by M G Vassanji
—You did well. You had all the answers. Let’s get out of here and celebrate.
—Let’s.
While we were sharing this precious moment, Radha came gliding over, the face beaming as always.
—That was very interesting, Dr Sina. She turned to a curious and surprised Joanie, and continued,—Dr Sina’s been visiting our protest site on Yonge Street, and I’ve been trying to convince him about why interfering with the karmic cycle is not such a good thing. It gives him bad karma.
—By our, you mean that group in which that man burnt himself to death?
—Yes.
—Ugh. Well, I hope you haven’t succeeded in convincing Frank of your beliefs.
—I’m afraid not.
—Thank heavens.
The one trim and shapely, the lines clean as though drawn by an artist, with not an ounce of extra flesh, not an expression or move wasted, no fuzziness except on the rare occasions when she yielded to me. And the other, with a fleshiness that became popular briefly some years ago; all fuzzy, even her beliefs. Despite her karmic protests, she had looked decidedly shaken at Professor Kumar’s self-immolation. She walked away, unperturbed.
As I turned towards Joanie, I caught Musa’s somewhat furtive eye upon her. He looked away.
—Have you met that young man—Musa—before? He seems straight out of some anarchists’ colony. He was staring at you very strangely.
—The one who skewered you—yes, I think so, somewhere.
Too quick, and a necessary half-lie, perhaps there lay her fuzziness. They had exchanged glances and her face had reddened. Musa, I was convinced, was the mysterious Friend she saw on the side. There was no point in asking what she saw in that scruffy man. I love a young woman…Which made me…what? The reconstituted senior citizen to whom she had sold herself. That was painful, that barb. Joanie, partly turned away, was looking blandly around the room with a baby’s blameless face, and I was talking to an admirer while thinking, She can’t see me that way…selling herself to…
Radha waved from a distance, sailing across the hall in her colourful sari.
It was not merely distressing that day, it was devastating.
Later that evening it was I who was cold, the aphrodisiac useless. I refused to rise.
TWENTY-SIX
The Notebook
#53
The Journalist
Haali, or Holly, had known when she kept returning repeatedly to Maskinia for XBN assignments, which were never imposed on her, that her fate was tied to that country; but she couldn’t have imagined that one day she would identify with it so much. Before, she had come to the country as someone from a privileged planet, followed on the streets by packs of children like the Pied Piper, handing out cheap goodies from the North, stopping to take photographs and interview people; be admired and feel wonderful about herself; she was a madam from there. She ate special foods and drank special water and constantly fortified herself against their touching. Now she was one of them and trusted. She ate and slept with them (though she had to be careful). She moved about freely exploring the neighbourhood, visited houses and played with the children, teaching them the rudiments of English; she trained with the women and ate with them, sitting in a circle on the floor, and made love with Layela. She was wary of the men, who needed to eat, but she was never touched by them again. She knew she would not return to America. As she listened to the Nkosi speak to his followers, his message always the same but explained in different ways, she came to believe in it, felt one with the others in this belief. It seemed so obvious. A small percentage of the people on earth wallowed in wealth while the rest suffered deprivation. She could see it all around her, the poverty and forbearance, and yet the kindness and a sense of humour and play. These people deserved better. There must be change, and she would play her small part to make that possible. And so when the Nkosi’s men told her of their plan to waylay the tourist bus, using her as a decoy who would be trusted by the tourists, her former compatriots, she believed in its necessity for the greater good. The ransom would go a long way. She was moved to tears when she was handed her weapon in the presence of the Nkosi, a gesture of his complete trust in her.
She knew there would follow the inevitable negative responses from back home when she announced that she was a Warrior now and was staying on in Maskinia; still, the chorus of abuse that arrived was shocking to her. Sympathy and friendship had transformed in the blink of an eye into pure hatred, without a consideration for what her message was to the world, that the people behind the Border, in so-called Barbaria, were only human, we must not fence them off like wild animals. Among those few whom she counted especially close to her, her father begged her to return and spread her message from the safety of home. No one would blame her, he told her, her behaviour could be explained by the shock of her trauma and her sincerity; there were many people who believed as she did. Her mother kept silent. Her friends’ messages all amounted to the same substance: Come on, Holly, you don’t mean that! Come to your senses! Come home and all will be well. And then all converging to the annoyed brush-off: Please don’t write or call. I think it’s better we don’t stay in touch anymore. Holly who? She had been naïve, but was learning. She was on the other side. There was no in-between.
—
At first the tourists had been delighted to meet her, one of their own. A few had heard the recent news that Holly Chu, XBN star reporter, had been captured and eaten in a particularly noxious neighbourhood in Maskinia. So you’re alive, after all! Wonderful! They made jokes: Can I take a bite? A nibble in the ear? Then she led them to the leader, Nkosi, who she said wanted to welcome them in person and give them gifts. She told them a new policy of rapprochement was in the making between their nations. They arrived at the headquarters in their tour bus, and Holly herself led them through the gates and somehow connived that their three guards were delayed at the back of the group, where they were overpowered and disarmed. The tourists entered the compound and were fed and then informed that they were prisoners of the Warriors. There was screaming and shouting, the men attempted to fight and resist (some of them were trained in combat), but finally they all quietened. They were photographed and filmed and led inside through tunnels to their quarters, which had been made reasonably comfortable for them.
