FALL 2011/WINTER 2012

NOVEL EXCERPTS

The Tribunal by Frank B. Wilderson, III

I. Johannesburg. Noord Street Station. December 1992.

The train lurched and Tony heard the muffled sound of doors slamming up and down the line of coaches. The wheels churned and ground beneath them the voices in the corridor. Kopano had dispatched him with the cool, inscrutable vagueness he’d come to associate with Tswana speakers:  Take the Blue Train to Cape Town. You’re a professor, Kopano said, gratuitously, for Tony had spent ten years building his cover. What else could he possibly be? You’re on holiday, so you can be extravagant, but not too extravagant. From the Cape Town station take one of the tour buses to the False Bay. Roman Stanza will be there to meet you. Do you know Comrade Stanza, Kopano had asked, with that sphinxlike expression, inches shy of a smile, but miles away from its meaning. We’ve met, said Tony, thinking, two can be inscrutable.

The train was still inside the station. Its wheels grumbled reluctantly against the rails. The large clock above wooden benches buffed smooth by gingham dresses and worsted tweed struck the hour. The few remaining passengers for the Blue Train trickled down the platform with their families in tow. This is South Africa, Tony thought, even White South Africans are sent off by throngs of people. The first time he witnessed these large filial farewells, he mistook them all for passengers and wondered how they’d all fit on the train. But when the final boarding call sounded, and the train huffed and hissed its last warning to garrulous patriarchs in khaki shorts and thick woolen socks turned down at the ankles, red faced men patting their stomachs and talking over family members, as their wives fussed over children’s collars or baskets of provisions; two people, sometimes only one, would peel from the throng hurling their goodbyes like garlands over their shoulders as they trotted alongside the compartment gathering momentum and flung themselves on board. And once inside, they leaned from the windows of their compartments and waved as the train gathered steam, and the throngs on the platform thinned. Tony would lean out the window as though he too had people on the platform. And when at last the station was lost to the pull of the earth and the curve of the train he would wave goodbye to their kinfolk as though they were his own.

He closed the window and stowed his suitcase in the spacious closet beside his private bathroom. Then he opened his leather satchel, the kind carried more by barristers than by professors. He retrieved a copy of Roman Stanza’s “Intertextuality, Plagiarism, and Recycling in South African Literature.” An essay, he thought, intended to cure insomnia. He wished he’d pressed Kopano for more details, though he knew good and well why Kopano hadn’t given him any. If he was caught and tortured between Jo’burg and Cape Town, there would be very little for Special Branch to bleed from him. His handler’s name in Jo’burg and the name of his contact in Cape Town; and if he held out from giving up that information for seventy-two hours, Kopano could be across the border to Lesotho and Roman Stanza could be on a British Airways jet to London.

It was July, the middle of winter, two and a half years ago when he met Roman Stanza.

“Can’t say I’m fond of Americans.” If those weren’t the first words out of Roman Stanza’s mouth when they met, they were the words Tony thought of as the first. “But a chap in the rain is a chap in the rain. And besides,” he added, “you’re not really an American. Not like the sort we normally get at ROSA,” by which he meant the Rhetoricians of South Africa’s annual conference. A cloud bank thickened up above Table Mountain but so low to it that the plateau and its jagged wet, glistening escarpment made it look like Dick Tracy in tears. Whenever a cone of light from a street lamp illuminated the interior of Roman’s car Tony caught sight of Roman’s left hand as it gripped the steering wheel or tugged on the stick shift. All the fingers were there but the skin was an archipelago of scar tissue—jagged lines and two toned blotches—they were too pervasive to be dog bites, and they radiated with too much rage to have been caused by a machine.

“Suck all the air out a conference—Americans. Empire and narcissism; nitroglycerin if you ask me.”

Table Mountain was behind them now but they seemed to be driving away from the forms of light that suggested lodging and commerce. Tony had been too grateful for the ride to accuse Roman of not knowing his way around a city he grew up in. As the street lamps grew fewer and farther apart Roman’s hand seldom came into view. Roman’s scars would have made more sense to Tony had he been a township dweller instead of a middle aged Huguenot with curly forelocks. Like prayer beads they graced his brown eyes with redemption.

 “Unlike the cretins who came to my talk this afternoon, I didn’t wait for Mandela’s release in February, to start raising the political stakes of my scholarship,” Tony said.

“You might want to show a bit more compassion, mate; even for a group of White South Africans.”

“You might want to shit where you eat.”

They let the words hang in the space between them.

