Russell Banks - The Darling

I remember that their eyes locked, Woodrow’s and Charles’s, and I realized that one of the two had betrayed the other, or perhaps not yet; but both knew that, if it hadn’t happened yet, the betrayal was coming. It was a strange, fierce exchange of gazes between the two men, the minister and the man who had been sent to fetch him by the leader, that illiterate ex-sergeant, Samuel Doe, the master of the coup that had executed the previous president and his cabinet three years earlier. I knew him; we all did. Liberia is a small country, and we all knew what kind of man he was. His paranoia and secrecy and penchant for torture had kept the country loyal out of fear of him, starting with his ministers and judges in particular, but the small men in government as well, all the way down to the non-commissioned officers in his personal security force, the enlisted soldiers in the army, customs officers, cops in the street, the private guards at the banks, even the caretakers and watchmen. The leader’s cruelty and greed and his limitless lust for power in his petty kingdom had corrupted his subjects from top to bottom, including the two men facing each other here on the patio, my husband and his friend, two minor ministers in the cabinet, one evidently sent to arrest the other by the leader himself, who, in his enormous, white, limestone house on Mamba Point was at that moment probably swilling fifty-year-old Napoleon brandy and crowing with delight, because, as I soon learned, he was convinced that the two of them, Charles Taylor, the Gio, and Woodrow Sundiata, the Kpelle, both of them clever village boys, American-educated college boys, had been stealing from the president’s personal cache of millions of dollars originally sent to Liberia as American foreign aid. The leader knew this was true. The Americans had shown him the proof. The leader was a shrewd judge of character and circumstance and no doubt believed that Sundiata was the weaker of the two ministers, weak because he was married and had children, and therefore would betray his friend Taylor very quickly, very easily, probably by midnight, especially if Taylor were the one sent to arrest him. And then the leader would have both thieves in his grasp, instead of only one, as would have been the case if he’d chosen to arrest Taylor first. That man, Taylor, was too angry and too strong inside to confess or incriminate anyone else. Taylor would have let the leader’s men torture him to death — not to protect Woodrow, whom he felt superior to, like all the Gio, but to infuriate the leader, whom he loathed and whose power and wealth he coveted.

Charles and Woodrow spoke in Liberian pidgin, and I could barely understand them. Even so, right away it was clear that something much more complicated and dangerous than a mistaken or false arrest was taking place, for Woodrow seemed to understand very well why the Minister of Public Services, his good friend and longtime colleague, had invaded his house, shot his dogs, terrorized his family, and clapped him in irons. And Charles — I knew him well enough now to call him Charles, I’d danced with him and shared fond reminiscences with him of Massachusetts, where he’d attended Bentley College — seemed disgusted with himself, as if he’d fallen for an old trick, as if he knew that somehow Woodrow was not the prisoner here, he was. Woodrow spoke too quickly for me to translate, but I knew that he was making a plea. Yet he was not exactly pleading. He was asking Charles to be sensible.

Charles told him to shut his fucking mouth. I understood that. Then in English, Charles said to me, “It’s all right, he’ll probably be home by morning. But you stay here, stay with your children and your people. Don’t let anyone leave the house until Woodrow returns. You understand me, woman?”

I nodded, and Charles walked quickly away, followed by Woodrow and the four soldiers who held their guns on him as if they expected him to make a run for it. Then all the soldiers left, but one, who took up a position at the gate. When the truck was gone and Charles’s black ministry car had rolled into the darkness behind it, the lone soldier strolled into the house and returned with a bottle of Woodrow’s whiskey. He lighted a cigarette from a fresh pack of Woodrow’s Dunhills, squatted down by the gate, and took a long pull from the bottle. The soldier saw me watching him from the patio and extended the bottle, offering me a drink. I shook my head no, no, no, and hurried inside to my children.

It all happened so fast that it hadn’t fully registered with me, until, halfway across the living room, my legs suddenly turned to water. The room spun, and I tipped and nearly fell to my knees. I reached out to break my fall with one hand on the cold tile floor, when from the tiny, dark laundry room at the rear of the house, Jeannine, trembling, gray faced, her eyes darting around the room, led the boys out.

They saw me and let go of Jeannine’s hands and tumbled towards me like baby birds falling from a nest. I caught them in my arms and pulled them close and stroked their heads, the four of us on the cold floor, tossed together in a tangled heap the same way we sometimes played mamma lion and her cubs in the cave, except this time, for the first time, the boys were terrified and crying, all three of them, and I was struggling not to cry myself, saying in a low, crooning voice, as if all four of us and also Jeannine had been wakened by the same nightmare, “They’re gone now, the soldiers have gone away, they’re gone and won’t be back, my darlings.”

The twins were quickly comforted and settled themselves peacefully against me, the nightmare over, but Dillon pulled away and, looking over my shoulder and around the room, said, “What about Papa? Where’s Papa?”

“He’ll be fine, Dillon. Don’t worry about Papa.”

“Why did the soldiers take him away?”

“He’ll be back soon. The leader wanted to speak with him, that’s all. Your papa is such an important man that the leader wanted to see him and couldn’t wait for tomorrow, that’s all, so he sent some of his own special soldiers to fetch him.”

Dillon looked at me with his steady, skeptical gaze. He knew I was lying, but accepted it, so as not to further frighten his younger brothers. I knew that, had we been alone, though barely seven years old, Dillon would have pushed me for the truth, or else a more complex and believable lie. That was his way. And possibly mine. Children are usually more concerned with justice than truth. And a strong lie sometimes gives as much strength to the one being lied to as to the liar.

The twins merely wanted comfort, not the truth. That was their way. Jeannine, too, wanted comfort, and accepted my reassurances with evident relief, clasping her hands together as if in prayer, although she surely knew that Woodrow, her uncle, her employer, her sometime lover, the man whose power had brought her out of the tribal village into this magically softened life in the city, the person on whom she depended utterly for safety, physical comfort, nourishment, even health, was in danger of losing all his power, possibly his life, and that therefore she, too, was in grave danger.

I disentangled myself from the boys and stood and helped them to their feet, tugged and straightened their pajamas, and kissed them each and in as normal a voice as I could manage told them to hurry along to bed now, it’s very late. “When they’re in bed, Jeannine,” I told her, “there’s broken glass on the patio.”

“Yes, m’am,” she said, and drew the boys to her and led them down the hall towards their bedroom. Then I remembered the dogs. Good Lord, the poor dogs! I walked to the door and looked out at their black bodies between the car and the gate, where the soldier squatted and drank Woodrow’s whiskey and smoked his Dunhills. If I left the house, I’d have to negotiate the space with him somehow. As long as I stayed inside, he’d stay outside. Better to send Jeannine for Kuyo tonight and ask him to come over to the compound right away and remove the bodies of the dogs and hose the blood away before the boys got up in the morning and, when they asked where are the dogs, Mammi? I’d have to lie again and say that Mr. Doe had admired them and wanted them to guard the presidential palace, and Papa had decided that it would be a nice thing to give the dogs to him. Wasn’t that nice of Papa?