Soon after the tourists’ capture, Holly went to see them and explain to them their situation, and her own. They cried, they screamed, they tried to tear her hair out when they realized how she had tricked them. They beseeched. Come to your senses, Holly, help us, these people are savages and cannibals, they will kill us. They tried to convert her. You are one of us, we are an advanced people, at least accept your identity, be with us. We should maintain a solidarity, a dignity. We represent our civilization. Your friends are barbarians, through no fault of theirs; it’s decades of poverty. And it’s in their genes. We come from a civilized heritage. They are cursed, they have no history, no civilization, no science of their own, no art.
We are your fans! We have seen you in the news, you’ve stood in our homes and spoken to us. My daughter did a project on you, you inspired her! McGill!—I was there, we overlapped! Where did you house? On the hill? Me too, and then the student ghetto? What street?
Why have you betrayed us and yourself?
Holly told them, I feel one of them and I want to work with them. My grandmother was from these parts. I used to hear stories about her and about a great railway. I’m not sure exactly where it was…or where she came from. If you think of them as savages and cannibals, with no civilization or human grace, why did you come to see them? To gawk at them and throw them crumbs?—this canned stuff and these phones and cheap gadgets?—and feel good about yourselves?
Nothing will happen to you, I guarantee that. With my own life. You will not starve and you will not be personally harmed. These people are not all rapists. But they want to use you as pawns.
She knew that some of these women would not be left alone. She paused. She
felt queasy.
TWENTY-SEVEN
EDWINA’S DARK, CREASED FACE filled the screen, her close-cropped hair red like blood.
—Doctor, you’ve got to come. He’s raving beyond control.
A quaver in the voice.
—I’m coming right away.
The conversation was undoubtedly monitored, but what did it matter now. It was the moment I’d expected and feared all along.
—Come to the church, Doctor. The one across the street from the apartment, the Holy Trinity. Oh, poor man, what a fate it is…
This last sentence muttered, as she looked away and hung up. It was midnight, who goes to church at this hour? But then, what did I know of church-going? Joanie lay asleep, undisturbed by the phone, or perhaps electing not to query. The evening had left us both silently aching.
I arrived on Walnut Street by taxi. A light drizzle fell. Through the cold wet screen of rainfall the street looked dark and empty but for the dismal all-nighter at the strip mall, outside which this time sat a burly guard enviably dressed to the head and holding a weapon against the ground. A few blocks away somewhere sirens went screaming in varying pitches. The church was a tall and ancient red brick structure with a square tower barely visible in the mist; a low wrought-iron fence enclosed it inside a scrappy yard, and a gate opened to a paved walkway. The entrance was in shadow. I pushed the heavy door open into a compact and dimly lit vestibule with a noticeboard on a wall. There was another door here, arched and imposingly antique, leading to the prayer hall; from inside came shouts and muffled voices. I pushed and entered the chamber, a cavernous space filled with rows of wooden seats on either side of the aisle, overhung with glaring plastic chandeliers that looked indecently small and recent.
Up front, below the stage—on which stood a lectern and a chair under a large green banner with a gold cross in the middle—were gathered some fifteen people. Edwina saw me and approached me at the back, rolling her heels as she hurried in small steps, and taking my hand she led me on the red runner directly to the front to see Presley Smith. The crowd parted to let us through.
Presley Smith was lying on the carpeted steps leading up to the stage, his face contorted in a grimace and covered with beads of sweat, his mouth open, spit trickling down his chin. His red Afro was squashed into a mop. A clown in distress. A tiny shivering ran in waves down his body, breaking sporadically into a twitch. His shirt was untucked and his shoes had been removed.
The pastor, a small man in a black suit, stood at the top of the steps and spoke directly to me.
—He’s been gibberin nonsense, all gibberish and speakin in tongues. Perhaps you can understand him, Doctor.
—The session was on, full swing, everybody all going into a trance like, a man explained.
—Despite my warnings, ’spite my warnings, muttered Edwina, and I wondered what warnings she had made and to whom.
From what I could gather, the congregation had collected for the evening service, during which members would bring themselves occasionally into trances, responding to the reverend’s promptings. Presley, however, failed to emerge from his state. He kept moaning for a period, startling the others, and then suddenly he staggered up to the front, and turning to face them he pleaded,—You must help me! Don’t you see, you’ve got to help me! As a few people went forward to assist, he collapsed on the floor. He then started speaking incomprehensibly, what the pastor described as gibberish. They didn’t know what to do.
Edwina was bending down to wipe Presley’s face, still speaking, as everyone else stood well away from him.
—No tellin what’s going to come out in his condition…can’t control myself, he was saying, my self wants to come out. That’s exactly what he said, my self wants to come out, out, out…And he was speakin in that strange, devilish tongue—
She crossed herself.
There was a chorus of reports:
—My father, he said, my father—in English.
—And lion, I heard him say, lion.