Tony leaned back and surrendered to the rain drumming the roof, to the pendulum rhythm of the windshield wipers, and the icy grip of wet socks around his feet. He was sure he’d seen that pinched-face woman from Rhodes University look back from the hotel shuttle, certain that even in the drenching rain she saw him running down the steps of Great Hall, steadfast in his conviction that others in the shuttle saw him as well and told the driver to leave. All he wanted now was to get back to his room, take a hot shower, drape himself in the plush robe the hotel provided, drain a bottle of merlot, then flatten himself on the king sized bed while Sarah Vaughan moaned her undying love into his headphones, and drift off to sleep with fuck ‘em, fuck ‘em, fuck ‘em on his unrepentant lips.

They didn’t speak until they reached the hotel. At which point Roman said, “Bet you thought I was lost.” His voice was stiff but Tony could tell that he was trying to make it sound conciliatory; as though he, Roman, had insulted Tony instead of the other way around. It made Tony sorry for what he had said. Why can’t he act like the Afrikaner he is and tell me to go fuck myself? It would make it a whole lot easier.

“They say this hotel has a decent pub.” Pub instead of bar was Tony’s attempt at an olive branch. It was the best he could do considering there wasn’t much time. The doorman had scurried into the rain and his umbrella, which he held so that Tony wouldn’t get wet when he opened door, was doing precious little for him. South Africans are so garrulous and in need of companionship, Tony thought, that riffs like this could be mended with a couple of drinks. That was apartheid’s greatest sin, he thought; not the pass laws, not the Group Areas or Mixed Marriages Acts, not the sjamboks that open your skin, but the way the people craved and savored every moment of unregulated, human contact that came their way.

“Sorry,” said Roman and he shifted the car into first gear. “I’m moderating two sessions tomorrow. Then there’s the plenary and—.”

“Right,” said Tony. The last thing he had counted on was his offer being rejected. It was he, Tony, who craved this moment of contact. He was more South African than he wanted to admit. The doorman knocked politely on the window. Roman jiggled the stick shift. Tony looked at his hand.

“Nasty wound, that,” he said. “I had something similar, but on my wrist. My own dog bit me.”

Roman hid his hand in his lap, out of the light.

“Skin graft,” he said. “Botched skin graft when I was a child.”

Faces of the well-wishers standing on the railway platform pulled away, and the Blue Train emerged from under Noord Street Station’s immense canopy into the sun glaring down on a badlands of rails and points. Zulu men picked their way across the tracks on their way to the platforms for the township trains. Tony knew they were Zulus by the way they held their knobkerries and by the way the people on the platforms (Africans, for the train was passing through that part of the yards reserved for Black commuters) watched in fear and parted as they approached. But the men with knobkerries wouldn’t let them part. Instead they fanned out as the throng of people on the platform fanned out; forcing the commuters back into their original knot. Now, the people looked in terror around them, for the Zulus had formed two columns that ran along either side of the scared commuters. Roman’s essay slid from Tony’s lap as he stood and pressed his face to the window. The impimpis faced the people now. “Where are the police!?” Tony yelled, but the glass of his compartment was too thick, and the screech of wheel and rail too loud, and, anyway, he knew full well the police were nearby waiting to whisk the impimpis safely away. He felt a chill as though his own ghost had run through him.

II.

The steward knocked on the door of Tony’s compartment. He was a stately old man of Xhosa descent judging by the markings on his face. He bore winter cherries and a rose on a serving tray. But instead of placing the tray on the table by the window, he asked him if he was in the right compartment. Tony said wearily, “I’m American.” The steward asked if Tony had an Honorary White stamp in his passport, or an adhesive strip with a barcode that could be scanned by the conductor if, he paused, if Tony should be in need of assistance. Tony felt his lips thinning into invisibility as the word, “yes,” hissed through his teeth. Sharp, sharp. And this vexed Tony to no end. Do you speak tsotsitaal to the White passengers? he wanted to scream. The steward set the tray down and said first class passengers were all invited to a free wine tasting session in the club car. The best wines Stellenbosch has to offer, he assured Tony. But Tony, he added, looked as though he could use some rest. The steward suggested he take a nap and he would put his name down for first call for dinner.

“I’d love to go to the wine tasting party,” Tony said, “I prefer to eat dinner at the peak hour. I like to make friends when I travel.”

The steward shrugged and left, but not before advising Tony to carry his passport with him when moving about the train or any of the stations along the way.

He lay down on the bed and decided not to go to the club car. Who needs ‘em. A minute ago I was going to read in my room until the first call for dinner. Be the first in at first call and the first out, long before second call. Give them nothing to gawk at, no reason to be disturbed, no excuse to check for a stamp or barcode in my passport. But then he stood up and said, “I’m going to go get me some wine.”

