by Zeilig, Leo;
‘I’m a doctor,’ Viktor lied.
‘I see.’ Blondie sounded excited. ‘You’re one of us.’
‘Not really. It’s public health. All social science. I’m out of touch, I haven’t practised for years.’ Why had he lied?
‘You’re still a doctor,’ Blondie reassured him. ‘How’s your sleep?’
‘I fall asleep, but wake and then can’t get back to sleep. It’s then that I start to fall apart, even the guillotine doesn’t help. Destructive thoughts.’
‘That’s normal. I am thinking of a standard selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. I would normally go for Prozac, but for the sleep we could take a more traditional route, a tricyclic antidepressant. What do you think of amitriptyline? Old-fashioned, I know, but you will sleep.’
‘Good choice,’ Viktor said, nodding his head knowingly. He thought again about Jack.
‘So we’ll go the amitriptyline route,’ Blondie repeated.
‘I can’t stop thinking about the past. The dead,’ Viktor said vaguely. ‘About Jack. I keep thinking about Jack.’
‘Who’s Jack?’
‘Jack Slomin. Jack died last week.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Jack shouldn’t have died. Our family friends are all dying. Iris, then Ruth, Joe. I can’t stop thinking about them. What happens when they’re all dead?’ Viktor spoke quickly, staring ahead.
‘Maybe you should see someone you can talk to about this.’ Blondie uncrossed his legs, sat straight in his chair.
Viktor’s shoulders hunched forward and he put his head in his hands. His mouth was dry. ‘I don’t have a sex drive any more. I can’t even ... you know, what do you call it ...’
‘Masturbate?’ Blondie offered.
‘Yes, and my, my, my ... you know ... our ...’
‘Penis?’
‘Yes, my penis isn’t working.’
Point 1: Forgetting the names of everyday objects.
‘Depression does tend to kill desire. That’s not unusual, we’re not robots.’
‘My problem is that I used to masturbate regularly, compulsively. Now, not at all.’
Blondie shifted in his seat, pulled his glasses off, cleaned them with the hem of his jumper.
‘What if I said,’ Viktor continued, maintaining his flat, level tone, staring ahead, ‘that before this depression I was an obsessive-compulsive masturbator?’
‘Well, there is nothing wrong with masturbating. How often, exactly?’
‘At least once a day, sometimes twice.’
‘Can we settle on these antidepressants? I can also set up some counselling for you.’
‘But surely it’s better that I’m not masturbating now, as I was?’
‘Well, how would you feel if I said that compulsive behaviour like that might get in the way of developing healthy relationships?’
‘I would feel criticised, ashamed. Of course I have meaningful relationships. I have a daughter, for example.’
Blondie wheeled his chair under his desk, pulled the keyboard forward and started to type. ‘Well,’ he said, still moving his fingers, ‘what would you say if I told you that compulsive masturbating is not a problem – that perhaps masturbating represented a forward movement?’
At last Viktor’s stream of thoughts and words was stilled. He straightened himself in the chair and turned to the doctor. ‘Perhaps you’re depraved, doctor,’ he joked.
‘Perhaps,’ the doctor replied, smiling.
There was stillness between them, punctuated only by the satisfying, plastic click of the keyboard. The thicket of worry began to fade, Jack, the dead, his chaotic disorder ... the early signs of dementia. Point 4: Have you noticed that your family and friends have started to die? Have you started to think more about the dead than the living? Do you fixate on flaccid, dying, out-of-sight genitals rather than living, erect tissue?
‘I’m prescribing amitriptyline and a course of six therapy sessions – though there’s going be a delay with these. CBT.’
The doctor stood and walked to the door. Viktor followed. They shook hands. Blondie commented, ‘I will also make sure your records are changed. They have you down as Mr Isaacs.’
Chapter Three
One of Biko’s ideas was to get the students to march to the Reserve Bank in the centre of Bulawayo. There was no other place in the southern city so charged, so culpable. Even the old man deferred, in hushed tones, to the Reserve Bank – the ultimate arbiter of all demands for redistribution, the state’s crypt of stolen loot. The day’s climactic crescendo, its crashing victory, would come when the students – and whoever else they’d managed to pick up on the protest – would hammer on the reinforced doors of the country’s vault. And if they could get inside ...
