Love in Revolution

by B. R. Collins

  Martin said, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Have you –’ I stopped, and then started again, in spite of myself. ‘Have you seen – there aren’t many – there haven’t been many Zikindi around lately . . .’

  He gave me a sidelong look, frowning, and shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. Not for ages. Haven’t seen a Zikindi since . . . for ages. Not here, not since – oh, since we saw that girl, the day the Bull –’

  ‘Course not,’ the guard next to me said. ‘We’ve been cleaning up, haven’t we? Party orders.’

  I turned to look at him. He was dark and spotty, and young. He had a sparse moustache and breath that stank of garlic. I said, ‘What?’

  ‘Zikindi clean-up,’ he said, as if that explained everything. ‘Get ’em out of our towns and cities. He who doesn’t contribute to the state cannot expect to profit by it.’ He put on a different accent for the last sentence; it reminded me of Leon’s voice.

  I felt my throat tighten. I said, ‘Oh.’

  ‘Weren’t many here, actually. There was a clampdown last year and they don’t try to come back here any more. Except – hey, Pauli –’ The guard turned sideways to consult his friend. ‘Last week, that tip-off you had –’

  ‘Oh, yeah, that girl . . .’ Pauli leered. ‘Sweet little thing, so anxious to please . . .’

  It took me a breathless second to realise that he was talking about the informer, not Skizi; then, with a wave of fury and relief, I thought, Ana Himyana. It had to be.

  ‘Yes,’ the first guard said, giving me a little smile as if he was doing me a favour. ‘One of the convent girls, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Pauli said. He rummaged in his pocket for a cigarette, and then looked round, as if he was surprised we were still listening. ‘She said there was a Zikindi girl living in the old Ibarra hut – you know, up on the hill – so we went up there and –’ He broke off to light his cigarette. Somewhere a long way away I heard the referee blow his whistle for the start of the match, and everything went silent.

  I couldn’t move. In a strange, hoarse voice that didn’t sound like mine, I said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, we –’ Pauli started, but the spectator on the other side of him jabbed his elbow into his ribs, and he scowled and shut up.

  ‘What did you do?’

  Martin nudged me. He said, in a low voice, ‘Est–’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Hey!’ The spectator leant forward to glare at me along the row of seats. ‘Let the players concentrate, Comrade!’

  I glanced down at the court, where one of the players was standing ready to serve, taking deep breaths. It was stupid; in three seconds everyone would be shouting. The guards were looking down at the court now, as if they’d forgotten everything they’d been saying. As if a pello match was easily more interesting than the Zikindi girl they’d –

  ‘Please,’ I said, but there was a ripple of applause, and they didn’t seem to hear me. ‘Please tell me what happened to the Zik–’

  Martin punched me.

  It was on my shoulder, but I felt the impact all the way from my jaw to my buttocks. And it was hard; it made me catch my breath and then, after a second of numbness, clutch at my arm, the tears welling up automatically in my eyes. When I thought I could speak again, I opened my mouth to swear at him.

  But he was already leaning towards me, looking worried. He said, ‘Sorry, Est, sorry. Did I hurt you? I just needed to shut you up . . .’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because . . .’ He hesitated, and looked round; but everyone was watching the game, and no one seemed to be paying attention to us. ‘Please, Est, I don’t think it’s a good idea to ask too many questions. Not about . . . just don’t. Please.’

  My mouth was still open. He knew about Skizi – not her name, or exactly what had happened, but he’d realised why I was asking. I could see it in his face. Somehow he’d guessed . . .

  I said, ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Not now. Go after the match.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I know. I understand, honestly. But you can’t walk out now. Look.’ He pointed, keeping his hand low, so no one else would see. I followed his finger. The ranks of Party officials, in the stand near the referee. ‘And there are guards everywhere.’

  I looked at him. His eyes were very steady.

  ‘All right,’ I said. I dug my nails into my legs. I thought that if I could hurt, and keep on hurting, I wouldn’t be able to think.

