Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

by Sunil Yapa

  He sometimes felt as if there were a wall between himself and the world. Not in the moments of negotiation, but outside, beyond the gates of the club or the Parliament or the palace. His status and power were the moat, the razor wire, and twenty miles of no-man’s-land. Riding in a limo through the streets of London, D.C., Berlin, Mexico City, or Delhi, and the faceless crowds shuffling by like blobs of color, dark passing clouds of humanity drifting by the smoked-glass windows and he wanted to ask the driver to stop, wanted to step out of the car to speak to the people he saw, the shadows gathered under the trees, a million miles from his passing tires. But it always seemed there was not enough time, it was too dangerous, he didn’t speak the language, he would never understand their lives anyway. Always something. Another report to read, another call to make—but this was his life, the duty he had chosen. Not to walk in the streets communing with the souls, but to ride in the limo, calling the PM’s. To attend the conventions. To negotiate trade agreements. To build the nation through economic development. As much as he might like, his responsibility to his people did not allow him the luxury of time, of stopping to talk with them in their roadside huts.

  He listened to the whistles and something like a bagpipe—could it be a bagpipe?—and he imagined Colombo, 1983, when those sticks were splitting open heads and he watched in absolute awe and a sort of admiration and disbelief as a line of cops stood on the opposite corner and watched the demonstrators peacefully pass. He heard their sweet angry American voices chanting and singing, saw their American bodies marching and dancing, and he was surprised to feel not fear, or anger, but a kind of happiness. A calm.

  My god, man, he said to himself. This is America.

  * * *

  He worked his way into the crowd, a dampness of sweat gathering on his forehead, darkening the fabric of his Italian suit. He moved slowly, a slight limp to his step. The slowness of his gait, and the subsequent air of dignity, were partially the result of a broken foot which had never properly healed—broken during his time in Welikada Prison, years ago when he had been a leader of the opposition party, just a young man really. Ten years he had been jailed, and despite his warm manner, a certain solitude still clung to him. It was like the warmth of a tropical noon stretching into evening, a long-ago memory of suffering, forgotten, but still producing heat. The memory, he supposed, was like the broken foot improperly healed—the legacy of the injury stitched into the bone, nothing more.

  He moved into the crowd, felt the familiar pleasant ache in his shoulders of fifty laps in the Mount Lavinia club pool. He needed the swimming even if he disliked the idea of belonging to a club—all the old British ways. The pretensions and condescensions of Sri Lankan high society. Behind the polite smile, the firm handshake and chuckle, he sometimes wanted to tear the bastards to pieces. Here they were born to wealth and comfort while their country threatened to slide into a chaos from which it might never return. Tiresome people, but he knew it was only human nature to believe it best to ignore suffering, to focus on your own good fortune. The human survival mechanism: to say your prayers, thank your gods, and hold your breath when you passed the slums. The sweet poison of privilege, wasn’t it? To think blindness a preferable condition. And yet, there they were whether you wanted to see or not. The unwanted of the world. People begging on the street. People without enough to eat. People without the medicine and doctors to make them well. People without proper clothes or homes. Without clean water to bathe or drink. Did these self-congratulatory club members think their inherited wealth came from nowhere save their miraculous good luck? Did they not find a connection between their obscene wealth and the obscene poverty all around them? Perhaps it was too much to suggest the fault was theirs alone. The upper class was too goddamn stupid to be blamed, frankly. But how could they do nothing? How could they look upon their fellow creatures suffering and do absolutely nothing?

  He didn’t have an answer for that. He only knew he had his meeting with Clinton in six hours’ time, and now here he was standing in a crowd, the streets were jammed, and three blocks down, rising black and lovely above the crowd, there was the object of his desire twinkling in the rain: the convention center.

  He pushed aside a young kid with dreadlocks, another girl with a turtle puppet. He listened to their chants and he felt the energy of the crowd around him, and it began to occur to him that perhaps the crowd was not a crowd, but something else entirely. As he continued forward, moving more slowly yet, it began to dawn on him that this was not a formless shapeless mob without intent. No—it seemed increasingly possible that their intent might be to stop him from getting to his meetings.

