by M G Vassanji
He says: “The line between Darcy’s company — Inqalab — and this …” (He pronounces the word “Ink-alab,” the last part to rhyme with his “A-rab.”)
“But there is no straight line between the two,” I reply.
“No. But there is a point of contact — hence we are here, and so on.”
Touché. That’s the point, isn’t it. If you make it a habit to stand under trees and get caught by lightning, whom to blame. Dissent is all right, he says. But it can become a habit; like tobacco or coke; or promiscuity (I beg off from that one, it’s his example); one day you just might get hit, kapow! Then where are you? Involved in something like this. Or this:
He brings out another photo. This one is smaller, in black and white. It is from a much earlier explosion: September 1971, Kendall Square, Cambridge; Tech’s ISS. A man had been killed then, but there’s no body in this picture. I hand it back to Will and we let it go at that.
Though nothing explicit had been revealed, or discussed afterwards with my wife, I had exposed my feelings for Rumina that afternoon in Glenmore. It was the last straw in a marriage that Zuli and I both knew had been crippled for years. There was no forgiveness — for me to crave, for Zuli to give. Shortly after our separate arrivals back in Chicago, Zuli and I decided to live apart, and I moved out. Within a year we were divorced.
I was living then in a suburban apartment complex to be near the kids and their school. I had not felt so alone in a long time. I had no friends in town, family and work having been my sole preoccupations for more than a decade. Now the kids were a matter of weekend visits under sanction from a possessive mother, and at work the company in which I had minority partnership had moved so far from its original mandate (into New Age and do-it-yourself titles) that I was already open to other possibilities. And so, having accepted Darcy’s offer, and having told the kids beforehand of my impending departure, one morning I went to their school and said an emotional goodbye to them outside the principal’s office, promising them I would call frequently, and we would meet regularly. I then picked up maps from the AAA; I left a note for Zuli at the house I now suddenly felt a mawkish attachment for; and I headed west and south on the highways.
So you absconded? Will says. Just like that. Yes, I reply. My one struggle was moving even farther away from Sara and Rahim. I could only hope they would one day understand. I felt at the time I had nothing to lose and everything to gain: first, to assuage a conscience which had never fully recovered from a belief I had betrayed my world, as Lucy-Anne had put it so dramatically once. And then, to try and find a relationship with Rumina. I couldn’t get her out of my mind now.
III
PHANTOM OBSESSIONS
(Fall/Winter, 1994–95)
“The fire is in the minds of men
and not in the roofs of houses.”
– FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Possessed
1
California. Had it always been in the mind? Go West, young man, they used to say, didn’t they — whoever they were — the movies most likely; or, as Grandma would say, citing ancient lore with wide-eyed confidence or, later, a knowing smile at my teenager’s newfangled scientific scepticism: The sun will rise from the West, that’s where the Lord will come from, salvation. Later still, hippies beckoned with flowers and pot and freedom from the norm, and West Coast girls were … and Berkeley was radical Mecca, that’s where the revolution came from, and I thought Grandmother had been right after all. Ultimately, I learned to settle down, adopting East Coast values and ways, succumbing to a fast-paced world of subways and trams, and grey gritty streets in biting cold, and narrow spaces and tight living — in spite of which, supposedly, there was more history and culture and irony. And California, too good to be true, always far out and a little too much; the last escape on this continent, where the sun god ruled; and the sea, the sea.
With his exhaust pipe clunkingly defying its recent lifetime warranty — he would have had to return to Reno to make a claim — Ramji had driven into Santa Monica and westwards still to where the road must end, where the ocean was bound to be, and here he was, and the shimmery mystifying vastness lay before him.
When he was in his teens in Dar es Salaam he would go to the seashore to study for examinations, sit on the same stone bench every afternoon, hardly a soul in sight. There would be absolute quiet, except for the rhythmic burble and burst of waves, the occasional rustle from a branch overhead, in which to cram all those theorems and trigonometric formulas, and lists of exports from the shires of England; and lines from Julius Caesar — appropriate political drama for Africa during the decade of the popular dictators.
