The Power

by Naomi Alderman

  There’s some kind of crisis on the table next to her. A machine starts beeping. There’s an involuntary jolt from the skein they’re stitching into him – good girl, thinks Roxy, that’s my girl. One of the surgeons falls to the floor, another swears in Russian and starts giving chest compressions. With two eyes open, Roxy gauges the distance between the table where she’s lying and the door. The surgeons are shouting and calling for drugs. No one’s looking at Roxy; no one cares. She could die now and no one would give a shit. She might be dying now; she feels like she could be. But she’s not going to die here. She tips herself off the table down hard on her knees into a crouch, and still none of them notices. She does a backward crawl towards the door, keeping low, keeping her eye on them.

  At the door, she finds her shoes and pulls them on with a little sob of relief. She topples out the door, hamstrings taut, body singing with adrenaline. In the courtyard, the car is gone. But, limping, she runs out into the forest.

  Tunde

  There is a man with a mouthful of glass.

  There is a thin, sharp, translucent sliver spearing the back of his throat, shiny with saliva and mucus, and his friend is trying to extract it with trembling fingers. He shines a light with his phone torch to see where it is exactly, and reaches in while the man retches and tries to hold still. He has to go in for it three times, until he grasps it, pulls it out between thumb and forefinger. It is two inches long. It is stained with blood and meat, a lump of the man’s throat on the end of it. The friend puts it on to a clean, white napkin. Around them, the other waiters and chefs and orderlies continue with their business. Tunde photographs the eight shards lined up on the napkin.

  He’d taken photographs while the obscenity was happening at the party, his camera casual and low at his hip, seeming to dangle from his hand. The waiter is just seventeen; this is not the first time he’s seen or heard about such a thing, but the first time that he’s been subject to it. No, he can’t go anywhere else. He has relatives in Ukraine who might take him in if he ran, but people get shot trying to cross the border; it’s a nervous time. He wipes the blood from his mouth as he speaks.

  He says quietly, ‘Is my fault, must not speak when the President is speaking.’

  He’s crying a little now, from the shock and the shame and the fear and the humiliation and the pain. Tunde recognizes those feelings; he’s known them since the first day Enuma touched him.

  He has written in the scribbled notes for his book: ‘At first we did not speak our hurt because it was not manly. Now we do not speak it because we are afraid and ashamed and alone without hope, each of us alone. It is hard to know when the first became the second.’

  The waiter, whose name is Peter, writes some words on a scrap of paper. He gives it to Tunde and holds his hand clasped over Tunde’s fist. He looks into his eyes until Tunde thinks that the man is about to kiss him. Tunde suspects he would allow it because each of these people needs some comfort.

  The waiter says, ‘Don’t go.’

  Tunde says, ‘I can stay as long as you like. Until the party is over if you like.’

  Peter says, ‘No. Don’t leave us. She is going to try to make the press leave the country. Please.’

  Tunde says, ‘What have you heard?’

  Peter will only say the same thing: ‘Please. Don’t leave us. Please.’

  ‘I won’t,’ says Tunde. ‘I won’t.’

  He stands outside the kitchen for a smoke. His fingers are trembling as he lights the cigarette. He’d thought, because he’d met Tatiana Moskalev in the past and she’d been kind to him, that he understood what was happening here. He’d been looking forward to seeing her again. Now he’s glad he didn’t have a chance to reintroduce himself. He pulls the paper that Peter had given him out of his pocket and looks at it. It says, in shaky block letters: ‘THEY’RE GOING TO TRY TO KILL US.’

  He gets a few shots of people leaving the party through the side door. A couple of gun-runners. A bio-weapons specialist. It’s the Horsemen of the Apocalypse ball. There’s Roxanne Monke getting into her car, queen of a London crime family. She sees him photographing her car, mouths ‘Fuck. Off’ at him.

  He files the story with CNN when he’s back in his hotel room at 3 a.m. The photographs of the man licking the brandy up from the floor. The glass splinters on the napkin. The tears on Peter’s cheek.

