We have just been taking part in long and fruitless negotiations with the members of Manifesto, one of the innumerable opposition forces, locked in combat with the very weak “strong man” of the regime, President Syad Barré, once a friend of the USSR, then its enemy, and now an old man shut away within the fortress of the Villa Somalia. His opponents have already formed themselves into a government, and while making speeches about the future of the country, these gentlemen are squabbling over the ministerial portfolios they count on obtaining after the overthrow of Barré. They are ready to form alliances with anyone at all – the USSR, America, the devil – in fact, with whoever will supply the most arms and money in the shortest possible time. They are hesitant and lack ruthlessness. One cannot count on them. Soon the real warlords will arrive, who will have none of their reservations. Furthermore, it is clear that the Moscow analysts have as poor an understanding of this country as the American strategists. But the salient point is that there is less and less for the experts in history to understand. For this city’s only history is mere survival, the phases of it are recorded in corpses: these two bodies, among others, a few yards from our refuge, two youths, probably the ones who had to abandon the fridge and run, and fell beneath a burst of gunfire. And the chronology of this history gone mad is documented in the use-by date on a pack of milk swollen by the heat.
We are waiting for nightfall to be able to leave the area. The fighters will be active for another half hour, shooting, killing, stocking up their reserves of food. Then they will go back to their quarters, as they do every day, to lose themselves, some in the thirst-provoking nirvana of khat, some in the caresses of a female companion in arms. The city, dark, without water, without links to the outside world, will become a dot in space amid the stars.
The woman Elias begins to talk about is not at all like the present-day Anna I had imagined through my half-slumber in the plane. Instead, she is thinner and weary, and when she stands against the light beside the window her pale face blends with the silvery swirling of the snowflakes outside the glass. At first, like a clockwork toy animated by the last few turns of the key, she played the part of a worldly Muscovite woman, a diplomats wife showing a friend round her luxurious apartment. But within a few minutes the clockwork runs down, comes to a standstill. “There came a time when we’d had enough of all those African bits and pieces. Besides, its better like this. With all the masks they make for the tourists, there soon won’t be any forests left…” The clockwork within her comes to life in one last spasm, just to say that, unlike other diplomats wives, she has a job and that at the embassy they have entrusted her with work on data processing… They smile at one another, aware of the futility of the roles they are trying to play: she, a modern woman who has achieved a brilliant international career, he, a champion of human rights who braves all dangers (in the falseness of those first few minutes he had spoken briefly about the battle at Mavinga, where he was wounded. What an idiot!).
They fall silent, observe the fluttering of white above the bare trees in the courtyard. He is aware of the slender-ness of Anna’s hand in his own. She begins speaking without turning her head toward him.
“I’ve lived a life – in fact, I constructed it, this life – which I should not have lived. And yet, you see, I feel I absolutely had to live through it, such as it was, this life, to be capable of denying it. A lot of people can probably judge their lives like this. But the difference is that you and I love one another…”
The snow tumbles even more heavily out of the darkening air. Elias draws a breath, preparing to reply, but suddenly a toy standing on the television set comes to life: a plastic crocodile that opens its jaws, moves its feet, and emits a growl with a jazzy tune. “It’s my son’s clock. That means it s time for the television news…” They both laugh softly and wait for the reptile to finish its performance. Anna goes on talking, but in a voice as if liberated, less cautious.
“You told me one day that the world must be changed. Because it was intolerable for a soldier to smash a woman’s collarbone with a kick of his boot. But you haven’t really succeeded in changing it, this world…”
“I’d have hated myself if I hadn’t fought to do so…”
“If you’d married me, you wouldn’t have had time to fight, admit it.”
“Even yesterday I should have replied: wrong, of course I would! But I don’t want to lie anymore. If I’d married you, I’d have become a fat Angolan apparatchik who’d spend his time opening accounts in the West and counting everything in barrels and carats… And I’d have looked like… Yes, that crocodile. But less fun.”
She seems not to have heard his joking remark.
“In the end this was the thought that kept me alive. I said to myself: Very well, I’m living with a man I don’t love. The years go by, and it will always be like this. Till I die. And then I remembered that woman they laid on the ground in front of her child, and the child sees his mother’s collarbone is broken… And then I said to myself that the only way to love you was to let you fight against that world. I suffered a lot but I believed I was doing the right thing. And now it’s too late. We can’t go back anymore…”
They do not switch on the lights, and in the darkness Elias can see Annas eyes, her gaze lost in an invisible procession of days, suns, moments.
“But what if we tried to go back?” It is suddenly hard for him to control his voice, although it is finally saying precisely what he wanted to say An improbable but unbelievably real, true, and vital dream. He tries to makt it less abrupt, to find a justification, an excuse for it. “You know, Anna, to tell you the truth, I shall soon have very little choice. There won’t be much of a future for the person IVe been all this time. Your country no longer needs me. Mine, governed as it is, will do everything in its power to make me disappear. So I’ll be forced to go back. I thought we could do it together…”
“Go back… But go back where?”
“Back to Sarma.”
He leaves her at nightfall. The streets are already almost empty, the same streets, he thinks, as twenty years ago, the same slow swirling of the snow…
A few dozen yards from his hotel three men suddenly block his path. Young, dressed in leather jackets. Heavy, wary faces. Elias steps aside slightly, feels his muscles tense ready for a fight. In a flash all the disgust for these Moscow brawls floods in: the collective beating up of a dirty negro. Except that now, facing these three cretins in their leather gear, there stands a body covered in scars, raked by bullets. He clenches his fists, lowers his chin.
“Excuse me. Can you change this for a few dollars?” Their English accents are comical, and indeed the whole performance makes their faces look singularly foolish. All three of them look like recalcitrant pupils taking an oral exam.
“No dollars,” he replies. “Just Mongolian tugriks!” He smiles, walks round the trio, who are lost in confusion over how to translate his reply. On arriving at the hotel, he goes to the bar and orders a drink.