Russell Banks - The Darling

That same night Sam Clement found me at the sanctuary. He arrived in the backseat of a Humvee driven by a helmeted U.S. Marine with a second, heavily armed Marine in the passenger’s seat, big, pink-skinned southern boys with necks like tree trunks, crisp, camo’d uniforms, their weapons and boots oiled and glistening, so different from the rusting weaponry and motley uniforms of Doe’s soldiers or the bizarre costumes worn by the rebels. For weeks, Marine helicopters had been airlifting embassy personnel and U.S. and other foreign civilians from the U.S. embassy grounds to four destroyers stationed a few miles offshore, there to receive and ferry people north to Freetown, in Sierra Leone, where there were commercial flights to London and charter planes to the States.

Rain poured down on us in the middle of the muddy yard. We stood in the beam of the headlights, while the Marines stood guard beside it, as if expecting to be attacked. Sam grabbed me by the shoulder. “For Christ’s sake, Hannah, come to the embassy now! You’ll be dead or worse by morning if you don’t. Doe’s dead. This place is turning into a goddamned killing field.”

“Doe’s dead?”

“Where the hell you been, girl? Prince Johnson and his boys got him.”

“Home,” I said. “I’ve been at home. And here.”

He was disgusted. “I’m surprised you’re still alive,” he said and pulled me towards the Humvee. “Get in.”

We rode in silence, until halfway back to town I said to Sam, “I’ve got to go by the house first. I need my passport and some papers and a few clothes, Sam. And some money.”

He didn’t answer at first, then said to the driver, “Sergeant, we’ll make a stop back at Duport Road.”

“Yes, sir. Same place we was watchin’, I suppose,” the Marine drawled.

“Yes.”

When we pulled up to the house, I got out and unlocked the gate and swung it back. The driver drew the Humvee up to the terrace and parked, and Sam and I went inside the darkened house. I lit a kerosene lamp on a table by the door and started for the living room.

Sam said, “You out of fuel for the generator? Smells like you haven’t had the air-conditioner on for weeks.”

“I guess there’s fuel. I just haven’t used it. I’ve been going to bed early, I guess, and making do with candlelight and kerosene lamps.”

He told me to wait while he got the generator started and left me alone in the living room. He was right; the house smelled amphibian. I looked around the room as if I hadn’t seen it in weeks, as if I’d been in another country. Mildew and mold had darkened the walls and ceiling, and the cloth on the furniture and the rugs had started to rot. For weeks I had sleepwalked through my days and dreamlessly slept through my nights and had barely noticed the rapid disintegration of my home. Now, as I lit candles and lamps and walked from living room to dining room to the boys’ bedroom and mine and Woodrow’s, I saw that the house and everything in it and all the memories that it contained were dying before my eyes.

Returning to the living room, I heard the generator rumble to life, and suddenly the lights came on, and the air-conditioner fluttered and whirred. Sam came inside looking pleased with himself. “Let there be light!” he said. He hadn’t shaved in several days and looked very tired. His rumpled suit was spotted with mud and coffee stains and sweat and looked like he’d been wearing it for weeks. But he was oddly attractive all the same. Fatigue and anxiety became him. They undercut his Tidewater arrogance, his genteel self-assurance, and gave him a more humble mien and manner. He shot me a crooked smile and said, “Too bad we don’t have some time to kill. We could throw us a little party.”

I looked up at him. “In all these years, Sam, you’ve only hit on me once, when you tried to kiss me out there on the terrace. Remember?”

“Yes. That was an accident. I was a little drunk, I’m afraid. But I don’t mean that the way it sounds. You are an extremely attractive woman, I can say that. It’s just that I don’t make a habit of coming on to married women.”

“I never thought of you as especially scrupulous, Sam.”

He laughed lightly. “I’m not.”

“What about widows?”

“Yes, well, that would alter things a tad, wouldn’t it, now? But this is not a good time, Miz Sundiata, for you to be coming on to me. If that is what you’re doing.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Maybe I’m just curious.”

“Curious, eh? The truth is, sometimes after I’ve been out here in this goddamn heart of darkness I get horny for white people, that’s all. I suppose you do, too. I expect that’s a little of what’s going on with you right now,” he said.

I exhaled slowly and sat down on the sofa. “No. I’m lonely. And I’m confused. And I’m frightened. And terribly sad, Sam. I’m sad. And suddenly, in this light and in this room, you are a very attractive man to me, and if it would make my loneliness and confusion and fear and my sadness go away for a few moments, I’d like you to make love to me. That’s all.”

He furrowed his brow and looked steadily at me, as if he suspected a trap was being set for him. “That’s all, eh? I was under the impression that you preferred women,” he said.

