Amriika

by M G Vassanji

  Sanity prevailed, however, and someone said, “ISS’s been bombed!”

  “A couple more bomb threats too,” said one of the two cops, who were emerging unscathed from their badly dented vehicle. “Now if you folks’ll kindly make room …”

  The students made room for the two to walk through to one of the other squad cars, then they went quietly, en masse, to Kendall Street to see what had happened. A police cordon was already in place when they arrived, and they stopped obediently behind it, positioning themselves into an intent crowd of watchers on the farther side of the intersection, in partial darkness. Flyers soon appeared among them.

  Ramji, who had come with the crowd of watchers all the way from Mass Ave, snatched at a flyer:

  STRIKE TERROR INTO THE PIG STATE! ONE MORE BLOW FOR THE OPPRESSED PEOPLE OF THE THIRD WORLD! The Institute for Strategic Studies is one of the lynchpins of the Warfare Terrorist State that goes by the name of the United States! … The ISS has formulated the policies of the Warfare State in Vietnam! … signed: Third World Liberation Front

  There was a shout and the sound of a scuffle behind him somewhere as, apparently, a couple of people distributing the flyers were hauled off by police. At that moment, Ramji found himself reminded of someone he had not seen, had hardly thought about, in months — Lucy-Anne Miller. He glanced at the flyer in his hand, again looked at those words. Surely not her.…But she liked to talk of the Third World.…Smash the state, bring home the war, enough of the namby-pamby stuff.…According to rumours circulating in the crowd, it seemed one person had been killed by the blast, the panhandler who always used to sit at the side of the building.

  Ramji peered before him, towards the bombed building, an old one-storey yellow-brick structure partly hidden from view by police and fire vehicles.

  Late Wednesday night a commune in Brookline was raided by the police. Seven people were arrested in connection with the bombing, four of them while they were in the final stages of preparing to leave town.

  News of the arrests made the next morning’s headlines. When Ramji picked up the early edition of Tech Speak, his worst fears about the bombing were realized. None of those arrested were familiar to him, but: the police were seeking two other suspects, a couple named Lucy-Anne Miller and Jason Perly. The news preoccupied him all that morning. She couldn’t have done it, he would tell himself — not this. But then again, why not? He simply had a soft spot for her, and he hoped that she wasn’t involved. At lunchtime, as he came down the fifth-floor corridor of Rutherford to go to his room for a quick bite to eat and pick up some books, he was mulling over the news once again. Of all the stupid things, to be involved in a bombing and hoping to get away with it. What a waste of a life.

  He flung his room door open, and there she was, the object of his current anxiety, seated on his green armchair, one leg over its armrest, looking up from a book: Lucy-Anne. She was wearing brown cords and a green army jacket; the book was No Exit. He opened his mouth, checked himself, closed the door.

  “I’m no James Bond,” he spluttered angrily at her. Somewhat ludicrously, in his mind flashed an image from a movie seen in boyhood, the British secret agent entering his room to find a squeezably soft, gorgeous Russian blonde in his bed — while two Russian agents film the resulting love scene through a spyhole in the wall.

  “My, my. Testy, aren’t we,” she said.

  “What do you expect? …”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You guys bomb a building, kill a man in the process, and you come here … for what?”

  “They’re framing us.”

  “What? … Don’t you live at — here — ‘641 Macedonia Ave —’ ” he said, reading from the paper, “and what have we here — ‘gallon containers, fertilizer, pipes —’ ”

  “Don’t you see —”

  “… ‘the oven had obviously been used to dry fertilizer, an FBI spokesman said,’ ” he finished. “You live there.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “Do you have an alibi?”

  “For when, Sherlock? We were all in and out.”

  “What do you want me to do? You’d like to see me in jail? Or perhaps back in Africa up my tree, taking the revolution with me?” Then he remembered, he screamed at her: “And who gave you my bloody key?”

  “Shawn,” she said calmly. “He thought his place would be watched. Look, we were on our way to Canada, via Maine, someone — the pigs — blasted the car with a shotgun Monday night. We’re waiting for another car. I’ll leave Saturday. How about that?”

  He didn’t say a word.

  “Look — I didn’t bomb that building. But it deserved what it got,” she muttered angrily. “Except for that bum, of course.…Don’t you see what they’re doing in places like that? They’re divvying up the world — your world — into spheres of influence, friendly countries and the not-so-friendly, which can be destabilized —”

  “But I don’t believe in bombs,” he pleaded with her.

  “They’re as American as apple pie,” she retorted sullenly.

  From the corner of his eye he noted the black phone on his desk. He’d come back to have lunch, but now he had lost his appetite. He picked up a couple of books from the desk.

  “I’m going,” he said brusquely. “Classes.” But then at the door he hesitated and turned to look at her, adding more gently: “Help yourself to anything in the fridge.”

  She returned his look with what he could only think of as a kindly smile.

  The overwhelming feeling he had as he left his room was of being suckered; of knowing that and not being able to help it; of being so predictable. She had known he wouldn’t turn her in. Suppose right now he went ahead and proved her wrong? … Of course, she could be innocent and telling the truth; that was the saving grace.

