No sooner had the sun vanished than the first traces of a heavy engine and tires crushing gravel could be heard. The guards responsible for opening the gate turned toward it, as if longing to perform the one task they were certain they knew how to accomplish. Isaac stared directly at each of the guards and, by doing so, kept them in place. At the last possible moment, Isaac clapped his hands and set them free. All four scrambled to lift the locks and pull open the gates. In their haste, they trampled the perfect driveway they had spent hours creating. Isaac wasn’t troubled in the least bit, though. I saw him smile as they ruined what he had demanded they create.
“Look at them,” he said. “They’re like children.” But there was no affection behind his words. Though he called them children, I was certain that what he really meant to say was that to him they were like dogs.
The gates opened and three black Mercedes slid into the courtyard. They looked beastly in the semi-darkness of early night, with their pale-yellow parking lights shining over us. I doubt I was the only one who felt an instinctive desire to run. They are only men, I said to myself, but there was no comfort in that. If there was anything to fear in this world, it was men who came in under the cover of night, who sat in expensive cars behind tinted windows, with the engines running and the lights on, while they measured their safety and our value to them.
At least a quarter-hour must have gone by before the first car turned off its engine and the second and third followed. None of us moved or spoke. By now it was dark outside. That’s what they had been waiting for. When the car doors opened, all I could see from my place on the porch were the silver door handles and the outlines of the six men, who exited in pairs from the back of each sedan. Four were wearing dark suits and were as tall and almost as thin as I was. The two who had exited first, from the last car, were short and barrel-chested; their military decorations and caps stood out as clearly as the pistol each was holding at his side.
After all the anxiety and preparations, the men came and disappeared in a matter of minutes. They stood in the courtyard, talking among themselves, and then, without so much as a single glance at the guards, or the grounds, filed into the house. Only one stayed long enough to acknowledge that any of us were there, and even that interaction lasted a matter of seconds. That man was by far the youngest of the four men in suits. He paused at the entrance to shake Isaac’s hand. I knew immediately I had seen his face before.
“You’ve done a fine job,” he said, clasping both his hands around Isaac’s. His voice was familiar; he had a real British accent. He avoided looking directly at me, but I remembered where I had last seen him. He had been sitting at the table across from Isaac and me at the Café Flamingo. He was the one who had ordered the beating to stop. When I walked past the café, alone or with Isaac, I looked to see if he was there. He never was, and so I never mentioned him to Isaac. I wasn’t sure what I would have said had he been. That man there saved you from being beaten to death, or that man there watched for several minutes as those boys nearly beat you to death.
Isaac walked him to the door. One of the soldiers opened and closed it quickly, and then took his place in front, while the other hovered restlessly around the cars. Having decided the house was safe, they slid their guns into their holsters. They made a show of looking professional; they wanted it to be clear that they were officers, not hired guards at the end of their career.
I followed Isaac back to the tree, where we had left the chairs we’d spent most of the afternoon on. It was a warm, slightly humid night. Miles away, near the center of the city, we could see at least a half-dozen bright white lights that had been raised to trap the grasshoppers that had just begin to come out. It was hunting at its simplest: the grasshoppers swarmed around the lights and knocked themselves out by the dozens on the metal sheets that surrounded them. They were collected in barrels and then sold by the handful in little brown bags or plastic sacks, half dead or freshly roasted, a delicacy for even the poorest. It was said the president ate them by the dozens, roasted or boiled and then dipped in chocolate.
Isaac was staring at the lights as well. He had told me once how as a child he had tried to create his own little grasshopper farm to profit from, by taking all the candles from his grandparents’ house and lighting them in the yard. “I caught three grasshoppers,” he said, “and then I almost died of malaria after a hundred mosquito bites.”
“We’re missing out on all the fun,” he said as he pointed toward the lights. He was sincere, and full of nostalgia. I was relieved to hear him talk like that.
“There’s always tomorrow,” I said.
“Second day is not as good,” he said. “You want them on the first night, when they’ve just come out.”
I let him dream about grasshoppers and the riches he might have made off of them. It was one of the rare times in my life when a part of me wasn’t concerned with how many minutes or hours had passed since someone had last spoken. I knew the doors to the house weren’t going to open anytime soon, but more than that, I knew that once they did it would be harder—not impossible, just harder—for both of us, Isaac especially, to drift into the past so easily. I let him have that for as long as I could. Eventually, though, I had to ask him: “What happens now?”
“We wait,” he said. “They have things to discuss inside that don’t concern us.”
“That man,” I said.
“Which one?”
“The one who thanked you.”
“What about him?”
“I’ve seen him before. He was at the café that afternoon.”
“His name is Joseph,” Isaac said. “The Flamingo is his café.”
“Did you know that when we went there?”
“Yes and no. I didn’t know what he looked like or his name. I wouldn’t have had that fight if I knew he was watching, but it worked out anyway. After you left, he came back. I was on a table in the kitchen. He brought a doctor to see me. He said he liked my courage. He asked what I was doing with myself. I told him I was a student at the university, but he knew I was lying.”
