Only a tiny amount, really.
It doesn’t even knock him over. He staggers, his eyes go wide, he lets out a gasp, he takes one, two, three steps back from his podium and wraps his arms around his midriff.
The audience have understood, both those live in the studio and the folks back home; everyone has watched and seen and understood what’s happened.
The crowd in the studio go very silent, as if they were holding their breath, and then there’s a bubbling, gathering, discordant, roiling murmur rising higher and higher.
The candidate tries to stumble on with his answer at the same moment that the moderator says they’re taking a break and Margot’s expression changes from the angry, nose-curling victory of aggression to the sudden fear that what she’s done cannot be undone, in the same instant that the studio audience’s rising bubble of anger and fear and incomprehension turns into a mighty wail, at the very same second that they cut to a commercial.
Morrison makes sure that the candidate comes back from the commercial break looking groomed and smooth and poised, but not too perfect, maybe just a little shocked and saddened.
They run a smooth campaign. Margot Cleary looks tired. Wary. She apologizes more than once over the next few days for what happened, and her guys give her a good line to play. She’s just so passionate about the issues, she says. It was unforgivable, but it was only when she heard Daniel Dandon lie about her daughters that she lost control.
Daniel is statesmanlike about the whole thing. He takes the high ground. Some people, he says, find it tough to keep their composure in challenging situations and, although he admits his figures were mistaken, well, there’s a right way and a wrong way to handle these things isn’t there, Kristen? He laughs; she laughs and puts her hand over his. There certainly is, she says, and now we have to go to commercial; when we come back, can this cockatiel name every president since Truman?
The polling numbers say that people are, in general, appalled by Cleary. It is unforgivable, and immoral – well, it just speaks of poor judgement. No, they can’t imagine voting for her. The day of the election, the numbers are looking strong and Daniel’s wife starts looking over those plans to renovate the Governor’s mansion arboretum. It’s only after the exit polls that they start to think something might be wrong, and even then – I mean, they can’t be this wrong.
But they can. It turns out the voters lied. Just like the accusations they always throw at hard-working public servants, the goddamned electorate turned out to be goddamned liars themselves. They said they respected hard work, commitment and moral courage. They said that the candidate’s opponent had lost their vote the moment she gave up on reasoned discourse and calm authority. But when they went into the voting booths in their hundreds, and thousands, and tens of thousands, they’d thought, You know what, though, she’s strong. She’d show them.
‘In a stunning victory,’ says the blonde woman on the TV screen, ‘one which has shocked pundits and voters alike …’ Morrison doesn’t want to listen any more but can’t make himself turn it off. The candidate is interviewed again – he’s saddened that the voters of this great state did not choose to return him to office as their Governor, but he bows before their wisdom. That’s good. Don’t give reasons; never give reasons. They’ll ask you why you think you lost, but never tell them, they’re trying to back you into criticizing yourself. He wishes his opponent every success in office – and he’ll be watching her every step of the way, ready to call her out if she forgets for a moment about the voters of this great state.
Morrison watches Margot Cleary on the screen – now the Governor of this great state – as she accepts her plaudits and says that she’ll be a humble, hard-working public servant, grateful for the second chance she’s been given. She also hasn’t understood what’s happened here. She thinks she needs to ask forgiveness, still, for the thing that brought her into office. She’s wrong.
Tunde
‘Tell me,’ says Tunde, ‘what it is you want.’
One of the men on the protest line waggles his banner in the air. The banner reads: ‘Justice for men’. The others give out a rattling, ragged cheer and fetch another round of brewskies from the cooler.
‘What it says,’ one of them opines: ‘we want justice. It’s the government did this, and the government has to put it right.’
It’s a slow afternoon, the air is syrupy and it’s going to hit 104 in the shade out here. It is not the best day to be at a protest at a mall in Tucson, Arizona. He only came because he’d had an anonymous tip-off that something was going to happen here today. It had sounded pretty convincing, but it’s panning out into nothing at all.