Despite Biko’s intentions to keep this plan from the Society of Liberated Minds in Harare and in particular Nelson, news had leaked north. Late in the night before the action Nelson fumbled on his phone, feeling the unusual sensation of panic as he texted Biko.
Biko. I want to state that I am not opposed to any protest OUTSIDE the Reserve Bank. But you must be aware that the Reserve Bank employs guards armed with machine guns (i.e. live ammunition). I very strongly urge comrades NOT to try to occupy or storm the bank in any way as there is the real possibility of comrades being killed. Any such action is suicidal and reckless. We do not need our members unnecessarily killed. Please, Biko, see sense.
Biko was curt in his reply.
What is the difference between this action and storming police HQ, which we have done many times?
Calming himself, steadying the phone, Nelson replied laboriously, as though he was providing comments on a student paper.
Biko. The difference is that bank guards are not trained to restrain protesters. They are trained only to shoot with live ammunition, not stun grenades, shields, water cannon, tear gas or rubber bullets. Just live ammunition. They are trained to shoot anyone who is there illegally. THEY ARE TRAINED TO AIM FOR THE CHEST AND HEAD. They will not issue orders or ask questions first. A bank contains money, which is a critical part of the capitalist system. They will kill to defend it. I do not know who has called the action but I can only repeat my urgent plea. Please do NOT try to breach the Reserve Bank.
Nelson knew who had called the demonstration, and he knew that Biko was the only person in the Southern fucking Hemisphere who would suggest attempting to occupy a central bank – even its regional office.
Biko felt the logic of Nelson’s words seep insidiously into his decision-making. Yet he resisted, typed hard on the keys of his phone and hit send.
Again, you presume that we would not consider our own safety. The plan is surely to go as far as is safe. Do you really think they’re just going to shoot at peacefully protesting students on their doorstep? I think you are overstating your case. I will personally move as far forward as is safe. Again, your negativity is disappointing.
Nelson hesitated, put his phone next to him on the sofa and took a mouthful of cheap wine. The wine didn’t calm him and do its normal, reliable work – he was still panicking.
I only want the best way forward in these exciting times, Biko!
*
Viktor felt his life had been taken over by Rosa. The hours spent changing nappies; the loud midnight howl that would wake both of them, sitting up in bed shocked, as though they’d never heard her cry before. The sounds of her night fears seemed louder than her small body should be able to make. Her fear of the night and nothingness. Her Being Towards Death. From her pushchair Rosa saw London faces, hanging jowls and mouths cast that way by the natural downward pull of England on their bodies and emotions.
‘She sounds as though she’s being killed.’ Nina turned on her side and flicked the switch.
‘She realises she’s alive,’ Viktor said.
‘What?’ Nina asked. Rosa’s crying rose and fell as she gasped for air between her tears.
‘She wakes up,’ Viktor found his slippers, pushed in his feet, ‘and re
members in a second what existence is, and then she cries.’
‘Rubbish. She just gets scared,’ Nina snapped.
‘But why?’ Viktor unhooked the towelling dressing gown from the door, his father’s hand-me-down. The sleeves rode up his arms, the bottom swung untied around his thighs. Standing in it he felt calmer, comforted – his heart slowed, stopped pounding.
‘Because she gets scared of the dark,’ Nina repeated more calmly.
‘Yes, and of life.’
‘Only you’re scared of life, Viktor.’
‘We all are. Maybe she cries because she knows how much people suffer.’
‘Would anyone else think such a thing?’
‘I’m coming, sweetie,’ Viktor cried. ‘Daddy’s coming.’ Rosa’s sobbing quieted, gave way to deep, tearful hiccups. The chorus of howls from her throat fell back into her chest.
‘So you’re saying,’ Nina continued, ‘that children detect a pitch of sadness in the world. Like dogs.’
‘Not children. Rosa. Perhaps that’s her burden.’ Viktor swung the door open and left the room, calling in front of himself as he stumbled along the corridor, knocking into the walls. ‘I’m coming, darling. I’m here.’
