by M G Vassanji
Ramji had come to the walk by himself. He did not think it wise for Michel to spend time at the festivities, where some people might recognize him. But he did not want to leave Michel alone, either, so he asked Rumina to stay with him. By this arrangement he was also making amends to her for his suspicions and his outburst of the previous evening. During their conversation in the night, Michel had agreed that Ramji would take him to a police station the next day, Monday, in the company of a lawyer. There were a few lawyers in the Community, and Naaz could be prevailed upon to use her influence in acquiring the services of one. Earlier in the morning, Michel’s father had called. Ramji had picked up the phone and explained to him what had been decided. Mr. Aziz had sounded stunned: “Are you sure?”
“It’s the only way, Uncle, believe me,” Ramji told him.
Michel and his father had then spoken. Rumina had been out of earshot. Ramji had not yet told Rumina about that decision, or indeed about Michel’s confession in the night. She was up early and he had not had a private moment with her after that. But he was sure that Michel would tell her, and that perhaps was best.
Ramji had obtained his yellow-and-black Friendship Walk T-shirt and was waiting with a crowd of people. The president announced over the loudspeaker the names of all the cities participating in this Friendship event for Third World aid. There was tumultuous applause, and he raised both hands to lead on the cheering to even greater intensity, before gesturing for silence. He thanked various organizations and individuals, and announced the figure he expected his constituents to raise during this walkathon. A health expert came to the microphone and advised the walkers on elementary precautions to take, such as monitoring their heart rates and drinking the recommended liquids. Finally, at a little past ten, a long whistle blew, and a mass of yellow-and-black T-shirts set off behind the president. People walked for themselves or for teams. For every round of the field completed they received a rubber stamp on their numbered cards, from voluteers. Individual and team prizes would be awarded at the end of the event.
Ramji walked alone for a while, elated by the experience even though he was unable to keep away completely stray reminders of the recent events. There was a common purpose and humour in the day’s proceedings that, he realized as he walked, had quite touched him. When he had finished one round of the field, he found himself joined by a chatty Hanif. A little later Leila and Lata too came over, and the four of them set a brisk pace during which they passed Basu and Zayd. After a couple of rounds the kids left him, and Ramji settled down to a more easy pace by himself. He had aimed to walk for at least two and a half hours that day.
A cloud covered the sun and a sudden chill blew in the air. This, at least, was how he would remember it, that moment when it seemed to him that there was also a sudden silence around him, as if the sound had been somehow muted. And in the midst of that muted scene he found himself being approached by Leila, who caught him by the arm and said, “Come,” and then, to his befuddlement, added, “There’s been an incident, my mother’s waiting —”
“Where? What’s happened?” he asked.
“Rumina …”
She seemed to fly off, a figure in blue tights and long T-shirt, and Ramji raced after her, desperately, through a crowd of walkers and towards the exits, and the parking lot. What happened? Is she all right? What happened?
He lost sight of Leila but ran straight into Naaz, who took hold of him by the forearm and said, “Come with me. I am driving you.”
“But where?” he asked helplessly. “Is she all right?”
“To the hospital,” she replied. “Come —”
A police officer had been standing beside her. By now Darcy had come up, as had Basu and Zayd, and Leila, Lata, and Hanif.
“She’s all right,” Naaz said, pulling Ramji by the arm. “The officers here received a radio call to find you here. She must have told the police where you were.”
And Michel? he wondered in a daze. Has he been captured? This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? How did they find out where he was?
Naaz drove him in his car, straight to the hospital, and Darcy came along with them. Naaz seemed to have got wind that the event that was now unfolding had to do with the bombing of the bookstore in Ashfield. And so, despite her concern for Ramji and her taking command so effectively, she couldn’t help grumbling and chiding: Well, we got the publicity we wanted — more than we needed; I always warned you, Bapa, about your reckless statements and that magazine.…We don’t do such things, it’s not us! How did a bombing suspect come to be one of us, and what was he doing in Ramji’s apartment with Rumina?