As he made my way down the corridor the train jostled him from side to side as if to say, I know you got better sense.

The door to the club car slid open. He steadied himself on the shifting footboard that joined the coaches. The draft clung to his shoulders. Two long blue sofas ran the length of one side of the car. A line of running lights were laced up above, where wood paneled walls joined an aqua blue ceiling. They illuminated a series of oil paintings of seafaring life and lore. It felt like a large living room at the bottom of the sea.

An ice sculpture of a dolphin anchored a table at the center of the compartment. Arranged at one end of the table was a array of hors d'œuvres and canapés, tiny toast soaked in olive oil and garlic then baked to a crisp and laced with salmon & cream cheese, baked mushrooms stuffed with cream cheese and sausage bits browned in a frying pan, stuffed eggs, mini quiche, and Granny Smith slices atop Danish blue cheese spread on thin crisp slices of toast. And there was a round tray of raw vegetables and beside it, lying on its side, a two dimensional fish made out of salmon pâté. On the near side of the ice dolphin were wine glasses and bottles of wine from the most renowned Cape vineyards.

The sommelier wore a wine-and-revolver red ascot. His eyes were slightly sleepy and bemused. Tony could tell by his penetrating British accent, that he was a Cape Afrikaner trying to pass. He had just said something amusing. His audience chuckled and held up their glasses. Now, his smile ran aground. They turned around and saw why.

Their silence opened a portal to sounds that might not have been heard otherwise. The churning of wheels, the clink of chains on the stems of table lamps, and from sea blue speakers embedded in the walls above, a bebop jazz band belting out a soft, familiar ballad. Duke Ellington’s piano and Dizzy’s muted trumpet genuflecting to Billy Eckstine’s honeyed baritone. “My Foolish Heart” was the song. Tony knew from the way they looked at him that it wasn’t meant to be heard. It was there to guide each sip of wine serenely to the palate. They faced each other in silence while Billy Eckstine sang, There’s a line between love and fascination/That’s hard to see on an evening such as this. The longer he stood there the more their faces registered the obscene juxtaposition between what should not have been heard with what should not have been seen. This is a mistake. Billy Eckstine couldn’t get a grape in here. But he had crossed the Rubicon. The door slid closed behind him.

At the far end of the club car he spotted an oasis. A bar with a Colored bartender. But there were two White women seated before him. His heart sank again. This isn’t your day, Bubba. By now the wine tasting party had turn their backs to him and the sommelier had resumed his lecture. But he could feel their eyes burning through the backs of their skulls surveying his every move. He knew that if he went back to his compartment now they would have won and he would be asked to present his Honorary White stamp or the barcode in his passport, in the dining car, in the observation car, and here should he be so bold as to return. But if he continued to the bar he ran the risk of those women getting up and leaving. And that would be even more humiliating. The smoking chairs along the side of car weren’t an option either. The wine tasting party was practically backed up against them. Again, too close to White bodies. The bartender averted his eyes and turned his back as he dried shot glasses. But the two women at the bar didn’t look away. One of them was smiling. Or perhaps he needed to believe she was smiling. He wanted to believe in the tilt of her head, the sparkle in her eye, in the way her short brunette hair seemed to move over her ear, as if she had just beckoned, that this amalgamation of details was saying, join us, come over and join us.

When he reached the bar she offered to buy him a drink. And her friend—a woman so gorgeous his palms perspired when he looked at her—said, yeah, what are you drinking? He glanced back at the wine tasters. They had renewed their interest in him—in them, to be precise. Thanks, he said, reaching for his wallet, but it’s not necessary. The shorthaired brunette touched his hand. The bartender’s eyes widened as he looked past Tony as though clocking a lynch mob. Tony started to turn toward the wine tasters but she pressed his hand against the bar and laughed. “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”

“American?” he asked.

She frowned. “Canadian.”

“Even better,” he said.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” her friend said. “What are you Canadian too?”

“No, I’m from Minneapolis.”

“Then what have you got against Americans?”

“I’m just glad you two are Canadians instead of Americans.”

“She’s Canadian.”

“Oh.”

Had the woman who offered him a drink and placed her consoling hand to his, been offended by his preference, and asked what he had against Americans, he might have answered, how much time do you have? But the other one had put the question to him, the pretty one; and he was no good at contradicting pretty women.

