companies with no real employees and line their own pockets with money. But you work for Ms. Ling, who is a tool of these people, so surely you know this? I am boring you, I am afraid?”

  No, she was not boring him.

  “You are the woman from the casino,” he said, “Clark.” She was the woman who had been there when the man was arrested.

  The tiny woman clasped her hands together. “The man who was arrested, he is innocent of any crime except the desire for justice for all peoples. Are you aware that almost half of the households in Julia with children under six are single parent households? That forty percent of all the children in Caribe go to bed hungry? That the average family’s major source of nutrition is yeast substitutes? And the government lines its own pockets, and banks such as this one loan them the money to do so. They mortgage their own people.”

  Namibia. Woman and children lined up clutching enamel bowls, waiting for boiled corn. That was mortgaging one’s own people and going bankrupt. He didn’t like politics; the woman was telling the truth, he thought, but he couldn’t be drawn into that just now. He had to think. He was fascinated by the black plastic crucifix swinging between them. It was as long as the palm of his hand, the features of the Christ’s face a clearly defined rictus of pain. He had seen crucifixes like that before.

  “Here, the rich get clean, dry air. Go down a few levels, Mr. Dai. The air is damp and impure. There is not enough oxygen because the recirculating equipment is old, insufficient for the population and not maintained.” She covered the crucifix reverently with her hand, tiny wiry hand with beautiful nails, pink and paler than her skin. “Please come and talk to us, Mr. Dai,” she said in English, “we need your help. Our brothers are held in prison with no chance of due process or escape, if we are to free them we must bargain with the government. You can help us turn their own tools against them.”

  “Êtes-vous Catholique d’Afrique del Sud?” he asked. South African Catholics. She was, he recognized the Christ, but what would a member of the South African Catholic and Apostolic Faith be doing in Caribe?

  “Divisions within the world church are artificial in the eyes of God,” she said. “For centuries the Church has allowed itself to be schismed by internal politics while neglecting the very people it should serve. And now the official church has no more to do with God than this bank.” She gestured towards the entrance to First Hawaiian. “But God is in the world, Mr. Dai. God is with us. We are his instrument, and we will set in motion powerful forces. You know, Mr. Dai, that the world is a complex web, and that not one of us draws a breath but that it affects the rest of the world. But God sees the pattern in chaos, and he shows us where to strike. We are God’s surgeons, Mr. Dai.”

  This woman was violence. Here he was, in a city under the ocean (when he pictured Caribe he always thought of an atlas, blue oceans, the Atlantic and Caribbean with the arrows of currents sweeping great circles); here he was, and Afrique had followed him on one of those arrows. Afrique was making demands on him.

  She was still talking. “You are inside, Mr. Dai. You can bring us inside. If we are to free our people, we must place our scalpel in precisely the right place. You can be our hand.”

  He nodded. Go away, he thought, leave me alone.

  Her eyes were huge, hungry. The face of the South African Irregular Forces, who sometimes fought with the Republic, sometimes with the Prots. And now that the war was over and the Republic had won, the faces of the people who had lost most of all. “You could help, you could strike a direct blow. I wish I were in your place.” She did wish it, her face said desperate things, “help us.” It said, “help me.” It said, “I am hungry.”

  He looked at her and she looked at him, holding her black plastic crucifix folded in her small hand with its clean pink nails. This woman wants to die, he thought.

  “We are friends,” the man said, taking the woman’s arm and pulling her back a step, holding her next to him as if to dampen the intensity of her wanting. The weight of their wanting.

  David glanced around, checking the exits. Through the Skate’s window he saw the book, L’Étranger, open and upside-down on the seat. “Excuse me,” he smiled, “my book, that isn’t good for them.” He opened the door and the man tensed, but before they could really do anything, David rested his knee on the seat, closed the book and dropped it between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. In the mirror he saw the man waiting. David reached under the seat, expecting them to lunge, and for a moment his hand did not find anything but still they did not move. He found the handle of the handgun, smooth and cool, and straightened up. “Please go now,” he said, holding it on them.

  They stared at him. What was he going to do now, shoot them? Once he had shot a South African Prot less than ten feet away, close enough to see the other’s face dissolve. But that was with shooting going on all around, running, the incredible noise of battle. That was a different kind of fear, larger, but less complicated than this fear. He did not know what they would do. He could see the terrible betrayal, the terrible sadness in the woman’s face. The man’s face was blank and that was worse because he did not know what feeling was behind it, what the man might do.

