Chris Abani - The Secret History of Las Vegas

No, thank you, he said.

Okay, well, here’s what we need, she said, putting a pile of papers in front of him. I need you to sign and initial everywhere you see a red mark; no need to read it all, it’s standard counterterrorist issue contracts and stuff like that. Life insurance — you know, if you get killed in the line of duty. Your family will get the money. You do have a family? No? What a shame, a nice young man like you should have a family. Oh well, maybe soon. Here’s a pen.

It took Sunil ten minutes just to wade through and find all the red marks to sign next to.

All done? Good, good. Leave your bag here and I’ll have it sent to your quarters. You will be sharing with the other blacks here; their quarters are at the back. But for now, you are to go to Shed 10, which is over there, she said, pointing, and join the officers you came in with. They will take you to meet Eugene. He runs this place and he is eager to meet you.

Shed 10 was easy to find. He just followed the screams and the subsequent three gunshots. As he got to the front of the shed, which was more like a barn, the two white officers were loading the body of the hooded man onto the front of a jeep, strapping him down like an antelope carcass.

There you are, one of them said. Get in. Eugene wants to meet you.

The Land Rover roared over the rough terrain, heading out behind the farm, across a stretch of hills littered with stubby grass and rocks. The compound fell away behind them, lost in a cloud of dust and debris. Sunil noticed the ribbon of water to his left. Idyllic willows, drooping gracefully over the river, lined the entire length of it.

Vlakplaas River, the driver said. Good, eh?

Yes, Sunil said to be polite.

And now here, over beers, Eugene was asking him if he was philosophical only ten feet away from the body of the hooded man.

You like the more practical things? Maybe love? Do you have a stukkie, Eugene asked.

No, I don’t have a girlfriend, Sunil said.

More of a one-night-stander then, eh, love them and leave them, Eugene pressed on. No judgments from me.

None of that, Sunil said, taking a swig of beer.

So what do you believe in then?

I don’t know, Sunil said.

The fire in the pit was going strong and the men were roasting kudu steaks on a grill placed at an angle over the fire. The gamey smell was nauseating to Sunil.

I like you; you’re an honest man. I can see we are going to get along. When I was a child, I used to believe in God, but as the Bible says, when you become a man you must give up your childish ways, Eugene said.

So what do you believe in now, Sunil asked.

Eugene put his weathered copy of Inferno down and scooped up a handful of dirt. As in much of Africa, it was red, like a handful of blood. Even in West Africa where the surface soil was a deep black loam, if you dug a little, the red turned up, underneath everything; like the very continent’s blood: everyone was buried in it and everyone came from it. If there was an Africa, this was it. Eugene was crumbling the earth into a fine red drizzle.

I believe in this, this fucked-up land we call Africa, he said. I’m a real Boer like that. Like the Zulu or the Ndebele, I live and die for this earth. I sleep it, I dream it, I taste it, I love it, hell, I even breathe it.

I see, Sunil said.

It was hot, and flies were beginning to buzz around the dead man and the stack of kudu meat, both raw and cooked. The men were eating, drinking, and generally joking around. The mood seemed light, like any picnic Sunil had attended.

Baas, you want some food, one of the men called to Eugene.

He shook his head, never taking his eyes from Sunil’s face.

See, I’m nothing like these barbarians, he said. That’s why I brought you in. These men care nothing for Africa, even the blacks among them. They care nothing for causes. They only care about having and using brutish power. Without thinkers like me, it will all be taken from them, because that kind of brutish power cannot survive for long. It begins to feed on itself.

That takes no great insight to realize, Sunil said, swatting at a fly. If you brutalize an entire people to have your way then you must always live with the fear of retaliation; it means you can never drop your menacing guard. We can only live like that for so long before we slip up. That’s what you do have in common with these men, Dante or the Bhagavad Gita notwithstanding.

Eugene let the rest of the earth drizzle from his hands. Sunil became aware suddenly that the men by the barbecue had stopped talking. The only sound was Eugene dusting his hands off and the buzzing of flies. Then there was the unmistakable click of a hammer cocking on a gun. Sunil felt the hair on his neck rise to attention. Although he could not see who had the gun, because his back was to them, he knew it was pointed at him. Eugene looked from Sunil to the men behind him and shook his head. The hammer was released and just like that, the chatting and laughter resumed behind Sunil.

I like you, Sunil. I really need a man who speaks his mind, Eugene said, picking up his book and waving it at Sunil. So what else do you make of a man like me?

Professionally?

It would hardly be personal since you don’t know me.

And there won’t be a gun to my head?

No, no, of course not, Eugene said, smiling, eyes cold.

Sunil took a swig of beer. He knew this was a test, but he wasn’t sure how to pass it. There were a lot of metal clanking sounds coming from behind him but he didn’t turn around.

You are a man who strives for the power to control other people, he said.

But why do you think that is?

I would say it is because the striving and the power keep you from realizing just how helpless you really are. It protects you from facing the fact that others are manipulating you, that regardless of what you might claim, your philosophy is simply a way to rationalize what you do for others too afraid to do their own dirty work; that you are in a way also a victim of the apartheid state.

You are wrong about me, Sunil. Unlike men like you and even Dante here who have wandered into the dark forest of error unknowingly and who now desperately want to return to their joy, kept from it by your own demons, your ferocious beasts of worldliness, I came here to this hell by choice. Those beasts that are your terrors are my constant companions, sometimes my pets, sometimes my leaders, but never ever the source of terror. I have no terror, you see. I’m not like Dante, who has come upon the sign that asks all who enter to abandon hope. I came here to find hope. I know that I have done bad things, that I must continue to do bad things, but I do so for the ideal. For the utopia that this land was and will remain — we drove the blacks from it and we drove the British from it, and I will be damned if I will let any Afrikaner destroy it. Do you understand? This is the only thing that will last, this land, long after those fools and incontinent cowards and liars in Pretoria and Bloemfontein have been driven from power. Let me tell you, it is hard to tell sometimes who is being controlled and who is doing the controlling, and so the only way forward is to have purpose, and purpose is an ideal. That ideal can be found in heroes like Arjuna. Do you know what Arjuna means?

Sunil shook his head.

Do you know who he was?

Sunil shook his head again.

Your father, before he died, was Indian, right? You of all people should know about the hero of the Bhagavad Gita.

My father was Sikh.

Arjuna means light, white, shining, bright, Eugene continued, as though Sunil had not spoken. Arjuna is a peerless archer and a reluctant hero who doesn’t want to go to war at first because he loathes having to kill his own relatives who share a different ideology. But Krishna comes to convince him of his duty, the warrior’s duty. That was his code, which was the ideal that transformed everything Arjuna did to an act of God, to an act of the highest ethical order.