“Trap?”
“Thinking I had somehow committed myself to one kind of action and one kind of cause. There is so much more to the world. You know what I mean. You mustn’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.”
“As you say, you feel like a stranger here. You don’t feel involved. And I can see how some of our attitudes can irritate you. I feel we’ve let you down. We haven’t used you well — and that’s true of a lot of other people besides yourself. Because you’re a brave man, Peter. People who’ve read your book know that you’re a brave man and that you’ve suffered for your beliefs, in a way that most of us will never suffer. Can we talk about your book? It wouldn’t embarrass you?”
“We can talk about my book.”
“It’s an extraordinary book. Quite a document. But I’m sure you don’t want me to repeat what the critics have already told you.”
“They didn’t say that.”
“One of my problems with the book is that, although it’s very political — and I know that you consider yourself a political animal — there seems to be no framework of political belief.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“We’ve talked about this. You write as though certain things merely happened to you, were forced on you.”
“Some people have said this to me. It was what the publisher said. I suppose that’s what’s wrong with it as a book.”
“You describe the most monstrous kind of white aggression against black people. Monstrous things happened to you and to people you know. And some of those people are still there. You describe individual things very clearly. But it isn’t always easy to see where you were going or where you thought you were going.”
“I began to feel that when I was writing. What was clear at the time became very confused as I was writing. I felt swamped by all the people I had to write about, and all the little events which I thought important. I thought I would never be able to make things clear. But I was hoping people wouldn’t notice.”
“But the astonishing thing is that you risked so much for so little. Looking back now, the guerrilla activities you describe in your book, the little acts of sabotage — they really cannot be compared with the guerrilla activities of other people in other countries. Would you say that was fair?”
“We were amateurs. The situation was different in other countries.”
“And perhaps the motivation was different as well. It isn’t for me to pass any judgment, so far from the scene. I can only admire. But I find it hard to imagine that you expected what you were doing to have any result. Tearing up a railway, bombing a power station.”
“I’m amazed myself now at the things we tried to do. I suppose we led too sheltered lives. We exaggerated the effect of a bomb.”
“It was a gesture. You were making a gesture.”
“It didn’t seem so at the time.”
“And you and your companions paid heavily for that gesture. You were tortured, Peter.”
Roche, warm sweat tickling through his hair and down his forehead, stared at the microphone.
“Even that you write about as something that just happened.”
Roche turned his head and looked at the picture window. The royal palms were dark warm silhouettes against the glowing sky.
“No bitterness,” Meredith said. “No anger. Many people have remarked on this. But I have a problem with it. At school — many people will remember this — we were sometimes given a punishment assignment. I don’t know what happens nowadays, but we wrote lines. The way of the transgressor is exceedingly difficult.’ ”
The tone of Meredith’s voice, and a certain rapidity in the delivery, indicated that this was something he had prepared. Roche heard the professional laugh in the voice. Dutifully — the duty owed to someone who had prepared so well and was trying so hard — Roche turned to face Meredith again. He saw the smile, not the smile of the uplifted face, but Meredith’s other smile.
“That was what we wrote,” Meredith said. “We would write fifty of those, or a hundred, even two hundred. Some boys sold lines. And that to me is the message of your book. You transgressed; you were punished; the world goes on.”
“That’s how it’s turned out. If you want to put it like that.”
“It’s the message of your book. You’ve endured terrible things — you’ve got to try to come to terms with it, and I can see how that attitude can give you a kind of personal peace. But it’s a dead end. It doesn’t do anything for the rest of us. It doesn’t hold out hope for the rest of us.”
“Perhaps it’s a dead end for me. But I don’t know why you should want me to hold out hope.”
“We look up to people like you. I’ve told you. I’m trying to determine what you have to offer us. No bitterness, Peter. No anger. Don’t you think you’ve allowed yourself to become the conscience of your society?”
“I don’t know what people mean when they talk like that.”
“But you do. It’s nice to have someone in the background wringing their hands for you, averting the evil eye — what we call over here mal-yeux. You’ve heard the word? People are perfectly willing for you to be their conscience and to suffer, while they get on with the business of aggressing, and the thugs and psychopaths get on with their work in the torture chambers.”
“They’re not thugs. They’re perfectly ordinary people. They wear suits. They live in nice houses with gardens. They like going to good restaurants. They send their grown-up daughters to Europe for a year.”
“And people like you make it all right for them. Your society needs people like you. You belong to your society. I can understand why you say you are a stranger and feel a little bit at sea among us.”
“I came here to do a job of work.”
“We’ve been through that before. I don’t want to embarrass you, Peter. But you’ll understand that we look at things from different angles. Have you really come to terms with your experience? Do you really think the effort has gone to waste?”
“I haven’t come to terms with it. All my life I’ve been frightened of pain. Of being in a position where pain could be inflicted on me.”
Meredith crumpled the white handkerchief on the table. “You talk about that as though it was something that had to happen.”
“I know. I used to wonder about that. And it used to frighten me.”
“This obsession with pain. It’s something we all share to some degree. In your book — we’ve talked about this — in that chapter about your early life you talk about the German camps.”
“The publisher asked me to write in that chapter.”
“In that chapter you talk about the extermination camps. You say it was the most formative experience of your adolescence.”
“I’m forty-five. I imagine most people of my generation were affected.”
“It made you sympathetic to the Jews?”
“What I felt had nothing to do with the Jews.”
“Did you want to revenge the people who had suffered?”
“I wanted to honor them. In my mind. Not to dishonor them.”
“No anger?”
“What I felt wasn’t anger.”
“What did you feel, Peter?”
“I was ashamed.” Roche touched his left arm and felt his own warm sweat. “I was ashamed for this.” He let his hand rest on the wet arm. “I was ashamed that the body I had could be treated in that way.”
“And the test came. You made your gesture. You cut your railway line, you blew up your power station. The gesture was important. And you were prepared for the consequences. The psychology of bravery. It’s a very humbling thing. But now you’re at peace with the world. No bitterness, no anger. This obsession with pain and human suffering is in the past.”