  I stared at the court. A Zikindi girl living in the old Ibarra hut . . . we went up there and . . . I kept on staring, and the crowd made noises, but I stared and stared and I couldn’t see anything.

  The warm-up match ended finally. The noise was thick, like a wall, but it was restrained, polite, for a pello match. One player was standing in middle of the court, with Karl and another Party man I recognised only vaguely from one of Leon’s leaflets.

  I stood up. I wasn’t the only one; people were shuffling out, going to buy another garlic pie, or stretch their legs. My knees were shaking. I had to lean on Martin’s shoulder just to get myself to my feet.

  He looked at me, and I felt him start to get up too.

  ‘I’m going on my own,’ I said.

  ‘Esteya . . .’

  ‘Please,’ I said, and although I couldn’t come up with any more words I thought Martin understood. He bit his lip, nodded and sat down again slowly.

  I pushed my way along the row of seats. I was shaking more now, and my hands were fizzing as if they were crawling with ants. I shoved my way through the crowd, smelling garlic and sweat so strongly I had to cough to stop myself retching.

  Then I was somehow out of the crowd and running through the alleys, and up the hill and towards the Ibarra hut, and my heart was beating in a kind of sickening blur in my chest, and I would have given anything, anything in the world, to see Skizi coming out to meet me, but she’d never done that, and this time she didn’t either.

  Twelve

  I knew, of course.

  I stepped in through the doorway, and grit and dead embers crunched under my feet, and I knew. Everything was smashed to pieces, burnt, scrawled with obscenities in ash and faeces. I was afraid to breathe, in case they’d killed her and not taken away the body. For a moment the fear was so strong that I smelt rotting meat – sweet, horrible – until I caught my breath, and there was nothing but the clean smell of faeces and charcoal, and I knew I’d been imagining it. At least, I thought, at least they’d had the decency to take her away . . .

  I didn’t want to go any further into the hut, but I did.

  I was almost glad that they’d smashed everything: it was like walking into somewhere that reminded me of Skizi’s hut but wasn’t – definitely wasn’t, couldn’t have been – the same place. It would have been worse if nothing had changed. I didn’t want to look round and think about the time I’d spent here, the hours we’d spent in front of the fire, in the bed, Skizi –

  I felt my throat close, as if the air had turned to water and if I tried to breathe I’d drown. My legs started to give way. I stumbled to the wall and leant against it, my forehead against the plaster. Everything hurt.

  They couldn’t have killed her. They couldn’t have . . .

  But if they’d taken her away . . .

  I heard myself cry out, a kind of hoarse, gasping noise, like someone falling. I couldn’t bear it. Skizi, beaten up, taken away, imprisoned somewhere – in one of the camps, one of the work camps for scroungers and counter-revolutionaries that no one talked about and the Party claimed didn’t exist but still, somehow, everyone knew about . . . There were people who belonged there – there were people who deserved it, who really did plot and subvert and sell black-market food, but not Skizi, not Skizi. I shut my eyes for a second and I could see the camp in my mind’s eye, rows of white faces and grey blankets on the bunks and men with guns and everything smelling of grime and despair. I rocked forward, hitting my forehead on the wall, once, then twice, hard. P
lease, God, please don’t let this be happening.

  And I’d been . . . when they took her away, I was at home, sitting on my bed, reading or looking out of the window, thinking I was so strong, such a martyr for not telling Mama and Papa about the food, and . . . she must have thought that I’d abandoned her, that I was never coming back. She must have thought it was me that sent the gua–

  I dropped to my knees, and then bent over. I felt myself retching and retching, tasted bile, felt my mouth gaping, stretched in a grimace. She must have thought –

  I vomited on the floor, over and over again, until my ribs ached and my throat burnt with acid. My eyes were watering. In the end I caught my breath, sobbing with fatigue; and then, in the moment of silence between inhale and exhale, I started to cry.

  When I stopped, finally, I was cold and shaking all over. I didn’t feel any better, but the tears had dried up. I was thirsty.