  He returned at ten in the evening, noticed the downstairs lobby packed with YAP guys — four of them leaning against the counter, on the other side of which at the table sat Steve Mittel, apparently their man at Rutherford. Clean-shaven and sporting crewcuts, all of them.

  “Hi,” said Chunky Crewcut. The Intimidator. The sight of his jeering Neanderthal-looking face filled Ramji simultaneously with rage and fear.

  “Hi,” Ramji replied with false cheer, walking past rapidly to get to the stairs.

  “He’s got a white chick in his room, likes them white, he does,” one of them said behind him.

  Ramji looked down from the first turn of the stairs. The distance was safe, so he could make a run for it to the first-floor rooms. Taking a breath, he said angrily, “What’s that to you … KLANSMAN! What are you going to do about it, KU-KLUX-KLANSMAN! Are you going to burn a cross outside my door?” All his anger from that previous night when they attacked him came pouring out now, in uncontrollable surges. And almost everyone from the rooms had come rushing out to the staircase, staring down at the scene from their landings. There was little sympathy at Rutherford for the right wing, and they all began shouting abuses at the foursome.

  “Assholes!”

  “Creeps — lay off!”

  “Go back to Baker House!”

  But the four were not leaving. They were big and hungering for bony contact.

  Ramji climbed the stairs to his room. Lucy-Anne was there, looking rather like a tart on the job: with a blonde wig and gaudy makeup, in miniskirt and boots.

  “Hullo. Where are we off to? Isn’t that … a bit too obvious?” Besides, what does it say of my taste.

  “Yes, and no. It’s distracting — no one would expect to see me like this. I’ve already got a few whistles and a proposition. I went out for a while.”

  “Oh yeah? Anyway, those YAPs are on your scent. They’re waiting downstairs. We may not last the night.”

  We: he was already in on the conspiracy, was he. Pray God morning comes quickly. It’s Friday tomorrow. She seemed a bit shaken by what he’d said, and he told her to sit down and made some tea and tried to calm himself. Later he heard voices down the corridor o
utside, went to the door and peeked. Who should be sitting outside the resident genius Billy Blair’s room some five doors away but Chunky the goon with a girl. Keeping vigil for guess who. Trust Billy to keep such friends. But a YAP? Ramji shrugged nonchalantly, closed the door. They could be planted there all night.

  Obviously they were not sure of themselves, whatever their suspicions were, or the cops would have been here a long time ago. Maybe one of them was police — but then, who had heard of undercover cops disguising themselves as right-wingers? They went around as radicals. Someone must have recognized her this morning, outside Rutherford perhaps. So that outfit’s not such a bad disguise after all.

  He voiced his approval out loud, and she said — well, tartly, he thought — “It’s worked before.”

  The trick on this tightrope was to appear as normal as possible, let everyone think this foreign student’s picked up a white girl off the street. He wanted to ask her, Are you sure you were not involved in that bombing? That sounded terribly inane, and besides, what would she answer?

  He said, “So what shall we do?”

  “Let’s play cards.” She brought out a deck from her rucksack and they played gin rummy for a while.

  Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. Ramji and Lucy-Anne looked at each other, then he got up and opened the door slightly. It was Steve from the desk.

  “Your mail, I brought it up.…” He gave a quick look inside, adding: “Sorry about those guys downstairs. Uncalled for.” And he left.

  “Is this some kind of harassment? Who asked him to bring my mail up?”

  “Maybe he’s just a nice guy.”

  “And he thought he’d come and check up on us. Here, let me teach you a game called Zanzibari.” They began playing, and she seemed to enjoy the game.

  “Is it really an African game?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, proudly, nostalgically.

  Later she wanted to go to sleep. “But I have to go pee first,” she said.

  Outside was the men’s room, which could be converted with a sign hung outside, but that was too involved and risky.

  They both threw a glance at the basin. Fat chance, he thought.

  “All right, turn off the lights. I’ll use the window.”

  “What?”

  “It’s all right — I’ve checked the ledge. It’s quite wide. I’ve noticed you store your doughnuts there, don’t you …”

  “And a squirrel keeps stealing them. Spare my doughnuts, though. Are you sure — you won’t topple off … or be seen?”

  “Turn off the lights.”

  He did so. She went to the window, climbed up and out onto the ledge. He couldn’t help himself from trying to discern the sounds. He heard only the rustling of clothes. She was facing him. “Don’t gawk.”

  She slept on the bed while he worked, using the desk lamp, or tried to; he filled some mugs with water and poured them out the window where she’d crouched.

  He couldn’t sleep, sat on the armchair staring vacantly ahead. The dark was soft, a dim glow poured in through the window, from the yellow night lamps in the courtyard down below. He tried not to think about this circumstance he found himself in, but that was not entirely possible. It was like after a sudden accident, a fall perhaps, and one could not quite believe what had just happened.

  I could go out, lock her in, and call the police. Would I? No, but I don’t quite know why.

