The Journalist

by Dan Newman

  I am suddenly exasperated. “Veng…what the fuck is that?”

  D’Angelo lifts one of his meaty hands. “Take it easy, Roly. Take it easy,” he says, which has exactly the opposite effect on me. I am about to go off when our guide jumps into the conversation.

  “Vengano—hot. Ah, angry, you know? Dey not happy jus now.”

  The driver looks nervously at the group ahead and then back to us. “Maybe we go. I think maybe dey see you and…bad, bad.”

  Ahead of us, our fully stopped car has elicited even more interest and some of the members are moving closer, craning their necks, trying to see who we are. I can plainly see they’re carrying long blades, like pirate cutlasses, swinging them loosely as they point at the car and gesture to one another. I look at D’Angelo and I see the words on his face before he speaks them. “Yeah, let’s go. Let’s get outta here,” he mutters, his eyes fixed on the group now moving cautiously down the track toward us.

  The driver wastes no time. He grinds the gears as he searches frantically for reverse, finally seats it, then pops the clutch. The car lurches once, then immediately stalls. He says something in Shona, which is almost certainly fuck, then attacks the keys in an effort to crank the vehicle back to life. Ahead of us on the track to the farm, the group has become aware of our attempted withdrawal, and some ancient predatory instinct has kicked in. They cry shrilly, raise their cutlasses, and charge the path. Behind them, those who were only observers have now joined in. A mob has just been born and is headed our way.

  The guide shouts at the driver in Shona, and the engine turns over and over without firing. The mob is now a mere fifty yards away. As the driver releases the key for another try, the guide decides he’s had enough and abandons ship. He is past us and sprinting for the road before any of us can react. A moment later the car sputters to life with a belch of black smoke and the driver dumps the clutch again, but this time with enough grunt to keep the momentum, and we’re suddenly retreating, one door flung wide from our guide’s departure, and with a screaming mob redoubling their efforts to catch us. The driver is facing us as he drives in reverse, looking through the back window. I can see terror on his freely sweating face. The car lurches left and right through the overaccentuations of high-speed backward driving, and by the third overcorrection, physics steps in and orders the car off the road.

  We spin into the shallow gully only meters from the fence line, kicking up an instant maelstrom of dust and cusses. D’Angelo and I clutch at our bags and gear, the driver is shouting in Shona, and all I can really hear is a high-pitched whining in my ears as adrenaline courses through me and threatens to tear my heart from my chest.

  The dust obscures any view through the windows, and before we can tug on the door handles, they clatter upon us.

  • • •

  Professor Bowman, during one of his well-trodden first-year lectures, spoke about passion. “Whatever you do,” he said, “do it with some degree of passion. Go after something, anything, with gusto. And I don’t care what it is or what your lot in life is. If you’re a mainstream journalist, do it thoroughly, write with spirit and do the work to the best of your ability. Honor the trade and its purpose. If you’re a garbage man, do that with the same intensity. Embrace the thing before you and do it with a consideration to beauty. Be passionate!”

  I now remember that lecture with the intense clarity afforded by adrenaline sparking my every neuron, and I wonder, for an instant, if the Professor would applaud these people. I wonder this because of their passion. As I sit in the back seat of the car, hands thrown around my head and eyes peeled wide, I understand that the people pulling at the now locked doors, banging on the sheet metal and screaming wildly, are in the grips of the kind of passion Professor Bowman would surely approve of. I know now that I will not just die here. I will be torn to small fleshy pieces.

  29

  The window behind me stars briefly and, with one more crack of a well-hefted blade, shatters. Then the driver’s-side window. I can now hear the driver screaming in Shona, and even though I know nothing of the language, his plea is universal. D’Angelo is putting up a fight, swatting the hands that are clutching and grabbing at him through the door they have now pried open, and in an instant he is dragged out of the car feet first.