  Forty countries in five years.

  Armenia, Aruba, Austria. Belgium and Bulgaria. Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic. Denmark. Estonia. Finland and France. Germany and Greece. Grenada and Guyana. Some were easier than others. Haiti, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, and Japan. Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg. Malta. Sweden. Switzerland.

  Perhaps it was excessive for a man his age, but he took a steady pace. He was a man of steady pace if nothing else. How else to do what he did? The Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning, specially appointed for Sri Lanka’s entry to the WTO. To negotiate trade among the asymmetries of global wealth—it was a bit like navigating a coral reef in your bare feet. The bright darting bait. The razor’s edge. The sharp-nosed predators lying back in their dark.

  He visited the Four Tigers, and the Celtic Tiger and the BRICS. Tea with Mandela in a free South Africa. Can you believe it?

  And, of course, last but not least, most visited, in fact, in the five years, the empire that had once ruled his own: the United Kingdom. Leaden London, murky around the edges like a watercolor portrait of the Queen.

  People were sneering at his suit and blocking his way. The crush of bodies pressing on him, buffeting him from all sides. Without much thought he pulled out his passport.

  “Let me through!” he said, waving it above his head. “I am an international delegate!”

  It had been quite a holiday. A five-year holiday with wine and photos and the ever-present threat of a massive heart attack because the stakes were nearly unbearable. Just one “no” vote from any of these men, or their representatives, would veto Sri Lanka’s entry. One no. It was a kill shot. Like walking through the tall grass with forty long barrels trained on your soft parts. Forty bwanas waiting for the step that will reveal your heart. Christ. The patience required to placate these men and their oversized demands. The diplomacy. The charm and deep duty of international negotiations.

  One more. One more signature. And who could it be but the Americans? Well, Clinton had agreed. All we need is his signature. Five years, five long years, and it’s nearly done.

  A soft glob of some human fluid arced from the crowd and landed warm on his cheek. He recoiled as if shot. He was finally beginning to see the individuals in the crowd—a rain-soaked woman, hair plastered to her forehead; a heavy man with a mouth like a fish, water beading on his glasses. A man filming the whole thing on a handheld video recorder the size of a small book. He was tall and pale with dark unwashed hair and a serious face, wearing a jean jacket and sandals with socks, and he turned and yelled into the crowd, “Don’t spit on the delegates, you assholes.”

  “Thank you,” Charles said. He replaced the passport and removed his pocket square and dabbed delicately at his cheek.

  “Now, if you will excuse me, I must get through.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that, sir.”

  He replaced the pocket square.

  “Thank you, but I have meetings which begin shortly.”

  “I know. We canceled your meetings.”

  “You did what?”

  “We canceled them. Sir.”

  “You canceled what? My meetings? No, I don’t think you understand.”

  But even as he said it he knew. It’s you, Charles, that doesn’t understand. He was seeing the scene, the motley assortment of faces, some angry, some list
ening, some formless and questioning; he was seeing the line of cops on the north side of the intersection in their leather and shields; seeing it all, but it was as if he were blind to some essential element. He knew suddenly that despite the apparently normal functioning of his eyes, he was seeing nothing at all.

  “But you and I,” he said, “all of you,” he said, gesturing to the people, “we’re on the same side.”

  The man laughed. “You’re a delegate.”

  “Yes. Yes. I am a delegate. I am the delegate from Sri Lanka. That is exactly why I’m here.”

  “Oh shit.” The young man in the denim jacket seemed very worried. He said, “Oh, fuck. I’m so sorry. Is that even the thing to say here? We’re out here to protect countries like yours.”

  Charles nodded, thinking, Protect countries like mine? What did he imagine the Third World to be? This man with his denim jacket, his sandals and socks, his greasy brown hair. Did he picture a world without universities, without scientists and politicians, without writers and thinkers? What did he see there in his mind? A world of horses and hand-pulled carriages? Broken-limbed beggars howling at every turn? Did he see a wasteland devoid of taxis and buses and the straight-backed men and women to stand and hail them?

