by M G Vassanji
The chief, Nkosi, asked,—What’s your name, my daughter?
—Holly, she replied. She was surprised that the old man spoke in English.
—Haali. Good, the old man said, his eyes twinkling. He had a throaty voice, somewhat higher than she expected. It was bright and burning hot in the compound, and one of the young men there turned on a fan for him, which was quite useless. No, the old man said, he did not want to go inside into the air conditioning. He turned again to Holly with affection and said,
—You are Haali, but your Warrior’s name will be Umoja wa Kwanza. Understand?
—Yes, Nkosi, Holly replied.
—It means unity first. We are a very disunited people. This faction fights that one, and that one fights someone else, who betrays us…He grinned slyly.
—Yes, Nkosi.
—You have come here, Umoja, to open for your people a window into our world. Isn’t that so? This is what they are, you tell them. What do you expect to see? And when you’ve seen, then what? When you’ve shown them, then what? Will our condition change to become like yours? Never mind, we will show you our world. Stay, and you will see starvation and disease, and radiation blight. You will see children with eight fingers or two heads and men who have cooked and eaten other men. Such is our world, which we cannot leave because your governments have put a fence around us. We live inside a cage.
—Yes, Nkosi.
—Don’t just say Yes Nkosi! Do you believe me, Haali? Will you work for me?
—I believe you, Nkosi, and I will work for you.
—
#50
It’s out, Presley, your link with Holly. Nothing is coincidence. It took the Cyliton to figure out your secret. I refused to see it. What are you, then, Pres, a terrorist from Maskinia? A Freedom Warrior? Does that explain your war games? Many lives are involved, Joe said, so will you regain your former self, pick up a gun, and go on a rampage? I don’t think so, Pres, that’s not possible. Your mind is now a jumble of two selves, a no-self overloaded with details, data, crying out in agony in that hole in which you’ve hidden yourself.
My fear is, Pres, there’s even more to you that’s staring me in the face. Some truths we’d better not know.
Slowly it’s becoming clear to you, where you hide nursing your own internal terror, your incoherent, chaotic mind screaming with noises and blinding with images, what the meaning is of that statement. It’s midnight, the lion is out. You see yourself driving the red car. But whose baby is in the rain?
TWENTY-TWO
IF HE SOUGHT SOMEWHERE to lose himself, he had chosen the right neighbourhood. What connection could he possibly have to Walnut Street, I wondered as I made my way there. Nothing had brought me this far east before, though like most people I was aware of the area’s reputation. Crime is so rampant in this part of Lawrence Town that it registers only as a colourful instant of diversion from more important news. Reports from Walnut Street, as we know, invariably involve flashing lights and wailing sirens. A good place to hide, then. To reach it I had been careful about being followed—hurriedly crossing roads and changing directions, walking well inside shadows and in the middle of crowds, and once even getting off and back on the train—knowing full well that these antics were useless, not to say comical. There are more efficient ways to track a person. Even the air we breathe has eyes, they tell us. There was that ladybug planted on my jacket, and though I was not wearing it now, there could well have been something else stuck to me or that I had ingested.
I emerged from the dank dungeon of a station from another century into a world that was alien and truly depressing, and hurried nervously further east down Walnut Street in the direction of increasing numbers. The brighter, commercial section of Lawrence Town was two blocks behind me on Prince Albert Park Avenue, but Walnut Street was dark and dismal, pressed down by a foggy night. Wet potholes lurked like traps to break your legs, street lamps were sporadically lit. The buildings were of yellow or brown brick and of two or three storeys. Many windows were boarded.
There was once some hope brought here, one is told, when immigrants were arriving by the planeloads, many choosing to settle in Lawrence Town. Developments sprang up. But Walnut Street failed to prosper, and those who did well left the neighbourhood. Now it is our Forgotten World. We fret about the Long Border and Region 6, we drop aid to those countries and are constantly in confrontation with them, our media never tire of describing and debating about their miseries. But this border world in Lawrence Town is our own, and it might as well not exist; it’s too embarrassing, too ugly. Not exotic or exciting enough for Holly Chu, though surely unsafe enough.