“He’s got sense,” said the Canadian as she raised her hand from his and beckoned to the bartender. The bartender poured a glass of merlot for Tony and wrote it down on the two women’s tab. The club car was the caboose and the wall behind the bartender was made of concave glass. As they raced along Tony and the two women could look past the bartender, through the huge bubble and watch the tracks and the towns recede in distance. Tony felt like he had met the Canadian woman somewhere before. Her face pushed up through a bog but her voice didn’t match the memory. Then it hit him. Sarah. She looks like Buddy’s wife, Sarah.

The Canadian woman waved her hand in front of his face. “Do I have a wart or something?”

“Oh…I’m sorry. You…you look just like my brother’s wife.”

“Your brother’s wife?” Her voice tinged with disappointment. “Well, I guess that almost counts.”

“Almost only counts in horse shoes, hand grenades and atom bombing,” her friend rejoined. “Simone Sebastian,” she said, turning to Tony.

As Simone offered her hand, the Canadian woman said, “Heather Daniels,” and extended hers as well.

“Tony Rampart.” His palm moistened more when Simone spoke to him. Seated beside her on that blue pin cushion bar stool, he realized that her White skin and her beauty would have surely turned him away had the two come together in his mind when he first entered the club car, the way they came together now. So he gave Heather his moist palm that it might be dry when he touched Simone.

Simone said: “What does Mr. Tony Rampart do in South Africa, when he’s not sipping wine on the Blue Train?”

He told her that he taught political theory and literary criticism at the University of the Witwatersrand. As he elaborated his areas of research he noticed how attentive Heather Daniels became and how Simone Sebastian receded, as though caught in the undertow of the passing landscape. She glazed over the way his wife, Thandiwe, did when he lectured her on finer points of Italian Marxism. But Simone was no native to remake in his image. To him, she was life itself. He felt no sense of noblesse oblige toward her, only a hope and a prayer that he would say nothing to offend. He was inadvertently rescued from his free fall through some lost region of her mind when he mentioned that he was an elected official in the ANC. Simone perked up.

“How exciting,” she said. She turned on the blue bar stool and faced him. She seemed unaware that her knee rubbed against his. But he wasn’t. Her touch sent waves of goose bumps and sensations into forbidden regions of his body. “A Black American expat in the ANC. This is interesting.”

“Well…it’s not so special.”

“Are you kidding, it’s historic! Do you know Nelson Mandela? I’m an FSO—foreign service officer—with the embassy in Pretoria. Political affairs. Can you arrange for me to meet him?”

One voice said, Don’t be a fool, Tony. You’ve got a live one on the line. Don’t pull too hard. Just reel her in nice and slow. But another voice said, she’s a political affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy, fool. She knows all about the internecine struggles inside the ANC. She can look you up when she gets home. Find your voting record at Party congresses; get back copies of speeches you’ve made against American and European commerce. Talk to her contacts on the ground, people who know you’re as red as they come. Then, she’ll really start snooping around. Kopano will blame you for putting the State Department on our trail. The first voice rejoined, Kopano said be extravagant. By which he meant build your legend along the way. And a third, tie-breaking voice told him that nothing mattered outside of this compartment on this train. Not Kopano. Not Roman Stanza. Not his political leanings or the fact that Simone worked for a country, he was hell bent on destroying. These narrow blue walls and this half bubble of glass looking out onto the world were not the world but a small utopic space that the world couldn’t touch. We’re moving too fast for the world to catch up. It came to him in a flash. How could he have forgotten Foucault, for he had just lectured on the concept of the heterotopia only three weeks ago?

As if his brain was reminding him of his academic cover, it set to musing on Foucault’s ideas of the various kinds of heterotopia.  The crisis heterotopia, like the boarding school or motel room where activities like coming of age or the consummation of love take place out of sight. Heterotopias of deviation, like hospitals, insane asylums, prisons, rest homes, and graveyards, places where we store people whose behavior is outside the norm or has ceased all together. And heterotopias of time such as museums; they exist in time but also exist outside of time because they are built and preserved so that the objects that dwell inside them are immune to the ravages of time. A moving train, he realized, is all three heterotopias rolled into one. It is a heterotopia of crisis, a motel on wheels, gliding along; heterotopias of deviation, where a woman like Simone and a man like me can exist without Sarah and my brother’s baggage; and heterotopias of time: even our whistle stops at country stations won’t last long enough for time to board. She can come to my compartment tonight and we can make love as two beings who are in the world but not of it, safe in our knowledge that the world can’t touch us; and when we disembark it will be as though it never happened. This discovery, or should it be said, this spontaneous application of his research to his life, was so convincing and emerged with such force and pleasure, that he was tempted to sneak a look down between his legs in order to make sure things were behaving as decorum demanded.