‘Any of you guys involved with the internet at all? Badshitcrazy.com, BabeTruth, UrbanDox – any of that online stuff?’
The guys shake their heads.
‘I saw an article in the newspaper,’ says one of them – a man who apparently decided to shave only the left half of his face this morning – ‘says that new country, Bessapara, is chemically castrating all the men. That’s what they’re gonna do to all of us.’
‘I … don’t think that’s true,’ says Tunde.
‘Look – I cut the piece out in the paper.’ The guy starts to rummage in his satchel. A bunch of old receipts and empty packets of chips tumble out on to the asphalt.
‘Shit,’ he says, and chases after his litter. Tunde films him idly on his camera phone.
There are so many other stories he could be working on. He should have gone to Bolivia; they’ve proclaimed their own female Pope. The progressive government in Saudi Arabia is starting to look vulnerable to religious extremism; he could be back there doing a follow-up on his original story. There are even gossip stories more interesting than this: the daughter of a newly elected Governor in New England has been photographed with a boy – a boy, apparently, with a visible skein. Tunde’s heard about this. He did a piece where he spoke to doctors about treating girls with skein deformations and problems. Not all girls have it; contrary to early thinking, about five girls in a thousand are born without. Some of the girls don’t want it, and try to cut it out of themselves; one of them tried with scissors, the doctor said. Eleven years old. Scissors. Snipping at herself like a paper cut-out doll. And there are a few boys with chromosome irregularities who have it, too. Sometimes they like it, and sometimes they don’t. Some boys ask the doctors if they can have theirs removed. The doctor has to tell them, no, they don’t know how to do that. More than 50 per cent of the time, if a skein is severed, the person dies. They don’t know why; it’s not a vital organ. The current theory is that it is connected to the electrical rhythm of the heart and its removal disrupts something there. They can remove some of the strands of it, to make it less powerful, less noticeable, but, once you have it, you’ve got it.
Tunde tries to imagine what it’d be like to have one. A power you can’t give away or trade. He feels himself yearning for it, repulsed by it. He reads online forums where men say that if all the men in the world had one everything would be back the way it ought to be. They’re angry and afraid. He understands that. Since Delhi, he’s been afraid, too. He joins UrbanDoxSpeaks.com under a pseudonym and posts a few comments and questions. He comes across a sub-forum discussing his own work. They call him a gender-traitor there because he did that story about Awadi-Atif rather than keeping it secret, and he’s not reporting on the men’s movement, and on their particular conspiracy theories. When he got the email saying something was going to happen here today he thought … he doesn’t know what he thought. That maybe there was something here for him. Not just the news, but something that would explain a feeling he’s having these days. But this is nothing. He’s succumbed to fear is all it is; since Delhi, he’s running away from the story, not towards it. He’ll get online in his hotel this evening and see if there’s still anything to report in Sucre, see when the next plane down is.
There is a sound like thunder. Tunde looks towards the mountains, expecting to see storm
clouds. But it’s not a storm, and it’s not thunder. The sound comes again, louder, and a huge cloud of smoke erupts from the far end of the mall, and there’s screaming.
‘Shit,’ says one of the men with their beers and signs. ‘I think that’s a bomb.’
Tunde runs towards the sound, holding his camera very steady. There is a cracking sound, and he hears masonry falling. He rounds the building. The fondue-chain place is on fire. Several other units are collapsing. People are running from the building.
‘There was a bomb,’ one of them says, directly into Tunde’s camera lens, his face covered in brick dust, small cuts bleeding through his white shirt. ‘There are people trapped in there.’
He likes this version of himself, the one who runs to get closer to danger, not away from it. Every time he does it, he thinks, Yes, good, this is still me. But that in itself is a new thought.
Tunde circles the wreckage. Two teenagers have fallen. He helps them up, encourages one to put her arm around the other for support, because her ankle is already blooming great blue bruises.
‘Who did this?’ she cries directly at the lens. ‘Who did this?’
