An Ounce of Practice

by Zeilig, Leo;

  Biko knew Hopewell was dying, quicker than Samuel and him. HIV was a topic they’d tried to avoid – until Biko, with his giant shoes, had crushed this taboo too. Hopewell was sick and the prison guards had taken the pills his wife delivered and sold them. Hopewell’s face was pale and hollow, his fatless body meant he couldn’t find a comfortable position on the mattress they shared.

  Hopewell started to cough – a dry, hacking cough that shook his entire body, as though he was trying to exhume his lungs, regurgitate each of his organs, clear his being of the clogged and diseased furnace. He inhaled deeply between coughs. His chest ached unbearably as the air travelled into his lungs.

  Nothing silenced Biko except Hopewell’s life rattling precariously in these fits. Biko jumped up from the bed and stepped over Hopewell. The coughing subsided. Hopewell wiped his bloodied lips on his sleeve and fell back on the wall, focused only on recovering his breath, keeping upright. Biko hammered the doors with his fists, his arms working all their strength against the iron door. The metal plate on the door echoed like a kettledrum. The sound filled the corridor, waking the other prisoners, who shouted and cursed.

  ‘You bastards!’ Biko howled. ‘You are killing him. Give back his pills or contend with me, feel my wrath. Listen to him, he’s fucking dying.’ Even with the medicine Biko knew it was useless. Unless he was eating properly he wouldn’t keep the pills down and he’d continue to lose weight. He’d still die.

  ‘Leave it, Biko,’ Hopewell said softly. ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘Come on, Biko.’ Samuel took one of Hopewell’s arms and indicated Biko to the other. Together they hauled him across the few steps to the bed, laid him down and covered him. Hopewell tried to resist, to push the blanket off his body and get up, but the coughing had sapped his reserves of strength. The colour drained from him, dragging his features down, turning his eyes lifeless. The skin on his arms sagged.

  Biko and Samuel both felt desperate standing over Hopewell. Hopewell looked up at Biko like a child, expecting a formulation of words, a philosophy that would soothe him, but Biko dropped his gaze and turned his head away.

  ‘Goddamn it, I need to shit again.’ Samuel undid his trousers, moved to the open bowl, dropped on the toilet and sighed. Hopewell muttered, ‘What does “wrath” mean, Prof?’ Each man smiled.

  *

  In the middle of the week, the stream of virtual solidarity, the social media campaign, gushed forth, breaking the banks, flooding the fields in the distance, rushing unstoppable over the great citadels of real power in London and Harare. #FreeBiko was trending all over the world. Viktor felt elated. The walk from the flat to town was pleasing. Viktor strolled with a noticeable spring in his step. It might have been a disaster that had drawn him in, but now he was in his element, his towering, unconquerable best. He swung his arms, felt his lean muscles, tensed his chest, breathed deeply into all of his outstretched limbs. He thought that this must be what it feels like to be a man. A whirlwind of temporary euphoria surged through him and gave him – a man unaccustomed to feelings of confidence – a slightly odd appearance: his loose limbs now tense, his ambling, habitual doubt given direction and focus. He walked Harare’s streets like a cowboy, a lunatic on a dangerous high, wanting to be shot. Daring the bullet.

  Once the coffee was ordered, his feet planted correctly on the floor, he opened his laptop, fired it up, connected to Louis’s fast, password-locked Wi-Fi connection. He opened the browser, sat back, his shoulders opened wide, and looked around, made eye contact with the customers he knew and smiled. His Facebook page, commandeered for the campaign, buzzed pleasingly: 270 notifications. He took a gulp of coffee. His eyes fell immediately on Nina Thompson commented on your wall. Viktor slumped forward, his form bracketing the computer. He wetted his mouth and opened the post. Nina had written:

  Trigger Warning: Imposter Alert. Viktor Isaacs is a liar and a fake. He uses people, abuses his daughter and is self-obsessed. His campaign is a front for his damaged ego and spirit. He is abusive, violent and a threat to children.