“Yes, I know, Madiba well.”

“Madiba?”

“That’s what we call him. It means father.”

It wasn’t a lie. He did know him well; well enough to know that he was not among those who could call him father.

Heather Daniels promptly changed the subject. She brought the conversation back to that moment when her eyes met his—as he stood on the footplate between the cars, hesitating, steadying himself against the roll of the train and the lancing gaze of the sommelier. Heather said that in the brief instant that they had exchanged glances she had pegged him for an American. And that she told Simone she was sure of it as she watched him stride toward the bar.

“It’s the walk,” Heather, said, “I’ve lived in Kenya, Togo, and Guinea Bissau. East, West, North, and Southern Africa. Africans don’t walk like that. Even Black guys in Canada don’t walk like that, unless they’re trying to imitate you guys from the States.”

“How do we walk?” he asked her.

Simone looked at Heather skeptically, but Heather wasn’t the least bit concerned with Simone’s skepticism. Heather ate the olive from her martini, and minced the tiny plastic spear, thoughtfully. A martini, Tony thought, what a strange drink for a woman who builds clay ovens with natives in the bush. His pulse raced when he looked at Simone for too long and pattered slowly back to normal when he concentrated on Heather. So he did what he could to focus on Heather and not Simone. But this made Simone feel left out—and roused rash responses to whatever Heather had to say.

“It’s a walk that’s part laughter and part chip on the shoulder,” said Heather.

He raised his wine glass: “To the walk.”

“To the walk!” they both toasted.

Then, Simone raised her glass to Heather, her tone laced with incredulity: “And to the walk detective,” she said.

“You don’t believe I can tell men by their walk?”

“Oh I never question your knowledge of men below the belt.”

“You too must be best friends,” I said.

“This scallywag?” Simone chuckled.

Simone was a head shorter than Heather. A necklace of dress pearls graced her neck. He thought of himself as someone who didn’t normally notice what women wore and he hadn’t seen Simone’s pearl necklace at first. Her beauty hadn’t struck him when he first made his way across the club car. In fact, the word that first came to mind wasn’t “beautiful” but “sensible.”

Her sensible blue gingham dress was just right for hot railway stations and cool compartments, and probably wouldn’t wrinkle even after days and nights of travel. Her hair was long and blonde, but made sensible by being bunched and tied into a ponytail to keep it off her shoulders and keep her neck cool. Sensible too were the spotless athletic shoes she wore in lieu of heels. On Park Avenue, she could have been a curator on her way to the Whitney Museum or an heiress to a banking fortune out for a stroll. Tony was struck by the sensible absence of lip rouge or eye shadow. But when she asked me point blank, “What have you got against Americans?” he saw the pearl necklace clinging to her delicate throat and he felt the sharp jolt of his error—the cross trainers instead of high heels, the blue gingham dress, the absence of rouge and eye shadow, were not markers of a sensible orientation to the world. But signs that she knew she could go anywhere and get what she wanted with her good looks.

Heather lacked Simone’s urbane reserve and sophistication but she was a more seasoned traveler. The kind of woman who spoke to people in their language wherever she went, who didn’t blame porters for late arrivals and missed connections, and kept sliced apples and cheese for long nights in empty stations. She was thoughtful and cooperative, as though she’d grown up in a large family where you made adjustments and waited your turn for love. And there were the little things. Like the way she wore her hair snipped into a wash and wear style that made her look like she could fit in anywhere—sipping a martini in the club car of the Blue Train as it crossed a towering viaduct, or while hanging from ceilings and ladders doing home repairs in an unvarnished room. Fit in but not stand out. Heather was the kind of woman men went home to when they wanted peace of mind. Simone was the kind of woman men left home in search of when peace of mind got old.

