by Dan Newman
Okay—calling it a story may be a bit of an exaggeration; it’s really a mundane series of questions and a block of background copy on Lesotho, a tiny, desperately poor nation surrounded by South Africa. It’s more like a set of loose notes, to be honest, but it represents a story—a real story. Nevertheless, I hammer away, and in a matter of hours I have a draft.
According to the great Professor Bowman, putting time into almost anything invariably makes it better. The same is true for writing, and so I decide to sit on my story for a couple of days. The idea is to put some mental distance between it and me, so I can review it with fresh, and perhaps objective eyes. After all, it’ll need to be at its best before I take it to Carroway. I need a distraction, something else to focus on, and the answer comes almost immediately. Maybe I’ll ask her out for dinner, perhaps a walk down by the water; whatever it is I know it’ll consume my attention fully and the thought makes me smile.
I pick up the phone and begin dialing her extension, then quickly set the receiver back down. Donna works on the same floor on the far side of the newsroom; I’ll just go over there, ask her out. I walk through the labyrinth of cubicles, past desks with paper and file folders stacked a foot high, nodding to coworkers whom I recognize but never speak to. I pass Carroway’s glass fishbowl, and smile briefly to Janet, his assistant, who smiles back warmly. A quick left and I’m in the main thoroughfare that cuts through the field of cubicles; Donna’s is at the back against the wall.
As I get closer I can see there are other people there, some with chairs pulled up and leaning in, others draped over the cubicle wall and craning for a view. Among them, at the center, is Donna, pointing at the screen and explaining something. In the face of the group, my courage suddenly collapses.
I mean to keep walking, beyond her cubicle and the group, but I’ve passed the last intersection and find myself faced with a white wall and nowhere to go. A light ripple of panic sets in. I’m forced to stop and turn, and I try to pull off some expression that says, Dang it, I forgot that piece of paper I meant to be walking over here with, and I even snap my fingers as I turn, to emphasize, of course, the sudden dawning of it all.
Perhaps I might have gotten away with it, been able to sneak back undetected by anyone in the group of five or six hunched around Donna’s desk, but my little ad lib finger snap has turned a few heads—Donna’s included.
But if I’m anything I’m committed, and so I retreat as fast as I can without running, even putting a little bounce in my step.
“Roly?” It’s Donna, but I’m at that point where I’m just far enough away that I could keep going, and people would think I simply didn’t hear. Maybe.
“Roland!”
The jig is up. I turn and smile. Everyone in the group is now looking my way, plus a few other random folks nearby who happened to hear Donna call out. I’m supposed to say something here. Something like Oh, I was just checking if you had that thing, that article, that something. But I’ve got nothing. Everyone is looking, including Donna, and finally I open my mouth, because that’s what you do when you’re going to say something—but I have nothing lined up and exactly what will come out is a complete and terrifying mystery.
Donna reads the situation precisely. “Oh, gimme one sec,” she says, her tone implying she’s running late for some prearranged meeting with me. “I’m just finishing up.” She swivels back to her keyboard and speaks to the group, her attention still on the monitor before her: “That’s all of it, guys, I’ll email you the pictures. Oh, and by the way,” she says, bobbing her head once in my direction without looking up, “that’s Roly Keene—he wrote the USCIS Immigration piece.”
I’m saved from certain embarrassment, subtly shifted from awkward suitor to professional colleague by Donna’s deft touch. Instead of ridicule I get hellos and nods that carry a measure of what looks suspiciously like regard. The others file past, and finally Donna stands and smiles. I am entirely aware of the dramatic social rescue she has just performed, and something in that wide, warm smile tells me she is, too.
“What are you doing way over this side?” she asks, still smiling.
“Slumming, really.”
She steps toward me, and stands close enough for me to smell her; it is lavender, I think. “Well,” she says, “it’s a good thing I know how to deal with the local rabble, then.”
