For dinner that night Teddy wore his brown Prussian boondockers, the boots climbing his shin, causing his pants to billow below the knee. Joining him were the American Consul Eric Dukette, Chief Inspector Franco Warez, Father Amiel Piote, and Everett Doyle from the Ministry of Internal Planning. Teddy greeted his guests with a high salute, the medals pinned to the front of his faux General’s uniform jangling as he marched. Two soldiers dressed in dark suits and white gloves served Cornish hens, boiled potatoes and German ale. Father Piote licked his lips and offered a blessing for the poor.
“A toast,” Teddy raised his glass. “To Leo Covings,” he told the others his news, how after much negotiation the American director had agreed to come to Bamerita. Hearty congratulations were extended. “Obviously Covings appreciates your talent, General.”
“If not for your gift,” Father Piote peeled the skin from his hen.
Teddy disputed none of this, pressed his knife against the bone of his bird and said to the Chief Inspector, “Let’s keep an eye on things, shall we? We don’t want any foolishness while our guest is here.”
“No foolishness,” Chief Inspector Warez promised.
“All this nonsense lately.”
“They’re making much of nothing.”
“Good Baby is good business.”
“Caveat emptor.”
“If it will help them feel better,” Teddy said, “we’ll have someone arrested. One of the factory managers should do.” He lifted a wing from the bird torn apart. The dining room table was plaited in a braided cane, the entire villa modeled after a chateau built in the Bavarian hills with pine panelling and a light jade color scheme, the halls filled with cactus plants in majolica pots. Everett Doyle wore a seal skin jacket, suggested “For safe measure more guards should be assigned to the daily shoots while Covings is here.”
“A good idea. We don’t want anything unseemly caught on film.”
“No.”
“Of course not.”
“We wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression.”
“Film provides more than impression,” Teddy corrected. “It creates reality.”
“Which is exactly what we’re doing.”
“What we’re doing, yes.”
“Only a government that is truly progressive would even consider what we’ve done,” Teddy sopped up the grease on his plate with a piece of bread. “Why is it so hard for them to understand?”
“Putting each Bameritan on film shows how broad-minded we are.”
“How liberal.”
“Ha! Yes. Everyone has their chance to be a star.”
“Why do they fight it so?”
“Change is most vigorously resisted among the less enlightened,” the good Father touched the cross on his papal chain.
“What do these people know?” Everett Doyle sliced his potato. “They’ve no idea how hard it is to run a government. They read of democracy in comic books and think everything is milk and honey.”
“Your American founders understood, didn’t they, Eric?” Teddy addressed the American Consul. “The framers of your constitution knew pure democracy was an unnatural form of government, that people benefited most when lead by the few.” He leaned into the table then and recited from memory, “I believe further that a democratic Government is likely to be administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” Pleased with himself, he asked the American Consul, “Do you know who wrote that?” and answered before anyone else could. “None other than your Benjamin Franklin, that’s who!”
Eric Dukette waited a moment, wondering if he should correct Teddy on the meaning of the Franklin quote, and deciding not to, he glanced around the table before replying, “It’s good to see your sense of governing is so deeply rooted in American history, General.”
“Deeply, yes,” Teddy back in his room, repeats for the girl. “Smile for the camera,” he turns her around, has her dance up on her toes, her dress lifted above her hips, waved left and right. Teddy sings, “She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye.” Without his boots the cuffs of his pants droop several inches around his ankles. He bends his knees, slides forward. Bo Peep is in front of him and the camera’s rolling. He removes his undershorts and puts his hands on the girl’s head, touches her firmly. “With the throne,” he says “comes the scepter,” and offering his royal truncheon groans, “God bless America, but don’t I know? That’s a girl. That’s it. That’s all there is. Governing is no more than this. It’s simply a matter of taking what I give you.”
CHAPTER 3
I first met Katima after hurting my leg in a fall. This was last winter. Before then, between losing Tamina and now, my relationships with women were limited, in large part, to casual dinners and the occasional act of physical cooperation between ladies Emilo sent my way. I didn’t subscribe to the Brahmacharya’s idea of celibacy as a means of enhancing spiritual enlightenment, but kept to myself as a matter of course. My abstinence was practiced aggressively and with periods of absolute commitment that had nothing to do with Gandhi and everything to do with the world as I found her and being still in love with Tee.
I lived with my children, and then alone, and walking home one night had absentmindedly stumbled over the curb. Following a period of resting my knee, Dr. Bernarr recommended I swim at the University’s pool. Because of my injury and lack of stamina, I could manage little more than splashing and slapping at the water. I stopped after a few laps, breathing hard and holding onto the side as Katima came over and knelt on the deck.
“What are you doing?” she wanted to know if the problem with my leg was trauma or a more permanent condition. “You move like a boat with one oar.”