In those green adolescent days in a small African town, looking out to the sea and what lay beyond, he dreamed of … what? Doing something incredibly wonderful or great. A major scientific discovery, for example. A new theorem. Or even, in the moral or heroic domain, risking his life to rescue a drowning child or a girl from the treacherous hold of a receding tide — as a boy from his school had done a few years before. The boy had lost his life but attained the status of an angel. (So it was believed.)
And now, looking out across another ocean, what did he seek? What did he have to give?
Between Darcy and Rumina the pull was enough to bring him over. Desire for a young woman, and desire to do something useful, make amends, in whatever small way, for the past. It was towards the past he was now looking, in a manner of speaking, across the Pacific Ocean, towards Africa and India; though he was uneasy at this unexpected symbolism, what it might portend about his quest.
How would Darcy seem to him now, from up close? Would the old charisma still be there? Darcy’s voice had carried an easy, unaffected authority, when they’d spoken to each other over the phone in recent months, but Ramji also detected in the tone a paternal familiarity. They had rather warmed to each other. Did Darcy wish to see in him some sort of lost son? And had he, Ramji, come here chasing lost dreams? He cast aside the thought; nothing ventured, nothing gained. At the very least there was a common cause between them.
And Rumina? Could they simply carry on from where they’d left off, without regard to what had once come between them?
He must have stood there an hour, lost in thought, before coming to with a start. He checked his watch, turned, and walked back to his car and drove off to look for the offices of his new employer, where he had arranged to arrive at about this time.
Inqalab International — the Company, as he would learn to call it, would come to think of it — had found mainstream occupancy and quiet anonymity in Santa Monica, at the rear of a commercial development on Pico Avenue named the Aerospace Business Park. Between the forbiddingly modern glass-encased main building and a fair-sized yellow-brick warehouse at the back ran an elongated one-storey block of modest offices with glass doors and front panels, one of which was Inqalab. The Company name was painted in gold on the door, beside a logo consisting of a golden globe circled by what could have been either the red petals of a flower or the raging flames of a fire. Inqalab was the Urdu-Hindi word for “revolution.”
There was no one at reception, or in the adjoining front office, but the sound of lively chatter and the telltale aroma of Indian savouries seemed to emanate from the back through a passageway. He headed that way, past two more offices and a conference room, and came into a large, square, and brightly lit workroom where everybody was gathered around a table laden with food.
“He comes! The messenger from the east!” said a loud voice. “He’s crossed the continent to come and join us! Welcome! Ramji, may we presume? And you have duly found parking for your camel?”
“And you must be the revolutionaries!” Ramji grinned.
Half a dozen people had looked up or turned to face him as he entered. The guy with the robust though not quite sincere-sounding welcome had a handsome boyish look, he was short and clean-shaven, with close-cropped hair. He introduced himself as Zayd Afzal, one of two associate editors, the other being
Indra Basu, equally short but dark and pudgy, who raised a hand in greeting. Between these two stood someone thin and frail and not much taller, who was staring at him — it was Darcy. He came forward and put a hand on Ramji’s shoulder and said warmly, in a familiar drawl now crackled with age, “Welcome. We’ve been waiting for you.”
