ECLIPSE (4 page)

“Practice law. After college I weighed my student loans against my literary gifts and chose law school over a master’s in creative writing. Now I’m paying off my debt on the installment plan, one year at a time, hoping to stay out of debtor’s prison. And you?”

She glanced over at him. “I’m like you, I guess—a would-be writer who decided that the smart move was a master’s in education. I look at the bestseller list, and it seems like no one who’s any good writes for money.”

“Tell that to Philip Roth,” Pierce answered with a smile. “Or, for that matter, Stephen King.”

She shot him a swift grin, as though caught in an alibi. “So maybe I was a coward. But now I’ve made other plans.”

To Pierce’s practiced ear, the last phrase sounded significant. “I’d like to hear about them. Any chance I could buy you dinner?”

She stopped abruptly and stood in the moonlit shadow of the spire, appraising Pierce with an enigmatic smile. “Thanks,” she said. “But I’ve got somewhere to go. My boyfriend’s giving a speech.”

Once more, Pierce felt a stab of disappointment. “Concerning what?” he asked.

“West Africa—and oil.” She hesitated, then added, on seeming impulse, “If you’re curious, come with me. The more people who hear him, the better. The first time
I
did may actually have changed my life.”

To refuse, Pierce sensed, would sever whatever tenuous link they had—especially since, having invited her out, he lacked an excuse. “If he’s that good,” he answered, “I’ll buy you both dinner.”

Pierce had thought of it as reconnaissance, at most the waste of an evening. Now, twelve years later, he gazed intently at the BBC Web site, recalling fragments of half-forgotten prayers from his Catholic boyhood as he worried for them both.

A
S THE FIRST LIGHT DAWNED
, M
ARISSA STOOD AT THE CENTER OF
Goro—seven days ago the scene of her husband’s greatest triumph—awaiting the passage of the sun with far more apprehension than she had expressed to Damon Pierce.

Around her the village stirred to life. Children arose for school; Omo arrived at the marketplace to prepare her mother’s stall; the few remaining fishermen paddled ancient canoes out to sea and cast their fishing nets, a snapshot of a timeless way of life. Soon more villagers would leave their thatched huts, and struggling enterprises like the Happy Fingers Saloon—a hairdresser, to Marissa’s persistent amusement—would open at idiosyncratic hours. In the freshness of dawn, the grass beside the polluted creek was verdant, and the sandy beach where it met the ocean un-streaked with oil. But Marissa feared that this day, already marked by nature, would be unlike any other.

Inside their house, Bobby was at his desk, awaiting word from his lieutenants across Asariland. His father, Femi, peered out his door. Today he wore the robes of a chief, the formal vestige of a power that had dwindled as his son rose and youth fell away. Now he gazed up at the sun with a misgiving as palpable as that which Marissa chose to conceal.

At precisely 10:17, the astronomers said, a total eclipse of the sun would cast the village into darkness, relieved only by the unrelenting glare of oil flaring. It was Bobby’s luck, or fate, that nature would cause this to occur six days after General Karama had forbidden all nighttime gatherings, citing the lynchings that had ended Asari Day.

For two days Bobby had stirred a debate among his cadre by cell phone and e-mail. “We cannot crawl back into our holes,” he concluded. “And not even Savior Karama can stop the movement of the planets.”

His plan was provocative: a mass demonstration that would conform to Karama’s edict due only to the intervention of the moon, the Asari people’s defiance signaled by lighters thrust toward the dark of the sun. Karama’s response was to close the major airports; cordon off Asariland; and expel all foreign journalists from the Luandian Delta. His directive did not mention Bobby’s plan: the fact that PGL had simultaneously shut down operations provided Karama, in Marissa’s mind, with sufficient pretext for whatever he chose to do.

Since this edict Bobby had barely slept.

Restless, Marissa crossed the muddy clay and reentered their house. On another day, she would have found its character fondly familiar: a balky fax machine, an erratic cell phone, the generator whirring, cartons jammed with speeches and manifestos, documents strewn across Bobby’s desk in a chaotic jumble he allowed no one to touch, the sturdy but sclerotic ceiling fan whose revolutions barely disturbed the listless air. Bobby sat with his back to her. Beside him, signed the day before, was a final iteration of his will.

Now he was writing his speech in longhand, so focused on this task that he did not hear his wife. Only the sound of helicopter blades caused his hand to pause.

Marissa preceded him to the door. Hovering above the line of palms was a helicopter with the black logo: PGL. From behind her, Bobby murmured, “I thought they were gone.”

Marissa faced him. Reading her face, he spoke with quiet urgency. “If I back down, the movement ends. I’m the one they trust, and the world community sees them through what I say or do.”