A homeless man looked up from a steaming manhole and called out for change before closing the lid over himself; a couple of decrepit old women out on a walk with a little dog gave me a wide berth. A strip mall with a convenience store, a fast-food place, and a little Indian restaurant called Something-India—there was no other business on the street. A police car was one of two vehicles parked there. Lamar had advised me not to bring anything of value and so I had with me only a couple of paycards and an old phone that he had given me for this journey, used previously by a client who was no more—or rather was someone else. Not strictly legal to use these, but it’s handy.
On the steps of 4113, two men sat in the shadows, smoking joints and chatting, ignoring me completely, so that I had to step gingerly between them to get to the door behind. I was the wrong sort here, and looked it. A murmur of contempt followed me in as I pushed through the door into a small vestibule, and saw a row of broken old mailboxes and buzzers beside an inner door. I pushed it in and took the staircase up. The lighting was the barest minimum. A woman came down scolding a child behind her, and brushed past me in her scratchy old coat. This was a house more than a century old; the stairs creaked, the bannisters swung out alarmingly at the slightest push, the walls were the colour of vomit; and indeed a fetid odour, heightened by some cheap deodorizer, permeated the entire dark cavern, along one side of which the stairs reached up to the residence corridors. As I climbed up, on the third floor a woman shouted, two children screamed and started running down, shaking the wooden structure of the house to its foundations.
Reaching the first floor before they did, I knocked on apartment 3 and a door was opened by a short, bent, aged-looking woman, with red hair cropped to the skull and a dark face shrunken as a raisin. She hobbled off inside and I stood at the entrance facing Presley Smith, who was sitting on an armchair which had been turned at an angle so he could watch the wall-mounted flat television. He looked up sideways at me and grinned.
—You made it, Doc.
—Yes—though I wondered if I would. What’s this place?—you don’t live here?
I closed the door, just as the floors trembled from the chase proceeding down the staircase. There was also in the room a long, low sofa with a white cloth cover, on which had been thrown assorted clothes, and two straight-backed chairs and a centre table. The floor had been polished decades ago, probably when the walls were also papered. A chandelier hung from the ceiling but the dim light in the room came from a floor lamp and the flickering television.
—My hideout, Doc. My hideout, he replied a little edgily.
His red Afro had collapsed somewhat from lack of care and lost its lustre. His clothes looked unwashed. Presley seemed to fit in here, but it was hard to suppress my revulsion. I was not sure that my concern for my patient had warranted this risky and unpleasant venture. He was eyeing me curiously, watching my discomfort. I couldn’t even decide where to sit. Such places have insects, I’d been told, and not the nice sort. I couldn’t help recalling Bill Goode making his insect gesture on his show.
—Were you followed? he asked.
—I tried not to be. There’s no guarantee against the experts. A police car’s hovering outside.
—I see. Mrs Clarke, Edwina—he nodded towards the kitchen, from where a sound came—agreed to take me in. She’s my former girlfriend’s mother.
Edwina hobbled in with a tray of tea and biscuits. She looked at me with a tight-lipped smile and a hard glitter in her eyes. I took the tray from her and placed it on a side table.
—Thank you, son, she said, which was indeed flattering.—Have a seat, she added,—have a seat.
I sat down on one of the two chairs, watched her pour the tea shakily into cups and lay out the biscuits. She was a black woman. I realized now what I implicitly had known, that there were areas of the city known for being pure ethnic, one of those that journalists like to visit on occasion to show their audiences glimpses of the authentic. If this was authentic, who wanted it?
I accepted a cup from her and Presley took his. We watched her leave the room.
—Mrs Clarke, aren’t you going to sit with us? I called out.
—You go ahead and have your talk, she said and disappeared.
