Paper by Richard Lane
He was on the beach, staring at the sprawling sands of Santo Tomas, Menorca, watching the thousands of glints in the sea a hundred metres away. His wife was beside him. She was lying on her stomach, her orange swimming costume rolled down to her waist. She had a pencil and a sketchpad in her hands. It must have been the yacht moored near the shore she was drawing – it was the only thing they could see for miles.
A breeze picked up, blowing playfully at first as if trying to attract their attention. Then the wind lost its patience and gusted hard, taking the sketchpad clean out of his wife’s grasp. But she kept on drawing, her pencil scratching at thin air. It was then that the scene started to fade, whiting out like a blank page.
The pain greeted him like a scorned lover, and all he could do was moan.
He was stood by the desk, quickly losing his patience with the black-suited man standing behind it.
“I’m sorry, Sir, the President isn’t here today,” the black-suited man repeated. “You will have to come back another time.”
Robert waved his papers in front of the black-suited man’s face, a gesture of frustration rather than anything meaningful. “This is ridiculous, I have an appointment. He knows I’m coming!”
“Sir, this isn’t a doctor’s surgery. The President is a very busy man. He goes where he is needed.”
Robert ceased waving the papers, and slammed them on the desk, just missing the black-suited man’s fingers. “He’s not the bloody Pope. He’s the President of a country and he is supposed to show some courtesy!”
The black-suited man leaned over the desk, he was small, skinny and his face gaunt, but his eyes showed no signs of intimidation. “Sir, as I have told you three times already, he is not here. Now please leave or I will have you escorted out.” The black-suited man’s eyes flickered to one side, where one of the guards stood, smiling excitedly like a child, but his eyes contained a very different kind of excitement.
Robert looked at the guard, looked at the rifle in his hands and the smile on his face. He felt something tug at his sweat-slicked shirt.
“Dr Gilchrist, we should go,” Emmanuel said.
Robert glanced to his side, at Emmanuel’s pleading face. He nodded absently, and slowly, cautiously, took a step back.
He was lying on tarmac, he realised. Hot tarmac. Hard tarmac. The sky was vivid blue, a reflection of the ocean in his dream. He was warm, but patches of him were warmer than the rest.
Something had happened, he didn’t know what. Thinking was hard at the moment, remembering was impossible. Doing should be easier, and the next thing to do was get up, off the tarmac that was slowly frying his back.
His stomach muscles clenched, his biceps inflated, his elbows dug into the hard, cracked road. His hands flipped so his palms faced downwards. He pushed.
Fireworks went off. Stars exploded. The world spun, twisted, and went black. He roared in agony, the warm patches became infernos blazing across his body, and only now did he notice that the blaze was wet.
He was sat up, panting, resisting the urge to vomit. He stared down at himself. The right side of his body was peppered with shards of metal and glass, like the inside of a recycling bin.
He was muttering under his breath, cursing, swearing. He had known something like this would probably happen before he had stepped off the plane, but the ease of it so far had fooled him into complacency. Go in, smile, pretend to be nice, take the diploma off the President of Zimbabwe, shake his hand, and leave. He was an idiot.
Emmanuel jogged up beside him, lifting his smaller brother, Farai, up onto his shoulders. “Why did you not tell me you wanted to see Mr Mugabe?” he said.
Robert kicked a stone venomously, the child in him was angry. “Because I didn’t want to get you involved.”
“And you do not trust me?”
Robert sighed. “And that.”
Emmanuel cackled. “That is good. Zimbabwe is not a safe place. Trust nobody, especially the police. But you should not raise your voice like you did before. And never insult the President. They will be watching you now.”
“I don’t care,” Robert spat. “Once I’ve got that diploma off Mugabe, I intend to spend the rest of the week sat by the pool at the Sheraton. Where the hell is he anyway?”
“The President is giving a speech today, near his home. I could have saved you a trip if you had told me what you were doing.”