“Why did he care?”
“He didn’t. He just felt sorry for me. I kept going back there, though—whenever I wasn’t on campus I was there. He gave me little jobs to do: I moved boxes around, I cleaned the floor in the kitchen. After a few weeks, he asked me what I thought about what was happening to the country. I knew who his father was: I saw him once before I came to the capital. Everyone in our village loved him. He was supposed to be the first governor of our district, but then, just before the elections, he disappeared. The president said that it was rebels, or maybe even the British who did it. The president put a cousin of his—a colonel—in his place. Joseph was still in London at the time. His father was smart—he kept him there while he was running. I don’t think most people knew he had a son.
“I didn’t tell him that I knew who his father was. I knew I could say anything I wanted to him, though, so I told him the truth. I told him that I thought it was worse now than it had been under the British. He liked that, but he told me I was wrong. ‘It’s better to be killed by your own devil than by someone else’s,’ he said. He gave me a list of names and asked me if I knew who any of those men were. I told him no. He asked me if I was lying. I said I was from a small village; I didn’t know who anyone was. ‘Even better, then,’ he said. ‘Remember to act as if you always believe that. Even when it’s no longer true.’ I started picking up and delivering messages for him. Only at night, or early in the morning. It was normally to one of those men inside the house, although this is the first time I’ve seen them. There was always a guard or a maid who met me at the door.
“I wanted to stay with him all the time, but he told me he needed me on the campus. ‘The students have to know what’s happening,’ he said. ‘They can’t just read about it anymore.’ ”
“And that’s how the protest began?”
“I’m surprised,” Isaac said. “You haven’t recognized any of the old gua
rds.”
“Why should I?”
“Two of them used to work on campus,” he said. “They were the first ones to attack us that Friday. Since you were running, you wouldn’t have had time to look at them.”
“We were all running. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to.”
“Don’t take it that way,” he said. “You had to run. I wanted to tell you what was happening, but I couldn’t risk it. Joseph spent a lot of time and money finding two guards he could trust. The rest was easy. Once they felt they were being attacked, all the student groups joined in and made their own rally. I barely had anything to do with that. I just had to be there to watch. I was surprised when you showed up.”
“I didn’t know what was happening. I don’t think I would have come if I did.”
“I know. But you stayed. You were loyal. When I heard you were in the hospital, I thought it was the soldiers who did that. The ones outside the gates weren’t going to do anything”—Isaac pointed to the uniformed man standing by the cars—“those were his men. But there were so many others on campus who weren’t with us. I told Joseph you were beaten leaving the campus that night. That’s why he let me bring you here, why he gave me money for the hospital. You can’t tell him it was because you were walking down the street. It’s dangerous for him now. The same for the other men as well.”
“And what about you?”
“It’s hard to say. I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. You’re lucky. Right now you have nothing to worry about. No one has any idea who you are.”
HELEN
I drove my car around the block and parked on the opposite side of the street, half a block away from Isaac’s building. I was prepared to wait there all night. If Isaac left, I would follow him and then surprise him—or surprise him and then follow him. I didn’t know how it would work out. I didn’t have a plan and didn’t want one. If my mother could see me she would have said, “Helen, what are you doing? What’s your plan?”
I believed that my not having a plan was what separated us. Her hair was long and dark brown, almost black. Mine never went past my shoulders; it was lighter, and in the summer almost blond. My mother had thick calves and narrow little feet. My legs were slender, and I hadn’t been able to fit into my mother’s shoes since I was a teenager. I went to college; she was pregnant and married two years out of high school. I sang all the time; the only music I ever heard from her was during the Christmas season, when she hummed the same two songs—“Silent Night” and “White Christmas.” She had small hands, with long, delicate fingers that I imagined could easily break. My palms were large, and so were my fingers—man’s hands, a boy in grade school had called them. The only book I ever saw her read was the Bible; she believed deeply in God. I never cared about him and went to church most Sundays because she wanted me to. She had a round, perfectly oval face that was pretty, not beautiful, when she was young. I had the same face she did when she was my age, but I promised myself that when I got older I wouldn’t let it sag and fill with weight as hers had. She was a profound sleeper. I woke up several times each night. She cried easily. She hated to drive; she kept both hands on the steering wheel and even on empty country roads in the middle of the afternoon, stayed at least five miles below the speed limit. I could spend hours in my car. Her parents’ named her Audrey, after her grandmother. My father named me Helen for reasons he said he couldn’t remember. Those were all only superficial distinctions. She had always been a cautious woman; until now, the same had always been true of me.
Another set of lights came on in Isaac’s apartment. He was walking back and forth across the living room, rubbing his hand over his head. He turned toward the picture window, but from my angle I couldn’t see his face clearly.
I reminded myself that if I were my mother I would have left by now.
