Guerrillas

  The double doors closed behind Meredith as he went out, and there was silence in the studio. The sealed picture window gave Roche a view of the city such as he had never had. In the city center there was nothing to be seen except other buildings. But, here, in what had once been a good residential area, no tall buildings blocked the view, and Roche looked over roofs, silver or red, dramatized by the tall pillars and the dark-green fronds of the royal palm, to the sea, and to the hills that ran down, ridge after ridge, to the sea. The hills were bare and fire-marked, smoking in patches, but the sun was going down behind them, and the sea glittered. In the deep water behind those hills, doubtless, the American warships lay. But Roche, imagining the sunset soon to come, the hills and the royal palms against the evening sky, thought: It is, after all, very beautiful. It is a pity I’ve never seen it like this, and have never enjoyed it. And some time later he thought: But perhaps one never enjoys these things.

  He was reducing his thoughts to words, formulating whole sentences. It was almost as if, in the silent room, waiting for Meredith, who seemed a long time, he had begun to talk to himself.

  A silent room, a silent view: the picture window was made up of two panes of heavy glass, separated by a gap the width of the wall. The glass was radiating heat. Discovering this, Roche soon discovered that the room had a warm, stale, furry smell, as though dust and fluff were rising from the carpet.

  The double doors were pushed open, and Meredith came in.

  Meredith said, “The SM’s coming.”

  “This studio’s stuffy.”

  “The air conditioning can take a little time.”

  They sat down at the round table with the microphone, the green bulb, the heavy glass ash tray.

  Meredith said, “I have no notes. Let’s keep it like a conversation. What always matters is what you are saying or what I am saying, and not what you think you’re going to say next. Don’t worry about repeating or going back. Don’t worry about referring to things we’ve talked about in the past. Let’s keep it conversational, and let’s not pretend we don’t know one another. I’ll call you Peter and you’ll call me Meredith, if you want to call me anything at all. It’s going to be rough, you know, Peter.”

  Roche said, “I’ve nothing to hide.” It was a line he had prepared.

  A weak light came on in the adjoining cubicle and through the glass window a very tall man wearing a white shirt and a tie could be seen. He smiled at Roche and Meredith and sat down before his instruments.

  Meredith said, “The SM.”

  Roche was perspiring. He said, “I’m smelling dust everywhere. It’s the kind of thing that would give Harry asthma in a second.”

  The voice of the studio manager came through the speaker: “Can we have something for voice level, please?” For such a big man, his voice was curiously soft, even effeminate.

  Meredith, lifting his head slightly, smiled, for the studio manager, for Roche; and Roche noticed that Meredith was perspiring all over the wide gap between his everted nostrils and his mouth. Meredith said to the microphone, “Every day in every day I grow better and better.”

  The studio manager gave a thumbs-up sign, and Meredith said, “Peter?”

  Roche said to the microphone, “You need to do some vacuuming here.”

  The green light on the table came on.

  Meredith said, “We’ll go into it straight away.” He said to the microphone, “This is the Peter Roche interview for Encounter.” He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was lighter and more relaxed than it had been so far. “Peter, you were saying as we were driving here to the studio that you didn’t think you had anything more to do here. Would you like to go into that a little?”

  “I’ve begun to feel like a stranger. Recent events have made me feel like a stranger.”

  “Do you feel more like a stranger now than when you came—seven, eight months ago?”

  “I never thought about it then. I was very happy to be here.”

  “But didn’t you think, when you were coming here, a place you’d never been, that you were going to be a stranger?”

  “A stranger in that way, yes. But I thought that there was work for me to do. I thought that certain problems had been settled here, and there was work I could do.”

  “You mean racial problems?”

  “Yes, racial problems, and all the things that go with it. I mean not carrying that burden, not wasting one’s time and one’s life carrying that burden. I thought there was work I could do here. Work.”

  “I see you gesturing with your hands. I suppose by work you mean constructive work.”

  “It’s a human need. I suppose one realizes that late.”

  “Creativity. An escape into creativity.”

  “If you want to put it like that.”

  “But some people will find it odd, Peter, people who know your background—and now you tell us of your need for creative work—that you should look for this with a firm like the one you chose.”

  “Sablich’s.”

  “You’ve mentioned the name.”

  “It wasn’t what I chose. I would say it was what offered itself. And I liked what they offered. I didn’t know much about them when I took the job.”