I was hoping for a clean escape from that mess with the attempted (and highly unsuccessful) getaway, but no such luck. “I’m sorry, I just…all the people, and the…”
Donna laughs out loud, then quickly tries to stifle it with both hands, but it’s too late. “You are sooo cute!”
I cringe. “Cute?” Donna laughs again, and this time physically doubles over.
I look around and people are starting to pay attention again. I reach out and take her by the arm. “Can we just go get a coffee or something?”
“Sure, but what will we do if there’s people there?” The giggling resumes.
“That’s not funny,” I say. “Not even a little.” But it is, and her laughter is contagious. And so we head for the elevators, Donna still giggling that adorable giggle.
• • •
I knock on Carroway’s door and he waves me in, a phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder, scribbling notes on a pad before him. His computer is dark, the monitor little more than a destination for little yellow sticky notes crammed with Carroway’s doctor-like scrawl.
“So, what’s up?” he asks, setting down the phone.
“I want to know how I go about getting the okay to travel. Well, for a story, that is.”
He leans back in his chair, throws his arms behind his head and looks at me with a this-oughta-be-good sort of smile. “That depends where you wanna go.”
It’s my cue to begin the sale, the pitch for the story I’ve been working on over the last few days. I set out the rationale, the expenses I expect to incur—flight, accommodation, food—and I explain the story’s function. It’s to be the follow-up to the immigration piece, and it’ll look at the human toll the business of selling citizenship has claimed. I focus on three families, two in Lesotho, and one six hundred kilometers away in Swaziland, all of whom had sons caught up in the federal net and deported back to their homelands.
No, I haven’t spoken with the families—none of them have phones—but I have made contact with people locally—two churches and an aid organization—who have confirmed that the families are there.
No, I don’t have any experience with this kind of thing, but that’s part of why I want to go.
And yes, I think it’s a responsible direction to take the piece. It’s the evolution of an important story; it moves past the sheer shock value that made the original story so compelling and holds up a bright light to the real cost of selling nationality. It grounds the story and morally legitimizes the newspapers’ breaking of it.
When I’m done talking, Carroway nods in thought, then breathes in sharply through a pair of well-haired nostrils. “I’ll sign off on it, but I suggest you go pitch it to Sheila first—this is her bailiwick. If she gives you a hard time, I’ll see what I can do, but I’m pretty sure she’ll go for it.”
I nod in appreciation, but Carroway’s not done. “There’s a spot coming open in her group, but I have to warn you you’re not the only one after it.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“There’s a girl in the society section being considered, Donna Sabourin. D’you know her?”
Inside something lurches hard to the left. “Yeah—she did that thing on hats and horses—‘Ladies at the Races’ or something, right?”
“You’d be surprised; there’s a market for that.”
“I guess.”
The old editor misses nothing. “Some disdain there?”
“Well, just for the topic, not the person.”
“And what do you think of the person in this case?”
“That’s kind of an unfair question, don’t you think? I’m competing for the
same spot with her.”
“But it’s a question, nonetheless.”
I think hard before I answer. “I think she’s very capable. She’s doing all her work on the society page because—to quote a certain editor—that’s what the machine needs right now. She’s definitely doing a good job there, and like you said, there’s a market, and markets pay the bills.”
“So you see value in the society pages, then? In the context of the culture we live in?”
He’s baiting me now, and this water feels suddenly shark infested. “Yeah, I see value—commercial value. I’m not sure how much journalistic value I see. I mean real social commentary. The society stuff we get now is all who’s wearing what—but that has little to do with the capabilities of the reporter coving it, I think. She’s feeding a demand.”
The old editor leans back and taps his lips with the arm of his glasses. “There’s an interesting debate in that for another day—the whole question of who defines the news, who determines the content…is it the providers or the consumers?”
“Ah, the great chicken and egg conundrum.”
Carroway smiles. “Deep waters, my Padawan.”