The complete picture of what had happened was given to them only at the hospital. Following a lead, police had arrived in full force at the apartment in Hermosa Beach. Michel refused to surrender himself, claiming he had Rumina as his hostage. Police negotiators spoke to him through the apartment door and over the phone. They asked him to bring Rumina on the line. Michel refused at first, then relented. In a shaky voice Rumina told the cops that Michel had tied her to a table, and that he had a large knife and a gun. At this point Michel fired a shot through the front window. It went clean through to the house across the street. On the phone Michel sounded frightened, desperate, and confused. He asked for a flight out of the country, but couldn’t decide where to. Later he asked for a press conference. He was told there wasn’t enough time to arrange it then, but he could talk to the media later. The police arranged to have Michel’s father and his fiancée Shirin speak to him. To Shirin he said, “You should marry someone else, if something happens to me.” This alerted the cops to the possibility of suicide, and danger to Rumina. Michel thenceforth refused to speak to them. His family had arranged for someone from the Los Angeles Shamsi community to come and talk to him, but the police decided not to wait. As they attempted to crash through into the apartment, Michel fired one shot, at the door. Rumina screamed. Then he fired another shot, this time at his head, killing himself. The police suspected that Rumina had been faking her plight; she had been, if anything, a voluntary hostage. She was not tied when they got to her, but she kept on screaming. She was being treated for shock.
Her eyes were open when they went to see her, in a room by herself. She was lying on her back, her head raised on a pillow and turned just a little, to face the door. Ramji saw the grief, the weakness, the helpless look; he rushed towards her side, but before he got there she turned away.
I brought Rumina home the next day. Straight from the hospital we met Darcy, Naseem, and Naaz for lunch; I thought the conversation and the company would bring her out. But she hardly ate and spoke as much, and the situation was saved only thanks to the cheery spirits of the other two women. I told myself she was still in shock, she needed more time to recover; but the image of her turning away from me the previous afternoon gnawed at me without mercy. There had been something instinctive about the gesture, it seemed to carry a terrible meaning for me that I dreaded to entertain. When we got home, I asked Rumina, Can you talk about it — what happened? and she quickly said, No, not now. In the evening I took her out to eat and she picked at her food. I cannot recall what we spoke about. We returned, watched some television, then she went to bed, taking a prescription sedative. In the morning I suggested I stay home with her. She said quite forcefully that I should go to work, she would be all right, all she needed was some time. She smiled, sounded tantalizingly close to her normal self. But did I know her then? I left with a kiss and a warm glow in my heart. I have not seen her since.
When I returned in the afternoon I found a note on the dining table: “I’m going away. I need to be alone — at least for a while. Please forgive me for the pain I caused you.” She had packed a suitcase. Frantically, incredulous at first, and with growing desperation, I called up friends and hotels, to no avail. Weeks later I found out from Dr. Weinstein that she had been with him to East Africa and back; and a former colleague at the coffee shop where Rumina had worked, and which I’d begun desp
erately to frequent like a crazed being, informed me out of pity that Rumina had gone briefly to Michigan soon after she left me. Why would she go to Michigan, it had meant nothing in our life together; was it to see Michel’s folks? And where was she now? Neither Dr. Weinstein nor the friend seemed to have any idea.
How do I explain what deep sorrow her loss has meant for me? She haunts my existence. Doubts and questions prey on me. Did she think that I betrayed Michel by convincing him to turn himself in rather than helping him to escape? If so, why this harsh judgement upon my motives? Unless Michel now meant more to her than I did. Or is it simply that the shock of seeing a friend shooting himself in the head was too much for her. Had she no feeling left for me, that she saw no need even to explain what troubled her so much? What of our love for each other, what of all those promises and plans we made together? Simply water under the bridge? She was never like that, I will never believe that of her. In that phrase “Please forgive me” lies my salvation. She must come back.