  “But you know now.”

  “It doesn’t alter my attitude. I know they have a past here, and that people think about them in a certain way. But I also know they have done a lot to change. The fact that they should want to employ me is a sign of that change, I think.”

  “Some people might say public relations.”

  “There is that. I always knew that. But isn’t that enough? I was more concerned with the work they offered, and what they offered seemed pretty fair to me. In a situation like that I believe one can only go by people’s professed intentions and attitudes. If you start probing too much and you look for absolute purity, you can end up doing nothing at all.”

  “I can see how some of our attitudes can irritate you, Peter. And we’re all guilty. We have a special attitude to people who take up our cause. It is unfair, but we tend to look up to them.”

  “But I didn’t think I had to keep to a straiter path than anybody else. I’m not on display. I don’t know why people here should think that.”

  Roche’s temper had suddenly risen. He was sweating; his shirt was wet. He turned away from the microphone and said, “The air here is absolutely foul.”

  “The air conditioning doesn’t seem to be working efficiently,” Meredith said. He too was sweating. He looked about him, perfunctorily, and then he spoke to the microphone again.

  “Peter, you say you came here for the opportunity of doing creative work, unhampered by other pressures. And you’ve done quite a lot. But in the public mind you have become associated with the idea of the agricultural commune. You know, back to the land, the revolution based on land. I don’t believe it’s a secret that it hasn’t been a success. Are you very disappointed?”

  “It would have been nice if it had worked.”

  “Did you think it would work?”

  “I had my doubts. I thought it was antihistorical. All over the world people are leaving the land to go to the cities. And they know what they want. They want more excitement, more lights. They want to be richer. They also want to be brighter. They don’t want to feel they’re missing out. And most of them are missing out, of course.”

  “You didn’t think the process could be reversed here?”

  “Not after I’d been here. You can’t just go back to the land as a gesture. You can’t pretend. The land is a way of life.”

  “And perhaps also a way of work. Not a way of dropping out. But I believe you’ve used the key word, Peter: pretend.”

  “Only very rich people in very rich countries drop out. You can’t drop out if you’re poor.”

  “But that’s our trouble here. You’ve probably observed it. We are too vulnerable to other people’s ideas. We don’t have too many of our own. But, Peter, you say the idea of the agricultural
commune in a society like ours is antihistorical. And yet you helped.”

  “It was what they said they wanted.”

  “Your theory of professed intentions.”

  “If the choice had been mine I would have chosen some other project. Something in the city.”

  “And yet for this antihistorical project, which you didn’t think would succeed, all kinds of people and organizations were pressured, to put it no higher.”

  “We wanted to involve everybody. Or as many people as possible.”

  “You certainly succeeded.”

  “That way it seemed the thing might just work. And we received a lot of government encouragement. A lot of help.”

  “The government too believes in professed intentions.”

  “We were all misled. Perhaps we were all hoping against hope.”

  “And perhaps, hoping against hope, we misled others. Where do you think the error started?”

  “I suppose you can say it started here. In the society you have here. It isn’t organized for work or for individual self-respect.”

  “We won’t quarrel about that. But you don’t think the leadership might have had something to do with it as well?”

  “You mean Jimmy Ahmed.”

  “Tell us about him, Peter, now that you’ve mentioned him. It’s a strange thing to say, but you know him better than most people here.”

  “I found him attractive, a leader. He seemed to be able to get things done. And he had a following.”

  “I know. I went to school with Jimmy. He was Jimmy Leung then. I’ve told you this before. And to me Jimmy’s always been something of a problem. I was in London when he suddenly emerged as the black leader. In fact, I was one of the first people to interview him. He was living in a big house in Wimbledon, and I thought he was quite well looked after. Even then he had powerful friends. But, you know, when Jimmy talked about this country, I couldn’t recognize it. Some of the things he said I found quite humiliating. I’ve told you about the banana-skin game he said he played at school. You would drop the banana skin and if it fell one way you were going to marry a fair-skinned person, and if it fell the other way you were going to marry a yellow person with freckles. You can imagine how the women columnists took that up.”

  “I think you’re making too much of a small thing.”

  “But sometimes small things can tell us more than professed intentions. I never played that game at school. I don’t know anyone who played that game. It sounds to me more like a Chinese game. But the people in England took it seriously.”

  “I wonder. But I don’t know much about that. I didn’t know Jimmy in England. I met him here. I’d only vaguely heard about him before I came here.”

