Russell Banks - The Darling

That first day I saw him as more like an old-time samurai than a modern, post-colonial, West African bureaucrat. It was a first impression that would hold up for several months. There was a visible tension between what I took to be his passionate nature and the means by which he kept it in check — he stood up in a single motion, as if caught by surprise, although Miss Dawn Carrington had been twice announced to him, by phone from his outer office and then by his personal assistant, a young, very tall, very black man named Mr. Satterthwaite, who had showed me in and quickly left us alone.

Woodrow Sundiata stepped back against the latticed window, clasped his hands together high on his chest, and made a little bow. He moved with the confidence of a man used to being in charge of situations and people, I thought, a familiar type to me. He looked directly into my eyes, nowhere else, as if everything he needed to know about me was revealed there. Then, abruptly, he looked away, gestured towards a chair next to his desk, and said, “Please sit down, Miss Musgrave.”

Musgrave! I was suddenly dizzy and sat down quickly, more to keep my bearings than to be polite. I stammered, “I’m sorry, but … but why… why do you say that name?” I was sweating even more heavily than before and had trouble breathing, as much from alarm as the heat and the wet weight of the air, which seemed to have been doubled by his words. Miss Musgrave! It had been more than five years since a stranger called me by my father’s last name. Even underground no one called me by that name, except for Zack, and then only when trying to antagonize me. Was I no longer underground then? Was my secret out? Just like that?

Relief and fear washed over me in successive waves, each nullifying the other. I felt neither emotion on its own, although I knew as a fact, as data, almost, that I was both immensely relieved and very frightened. No, what I felt was simple, mind-numbing shock. Shock at finding myself suddenly no longer underground, for that is what his calling me Miss Musgrave meant. It was now a fact. I said to myself simply, This is amazing!

“Yes, well, the American embassy in Monrovia, as you no doubt know, keeps track of American citizens residing in West Africa,” he said and slipped me a weary, knowing smile and a conspiratorial sigh. “We help them; they help us. Though we, of course, have somewhat different priorities and concerns than do they.” His accent was almost Caribbean, British with a musical, lower-register lilt. “Would you prefer that I call you Miss Carrington then?” he asked.

“No. No, that’s fine. I’m a little … confused, however. And surprised, I guess. That is, that you … that I was allowed to enter the country, I mean.”

“I imagine so. But all appearances to the contrary, Miss Carrington, and in spite of our ancient and mostly honorable, historical connections to the United States, we don’t work for them. And from the file we received, it didn’t seem that your Miss Hannah Musgrave was of any particular danger to the Republic of Liberia,” he said. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

He laughed. He had a pencil-thick gap in the middle of his upper front teeth which was strikingly attractive to me. “Oh, either one. Are you a danger to us? Are you Hannah Musgrave?”

“No,” I said. “To the first question. And yes to the second.” It was true, I posed no danger to anyone. Not anymore, not after today. Except possibly to myself. And in spite of Dawn Carrington’s name in my passport and on my Ghanaian exit visa and my Liberian entry visa, I was indeed Hannah Musgrave. And loved hearing this man say it. My name. And wanted him to say it again. Miss Musgrave. Hannah Musgrave.

We sat opposite each other in silence for a long moment, while I tried letting the name cover my body and my mind. But it wouldn’t fit over or around me. It pinched and pulled and seemed too small, as if cut for some other woman’s body and mind, a woman who was practically a stranger to me. I was no longer the Hannah Musgrave who’d gone underground in 1970, who’d disappeared from the world of parents, town, college, and university, where she once upon a time had played a central role, or at least a known and recognized role. And I could no more return now to being the old, abandoned Hannah than I could leap forward in time and become the new, nicely recovered Hannah, thank you very much, who tells this story these many years later. I might have been once again dressing myself in Hannah Musgrave’s name, but the woman who was born wearing it was gone, apparently forever, as if she were the unexpected victim of a rare, fast-acting, fatal disease. But if I wasn’t that woman anymore — and was no longer Dawn Carrington — then who was I? Desperately, that afternoon in Assistant Minister Sundiata’s office, I struggled to become the thirty-four-year-old Miss Musgrave freshly arrived in the city of Monrovia from Accra in search of a job, any kind of job, Mr. Sundiata, and housing, any sort of shelter will do, and intelligent company, for I am utterly alone, cut off from all the communities to which I previously belonged. Oh, and yes, thank you, I would be pleased to have dinner with you this evening, sir .

“My assistant, Mr. Satterthwaite, will drive you to your quarters, so you can get settled. Perhaps you’d like to take a short nap and freshen up a bit? I’ll come ’round at seven o’clock, if that’s not too early.”

“No, that’s fine,” I said. “But… I’m a little confused. Look, I’m sorry to ask, but I have to. How can I be sure that you’re not…?” I paused. “All right, let me say it. How can I know that you won’t turn me over to the American embassy?”

He smiled. “To tell you the truth, you can’t. But really, Miss Musgrave — may I call you Hannah?”

“Yes! Please do.”

“It’s a lovely name,” he said and flashed his gap-toothed smile. “Yes, Hannah, you wouldn’t do us much good wasting away in an American jail, now would you?” He stood and took my hand in his and examined it, and for a second I thought he was going to kiss it. “You’re not married, are you.” It was more a statement than a question.

“No.”

“And you’ve come here alone. That’s quite something. What about your American companion in Accra?” He glanced back at an open file folder on his desk. “Zachary Procter, he calls himself. Not his real name, of course.”

“No, it’s his real name. He’s still in Accra. In fact, I don’t think Zack even knows where I am. I don’t think he knows I’ve left Ghana. I… I’m quite alone.”

“That’s good. Good for him, I mean. Because I don’t see how we could be as … lenient with Mr. Procter as we are being with you. But let me assure you, Hannah,” he said, and now he did indeed kiss my hand, a gesture that was both comical and elegant, making me smile. “You are no longer alone.”

WOODROW’S OFFICE in the Ministry of Health was located off Tubman Boulevard at the southeastern edge of Monrovia in a freshly built, three-storey, cinder-block cube attached to the John F. Kennedy Medical Center. His assistant, Mr. Satterthwaite, drove the ministry Mercedes, a ten-year-old, velvety, dark gray sedan in immaculate condition, and I sat in air-conditioned ease in the back and gazed at the city as we passed through it. Earlier, coming in from Robertsfield Airport some fifty-five kilometers south of the city — packed into an antique Plymouth sedan with six other passengers picked up along the way until I was finally dropped off at the ministry — I had been so distracted by the heat and so anxious and tentative about my reasons for being in this place, this city, this country, this continent , that I barely noticed where I was, and if the driver or one of my sweating, placid, half-asleep fellow passengers had told me that I’d been returned to Accra by mistake or had been magically transported to New Bedford, Massachusetts, I might have believed him. That’s how disoriented I’d become since leaving Accra. But as I saw clearly now, I certainly was not in New England. And Monrovia was not Accra, and Ghana was not Liberia.