  I stood up. On the plaster next to me someone had written LEECH, in excrement. The C was smeared out of shape. I touched my face and felt the stickiness on my temple where I’d been leaning against the wall. It should have disgusted me, but all I could think about was how someone had managed to relieve themselves just at the right moment. Or perhaps they’d found the latrine pit at the edge of the field.

  I raised my hand to wipe it off, and then thought I’d only get my hand dirty. I walked to the bed, or where the bed had been, letting my fingers brush the broken bits of furniture, the ash on the wall, the last smudged traces of Skizi’s drawings. I remembered the first time I’d seen them. It seemed more than a lifetime ago. I could just make out the shape of a face, behind the new grafitti: PERVERT . . . I realised with a shock that it was my face, the dark-browed, unexpectedly beautiful face that had surprised me so much when I saw it.

  PERVERT. It was a coincidence; they’d got everything else, BITCH, SCUM, WHORE . . . Above the bed someone had written BOURGEOIS, getting smaller to fit it on the wall. I heard someone laugh; I was on my own, so it must have been me.

  I bent down and looked at the floor, searching for the floorboard with a knot in it. The floor was dirtier than I’d ever seen it, covered in mud and ash and with scorch marks where someone must have kicked the embers out of the hearth into the corners of the room, but it only took me a second to find the place I was looking for. I crouched, hooking my finger into the knothole the way Skizi had done. It stuck – it must have swollen in the damp from the thaw – but when I pulled harder it came out, leaving the dark space underneath. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Skizi had sold the rest of my mother’s things ages ago, to buy food – we’d never mentioned it, but I knew, all the same – and she didn’t have anything I wanted, not really . . . But there was something there, and I felt my heart speed up. Something pale, flimsy, folded up . . .

  My old exercise book.

  I’d forgotten about it. I hadn’t seen it since the day I gave it to Skizi; she’d gone on drawing on the walls, on the spaces between paragraphs in the Party leaflets, on whatever else she could get her hands on.

  I took it out, and opened it. It was sticky with moisture, and the pages clung together. I had to peel them apart, carefully, and even then they were wrinkled and fragile.

  Drawings. Every page was full. Faces, figures, hands . . . I looked through, and the pain that had faded rose again, so intense for a moment that I couldn’t see. When it died away, I was looking at myself. I swallowed, feeling a smile on my face that wasn’t quite like a smile, and touched the charcoal lines, very gently. I was on the next page too – sitting with my back turned this time, my head leaning against the wall, watching a fire in the hearth. I recognised myself, somehow, in the shape of my shoulders. That was the way I sat – me, and no one else. I couldn’t bear to keep looking at it. I turned the page.

  There was a picture of a hand, a picture of a foot; and I realised, with a kind of pang, that they were my hand and my foot. They weren’t beautiful – they looked like my hand and foot, after all – but they were too. As if she’d looked and looked, until she saw something that was worth drawing.

  I flipped the pages, faster and faster. They were all me. My other hand; my knee, my elbow, my breasts, my navel.

  She must have spent hours drawing me.

  I would have cried again, if I’d had any tears left. But I didn’t. I folded the exercise book over into a roll and put it in my pocket.

  Then I left, walking down the hill without looking back, towards the noise of the festival. I walked slowly, because it didn’t seem important.

  Nothing was important any more.

  The game was over. The streets were still heaving with people, and that strange joyless tension was still in the air, so that people grinned and shouted to each other and broke drunkenly into song without any of it sounding quite convincing. Or perhaps it was because of me that everything sounded fake, and actually they were all having a wonderful time. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.

  I glanced around for Martin. There were red handkerchiefs everywhere I looked, everyone in the same trousers and shirts, dressed like peasants. It was hard to spot anyone; they all looked the same. I caught sight of some girls from school, laughing with their heads together. It made me think of Ana Himyana. That tip-off you had . . . that girl . . . I felt sick. I turned aside, afraid someone would notice the expression on my face.

  I found myself face to face with Martin. He was leaning in a doorway, frowning. When he saw me he straightened and moved towards me, but his face didn’t change.