One day, long ago — this must have been the late fifties — two young men came to their house in Dar and said to Grandma in grave earnest voices: Ma, have you heard, the Governor has put Mr. Darcy in prison. We are collecting donations for his defence. But isn’t this Darcy a sheytaan, Ma asked, he speaks out against the Community, he doesn’t pray, and he married that woman. But he’s one of us, Ma. Grandmother put her hand in her bosom, pulled out her tiny black coin purse and gave the young men a crumpled five shillings from her small monthly allowance. Over the next few years of the boy’s life, this “Darcy” would become an awesome and rarefied presence, one invoked by exciting news and rumour. He was the man who’d defied the Governor, who spoke better English than the British, who did sinful things like smoke and drink and arrogantly get up from mosque, on the few occasions that he came, during a sermon. But then one day, the man himself arrived at their house, in a beige suit and red tie and polished brown shoes. He came supported by two young men, and sat down on a straight-backed wooden chair. Kulsa Bai, he said to Grandma, relieve me of my pain. He said this with familiarity, though they had not spoken before; but each had a reputation townwide. Grandma was caught by surprise, took some moments to regain her composure, then offered the visitors tea and biscuits. First the pain, said the sufferer, barely able to lift an arm to detain her. Grandma eyed Darcy from the doorway and said, It won’t go away with one visit. Start now anyway, he said. But you’ll have to believe in the treatment. I will believe, he grumbled, what makes you think I won’t? At her bidding, painfully and laboriously he went down on his knees then flat on his stomach, on her spotless and gleaming linoleum floor, and extended his arms over his head. Grandma began to prod and feel his back with her right foot, all over, and he would say, No, not here, a little to the left, that’s too far, and so on, until she found the spot, and he groaned, Yes here, quash the sala. She closed her eyes, whispered some prayers; then spoke, Shall I break the knot? She had to repeat it so he understood, and he said, Go ahead, go ahead, yes; at which, stepping on the pain, she crossed over to the other side of him; and then she crossed back.
The sala, the pain, was quashed it seemed after a few visits. Grandma’s treatments were always free of charge, but after Darcy’s cure, he left the boy a present, a genuine Parker fountain pen.
Though Darcy remained a subject of rumour and news, there was now also a certain tangibility to him. He greeted Grandma in mosque during his rare visits, and he occasionally even dropped by to see her at home, during the day, when Ramji was in school. One time he brought a slide rule for the boy — a teenager by now — and what a valued, exotic, beautiful gift that was!
And then just before Ramji was to leave for America, Robert Kennedy was shot dead, the Kennedy who’d come to Dar and won their hearts, and Ramji suddenly said, I’m not going there, shocking everyone — his teachers, his friend Sona, and Grandma. But Grandma prevailed. She told him, Go and speak with Mr. Darcy. And so, one afternoon, he rather timidly stepped into Darcy’s office, which was behind a common storefront, on a dirty street across from Hindu Lodge, the vegetarian restaurant. It was dusty, and the boy had to walk a path between stacks of old newspapers and magazines to an old wooden desk at which Darcy sat. The man looked up over his reading glasses, screwed his pen shut. Yes, young man, what can I do for you? And Ramji, first introducing himself, in case Mr. Darcy did not know him by face, explained his dilemma. He was afraid to go to America, he said, where a great man could get killed so easily. They had amazing things there, but what values did they have? He realized as he went on that he didn’t have just one reason but a mass of fears. There were many temptations in America … he didn’t want to lose himself there. He didn’t want to leave Grandma alone. He would be homesick. And the man said with an understanding smile, For you, my boy, there’s nothing more important than your education. Go and get it wherever you find it. See the world and learn from it — and come back to us. That is your duty to your country, to your people. I myself have a son in America. And don’t worry — we will look after your grandmother, she’ll be safe and sound when you get back!
And now, two decades and a half later: the same man, old and shrunken, the clothes identical to those he always wore. What had he actually thought then? Had he smiled to himself at the boy’s naive view of the world, of the Kennedys?
There were four other people in the room: two young men, Sajjad and John, who did the printing and setup; a slightly older impish-looking man in a safari suit standing between them, called Mohan, a travel agent from next door; and a woman in a pink and blue sweatsuit who said, “Hi! I’m Naseem. I made all the food here, I run a catering agency,” and later, when he’d accepted a plate from her, “I was among the first to come to L.A. — when I came, there were fewer than twenty-five of our people here.”
“And now?”