That is the question. Someone has blown up a fondue restaurant, two shoe stores and a well-woman clinic. Tunde stands back from the building and takes a wide-angled shot. It’s pretty impressive. To his right, the mall is on fire. To the left, the entire front of the building has come away. A whiteboard with shift allocations still attached to it crashes from the second floor to the ground while he films it. He zooms in. Kayla, 3.30–9 p.m. Debra, 7 a.m.
Someone is crying out. Not far away, but hard to spot in the dust-on-dust – there is a pregnant woman trapped in the rubble. She is lying on her huge belly – she must be eight months gone – and a concrete pillar is trapping her leg. Something smells of gasoline. Tunde puts down the camera – safely, so that it’s still recording – and tries to crawl a little closer to her.
‘It’s OK,’ he says, hopelessly. ‘Ambulances are coming. It’s going to be OK.’
She screams at him. Her right leg is crushed to bloody meat. She keeps trying to pull away from it, to kick back against the pillar. Tunde’s instinct is to hold her hand. But she is discharging with great force every time she kicks against the pillar.
It is probably involuntary. Pregnancy hormones increase the magnitude of the power – perhaps a side effect of a number of biological changes during this time, although people say now, very simply, it’s to protect the baby. There are women who’ve knocked their nurses clean out while giving birth. Pain and fear. These things whittle away control.
Tunde shouts out for help. There’s no one nearby.
‘Tell me your name,’ he says. ‘I’m Tunde.’
She winces, and says, ‘Joanna.’
‘Joanna. Breathe with me,’ he says. ‘In’ – he holds it for a count of five – ‘then out.’
She tries. Grimacing, frowning, she breathes in and puffs it out.
‘Help is coming,’ Tunde says. ‘They’ll get you out. Breathe again.’
In and out. Once more in, and out. The spasms are no longer jerking her body.
There’s a creak in the concrete above them. Joanna tries to crane her neck around.
‘What’s happening?’
‘It’s just some strip lights.’ Tunde can see them dangling there by just a wire or two.
‘It sounds like the roof is coming down.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Don’t leave me here, don’t leave me alone under here.’
‘It’s not coming down, Joanna. It’s just the lights.’
One of the fluorescent strips, dangling by a single wire, sways and snaps and crashes into the rubble. Joanna jerks and spasms again; even as Tunde is saying, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’ She’s breaking again into that uncontrollable cycle of jolts and pain, she’s struggling to pull herself out from under the pillar. Tunde is saying, ‘Please, please, breathe,’ and she’s saying, ‘Don’t leave me here. It’s coming down.’
She sends her power into the concrete. And a wire thread within the concrete connects with another, and another. A light bulb explodes in sparks. And a spark ignites that gasoline-smelling fluid that had been dripping. And there is fire, suddenly, all around her. She is still shouting as Tunde picks up his camera and runs.
That’s the image they freeze on the screen. They’ve said there’d be upsetting images, after all. No one should be surprised to see this, but isn’t it just terrible? Kristen’s face is grim. I think anyone watching would agree that whoever did this is the scum of the earth.
In a letter to this news channel, a terrorist group calling itself Male Power has claimed responsibility for the attack, which destroyed a medical clinic catering to women’s health issues alongside a busy mall in Tucson, Arizona. They claim the attack is only the first ‘day of action’, intended to force the government to act against the so-called ‘enemies of man’. A spokesperson for the office of the President has just completed a press conference, giving the strong message that the government of the United States does not negotiate with terrorists and that the claims of this ‘conspiracy-theory splinter group’ are nonsense.
Well, now, what are they even protesting about, Tom? Tom scowls, just a micro-expression, before the practised face peels over the real one, the smile smooth as frosting on a cupcake. They want equality, Kristen. Someone’s saying, cut to commercial in thirty in their earpieces, and Kristen’s trying to wrap it up, but something’s going on with Tom; he’s not bringing this chat to a conclusion.
Well, Tom, there’s no way to take this thing back now, they can’t rewind time, although – smile – in our next segment, we’ll be rewinding a little dance history to take you back to a craze called swing.
No, says Tom.