  Someone has grabbed my hair and I am being drawn up and out through the rear window on my back. Because of the angle, my chin is being forced up, exposing my throat, and I fully expect a blade to hack into me and stop only after it finds my spine. But as I hang suspended and exposed, my throat laid bare on this makeshift sacrificial altar courtesy of Ford, something else happens.

  In an instant there is a turn in the way the mob surges. The hands in my hair are still there, but I can feel hesitation, uncertainty, and perhaps just a shade less passion. Through the high-pitched whine, I can hear a man shouting, bellowing. Faces are turning toward him, voices are muttering, and suddenly I am released. Half in and half out of the back window, I am suspended on the trunk, hands and palms skyward, eyes wildly trying to comprehend this sudden turn of events.

  The mob somehow changes, morphs. It is abruptly a group of people, panting, out of breath, and still clearly hopped up on adrenaline themselves, but no longer a mob. Moments later another set of hands seize me, but the touch is supportive, and I am pulled out, off the trunk and onto my feet. There is an argument happening to my left, two men heatedly going back and forth, until one, the one with a heavy blade, throws up his free hand in disgust, and dismissively walks away from the other and out of the group.

  Now the group, too, is evaporating, and I am seeing individual people for the first time. I realize the man who was arguing is our guide—the one who had fled from the car. I don’t understand any of it, and suddenly I remember D’Angelo and whip my head about frantically to find him. I see only his legs sticking out from beneath the car, and as I walk around I realize he had somehow managed to get into the space between the ditch and the bottom of the car. He is completely covered in dust as he slowly comes out, eyes as wild as mine feel, and hands clenched into meaty fists. There is a smear of blood on his cheek, but otherwise he seems whole.

  “It is okay,” says the guide, breathing heavily and clearly still a tad edgy. “Dis people jus famas.”

  “Farmers?! Fucking farmers?!”

  The D’Angelo I am used to has apparently returned. “Roland, shut the fuck up.” And I do.

  Some of the “farmers” are wandering back toward the farmhouse, but most are looking at us curiously, the way people look at lobsters in tanks at seafood restaurants. D’Angelo and I are asked to move aside, and the group puts its collective muscle into the car and pushes it back onto the track. It’s a bizarre scene: a battered car with its windows cracked and shattered is being carefully restored to the road by the very people who just attacked it. Some even wipe at the dust and brush shattered glass off the trunk, and one man carefully closes the passenger door, sees it does not sit properly, and then closes it again—coming away with a nod of self-satisfaction to his work.

  The guide points at the car. “You wan go now? Or you still wan talk-talk with dis people?”

  D’Angelo looks at me and I at him, and something in it all strikes us both as hilarious at the same moment. We laugh the laugh of the narrowly reprieved, and eventually I say yes, we still want the interview—only we’ll do it here at the car if that’s okay. No need to go over to the house to where all the other farmers have now retreated.

  As it turns out, we owe our escape to the guide—the one who got out and ran—and it’s a good thing he did, too. The mob focused on us, and ignored him, and he was able to shout back at them—from a safe distance—that we were foreigners here to tell their story. I gather from the animated way the conversation is going that the farmers are now under the impression that we are sympathetic reporters here to tell the world about their struggle. We are content to be perceived that way, still fresh from the reality that we could have easily been butchered
without timely intervention.

  Occasionally, and very gently, we nudge the conversation, with the aid of our guide and interpreter, toward details of the killing of the family that once called this place home. At the end we thank them, perhaps a little more enthusiastically than they really deserve, more for what they didn’t do rather than what they did.

  An hour later we are once again cruising through the open fields of Zimbabwe, the cool air streaming over us (thanks to the broken windows that needed to be kicked out entirely to make the car drivable), headed back to the hotel and relative safety. This “scrape,” as D’Angelo calls it, has left me feeling at once terrified and supremely alive. The brown, dusty country we moved through earlier is now awash with vibrant tones and hues, each popping from the land and screaming to be noticed, while somehow managing to still be a perfectly balanced part of the picture. Near death has left me in a state of near euphoria, buzzed, hypersensitive, and acutely aware of the fact that whether we lived or died in the back of that car was a decision neither of us could impact. We were simply passengers in every sense of the word.