  Just past 9 a.m. he wakes involuntarily, gritty-eyed, sweat prickling his back and temples. He checks his email, to see what the night editor’s said about the piece. He’s promised anything that came out of this party to CNN first, but if they want too many cuts he’ll take it elsewhere. There’s a simple, two-line email.

  ‘Sorry, Tunde, we’re going to pass on this. Great reporting, pix excellent, not a story we can sell in right now.’

  Fine. Tunde sends out another three emails, then has a shower and orders a pot of strong coffee. When the emails start to come back, he’s looking through the international news sites; nothing much on Bessapara, no one’s scooped him. He reads the emails. Three more rejections. All for similar foot-shuffling, non-committal we-don’t-think-there’s-a-story-here reasons.

  He’s never needed a market, though. He’ll just post the whole thing to his YouTube.

  He logs on via the hotel wifi and … there YouTube isn’t. Just a tiny take-down notice saying that this site is not available in this region. He tries a VPN. No good. Tries his cellphone data. Same deal.

  He thinks of Peter saying, ‘She is trying to make the press leave the country.’

  If he emails the files, they’ll intercept them.

  He burns a DVD. All the photos, all the footage, his own piece.

  He puts it in a padded courier envelope and pauses for a moment over the address. In the end, he writes Nina’s name and details on the label. He puts a note inside, saying, ‘Hold this till I come fetch it.’ He’s left stuff with her before: notes for his book, journals from his travels. Safer with her than travelling with him or in an empty apartment somewhere. He’ll get the American ambassador to put it in the diplomatic bag.

  If Tatiana Moskalev is trying to do what it looks like she might be trying to do, he doesn’t want her to know yet that he’s going to document it. He’ll only get one chance at this story. Journalists have been expelled from countries for less than this, and he doesn’t kid himself that it’ll make any difference that he flirted with her once.

  It’s that afternoon that the hotel asks for his passport. Just because of the new security rules at this difficult time.

  Most of the other non-bureau staff are on their way out of Bessapara. There are a few war reporters in flak jackets on the northern front, but until the fighting starts in earnest there’s nothing much to say here, and the posturing and threats go on for more than five weeks.

  Tunde stays. Even while he’s receiving offers for substantial sums to go to Chile to interview the anti-pope and hear her views on Mother Eve. Even while more male-activism terror splinter groups say that they’ll only deliver their manifesto if he comes to tape them. He stays, and he interviews dozens of people in cities across the region. He learns some basic Romanian. When colleagues and friends ask what the hell he’s doing he says he’s working on a book about this new nation-state, and they shrug and say, ‘Fair enough.’ He attends the religious services in the new churches – and sees how the old churches are being repurposed or destroyed. He sits in a circle in an underground room by candlelight and listens to a priest intoning the service as it used to be: the son and not the mother at the heart. After the service, the priest presses his body against Tunde’s in a long, close hug and whispers, ‘Do not forget us.’

  Tunde is told more than once that the police here no longer investigate the murder of men; that if a man is found dead it is presumed that a vengeance gang had given him his proper reward for his deeds in the time before. ‘Even a young boy,’ a father tells him, in an overheated sitting room in a western village, ‘even a boy who is only fifteen now – what c
ould he have done in the time before?’

  Tunde doesn’t write online about any of these interviews. He knows how that would end – a knock on the door at 4 a.m. and being hustled on to the first plane out of the country. He writes as if he’s a tourist, on vacation in the new nation. He posts photographs every day. There’s already an angry undercurrent to the comments: where are the new videos, Tunde, where are your funny reports? Still, they’d notice if he vanished. That’s important.

  In his sixth week in the country, Tatiana’s newly appointed Minister for Justice gives a press conference. It’s sparsely attended. The room is airless, the walls papered with beige-and-brown string.

  ‘After the recent terrorist outrages across the world, and after our country was betrayed by men who work for our enemies, we are announcing today a new legal vessel,’ she says. ‘Our people have suffered for too long now at the hands of a group which has tried to destroy us. We do not have to ask ourselves what they will do if they win; we have already seen it. We must protect ourselves against those who might betray us.