The whole of Rosa’s first two years of life contained her unending suffering. Her crinkled, newborn face had been furious, Viktor thought, from the moment she’d first seen him waiting for her in the hospital, his glasses off, staring down at Nina’s dilated, bloodied vagina. Then there had been her relentless crying, her mouth open, the toothless, pink gums declaring her disgruntlement, hunger, pain, discomfort. In the first months she would sound her distress and he would sweat, remove his jumper, pace the room. When it was too much Viktor would sit on the toilet, the lid down, his hands holding his face and cry. He communed with Rosa using his own tears. Later, Rosa would be in his arms, hanging onto him like a sprig of ivy, the sadness passed, the night settled, and they’d fall asleep, folded together, their suffering ended.
Viktor’s heart swollen, his breath obstructed, he’d hear Tosca, speak and sing the words, struggling, stumbling in his bad opera Italian, his accent scratching and abusing the words:
Amor che seppe a te vita serbare
ci sarà guida in terra, e in mar nocchiere,
The love that found the way to save your life
shall be our guide on earth, our pilot on the waters.
His daughter purred in his arms, hovering just out of sleep, looking at Viktor, who sat arched like a shepherd’s staff, craning over her. A slight smile creased her cheeks; he fancied they sang softly together.
Each time he tried to lay her in the cot she’d wake, her broad, round eyes would spring open and her chest expand, readying her lungs for complaint. Viktor would straighten his back and bring her again into his lap, muttering, ‘And in harmonious flight the spirit soars to the ecstasy of love.’ Only when she was fully lost to sleep, thirty minutes later, could he lay her down and return to the bedroom, his own sleep emptied from him.
‘What do you sing to her?’ Nina asked when he came into the bedroom.
‘It’s not really singing. I normally just speak the song.’
Nina was sitting up in bed, the pillows arranged behind her, a book spread on her lap, her phone in one hand. ‘So?’
‘The words are from Tosca.’ Viktor let the dressing gown slide off his shoulders and fall to the floor. ‘They come at the end of the opera when Mario Cavaradossi is about to be led away – before he is shot, before Tosca throws herself to her death, they sing together. I think Rosa likes it.’ Viktor pulled the cover back.
‘Do you think it’s appropriate to sing a death aria to our daughter to get her back to sleep?’
‘Oh, but it’s not—’ Viktor turned, excited, to Nina. ‘It’s about love and life. You see, they have planned it, they think Mario won’t die. This is their last love song. “And harmonies of song. Triumphant the sound trembles with new hope.” They are going to cheat death – Mario and Tosca will be together. Do you see?’
‘And which one of you is Tosca?’
‘I don’t know. I sing both parts. It’s more the sentiment that Rosa likes, “the spirit soars to the ecstasy of love”.’ Viktor dropped back into the bed and pulled the cover to his neck, his long, fleshless feet exposed.
‘Well, if it works,’ Nina said, yawning.
‘It does.’
‘I want to read you something, darling.’ Nina picked up her phone.
‘What?’
‘Just listen.’ Nina’s face was lit by her phone. ‘An important project that is currently on your plate requires a very dramatic performance by you. You want to prove to everyone that you are worthy of being where you are. You don’t want to disappoint anyone. And you don’t want to let a dream slip through your fingers. Relax. You have what it takes.’
‘Who sent you that?’
‘No one. It’s your star sign. Libra, right? I get yours and mine, Gemini, on my phone every morning. I’ve told you, I find them insightful. They come through in the middle of the night, about the time Rosa wakes up.’
‘Do you pay for them?’ Viktor asked.
‘Don’t you think it’s uncanny?’ Nina ignored his question.
‘What?’
‘The reading: “You don’t want to disappoint anyone”.’
‘No. It could apply to anyone.’
‘But it doesn’t. It’s you.’ Nina dropped her book to the floor, placed the phone on the bedside table, retraced the path to the lamp. The room disappeared. ‘You’re the only troubled soul in the house – with your opera, your hopeless causes, your desperate attempts to please everyone.’