Presley and I sat in silence for a while, appraising each other. He did not look distressed; on the contrary he looked definitely upbeat.
—How are you faring? I asked him.—You sounded desperate in your message, but you seem to have managed. Have you?
—I’m managing, but mark you, with a lot of concentration and willpower. Edwina’s concoctions are helpful. He nodded towards the kitchen.—She makes tea from extracts that she buys from a Chinese doctor in the neighbourhood.
He started to say something else, but stopped.
—So you can control those stray thoughts that bothered you before. That’s very good, Pres. Maybe we doctors can learn from that!
And we could have met in the city, I thought. All that effort and risk to come see him, for nothing. He read my face and apologized.
—I’m sorry, Doc. You had to come all this way. When I posted that message I was desperate. There seemed no hope. But soon after, I began to improve. I found I can keep the lion away. The lion who stalks at midnight! It always starts with him—the lion. I keep him at bay. Stay away, lion!
He grinned, having gestured with his hand to shoo away the creature.
The scientist in me wanted desperately to record him. What he said in his current state could be of value to my discipline. But I was forgetting myself. He was my patient, who needed attention. I listened carefully to him, aware that I’d recall most of it later. And what I’d just heard was not reassuring at all. It sounded forced.
—DIS is desperate to see you, Pres. There’s a call out on you. For all we know, there’s a camera pointing at us.
We both threw a look towards the window, but it was totally barred to the outside.
—Thank you for coming—and caring—Doc. I didn’t trust you at first, when I came to see you, but now I see that I can. I think I’ll be all right with the people here. They look after me—Edwina and others.
—It’s not a trivial condition we are speaking of.
—Yes. But I’m managing. There’s the Chinese potion, and I do yoga to strengthen my mind. All that seems to work. And I attend the church here. The community feeling, Dr Sina, has given a new meaning to my life. I did not have it before. I was alone. Now I really belong, Doc. I have friends and I have community.
This was the second time he was shunting me away, after first seeking me. But he’d found a meaning and a way to cope—so he believed. But the brain is a canny beast, I told myself. I didn’t know what more to say and we both sat there in uncomfortable silence, listening to a burst of sirens go screaming past outside.
—You’ll live in hiding.
He looked at me as though to say, What alternative do I have?
I was ready to leave.
—I’ve brought some pills for you, Pres. They will help suppress those flashes. First take the blue one, then the yellow one—if you need to. Let’s hope you don’t.
—Thanks, Doc. I hope so too.
He smiled. And in that face, behind that smile, suddenly I didn’t see any hope at all. I could never forget that face, what destruction it revealed behind that mask.
—I should go, then, I said and got up.—I hope you’ll be all right, Pres.
—I trust you, Doc. Believe me. I’m as all right as it’s possible to be. And I’m happy and with friends. They are my family.
I wondered in what condition I would see him next. We shook hands. As I reached the door, Edwina opened it for me, and as I stepped out, she murmured,
—Can you make me young, Doctor? Like him and you. But no ghosts. I don’t want to be visited by ghosts.
—There’s no guarantee against ghosts, Edwina. And it’s very expensive.
—Well then.
She let me out, and the locks clicked several times behind me. I went downstairs and out into the street.
—
As I hurried down the street, blaring metallic music approached from ahead followed by a car packed with punks. Before I could thank my stars that they hadn’t stopped to harass me, another car came along and stopped.
—Whitey!
I’m not exactly white, and besides, these descriptions long lost their use in the society I come from. I kept walking.
—Whitey—you got any money on you?
—Not for you.
It’s easy to sound bold, but my legs were quaking.
Two doors opened and two hulking fellows came loping towards me. The one in the lead, who had spoken, I now saw was as white as chalk with tattoos on his arms. There was metal in his teeth. His hands were metal contraptions, in one of which he held a small zapper, and I was thinking, This is it. I looked behind me, desperate for someone to come to my rescue. The young man laughed. He waved his zapper, though he didn’t need it, with one swing of that psychedelic arm he could have felled me. What would he do then, drink my blood? Cut me open and steal my organs? (Fine use they’d be.)