  Should he shoot the man?

  Then the man backed up a few steps, pulling the woman with him. She looked as if she might say something.

  “I have been in Afrique,” David said. “I have already paid. Please, just walk.”

  And then they turned and walked away. Just like that.

  He waited, rigid, until they had left the parking, gone across the street, walked out of his line of sight. The im from the funeral—Mayla in her black dress—was still sitting on the hood of the Skate. He picked it up, locked the car and went into the bank.

  I
n the elevator up from the parking he had to figure out what to do with the handgun. He tucked it in the waist of his tights and felt foolish pulling on his sweater as the door opened. “Hello Max,” he said to the receptionist. “I have to talk to Ms. Ling.”

  Max called. She was on a call, just a moment.

  “Tell her it is an emergency,” David said. Max looked at him and nervously adjusted the cuffs of his suit before calling. David was afraid that in a moment the shaking would creep from his knees to his hands. Max pointed down the hall.

  It was the first time he had been in her office. Books, real books, a whole wall of them, and leather chairs. There were overhead lights, but on her desk next to her console was a gooseneck lamp with a green glass shade. “I’ll get back to you,” she was promising and then she cut off the call.

  “Two people in the parking, they just tried to, what do you say, make me join their organization. Politics. They wanted me to do something.”

  “What two people,” she said, “what do you mean?”

  “What two people! I don’t know these people! They have this, ask me if I work for you!” He thrust the paper at her and she took it, frowning.

  “They gave you this?” she asked.

  “They left it,” he said, “I held the gun on them, told them to leave!” He pulled the gun out of his waistband.

  She did not look at it, she looked at him. Like the woman with the crucifix, the weight of her look, wanting something from him. Then she keyed the console. “Police please, Corinne Street District.”

  He was cold. It was so cold here. It was what came after the adrenaline. He crossed his arms thinking, this is it. This is not the army, I do not have to stay. If I want to I can leave.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Cold,” he said, furious with her. When she had hired him she did not say anything about this.

  She called Max, asked him to bring two cups of tea. “What happened,” she said, “what did you do?”

  “I told them to go away,” he said. He put the gun down carefully on her shiny black desk. She blinked.

  “Who are these people,” she asked. Looking at the gun.

  “A South African Catholic,” he said. “The people from the casino, from the arrest.”

  “From the arrest?” she said. “You mean blue and whites?”

  “No! I do not mean policemen. I mean two people like us, who are leaving the casino when the man is arrested! You did not tell me this job was like this!”

  She said, “Nothing like this ever happened to me before.”

  Like the man arrested in the casino, saying There must be some mistake. “Insurance,” he said. “You did not say anything about terrorists, South African Catholics who think they are instruments of God!”

  “La Mano de Diós,” she said. “Were they from La Mano de Diós?”

  “I do not know, they did not introduce themselves. I am not an assassin, I do not shoot people, do you understand? I do not know about security, I was a soldier, that was different! I was not even a very good soldier, just so-so. I do not know about politics! This is a mistake, I am not what you think I am!”

  Max knocked, brought in tea. “Good night Ms. Ling.”

  “He should wait,” David said. No sense sending the young man out alone. “Maybe people should wait until the police come.”

  “Max,” she said, “someone approached David in the parking, threatened him. Maybe you better have people wait until the police get here, then someone will see you to transit or take you home, all right?”

  Max looked at David. Angular face, skin the color of sandalwood and wiry hair that grew close to his head. A sleek young secretary with a job that might get him into the middle class. He didn’t look frightened, just wary. It wasn’t real for him. It wasn’t real for Mayla, either.

  “Make yourself a cup of tea, and don’t let anyone else up or down the elevator until the police get here. They’ll be able to access.”

  Max didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to stay. “Yes ma’am,” he said finally. He closed the door softly, as if he might waken someone.

  “I think I am not suited for this job,” David said.

  She did not answer.

  “It was a period of probation,” he insisted. “So I think I should go back.” Meph, what to do about the kitten? Stupid to stay in a country because of a kitten.

  “All right,” she said. The color was bright in her cheeks. She is angry, he thought. But he didn’t care.

  “I need to hire someone else,” she said, her voice low enough that it sounded in the upper registers of normal even in the air mix—or was he just getting accustomed to the way people talked? “I need to replace Tim, can you at least stay until then?”