Commercial in ten, says a producer, very calm and level. These things happen; problems at home, stress, overwork, health anxiety, money worries – they’ve seen it all, really.
The CDC is hiding things from us, Tom says, that’s what they’re protesting. Have you seen some of that stuff online? Things are being kept from us, resources are being channelled in the wrong direction, there’s no funding for self-defence classes or armour for men, and all this money going to those NorthStar girls’ training camps, for God’s sake – what the hell is that about? And fuck you, Kristen, we both know you’ve got this fucking thing, too, and it’s changed you, it’s made you hard; you’re not even a real woman any more. Four years ago, Kristen, you knew what you were and what you had to offer this network, and what the fuck are you now?
Tom knows they went to commercial a long time ago now. Probably just after he said ‘no’. Probably they thought a few seconds of dead air was better than this. He sits very still after he’s finished, looking straight ahead, into the eye of camera three. That’s always been his favourite camera, shows off the angle of his chin, the little dimple there. He’s Kirk Douglas, almost, on camera three. He is Spartacus. He always thought he could get into acting eventually, just small parts to start with; maybe at first he’d be playing a news anchor, and then something like the teacher in a high-school comedy who turns out to understand the kids better than any of them realized because you know he was pretty wild too way back when. Well, that’s all over now. Let it go, Tom, let those thoughts go from your mind.
You done? says Kristen.
Sure.
They get him out before they come back off commercial. He doesn’t even resist, except that he doesn’t like that hand on his shoulder and fights it off. He can’t bear a hand touching him, he says, so they let him be. He’s worked for a long time, and if he goes easy now his pension might still be secure.
Tom’s been taken sick, very sadly, says Kristen, bright eyes earnest down camera two. He’s OK, and he’ll be back with us real soon. And now, the weather on the ones.
From his hospital bed in Arizona, Tunde watches the reports of the story unfold. He emails and Facebooks with his family and friends back in Lagos.
His sister, Temi, is dating a boy now, someone a couple of years younger than her. She wants to know if Tunde has a girl out there in all this travelling.
Tunde tells her there’s not much time for that. There had been a white woman for a while, another journalist who he’d met in Singapore and travelled with as far as Afghanistan. She’s not worth mentioning.
‘Come home,’ says Temi. ‘Come home for six months and we’ll find you a nice girl. You’re twenty-seven, man. Getting old! It’s time to settle down.’
The white woman – her name was Nina – had said, ‘Do you think you have PTSD?’
It was because she’d used her thing in bed and he’d shied away from it. Told her to stop. Started crying.
He’d said, ‘I am stranded a long way from home and there is no way to get back.’
‘We all are,’ she’d said.
Nothing worse has happened to him than to anyone. There is no reason for him to be afraid, no more reason than any other man. Nina’s been texting him since he’s been in hospital, asking if she can come and see him. He keeps saying, no, not yet.
It’s while he’s in hospital that the email comes in. Just five short lines, but the sender address is right; he checks it hasn’t been spoofed.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
We saw your reporting from the mall in Arizona, we read your essay about what happened to you in Delhi. We are on the same side; we’re on the side of all men. If you’ve seen what happened in the Cleary election, you’ve understood what we’re fighting for. Come and talk to us, on the record. We want you on our team.
UrbanDox
It’s not even a question. There’s still his book to be written; the book, those nine hundred pages of chronicle and explanation. He has it all with him on his laptop all the time. There’s no question about this. A meeting with UrbanDox? Of course he will.
The theatrics around it are ridiculous. He can’t bring his own equipment. ‘We’ll give you a phone to record the interview,’ they tell him. For God’s sake. ‘I understand,’ he writes back. ‘You can’t compromise your position.’ They like that. It feeds into their sense of who they are. ‘You’re the only one we trust,’ they say. ‘You tell the truth. You have seen the chaos for what it is. You were invited to the action in Arizona and you came. You are the one we want.’ The way they talk is positively messianic. ‘Yes,’ he emails back. ‘I have wanted to talk to you for a long time.’
The Power Page 17