  ‘Thus, we institute today this law, that each man in the country must have his passport and other official documents stamped with the name of his female guardian. Her written permission will be needed for any journey he undertakes. We know that men have their tricks and we cannot allow them to band together.

  ‘Any man who does not have a sister, mother, wife or daughter, or other relative, to register him must report to the police station, where he will be assigned a work detail and shackled to other men for the protection of the public. Any man who breaks these laws will be subject to capital punishment. This applies also to foreign journalists and other workers.’

  Looks pass between the men in the room; there are about a dozen, foreign journalists who’ve been here since it was a grim staging post in the business of human trafficking. The women try to look horrified but at the same time comradely, comforting. ‘Don’t worry,’ they seem to say. ‘This can’t last long, but while it does we’ll help you out.’ Several of the men fold their arms protectively over their chests.

  ‘No man may take money or other possessions out of the country.’

  The Minister for Justice turns the page. There is a long list of proclamations printed close together in small type.

  Men are no longer permitted to drive cars.

  Men are no longer permitted to own businesses. Foreign journalists and photographers must be employed by a woman.

  Men are no longer permitted to gather together, even in the home, in groups larger than three, without a woman present.

  Men are no longer permitted to vote – because their years of violence and degradation have shown that they are not fit to rule or govern.

  A woman who sees a man flouting one of these laws in public is not only permitted but required to discipline him immediately. Any woman who fails in this duty will be considered an enemy of the state, an accessory to the crime, one who attempts to undermine the peace and harmony of the nation.

  There are several pages of minor adjustments to these rulings, explanations of what constitutes ‘being accompanied by a woman’ and leniencies in case of extreme medical emergency because, after all, they are not monsters. The press conference becomes more and more quiet as the list is read out.

  The Minister for Justice finishes reading her list and calmly sets the papers down in front of her. Her shoulders are very relaxed, her face impassive.

  ‘That is all,’ she says. ‘No questions.’

  In the bar, Hooper from the Washington Post says, ‘I don’t care. I’m leaving.’

  He’s said this several times already. He pours himself another whisky and plops three ice cubes into it, swirls them round hard and makes his case again:

  ‘Why the fuck should we stay somewhere that we actually can’t do our jobs, when there are dozens of places we can? Something’s about to break out in Iran, I’m pretty sure. I’ll go there.’

  ‘And when something breaks out in Iran,’ drawls Semple of the BBC, ‘what do you think will happen to the men?’

  Hooper shakes his head. ‘Not in Iran. Not like this. They’re not going to change their beliefs overnight, cede everything to the women.’

  ‘You do remember,’ continues Semple, ‘that they turned overnight when the Shah fell and the Ayatollah came to power? You do remember that it happens that quickly?’

  There’s a moment of quiet.

  ‘Well, what do you suggest?’ says Hooper. ‘Give up everything? Go back home and become a gardening editor? I can see you doing that. Flak jacket in the herbaceous borders.’

  Semple shrugs. ‘I’m staying. I’m a British citizen, under the protection of Her Majesty. I’ll obey the laws, within reason, and report on that.’

  ‘What are you expecting to report? What it’s like sitting in a hotel room waiting for a woman to come and get you?’

  Semple sticks his bottom lip out. ‘It won’t get any worse than this.’

  At the table next to them, Tunde is listening. He also has a large whisky, though he’s not drinking it. The men are getting drunk and shouting. The women are quiet, watching the men. There is something vulnerable and desperate in the men’s display – he thinks the women are looking with compassion.

  One says, loud enough for Tunde to be able to hear, ‘We’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Listen, we don’t believe in this nonsense. You can tell us where you want to go. It’ll be just the same as it’s always been.’

  Hooper clasps Semple by the sleeve, saying, ‘You have to leave. First plane out of here and screw it all.’

  One of the women says, ‘He’s right. What’s the point of getting killed over this piss-pot of a place?’

  Tunde walks slowly to the front desk. He waits for an elderly Norwegian couple to pay their bill – there’s a taxi outside loading up their bags. Like most people from wealthy nations, they’re getting out of the city while they can. At last, after querying each item on the mini-bar receipt and the level of the local taxes, they leave.