He knocked back the rest of his third glass of wine. An undignified way to drink wine, a voice within him said, but he didn’t care. He was warm and loose and he could hear the music again. The melody pushed and elbowed the rib cages of those wine tasters, knocked them through the windows, over the viaduct, into the ravine; the harmony pressed its hand against the mouth of that ascot wearing minion; and the rhythm snatched fistfuls of canapés and two bottles of wine on its way out the door. Now, it was Billy’s Eckstine’s turn. He stepped to the mike and waited for the bridge to bring back the melody. That’s right, Billy Eckstine singing, the one and only, the Negro your muslin daughters creamed over when you went off to war. Billy Eckstine on the bandstand, not a worry in the world. Over the hushed rumbling of the train, Eckstine stood in a double-breasted suit with his long legs pressed close to the mike stand, his eyes half-closed, his mouth just a little bit open, his pelvis just a little bit tilted, up, up, up it rises as he rocks back on his heels, as though any moment now, yes, any, any moment now…With one hand he holds the slender throat upon which a sweet microphone rests. It trembles as he fingers the pearls, reaching round the back, searching for a clasp, while he whispers in her ear: Don't tell me about a night in June/Or a shady lane beneath the velvet moon/Don't tell me, 'cause I wanna talk about you. Tony turned on the bar stool. Once more his knee met Simone’s. Once more she didn’t pull away. The warmth inside him magnified. My, my, my, how those pearls complete the picture. I know you, he thought. You’re the foliage of fall aflame in the trees, the muffled clomp of horses crossing covered bridges, you’re the disappointments and dreams he knew in New England.

“I like trains,” he said to her.

She smiled, knowingly. “What do you like about them?”

“The motion.”

“The motion?” she smiled.

“Mm-hmm, the motion. Especially at night.”

“Why at night?”

He laughed and leaned closer. The press of their knees held firm. “I’d say it helps me sleep, but I’d be lying.”

She sipped her drink and gazed at him over her glass.

“You’d lie to a Girl Scout?”

He shook his head.

“Those are beautiful pearls.”

She touched them instinctively.

Heather cleared her throat.

“Her husband gave them to her.” Tony and Simone’s knees parted. Heather peered around him and said to Simone, “He’s so romantic. Your husband. Married people are always there for each other.”

Simone was fazed only momentarily. She tilted her nose up, ever so slightly but enough for Heather to notice. She studied the landscape rushing by. Lord have mercy, Tony thought, she’d drown in the rain. That’s what his mother would have said had she met Simone. So stuck up she’d drown in the rain. But his mother wasn’t there.

Still gazing at the landscape through the large curved window, Simone said, “Remember 4th grade; how you couldn’t get to 5th grade unless you knew all 51 capitals in all 51 states?”

The bait was for Heather. And Heather, poor child, took the bait. “You’re drunk. There aren’t fifty-one states.”

“Yes, there are,” Simone eyed Tony and they chortled, “Canada!” Then they broke out laughing.

 “Couple of Laurel and Hardies,” said Heather, but she wasn’t laughing.

III.

The steward appeared at the far side of the club car. To the sommelier and the wine tasting vipers he flashed a fifty-two teeth salute. Tom-ass nigga, Tony thought.

“First call for dinner, good people!” He smiled and grinned and bucked his eyes up and down the car. “Yes, good people first call for dinner.” Completing his circle he graced the bar. “Enjoying yourselves, good people?” His obsequious grin cast a democratic vote of approval on all three of them, but as his eyes moved from Heather, to Simone, to Tony they narrowed. He told them that if they accepted first call and were willing to be seated right away, he’d get the maître d to waive the dress code for them. Heather accepted this on their behalf, perhaps because she thought the best of people and considered this to be an act of Ubuntu; or perhaps because she, unlike Simone, hadn’t brought evening wear. But Tony believed the steward was covering his ass; which was why he stayed behind: to tell the sommelier and the wine tasting vipers, he’d have the transgressors in and out of the dining car as quickly as possible; that they wouldn’t have to dine in the presence of a scandal.

IV.

Heather maneuvered herself into the seat directly across from Tony, and Simone into the seat beside her.

They dined on a seafood medley of scallops, Atlantic shrimp, squid, and cubes of black cod sautéed in a rich butter and paprika sauce with minced garlic, fresh tarragon, and thyme; escorted by steamed broccoli, and brown rice pilaf adorned with a sprig of parsley. Heather joined Tony in his fifth or sixth glass of merlot, who’s counting, he grinned inwardly; but since leaving the club car Simone had switched from scotch and water to Pellegrino and lime.

The warmth of the wine flushed his cheeks and neck now more intensely than before. The food was delicious. It tastes like Simone, he decided as he watched the pearls move up and down on her delicate throat, it tastes like her. He sat with his back to the engine. He felt like a child being pulled up and back on a huge Ferris wheel at the Fair. The clouds were tufts of candy floss spun from his hands and tendered to the wind. The wine seeped into deeper recesses of his brain. The world unhinged itself and the trees and jagged peaks snapped loose from their moorings and flew away. To steady himself he drank even more.

