The Power

by Naomi Alderman

  Tunde doesn’t really know any of the women in this crowd. There is no one who would shelter him in her home if the army came. The crowd is becoming more tightly pressed together; it has happened so gradually he barely noticed it, but it makes sense now he knows that the army is trying to squeeze them all into one place. And then what will happen? People will die here today; he feels it up his spine and into the crown of his head. There are shouts from up ahead. He doesn’t speak enough of the language to understand. Tunde’s usual mild smile fades from his face. He has to get away from here, has to find high ground.

  He looks around. Delhi is constantly under construction, most of it unsafe. There are buildings from which the scaffolding has never been removed, shopfronts that slant awkwardly, even some half-collapsed places still partly inhabited. There. Two streets up. There’s a boarded-up shop behind a wagon selling parathas. A kind of wood scaffolding is fixed to the side of the building. The roof is flat. He shoulders his way through the crowd urgently. Most of the women are still trying to move forward, shouting and waving their banners. There’s the hiss and crackle of electrical discharge somewhere further ahead. He can feel it in the air now; he knows what it feels like. The scents of the street, the dog shit and the mango pickle and the body odour of the crowd and the frying bhindi with cardamom become more intense for a moment. Everyone pauses. Tunde pushes forward still. He says to himself, This is not the day you die, Tunde. This is not that day. It’ll be a funny story to tell your friends back home. It’ll go into the book; don’t be afraid, just keep moving. You’ll get good footage from a high vantage point if you can just find a way up there.

  The lowest-hanging piece of scaffold is a little too high for him to reach, even by jumping. Further up the street he sees that other people have had the same idea, are climbing on to the roofs or into the trees. Some others are trying to pull them down. If he doesn’t get up there now, he could be overwhelmed in a few minutes by others trying to take his place. He yanks over three old fruit boxes, piles them on top of each other – takes a long splinter in his thumb as he does it, but doesn’t care – climbs on top of the boxes and leaps. Misses. Comes down heavily, the shock sending a jolt of pain through his knees. These boxes won’t last. The crowd is surging and chanting again. He jumps again, this time with more force, and there! He’s got it. Bottom rung of the scaffold ladder. Straining the muscles in his sides, he hauls himself up to the second rung, the third, and then he can scramble his feet up on to the rickety structure, and then it’s easy.

  The scaffold sways as he climbs. It’s not bolted to the walls of this crumbling concrete building. It was lashed with ropes once, but they’ve frayed and rotted, and the strain of his climbing is pulling the fibres apart. Now, this would be a stupid way to die. Not in a riot, not by an army bullet, not by Tatiana Moskalev taking him by the throat. Just falling a dozen feet on to his back on a street in Delhi. He climbs faster, reaching the rough parapet as the whole structure sighs and swings more wildly from side to side. He clings to the parapet with one arm, feeling that splinter working its way into his thumb, kicks off with his legs and manages to jump half on to the roof, so that his right arm and right leg are wrapped around the parapet and his body is swinging above the street. There are screams from further along the street, and pops of gunfire.

  He pushes again with his left leg, just giving himself enough momentum to flop backward on to the gravel roof of the building. He lands in a puddle, soaking him through to the skin, but he’s safe. He hears the creak and crack as the whole wooden structure finally gives up and crashes to the ground. That’s it, Tunde, no way back down. On the other hand, no chance of being overwhelmed by crowds escaping the crush up here. Actually, it’s perfect. Like it was meant to work out this way for him. He smiles, breathes out slowly. He can set up his camera here, film the whole thing. He’s not afraid any more, he’s excited. There’s nothing he could do, anyway, no authorities to call and no boss to check in with. Just him, and his cameras, up here out of the way. And something’s going to happen.

  He sits up and looks around. And it’s then he sees there’s a woman there, with him, on the rooftop.

  She’s in her mid-forties, wiry, with small hands and a long, thick plait like an oiled rope. She’s looking at him. Or not quite at him. She flicks him glances, looks to the side. He smiles. She smiles back. And in that smile he can tell with certainty that there’s something wrong with her. It’s the way she’s holding her head, to the side. The way she’s not looking at him and then suddenly staring at him.

  ‘Are you …’ He looks down at the surging crowd in the street. There’s the sound of gunfire, nearer now. ‘Sorry if this is your place. I’m just waiting here till it’s safe to go down. That all right?’

  She nods, slowly. He tries a smile. ‘Not looking good down there. You come up here to hide?’

  She speaks slowly and carefully. Her accent’s not bad; she could be saner than he thought: ‘I was looking for you.’

  He thinks for a moment she means that she knows his voice from the internet, that she has seen his photograph. He half smiles. A fan.

  She kneels down, dabbles her fingers in the puddle of water he’s still sitting in. He thinks she’s trying to wash her hands until the shock hits his shoulder and his whole body begins to tremble.

  It’s so sudden and so quick that for a moment he imagines it must have been a mistake. She’s not meeting his eyes, she’s looking away. The pain bleeds across his back and down his legs. There are scribbles of pain drawing a tree across his side, it’s hard to breathe. He’s on his hands and knees. He has to get out of the water.

