The Governor of the Northern Province (30 page)

III.

“And you are?”

“Governor of the northern province.”

“And you have come here?”

“Yes, to talk to you about the crimes you are to stand trial for.”

“And you are?”

“Governor of the northern province.”

“And you have come here?”

“Yes, to talk to you about the crimes you are to stand trial for.”

“Will these begin with a murder charge? Assault with a deadly beer bottle?”

She turned on the radio she had brought into the room with her. Music. He wondered if she wanted him to dance her again, for the men watching and listening from outside.

“Yes, I remember. I knew I'd be meeting you today—the President told me. And no, to answer your question, there will be no mention of beer bars and bottle fights. That's not the past this nation needs to have healed. This music will drown out our voices while we speak. Because they're listening and watching.”

How the men in the cell had laughed at him. At his going on about women and politics. As something that happened over there, in Canada. After a little frisking, he had been taken into this windowless room for a meeting. He had massaged his cheeks and shaken out his arms and legs while waiting, as he used to before a night of dancing at the beer bar. More recently, he'd found this was a good way to get ready for another interrogation session. He was more bendable than breakable then, when the blows started. Only the door opened and it was a woman, and not just a woman but the governor of the northern province, here to discuss his coming trial, and not just a woman in what should have been his position and planning to punish him from it, but more. Marigold. He wanted to believe that it wasn't her, that he wouldn't be able to recognize her since the last time he remembered seeing her, when it wasn't her face but the span of fabric over it, the beer bottle on the small of her back. Her arms shaking like fishtails, caught in her pulled-up dress, her legs blundering around the dance floor trying to get away from Foday. But it was Marigold, and he did remember.

Bokarie's face was cut at a sharp angle, staring at her, and she had expected as much and so told him what had happened to her after they'd all come to the capital city that first time. How she was grateful for having escaped Uncle's beer bar and knew she wanted something more than simply dancing at a better place for richer clients in the capital. And while her girlfriend Elizabeth, Bokarie's old girl, had gone into the palace to become the General's, she had wanted something more than that even. Owed it to the life she'd been taken from, the possibilities given in its place. So she started working for a non-governmental outfit in the capital, trying to help bring young women out of the thumping sex trade. She gained prominence for her efforts and moved up quickly, because she didn't talk, she acted. This was a method she had benefited from herself. She intervened not by compiling case studies but by going into the bars and pulling girls out. Which was how she found Elizabeth again, incidentally. And eventually, when there was a change in presidents and international pressure for something to be done about the terrible events in the Upriver region of the northern province, and also for some evidence of political progress in the nation as a whole, she had been put forward as a possible governor.

Still nothing from him. His mouth so dry he couldn't even spit at what was being said.

“And so I met with the new president. He didn't remember me from our first meeting at his campaign headquarters, back when he was the General. He wasn't hiding his military past, of course, this helped him get elected.”

“So did I.”

“Yes, that's right, but wait. Anyway, he and I talked about—”

“Possibilities.”

“Yes, that's right, but wait. We talked about what had happened in the Upriver region and how part of his promise to the outgoing president and to the citizens and to the internationals was that he would create peace there when he came to rule. And he confirmed that I was from the northern province and that I was indeed of mixed blood, which nowadays makes things like this a lot easier. Then he asked me if I was willing to be governor. I agreed, because I wanted to help—”

“Yes, yes, I know. The People.”

“No, wait. That's where you're wrong. I wanted to help
people
. Can you understand the difference?”

That was more than enough for him. He uncoiled from his chair and whipped around the room, his back bending and arching. Like a bird's beak was splitting it. Guards were at the door immediately, truncheons ready to frisk him again, but she sent them away, thanked them for their concern but said everything was fine. There was only music for a few moments. Bokarie mimed an offer to dance, to remind her of what she had been, before her cropped hair and pantsuit, of who he had been for her. She winced a little but expected this much gall and pressed on. She needed to make sure he understood where he was going, what was coming to him. That he understood why. She changed tactics.

“I understand you've been abroad. Tell me, what was Canada like? You must miss it.”

He spat. “People are the same everywhere.” He spat again. She changed tactics.