So distorted were his faculties that he ate the parsley sprig mistaking it for a piece of broccoli. The bitter taste and coarse texture startled him. You’re losing it, man. Parsley? Don’t you know the difference between parsley and broccoli? He laughed silently at himself. Now, he could feel laughter all around him. No, the laughter was inside of him admonishing him for being so drunk he didn’t know the difference... Don’t you know the difference, Tony? That’s what Mike Kangas, big Mike Kansas had said to him. Don’t you know the difference, Tony? Or was it Tony, what’s the difference? Yes, that was it. Tony, what’s the difference. And then the whole Dartmouth football team broke out laughing. Laughing at him, but he didn’t mind. Perhaps he was just as drunk then. Drunk, at training table? Hardly. So, what was it, why was it so funny? Big Mike Kangas with is blonde crew cut that had nothing to do with the 70s. Kangas could almost reach the twenty foot high oak ceilings rafters when seated in his chair. Kangas talked with his mouth full, as though he had no home training, though his father and his father’s father had all gone to Dartmouth and played defensive tackle, just like him. Who was going to tell Mike Kangas not to talk with his mouth full? He practically owned the school. What had Tony said that made them all laugh? The whole team reared back in their chairs, and the rafters bent from the strain of their boisterous monsoon. Hey, Rampart! Tony, man, what’s the difference…Yes, that’s what he said. Hey, Rampart what’s the difference…But the difference between what and what? It wasn’t coming back to Tony. Kangas had elbowed Winston Boler before he spoke. Whispered in his ear as they watched Tony eating the parsley. And then they laughed and laughed and laughed some more; and Tony said, what, what, what the fuck’s so funny? Hey, Rampart what’s the difference, yes, that was it, what’s the difference between parsley and pussy? End to end the table went quiet. Then Kangas asked him again. Now a chain reaction of giggles rippled up and down the line. And Tony shrugged his shoulders as if to say I don’t know and I don’t care, when he didn’t know but he did care, how he cared, especially when someone whispered, “dumbass” and everyone laughed again. So Kangas said, nobody eats parsley! And the raucous monsoon broke through the walls and the whole team was pounding the table and whooping and hollering and howling like wolves until the ruckus released him from his embarrassment and he too was laughing and pounding and howling as well.

“Hey,” he said to Heather and Simone. They looked with bewilderment at his hand as it slapped the table. “What’s the difference between—”

They waited. They bore earnest expressions of expectation, like two women at a poetry reading who just asked the speaker where he finds his muse and where they might find theirs and were eagerly awaiting the sweetness and light of his answer.

“The difference between what?” Simone asked.

“Yes…well…er…that is the question. To be sure.”

They looked at each other.

Heather reached her hand across the table and placed it on top of his just as she had done before. At the same time, and without giving any indication of subterranean rumblings, she slipped her foot out of her shoe and ran her toes along his leg.

“I think our Tony’s a little drunk,” she said.

“Now, it’s ‘our’ Tony,” Simone said, unaware of what was happening.

Heather looked as though she was going to respond but before her inebriated brain could work up a pithy rejoinder, Simone said: “If you’re not a businessman, how is it you’re riding the Blue Train?”

“Simone,” said Heather, turning her name into a reproach. “You don’t ask someone that.”

Simone ignored her. “Do you have an Honorary White stamp in your passport; or an electronic barcode?”

“No,” Tony lied.

“Then how did—.”

“Leave the man alone, Simone. Does it matter how he got on the train? We’re having a good time. Show a little compassion.” He felt Heather’s foot on the lower part of his leg again. But this time it was a caress of consolation. He didn’t draw away. Simone saw the sudden look of gratitude that he gave to Heather and he knew she knew what was happening under the table.

She lashed out at him; accused him of being a bundle of contradictions. She said the ANC’s legitimacy in the eyes of the West was waning and would continue to wane as long as thirty percent of its members were Communists. The lashing didn’t anger him; it turned him on. Her anger was raw and unbridled. He wanted it to last. Are you willing to go down with the whole democratic movement, she hissed. Yes, he thought, and a tingling sensation ran up his leg, I would love to go down, baby. He drank ravenously and let her talk. There’s flexibility and then there’s flexibility, she insisted. A humongous grin threatened to spread across his face so he pressed the wine glass to his lips.  Amen, for flexibility, baby, amen. He took in the flutter in her throat and the heave of her cleavage. Your faux communism is a sign of weak accommodation, she was remonstrating, undue flexibility. Mmm-hmmm, just call me Gumby; the Rubber-band Man. He kept drinking to keep his grin at bay. Yes, honey, let’s you and me get flexible. The bones in his body softened until they were languid and supple and surrendered to the undertow. His head lolled backward and it felt like his spine was melting away; his whole body sliding down his chair like water down a ravine until, at last, he came up and knelt before her, so close to her knees he caught the scent of her nylon stockings. Now, all he imbibed were bits and pieces of what she said, “socialism,” “terrorism,” “America’s strategic interests”—which caressed his ears like the cooing of foreplay. He closed his eyes and leaned into the sweet sweetness of her thighs. I wonder if she sings The Star Spangled Banner when she comes.