“Take me there.” Robert said. “I’ll make him talk to me.”
“You want to confront him?” Emmanuel quizzed.
Robert nodded.
“Then you are insane, Dr Gilchrist, and I like you very much.”
He was dizzy. The sky was out-of-joint, the earth dislocated. He couldn’t hear anything, only a vague, distant roar like he was underwater.
His wounds weren’t bad. They were many but they were shallow. He knew now what had caused them, twenty feet from where he had wakened sat the smoking, bullet-pocked frame of a police car. A single shot had pierced the petrol tank like an injection of fire.
There were bodies on the road, he could see them. Dull, fuzzy shapes that dotted the corners of his eyes. The battle was behind him now, the police gradually advancing like a glacier; a cold, irreconcilable juggernaut.
He was only dimly aware of what was happening and what had gone before. The spinning had slowed and he could see beyond what remained of the cordon and the stage that the guards, in their regime-fuelled bloodlust, had disregarded their duties and left the gate yawning open. He shuffled towards it.
He was on the bus, window seat. Beside him, Farai was sat on Emmanuel’s lap, receiving an English lesson from his elder brother.
“Robert Gilchrist,” Emmanuel said.
“Raw. Bart. Gill. Crisp.”
Emmanuel laughed. “Very good, now try again.”
Robert smiled, and stared out of the window, the pavement ran alongside them, as if it was following them, or perhaps leading them. Robert hadn’t noticed when he was walking along it earlier, but now he saw that footpath was virtually empty. The few people that wandered along it were hunched over, walking jerkily like they were restraining themselves from running. Heads faced the ground, not looking up even when someone went the other way. Robert guessed it didn’t happen very often. Beside him, Farai giggled.
The bus braked suddenly, and Robert lurched forward, putting his hand out to stop himself from cracking his head on the seat in front. Farai squealed. Emmanuel gripped the toddler closer to him, hugging the boy’s face to his shoulder.
“What the hell…” Robert breathed.
“Police Checkpoint,” Emmanuel hissed. “Keep your head down. Try not to stand out.”
Robert glanced around him. He was the only white person on the bus. Brilliant, he thought.
Two hulking figures wearing light brown uniforms leapt up the steps of the bus. Robert put his head down, facing the window slightly. He could hear the clomp, clomp, clomp as the policeman’s boots paced quickly up the bus. It was pointless, he was always going to be singled out, but he still felt a sense of deflation when the policeman stopped by Emmanuel’s seat and clicked his tongue.
“You, papers,” the policeman said to Robert in thickly accented but firm English.
Robert nodded silently. He began to rummage through his khaki green backpack, trying to find his passport. The policeman waited five seconds before he snatched the pack from Robert’s hands. He roughly extracted Robert’s rust-coloured British passport and flipped it open. After a couple of moments he grunted, dropped the passport back in the bag and began to rummage again. This time he brought out Robert’s mobile phone – a three-week-old Nokia, and a tangle of wires that contained his MP3 player. The policeman smiled, and looked at Robert.
“Confiscate, yes?” he said.
The words “Get,” and “Fucked,” appeared respectively in Robert’s mind, but he felt Emmanuel squeeze his knee, and he merely nodded again.
“Good,” the policeman said. “Very good, excellent.” He turned, and shouted something at his companion, who was guarding the doors at the front of the bus. The policeman threw the bag back at Robert, aiming for his face, but Robert caught it swiftly out of the air, and smiled politely at the policeman.
The policeman’s own smile faded, and he marched down the bus, muttering a few incomprehensible syllables at the driver before stepping down onto the road.
He was closing in on the gate. His right shoulder was particularly painful, a piece of metal two inches long jutted out of it like the beginnings of a third arm.
He was two feet from the entrance of the Mugabe Estate when the noise started. The watery roar in his ears was suddenly replaced with a rising sound somewhere between a ring and a whistle. He stopped as it grew louder, and brought his hands to his ears as it became a banshee scream that battered his eardrums and made him groan in pain. Then it was gone, and he was dropped into hell.
