by Zeilig, Leo;
Now Viktor cried too. We’ll ride together on the Big Wheel. I promise. That’s what we’ll do. The photo sucked the air out of him, choked him with tears and remorse. He looked at the brown jumper he was wearing in the photo. Tears fell on the photo, wetting Rosa’s face again. What he had tried to suppress, clog with his writing, with Zimbabwe, the campaign, was the Rule of Life, his life, of the goddamn universe: not to part from her. Rosa had held him tightly that night, grabbed his hand, her nails pressing into his arm. The day at the fair was over just as it had started. And like the final choice she’d made, to ride once more on the train and walk home in the setting sun, Rosa knew that they could easily, if they wanted, decide not to fight any more and be together. Find a way through and refuse to let go.
Isn’t that what it all meant? Viktor now asked himself.
He dropped the photo to the floor and pushed it under the bed with his heel. He stood, straightened the covers, gathered up the scattered clothes and threw the dirty ones to the door for washing. He folded the others, placing them neatly on the bed.
*
Beside the pool, Anne-Marie spoke fluently, as though she had been rehearsing. ‘There is the strangest sensation, with you, of always being alone. You are only half present. A part of your mind is constantly absent. I’ve seen it, Vik: your lips composing your next article, the latest Facebook status. You seem to have given over a portion of existence to the internet. Sometimes it seems that is where you really live and feel and express yourself. Your measures of success, even for Biko, are the numbers of likes you receive or how extensive the comments are on your latest update. That’s why you could open up to me the way you did, because it was through that screen. If we’d met in person I doubt you would ever have approached me.’ Anne-Marie stumbled, paused. ‘You live by a laptop brightness, in a halo of screens. In meetings, in the day, in the toilet, always some message, email, blog post. You have abandonné, abandonné ta vie, for’ – Anne-Marie faltered – ‘some, some rêve, une rêve, a dreamworld, a sort of death. A small death.’
A breeze blew across the water, working up small waves; a miniature surf broke and spat against Viktor’s legs. His addiction to the world Anne-Marie described was worse than even she knew. He had hidden his longing for even their lovemaking to be over so that he could post another piercing, startling observation, spill more words over some theory. Did he really need to write another word on Sartre? Had the world not already had its say on Jean-Paul? Were there not enough essays and books on Fanon? On the bloody Nazis and Heidegger? The world did not need more books. The stock of answers was already available. All the solutions to the problems facing us are already present, but the continent and its people are unable to grasp them. Viktor couldn’t stop himself. Each living, breathing segment of the day needed its counter-substantiation online, to justify, to prove, to be. Even in Zimbabwe Viktor only felt truly alive when he was illuminated by his screens, the lifeless brightness of his phone and laptop. And now he had dragged Biko into this, his universe.
Viktor had reasoned that the present didn’t really exist. Since life moved constantly onward in a complex series of lurches and false starts into the future, there was only the future, with no honeymoon or consummation in the present. Time turned life into dust. In his fevered state he saw life travelling from memories of the past to a future filled by death.
Anne-Marie was right.
Still, Viktor defended himself. ‘Yes and no, Anne-Marie. The new media is overused, but it also connects us with each other – London and Harare, Cairo and New York. It gives us a connection to communities that might otherwise be invisible, inaccessible in our neoliberal world, when there is no money for airfares and no time off from labour. This is why I have become passionate about the fight to get us ... us activists to fight for internet freedom. It’s why the old man is so intent on monitoring it, checking our emails for insults.’ Viktor hunched his shoulders and stared into the dusk. He turned his hands over as if he was offering up this freedom in his open palms. ‘These devices of ours,’ he continued, ‘are proprietary, used to sell things, but darling, they have potential. Imagine how we could use them if we weren’t bound by capitalism.’ Viktor brought his feet out of the water and adjusted his position towards Anne-Marie.