  “Tim can stay,” he said harshly. Tim did not seem to want to leave. Tim would probably like all this macho shit about guns and terrorists.

  “I really don’t want Tim to stay,” she said. She was not angry, she was embarrassed. The color in her face was embarrassment.

  “What difference does it make, Tim or me?”

  “There is a problem with Tim,” she said. She wanted to avoid this.

  “What?” he insisted, because he was angry and he wanted to push her.

  She gestured to the air, not looking at him. “Tim and I, Tim thinks he is … that we are having a relationship. You see, I knew Tim before I hired him, we went out a couple of times.”

  Her discomfort was a palpable thing.

  “It is my mistake, really,” she said. “I should never have hired him. He said it was only for awhile, that he was going back to Australia. Now he says that he never said that. You see, he came back to Belize to clear up a problem I had with a bank suit, he did me a real favor. I feel like I owe him … something. But I’ll talk to him, have him arrange the date to leave. Then you can leave. Only a couple of weeks, I promise.”

  “What about your insurance?” he said, goading her.

  “Oh fuck the insurance! I don’t care about the insurance. I’ll tell them you quit unexpectedly and that I’m trying to replace you. It must happen. A few weeks,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “Please,” she said—pleading like the woman in the parking—“don’t mention quitting to Tim.”

  He wanted to laugh, he had already mentioned quitting to Tim.

  But he felt tired, tired of these people and their wanting. It was easiest not to explain he had already said something to Tim. Easiest just to go along.

  He sighed. “All right.”

  4

  A Few Simple Things

  At the police station, David was seated in front of a pale screen, empty of everything but light. Mayla closed her eyes and the afterimage of the pale screen was a red square. She could hear the hiss of the air-circulating system. “We will be monitoring your pulse rate, your eye movements and pupil contraction,” the blue and white told David. “We will be showing you ims. If you can identify them, please name them for us.”

  “This is the same equipment that they use for interrogation?” David asked.

  She flinched at the word “interrogation” but did not open her eyes.

  The blue and white said, “You are not being interrogated, Mr. Dai.”

  “I understand,” David said. “But these—” in his pause she imagined him searching for the English, “I was in the military, they use these things.”

  She thought of Tumipamba’s white coffin and it was there in her mind’s eye, tilted up, with Tumipamba watching her from behind the glare of light on the glass. She couldn’t get it out of her head so she opened her eyes. The screen was empty and bright, and Tumipamba’s coffin was whited out.

  People had sat in this room and been interrogated.

  If it had been an interrogation, how would they make someone look at the screen? How would they keep someone’s eyes open? Cut off their eyelids?

  She blinked.

  “Have you yourself ever been a subject before?” the blue and white ask
ed David. “Conducted a session?”

  David had not.

  “Fine. Just relax. You won’t feel any discomfort.”

  The first im was her own face in a less than flattering image. Oh God, it was from her driver’s license.

  “Mayla Ling,” David said, “my employer.”

  Another im.

  “Mr. Talsing, I worked for him in France.”

  Tim’s. A woman he didn’t know. Another woman. “Not familiar,” David said.

  Another woman.

  “The President of France,” he said, sounding amused.

  Mayla let out her breath, not aware until that moment that she had been holding it.

  A man.

  “Familiar, but I cannot place him.”

  A square-faced oriental with deep lines around his mouth. “My father, Philippe Dai,” he said so softly she leaned forward. Where did they get these images?

  More people, some he knew, some he didn’t.

  Then they told him it was not necessary to talk although he could make any comments he chose. The system would measure the way he reacted and build off of the features he found familiar or resonant to construct her face. He should not try to picture the woman.

  David frowned. “Do not picture her?”

  “That’s really a bit of a trick,” the blue and white said, friendly. “It’s like the old recipe to turn water into gold. Put it in a big pot on the back of the stove and stir it and stir it, all the time not thinking about a white rhinoceros. After I say it, all you can think of is the white rhino. Now eyes on the screen, Mr. Dai.”

  Ims began to flicker in front of him. Faces: some light, some dark, and most (but not all) female, shifting in a plastic blur, liquid chins and noses and cheeks and foreheads brightening and shading. They began to show certain characteristics: black eyes looked out, arrested, became fixed, while features shifted around them, melting and moving. Some alchemy measured the way David looked at things, how his pupils expanded, how his eyes moved when the face was familiar, what his heart did. This is familiar, their measurements told them, that is not.