He followed her to a small lounge just off the mezzanine. She closed the door behind them and they stood facing each other. In his mind, Yudel ran through possible things to say. He wondered if he should offer her a seat, ask what this was all about, thank her for inviting him, shake her hand, hug her, or just look at her. He just looked.
“That was entertaining,” Abigail said. Her smile showed that there was nothing sarcastic in the observation. “Thanks for coming. It’s great to see you again.”
“Yes”—Yudel stumbled over possible responses, settling on—“me too.”
“Let’s sit down,” she said. She was already sinking into an armchair, one of a few arranged around a coffee table. Yudel sat down opposite her. “So what’ve you been doing?” Abigail asked.
Yudel was glad to see her, but this was not the kind of conversation he made. “You want to know about this young man, Tony Makumbe?”
“Same old Yudel,” she said. “No small talk.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m not skilled in that area.”
“Or interested, either. Let’s talk about Tony, then. You said you think he’s a schizophrenic?”
It had been asked in Abigail’s most businesslike way, but she had not changed and he could see the anxiety behind it. “Yes. He doesn’t perceive things the way the rest of us do.”
“I saw that too.”
“In fact, he sees the world in a way that we cannot comprehend.”
Abigail’s face had become very still. “Yudel, he’s in prison in Zimbabwe, with six others.”
“Not Chikurubi, I hope.”
“Yes, I think that’s the name of the place.”
Yudel looked at her without saying anything. It was a look Abigail had difficulty reading. She was not sure whether it was sympathetic or portentous, or both. “What do you know about that place?” she asked.
What should I tell you? Yudel wondered. “It’s not a good place,” he said eventually. “I visited it fifteen years ago. It was not a good place then. It’s worse now. Food may be the main problem. Even Zimbabweans who are free have little food.”
“I know,” she said.
“A few months ago, inmates were being fed a slice of bread and a bowl of thin sadza porridge a day.”
Abigail’s face was very still. “How long do they live?”
It was a question he hated having to answer. “I’m told that in the last five years more than half their prisoners have died, either of hunger or of diseases they were not strong enough to resist—often cholera. The cells are overcrowded. I believe sometimes cells contain three or four times the number they were intended for.” He decided against telling her about the cemetery that had been created on the prison farm or that the prison had the month before contracted a company to undertake mass burials. He had told her too much already.
“Oh God, Yudel. What are you saying?”
“Is he a sturdy boy?” Yudel asked. “Many schizophrenics are not.”
“The letter I received said he’d been sick.”
“They may have been talking about the schizophrenia. How long has he been there?”
“Just a few days.”
“Are you sure he’s still alive?”
“No. Are you sure he’s a schizophrenic?”
“No, but it’s a reasonable guess. How long is his sentence?”
“He’s not sentenced. They’re just holding him. They haven’t troubled the courts. In fact, they deny they have him.”
“And he’s in Chikurubi?”
“The activists there say so.”
“Ah,” he said. “Not always the most reliable source of information.” He asked himself what there was to say about this sort of African catastrophe. There were enough of them. Then he remembered that there may be some good news. “International bodies have been asking us to help. I don’t know if we’ve done anything, but I understand there’s a World Food Program shipment on the way to Chikurubi. It was due to land in Beira yesterday.”
“That’s a blessing.”
I suppose you’d better know the rest of it though, Yudel thought. “That food will have a street value. And it has to get through some of the most corrupt officials and the most desperate crowds on the planet before it reaches them.”
“Oh, Yudel,” she said.
“He’ll have to get out of there soon.” He looked at her face and saw that this was not all she had to tell him. “There’s something else?”
“Just that they’ve asked me to come there to help them get a court order, forcing them to free my…” She paused a moment to rearrange the sentence. “… to free Tony’s group.”
Before she could continue, the door was thrown open and Robert came into the room, arms swinging in agitation. Abigail was on her feet quickly. Yudel followed uncertainly.