Simone thumped her elbows on the table.

“What are you grinning at,” she demanded, “you think this is funny?”

“I’m not grinning.”

Simone looked at Heather.

“You were…kind of…grinning,” she said, cautiously. Then she added, “And you moaned. I guess you loved the seafood.” She turned to Simone, “It was delicious. Don’t you think?”

“Are you a member of the SACP?” Simone snapped at Tony, as though Heather warranted nothing which resembled a response. “You know you can’t ever teach again in the States if you are. I know you’re not MK, because they don’t trust Americans in the underground. But that doesn’t mean you’re not a member of the South African Communist Party.”

“Lower your voice,” Heather pleaded.

Tony said: “I won’t help you open a file on me.”

Simone shot back: “Are you ashamed of your political affiliations?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a simple question.”

“Guys,” said Heather, “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“What part of the Twin Cities are you from? What high school did you attend?”

“Like I said, do your own leg-work.”

“We can find out.”

“Simone,” Heather’s voice was cracking, “I can’t believe you.”

“It’s a simple question, what part of town?”

“The commie part, you wouldn’t know it.”

Simone nodded angrily.

He was starting to hate her.

“Care to tell us the last time you went back to the States or is that a secret too?”

“In April,” he lied. For it had been early May.

“And what was the purpose of your visit?”

“Simone,” Heather exclaimed, “stop this!”

“I went home for the L.A. riots.”

“The riots?” Heather murmured, warily. “Were you doing research?”

“No, my brother and I did a little affirmative shopping.”

Heather mouthed the words in puzzlement: “Affirmative shopping—”

“Oh, shut up, Heather! He’s making fun of you.”

“We’re going to see this revolution through,” Tony told Simone. “And we’re not going to let you or your cronies in the Pentagon tell us when or where to stop. It’s over when we say it’s over.”

“You’re romanticism is tiresome,” said Simone. “You’re from Minneapolis. Who is this ‘we’?”

“My wife.” He let the cracks in Simone’s face run their course. “She’s South African. That makes me South African.” He said it as coldly and as flatly as he could; like a telegram that read, Your mother’s dead. Stop. Condolences. Stop.

“You’re not wearing a ring,” said Simone. The vigor was gone from her voice.

“Neither are you,” he said.

More embarrassed than enraged, she pushed back from table. “You’re no communist. You lack the gravitas. You’re just a tourist in your own life.”

When she left he saw how much his revelation had hurt Heather as well. Now, he was truly alone: without Simone as a lover, and without Heather as a friend.

“I think…I think I’ve had too much to drink,” Heather said. “I should go.”

“Don’t go,” he said.

She turned to look out the window, but night had fallen and all it offered her was her own reflection. She needed something to look at, the uncleared dishes, the wine glasses, or the cloth napkin she kept twisting, anything but than him. “At least it’s clear who was meant for who.”

“She and I couldn’t agree on lunch,” he said.

“It’s whom. I should have said whom. My grammar is awful. I never know the difference. Simone always knows. She went to Vassar. I went to Simon Fraser. On the six-year plan, working at McDonald’s. Simone went to Vassar,” she laughed, “but Heather worked at Vancouver’s very first McDonald’s.” Her voice was unsteady and she wouldn’t let him see her eyes.

“Heather.” He reached out for her hand but she jerked it into her lap. Moisture welled in her eyes.

“This is crazy,” she said, “I just met you.”

He didn’t know what to say. So, he said, “It’s the wine. We’ve had too much wine.”

“I read a book in college. About a slave. He escaped and made it all the way to Canada. He was free. Then one day he went back. Just like that. He re-enslaved himself. He went back to teach other slaves how to read and write, so that they could organize and fight. One night they caught him teaching three slaves how to read. The next morning they cut three of his fingers off; one for each student. People like that don’t lack gravitas.”

“Heather, please.”

“He wasn’t a tourist in his own life.”

“Heather.”

“He didn’t know how special he was.”

“I don’t need your charity.”

Heather recoiled. Slowly, she regained her composure. Her eyes were dry as dust.

“Simone will take more than three fingers.”