I rolled down my window. I wasn’t positive, but it looked as if his mouth was moving. He might have been talking, laughing, or crying. Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t alone.
I leaned the top of my head out of the car so I could see better. There was a shadow on the wall that wasn’t Isaac’s. It was much shorter, rounder, and when seen against the wall, had little or no hair.
I heard my mother’s voice again. This time she was telling me to run, to close my eyes and drive away, but what good would that have done? Had I driven all the way to the coast, east or west, I would still have been sitting on that block, watching the shadows.
I took the key out of the ignition and threw it into the glove compartment. I thought of slashing the tires of my car, unplugging wires from the engine. I didn’t trust myself not to run. After a while I closed my eyes. David was right—this wasn’t the type of neighborhood to do that in. Every time I felt myself drifting off, I looked back up to Isaac’s window. There were small surprises. It looked briefly as if the shadows in the living room weren’t just talking but arguing, with arms raised and fingers pointed. Then, seconds later, everything seemed perfectly calm. For twenty minutes, Isaac sat on the couch and hardly moved while the other shadow sat opposite him. I realized I felt more comfortable when I thought they were fighting.
I never took my eyes off the window, but at some point I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes, there was no one sitting in the living room. I had just begun to worry that I had missed out on something vital when the man who looked liked the shadow on the wall left Isaac’s building. I saw him for only a few seconds, while he was standing under the porch light, looking for his car. He was much older than I had expected, bald, but not as fat as I thought.
As soon as he got outside, he lit a cigarette and took his keys out of his pocket. He started walking toward me. I slipped to the bottom of my seat, but my window was open. I heard a car door near me open and close. I heard the engine and could see the headlights. He had been parked on the other side of the street, maybe two or three cars behind me. I could feel the car as it neared me, but just in case I’d missed him, the man rolled down his window and said, “Good night, Helen,” as he passed.
ISAAC
Isaac and I were half asleep on the chairs by the time we were allowed back into the house. By then the girls and the house guards had gone off to the servants’ quarters. The cicada lights had gone off, as had all the lights in the city. It was two weeks since the government had started cutting off the streetlights after midnight, but I had never noticed until then how complete the blackness was. Looking out at the capital from our secluded corner reminded me of a story my father had told me about a city that disappeared each night once the last inhabitant fell asleep. He was good at telling stories—not great, like my uncles and grandfathers, who reveled in the theatrics. Compared to them, a story was a solemn occasion delivered in a calm, measured voice that nonetheless left a lasting impression on anyone who was listening. He told me that story about the city that disappeared at night shortly after I developed a sudden, irrational fear of the dark. I must have been ten or eleven at the time, old enough to have known better than to be afraid of something so common and simple as the end of the day, and well past the age of bedtime stories, but for the first few nights of my terror, my father indulged me. He told me one night about the countries thousands of miles to the north of us where months went by without the sun setting—hoping I would find comfort in knowing that the world didn’t end simply because the lights went out in our village.
According to my father, the city in the story was once a real place. “I’m not inventing this for you,” he said. “Everything I tell you is true.” I believed him in that semiconscious way that children have of dismissing reality in the hope of finding something better. “For hundreds of years,” my father said, “that city existed as long as one person dreamed of it each night. In the beginning, everyone kept some part of the city alive in their dreams—people dreamed of their garden, the flowers they had planted that they hoped would bloom in the spring, or the onions that were still not ripe enough to eat. They dreamed of their neighbor’s house, which in m
ost cases they believed was nicer than their own, or the streets they walked to work on every day, or, if they didn’t have a job, then of the café where they spent hours drinking tea. It didn’t matter what they dreamed of as long as they kept one image alive just for themselves, and in many cases they would pass that image on to their children, who would inherit their house, or attend the same school, or work in the same office. After many years, though, people grew tired of having to dream the same image night after night. They complained. They bickered and fought among themselves about whether they shouldn’t abandon the city altogether. They held meetings; each time, more people refused to carry the burden of keeping the city alive in their dreams. ‘Let someone else dream of my street, my house, the park, the intersection where traffic is terrible because all the roads lead one way,’ they said, and for a time, there were enough people willing to take on the extra responsibility. There was always someone who said, ‘Okay, I will take that dream and make it my own.’ There were heroic men and women who went to sleep each night when the sun set so they could have enough time to dream of entire neighborhoods, even those that they had rarely if ever set foot in, because no one else would do so. Eventually, though, even those men and women grew tired of having to carry all the extra parts of the city on their backs while their friends and neighbors walked around, carefree. They also wanted other dreams, and one by one they claimed their independence. They said, ‘I am tired. Before I die, I want to see something new when I sleep.’ Then the day came when no one wanted to dream of the city anymore. On that day, a young man whom few people knew and no one trusted went to all the radio stations and shouted from the center of the city that he alone would take on the burden of keeping their world alive each night. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll dream of everything for you. I know every corner of this city by heart. Close your eyes at night and know that you are free.’ ”
All Our Names Page 11