His hearing was back, full force. Stereo surround sound. Cinema quality. Guns crackled, men and women shouted and screamed. Bodies by his feet moaned and cried out like some twisted harem.
Yet one thing stood out among the general cacophony, a squeal of torment, like the one he had heard on the bus, only long and drawn out and so much worse. Robert turned and saw Farai a few yards away, holding the body of Emmanuel, who was lying on his back, a foot-long piece of shrapnel protruding from his chest.
He was in Edinburgh. He was twenty-five years younger, a student, third year politics. He was inside the round stone bulk of the McEwan Hall, packed to the point where nobody could move. He’d arrived early to get into the front row. He had managed to reach the second.
The new-Prime Minister of Zimbabwe walked up to the pedestal, dressed in the robes of an honorary graduate that flowed behind him like black wings. The great statesman of Africa, the typical “lad o’pairts.” As the Prime Minister was handed his diploma, cameras flashed, so numerous that the hall was filled with strobe-lighting. The audience erupted in applause. Mr Mugabe smiled and waved.
Robert was cheering. One day, he wanted to be just like him.
He was crouched over Emmanuel. The lad was still alive, at least, he was still breathing. The young man’s perforated lungs rasped and whistled as they sucked air in and blew water, blood and mucus out. His eyes were wide and white, and his mouth worked helplessly. Emmanuel’s fingers curled like a dying leaf, beckoning Robert to come closer.
Robert put his ear by Emmanuel’s mouth, waiting for the whisper, the boy’s last wish. Yet all he heard was a bubbling in Emmanuel’s throat, and a long, final exhalation.
Farai wailed, clutching at his brother’s midriff, almost cutting his face on the bladelike metal splinter that was now part of his brother. Robert remained still, his eyes failing to see, his mouth hanging open like all the knowledge he had gained in his life had just been flushed out of one ear.
He was one of thousands.
The crowd moved like an ocean, heads bobbing like ripples, dark hands waving like white horses. They were gathered fifty metres from the gates of the President of Zimbabwe’s home. Beyond the black rails stretched a savannah of green gardens and the red brick and marble of a mansion more akin to the hills of Hollywood than the plains of Southern-Central Africa.
Robert slid between thin bodies of men and women, gathered to see their great leader, to hear him speak. Behind Robert, Emmanuel followed, Farai sat on his brother’s shoulders, nodding in rhythm with Emmanuel’s pace.
Eventually, they reached the front of the throng. Thick wooden barriers flattened the front of the crowd, dotted regularly with armed policemen stood like salt pillars. Most notably, two pickups trucks sat between the barriers and the pedestal that awaited its President. On the backs of the trucks were two mounted machine guns, the ultimate in riot control.
Robert attempted to attract the attention of a policeman, but at that moment, the crowd began to roar.
He was a blank disk, an empty file. Sat cross-legged on the ground like he was back at primary school, chaos raged around him, but to his mind they were all ghosts. Then the hard-drive kicked in, the disk spun, and information began to trickle back into his mind, beginning with questions.
Why had they sent him? Was revocation not enough? Was it atonement for mistakes made? Response to a callous dismissal?
Surely they must have known it would never work. For the President of Zimbabwe to hand back the diploma without so much as a word would be admitting defeat, two-one to the West. With the paper still in his hands, it was a tie, one point to the University of Edinburgh for revoking the honour, one point to Robert Mugabe for flagrantly dismissing the disgrace. A stalemate with Europe, over anything, was worth your dying grasp.
None of it made sense. There was only madness, around him and inside him.
He was watching intently. President Mugabe walked onto the stand. He waved. The crowd cheered manically, arms stretched out like elastic. Emmanuel lowered Farai from his shoulders, away from the groping hands.