The culmination of the incident in Ashfield, Michel’s refuge with me, his death by his own hand while under siege by the police, and the capture of his accomplices received national coverage in the news media. I received some notoriety as the person who had harboured one of the bookstore bombers, and photos of the house in which I had lived had also appeared in the news. It took little time therefore for Svend to put up a shingle bearing his innocent-sounding Swedish name outside the house, for the benefit of curious passersby and to placate seething neighbours, letting them know he was not associated with foreign extremists. It was clear to me that I had to vacate; and in any case, with Rumina gone, the place was a hell for me to live in. I stayed a few weeks with Naseem in Santa Monica, then found this little place a few blocks down from her on Moonlight Drive, a stone’s throw from Venice, almost, in an arrangement very like the one Rumina and I had had with Svend.
I’ve had my share of well-wishers here. Darcy has been a steady though unobtrusive presence, calming. We go on walks or find a place to sit at a café or on a bench facing the beach. We do not speak, except obliquely, about the Michel episode. There’s nothing much left to say about it. He has generously kept me on the payroll, until I’ve recovered, he says, though I don’t anticipate going back to work for the Company. Its sponsors have decided to stop publication of the magazine, having been embarrassed by its attraction for the bookstore bombers, and Zayd has found employment elsewhere. It is unlikely that his zealous quest for that elusive and now silent Phantom Author will ever be fulfilled. That’s just as well.
Naaz has been a surprisingly persistent visitor. She’s seen me as a challenge, broken by grief and therefore ripe material to be brought back into the fold of the Community. But I find her entertaining, delightfully decadent and quite happy with the contradictions of her life.
And Leila, Hanif, and Lata — that trio from the pampered generation — have taken it upon themselves to keep an eye on me while pretending to visit the beach around here.
What triggered the tragic event that fateful day of the Friendship Walk? From media accounts, which federal agents confirmed when they interrogated me, it seems that the chain of events was set off by my phone conversation with Michel’s father. As soon as I had told him that it had been decided the best course of action was that Michel voluntarily talk to the police and turn himself in, federal authorities traced numerous calls made by Mr. Aziz, several of them to his brother in Ashfield. Michel’s uncle had then desperately, and only once, tried to reach Michel in L.A. This was what the Feds, who had been monitoring telephone lines in Ashfield, needed to lead them to my doorstep. Michel had already been missed, and considered a suspect, for having left Ashfield. The police had hoped that withholding his name from the press would give him a sense of false security wherever he’d taken himself to, and that he might lead them ultimately to bigger fish. All they caught was me. An outcome not entirely unsatisfactory, according to Will Jones, the man who’s been my regular if sporadic companion over these last few months. Disaffections lurk right beneath the surface of our democracy, he explains; grievances against history and fate threaten to tear at its fabric; these defects in our pluralist society have to be understood by the guardians of its security.
I think of Sona and myself, as we arrived wide-eyed upon these shores twenty-seven years ago on a hot and rainy August night; I think of how very very far we have come. I was thrilled by the discovery of the new, I rejoiced in breaking free of the old, in being on my own, enlightened, unfettered. But the djinni I released with me would nag at me in perpetuity, a feeling of betrayal and emptiness like a goad upon my conscience. And Sona? He would remain ever faithful to the truth of history, like a gallant but crazed knight he would fight vainly for the sanctity of his Clio. If he stumbled, if he fell, he would always have his cloister to return to, a cocoon of ideas to hide under. I exposed all, risked everything — and became a casualty, finally, of an anonymous “phantom” campaigner not unlike him in his obsessions.
Will and I have spent many days together, tentative at first, more cordial afterwards. We’ve talked and quarrelled, reminisced, gone out for walks, sat at my kitchen table or dining table over coffee and sandwiches, or on the porch with a bottle of wine. We’ve played tennis and thrown a football. All I know of him is that he’s from Kentucky, his father was a baker, he’s not married.