And while Carroway disappears into thought for a moment I wonder over the conversation. Carroway does nothing by chance. He lives and breathes the paper—hell, he’s one of its organs, and these questions are not being asked just for the sake of it. Somewhere in all this, Carroway’s opinion will carry weight. He’s probing my resolve, my determination to say I’m the guy. I’m the one who should be in that job.
But as much as I want to blurt it out, and as much as I would if it were anyone else, I find myself holding back. Why? Because it’s Donna, and so many of her own hopes and dreams are being weighed in the balance of this very conversation.
Carroway tugs me back to the moment. “So, you see the two of you on an even footing, then, in terms of qualifications for the job with Sheila’s group?”
My teeth clench and I think hard. Finally I answer in as measured a tone as I can muster. “I think her experience is writing about the natty downtown set, and mine’s about human impact in an international context.”
“Hmm. Light and fluffy versus serious and weighty?”
“Something like that, I guess.” And while I mostly believe it, I know part of me is quietly lining my own future. “But like I said, what she’s writing—it has nothing to do with her capabilities.”
But Carroway just nods; his mind has moved on.
I’ve tried to be evenhanded, but I know that despite everything I’ve been tipping the scale in my favor; it’s impossible not to. Would anyone put in this position react differently? You’re going to piss the world off, and you’re going to be alone. I shush the voice; there’s little I can do now. Instead I resolve to worry about that part later, and for the moment feel positive about the travel approval that appears to be in the offing.
But it’s not that easy. I recognize that Donna is something important in my life—or at least, she might become something important—and I wonder if I’ve somehow put a great tear in any future I might have had with her. Oddly, this tiny betrayal seems somehow more awful than the whole business with Chloe.
Standing up and walking out of Carroway’s office is a major accomplishment for me. As I stop in front of Janet’s desk and stare blankly, I wonder at the cost of so many good breaks in one streak. Surely, somewhere out there in front of me, out there in the world of botched robberies, grieving families, dead girls, and small betrayals of lovers, the big scale in the sky has to bring things back into balance.
My words to Carroway haunt me lightly, enough that I feel compelled to call Donna. I’ll take her out, make her feel good. I also suspect, uncomfortably, that perhaps the person I’m really trying to soothe is not Donna at all.
• • •
Donna’s arm is linked through my own, and as we walk slowly along the cobblestone streets where the tourists like to wander, she suddenly freezes, and a broad smile envelops her face.
“Oh my God. Look at these!” she says, dragging me toward a glass storefront.
I look up at the hanging sign: Fox Chocolates, and through the window there are rows of delicately handcrafted brown-and-white confections of every description. Beside me Donna is now an awestruck ten-year-old ready to hop up and down and flap her arms in excitement. I can’t help but smile at her unbridled enthusiasm.
She catches me watching her and cups her hands over her mouth and nose and laughs. “I know, I know!” she says through snatches of laughter. “I can’t help myself—it’s chocolate!”
I shake my head at her in mock disapproval, then pull her by the arm toward the store entrance. She resists momentarily. “Oh, come on,” I say. “If I don’t get you something here you’re gonna wet yourself.” She swats me, then pushes past and into the store, elbowing me lightly and sticking her tongue out for good measure.
Outside we sit on the lip of a low wall, and above us the sun is perched high in a perfect, cloudless blue sky. Donna is trying to eat the chocolate without getting any on her, but the caramel inside has other plans and sags in little golden arcs between her mouth and the chocolate in her fingers. “You sure you don’t want some?” she says, offering me the small white paper bag from the store. “You have no idea how good this is.”
“No, I’m scared if I reach in there I’ll lose an arm.”
She smiles again. “Hmm. Wise beyond your years.” She finishes the chocolate and sits for a moment, her eyes closed in exaggerated bliss.
“That good, huh?”