‘We have in Zimbabwe, in London, in our possession the technological ability to access every book ever written, every painting, song, every recording of every opera, every corner of the planet. Imagine – every backstreet revolutionary, shack protester, Egyptian activist, can be in touch with each other. The only thing between us and real access for everyone to total information is capital. The commercialisation of the internet is no less a historical defeat than the enclosures of the commons in Europe and the colonisation of Africa. Do not dismiss the value of these digital commons, that we still control, to change the world if we fight and occupy them.’
Anne-Marie laughed loudly, shook her head aggressively. She enjoyed Viktor’s passion, the way his words piled up, falling out of his mouth, his saliva spraying her legs. Yet she didn’t know how she had managed to draw Viktor into this debate, when she had planned to make a swift denunciation and move on to the point.
Viktor’s passion had been aroused little in the past weeks except his insistence on turning everything, each conscious daytime breath, to Biko. This indulged his craving for distraction and turned every action to high dread. A pervasive obsession drove him on. She had seen it, each day: Viktor digging deeper into the grave. Recently he had not even wanted to raise his expectations. He welcomed each rejection, every refusal by a lawyer, politician or campaigner to help, as evidence of a plot to destroy the single unflawed individual who could have reversed the plunge and torn Mugabe from his throne. Somehow Biko was the only person who had remained untainted by life – no longer a person, a passionate, impulsive, often maddening human being, but a symbol of decisiveness to Viktor’s paralysis and confusion.
Anne-Marie worried about what could possibly be left of Viktor if he had already been so taken over by loss: Biko’s, Rosa’s, his parent’s, hers, his own. This impassioned engagement at the pool’s edge was a surprise to her. She sat up and let go of her knees.
‘Je ne suis pas d’accord, Viktor. Pas du tout. The campaign for online freedom is not as great as the struggle against colonialism. In my dreams for a new Zimbabwe, a new Congo and continent, we will spend less time inhalé, absorbed, by computers. The use of these, these screens, speak of crisis, mudiwa, the reasons why we can’t travel, why we remain imprisoned inside our borders. You want to fight for freedom of access so everyone can be turned into the living dead, like you. Slaves to a technology that you say will free us. Hah!’ Anne-Marie felt the power of her own reason lift her. ‘Skype, Facebook, Twitter, email, they all enslave us, but only once our lives, communities, families have been destroyed. Why do I have to tell you this? I thought you were the radical with a ton of theory.’
Anne-Marie was so convinced by her argument, the momentum of her words, that she had become angry that Viktor should be so wrong. She continued, ‘Sure, I want an archive of books and music, but if I believed in Nelson’s revolution, once we have one, our first liberation, your first act, will be away from our bloody laptops and phones. Then these tools you speak of will be débarrassé entirely. Life and work freed from this dependence. Your addiction.’ She became calm, then continued. ‘I love speaking to my family in Kinshasa, to my mother, but why can’t you see that this connection is about our loss and douleur ... the, the grief. Our lives are fragmented, broken by separation, whatever you call it.’ Talking about her family, she recovered her breath, her tone less insistent. ‘You know, Viktor, thirty years ago we could drive across the Congo, from here to Lusaka, Lubumbashi, and then buses, taxis, trains, to Kinshasa. Trains, Viktor, do you hear that? Nineteenth-century technology. But now we have Skype. Text messages, WhatsApp. Thank the Lord for your phone. Give me back our trains; give me one train, one journey, Lubumbashi to Kinshasa, for all your
smartphones. Mon royaume pour un train. No, Viktor, mudiwa, in my future this technology will find its correct place and serve us, not give us this, this ...’ Anne-Marie waved her hand over Viktor, his drying, half-wet body, his face, head, his aura, ‘this new slavery. More men like you.’
What was Viktor hiding from? How had he turned his life force into the slavery that Anne-Marie spoke of? About this enslavement she was right. His ear was blocked with water; he turned his head to the side and knocked it, pushed his finger into his ear, held his nose and blew. The water bubbled and fizzed against the eardrum.
‘What would Lenin make of Facebook and texting?’ Viktor asked.
‘You mean our Lenin, Nelson’s Lenin?’ Anne-Marie queried.
‘No. Vladimir. Lenin the Bolshevik,’ Viktor added.
