by M G Vassanji
Sona’s pamphlet to Tech foreign students had worked a miracle. Fifteen of them raised their heads from Bessel functions and Landau and Lifshitz textbooks and signed up to go to Washington. Fifteen nerds, each one worth fifteen ordinary demonstrators, that’s how difficult they are. You deserve a medal, someone told him. Remember, said a voice, Sona’s, if there’s a riot in Washington you could be hauled in for conspiracy. That’s a new law. Conspiracy! — for God’s sake, for manning a sign-up booth in public! America is the most powerful country on this planet, the most influential in the world, it has an interest in our countries, it sends agents there, and it sends Coca-Cola and movies, and sets up libraries and dominates the United Nations, the IMF, and the World Bank, surely we should say what we feel when we’re here … but you’ve gotta watch it, said a guy at a rap session yesterday, the movement dies, the government kills it, with the aid of a tiny number of crazies who love to trash, because ordinary folks just get scared shitless to demonstrate about what they feel. STOP HARASSMENT OF THE CHICAGO SEVEN. SEND JUDGE HOFFMAN TO VIETNAM. And among the bystanders, a bunch of men and women screaming “Baby killers! Butchers!” at a Yippie contingent, referring to the Tate murders. How you can turn things around; you couldn’t find more peace-oriented people than the Yippies. Pregnant Sharon Tate was murdered by the psychopath Charles Manson and his zombies. NO MORE MY LAIS. And babies too? — a reporter had asked one of the soldiers involved in the My Lai massacre. And babies too, answered the soldier. That was a shocker: Americans do that too? — we thought it was only the gooks and the huns and the nips who did that. Lieutenant Calley and his men lined up unarmed villagers and shot them; women and children, babies too. That was the My Lai massacre, that is war. THERE CAN BE NO REVOLUTION WITHOUT GENERAL COPULATION.
The speeches lasted five hours in front of the monument, but it was all like a concert, better, because you could simply lie down during a boring interval, tune off, close your eyes, and dream. Yeah, dream, about where you are right at this very moment on the grass, where joints are passed around, a neighbour chomps on a hotdog, and a girl and guy sit back to front, up close, the girl lifts up her long skirt and gives the bearded long-haired guy a real rub on the crotch, and it’s all right, the sky is all colours and there are tears in your eyes from the light; or is it the cold November wind. Who are you? I am a guy, a simpleton, from the town of Dar es Salaam in the African country of Tanzania, belonging to a small Indian community called the Shamsis. It’s so far far away, this city by the blue-green Indian Ocean, it could be in another galaxy; it could belong to another life, a past incarnation.…Once I didn’t know what America was, where it was, this country of Elvis Presley, later I thought everything it did was good, the Kennedys, John and Bobby, were princes and God’s answer to Communism, and now I lie stretched out here before the Washington Monument in the capital, the cordoned-off White House not far away, because I have come here with thousands of other young folks to demonstrate against a war we think is evil, fought, financed, sponsored in all possible manner by this country, and its hands are bloodied, so is its soul.…And finally the refrain over and over, led by Pete Seeger, with Peter, Paul & Mary and the others, All we are saying, is give peace a chance, over and over, oh over and over, hold hands and don’t stop …
Afterwards, when the rally was dispersed, feeling at a loss Ramji followed a bunch of rowdies on their way to the Justice Department to demonstrate against the Chicago conspiracy trial. He kept his distance from them, and when they reached their destination he watched them first defy and then do battle with the police. His own voyeurism surprised — and repelled — him. Yet he could not restrain the desire to witness something daring and dangerous — and destructive; this manifestation of mad commitment.
As last night, too, he had watched.
He was sitting before the TV in the lounge of the dormitory where he’d been put up, and along came Lucy-Anne Miller with two guys, all three in boots and helmets, looking formidable, and immediately the focus of attention of every pair of eyes on the floor. These were the tough guys, they were taking on the government’s troops, actually bringing the war home.
“We’re going over to the rally outside the South Vietnamese embassy, we thought you’d like to come by.” She presented it as a casual affair, no hint of riot. But the way she was dressed gave her away, with her hair tied up, pants stuffed into her boots, pockets sewn up; tight jacket and that small bag for what — riot paraphernalia? Nevertheless Ramji agreed to go, and Ebrahim came along, if only, he suspected, to impress Lucy-Anne.
“Kenyatta — you hail a cab,” Lucy-Anne said to Ramji, without a glint in the eye; perhaps she yet hoped to rouse the Mau Mau in him. In their battledress she and her friends were unlikely to stop a cab, and just as unlikely was the Afro-haired Ethiopian.
The driver nervously dropped them two blocks from the embassy, and they started walking. There were sounds of bullhorns, sirens, and as they walked, their eyes slowly began to water. Holding wet cloths to their faces, they hastened their pace, drawn on by the bullhorns. An obsessive curiosity had seized Ramji, such as a child feels towards something it’s told is hot. You want to touch it, feel it’s real, tangible. “You’re assembled here illegally, please disperse.” Lights blue and red and white from the police cars. “Come on — let’s go!” Lucy-Anne said, and she and her two companions ran to join the demonstrators. “… please disperse.” A canister of tear gas flew in the air, a crowd of young people raced back, then some of them took out stones from their bags and they started throwing, at the police, at cars, at windows … and Ramji and Ebrahim walked away.