  ‘Est. Are you all r–’

  I looked at him, and he stopped and swallowed. I watched his face, somehow shocked by how quickly he seemed to know what had happened. I didn’t realise my own face was that transparent.

  I said, ‘Don’t ask me anything. Please?’

  He blinked, and nodded. He held out his hand, as if I was a child, and I took it, holding on as if he could help.

  ‘He lost,’ he said. ‘Angel Corazon lost.’

  ‘Of course he did,’ I said. I felt as if I’d known already, from the moment when I saw Skizi’s hut all broken and empty. Of course Angel had lost.

  Martin opened his mouth and hesitated. He said, ‘Let’s go home,’ but I thought it wasn’t what he’d meant to say.

  I let him tug at my hand, leading me home. The streets were emptying already, the crowds receding like a tide, slipping back into their houses as soon as they decently could, leaving little pools of guards and Party members and drunkards. One of them called out as I passed: ‘Hey, gorgeous, give us a kiss!’ I should have felt vulnerable, but I didn’t quite believe in my own existence. Martin gave me a sidelong glance and didn’t say anything, but he sped up.

  Then we were back at our own door, and inside the house, the thick walls cutting out the noise from the street.

  Martin stood looking at me, in the dimness of the hall. I could smell the filth on my face, and the acrid scent of ash.

  ‘Est . . . what happened? Are you all right?’

  I stared back at him. I could have told him; I could have told him everything, and he would have understood. But if I told him, I’d cry, and it would all be real, and Skizi would still be far away, in a labour camp or raped or dead.

  I heard myself laugh, a long shuddering laugh that sounded like the symptom of a disease. I turned away and started to climb the stairs. Without looking over my shoulder, I said, ‘Long live the revolution, Comrade.’

  I don’t remember very much about the rest of that spring, or summer. The only thing that’s clear is the letter I wrote, a few days after Skizi – after the pello game that Angel Corazon lost. It was to the Comrade Captain of the People’s Guards, who happened to be one of Papa’s friends. I didn’t sign it.

  Dear Comrade, I thought you should know that Ana Himyana has Anarchist sympathies. She spends all her time trying to distract the Communist guards and is a bad influence.

  The second draft said, Dear Comreyde, I thort you should no that Ana Himyana has Anak
ist simpathys. She spends all her time triing to distract the Communist gards and is a bad inflooence.

  But in the end I just wrote: Ana Himyana is an Anarchist.

  I shouldn’t have sent it, but I did.

  Later I told myself that they would have taken her away even if I hadn’t.

  After that, the summer, when I think about it, is a blur of dust and thirst and politics. I didn’t care; nothing seemed to make any difference to me. It was as if I’d left my life behind in Skizi’s hut, and there was nothing left of me but a kind of hopeless determination to carry on. And hatred, of course. I used to sit on the edge of my bed, thinking about Ana Himyana, wishing I hadn’t written that letter so that I could have the pleasure of doing it all over again. It gave me something to hang on to, something to think about, something to feel.

  School had stopped for good, and we hung around, running errands for Papa, waiting for news from Irunja, sleeping during the day through sheer boredom. For a few weeks everyone was supposed to work in the fields, but the farmers got angry when we didn’t know what to do, and after a while fewer and fewer of us went. We wore the same clothes every day – the Communist uniform of trousers and shirt and kerchief – and I cut my hair short with kitchen scissors, because bothering about how you looked was bourgeois, and dangerous. Not that I cared about the danger, but my hair made me hot, and now Skizi was gone I wanted to be ugly. One of the Ibarra boys taught me how to shoot a rifle.

  There were more food shortages, and now Leon sent us nothing, not even letters. We ate lentils and oranges. The water kept being cut off, and we had to get our water from the stream, carrying it in buckets like peasants. Gatherings of more than ten people were banned; then more than five; then there was a curfew. The King’s Cup was cancelled. No one played pello any more, not even kids in the street, because if too many people stopped to watch all at once they might have been arrested.