“Robert?”
“There’s an entire party out there, wondering where you are.” He was gesticulating in staccato fashion.
Rosa and Freek had followed him into the room, Freek having the presence of mind, always a strong characteristic of his, to close the door behind him.
“You slip away. Why aren’t you with me?” His words were again accompanied by furious gesticulations. “After you laughed at his feeble joke—if it was a joke.”
Abigail’s eyes blazed with the light of battle. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I? It was like this last time, too.”
“No, Robert. I’m not the one holding business meetings with the opposite sex in the Sheraton.”
“This is the Sheraton,” he snarled.
Rosa had followed the exchange between Robert and Abigail from close by, her head swiveling like a spectator at a tennis match. She placed a comforting hand on one of Robert’s forearms. “Robert,” she said gently, “you don’t need to be concerned. Abigail doesn’t feel that way about Yudel. I am the first to sense these things and it’s not like that at all.” She turned toward Yudel, perhaps looking for confirmation, but her eyes widened. “As for you, Yudel, take that smug look off your face.”
“Smug look…?” Yudel tried to protest.
“My God, Yudel.” Abigail rounded on him. “Your relationship with me gives you nothing to look smug about.”
“I’ve got no smug look,” Yudel tried to say.
“I know the Yudel Gordon smug look,” Rosa said.
How did I so quickly become the villain of the incident? Yudel wondered.
Freek came up to Yudel, and leaned heavily on his friend, an elbow on one of Yudel’s slight shoulders. He could scarcely keep the amusement out of his voice. “You’ve got it wrong, Robert. Yudel’s not the old white guy lusting after your wife. I am.”
Robert looked from one to the other. He turned suddenly and strode from the room, as angry as when he had entered. “What a fucking ridiculous pair,” he muttered.
“Thanks awfully, Freek,” Abigail said. “That was very helpful.”
* * *
Abigail and Robert drove in silence. This time neither attempted conversation. Abigail could see that Robert was holding the steering wheel far too tightly. His jaw was set in a way that reflected his anger. She had seen it before, not often, but often enough to recognize it.
And what was that all about? she asked herself. As if I didn’t know. Oh, Robert—all that fuss about something you know to be innocent, you foolish man. It’s all so clear. You are fucking her, aren’t you? I’m afraid it’s all too obvious now. You really are. There is simply no doubt about it.
12
By the time Robert had signed off the afternoon edition of his paper, Abigail’s flight to Harare was airborne. Her decision to go had been taken in bed the night before. The idea of putting a thousand kilometers between herself and Robert had considerable appeal. And, of course, there was Tony. Thinking about his imprisonment in that awful place instead of falling asleep, she had come to the conclusion that she had to go.
But even that is not entirely true, she thought. I knew from the start
that I had to go. I tried to avoid it, but I knew from the moment Krisj Patel first called.
She had waited till this morning before telling Robert. He had looked straight at her for too long, an expression on his face that she could not read, before suddenly turning away and going to work without replying. At least, for you, your wife will be out of the way, leaving the field to the opposition, Abigail thought.
From a businesslike flight attendant Abigail had received a glass of wine and a small packet of salted nuts. She had brought a book to read, but it had stayed in her luggage. With thoughts of Tony Makumbe and the tragedy that was Zimbabwe on the one hand, and Robert and his foolishness on the other, reading was impossible.
Suddenly, without warning, Abigail found that she was weeping silently. It was not for Tony or Zimbabwe. She may yet weep for them, but so far she did not even know Tony and it had been many years since she had last lived in Zimbabwe. She was weeping for herself and Robert. To Abigail, it was much more than her husband weakening with this pretty white girl. Pretty? Abigail asked herself. She was much more than pretty. It was no wonder Robert had not been able to resist her.