‘Lenin?’ Anne-Marie shouted. ‘You’re not serious! Who cares what he would have made of it? No, sorry, désolée, you and Nelson care. I’m wrong.’
Viktor felt his pulse quicken. ‘Lenin spent a lot of his time smuggling hand-mimeographed papers into Russia. He created an entire network of clandestine distributors. The point I am making—’
‘Yes, please make it before I ask Stalin to shoot you.’
‘The point is that this technology has streamlined making papers, books, pamphlets. Sure it’s distracting, the instant gratification and validation is addictive, but human beings find a way. We adapt.’
Anne-Marie’s laughter was short, ironic, derisive. ‘Yes, we adapt to new oppressions. I deal with adaptation every day. I adapt to the old man, to the Third Chimurenga, to text-messaging rural households out of poverty. Did you hear that? We give our clients mobile phones so they can adapt.’
Viktor ran his tongue across his teeth. ‘Every great thinker in the nineteenth century thought the printing press meant the death of language.’
‘Facebook is not the printing press. Your blogs are not a great invention, Viktor.’
‘No, no, I’m not saying that. But it is the next linguistic shift, a technological turning point. We have to embrace these turning points, otherwise we’ll be lost and existence won’t mean anything. We won’t be able to communicate in the language of the twenty-first century, with the new generation, the young. I know I am right.’ As he spoke he genuinely thought he was. There was an easy rhythm to his logic. The plausibility of his argument carried him forward on snaking sentences until he had shed his doubts.
Anne-Marie stood up, the pale creases on her stomach visible; her tall, rounded form, still smelling of moisturiser, flickered into sepia against the darkening day. Viktor craned, his neck strained, he stretched to see her. ‘You’ve spoken to me about Rosa, the Skype calls,’ she said. ‘The tours she gives you of her room, the apartment. How your relationship with your daughter has become hanging out on a computer screen.’ Anne-Marie let out another short, single laugh. ‘You can have your technological turning point. Your life in the West. Keep it.’ With her hands on her hips, Anne-Marie shook her head. The plaits tumbled to her shoulders as she cast off the remaining drops of water. ‘Come on, Vlad,’ she said, offering Viktor her hand.
They were silent. The walk to the car, away from the pool, was solemn, their heads ringing with the words of their argument. As they drove back to the flat, Anne-Marie spoke. ‘I don’t know if I can make you happy, if anyone can. What I want to say is, it would be hard leaving you now, but we would both survive. Better that we do it now, if we need to, than later, when you will be in each step I take and I will be in yours.’ Anne-Marie shuddered from head to foot, felt the cold in the air. ‘Life needs tenacity, Viktor. Patient blows at the same point, until you really see change. Nelson has that relentlessness. So do the others, in their way: Lenin, Biko. If Nelson has his revolution, his revolt, whatever you want to call it—’
‘Sweetheart, that is not what Nelson argues.’ Viktor spoke urgently. ‘There are these things already, revolts, protests, revolutions. The point is to direct them and lead them. They exist here too, in Zimbabwe, in the Congo. You changed history in 2000. X-Party was almost toppled, only for the movement to be hijacked and stolen. The point is leadership, organisation, how we challenge the NGOs, the middle class, the professionals.’
Anne-Marie thought about her grandmother, Pauline, sitting on the steps to the front door, swaddled in a patterned cloth, a twist of material around her head, peeling vegetables, gutting fish, plucking live chickens, all the time shouting to friends and neighbours walking past the house. Patrice, she said, always wanted her out of the kitchen; he pleaded with her to leave some of the chores to the staff, but she never listened to him. She was unflinching in her impression of her husband as just another noisy man. She saw through the avant-garde city when she arrived in Leopoldville in the 1950s, the gyro-buses, the tall apartment buildings and highways, the intrusion of a foreign power. These riches dazzled her husband but gave the Congolese nothing.
Têtue comme moi, Anne-Marie thought.
This woman had been the one person in her life who drew her out, distracted her, made her heart race and the pulse sound in her ears – who held her, levelled the ground and steadied her grip. And now, now, unaccountably, an entire thought had planted itself in her head: the need, the desire even, for Viktor to meet her grandmother.