  “We’re a dependent people, Peter. We need other people’s approval. And when people come to us with reputations made abroad we tend to look up to them. It’s something you yourself have been complaining about. But I have another problem here. You know the position of black people in England. You know the difficulties, the campaigns of hate. Yet some of us get taken up by certain people and are made famous. Then we are sent back here as leaders.”

  “You think there’s a conspiracy? People aren’t that interested.”

  “That’s what I mean. People aren’t interested. They are ignorant, they don’t care. But certain people get taken up. It is this element that is my problem, this element in a place like England that takes up some of us. Is it guilt? A touch of the tarbrush, as they say over there—black blood? Or is it something else? Some other kind of relationship. Services rendered, mutual services.”

  “I think you worry too much about those people.”

  “You think I do?”

  Since he had smiled to speak his sentence for voice level, Meredith had been serious, unflustered, his expression neutral in spite of the sweat and the heat that had inflamed his eyes. Now, for the first time, he had spoken angrily. But Roche didn’t believe in the anger. He thought it forced, self-regarding, a lawyer’s courtroom anger; it astonished, disappointed him, and it left him calm.

  Roche said, “How much longer are we going on?”

  Meredith, readjusting his expression, said, “Not much.” Then he spoke to the microphone again.

  “But we’ll leave it, Peter. You say you found Jimmy Ahmed attractive.”

  “He seemed to get things done.”

  “But what he was trying to do was antihistorical. Did you think someone with a shopkeeping background was really equipped for the task he set out to do? Or did you think, since it was antihistorical, it didn’t matter?”

  “I thought he might have chosen another project. With Jimmy, you always had to bring him down to earth. Farming is a serious business. It requires a lot of boring application. It isn’t for someone who’s easily bored or wants quick results.”

  “I think you are being naïve, Peter. You were a stranger when you came. I accept that. But did you think, after you’d got here, that someone with a Chinese shopkeeping background could be in tune with aspirations of black people?”

  “He seemed to have followers.”

  “Yes, followers. That’s why our brothels are full. But let’s leave that too. You said you came here because you wished to do creative work. That implies you felt you were needed.”

  “I was wrong.”

  “But it’s nice to feel needed. And that also implies that you felt you would be welcome. And you are welcome. But what a nice world you inhabit, Peter. You have so much room for error. I wouldn’t be welcome among white people, however much I wanted to work among them.”

  “That’s the way the world is.”

  Roche looked away and said, “I’m choking. I can’t think clearly in this studio.” But he spoke without temper.

  Sweat was running down Roche’s forehead into his eyes and down his neck into his shirt. He was aware of the studio manager in the dimly lit cubicle; and he had half addressed those words to him. But there was no response from the big man behind glass, cool in his white shirt and striped tie. The man had missed the appeal; he remained neutral; his expression didn’t alter.

  Roche looked away, past Meredith and the microphone, to the picture window, radiating heat. Beyond the two panes of glass was the silent view: the sun going down behind the hills, the sky turning pale ocher, the sea silver, the hills red-black, the royal palms darkening against the sky.

  The studio manager, responding to the silence, said, “Shall we stop?” The curiously soft voice again, singsong and slightly effeminate.

  Meredith, his face wet, his shirt wet and sticking round the collarbone so that his skin and vest showed, said, “We’ll go on for a little longer. It’s bad for me too, Peter.” He pulled out a loose white handkerchief from his hip pocket; but then he changed his mind; he didn’t use the handkerchief, and he left it on the green table.

  “I don’t want to embarrass you, Peter. Especially now that you say you’re leaving us. Have you any plans for the future? Do you know what you’ll do?”

  “I suppose I’ll go back to England and try to get another job.”

  “In the same field?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re washing your hands of us. I feel we’ve let you down. I feel you haven’t enjoyed your time with us.”

  “I wish my life had taken another turn.”

  “What do you mean? Do you wish you hadn’t done what you did? Do you think it’s all gone to waste?”

  “We’ve talked about this before, Meredith. I don’t think regret enters into it. I suppose I would do it again. I would have no option. I don’t suppose I ever thought about it going to waste or not. I just wish it hadn’t been necessary to do what I did. I wish the world were arranged differently, so that afterwards I didn’t feel I had been landed with a side. I wish I hadn’t walked into that particular trap.”

  “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 m
ean. 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?”