  He says, ‘Stop! Don’t do that.’ His own voice surprises him. It’s petulant, pleading. He sounds like someone more afraid than he feels himself to be. It’s going to be fine. He’s going to get away.

  He starts to back up. Beneath them, the crowd is yelling. There are screams. If he can just make her stop this, he’ll get some amazing shots of the street, the fighting.

  The woman’s still stirring the water with her fingers. Her eyes are rolling in her head.

  He says, ‘I’m not here to hurt you. It’s OK. We can just wait up here together.’

  She laughs then. Several barks of laughter.

  He rolls over, crawls backwards out of the pool of water. Watches her. Now he’s afraid; it was the laughing that did it.

  She smiles. A bad, wide smile. Her lips are wet. He tries to stand up, but his legs are shaking and he can’t quite manage it. He collapses on to one knee. She watches him nodding, like she’s thinking, Yes, this is expected. Yes, this is the way it goes.

  He looks around the rooftop. There’s not much. There’s a rickety bridge across to another roof, just a plank. He wouldn’t like to cross it; she could kick it over as he walked. But if he grabbed it he could use it as a weapon. Fend her off, at least. He starts to crawl towards it.

  She says a few words in a language he doesn’t know, then, very quietly, ‘Are we in love?’

  She licks her lips. He can see her skein twitching at her collarbone, a living worm. He moves faster. He is faintly aware that there are other people watching them from the rooftop across the road, people pointing and calling out. There’s not much they can do from there. Maybe video it. How much good will that do him? He tries standing again, but his legs are still trembling from the aftershocks, and she laughs when she sees him try. She lunges for him. He tries to kick her in the face with his shoe but she grabs the exposed ankle and gets him again. A long, high arc. It feels like a meat cleaver wielded in a solid and practised stroke all down his thigh and calf, separating the flesh from the bone. He can smell the hair on his legs burning.

  There is a scent like spices, something wafting up from the street. Roasting meat and the smoke of dripping animal fats and burned bones. He thinks of his mother, reaching into the pot to test the grains of parboiled rice between her fingertips. Too hot for you, Tunde, get your hands away. He can smell the sweet, hot aroma of th
e jollof rice bubbling on the stove. Your brain is jangled, Tunde. Remember what they say about this. Your mind is made of meat and electrics. This thing hurts more than it should because it short-circuits your brain. You are confused. You are not at home. Your mother will not come.

  She has him on the ground now; she is wrestling with his belt and his jeans. She’s trying to pull them down without undoing the buckle, and they’re too tight to come over his hips. His back is scraping on the gravel; he can feel the edge of a wet concrete block in the small of his back, rubbing him raw, and he keeps thinking if I fight her off too hard she’ll knock me unconscious, and then she can do whatever she wants.

  There is shouting now from far off. As if he were underwater, his ears clogged. At first he thinks he is hearing the shouting from the street. He is ready for another shock; his body is tensed for it. And it is only when the shock does not come, when he realizes he is fighting with the air, that he opens his eyes and sees that three other women have pulled her off him. They must have crossed on the plank bridge from the building next door. They have thrown her down and they are shocking her time and again, but she will not lie still. Tunde pulls his trousers back up and waits, watching, until that woman with her long, thick oiled plait has stopped moving altogether.

  Allie

  Excerpt from the forum ‘Freedom of Reach’, a nominally libertarian website

  Askedandanswered

  Major, major MAJOR news out of South Carolina. Look at the photos. Here’s one of Mother Eve – it’s a screengrab from the vid ‘Towards Love’, the one where her hood slips back a bit and you can see part of her face. See how the jaw is sort of pointed, and the relationship between the mouth and the nose, compared to the bottom of the mouth to the chin. On the diagram I’ve calculated the ratios.

  Now look at this photo. Someone on UrbanDox’s forum has put up photos from a police investigation four years ago in Alabama. All signs are it’s totally legit. Might have come from someone who wants justice, might have come from the police. Anyway. It’s photos of an ‘Alison Montgomery-Taylor’, who murdered her adoptive father and was never found. It’s very clear. The shape of the jaw is the same, the chin is the same, the ratio between the mouth and the nose and the mouth and the chin is the same. Just look and tell me that’s not convincing.

  Buckyou

  Fuuuuuuuuuck. You’ve discovered that all human beings have mouths and noses and chins. That is going to blow the field of anthropology wide open there, fag.

  Fisforfreedom

  These photos have very clearly been doctored. Look at the way that the light is shining in the picture of Alison M-T. Hits her cheek on the left-hand side and her chin on the right-hand side? Someone has Piltdown-man-ed these pix to make your numbers add up. I call shenanigans.

  AngularMerkel

  It’s well known that it is Alison M-T. This has been reported to the police in Florida before, but she’s got them paid off. They’ve been extorting money and threatening people all down the eastern seaboard. Eve and her nuns have joined up with fucking Jewish organized crime, this has been proven by UrbanDox and UltraD, check the threads on the May 11 riots and arrests in Raleigh before double-posting this bullshit, dickwad.

  Manintomany

  UrbanDox’s account was suspended for abuse, dickwad.