  She says she didn’t do it. Do I believe her? And if I knew for certain that she actually did do it, and was therefore one of the people responsible for that bum’s death, would I then call the police?

  There is a look of such innocence about her.

  She had washed the makeup off her face, borrowed his pyjamas, which she rolled up at the bottom, brushed her teeth, and, with a shy “Well, goodnight,” had got between the covers and gone to sleep, facing the wall. As if the yellow brick wall oppressed her even while she slept, she turned away from it later to lie on her back, her head partly turned to face him.

  A perfect upbringing, storybook style. A house something like the Morrises’, he guessed. With a mother and maid, Thanksgiving turkey and a Christmas tree. She gave all that up for the Third World, she says, for me and the world I come from …

  The general politics are correct, I think. But she has no inkling of the world I come from. In our house when I woke up and went to brush my teeth, there would be inch-long cockroaches scurrying about. Nothing romantic in that. And in my country Indians like me are sometimes called foreigners even though we’ve been there more than a century. There are people who want to leave, go away to Britain or America, does she realize that.…I am Indian and African and all screwed up with Western education, and all she sees is “Third World.” Yet she has the sympathy, from somewhere; and notwithstanding that innocent face of a child fast asleep she may have — has she? — killed someone … for that sympathy, for that Third World cause? — as she says — or simply due to some inner confusion, unhappiness, rage? … or a combination?

  But she says she hasn’t done it.

  To distract himself, he picked up from his desk the day’s mail (which Steve Mittel had brought up), went through it one by one but without much heart.

  Grandma wrote: “Beta — dear — May God grant you good health, wealth, happiness, etc. I am well and happy here, thanks be to God, don’t worry about me. I am overjoyed that you have started writing regularly again.…The rumours are true that a few people have been taken away at night; but only those doing illegal things …”

  Preventive detentions without trial had recently gone up, back home, for all sorts of reasons. You could be kept in a secret prison or exiled to a remote highland region.

  With Grandma’s letter came one from a couple of African tailors who were their neighbours back home. A few weeks ago Ramji thought suddenly of writing to them. This was their reply. They were thrilled at his letter, “danced with joy” at his success in America, from where they were certain he would return “a big man.”

  And one from Lyris: A group photo taken at the Divine Anand Mission in January, and a Guru Maharaj-ji flyer — “Who is Guru Maharaj-ji? Come and find out” — with her phone number scrawled on it.

  He got up, opened the door quietly, looked outside. The corridor was clear; the only sound came from the radios in the open rooms of the night-beavers toiling away, separately lost in their world of tangled hairy formulae. At such a time he might have strolled up to Ebrahim’s room for a small chat and a glass of sweet black tea; but not tonight, there would be too many questions.

  He lay down on the floor next to the bed and tried to sleep.

  The next day, Friday, he spent between his classes, the libraries, and the coffee house, avoiding his room as if it were infected. He had brought up the Times and the Globe for Lucy-Anne, but perhaps earned a curious look or two in the process: who had heard of Ramji going down specifically to buy a paper, let alone two papers, first thing in the morning? He shouldn’t have done it. Pray Saturday came without a hitch and she went off to the woods of Canada and he could forget about her.

  Friday at six, Ramji returned, prepared to go to the mosque. It had become more a social occasion now, this little private prayer meeting they had begun two years ago. Its location had changed from the music library to two attached seminar rooms above it on the next floor. The Friday mosque was where you went to be with people who seemed familiar, even if you’d never met them before, whom you could trust more or less unconditionally. Hopefully some family people would bring home-cooked samosas or kebabs, if not more. And later some of them would go to a movie if there was anything worthwhile. And hopefully too that new girl from Smith College would return — a homestyle East African beauty in a miniskirt, a rare thing. She had come for the first time last week and sent the guys’ blood racing.

  He glanced at Lucy-Anne. She was sitting on the bed, back against the wall, flipping through a book. They had not talked much since he came. He sensed she was keeping out o
f his way — or simply acting hurt because he had avoided her again all day. She was not in her tart’s disguise, and she’d confirmed that she had stayed inside all day. The YAPs were not around, which was a relief; perhaps they were convinced she was only a pickup after all.

  “Would you like to go to Friday night mosque with me?” he asked. She raised an eyebrow, and he explained, “It’s not far — in the Humanities building. It’s more a social event, though non-members wait in the outer room during prayers. Very informal.”

  She should be unrecognizable in the wig, he thought. His concern for her at the same time aroused a sense of dread in him, a quaking in the pit of his stomach. Am I getting in deeper … abetting a bombing suspect … and perhaps not only a suspect — if she is innocent, why run away to Canada and not stay to defend herself?

  “I’d love to,” she said brightly and began to get ready.

  “Go easy on the makeup, though,” he said, and they exchanged a smile.

  They left by the side entrance and, hurrying past the main doorway, saw Shawn and Kate absorbed in a discussion outside while apparently waiting for someone. Kate was gesticulating. They called out brief hi’s, not to draw undue attention, and walked on towards the Humanities building.