Russell Banks - The Darling

That first night, still half-drunk from the reception champagne — ten iced cases of Dom Perignon delivered to the reception by the president himself — and exhausted and confused by the crowd of people I barely knew, and weirdly, unexpectedly desolated by loneliness, I went straight to the bedroom that looked out on the moonlit beach and crashing surf beyond, doused the lights, undressed, and literally tossed myself onto the enormous, king-size bed and stared up at the slow-moving, overhead fan, and said to myself, Thank God that’s over!

And then thought, But, Lord, Lord, what have I done?

I could hear Woodrow where I had just left him, prowling proudly through the house, patting the leather-upholstered furniture imported from Miami and checking out the brand-new, stainless-steel kitchen appliances from Sweden, opening liquor cabinets and linen closets with undisguised glee and rising dreams of gluttony. He was delirious with happiness. And because I knew the reason he was happy, I hated him. And because I was the reason, the agent for his happiness, I hated myself, too. He had a Christian wife at last, and better yet, a white Christian wife, and better still, a white Christian American wife!

His marriage ceremony, to be sure, had been a little unusual — his bride had invited to the wedding no family members or friends of her own to raise toasts and share in the hosting or to present her, and had offered him no dowry, not even a single cow or a meager plot of arable land; she had brought him and his family nothing. I had arrived like a captured bride, booty. Nonetheless, an ordained Christian minister had presided over the nuptials, and at the reception in the grand ballroom of the Mesurado Point Hotel, where the air conditioning and sound system broke down fifteen minutes into the party, Woodrow Sundiata had been visibly honored by all the elite members of government in attendance and by the chief representatives of business, foreign and domestic. Woodrow’s people had come in from Fuama village, nearly thirty of them in elaborately feathered and wooden tribal costumes, carried to Monrovia in the back of a flatbed truck, and had danced, drummed, and sung for him and his bride and their guests all the hot afternoon long, and his father and mother had declared publically (although they’d had to do it in their native language rather than in English, and no one seemed to hear them) their pleasure and pride in this marriage, or so I was told by Woodrow, and there had been many florid toasts and speeches from members of the government. Not from the president himself, of course, but several of the more lugubrious ministers spoke. And despite my shortcomings, because of what I was rather than who I was, there was now a certain glamor to Woodrow and an almost enviable modernity. Suddenly Woodrow Sundiata possessed visible evidence that he was a city man, a worthy member of the Liberian elite, clearly a man fit for the president’s inner circle. If he had married a Liberian woman instead, even a descendant of the old African-American ruling class, he would have remained the same little, slightly boring, American-educated bureaucrat, the clever, but not too clever, missionary-boy from the bush. (By now I saw how he looked to others and was beginning to look to me, as well.) With me as his wife, however, Woodrow was exotic, a little sexy, and possibly dangerous, as if his newly consecrated American connection gave him access to power and information that were unavailable to other Liberians, even among the elite. Women flirted with Woodrow now, showed him their bare brown shoulders, large bosoms and butts, their big, bright teeth. Men sidled up to him and spoke confidentially to him of deals and possibilities and newly conceived alliances, then reported back to their brethren: Hey, my brother, you see? Even the Belgian representative of the World Bank has given the man the use of his private, very lovely, very expensive beach house for a honeymoon cottage. He’s now a man to keep track of. Woodrow Sundiata sleeps on fine Belgian cotton sheets tonight. The sub-minister sleeps with a white American woman tonight and every night. And she will connect him to the big American and European world out there beyond Liberia where, mysteriously, people get quickly rich and end up with power over other people’s lives and livelihoods. Woodrow Sundiata, my brothers, has become a man to deal with.

He strolled into the darkened bedroom, where I lay splayed on the bed in my underwear, lost in morbid thoughts of having somehow lost my history, of being trapped inside an endless moment. I couldn’t explain it to myself. I wondered if, when my politics disappeared, my only hope for an autobiographical narrative had disappeared, too. It had happened piecemeal, in small erasures, going back to New Bedford and barely noticed at the time, and now I seemed to be living outside of time, without cause or consequence.

Woodrow’s sudden presence in the bedroom hadn’t interrupted my thoughts. I was barely conscious of my brand-new husband’s silent body, even though I could smell him — alcohol, cigarettes, sweat — and in the half-light could see him. As if I were alone, I rolled off the bed, undid my bra and took off my panties, and slid under the covers.

“Ah, I see that you’re ready for me,” Woodrow said. He had already shed his jacket, shirt, and shoes and now slowly unbuckled his belt and dropped his trousers and shorts, stepping from them with knees high as if from a tub. He was erect and surprisingly large sized. This was the first time I had seen him naked. He still wore his socks and garters, like a man in an old-fashioned pornographic film.

I remember asking him if he had a condom.

“A condom? You’re not serious,” he said and gave one of his British chuckles, a low, belching sound that came from his chest. He spotted a candle on the dresser and matches and sashayed over and lit it. The long shadows of the blades of the overhead fan passed slowly across his dark brown chest and shoulders. “Ah, that’s better!” he pronounced. In the flickering candlelight his erection gave me a good-natured, straight-armed salute.

“Of course I’m serious,” I said to him. “I don’t want to get pregnant. Not yet, anyhow. Not this week, or even this year, maybe. Woodrow, I’m still absorbing the idea of being married , for God’s sake.” I pulled the cool outer sheet to my neck and tried to make a winsome smile. “One thing at a time, Woodrow. Okay?”

He laughed. “Hannah darling, this is a matter in which you must do as I say.” His erection, I noticed, was starting to droop, as if fatigued.

“Oh, come on. Now you’re not serious.”

“Decidedly so,” he said. His face darkened. He reached forward and with one hand grabbed my wrist and with the other whipped the covers away, and, lo, his erection had returned and was again at full salute.

Oh, dear, oh, dear , I thought in my mother’s voice, and said in mine, “Wait, Woodrow, please! You don’t have a condom. You didn’t bring any condoms? Let me at least…” I began, with no idea how the sentence should end, thinking that maybe there was something I could do to myself that would protect me from being made pregnant. Why hadn’t I anticipated this, bought a box of condoms myself in Monrovia? Surely they sold them at the Mesurado Point for the American and European men who were afraid of disease as much as I was afraid at this moment of becoming pregnant. I had thought of it, actually, many times, in sober anticipation of this very night, my wedding night, when for the first time Woodrow and I would make love, but each time had realized that in Liberia the women who bought condoms were likely to be prostitutes, so had put the idea out of my mind, until now, when it was too late. Too late. Too late, as Woodrow forced my legs apart with one knee between them and, scowling, spit on his hand and glistened up his cock, and then, too late, he was on me and in me.