“Why are they cheering?” Robert shouted into Emmanuel’s ear.
“He is our President,” Emmanuel replied.
“What about all the things he’s done? All the killings, the abuses of human rights?”
Emmanuel shook his head. “Nobody believes it happened. The President says they are Western lies. He defies the West. That is why they cheer.”
The crowd began to jostle, lurching forward toward its master. The police pushed back, using their rifles to club anyone who tried to pass the barrier. Robert stared up at the President, who was still waving, soaking up the manic admiration like a solar panel. Distantly, he could hear Emmanuel calling for Farai, they must have been separated in the shoving. All Robert could see was Edinburgh, the way he had waved and cheered, and a bitter taste of bile rose in his throat. He hated the President, it was all his fault. Robert wanted him dead.
“Raw. Bart. Moo. Gabby.”
Robert caught a glimpse of Farai ducking under the barrier. One of the guards yelled, and lifted the butt of his rifle to bring it crashing down on the child’s skull.
Emmanuel screamed, lunging forward. He vaulted over the barrier and leapt upon the guard. The guard fell, his head cracked on the hard road. His grip on the gun tightened and flame leapt away from the barrel, toward one of the pickups.
Robert shielded his eyes as the world went white.
Was it all in his head? A story concocted as an excuse for revenge? There were no papers now. No letters to prove why he was here, what he was doing. His rucksack was gone, burned or stolen in the explosion and ensuing confusion. There was only himself now, himself and Farai and the remnants of Emmanuel.
He glanced back beyond the stage at the gates of the Presidents home, yawning open, beckoning him closer. He had believed he could stop it. Decades of decadence piled on centuries of abuse, interference, indifference and ignorance. He had been so sure. In a matter of hours, he could have changed everything.
He looked forward, scooped up Farai in his arms, and began to run.
He was pacing through the streets of Harare. Head held high, on a mission that would change the world. He would show Robert Mugabe that the West would not stand idly by while he continued his brutal administration. His retaking of the diploma, by hand, on behalf of the University of Edinburgh, would be the tremor that triggered the eruption, the yell that started the avalanche.
He stopped, and realised he didn’t know where he was going.
He crouched down and removed the backpack from his shoulders. There was a map in there somewhere, amongst all the other papers. If he could just…
Something struck him in the side of the head, and his vision flashed and blurred. His head twisted, and in his dazed state he saw a woman sprinting along the pavement, followed closely by a policeman.
“Are you all right?”
At first Robert thought he had imagined the light, soft voice, but when the question was repeated Robert turned to find it belonged to a young man not more than eighteen. Robert stood drunkenly, and found the man to be at least a head taller than him.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Robert said, brushing dust off his shirt.
“You are a student?” The man said in English only thinly accented.
“Pardon?”
The man pointed to a small, round badge attached to Robert’s khaki backpack. On it was the University’s logo.
“Oh, no I’m a tutor. Doctor Robert Gilchrist, at your service.”
The man smiled. “My name is Emmanuel. This is my brother, Farai.” Emmanuel gestured to the small boy stood by his knee.
“Pleased to meet you,” Robert said. “Er…excuse me, but how did you know…” he trailed off, and simply poked his finger at the badge.
“I am at University also.”
“Edinburgh?” Robert suggested.
“Glasgow.”
“Oh.”
Emmanuel laughed. “I was accepted on a scholarship. I had to come back for a time to help my mother look after Farai. She is not well and my father is…missing.”
Robert was about to ask what Emmanuel meant by “missing,” but the lad quickly changed the subject.
“And why are you here, Dr Gilchrist?”
“Er, I’m trying to find your Parliament, I have…business there.”
“Well then you are going the wrong way,” Emmanuel said. “Parliament is in the opposite direction. I am going near there. You may follow me if you like.”
Robert looked down at the crumpled map in his hands. He could probably find Parliament on his own if he wanted. But what the hell.
“That sounds like a good idea,” Robert said.