—There, he’s speakin again…
The men and women all shut up, as from Presley’s mouth came the bewildering sounds of a foreign language, as if there were someone else inside him speaking in breathless moaning sentences. And I was thinking professionally, by habit, that I’d not had a case like this before; you can give someone a new memory but you can’t give him a language…he must have been bilingual. The words tumbled slowly, vaguely out of that troubled face. And they began to have this effect on me, they drew me in, and I strained to listen, strained to listen, expecting that if I tried hard enough I’d understand them. I was not myself, I had no control over myself. This strange patois, I knew it somehow, but I could not understand it, having lost the key to its mystery. I knew there stood only the thinnest wall between us—between Presley and me, this language and myself—the locked door and the absent key.
I should not have been there. And yet I had to be there.
—Can you understand him, Doctor?
—No…of course not.
—Jesus Christ have mercy on him, said the pastor.
—Amen, came a reply, and then a babel erupted.
—He’s possessed.
Edwina was still ministering to him, having put a foot cushion under his head.
—Speak English, my dear, speak the Lord’s tongue so He understands…
—What’s he saying, Swahili or something? Arabic?
—Aramaic. That’s the tongue. That sure is.
—Lord knows…
—And you’re right.
This was not the time to make sense, to pause and reason. I felt helpless. I could do nothing but comfort him, and be a witness to his struggle against himself. I had brought tranquilizers to help him, but he was beyond my reach. Someone gave me a push. People were all around me, all clamouring to listen to Presley muttering in his trance; and to touch him now, because somehow he was not the devil anymore but sacred and inspired. With more pushing and shoving, I found myself ejected to the back of the crowd like an intruder. I gestured to Edwina and pointed to the pills in my hand, and she came through the crowd to take them from me.
There came the wail of an ambulance outside, decreasing in pitch as it stopped. Flashing blue lights. Attendants in white came running in and pushed through the crowd. They laid Presley on a stretcher and rolled him away.
—Did you call an ambulance? Edwina asked me.
—No, I didn’t. But someone must have…
—Now who did, I wonder?
The church had emptied in a hurry meanwhile and turned deathly quiet. A few lights went out. The pastor was below the stage, facing away from me, grey head bowed in prayer to the gold cross; he turned around and walked up to the door, ready to lock up.
—Come with me, commanded Edwina to me.
—Where?
—With me. I have to show you something.
—I have prayed for Mr Smith, said the pastor at the door, giving me a nod of sympathy.
—Thank you, Pastor. I am Dr Sina. Presley Smith was my patient.
—I’m Imamu Issa Jones.
We shook hands. His, cool and damp and striving to be firm. He kept holding on for a moment longer.
—Was it you who called the ambulance, Pastor? I asked him.
—No, it wasn’t me. I thought you brought it jangling along with you, Doctor.
His tone said I should have, shouldn’t I? I shook my head, I didn’t.
—Good thing someone did, Edwina said in front of me, evidently feeling cold in her flimsy coat, and we left, saying goodbyes again.
Who were those uninvited efficient, white-clad attendants, and where had they taken Presley? There could be little doubt. The surprise was that the ambulance hadn’t arrived before me. But Presley was beyond help, they could do nothing for him.
We crossed the road and climbed slowly up the creaking stairs to Edwina’s second-floor apartment. As I sat down on the chair where I had last sat, she went to the kitchen and brought back a bottle
of bourbon and two glasses.
We shared the bourbon and commiserated. I asked her about Presley. She said he had no one except his former girlfriend, Edwina’s daughter, Jude. He did not say where he was from. Had he committed a crime, Edwina asked him, when he came to her seeking refuge. No, he replied. Then why was he hiding? Because I have a secret, he said. He looked helpless and she had no choice but to take him in, having determined in her mind that he was harmless.
I recalled our last meeting. We both knew then that we’d not see each other again.
—I’ve got something for you, she said, and with a small heave got up and went to the mantelpiece. She returned with a small flat object, which she put in my hands.—It’s his, she added. It was a very slim old-fashioned notebook with a metallic black cover. I flipped the pages and saw that he’d filled a few of them. There are not many who possess the skill to write by hand; we both did, apparently. But by this time I was beyond surprise. Presley’s hand on the page was uneven and unsteady, and he had used capital letters only. On one page were some names, addresses, and phone numbers; my entry had a strong underline. On another page he’d written a few perfunctory sentences: My name is Amirul. I had a cousin who was my teacher called Elim. I loved him very much. I lived in a compound…
Edwina said,—The anguished man. Possessed by the devil. And now he’s in a mad hospital. You should have sent him there straight away, Doc…if he was your patient.
I looked at her, wondered why her attitude had hardened. Perhaps the foreign tongue had frightened her, made him a foreigner in her eyes. The whole episode had been an imposition on her meagre existence, a life I could barely even begin to imagine.
She told me I could sleep on the sofa the rest of the night, and at first I demurred. But Joanie would be asleep anyway, I figured, and so I took the offered blanket and pillow and lay down. In the darkness I stared at the ceiling, Presley’s written words preying on my mind, a loose metal spring in the sofa pricking me in the back.
Amirul. A cousin and teacher called Elim. A compound: where?