“We did the same thing in Ethiopia …”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
And now at the Justice Department, the same scene, in daylight. A Viet Cong flag went up in place of an American one, which had been torn down. He watched for a while; a tear gas canister flew in his direction, and he turned to walk away; it fell far short. I can never have that madness, that commitment, he thought; that certainty.…It’s better to be a sane coward.
On his way to the dorm he came upon a phone booth and decided to call Runymede as he’d promised Ginnie he would. He smiled at the thought of her — surely she would cheer him up. John Morris picked up the phone and they exchanged a few pleasantries. And then John told him, “You called at the right time, Ramji. Ginnie’s in hospital.”
Ramji asked, Can I come see her tomorrow, I can then take a bus back to Boston. John said that would cheer up Ginnie immensely.
John picked him up at the Runymede bus depot the next day, in the Grand Prix. He shook Ramji’s hand warmly. He looked well, braced as if he’d just emerged from a shower, and smelling lightly of cologne. The red blazer and the checked permapress pants on him were utterly sporty and cheerful.
“Glad you could make it. The whole family’s here. No problems finding a bus?”
“Amazingly, no.”
“And how was the protest march in Washington?”
“Great. A few hundred thousand people …”
“You’re not saying!”
“They say it was bigger than the Martin Luther King march a few years ago.”
Their route took them through open countryside. It was a crisp sunny afternoon. Late autumn’s leaves clung to the trees, blushed in the cool clear light streaming through them. It was Sunday quiet, hospital quiet, deathly quiet, as they arrived.
Three low white buildings lay parallel amidst large green park grounds, which a paved driveway entered between two white pillar posts. Two children played on the lawn, minded by an adult in a windbreaker; a man and a boy puttered about near one of the buildings with ladder and wheelbarrow.
“Quite a small place,” John was saying, “… exclusive, and the doctor’s an expert in his field … not cheap either …”
“And what happened?” Ramji asked. “I mean, why —”
“Well, they decided an operation would help. At this stage all we can do is take the doctor’s advice.�
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“She’ll get well, then?”
“You’ll see.”
The three buildings were edgewise to them as they approached and were connected by glass passageways. The hospital entrance was in the leftmost wing. As they reached it, they saw Junior and Chris at the garden benches, with a girl, playing charades. She was the boys’ cousin, Mary, John told him. Ginnie’s sister Pat’s daughter. Yes, they were here, Ginnie’s sisters, they had driven up from Baltimore.
“Will he ever return …,” Chris called out playfully, and the two boys grinned at Ramji and said “Hi there!” Ramji returned the greeting.
“Get on with it,” Mary said to her cousins. “I said ‘Cuckoo’.”
Junior proceeded with the clues, miming a brood, negating it, with his hands.
“Sterile,” Chris said.
“Sterile cuckoo,” Mary shouted.
“Easy, huh?”
It was Chris’s turn, and he took Junior’s place. From the entrance, Ramji watched him do an elaborate pretense of reading, and moments later, as John registered him inside at reception, they heard Mary’s triumphant scream, “Story!”
“Oh, there he is,” spoke Ginnie excitedly from her bed as they entered her room. “The rest of you, out, give me a few minutes with my lover boy. Pat, see you later, John, honey …”
Ramji looked helplessly at John as the relatives all filed out, with good-natured, indulgent looks on their faces.
“See you later,” said John chirpily, and gently closed the door behind him.
“Oh, come here,” she said, and he went and bent over her and gave her a long long hug.
She looked devastated. Oh yes, the face was still full from the medication, but now plain and puffy, all the glow was gone from it, and the suppleness too, the flesh was dying and pale and the eyes were sunken, the skin on the neck and arms was mottled. He smelt makeup and perfume on her.
“Come lie down beside me,” she said, making room, and he stretched out uncomfortably next to her, on the edge of the bed, one arm around her.
“I’m all hollow, they’ve scooped out my insides, there’s nothing left, only my connections —”
“But you’re not connected now,” he said, pointing to the IV, which was idle. “You’re getting better.”
“You’re nice. Now tell me about what you’ve been up to, how was Washington?”
“Well, I was one among a quarter or half a million people, all peaceful, just walked, while the President watched football …”
“I envy you. I’ve always envied you, you know. You’re just starting out — at the beginning of a great discovery … like … like Columbus!”
Gone, gone the life and the loveliness; the voice, the bubbly cheerfulness now coming at him all seemed disembodied. He wanted to sit down and weep. She felt weak, too, on his arm, perhaps they really had scooped out her insides — what else can you do with a cancer? She had been a big woman, beautiful and sensual … all that a long time ago, she was now a helpless, hopeless patient in this cruelly heartless room with white paint and a stainless steel trolley and uneaten hospital food you discreetly turned away from.
He sat up on the bed, holding one fragile hand in his. He asked, “You don’t think, for instance … that I’ve been ungrateful —”
“Ungrateful? How?”