Her sadness went much deeper than that. Abigail had hated her first experience of sex. The rape had taken place when she was fifteen years old on the night after her parents had died. It had been so much worse for being at the hands of a man who many in the movement saw as a hero. For ten years after that she had recoiled at the possibility of a man, any man, desiring her physically. Then Robert had come.
Apart from that one incident she had endured against her will, Robert had been her only sexual partner. He had taken everything in sexual intercourse that had been repulsive and frightening, and replaced it with something so wonderful that it filled her with a joy that she had not believed possible. She loved Robert with the love of a woman for a man, but also with the gratitude of the rescued for the rescuer.
Oh, Robert, she thought, you damned fool. Did this have to come now? Did it have to come at all? Would I be on this flight had you not screwed that kid?
She closed her eyes and oblivion came quickly, blotting out all the unpleasantness in her own life and the tragedy of the country to which she was returning. When she woke, she turned for the first time to the newspaper she had bought at the airport in Johannesburg. The front-page headline was set in massive, bold, seventy-point type. It read: “MDC pulls out of unity government.” The subhead, immediately below that, expanded on the theme: “Zimbabwean moderates claim their right to disengage from a dishonest and unequal partnership.” In the article, the leader of the moderate partner in the coalition was quoted as saying: “They arrest our members without reason. They pack the key cabinet posts with their members. They only tolerate us because it gives them credibility.”
And where does that leave me? she wondered.
Almost before she realized how long she had been first asleep, then in thought, the two-hour journey was ending. The aircraft made a slow circle around Harare airport, tilting slightly toward the side on which she was sitting. Down below, she saw the runways and the terminal buildings off to one side.
On the far side of the airport in the middle distance, she could see the sprawling tangle of business premises, houses, shacks and official buildings that made up Harare. She was still too far away to see any of it clearly. But she had read about the shops where shelves had stood empty for years, the many businesses that had closed, and the white farmers who had been attacked, arrested and driven off their land.
But for now, it was better not to think about any of that. It would do no good. She was coming for one reason and one reason only.
* * *
Disembarking was delayed while a party of dignitaries in suits emerged from first class and were ushered out of the aircraft. From her window, Abigail saw that a red carpet had been spread at the foot of the stairs. At the end of the carpet a small delegation, its members also wearing suits, had gathered to welcome them. Judging by the fleet of Mercedes sedans and the motorcycle policemen waiting behind them, this group would not have to bother about formalities like passport control.
After the two groups had completed their handshaking and been driven away in the Mercedes motorcade, the red carpet was rolled up and a professionally smiling hostess thanked everyone for using their airline and ushered them toward the stairs.
Abigail noticed Krisj Patel as soon as she passed through customs. He was a tall man, but his narrow shoulders and hips would have fitted well on a much smaller one. As Abigail crossed the concourse, she could read the sign he was holding: “ADVOCATE ABIGAIL BUKULA.”
Patel was wearing clothes that seemed to have been intended for a stockier man. The trousers, especially, were baggy and held up by a belt that was pulled tight, but not threaded through the loops provided for that purpose. The shoulders of his short-sleeved white shirt hung halfway down his upper arms. Sleeves that should have ended above his elbows were at least a hand’s breadth lower. As a sop to corporate conformity he wore a broad, red necktie. He swallowed heavily when Abigail stopped in front of him. “You’re Krisj Patel,” she said.
“That’s right, Ms. Bukula. Certainly, that’s me, Attorney Krisj Patel of Smythe, Patel and Associates.”
“Suddenly, we’re formal, Krisj.”
Abigail was wearing a dark pantsuit and white blouse with ruffles down the front. Her expression was serious and unsmiling. “Over the phone it was all right to call you Abigail,” Patel said, “but now that I see you face-to-face I can see that you are actually Ms. Bukula.”
“Don’t be absurd.” He was leading her toward the doors. “You call me Abigail, or I’ll be on the next flight back.”
“Of course, Ms.… Abigail.”