  Here, thousands of miles from home, on another continent, in another hemisphere, I am reminded that while almost everything is entirely different, so much is the same. People make decisions, react in both contrived and natural ways, and at the end of it all, people die—or they don’t—and the reality is, no matter what your faith, your politics, or your personal code of ethics tell you, that conclusion is fucking random. Dead in a car in Zimbabwe and butchered by a mob of panga-wielding wannabe farmers, or shot dead on a city street thanks to the lies of a wannabe journalist, it’s all the same. It has almost nothing to do with us.

  After showering and changing into new clothes that are free from fear-induced urine stains, D’Angelo and I close out the evening in the bar downstairs. There is the usual assortment of reporters, little cliques and groups that form and fracture as people flow into and out of the room. Our story—what happened to us out at the Cullinan farm—is the major topic of discussion at the bar, and D’Angelo and I never tire at the retelling of it. We are past the beer and into the scotch, and I soon realize I have no taste for it and even less tolerance, but that won’t stop me. I soldier on bravely.

  And then, draped in the shining glow lent to all women viewed by those well lubricated, in walks Donna Sabourin.

  She sits down with her Foreign Correspondent crew, four of them in all, and sees me. Her eyes meet mine for a splintered second, and then fall back to her colleagues. That’s all the time it takes to dismiss me. But, thanks to the power of some rather cheap and decidedly evil local scotch, I am undeterred.

  I arrive at the table just as one of her group is departing, temporarily, judging by the half-finished drink. I slide into the seat and smile at Donna, and in all honesty I’m glad to see her. I miss a lot about my relationship with Donna—brief as it was—and the booze makes the longing all the more intense. But, ever the perceptive one, I can tell that something in the frown she is wearing means the feeling is likely not mutual. Still, I press on. “Donna, I heard about your move to Foreign Correspondent, and I wanted to come over and say congratulations. I didn’t get a chance to see you before you left, so I saw you here and so I think it’s great. Really great.”

  Donna forces a joyless smile and nods, but offers nothing more.

  I realize I am in trouble here on two or three scores: first, my hands are waving around altogether too much and without any real sense of refined motor control, and well beyond what the occasion calls for. Second, because it has suddenly become clear that she is not going to be an active part of the conversation. And third, the other two at the table are looking on with an air of condescending amusement. This has all the earmarks of quickly becoming an embarrassing, possibly offensive encounter.

  Donna, to her credit, reads the situation superbly and asks her friends to give us a minute. One asks if she’s sure in a quiet, understated tone and then they leave, casting just the correct degree of aspersion in my direction.

  Donna’s tone is cold, aloof. “What do you want, Roland?”

  “Wow, that’s a heck of a greeting. You’re a familiar face a thousand miles from home. What’s the harm?”

  “What’s the harm?” Donna shakes her head in exasperation. I ignore it by waving over a waitress and ordering two more scotches. Donna says she doesn’t want it, but I make some flaky hand gesture that means go ahead and bring them anyway.

  The silence starts to sag in the middle so I fill it quickly and with no skill whatsoever. “How are you?”

  “Roland, how did you get into this business?”

  “What business? The news business?”

  “Yeah, Roly, the news,” she replies sarcastically.

  “Same as everyone else, I guess. I went to school, got a job, and hustled.” I shrug.

  “I got into this through nothing but hard work. I got in with Foreign Correspondent through hard work, and with no support from the people I would expect to get support from.”

  “You’re pissed about something you think I said to Carroway.”

  She crosses her arms in a single twitch. “You deliberately badmouthed me. You—of all people.”

  “I did not, Donna! Look, I admit I had a conversation, with Ed, but I have—had—I mean, well I’ve never, you know… In fact, you know what? I told him you were a gifted writer. That’s what I said. A great reporter. That’s exactly what I told him. There’s no reason I’d say anything else, I have no interest in badmouthing you. And I never did!” At this point I am embarrassed by my lack of command over the English language, despite the effects of the whisky.