“Demonstrating against American policies —”
“Don’t be silly. We are not policies. The government is not the people —”
“Come again?” he teased, catching her eye.
“Well, not always — Ramji, you were always too clever for me. In fact, John and I have taken great satisfaction in watching you grow, find your space — don’t get spaced out though, isn’t that what you kids say?”
“Yes.” I have to make my confession, he thought. I have to say it, if it’s true, which I think it is, I’m going to say it, or I’ll forget it and not believe it.…“You know, I’ve loved you since … since that day …” Night, actually, but that sounds inappropriate.
“Yes, I know — though love is a complex thing, isn’t it? And I’ve loved you too, in my own way.”
What way is that? A mystery for me always.
The family was let in, and Ramji stayed a little while longer, then said to John, “I have to make classes tomorrow, I think I should go.”
John drove him all the way to the Port Authority Terminal in Manhattan, and Chris came along and was quite chatty. He was still a Buddhist and had finally left the military academy for the public school in Runymede, so he could be close to his mother.
8
Carnal desire, pure and simple, thighs touching in a Greyhound bus — accident or deliberate, does it matter, can one tell? — brown corduroy against blue denim.
The girl he sat with was reading Siddhartha, the bible of the mooney-eyed liberation-seeker following the Eastern way, and she caught him trying to take surreptitious peeks at it.
“Great book … read it?”
“Yes …”
She smiled at him, waited for his endorsement, and he hesitated.
“And? …”
“I found it too thin. It was all right, I suppose …”
“It’s allegorical, you see.”
“I know.…I prefer Dostoevsky, there’s more stuff in it, it’s heavier —”
“You would.”
He stared at her. “Tell me, why do you say that?”
What do you know about me, why this smugness? Have you found Nirvana already?
“Never mind.”
He leaned away, closed his eyes. The first time he read the Grand Inquisitor’s indictment of the Saviour in Dostoevsky’s Karamazov, he’d called up Sona in the middle of the night to tell him, Hey, you won’t believe what I’ve just read, it goes straight to my heart, it reads my mind, and it’s scary. And Sona said, It sure is powerful, but d’you know what time it is, for Chrissakes! And Ramji put down the phone, sensing Sona was not alone, probably was with that Amy girl he was seen with nowadays … what a development …
Her name was Lyris Unger, his bus companion said; their thighs were touching intermittently, they were smiling at each other, talking college-student lingo — You know? …
A slim girl, not very tall, with a long face, brown wavy hair combed back, wearing high, dark brown leather boots into which she’d tucked the legs of her corduroy jeans. She had a button pinned on her sweater, showing a white lotus inside a sky-blue circle, with the inscription “ONNE …” printed in orange inside the flower.
He pointed at the button. “Are you …?” He had seen posters of the Divine Anand Mission around campus, offering “One-ness” with the entire universe.
“Yes, I am a disciple.”
“What’s he like, this guru? I mean —”
“He’s called Satguru. He’s far out, really good.” She sounded almost wistful. “He’s not like those Indian gurus, who’re only after your money —”
“He’s not Indian?”
“He is … and he isn’t. He has divine birth,” she said mysteriously.
“Yes? How?” Curiouser and curiouser … but I’m after one thing only and —
I don’t believe myself. What about Ginnie, whom you held a few hours ago, scooped out as she put it … and dying? Yes. But she’d hardly deny me this irresistible heat flowing through denim and corduroy, in fact she’d encouraged it, perhaps it’s all I need, to be normal, and free at last … not that I’ll ever not love her … or forget that golden face full of laughter. Go on, she’d say, go on.…But is it real, this up-close invitation, these intermittent, almost casual nudgings? Dammit I should take a risk and find out, girls don’t feel your thighs just to frisk you. All that warmth touching and boiling me up …
“Why don’t you come to the ashram for a darshana and see for yourself? You should really try his teachings. Some people just come for his Rama-naam-bhakti — that’s what the chanting is called — it releases all their pent-up tension from the rat race of the world. Satguru likens it to a
bath in the Ganges.”
“Naah,” he said, too flippantly. “I don’t need that bhakti and meditation. You see, my people have always believed in meditation, to escape from the illusion of the world, which we call maya. And we have a mantra, and also a guru who comes from a long line of gurus, but they are called pir — sometimes also called guru, and would you believe it, also satguru and swami and so on —”
Fool, you Ramji; you blew it there, you egotistical navel-gazing nerd; do you think she cares about your spiritual life and your traditions? No wonder she sized you up the first instance; Dostoevsky indeed, all words and no action. You should have said, “Fine”; better still, “All right — I’ll come, but you’ll have to be my guide there and show me the ropes.…” Instead, she’s turned away, disgusted, to look out the window — better the concrete of the I-95 than you — and her leg has moved away. Free at last — to do what? Jerk off in your room? Tough.
The bus entered Arlington Street Station. Welcome to Boston, check your belongings, watch your step, check for connections, et cetera. He recovered his carry-on from the overhead rack, allowed himself to be nudged up the aisle to the door, got off the bus; and waited for her. She came down, went to pick up her bag, and as she began to leave the unloading bay, she ran straight into him.