Amriika (32 page)

He is not unresourceful. In the initial days of our interview, he brought with him a tome or two in his briefcase, reference books on foreign peoples, but he’s given up, having realized perhaps that these groups can cause as much trouble inside books as outside them.

“Why does each people think they are so special?” he once asked. A question more appropriately addressed to my friend Sona, whose life’s mission it has been to study the distinctiveness of just one community.

“To themselves, they
are
special, aren’t they?” I said. And when they fear annihilation … I almost added, but didn’t. When they fear annihilation, they are apt to take measures into their own hands? … Isn’t that why we are here, you asking and me answering?

Over the weeks, I’ve come to be fond of Will — we seem to understand each other, and talk like contemporaries, which we are. He is a boyish-looking man, with sandy hair and a red face, a tight build. A Yale man, in fact, a year younger than I. “Like you, I was on scholarship,” he says. His father was a baker. Not good enough a background for the
CIA
boys? — I smirk knowingly. He bites into an apple: Our success rate is greater, and you can see why: we have patience and time — and resources. We deal with people, not ideology, unlike those other, much-maligned guys.

Let’s see, he once said, when he was trying to find out if I was of revolutionary pedigree: Were your people — family, if you insist — involved in the Indian Mutiny of 1857? The Indian independence movement? Any relation to the Assassins of Persia? Not involved in the African independence struggles either? …

Quite off the mark, of course. I said, We are a peaceful people; all we’ve ever wanted is to be left alone; ninety-nine per cent of us have never seen an actual gun, let alone held or fired one —

Will pulled out the picture he’d just showed me from the stack, pushed it towards me, saying, “A lot of people who do this sort of thing say the same thing, that they are a peaceful people, all they want is to be left alone.”

I look at the picture:
Still life, post-destruction: broken torso of a woman in olive green
.…Why me, how did
I
come to be connected to this?

Regular as a pendulum, twice every week he’s arrived at my door, and prodded and probed my memory, asked me questions about my background and ancestry, taken away my impressions about people I have known and whom he finds interesting. And I have indulged
him, partly because I don’t think I have much choice. Partly because I am lonely and his company is congenial. He is a good listener and does not jump to easy judgements. But also, I must admit, talking to him has helped me draw out from my mind details I had quite forgotten, and his questions have suggested departures which I might not have taken on my own.

He has in his possession statements from people from my past … he let that drop one day, quite inadvertently, it seemed then, but perhaps it was deliberate needling on his part.

“What do you think your friends at the Tech thought of you,” he asked, “your former roommate Shawn Hennessy, for instance?”

“Well, as someone who was naive at first, but who learned fast; idealistic but unwilling to resort to just any means … a little nerdish perhaps —”

“And a jerk-off, in bed? Sorry —” he said, but he looked, if anything, amused.

If I could, if my complexion had allowed it, I would have turned beet red. “There’s nothing wrong with self-gratification, as nowadays we’re admitting,” I blustered, “it’s not a sin —”

“Who’s talking of sin?” Will said.

It began dawning on me that Will Jones — or someone else in his organization — had spoken to Shawn; and others, too? Our interview would surely be only a part of a larger file; this friendly but persistent fellow from the agency, my companion for a couple of days every week, Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons, must know things about myself even I don’t. And so I said to him once: “You must know — who called the cops on Lucy-Anne. Was it anyone we knew?” We were sitting at my dining table, with its yellow and green and brown khanga tablecloth and desk lamp, which also doubles as my writing table. Will smiled slyly at me,
reflected a while, then replied: “I’m surprised you have to ask. You must not have read his book.”

“Whose book?”

“You mean you really don’t know,” Will said. “Your roommate. Shawn Hennessy.”

I felt, that instant, like one might after a sudden checkmate, being one-upped mentally and abruptly, with a tightness in the pit of the stomach it takes minutes to get over. I got up to pour more coffee for us, which I did with some effort to keep a steady hand, and I said, simply, “That f—– traitor.” I recalled to mind Shawn’s subsequent academic career, our one exchange of letters, and thought,
But not surprising, after all, is it
…

Will had raised an eyebrow, watching me as I returned to the table. “Traitor to what, though?”

“His friends.”

I could have guessed: the most likely suspect, if you gave the matter some cool thought, someone who knew precisely Lucy-Anne’s and my whereabouts that Friday evening. But that’s in retrospect. To have guessed
then
about such a casual betrayal would have been to admit to the flimsiness of the radical movements and their causes — a cynicism that is more modern and sinister.

“Why would he turn informer?” I asked. “Did he believe in the war after all?”

Who else had he informed on? Was there ever a file on me, for instance, to which he had contributed?