For years, when she was studying in Paris, she had made the calls to Kinshasa, to her grandmother, with an interpreter. In language shorn of sentimentality, Pauline spoke to her young granddaughter. ‘You are my children. All of you. When you come back to the Congo, I will make a big party for you and dance.’
And the day I arrived I shouted, Je suis là! Two hours after the plane had landed I was sitting next to her on the porch preparing for the party, sharing a cigarette. It was only the second time I had ever seen her.
Ignoring Viktor’s defence, his interruption, Anne-Marie went on, ‘After Nelson’s revolution you will need to continue, long afterwards, on the same consistent path. Yes? Understand, this is not what I want or what I am suggesting. If you can become immovable, fixed to one thing, to a single course, then I need to know. Not now, but soon. If you can’t, then just let me go to the Congo alone. You see, I need to know if you want this to evolve into something. You have to let me know. If not, then we should tear up the foundations now, or soon, avant que le travail nécessite machinerie lourde. You see, mudiwa, I have always known what I wanted, and you have already had too much turmoil; this time you need to get away intact – or stay and commit.’
The car windows were open. Though the breeze and the dusk were warm, Anne-Marie shivered all over. She hugged herself and tried to rub her arms free of goose pimples.
‘Anne-Marie. I want to go to the Congo with you.’
‘I don’t want an answer now. I’m tired. Let’s just get home.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Another day, another revelation. Today the thought that gripped Viktor was the question of regret. This tunnelling worm tore into his flesh each day; regret cleared away the past, clarified the future, laid down his character. That morning Viktor had mused, propped up in bed, one leg hanging over the side, his dopey, befuddled thinking beginning to drop away, the hard sinews of thought gradually coming into focus: I loved Nina, but I can only love her now. When I was with her, my last thought, literally the final thought, the one clear-headed insight that made me feel happy was the unaddled certainty, established from hard, deep reckoning, that I didn’t love her. I was relieved that the relationship could come to an end and I wouldn’t suffer and I would be free again.
In his darkened room, the morning heat already making his restful contemplation uncomfortable, Viktor laughed to himself. Such self-deception. I only know now how I feel now, right now, after I no longer have her. When it is lost.
Only now could he see Nina, her full beauty, her square shoulders and plump, hard legs and breasts, her wide face.
Fucking hell, we are all lost, Viktor thought as he made his way to the café.
Louis sat pointing and pont
ificating from his stool behind the counter. The walls were yellow, crudely decorated with ornamental guitars and posters, their corners curled, album sleeves arranged in circles and triangles. Rodriguez next to the Bee Gees next to the Beatles. Viktor objected to this display more than to Louis’s racism and abuse, so he sat at the table under the records, debating with himself whether the records were still in the sleeves on the wall, if Louis still played them.
Last week, from the single speaker fastened to the wall, Viktor had heard:
I wonder how many times you’ve been had sex
And I wonder how many plans have gone bad
He had been shocked to hear these uncensored seventies lyrics in this country of sexual Puritanism and gratuitous violence. He had looked furtively around the café as the record cracked and fizzed on Louis’s old turntable, sex perfectly audible from the single speaker:
I wonder about the love you can’t find
And I wonder about the loneliness that’s mine
Was this Louis’s conscience on display? I was not always this fucking brute who terrorises my black staff, sitting like a demigod at the cash register of life. I too listened to songs of sex and love. I too know that in every hello there is a goodbye. I have also had plans that have gone bad. Were the record covers proof that Louis had once been moved and disgusted by the world, and that even he understood Viktor’s exile, his need for company, his loneliness?
After all, the man seemed to love Viktor. He clapped his hands together in a moment of exuberance every time Viktor pushed the smudged glass door and triggered the little gold bell. These spontaneous gestures, Louis’s smile, worried him because of their sincerity – because he knew it was his colour, his London English, his whiteness, that delighted a man whose daily fare of bullying and coffee-grinding had ceased to amuse him.