I told her about my fall and she instructed me to quit doing laps. “You’re not ready,” she explained the key to recovery was isolating my injury and working the muscles. “With laps, you have your arms and one good leg to compensate.” She had me raise my legs behind me and float to the surface, my hands still holding onto the side of the pool. “Kick,” she said. I did as told, felt immediately the extra exertion. “Do six sets of thirty seconds each. Rest fifteen second in between. Count them off like this,” she showed me how to breath.
Ten minutes later I got out of the water, my legs spent and not completely stable beneath me. Katima was off in the far end of the pool, overseeing the exercise of four other people, as I shuffled along the deck toward the locker room. I showered and went home. The next afternoon I returned to the pool where I found Katima swimming laps alone. As I began my kicking exercise, she swam to where I was and asked, “How’s the knee?”
“Good. Better, thank you.”
Beads of water ran down her cheeks into the dimples at the corners of her mouth. I let go of the side, allowed my feet to settle on the shallow bottom as she climbed out of the water and removed her silver swim cap. Her brown hair fell just over her ears. She shook her cap, dangled her toes from the edge, said “I thought that might be you,” as we introduced ourselves. I asked clumsily if we had met before and she, in turn, teased me with, “Don’t you remember?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she laughed. “We haven’t. But people know who you are.”
She stepped back, glanced at the camera which was anchored above the exit sign on the north end of the pool. Cameras not involved in the day’s scheduled shoot ran randomly, making it impossible to tell whether or not we were being recorded. “André Mafante and Katima Hynne at the pool, take one,” she smiled and made as if opening and closing one of those clapboards directors used when filming. “Would you like to say a few words to Teddy?”
“You shouldn’t taunt him,” I warned as she pointed again at the camera. “It isn’t worth the trouble.”
“A few words,” she ignored me, and pretending to hold a microphone, said “This is your chance to go on record.”
“But I am on record.”
“For the record?”
“Sure.”
“How is it you know so much about treating my leg?”
“It’s what I do,” she splashed at me with the side of her foot. “Physical therapy. I used to work at the hospital before Teddy threw me out. It seems our government doesn’t value therapy and refuses to employ nursemaids to bend knees and rub bellies,” she quoted the language one such actuary from the Ministry of Health used in his report. “Now I see patients privately and Teddy taxes what I earn at 60%.” She shook her head at the absurdity, joked about ‘General Admission,’ and how, “At least when Teddy was on TV we could change the channel.”
“There was that,” I shifted my sore leg underwater. Katima remained above me. I could see her green eyes reflecting the pale blue of the water. She reached down and stirred the waters with two fingers, said “My turn.”
“Alright.”
“About your tower,” she asked me then, “Is it true?” and wanted to know about Tamina.
I sank beneath the surface until just my head was exposed, and placing my hands once more on the side, raised my legs, stretched my body until I was floating. “I should finish my exercises,” I put my face in the water, just deep enough so that my breathing became a struggle. I stayed this way, kicking and holding on, until Katima left the pool.
Outside, after my shower, I walked home slowly on my sore leg. Katima caught up with me as I came across Deveh Street, halfway between my house and the University. She was riding a red bike, her gym bag clipped to a rack over her rear tire, and slowing down to pace herself beside me, said “I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I tend to blurt things out.” She apologized again for her reference to Tee. “I’m sorry if I put my foot in it. What I meant to say is that I think your tower’s fantastic. We should all build monuments.”
Dressed in a blue t-shirt and beige shorts, her hair still wet and combed straight, she straddled the sides of her bike, started talking briefly then about my work at Bameritan Samaritan, only to stop suddenly and confide her own story. “I was thirteen during the War of the Winds. My father was a farmer, a supporter of Kenefie. At night sometimes NBDF rebels came from the hills and asked for food which we gave them. One morning, we found a wounded soldier in our garden. My father carried him into the house, cleaned and stitched the hole in his side. The man had a high fever and slept for several days.
“When the rebels came again, my father refused to let them take the soldier away. There was an argument and one of the men went to the bed and grabbed the soldier by his arm, reopening his wound. My father stopped him, covered the soldier’s side with his fingers, shouted at the others to remember what we were fighting for. Eventually they backed away, agreed to interrogate the soldier at our house, and convinced he was of no use to them, left after an hour with six sacks of our food.
“The War ended and the NBDF offered amnesty. My father drove the soldier to the hospital.” Katima squeezed the handlebars on her bike. “A week later three policemen showed up at our farm and charged my father with aiding the enemy. The complaint was eventually dropped, but neighbors and merchants would no longer deal with us. My father said nothing in his defense. Our farm failed and he found a job as an apprentice cobbler under a false name. That winter he worked in a basement cutting old leather treated in formaldehyde. A lung infection spread to his hear t and killed him the following spring. My mother had family in Veritone and we went to live with my uncle. When I enrolled at the University four years later, I learned half my tuition was paid for by a one-time soldier working then in Gabaroon. ‘To cover what was covered,’ the note he wrote said.”