—What have you got in your pockets?
I fetched out one of my paycards and my phone. He pocketed the paycard and snatched at my phone, which with a quick glance he threw contemptuously on the ground and stepped on it. Not his fashion.
Just then a police car, which seemed to have been lurking in the shadows, slowly came cruising along and the two men jumped into their car and sped away. The police car stopped beside me.
—What are you doing here, sir?
—Visiting a friend who’s sick. She used to work for me. Mrs Clarke…
—Any ID?
—I’m afraid not. I was told not to bring anything that had value.
I told them who I was, gave them my phone numbers.
—You have to be careful. Strangers have a way of disappearing in these streets. You could end up in a hamburger.
They chuckled, and I didn’t know if they were serious, but they remained in sight until I entered the station.
As Joe Green had said, sometimes we need the police.
TWENTY-THREE
The Notebook
#51
The Journalist
Holly lay on her mattress in her corner. She had strung up a rag of a bedsheet as a makeshift curtain to demarcate her space, an indulgence allowed her by her new friends. She could sleep only lightly at night. The space was utterly dark; immersed in it, at first she felt nervous and frightened. This was the price of her privacy. But gradually she was getting accustomed to her space, to the intermittent scratches and sighs that relieved the brief loneliness of the night. She would think of the comfortable world she had left behind, rejected and spurned. Had she made the right decision? Yes! At some point you have to stop talking and do something, take that first step. And she had done that. If more people did likewise, the world might change. Hadn’t that fellow Gandhi inspired millions?
A squeal came from behind the curtain, a slight one, and it brought her suddenly fully awake. She sat up and listened. There were growls. Men. Shuffling. Then three men stepped in, lifting the curtain; the space now lighter, she saw shadows and recognized the men, she had seen them around. One of them came over and pointed a rifle at her and she was terrified. Another swiftly approached her, bent down, a
nd grunting tore off her pyjamas—which were recently stitched, a gift from Layela. When he’d had his way, not one word escaping her lips, her eyes locked into his, her heart bursting with pain, the two others followed. They left, summarily zipping up themselves. As she whimpered in pain and filth, Layela took her into her arms and comforted her; took her outside and hosed her, and she cried out.
—Shall I complain to Nkosi? she asked her friend.
—You should, replied Layela.
—You should, said Miriam.—Perhaps then he’ll listen.
In the morning they went marching with determination to the Nkosi’s compound. The soldiers teased them on the way, and at the gate they were met with hostility: Nkosi was busy, Nkosi was tired, there was a big meeting today. But the women persisted, Miriam speaking loudly to be let in, until suddenly the gate opened for them.
Nkosi was seated in his chair as usual, having at that moment finished with a tall glass of juice. The three women sat down on the ground before him, and after a preamble Holly told her story.
—I’ve treated these men as brothers in arms, as fellow warriors, and they have shown no respect for me and violated me. They don’t respect women—
—Haali, Haali—began the old man,—they should not have touched you. I am sorry. They will be punished.
He paused, then went on.—We are fighting a war, Haali. We need young, healthy warriors. Men. They need to eat…You go, I will punish them.
Holly didn’t know if and how the men were punished. She never saw them again. But Layela and Miriam told her this was the way of their world. The women had to yield, the young men had to eat, most of them would soon go to die.
—
#52
The Gentle Warrior
And you, Presley, you almost fooled me—but not quite. We both know, no Chinese medicine, no Christian piety, no Indian exercises will save you. I wish I could have helped you, my friend. My young friend. The moment I laid eyes on your incongruity, some nerve in the visual cortex rang a bell. Some memory circuit responded, albeit weakly, I admit. We are connected, you and I…and for sure Holly.