  There is only one member of staff behind the desk. Grey is colonizing his hair in clumps – a chunk here and there, the rest dark and thick and tightly curled. He’s perhaps in his sixties, surely a trusted staff member with years of experience.

  Tunde smiles. An easy, we’re-in-this-together smile.

  ‘Strange days,’ he says.

  The man nods. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You’ve planned what you’re going to do?’

  The man shrugs.

  ‘You have family who’ll take you in?’

  ‘My daughter has a farm three hours west of here. I will go to her.’

  ‘They going to let you travel?’

  The man looks up. The whites of his eyes are jaundiced and streaked with red, the thin, bloody lines reaching towards the pupil. He looks for a long time at Tunde, perhaps five or six seconds.

  ‘If God wills it.’

  Tunde puts one hand into his pocket, easy and slow. ‘I have been thinking of travel myself,’ he says. And pauses. And waits.

  The man does not ask him more. Promising.

  ‘Of course, there are one or two things I’d need for travel that I … don’t have any more. Things that I wouldn’t want to leave without. Whenever I were to set off.’

  The man still says nothing, but nods his head slowly.

  Tunde brings his hands together casually, then slides the notes under the blotter on the desk so that just the corners of them are showing. Fanned out, ten fifty-dollar bills. US currency, that’s the key thing.

  The man’s slow, regular breathing halts, for just a second.

  Tunde continues, jovial. ‘Freedom,’ he says, ‘is all anyone wants.’ He pauses. ‘I think I will go up to bed. Could you tell them to send me up a Scotch? Room 614. As soon as you can.’

  The man says, ‘I will bring it myself, sir. In just a few moments.’

  In the room, Tunde flicks on the TV. Kristen is saying, The fourth-quarter forecast isn’t
looking good. Matt is laughing attractively and saying, Now, I don’t understand that kind of thing at all, but I’ll tell you what I do know about: apple-bobbing.

  There’s a brief roundup on C-Span about a ‘military crackdown’ in this ‘tumultuous region’, but much more about another domestic terrorism action in Idaho. UrbanDox and his idiots have successfully changed the story. If you’re talking about men’s rights now, you’re talking about them, and their conspiracy theories and the violence of them and the need for curbs and limits. No one wants to hear about what’s happening here. The truth has always been a more complex commodity than the market can easily package and sell. And now the weather on the ones.

  Tunde stocks his backpack. Two changes of clothes, his notes, his laptop and phone, water bottle, his old-fashioned camera with forty rolls of film, because he knows there could be days when he won’t find electricity or batteries, and a non-digital camera will be useful. He pauses, then crams in a couple more pairs of socks. He feels a kind of excitement welling up, unexpectedly, as well as the terror and the outrage and the madness. He tells himself it is stupid to feel excited; this is serious. When the knock on the door comes, he jumps.

  For a moment, when he opens the door, he thinks the old man has misunderstood him. On the tray, there’s a tumbler of whisky sitting on a rectangular coaster, and nothing else. It’s only when he looks more closely that he sees that the coaster is, in fact, his passport.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘This is just what I wanted.’

  The man nods. Tunde pays him for the whisky and zips the passport into the side pocket of his trousers.

  He waits to leave until around 4.30 a.m. The corridors are quiet, the lights low. No alarm sounds as he opens the door and steps out into the cold. No one tries to stop him. It is as if the whole afternoon had been a dream.

  Tunde crosses the empty night-streets, the dogs barking far away, breaks into a jog for a few moments then settles back to a long-legged, loping pace. Putting his hand into his pocket, he finds he still has the key to his hotel room. He considers throwing it away or putting it into a postbox but, fingering the shiny brass fob, he thrusts it back into his pocket. As long as he has it, he can imagine that room 614 will always be there waiting for him, still just as he left it. The bed still unmade, the morning’s papers by the desk in ungainly peaks, his smart shoes side by side under the bedside table, his used pants and socks thrown in the corner by his open, half-empty suitcase.