  Donna is growing more prickly by the second. “No reason, huh? So it’s just a coincidence that you trash me to Ed and then all of a sudden you get the plum job at the international desk—the job I’d been in line for.” For a moment she seems about to boil over, but then reins it in. “I put in my time with the society pages, I paid my dues, Roly. You undermined me intentionally so that you could set yourself up for the job.”

  “Donna, that’s not it at all. All I did was answer a question I was asked, and gave my opinion. And, like I said, I told him you were a damn good society reporter.” I see the pit I’m headed for and swerve hard to dodge it. “Not that society was all you could do. No. I never said that. I just said that’s what you were doing. Back then. You know, for the machine.” I know it’s starting to look ugly so I change gears. “Carroway didn’t understand. Jeez, I even knew it back then. I shoulda said something. Donna, he misinterpreted. He got it wrong—what I was trying to say. And I was not looking for a job with Sheila’s group. I’m not that devious.”

  Donna leans in, both hands pressed into the table. “I think you’re plenty devious, Roly, and one of these days you are going to trip yourself up and fall on your ass.”

  “Come on.”

  “And just what did you tell Carroway, anyway? Specifically.”

  “I told him what I thought, you know, my opinion—which counts for nothing!”

  Her lips are peeled back tight and she speaks through a clenched jaw. “What did you tell him?”

  I know I should just stop now, stand up and run from the room, burst into song, anything but answer the question. But true to form, I babble away. “He asked what I thought about your work, and I said it was good, great—just that I didn’t see a lot of value in the society section. But that’s the section—not you.”

  Her face is pleated, her mouth hanging open and her color rapidly changing to crimson. “Fuck you, Roland. Fuck you! You waltz into the paper on the good graces of the owner, steal—steal—a major story and then suck-ass your way uphill, and you think you have the credentials to criticize my writing? Even if that was your opinion, would it have killed you to say something nice? You knew goddamn well I wanted that post. You fucking knew, you…” She can no longer keep control, and preempts her own public outburst by getting up and storming out of the bar.

  I knock back
my drink and follow. As I leave I note that no one, save D’Angelo, has noticed the quietly heated debate.

  I catch up with Donna outside the bar and follow, imploring her to understand my perspective. She ignores me and keeps walking and eventually we are at the door to her room. She turns sharply, blocking the door, and roughly shoves me out of her bubble. “Roland, you are a despicable person.” She simmers, and then, “Stay away from me.”

  With little else to work with, I try history. “Donna, we were pretty good together for a while there, don’t you think? I mean, Christ, I can’t be all that bad? Why don’t we just go inside and have another drink and…” My words peter out as the look on her face changes from anger to pure revulsion.

  My mind briefly escapes the bleak moment swirling around us, and settles on a memory so perfect it seems almost cruel—given the look on the face of the woman before me. In it we are sitting in a small restaurant in the city. Donna is laughing, at what I don’t know, but it’s warm, inclusive laughter. And as she laughs she brushes the hair from her face, then reaches across the table and takes my hand. It’s just a momentary touch. A simple gesture of affection that is so sincere that it takes me entirely by surprise. It is truly a perfect moment for me.

  But it only exists in my memory. The woman before me can’t see it, can’t remember it.

  She has something to say, yet can’t or won’t find the words. I watch as she physically swallows whatever it was, deciding that not telling me was more venomous, more hurtful to me; the act of withholding is a mighty exercise in self-control indeed. Finally, she just walks through the door and closes it sharply.

  30

  Days later, back at my desk at the Star-Telegraph, I set to work on two stories. The first is in the true human interest vein, and draws dotted-line connections between Zimbabwe’s current economic decline, the erratic political gesticulations of a cornered dictator, and the desperate lunges of a people caught in between. The second story is less important but infinitely more sellable. It’s got that proverbial sizzle.