Russell Banks - The Darling

They asked me if I was a Christian, had I been saved, and I said no, which seemed not so much to disappoint as to surprise them. This part of the story I told to Anthea, who like me is not a Christian and has not been saved but, unlike me, probably doesn’t need it. It was the end of October, and I was at my desk paying the monthly bills. Anthea came into my office off the kitchen for her pay and, apropos of nothing, attempting perhaps to fill in a blank that I had placed in an earlier version of my story, asked me what became of my house in Africa. I thought that she would find the presence of the Crowns in my old home and their Christian missionary zeal ironic and faintly amusing, which she did. But when she asked if the Crowns knew anything about my sons, since I had already mentioned that the couple knew who I was and had heard about my sanctuary, I lied and said no and wrote out her check and gave it to her.

The Crowns hadn’t been in the country long, but they had friends in high places, as Sam Clement used to say, among them President Taylor himself, whom they claimed to have personally introduced to Jesus Christ, causing the president to be born again, they told me, adding that I should not believe the ugly rumors of barbarism, corruption, and decadence sown by his enemies here and abroad. Charles Taylor had many enemies, they explained, especially among tribal leaders who did not want him bringing Jesus to this benighted land.

When I asked them if the president considered me one of his enemies, they looked away, for it was difficult for them to lie. Keith said that the president knew that in the war my sons had supported Prince Johnson, who was his enemy and was hiding in Guinea and still plotting to overthrow him. Janice added that the president also knew about my husband and that he had supported Samuel Doe, and he knew, of course, that in the war, when the fighting reached Monrovia, I had left for America alone.

“What are you telling me?”

Keith walked to the door and told the children to go back outside and play. Janice was silent for a moment. “We’re not apologizing for Charles Taylor,” she said. “It was a brutal war, people on all sides did terrible things. Both during the war and afterwards. And we’re not judging you, Missus Sundiata. Only God can do that.”

Keith took his wife’s hand in his and in a soothing tone said to me, “In this house we often pray for you. And we pray for the souls of your sons and your husband. Surely, Jesus has forgiven them. Just as He will forgive you, if only you ask. Seek, and you shall find salvation, Missus Sundiata.”

I tried to explain that my husband had been murdered by Samuel Doe’s men, one of whom was known to us, and that my sons and I had witnessed it, and that my sons had joined Prince Johnson solely to avenge their father’s murder, not to oppose Charles Taylor. But that was my story, my truth, not Charles Taylor’s, and although they did not contradict me or call me a liar, the Crowns would have none of it. They nodded and looked at me with pity and a craven hunger to save me from myself.

It was a hunger that I would not let them satisfy. Without warning I told them that my husband’s body was buried in their flower garden, which surprised and confused them. “And I would like to be alone there for a few moments,” I said. I told them that my husband was a Christian, and they could put a little cross over his grave there and continue praying for his soul, if they wished. “I’d also like to see my boys’ bedroom, if that’s all right. And then I’ll leave.”

There is not much more to tell. It was September 10, 2001, and one dark era was about to end and another, darker era to begin, one in which my story could never have happened, my life not possibly been lived. I stood at the edge of the garden at the side of the house where Sam claimed to have buried Woodrow’s body and waited for my husband’s ghost to rise from the flowers and punish me, as the ghosts of my dreamers had done. But he was no longer there. I was alone in the garden. In spite of the Crowns’ prayers for the salvation of his soul, Woodrow had gone to be with his ancestors in Fuama.

And when I went back inside the house and stood in my boys’ bedroom, I was alone there, too. Their spirits had long since disappeared from the room, replaced by the bright spirits of the four children who slept there now. My sons were with their father and their African ancestors. And it made me glad. They were with their people, the people who, living and dead, were loving them in death as I had never been able to love them in life.

I came back to the living room and prepared to leave. The Crowns asked me to stay the night with them, for it was dark by then and dangerous on the streets of Monrovia. I accepted their offer, and later, during dinner, Keith mentioned in passing that the next morning he had to fly supplies from the small in-town airport to their mission outpost in Ganta, close to the border of Côte d’Ivoire. I asked if he would take me there with him, so that I could cross out of the country and return to the States from Abidjan, the way I had come in. This was perfectly agreeable to him, he said, but why not fly out from Robertsfield? I explained that I had entered Liberia illegally without a visa and did not want to alert the authorities, especially the president, to my presence in the country. I said that I was, indeed, Charles Taylor’s enemy. And that is how I got to Abidjan, where I boarded a Ghana Airways flight to New York and made my way home to a nation terrorized and grieving on a scale that no American had imagined before, a nation whose entire history was being rapidly rewritten. In the months that followed, I saw that the story of my life could have no significance in the larger world. In the new history of America, mine was merely the story of an American darling, and had been from the beginning.

S PECIAL THANKS are owed to my assistant, Nancy Wilson, for her help with much of the research; to my agent, Ellen Levine, whose support and friendship have sustained me for, lo, these many years; and to my editor and friend, Dan Halpern, whose tact, intelligence, and trust guided me throughout the writing of this book.

Also, heartfelt thanks to Bela Amarasekaran of the Tacagama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Freetown, Sierra Leone; Sally Boysen at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio; Gloria Grow of the Fauna Foundation, Chambly, Quebec; and the many other individuals around the world who have dedicated their lives to saving chimpanzees from medical experimentation, abuse as entertainers and pets, and outright extermination.