  Then, below this, Nina had posted a picture of Viktor, a grotesque one she’d taken years ago of Viktor emerging from the bathroom, his hair in the air, face flushed, eyes wide and mouth caught in a grimace. They had laughed, he remembered, at how ridiculous he looked. ‘A goblin,’ Nina had said, ‘no, an ogre. My ogre.’ Needling him, teasing, tiptoeing up to his face and kissing him, loving him. Under the image Nina had typed, ‘Can this man be trusted with your campaign?’ Viktor felt the collapse, the truth in her condemnation, as certain as his hope had felt just seconds before. Stumbling, his hand shaking, he hovered the cursor over the corner of the post and hit delete.

  He blocked her account from his Facebook page. She posted the same comment and photo to the campaign’s public page; he deleted them there. Then in the comments of an article on Mutations. The next day she tweeted it at him. A day after that, another tweet from a different account. Sometimes her friends retweeted them. He began to search every aspect of his online presence daily, sometimes twice a day, heart always racing, never knowing where she would turn up next. Once he even found a post about him on LinkedIn.

  Each time, with each new-old accusation, his doubt about himself grew and he became more certain of his crimes, his diagnosis: deceitful, abusive, violent and grotesque.

  He could taste her loathing in his mouth, the bile rising in his throat, and he would rush to the bathroom as his bowels opened and out he flowed.

  Anne-Marie’s wisdom appeared clear, certain, like the Zimbabwean skies, her sentences coherent, uncluttered with the chaos of his doubt, the self-hate that clouded his thinking – her uncomplicated radiance that he was destroying with his encumbrances of thought. His hopelessness took with such force everything he was given, each new lesson, every experience, grasping Anne-Marie and throwing her into his sweat and dirt.

  Calmly, at night, Nina’s messages saved on his desktop, Viktor would show them to Anne-Marie – this complete exposure was new to him, a total release.

  Unruffled, unbuttoning her blouse, towelling down her perspiration, splashing water from the kitchen sink onto her face, her shoes kicked off by the front door, Anne-Marie would lie on the bed and look up at Viktor. He was now fraught again, pregnant with his news, pacing with his computer, waiting for Anne-Marie to settle, for this routine of arrival to be completed so she would be rested and he could finally bring his open laptop to her and point to the file.

  ‘Not again. Again and again and again,’ she’d say. ‘Keep moving, Viktor, keep your eye on the campaign. On Biko.’ After unhurried minutes reading the messages, she’d say: ‘I hope you haven’t responded, mudiwa. You must let this come out, all of it, let her évacuer, she needs to get this stuff out. The feelings of rejection and pain in every word she writes is unbearable. These words’ – she lifted the computer closer to her, squinted, and read – ‘“Viktor Isaacs has ruined his life and broke his daughter’s heart with his absence. He is a hypocrite who cares for no one but himself. He is lost”.’

  Anne-Marie had already spent some time questioning Viktor about Nina’s accusations – were they in any way true? Overwrought, anxious to see himself clearly, she hadn’t received a proper answer from him. So Anne-Marie, a feminist accustomed to believing women, had made a balance judgement of this aspect of her lover’s recent past.

  Lowering the computer, refocusing: ‘She is right to be angry. You left. She is the sole carer, bringing up your daughter without a sister, cousin, extended family to help her. But Viktor, listen to me. Viktor, look at me, sit down. Stop pacing around. Sit. You must allow this anger to run its course, let the ... deuil, the mourning, to pass. It will go. And for your daughter – and for Nina – you must keep moving. Push through the inertia, the paralysis of your questioning, to action. Once you have found that movement you will be strong again for Rosa. Find your way first, Viktor.’

  Viktor sat at the foot of the bed, a hand rubbing Anne-Marie’s feet, finally looking hard in
to her eyes for this lesson, this talking-to. She continued, ‘Got it? Now, here’s what we’ll do. Each time you receive these messages, show them to me if you can’t see what to do. Even if you think you can. Do you hear me?’

  So the routine was now set. Each time he received a message from Nina, an email or a tirade on a campaign platform, Viktor would read them, feel the lacerations, the deep sting of the words as they dug into his flesh, take a screenshot and then delete them from the public forum. Later, he would pace the flat in the hour before Anne-Marie came home, hungry for her reassurances, then follow her around with the computer folded like a Bible and Nina’s defamations on his desktop until she was ready to receive him.