Now that I’ve come to the end of my story, it’s time for him to leave me. On this final day he’s brought me out on Sunset Boulevard for lunch, at a restaurant Rumina and I once went to, for an evening of jazz music.
Over a light lunch we talk of many things. He’s off on a holiday to England, shortly, with a woman from the local FBI office. I’d love to go to Africa and all those exotic places, he says, but (he sounds contrite) I need the basic comforts of an American. Nothing wrong with that, I say. And no, I have no immediate plans to go anywhere. Just before we depart he picks up his attaché case from beside him on the floor, holds up a hand to make me stay, then brings the case up onto his lap and flips the lid open.
“One minute. I’ve got a present for you.”
“Oh yes? What is that?”
“It’s a letter, a very special letter.”
The media coverage I have received has been sufficient to bring me unexpected mail, mostly hateful, from people I did not know, but there were a few pleasant surprises. One of these was from Lyris Unger, who had introduced me a long time ago to the Divine Anand Mission in Newton, Mass. “You might recall our friendship in the early seventies …,” she wrote. Friendship! I wonder what she looks like now. I recall the thin girl in leather boots and brown corduroys sitting next to me in a Greyhound bus. She lives in Boston and for the last fifteen years has been a disciple of a Divine Mother in Pondicherry, India.
The letters have been sent to me either at the Company offices or at the house in Hermosa Beach, and in the early stages of its investigation the FBI duly scrutinized them before handing them over. It has been a while since Will last brought any mail for me and so this letter comes as a surprise.
It is from Lucy-Anne.
It’s easy to say that there is a sense of unreality about it; I don’t quite know what I am thinking as I hold the envelope in my hand, ready to open it. But my hand gives a slight tremble, my face is flushed …
Dear Ramji —
I was so very happy to discover finally where you were. I only wish the circumstances were better. I hope it all turns out all right for you in the end. I cannot imagine you as a part of anything bad. Whenever I have thought about the excesses of my own past, your example of kindness and moderation has always been a model for me. I cannot atone enough for my errors of the past. Our cause was just and real, and it is too easy to say at our age that we were young and in a hurry; but we were rash, certainly, and thoughtless and cruel at times.…Do you know that Ebrahim Abdulwahab is my husband? … I am a teacher here in Denver, to a bunch of Russian, Mexican, and Hmong kids, among others, and I have a couple of my o
wn in college now.…Any chance of your coming this way?
Love, Lucy-Anne
Two people. One who had believed in the destruction she caused, now free to atone and make good; and another, also destructive, but naive and not quite so sure of himself — and not so well connected either — washed away in the flood.
“Well …,” I say. He’s watching me, curiously, and so I hand him the letter and he reads it. When he gives it back to me, with thanks, I think he knows what’s going on in my mind. Such has become the nature of our relationship.
“We held it for a few weeks,” he says, about the letter. “We were debating whether to read it — there’s still a file on her.” He smiles. “But as you see, we didn’t read it — until now.”
Instead of driving me straight back to Venice or letting me take a cab, he enters through the gate of the Yoga Shrine further along on Sunset Boulevard, saying, “This is one place I bet you haven’t looked for your Rumina.”
He’s wrong, as he well knows it, but it’s a good place to get off and we say our goodbyes. I stroll through this green haven in the midst of the city’s concrete, I walk alongside the lake with its charming windmill, the ducks and swans paddling placidly on the waters, until I reach the spot, the bench I know so well. I sit there for a long time, an hour perhaps. I feel strangely depleted, after having recalled my life for Will over these weeks, and surely also for myself. There are raw spots now, exposed in the heart. There’s a thrill to their warm throbbing, yet they are not to be pressed too hard. What remains now? what new beginning, what direction? And Will’s remark about this being the one place I haven’t looked for her — a provocative reminder of my, as yet, fruitless inquiries?