“The fact that his brother Pat went missing in action in Vietnam. That might have been sufficient to turn him into a patriot. Perhaps he stopped believing in the extremist element of the peace movement.”

“What ever happened to Pat? Did he return safely?”

“No. He was sent up in space by the Russians, that’s what a psychic told his mother.” Will smiled.

If he was expecting a smart comment, I didn’t give him one. I asked:

“And Lucy-Anne? You must know where she is?”

“Yes, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to tell you.” He paused, then added: “Perhaps it’s best not to think of her — at least not yet.”

I walked with him to the end of the block, then he left, saying, “Till Tuesday, then.”

And what of this man Darcy, who had once come to my grandmother’s house for a pain in his back and helped me decide my future? A hero of sorts to me then, he would again play a part in changing the course of my life.

One evening we sit on a bench across from his apartment, the black ocean in front of us, the sky clear and starry, listening to the waves coming in, and he says, “If I hadn’t invited you here, you would not now be in this situation.”

Nor would I have met my Rumina again. And to think that it was she who had reconnected us in the first place, after all these long years. The Rumina present now in every rush of the waves upon the beach, every break, every swish and gurgle of water on sand …

Darcy smiles thinly, and continues. “In any case, it was not a good idea to involve a young person in an old man’s causes.”

“I’m hardly a young person.”

“You were still in your teens when I was the age you are now.”

Old? Yes, he’s old and defeated now; he was defeated even before he landed on these shores two decades after I did; only I
hadn’t realized it. To me, when I met him again all those years later, though he appeared somewhat marked by age and frailer, he was still the awesome, fearless Darcy. The original, genuine dissident.

Will says, another day: “This young woman — this Rumina, did she lure you into coming here to California or was she used to lure you? …”

It had been quite straightforward, really.

One day a phone call came to my office in Chicago.

“My name is Darcy, I am calling from Santa Monica. I don’t know if you remember me from Dar es Salaam …”

Mister
Darcy! My heart was racing. How could I not remember. “Of course,” I said, “you used to visit my grandmother —”

And after asking questions about me, my well-being, he said, “Yes, it’s been a long long time.”

He’d been given my name, he said, as someone who could assist him. He had recently taken over a political magazine with an interest in the Third World called
Inqalab
, and he was looking for marketing ideas. And so we talked.

At the end of the call I realized he hadn’t told me who had given him my name, and I asked.

“I believe she’s a friend of yours,” he said, “Rumina Abdala. She’s in Los Angeles, I came to know her in Dar.”

What was Rumina doing in California? When did she go? … But I didn’t ask.

A week later the phone rang, a sweltering July midnight. Rumina.

“Oops — what time’s it there, I clean forgot the time difference —”

And so we had an innocent chat, on the surface. She had a pretext, a question, could I suggest publishers who might be interested in publishing her thesis? I gave her two names in Amsterdam; what was she doing on the West Coast? She’d been invited to a conference there and had decided to stay. She liked the climate, and had found a part-time job teaching Swahili at a university. She had been there eight months already and would probably stay for the time being. We made no reference to our past intimacy — it had been almost exactly a year since Jamila’s reunion — though it hung heavily behind each calculated response we uttered. In that intervening year I had come to think of that brief and happy time we spent together as the prelude to an impossible dream and, therefore, best forgotten. Now there was fear at broaching the subject, and uncertainty, and of course the dark shadow of her past, which I did not believe I could ever feel neutral about. She called one more time, and again there was that sense of uneasiness, of fear stalking our conversation, despite the outward cordiality. Nothing might have come of these tentative gestures — except that Darcy rang again, two weeks to the day after that first time.

“Look, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Why don’t you come and join us here at
Inqalab
, help us reach out to more people. You have knowledge of the market —”

“I’m flattered.” And I was thrilled, too. To be invited by the old warrior to join him!

He explained his plans for expansion, concluding with: “I’ve made inquiries about you … and you’re what we used to call a
ndugu
. We need you, the cause needs you.”

Rumina called a couple of days later: “Do you think you will take up Mr. Darcy’s offer?” Unable to hide the excitement in her
voice, the tremor of happiness, and reminding me with a pang of the girl I knew in Glenmore — her freshness and youth and surprising boldness.

So who used whom? Did Darcy use Rumina to entice me to come over, or was it the other way round? In either case, it doesn’t matter now.

The Swahili term
ndugu
that Darcy used for me — it seems to disturb Will. In the seventies, this word became the equivalent of the “comrade” of communist countries. But, I tell Will, its first meaning is “little brother,” which always takes precedence. So
ndugu
from Darcy was no small tribute. Will smiles quizzically, indulgently, as if to say, Whatever pleases you. But we are back to the photo of the bomb scene: the debris and the victim.

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.