Guerrillas (28 page)

“You didn’t think the process could be reversed here?”

“Not after I’d been here. You can’t just go back to the land as a gesture. You can’t pretend. The land is a way of life.”

“And perhaps also a way of work. Not a way of dropping out. But I believe you’ve used the key word, Peter: pretend.”

“Only very rich people in very rich countries drop out. You can’t drop out if you’re poor.”

“But that’s our trouble here. You’ve probably observed it. We are too vulnerable to other people’s ideas. We don’t have too many of our own. But, Peter, you say the idea of the agricultural commune in a society like ours is antihistorical. And yet you helped.”

“It was what they said they wanted.”

“Your theory of professed intentions.”

“If the choice had been mine I would have chosen some other project. Something in the city.”

“And yet for this antihistorical project, which you didn’t think
would succeed, all kinds of people and organizations were pressured, to put it no higher.”

“We wanted to involve everybody. Or as many people as possible.”

“You certainly succeeded.”

“That way it seemed the thing might just work. And we received a lot of government encouragement. A lot of help.”

“The government too believes in professed intentions.”

“We were all misled. Perhaps we were all hoping against hope.”

“And perhaps, hoping against hope, we misled others. Where do you think the error started?”

“I suppose you can say it started here. In the society you have here. It isn’t organized for work or for individual self-respect.”

“We won’t quarrel about that. But you don’t think the leadership might have had something to do with it as well?”

“You mean Jimmy Ahmed.”

“Tell us about him, Peter, now that you’ve mentioned him. It’s a strange thing to say, but you know him better than most people here.”

“I found him attractive, a leader. He seemed to be able to get things done. And he had a following.”

“I know. I went to school with Jimmy. He was Jimmy Leung then. I’ve told you this before. And to me Jimmy’s always been something of a problem. I was in London when he suddenly emerged as the black leader. In fact, I was one of the first people to interview him. He was living in a big house in Wimbledon, and I thought he was quite well looked after. Even then he had powerful friends. But, you know, when Jimmy talked about this country, I couldn’t recognize it. Some of the things he said I found quite humiliating. I’ve told you about the banana-skin game he said he played at school. You would drop the banana skin and if it fell one way you were going to marry a fair-skinned person, and if it fell the other way you were going to marry a yellow person with freckles. You can imagine how the women columnists took that up.”

“I think you’re making too much of a small thing.”

“But sometimes small things can tell us more than professed
intentions. I never played that game at school. I don’t know anyone who played that game. It sounds to me more like a Chinese game. But the people in England took it seriously.”

“I wonder. But I don’t know much about that. I didn’t know Jimmy in England. I met him here. I’d only vaguely heard about him before I came here.”

“We’re a dependent people, Peter. We need other people’s approval. And when people come to us with reputations made abroad we tend to look up to them. It’s something you yourself have been complaining about. But I have another problem here. You know the position of black people in England. You know the difficulties, the campaigns of hate. Yet some of us get taken up by certain people and are made famous. Then we are sent back here as leaders.”

“You think there’s a conspiracy? People aren’t that interested.”

“That’s what I mean. People aren’t interested. They are ignorant, they don’t care. But certain people get taken up. It is this element that is my problem, this element in a place like England that takes up some of us. Is it guilt? A touch of the tarbrush, as they say over there—black blood? Or is it something else? Some other kind of relationship. Services rendered, mutual services.”

“I think you worry too much about those people.”

“You think I do?”

Since he had smiled to speak his sentence for voice level, Meredith had been serious, unflustered, his expression neutral in spite of the sweat and the heat that had inflamed his eyes. Now, for the first time, he had spoken angrily. But Roche didn’t believe in the anger. He thought it forced, self-regarding, a lawyer’s courtroom anger; it astonished, disappointed him, and it left him calm.

Roche said, “How much longer are we going on?”

Meredith, readjusting his expression, said, “Not much.” Then he spoke to the microphone again.