The airport was in a better state of repair than Abigail had imagined it would be. She could see none of the cracked tiles, broken windows and discolored paintwork she had been led to expect. What was missing was the range of food outlets that you found in the airports of more prosperous countries.
As they reached the exit to the parking area, Abigail’s attention was drawn to a woman of perhaps thirty. She was alone, leaning against a pillar, her thumbs hooked into the pockets of her jeans. Her skin was the deep brown of many equatorial peoples. She seemed to be watching them. When their eyes met, she held Abigail’s gaze for too long before looking away.
“Who’s she?” Abigail asked. “Do you know her?”
“Who? Oh, that girl.” To Abigail’s ears, Patel sounded like someone who had memorized the line. “Just a local.”
Perhaps, Abigail thought, and perhaps you’re not telling me everything. Abigail glanced once more in the direction of the woman, but she had her back to them and was moving away in the direction of the departures section.
Stepping out of the building, Abigail was enveloped by the warmth of the Harare afternoon. Suddenly she remembered Zimbabwe’s perfect days and how she had enjoyed her years in the country. Somewhere she had read that Harare had the best climate of any city on earth, and she had experienced it.
Two taxi cabs occupied a rank intended for more. Krisj Patel had his own car, an ancient Nissan that seemed to have been repaired many times, always with more enthusiasm than skill. Sections had been touched up with paint of three slightly different shades. The other cars in the parking looked to be in better condition, not too different from those at any other airport.
“I’m afraid this is my car,” Patel said. “I have to get in first to open the door on the passenger side. There’s no door handle on that side. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” Abigail looked doubtfully at the car.
Once inside, Patel had to lean all of his weight against the passenger door to get it open and allow Abigail in. Despite the car’s appearance, the engine started easily and it pulled away smoothly enough. As they drove, Abigail turned to look back. The woman from the concourse was outside now, watching them go.
“As I was saying on the phone…” Patel spoke quickly, as i
f fearing that he might be interrupted or that his message might not be favorably received and that he should deliver it quickly before there could be resistance. “… my clients want us to get an order releasing the prisoners, and Tony, of course, is one of them. When we get to court, I will appear with you. I am the attorney who will brief you.”
“And is Smythe happy with you spending a lot of time on the case?”
“Smythe?”
“Your partner, the Smythe of Smythe, Patel and Associates.”
“Oh no. Blake left after the 2000 referendum when the people voted against the government and the old man really went crazy.”
“And the Associates part of your firm’s name?”
“No associates either. Just me. I am the whole of Smythe, Patel and Associates.”
Absurd as it seemed to her, Abigail thought she heard a measure of pride in the statement. He seemed to be saying that as long as Krisj Patel was alive, the firm of Smythe, himself and the associates would be alive too. “Things have not been going too well here, Krisj,” she said.
“Not well at all, Ms. Abigail. I have more cases now than last year, though. I’d have still more if people were braver. Many would like to sue the government, but few have money. And most of those who do have money are afraid.”
As they traveled, the airport property gave way to open fields, fringed with trees. Both trees and grass were a deeper green than she remembered. It felt like a homecoming.
Perhaps it’s not the way the newspapers say, she thought. And yet she knew that the beauty of the country was only one part of her memory. There was also the other part, and that had not diminished with the years. She expected that she would soon be confronting it again.
Spanning the road, a sign announced: “Zimbabwe Independence 1980.” A little farther on, a billboard bore a bank’s suggestion to “Bring money back to Zimbabwe.”
Without warning and with an open road ahead of him, Patel braked sharply, swung the car onto the grass verge and switched off the engine. Cars on either side of the road were doing the same. It was a moment before she heard the sirens and some seconds longer before their source came into view. Three uniformed motorcyclists were followed by an armored personnel carrier. Through its darkened windows she could just make out armed soldiers. Close behind it, a black limousine flew the national flag. A second armored car and an ambulance brought up the rear of the motorcade.
Those Who Love Night Page 7