“At least five thousand,” she said proudly.
There was no sign of Rumina. They had agreed that she would meet him here at reception.
Ramji was given a quick tour of the premises, after which he found himself behind closed doors with Darcy, Zayd, and Basu in the conference room and library. They had all brought their drinks inside with them. He was now one of them and they wanted to make him feel at ease. When they quizzed him about recent political events though, somewhat startled, Ramji found himself sounding equivocal and without strong opinions, obviously not up-to-date, perhaps disappointing to the other three men. They seemed to have a somewhat exaggerated idea of his “radical days” — that he had been some kind of firebrand organizer. Where had they got that idea from? — from mention he himself might have made to Darcy, about his student days? Zayd even referred to the free-and-easy ways at Woodstock. Had he but been there to participate, Ramji thought! He had questions, yes, and ideas; but those could wait.
The Company was in the process of establishing the capability of publishing and printing bilingual multicultural texts, Darcy said.
“The idea is to make inroads into mainstream culture,” Basu explained, “subvert the homogenizing melting-pot, even as it goes out and chews up world culture in its maw.”
“In the ass,” Zayd said with a grin and Basu smiled.
Darcy looked at Ramji with a pained expression. “Don’t mind these extremists — I am here to tame them.”
There seemed a striking complementarity to Zayd and Basu, sitting across from each other at the long table: one light-skinned and ebullient in his manners, the other dark and reserved. From what Ramji had learned, they went back a long way together, were in fact the original founders of the Company.
The main inspiration behind everything here, Darcy said, the driving force, was the monthly journal Inqalab, “the Global Newspaper of Radical Analysis.”
“Of course, the journal is political, polemical, its position is deliberately antagonistic. It’s the devil’s advocate — although I shouldn’t use that term, it puts us on the side of the devil! — and that is precisely because we work with certain presumptions about power politics in the world — and how information is controlled —”
There was a voice, a distinctly familiar and thrilling voice, in the passageway outside. It drew all his attention; he listened to it, watched the closed door facing him, from behind which it emanated. It seemed to him that the other three people in the room had paused to do the same.
“It’s Rumina,” Darcy said.
At the same time there was a knock on the door, which then opened, as Rumina first showed her face and then stepped inside.
“Hullo,” she said. “Sorry, am I intruding?”
“Not at all, not at all,” Darcy waved away the apology. “Come in, we were just getting to kno
w our man better.”
“And we still have a long way to go, by the way,” threw in Zayd with a chuckle.
Ramji had got up from the table. “Hi,” he said; in diffidence, partly, yes, but also shock. He moved two slow steps towards her. It took him a few moments to connect, regain his sense of reality, and respond appropriately. He managed a smile, as they stood facing each other. She doesn’t look different, it’s the same Rumina. Then why did that first sight of her send a jolt through me, as if I’d forgotten what she looked like? … Am I disappointed? How can that be, there she is — that same round face, curly hair gathered at the sides in two delightfully abbreviated braids; and the twinkling, laughing eyes. A little plumper and darker than I remembered, but lovely, life itself.
She laughed. “Do I look so different?”
“No … no,” he stammered.
“You must be tired — you’ve only just arrived and they’ve put you to work?”
“Well, I spent the night at a motel before coming into town; not tired at all. Besides, they had a reception all ready for me, samosas and all that.…It’s nice to see you again.”
Naseem had followed Rumina into the room.
“Ramji,” Naseem asked, “what are your plans? Do you know where you are staying?”
He hadn’t given that any consideration, had thought he would somehow go along with whatever possibilities turned up. And now here was Rumina before him, and he badly wanted just to get away to be with her in private.
“We should go out to dinner first,” Darcy said. “And as for living arrangements, you can stay with Naseem as a paying guest — until you find something suitable of your own.”
“That is,” Naseem put in, talking to Ramji, “if you like my humble abode. There is a separate entrance and you will be left undisturbed. I live with my son.”