“But we’ll leave it, Peter. You say you found Jimmy Ahmed attractive.”

“He seemed to get things done.”

“But what he was trying to do was antihistorical. Did you think someone with a shopkeeping background was really equipped for
the task he set out to do? Or did you think, since it was antihistorical, it didn’t matter?”

“I thought he might have chosen another project. With Jimmy, you always had to bring him down to earth. Farming is a serious business. It requires a lot of boring application. It isn’t for someone who’s easily bored or wants quick results.”

“I think you are being naïve, Peter. You were a stranger when you came. I accept that. But did you think, after you’d got here, that someone with a Chinese shopkeeping background could be in tune with aspirations of black people?”

“He seemed to have followers.”

“Yes, followers. That’s why our brothels are full. But let’s leave that too. You said you came here because you wished to do creative work. That implies you felt you were needed.”

“I was wrong.”

“But it’s nice to feel needed. And that also implies that you felt you would be welcome. And you are welcome. But what a nice world you inhabit, Peter. You have so much room for error. I wouldn’t be welcome among white people, however much I wanted to work among them.”

“That’s the way the world is.”

Roche looked away and said, “I’m choking. I can’t think clearly in this studio.” But he spoke without temper.

Sweat was running down Roche’s forehead into his eyes and down his neck into his shirt. He was aware of the studio manager in the dimly lit cubicle; and he had half addressed those words to him. But there was no response from the big man behind glass, cool in his white shirt and striped tie. The man had missed the appeal; he remained neutral; his expression didn’t alter.

Roche looked away, past Meredith and the microphone, to the picture window, radiating heat. Beyond the two panes of glass was the silent view: the sun going down behind the hills, the sky turning pale ocher, the sea silver, the hills red-black, the royal palms darkening against the sky.

The studio manager, responding to the silence, said, “Shall we stop?” The curiously soft voice again, singsong and slightly effeminate.

Meredith, his face wet, his shirt wet and sticking round the collarbone so that his skin and vest showed, said, “We’ll go on for a little longer. It’s bad for me too, Peter.” He pulled out a loose white handkerchief from his hip pocket; but then he changed his mind; he didn’t use the handkerchief, and he left it on the green table.

“I don’t want to embarrass you, Peter. Especially now that you say you’re leaving us. Have you any plans for the future? Do you know what you’ll do?”

“I suppose I’ll go back to England and try to get another job.”

“In the same field?”

“No.”

“So you’re washing your hands of us. I feel we’ve let you down. I feel you haven’t enjoyed your time with us.”

“I wish my life had taken another turn.”

“What do you mean? Do you wish you hadn’t done what you did? Do you think it’s all gone to waste?”

“We’ve talked about this before, Meredith. I don’t think regret enters into it. I suppose I would do it again. I would have no option. I don’t suppose I ever thought about it going to waste or not. I just wish it hadn’t been necessary to do what I did. I wish the world were arranged differently, so that afterwards I didn’t feel I had been landed with a side. I wish I hadn’t walked into that particular trap.”

“Trap?”

“Thinking I had somehow committed myself to one kind of action and one kind of cause. There is so much more to the world. You know what I mean. You mustn’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.”

“As you say, you feel like a stranger here. You don’t feel involved. And I can see how some of our attitudes can irritate you. I feel we’ve let you down. We haven’t used you well—and that’s true of a lot of other people besides yourself. Because you’re a brave man, Peter. People who’ve read your book know that you’re a brave man and that you’ve suffered for your beliefs, in a way that most of us will never suffer. Can we talk about your book? It wouldn’t embarrass you?”

“We can talk about my book.”

“It’s an extraordinary book. Quite a document. But I’m sure you don’t want me to repeat what the critics have already told you.”

“They didn’t say that.”

“One of my problems with the book is that, although it’s very political—and I know that you consider yourself a political animal—there seems to be no framework of political belief.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“We’ve talked about this. You write as though certain things merely happened to you, were forced on you.”