“Oh, really? And what gave you that impression?”

He laughed. “A boy can tell. Especially one that prefers men. C’mon, m’dear, pack your bag. We can continue this discussion later.” He reached out for my hand and took it and drew me slowly to my feet. The rain pounded against the roof and splashed against the terrace and walkways outside. I thought of Woodrow buried in his shallow grave at the side of the house and my sons’ empty cots, their clothes and books and games still lying scattered around their bedroom.

“I can’t leave,” I said to Sam.

His face stiffened. “I’m under orders to bring you to the embassy, Hannah, and get you the hell out of the country.”

“I have to be here for when my sons come back.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I can’t find them. And I can accept that for now. But I have to make it so they can find me. You don’t know, because you don’t have children. You’re not a mother,” I said. “This is what mothers do, Sam. I know. I’m a mother. They wait for their children to come back home. Like my mother did with me.”

“I was afraid of this,” he mumbled and walked to the TV and turned it on. Nothing came up except snow, both television stations having been captured by the rebels days before and all the broadcast equipment mindlessly looted or smashed. “You got anything to drink?” he asked. “You’re gonna need one, and I’d like one, too.”

I pulled a bottle of Woodrow’s whiskey and two glasses from the liquor cabinet and poured us each a drink. I noticed that Sam had a videotape in his hand.

“Sit down, Hannah. I want you to watch this.”

I sat in Woodrow’s overstuffed armchair opposite the TV, and Sam put the tape into the VCR. He stood aside with the remote in one hand and his drink in the other and fast forwarded past footage of what looked like bands of rebel troops. Then suddenly I was looking at the face of Samuel Doe. He was seated on the floor of a brightly lit room with several men in rebel military uniforms standing over and around him. He was naked, except for a pair of blood-spotted underpants. He was fat, big bellied, his spindly legs splayed before him, his thin arms bound tightly behind him. The camera is shaky and moves erratically off Doe to the others and back again. Two of the men stroke his head, which has red abrasions and cuts and appears to have been roughly shaved with a knife or a dull razor. Doe looks mournfully up at his captors and says, “I want to say something, if you will just listen to me.” I recognize one of the two men stroking Doe’s head. It’s Albert — it’s Sweet Dreams Gladiator. He has a small smile on his face that looks almost gentle. Doe says to him, “You untie my hands, and I will talk. I never ordered anybody’s execution.” The camera swings away from him, blurs past the others in the room, some in uniform, some not, and there is Prince Johnson seated at a large desk. Hanging from the wall behind him is a pink and pale blue Sunday-school portrait of Christ carrying a lamb on his shoulders. I can read the legend below Christ: Look at me and be saved . Prince Johnson says, “I’m a humanitarian.” He sniffs and coughs lightly, as if from cigarette smoke. “Cut off one ear,” he says. The camera drifts back to Doe. Someone has a long knife in his hand, but the camera wobbles on Doe, who is pushed over on his back, and I can’t see who is sawing at his ear with the knife. Doe shrieks, and when the man steps away, I see that he is not a man, he is a boy. It is Dillon, my eldest son. Doe thrashes and flips his head wildly from side to side. He manages to sit up and begins blowing on his bare chest, as if to put out a fire. He ceases blowing and looks off camera at his tormentors. “I beg you…” he says. A hand shoves his head back and pushes him onto the floor again, and the knife goes to work on his other ear. He screams, a wail of pain and helpless fury. Then there is a quick swerve of the camera back to Prince Johnson, still at his desk, dangling a human ear above his open mouth, lowering the ear slowly. Chewing. Now Doe is in a garden, entirely naked, his face puffed and bloody, his ears reduced to pulpy stumps. There is a small group of men and boys hovering around him, among them Dillon and William, looking bored and half asleep, as if they’ve just been roused and told to get ready for school but would rather have stayed in bed a while longer. Doe moans and says to someone off camera, “Varney, I’m dying.” A man’s voice says, “We are asking you in a polite manner now. What did you do with the Liberian people’s money?” He speaks slowly in good English, as if for an American audience. Doe shakes his head and then is shown the knife, and he cries, “My penis! No, please, not my penis!” The camera jiggles and moves at a tilt, changing point of view as it gets passed over to William who turns its gaze on the previous cameraman, who is Paul, unsmiling, unafraid, almost blasé-looking. A man off camera says to Doe, “Repeat after me. ‘I, Samuel Kenyon Doe, declare that the government is overthrown. I’m therefore asking the armed forces to surrender to Field Marshal Prince Johnson.’ ” Doe complies, his voice thin and weak. Off camera, someone says, “Fuck.” Doe whimpers, “I want to talk. I need to pee.” The screen fades to white, then black.