She laughs freely this time, and falls toward me naturally, pressing her hands into my chest. I feel her instantly settle, her muscles relaxing and her shape melding with mine. Her head settles against my neck and her hair is pressed to my nose. I breathe the clean smell of her hair, and just as I think it can’t get any better, she exhales a gentle sigh that is so satisfied, so tranquil that I realize it is a sense and sound I didn’t even know existed.
While I drench myself with the purity of the moment, somewhere nearby the conversation with Carroway is casting a dark shadow. It’s something I know I’ll never tell her, along with the news of my upcoming trip, but it’s something I know she will inevitably find out on her own.
And so I cling to the moment for as long as it will last.
22
A handful of days later I find myself sitting in the departure lounge in O. R. Tambo International Airport in South Africa, staring through the plate glass window and seeing almost nothing. It took twenty-two hours of travel to get here, including eight hours to Heathrow in London, another eleven down the length of Africa to O. R. Tambo, and a final two-hour hop to the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho.
The story I’ve cobbled together over the last few days follows one of three men deported back to Lesotho from the US, three of many caught up in the aftermath of the USCIS immigration scandal I helped break.
The man is Lebo Magagula and he is now dead. His mother tells me the story during my stay in Lesotho, over the course of three visits to her small house in Thaba-Tseka. “House” is a rather grand word for the structure, which is really little more than a few sheets of corrugated steel nailed together and pitched lopsidedly over a hard dirt floor. Six people sleep in the single room, on the dirt floor, including Lebo’s mother. It used to be seven, but as I mentioned, Lebo is now dead.
Thaba-Tseka is a tiny village in the heart of Lesotho, surrounded by steep brown mountains that are perennially covered in short-cropped grasses and dotted with deep-set stones. Crystal clear rivers zigzag through the spurs, carving, as they have done for millennia, deep channels that swell with rainbow trout and barbell as long as a man’s arm. Rich fishing is perhaps the only advantage these hills still hold, save a few kimberlitic pipes—ancient volcanic plugs—that yield diamonds to the distant mine owners in South Africa and the Netherlands. Of course, the diamonds are quickly exported, leaving only crushed rocks and tailing to the indigenous people. But Tha
ba-Tseka has no diamond mines—the nearest is a day’s journey in a four-by-four—and none of the jobs, menial as they are, that go with them.
The summers are a perfect mix of hot African sun tempered by cool, high-altitude air, and the winters are bitterly cold with a sun that shines brilliantly but warms nothing. It is a hard place to live for any creature; there are no trees—all long ago burned for fuel—and there is little for livestock to eat. And like all the marginal places where industry and agriculture can find no profitable foothold, the poor set up home. “Poor,” like “house,” is an overstatement because the family in Thaba-Tseka, Lebo’s mother and her five children, have absolutely nothing.
The mother, Mathato, sits on an upturned plastic bucket, wiping at her face with bare hands, pulling at the neck of her threadbare dress, as it seems, to her at least, to be slowly choking her. She is probably fifty, but looks seventy. I sit in front of her on a short, three-legged stool, and record everything on the small voice recorder given to me by Tech Services at the Star-Telegraph. Later, when I write the story, I will do it all from memory. Not because I have some prized journalistic gift of total recall, but because her story is so heartfelt, so raw and unfettered with concerns of how it all might sound, that every bit of it stays with me.
She speaks Southern Sotho, a complex, ancient language that evolved hundreds of years ago, when the warring Zulus drove the people that would become the inhabitants of Lesotho into these barren mountains. They embraced the protection its remoteness offered and thrived on its harsh, unapologetic hillsides. One of her daughters translates her words into halting but passable English, and pausing—head bent and hands clasped—patiently and respectfully, whenever the old woman begins to cry.
Her oldest son, Lebo, learned basic reading, taught by a long-departed Irishman who had taken to living in the deep mountains and who had run a makeshift school. Lebo stood out with a clear bent for academia. He learned to speak English, mastered the basics of math, and eventually took the long journey to Maseru, the nation’s capital, in search of something better than a single corrugated tin room.