“Some people have said this to me. It was what the publisher said. I suppose that’s what’s wrong with it as a book.”

“You describe the most monstrous kind of white aggression against black people. Monstrous things happened to you and to people you know. And some of those people are still there. You describe individual things very clearly. But it isn’t always easy to see where you were going or where you thought you were going.”

“I began to feel that when I was writing. What was clear at the time became very confused as I was writing. I felt swamped by all the people I had to write about, and all the little events which I thought important. I thought I would never be able to make things clear. But I was hoping people wouldn’t notice.”

“But the astonishing thing is that you risked so much for so little. Looking back now, the guerrilla activities you describe in your book, the little acts of sabotage—they really cannot be compared with the guerrilla activities of other people in other countries. Would you say that was fair?”

“We were amateurs. The situation was different in other countries.”

“And perhaps the motivation was different as well. It isn’t for me to pass any judgment, so far from the scene. I can only admire. But I find it hard to imagine that you expected what you were doing to have any result. Tearing up a railway, bombing a power station.”

“I’m amazed myself now at the things we tried to do. I suppose we led too sheltered lives. We exaggerated the effect of a bomb.”

“It was a gesture. You were making a gesture.”

“It didn’t seem so at the time.”

“And you and your companions paid heavily for that gesture. You were tortured, Peter.”

Roche, warm sweat tickling through his hair and down his forehead, stared at the microphone.

“Even that you write about as something that just happened.”

Roche turned his head and looked at the picture window. The royal palms were dark warm silhouettes against the glowing sky.

“No bitterness,” Meredith said. “No anger. Many people have remarked on this. But I have a problem with it. At school—many people will remember this—we were sometimes given a punishment assignment. I don’t know what happens nowadays, but we wrote lines. The way of the transgressor is exceedingly difficult.’ ”

The tone of Meredith’s voice, and a certain rapidity in the delivery, indicated that this was something he had prepared. Roche heard the professional laugh in the voice. Dutifully—the duty owed to someone who had prepared so well and was trying so hard—Roche turned to face Meredith again. He saw the smile, not the smile of the uplifted face, but Meredith’s other smile.

“That was what we wrote,” Meredith said. “We would write fifty of those, or a hundred, even two hundred. Some boys sold lines. And that to me is the message of your book. You transgressed; you were punished; the world goes on.”

“That’s how it’s turned out. If you want to put it like that.”

“It’s the message of your book. You’ve endured terrible things—you’ve got to try to come to terms with it, and I can see how that attitude can give you a kind of personal peace. But it’s a dead end. It doesn’t do anything for the rest of us. It doesn’t hold out hope for the rest of us.”

“Perhaps it’s a dead end for me. But I don’t know why you should want me to hold out hope.”

“We look up to people like you. I’ve told you. I’m trying to determine what you have to offer us. No bitterness, Peter. No anger. Don’t you think you’ve allowed yourself to become the conscience of your society?”

“I don’t know what people mean when they talk like that.”

“But you do. It’s nice to have someone in the background
wringing their hands for you, averting the evil eye—what we call over here
mal-yeux
. You’ve heard the word? People are perfectly willing for you to be their conscience and to suffer, while they get on with the business of aggressing, and the thugs and psychopaths get on with their work in the torture chambers.”

“They’re not thugs. They’re perfectly ordinary people. They wear suits. They live in nice houses with gardens. They like going to good restaurants. They send their grown-up daughters to Europe for a year.”

“And people like you make it all right for them. Your society needs people like you. You belong to your society. I can understand why you say you are a stranger and feel a little bit at sea among us.”

“I came here to do a job of work.”

“We’ve been through that before. I don’t want to embarrass you, Peter. But you’ll understand that we look at things from different angles. Have you really come to terms with your experience? Do you really think the effort has gone to waste?”

“I haven’t come to terms with it. All my life I’ve been frightened of pain. Of being in a position where pain could be inflicted on me.”