  As if every soul that had ever breathed the air of Sri Lanka—the Third World—had lived a miserable ill-begotten life. Died a nameless unremarked death. Charles looked around. It was a strange idea. Did these people imagine America to be a place lacking in sorrow? Suffering?

  And yet, there was something distinctly American about it all, a fundamental difference in perspective and place—in how they saw themselves in the world. And this was what made it so American—not that they felt compassion for mistreated workers three continents away, workers they had never seen or known, whose world they could not begin to understand, not that they felt guilty about their privilege, no, not that either, but that they felt the need to do something about it. That they felt they had the power to do something about it. That was what made it so American. That they felt they had the power to do something—they assumed they had that power. They had been born with it—the ability to change the world—and had never questioned its existence, an assumption so massive as to remain completely unseen. The power and the responsibility to protect the people they imagined as powerless. The poor defenseless people of the Third World.

  He felt a sudden queasy sadness. What if they knew what a real revolutionary was? How bloody is a real revolution. He looked around, suddenly feeling the need to sit, and saw nothing but their faces, their round wet faces staring back at him.

  What a violence of the spirit to not know the world.

  * * *

  As a child Charles had known the geography of London as well as he knew the lanes of his own town. Piccadilly Circus. Waterloo Station. In his childhood dreams he had wandered Trafalgar Square, admiring the stone lions beneath Nelson’s Column as though he were one accustomed to such sights. Easily, he had imagined himself walking along the Thames, the water sparkling in his imagination in a way it surely never had in reality. Buckingham Palace. The black-and-white photos of the Queen and her children—the Royal Family—published in the daily newspaper. He remembered running his fingers over the grainy photo until the tips were stained black with ink, touching the Queen’s face, shattered somehow as only a child born in a colony can be by the unfathomable distance between himself and civilization.

  Civilization. That faraway thing at the center of it all. That bright candle guttering in the boundless dark.

  The young man in sandals and socks—Charley said to him and to the gathered crowd, “I’m not a rich man. I don’t love money, I love my people and I want to change the system just as much as you do. But you have to change it from the inside. Will you let me do that? Will you let me through, so that I can go to work?”

  The young man considered, while Charles waited with a small humble smile, his hands resting palms together. He was as surprised as anyone when the young man put down his camera and wrapped him in a clinching heartfelt hug.

  They swayed in the rain.

  And then the air exploded.

  A series of deafening reports which blew apart the day. He instinctively hunched and covered his head. Flash memories of 1983. City buses flying to pieces. Air filled with ball bearings and nails. But this wasn’t Colombo and this wasn’t 1983 and this wasn’t a civil war and this wasn’t suicide bombs.

  Was it?

  He risked a glance at the police. They were pointing strange guns at the sky. He turned back to the crowd and saw blossoms of smoke sprouting from the ground. People with bandannas to their mouths, coat sleeves pressed to their faces, eyes and nose sunk into the crook of their elbows.

  This was tear gas. It took more than a moment for him to realize it. He looked to the cops. Looked to the crowd. Looked back to the cops, the glass entrance of the convention center beckoning behind them, staff, janitors, and such, watching.

  Blasts punctured the air. The police had not calculated the wind before they fired. And now it was gusting strongly from the west, was blowing the gas straight back into their ranks. Charles saw it not rising above the crowd, but moving low and fast, close to the ground, a roiling fog of gray smoke sailing through the crowd and past him, as if being sucked into the convention center by a vacuum, and still they were firing. Explosions tore at the air. Canisters crashed into the ground. He felt the poison drift collecting in his clothes. Tasted the grit of it on his teeth, his tongue. Away from the convention center. And even now he wanted to resist, wanted to stay.

  Even now he thought he could still get in. He could still make the meetings.

  His ears ringing, he bent and ran toward the line of cops. One of the skyward guns descended level with his chest.

  “I Am. A. Delegate!”