“I have come here today to discuss the future, your future and this nation's future. As you know, you are currently charged with crimes against the People for your leading role in the Upriver Massacres. I am not here to discuss the legal side of this case but because I wanted to speak with you, face to face, about what is going to happen. I felt I owed you this much.”

He came alive at this, an admission of her dependence, of her not being the person she had become were it not for him.

“And what do you owe him? What did he ask you to do to get this position? And what did you ask of him to call me a liar and a lunatic for saying he's the General I was working for?”

“He doesn't know that I know this. Remember what I said a moment ago. When we met to discuss my becoming governor, he didn't remember me from back when we had all come to his headquarters. He was all hugs and whispers and dancing with you and your Elizabeth. The rest of us just watched.”

Bokarie came back to his chair and slid up the volume button on the radio.

“He doesn't know?”

“No, he told me, when I said I was coming to meet with you, that you'd go on lying and raving that he was the General you mention in the speech on the video and that you had been living in Canada until you were caught. And then he said that the truth was you were caught cowering in a neighbouring country and that of course you would try to blame him as the devil behind it all since he was on top now and that was the way in our country. Then he promised me that he had started a full military commission to learn the identity and whereabouts of the General you mention in that speech, though he predicted the man never existed in the first place, was something you made up in your speech to have someone grander than yourself to inspire the men, someone greater than yourself to blame if things went wrong.”

Bokarie gripped the side of the table and breathed hard. Because now wasn't the time for rage against such lies, against being called untalented. The betrayal of it, after what he'd promised him, after what Bokarie had done for him. People were the same everywhere. Just thicker and thinner skins, scales, feathers. But he hoped this was true now, thinly smiling at Marigold. He got up again and started moving around the room, the loud music helping him as he danced up the words.

His lips opened.

“I am glad you have come here to speak with me today. Because the truth about the tragedies of our homeland must be heard! I say, ‘Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast.'”

“Still dancing with your Bible, aren't you. That was your favourite line back when you were on top of the orphanage wall and we would watch you. But we're not living from that past anymore.” He darted past her words, intent upon a chance to save himself and, finally, maybe, a chance to get what was supposed to be his.

“From what you have said, there are possibilities to be had. For you, for us, together. With what we both know of the General— sorry, this President—we can reveal him for the lying filth that he is and then you would be raised up and could become, and then I could be raised up and become, finally become—”

“No. That will not happen. You will stand trial, either in the northern province or abroad—that's still to be determined. But you will, and you can speak as much of the truth as you know it and see what justice that brings. But I won't do it, I won't,” she said.

“And why? For your beloved The People?”

“No! For people. Because with this trial comes attention, from the President and others in the capital, but also from the foreign donors and dignitaries. And maybe this means they'll just talk more about how they need to do more for the people in my—in our country, but maybe something more than speeches and wristbands and blue helmets will come. Maybe some interest in us when it's not a natural disaster or a civil war, but for the dailyness of our enduring. But I know there's no getting around it—they need the drama, the terror and the monsters to make it worth their while. So I'm trying to match what they want to give for with what we have to give them. Which means maybe more bucket toilets for the villages you and your men sacked. Or some pedal sewing machines to make up for the arms you and your men hacked. Or another holy order willing to take in some of the boys whose fathers you raged with and raged on. And that's why you have to stand trial, Bokarie. That's why you're needed. So those things happen.”

“But haven't you seen enough of this place, haven't you met enough people, whether from here or everywhere else, to know any better? People who always want to get more? Who want us in the package to feel good about doing it? Who never, ever act except for themselves?”

“Like you did, when you saved me?”

His mouth went wide like an open grave, his tongue fell limp, he returned, crumpled, landed back in his chair. He turned the music off. It was over. Because he couldn't do it. He wouldn't answer her why he'd done it. He wouldn't give that up. Because then his saving her, his one secret goodness, would become just more blood and treasure to trade on, to give over to get more. He refused that for himself, to do that to himself. To do that to her. This alone Bokarie wouldn't have taken from him. They could have the rest and keep carving it up and adding to it and inventing it and remaking him into what they wanted, needed, decided he had to be. But not that, because if he gave in and gave it up, then he would only be their heap of broken images. He would be spent. The shell would be empty. There had to be another way.

He looked at Marigold. His lips closed. Bokarie was smiling.