  Viktor, Rosa cried for three hours last night after Skyping with you. I’m not sure how to help her with her grief, longing, confusion. She misses you and feels like she has to rank her love and doesn’t accept that people can love more than one person. And she still really wishes both her parents were together. Please don’t talk to her about this. I just wanted to give you an update. N

  *

  Feverish, uncomfortable, Viktor hadn’t been able to concentrate all day. His work had nagged at him. He stared dumbly at the screen, flicked between pages, articles, tweets. Even the dull, ever-present thunder of pain for Biko that normally coursed through him was not present. He tried to write, to think, to commence, but he was in the grip of restlessness. He needed to know what it was, what thing had him, yet he felt only the day’s constant, insistent sun, the pestering nothingness. He tried to fight the feeling, got up from his table at Louis’s and ordered more coffee, then thought he needed exercise and went outside and walked to the empty parking lot behind the café. He ran, circled the abandoned car park, lifting his knees high, stretched, jumped into a star and felt his heart. He tasted his pulse in his mouth, but still the day would give him nothing.

  Viktor’s thinking spiralled. He felt lost. The arc of his thoughts spun furiously downward. What was the significance of all this human action, this activity – to what purpose? And what of Viktor’s own words? What would become of his projects?

  Nothing would last. There would be nothing left of the Isaacses or the Lumumbas, nothing but a few decades of heartbreak and failure. And what of Biko? He is suffering, Viktor thought, but soon enough we will all suffer and then it will be over for us too. Over for everything, everyone – so what is all of this noise for? The screen flashed intermittently, friend requests, posts, campaign retweets, comments. The whole juggernaut of activity that he had started chirped mechanically at him; the part of modern life where he had sunk himself, sought meaning, bayed and cornered him – a total, complete human loss.

  Anne-Marie was working in Gweru. Viktor spent the evening alone. The night cleared some of the misery from the day; the mood of despair lifted. He peeled off the top sheet on Anne-Marie’s bed, dropped his clothes to the floor, fell on the mattress and adjusted the pillows behind him. The night was good. He felt embraced by the heat. The curtains billowed and flapped lazily in the breeze and the sounds of the neighbours entered the window and filled the room. He opened his computer and began to play La Traviata. He pulled out the headphones and the music jumped into the room, spun into the air, took control.

  Opera was part of the sickness that had Viktor in its grip. It enveloped and overwhelmed him, drew over him the comfort of its more beautiful and awful tragedy. Verdi had known that life was concentrated around the great and terrible extremes of existence: radiant, temporary joy and destitution, destruction, death. Viktor thought that the only art that mattered moved quickly between these poles; the life that happened in the space separating joy and death – the ordinary mayhem and the tedium of daily life, the slow agony of existence – was essentially irrelevant.

  Verdi understood this heightened, vital sense of life, and his operas moved furiously between these two states. Viktor knew the passaggio was not just a philosophical place, but an actual transition, or bridge, in vocal range for opera singers: the movement of the song, the note, from chest to throat and then head – from statement, explanation, to passion and intensity. It was here, in these passages, that love was declared, passion unleashed and life sacrificed. No matter how brilliant the singer, there was always a break and lift, a division between registers rather than full unification. And the break, for Viktor, was the point, the transition, the key, for it was here where life could become exultant, could break down, rejoice and die. You must make a turning point of your life – or it is nothing.

  La Traviata obsessed him, with its quick, tragic movement between love and obsession and tragic finality. His fantasy, that night, as he lay on Anne-Marie’s bed feeling the music gradually chase away his own anxieties, was that he was singing the title role of Alfredo; that he had become the bourgeois playboy and the beautiful clarity of expression could at last be his. Cleansed, letting the music wash him, the waves of melody, the orchestra subdued by his voice, even his private catastrophes seemed like nothing compared to the drama in the opera. He wagged his feet, moved the computer next to him on the bed, rocked his head in time to the music, comforted himself, then took his place on the stage. Love is the very breath of the universe itself.