  Shouting in the roaring air like shouting in a train tunnel with the train passing over your face.

  “I Don’t. Give. A Fuck.”

  Charles pointing at the center, point, point, pointing, and waving his badge.

  “I. Need. To Go. In. There.”

  Like trying to talk inside an airplane engine.

  “You Are. Not. Going. In. There.”

  “I. Have. Meetings.”

  Like popping the door of a plane at thirty thousand feet and trying to conduct a conversation on the wing.

  “Return. To. Your. Hotel.”

  And now the man’s gun was at his side, and his baton was in his hand. He jabbed Charles in the gut, a beautiful shot to the solar plexus, perfectly aligned with button and tie.

  Charles went to his knees. Sucking air and still trying to talk his way in.

  “I. Have. Very. Important. Business.”

  And it seemed the cop, too, had very important business, because the baton which had poked him was now rising to strike him down. The convention center a mere twenty feet away, and yet impossible, closed to him and his desires. He turned from the glass then, from the steps and the police, his heart already plunging in his chest, his eyes watering, and he fell. Landed hard on cold pavement. Felt the shock through his knees. The rawness of his palms.

  Someone took him by the elbow and helped him to his feet.

  It was the young man in socks and sandals. The young man who seemed to think he was out here to save the Third World. He had Charles’s hand and was leading him away from the police. First they walked. And then they ran.

  Arm in arm. Hand in hand over the slippery streets.

  And already, even as he ran, jacket flapping, hair wild, already he was thinking, Canceled? God help me, did this boy say my meetings are canceled?

  21

  Victor breathed and counted his breaths and focused on the rise and fall of his chest. The low pounding of the chant was like a blood beat in his temple. The gas an opaque cloud blanketing the intersection, radiating weird light. His heart was racing, each breath bursting from his mouth like a small explosion, the hot shame like a stone held on his tongue because he was
afraid. Fear had taken over his being and he knew if he could chant he wouldn’t be so shit-scared, but he just couldn’t do it.

  Victor had been on the road for three years, had circled the globe, east to west, and north to south. El D.F., Tegucigalpa, San Salvador. Shanghai and Hong Kong. Bangkok and Delhi. He trusted small signs, the ordinary language of everyday things. He grew a beard and lost weight. His skin took on odd fragrances. He ran out of money. He found a way back home where he could earn in dollars: he worked potatoes; he worked apples, stretching as tall atop an apple ladder as his skinny frame would allow. He tried waiting tables and only lasted a week. Couldn’t take it. He liked to be outside where he could hear the birds and the banging trucks, watch the planes trailing overhead, sleep under a tree during his lunch break if he wanted, the crunch of leaves beneath his head reminding him that he was still just an animal on a planet spinning through space. He liked to remember that. It was important to remember that. One fall he worked the wheat harvest, mucking and cleaning and moving north. Soon as he had enough money, he was off again.

  He traveled because he knew he did not belong. The home where he had been born was not his home. Something was missing. From him or from his home, he didn’t know, and so he wandered. He roamed and tramped and traveled, looking for what he didn’t know. Tierra del Fuego to the Atacama and the Andes. From the Ganga to the high Himalaya. Victor remembered a meal of lentils and rice in Kathmandu overlooking a narrow lane where women gathered to sell nuts and buffalo milk. That was the day he saw the body burning on a pyre of six-foot logs, the white-hot flames licking at the arms and legs and head, the flakes of ash drifting like bits of leaf over the river.

  He had wanted a knowledge born not from any school or teacher, but from his own eyes and ears. From his own brown body alone in the world. An experience and knowledge woven from every person he ever talked to, every bus station and hostel, every meal he had ever eaten squatting against a mud-stained wall, the hundreds of faces of the people he had met, the creased smiles, the yellow teeth, the bloodshot eyes. Where did he belong? To whom did he belong? He didn’t know. He liked to walk. Sometimes he just wandered a city, trying to enjoy the feeling of being lost, the feeling as if he were a satellite thrown open to every channel.