Katima moved the front tire of her bike back and forth. “We all have stories, don’t we, André?” It was true, I knew, and this I told her. “About Tamina,” I began, but she stopped me by putting the wheel of her bike against my right leg, and changing the subject, asked “Do you ride?”
“What? No.”
“Not ever?”
“I haven’t in years.”
“But you can?” she patted the seat, reached for my briefcase. “It’s better than walking for your leg.”
“I don’t think,” I stepped away, only Katima insisted, “It will all come back to you. It’s like riding a bike,” she laughed and leaned the handlebars into my hip. I objected twice more, was outargued each time, and finally gave in. My balance was a wobble, leaving me to pedal cautiously while Katima trotted alongside. “You’re doing great,” she cheered, watching as I maneuvered up the hill and down again into my drive. I set the bike by my front porch and walked to the curb where I waited for Katima who was just then coming over the hill. “You see? I told you,” she handed me back my briefcase. “Piece of cake. How’s the leg?”
“It feels good.”
“You should ride more often,” she encouraged me, smiled as I told her about the old brown three-speed of Ali’s still out back. The top of my tower rose above the rooftops. I thought of inviting Katima for a drink, in appreciation for treating my leg, but felt uneasy and said instead, “Yes, well, I should get inside. I have some work. There are things I need to do.”
Katima pretended not to hear, and looking up at my tower, asked “Do you mind?” She followed the path around my side lawn into the backyard where I watched her disappear for a moment behind the tower. The shadows in the yard passed over my house and through the kitchen window as Katima came back around and stood in front of me. I lowered my eyes, said “Yes, well, goodnight,” and took two steps toward my house only to have my bad leg buckle.
As I stumbled, Katima caught my hand. “It’s alright, André,” she squeezed my fingers. “Really.” She pointed up toward the top of my tower and the scaffolding secured by rods and hooks. “Look at that. The whole thing is nothing but a dangle. All of it, and yet every time you climb, you somehow make it back down.” She did not release my hand, reminded me then of yesterday at the pool, how she explained the necessity for isolating my injury, the importance of learning to relax, float and kick, the exertion difficult yet healing. “You hold on, and then you let go, and before you know it you’re like a fish swimming in water again.”
I did not get home from Emilo’s until 1:00 a.m., and dog tired, slipped into bed. Katima slept with her arms spread half on my side of the sheet. I called her twice that evening to let her know what was happening, and glad to be home, I str oked her hair. She stirred and reached, and still asleep, embraced me.
When the alarm went off, I moved stiffly, hung over and sore from all the lifting done at Emilo’s last night. Katima fixed tea and toast while I showered under cold water which did little more than chill my aching head. We parted with plans to meet for a late lunch, and exhausted still, I debated taking my car or riding my bike to work. I usually followed Roland Avenue through the Plaza to my office, stopping to knock on Emilo’s door, but this morning I assumed he’d be dozing off the effects of the anisette, and stayed on the numbered boulevards before arriving at my building just south of the University.
The roads in the capital were rutted and rattled the wheels of my bike. During Dupala’s first term in office, the streets were sealed with an oil based tar manufactured in Bamerita. Two years ago, under Teddy, an American company was contracted to add an additional layer of gilsonite. Special international loans were provided to cover the cost, money Teddy appropriated and deposited in private accounts. The gilsonite acquired was low grade, the roads now grooved and split through much of the capital and beyond. I spent the morning handling claims, reviewing my financial figures, trying to determine how close my business was to going under. People came early, family members of the dead or injured, beneficiaries in need of their checks. I phoned Emilo around noon but got no answer. A few minutes later, Davi Suntu poked his head inside my office and said, “We need to talk.”
I’d known Davi since our student days, was there as
he planned and subsequently founded Suntu Husbandry and Farming Group. The Group leased wasteland for the raising of chickens and pigs, expanded in time into food processing, corn and vineyards. When Teddy overthrew Dupala, Davi’s taxes were tripled, tariffs attached to the Group’s contracts, bribes and kickbacks imposed as the cost of doing business. Rather than be bullied out of the market, Davi created Suntu Savings and Loan which secured private capital to keep the Group solvent. Unamused, Teddy had the Ministry of Treasure file false charges against Davi, Suntu S & L and the Group. A series of hearings followed. Our friend Josh Durret provided legal counsel, guided Davi through the catalog of corruption in Teddy’s courts.
Three minutes after Davi arrived we were driving south toward the Plaza, the ruts in the road bouncing us hard on the seats. Along the way I struggled with what Davi told me, touched my mouth, ears and eyes, angry with myself for having left Emilo alone last night. “I should have stayed with him.”
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