  As Viktor reclined, Alfredo, proud and brave, fell for the frail, beautiful courtesan, Violetta. When Alfredo declared his love for her, she replied that her intention was to live for pleasure alone, untied by love. From joy to joy, forever free, I must pass madly from joy to joy. My life’s course shall be forever in the paths of pleasure. Alfredo ordered Violetta to love him. He broke her with his declaration of love, given like an order, and from this began the long descent in which her old freedom and independence would be destroyed.

  Viktor saw La Traviata as a story of resistance – Alfredo creating love where it had not been. In Alfredo’s command of Violetta, he saw his own destruction of Rosa – of all the women in his life. Alfredo captures Violetta’s heart, beats back her resistance and her will to be free; they live together outside the city and sing the ardour, the prison, of their ebullient spirits. The music filled Anne-Marie’s small bedroom, the scene of their life together, their old lives abandoned for each other.

  On the bed Viktor started to move his arms, to conduct the music, imagining himself facing the audience. As the music changed, the action moved back to the city, where the couple had to return. The fear mounted as the opera moved gradually, inextricably, towards ruin. The old world gathered itself up, built in the background, the poison of bourgeois society a hypocrisy that pulled Alfredo and Violetta into its old embrace. Viktor felt sleep drain from him, his pulse beating in time to the music.

  The couple were together in Paris, but a cruel rumour had spread that they had separated. Obeying a society that refused to accept their love, Violetta believed she must release Alfredo from his ties to her. What was she, anyway, in the nineteenth century – a courtesan, a call girl, a high-class whore? What could she give Alfredo except ruin? The action moved to a party in Paris – gambling tables, rich men in dinner jackets. Viktor felt the music swell, turn, lift, and the terrible inevitability of opera, a feeling he hated as a child, took root.

  Alfredo heard the lies and rumours of Violetta’s duplicity. He thought the philandering baron was behind it and that this was who Violetta wanted. He confronted her, asking, Is it him? Is it the baron you love?

  Yes, I do, she whispered. Infected, taken by the music, by the scene, as though it was the first time he had heard it, Viktor felt his heart lift, felt it beat in his mouth. Suddenly, only minutes from consummation, everything was destroyed – I wish to cleanse myself of such a stain, Alfredo screamed. He denounced his lover and called in the guests to witness his humiliation of her. He broke her, and himself too.

  With the destruction done, Viktor felt comforted – closer, somehow, to a sort of truth. The proximity of death is in everything we are, he thought. This was Verdi’s genius. Next to every act of life – love, hope, expectation – is death. Death is the word between e
ach word we speak, the image between each image and only the speed of life hides its presence. The final act was playing. Viktor let the music crash over him. Life moves, he thought, so quickly that we are not aware of the existence of death in everything we do. He heard Violetta dying in the background of his thoughts: Now neither man nor demon, my angel, will ever be able to take you away. Viktor thought, I must return to this tomorrow, incorporate it somehow. I will solve this problem tomorrow.

  Finally, satisfied, relieved, he fell asleep.

  *

  There is nothing strange to Viktor about appearing on stage, preparing in the wings, practising the arias sotto voce. He knows the words, and in the infinite possibilities of the dream thinks he might be able to sing. He hears the muffled music, the rustle of activity as the stagehands and cast whisper around him. The audience are silent, but he can sense them, breathless, expectant, the rustle of their presence inches from the stage.

  He knows the opera. The music is coming from inside him, as if he is singing each part: Alfredo, Violetta, the Baron, the chorus. He feels his chest vibrate to the music; he moves to the melody. Suddenly Viktor is jolted, pushed by a sea of hands, onto the stage. He looks down at himself and he sees he’s dressed in a tailcoat, a stiff white shirt, a bow tie and riding boots. Alfredo. He feels handsome and wants to sing.

  Quickly he looks around him. The orchestra has started to play. In the half-room of gambling tables, Persian rugs, carafes of red wine, someone has just spoken. In front of him he sees Violetta and his heart lurches. There is an involuntary uprising of feeling. Something capsizes in him; he can’t hold on. He wants to cross the stage and touch her hair, run his hands down her neck, feel the lace of her dress – he wants to reassure her. Viktor realises that he must not ask the question, but he can’t stop himself. The order of life is already written. He knows he must sing it. His chest fills and chokes with sadness and he sings, ‘Was it the Baron?’