Instead of reading her book, Nina had listened to Viktor in the next room, coaxing Rosa to sleep. Now she moved to him in the bed, put her head on his chest, her leg over his and felt his tall, skeletal body, unprotected by muscle or fat. ‘I think you are a good father.’
‘How can any of us be good parents in such a world?’
‘Oh, shut up, darling,’ Nina chided affectionately.
‘I’m too affected by her suffering.’
‘She doesn’t suffer. She’s a baby.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ Nina said adamantly, then softly, ‘I love you, Viktor.’
Chapter Four
Anne-Marie was isolated. One method to shut out the clamouring, the demands on her life for conformity and order, was simply to allow very few people in. It was brutal – and it worked. She spoke to her family – her uncle, an aunt, even her mother – on the phone and rarely visited. For four years she had told them half-truths about her life with Nelson: that this was a developing relationship, that he was a good, radical nationalist, that he understood the continent, knew its history. Then she threw them scraps – mostly lies – when they asked her questions about him on the phone. ‘Sister,’ her friends in Gombe would ask, ‘will he travel with you this year, will we meet him?’ To friends and family in France and Belgium she said, ‘Nous envisageons de voyager ensemble cette année, mais il est occupé. Je l’espère, nous pouvons faire le voyage au Congo.’ She chose her friends carefully. She knew what they would say and that they would understand.
When he was in Zimbabwe her strange confidant was Tendai. For the first months of his visit, washed up like a prophet, almost delirious, on the shores of Harare, with Nelson’s address written on a worn, dirty scrap of paper – raging, pummelling the air, working himself up – she had kept her distance. She was used to these refugees stumbling into Nelson’s flat, the HQ of the Society – new recruits, with their complex Southern African global traumas, their tottering comprehension – or lack of it – of the world.
Tendai was different, altogether more determined, angrier than anyone she’d met. He forced Nelson to gather up his arguments, putting him constantly on guard, exhausting him. Anne-Marie resisted Tendai, ignored him, pretended he wasn’t there. When he stayed and she realised it was impossible to ignore him, she challenged him, took him on – needli
ng, prodding and mocking. This was precisely the dynamic they both needed. Tendai’s sinewy, taut presence, the physical impression he left of stretched leather, his apparent disregard for his appearance and Anne-Marie’s scornful distance left them free of sexual ambiguity, of any faint, treacherous attraction. Instead, they had something completely unusual and extraordinary: intimacy liberated from sex, and an almost improbable capacity for honesty. They fell into each other with a hunger for connection that neither had ever known before. Tendai’s whole ravelled understanding of his imprisonment, his years of captivity, his confusion, could somehow find expression when they huddled in a corner of Nelson’s flat after a meeting or sat up into the small hours in her flat, where they spoke late in the week. Tendai was quickly granted rare permission to spend the night.
Anne-Marie had found a person shorn of the layers of silent assumptions and expectation that, in the global epidemic, had infected everyone she knew. She could speak about everything and, strangely, his contradictory, argumentative responses always satisfied her.
Unable to find regular work, after living at Nelson’s, with Society members in Chitungwiza and at Anne-Marie’s, Tendai had decided to travel to London on a visa and money he had been, incomprehensibly, able to secure. He could not be reasoned with. When Nelson’s great marshalling of words and arguments failed to bend his will, Anne-Marie left Tendai with his decision.
Sitting in the early-evening haze of her living room two nights before he left, taking up her sofa, his legs sprawled, possessing the space, his tone was calm: ‘Just because I am going, don’t think it means we’ll give up our sagas.’ Saga was Tendai’s adopted term to describe their conversations. ‘I will be away, but we will talk and email. Nightly, if we have to – our sagas take all night. If you need me. Right?’
Anne-Marie had expressed no opinion about his decision to leave, nor had she enquired about his contacts, the visa. She had given him money, which he accepted without bother or thanks. Her attitude was informed by a continent that was in a state of permanent leaving – of migration and death. Given his options, it was a sensible, entirely reasonable decision, but under any circumstances it would not have warranted judgement. She knew that Tendai would always pass periodically from one place, one climate, to another. As the migrating birds travelled south, he moved north.