  Abrahamic

  Yeah, I notice that every single fucking post you’ve made has been supporting UrbanDox, or two known sock-puppets. You’re either UD yourself or you’re sucking his dick right now.

  SanSebastian

  There’s no way this wasn’t her. The Israeli government is the one funding these new ‘churches’; they’ve been trying to bring down Christianity for centuries now, discrediting us, using the blacks to poison the inner cities with drugs. This new drug is just part of that; you know the new ‘churches’ are distributing these Zionist drugs to our kids? Wake up, sheeple. This whole thing is already sewn up by the same old powers and systems. You think you’re free because you can talk on a messageboard? Don’t you think they’re monitoring what we say here? Don’t you think they know who each of us is? They don’t mind us talking here, but if any of us ever seemed like we were about to act, they’ve got enough on each of us to destroy us.

  Buckyou

  Don’t feed the trolls.

  AngularMerkel

  Fucking conspiracy theory nutjobs.

  Loosekitetalker

  Not 100% wrong. Why do you think they’re not cracking down harder on illegal downloading of movies? Why do you think they’re not doing a search-and-block on porn sites, torrent sites? It’d be frickin easy, anyone on here could code it up in an afternoon. You know why? Because if they need to take any of us out, send us to jail for a million years, they’ve got the power to do it. That’s what the whole internet is, man, fucking honey trap, and you think you’re safe because you’re using some pzit-ass proxy, or bouncing the signal through Bilhorod or Kherson? The NSA’s got deals sewn up with those people, they’ve paid off the police, they’re in the servers.

  Matheson

  Mod here. This board is not the place for discussion of net security. Suggest you take this post over to /security.

  Loosekitetalker

  It is relevant here. Did any of you see the BB97 vid from Moldova? Taken by our government in the USA, monitoring Awadi-Atif’s troop movements. You think they can see that and they can’t see us?

  FisforFreedom

  Soooo … to get this back on topic, I don’t think that can be Mother Eve. Alison M-T is known to have fled on the night she killed her dad, 24 June. First sermons by Eve from Myrtle Bay are dated 2 July. Are we really saying that Alison M-T killed her dad and then jacked a car, crossed state lines, set up as a high priestess of a new religion and was delivering sermons ten days later? I don’t buy it. Coincidence of facial recognition software picked this one up, conspiracy theorists on Reddit went crazy for it, there’s nothing there. Do I believe there’s something weird about Eve? Sure. There are the same dark patterns as Scientology, as early Mormonism. Double-speak, bending old stuff to suit new ways of thinking, creating a new underclass. But murder? There’s no evidence for that.

  Riseup

  Wake up. Her people doctored the dates on those sermons to make them seem to go back earlier than they really do. There’s no video of those early sermons, nothing on YouTube. They could’ve been made any time. If anything this makes her look more guilty. Why would she have to pretend to have been in Myrtle Bay so early?

  Loosekitetalker

  Don’t see how the Moldovan sat images are off topic. Mother Eve’s been giving talks in South Moldova, she’s building up a power base there. We know that the NSA is monitoring everything, global terrorism hasn’t gone anywhere. Seventeen near relatives of the King fled Saudi after the coup with more than eight trillion dollars in foreign holdings. House of Saud hasn’t disappeared just because there’s a women’s centre in the Al Faisaliyah. You think there’s no backlash coming? You think Awadi-Atif doesn’t want his fucking kingdom back? You think he’s not sloshing his money around to anyone he thinks will help? Do you have any idea what the House of Saud has always funded? They fund terror, my friends.

  And with all that, you think there’s no interest in domestic terror and counter-terrorism? The NSA’s monitoring everything we’re saying here: be certain of that. They’ll have Eve under close surveillance.

  Manintomany

  Eve will be dead within three years, I guarantee it.

  Riseup

  Dude, unless you are using a dozen VPNs at once, wait for your door to be knocked down in three, two, one …

  AngularMerkel

  Someone’s going to send in a hitman to do her. Electricity won’t protect against bullets. Malcolm X. MLK. JFK. There’s probably a contract on her already.

  Manintomany

  Those speeches she makes, I’d fucking murder the cunt for free.

  TheLordIsWatching

  The government has been causing this cha
nge for years through carefully measured doses of hormones called VACCINATIONS. VAC as in VACUOUS, SIN as in our sinful souls, NATION as in the once great people who have been destroyed by this. Click here for the exposé no newspaper will publish.

  Ascension229

  There’s going to come a reckoning. The Lord shall gather His people and He shall instruct them in his Right Way and in His Glory, and this shall herald the end of days, when the righteous shall be gathered unto Him and the wicked shall perish in flames.

  AveryFalls

  Did you all see Olatunde Edo’s reporting from Moldova? The Saudi army? Anyone else look at the pix of those fine young men and want to go and join up? Fight the war that’s coming with the weapons they have. Make a difference, so when our grandsons ask what we did, we’ll have something to tell them?

  Manintomany

  That’s exactly what I thought. Only wish I were younger. If my son wanted to go, I’d wish him godspeed. He’s being fucked by a feminazi now though. She’s got her claws into him good and tight.

  Beningitis