“What about your writing?”

Bobby shook his head. “It is not the same as action—not to the world, and surely not to our people.” This last phrase, pointedly inclusive of Marissa, was followed by a fleeting smile. “However brilliant, my prose cannot rally a semiliterate populace. That’s why I schooled myself, frail vessel though I am, to not just speak but to act as a symbol for them and others.”

Outside, the deep beating of chopper blades slowly receded. Marissa touched his arm. “The others are gone,” she answered. “Karama has expelled them. No one hears us now.”

The doubt in Bobby’s eyes revealed how well he knew this. “The Asari do, Marissa.” He paused, his next words betraying that he, like she, could not forget the killings at Lana or the dangling corpses or Okimbo’s threat. “I cannot let them down, or they would be right to lynch me.”

When Bobby resumed writing, Marissa gazed out the door again, hoping the women in the marketplace would distract her from her anxiety.

She fixed on Omo and her mother, covering their sparse offering of pineapples in anticipation of what was to come. Their expressions were less animated and, to Marissa’s mind, their movements bore the weight of uncertainty. Every so often Omo cast her eyes at the sun: the pendency of an eclipse created a sense of awe among a people for whom the natural world held more mystery and meaning than it had in Marissa’s childhood. Watching the girl, her favorite, she barely heard the fax machine ringing.

A moment later Bobby appeared at her side, gazing down at a fax with a look of such devastation that Marissa felt her throat clutch. “What is it?”

When he shook his head, as though unable to tell her, she took the document from his hand.

It was signed by four of his lieutenants, including Eric Aboh, his second-in-command. Marissa scanned the agreement, more heartsick with each phrase. “On behalf of the Asari people,” the four leaders had met with “representatives of the government and PGL” and had “amicably resolved the current tensions in exchange for further talks.” Therefore they urged the Asari to “disclaim violence and provocation” and “allow all lawful economic activity to resume unimpeded.” For his part, Colonel Paul Okimbo had promised to “stabilize Asariland to prevent the unwarranted loss of life.” Slowing, Marissa read the final paragraph: “We urge Bobby Okari to place the good of the Asari above his own ambitions, and to call on his remaining followers to resume their normal lives.”

Watching her face, Bobby said softly, “How many pieces of silver it required, they do not mention.” He took the paper from her hand. “This is a hunting license, Marissa. Karama and the oilmen have isolated me. Now I will bear sole blame for whatever they choose to do.”

Before she could respond, an elderly subchief appeared at their door. Formally addressing Bobby, he said, “Your father, Chief Okari, must speak with you.”

Bobby glanced from Marissa to the man. “With both of us,” he answered.

R
ESTLESS
, P
IERCE SCANNED THE
I
NTERNET FOR DESCRIPTIONS OF AN
eclipse.

In the middle of the day, he read, a shadow moves across the sun. For a few moments, the sky becomes like that of a moonlit night; animals and birds go silent, and nature seems in suspension. Though the sun has vanished, its outer edge is visible as a ghostly hole around the black disk of the moon. But for that, and the gas flaring Marissa had so vividly described, Goro would be plunged into darkness.

Anxious for news, Pierce returned to the BBC Web site. A new bulletin was reporting an agreement. For a moment he was hopeful. Then he read Colonel Paul Okimbo’s promise to restore Asariland to a state of order and knew, from weeks of following the Asari movement after the massacre at Lana, that his friends’ peril had only deepened. In that moment, he thought of Bobby and Marissa twelve years ago, heading blindly toward this day, and imagined what might have happened had he met Marissa sooner.

THE AUDITORIUM WHERE
Bobby Okari would speak was small. A scattering of white and black students mixed with some older people from Berkeley—the men often distinguished by ponytails or beards, the women by an absence of makeup—whose worldview, Pierce surmised, had been shaped by the sixties. At Marissa’s behest, she and Pierce sat close to the stage, where Bobby Okari waited behind a cadaverous professor of international relations who had begun to introduce him. After describing
Bobby as a visiting professor of literature and one of Africa’s most gifted young novelists, the man’s voice became a pipe organ of piety: Bobby Okari’s true mission, it transpired, was to speak for the embattled people of West Africa who, for too long, had suffered from the oppression of neo-colonialists, arms merchants, purveyors of diamonds, and, most deadly, petroleum companies who fed the Western world’s rapacious thirst for oil.

Immediately, Pierce was bored. The professor struck him as a man whose impact on these problems consisted of ringing declarations to groups who could have recited them in their sleep. The more fruitful study was Bobby Okari. From his biography and appearance, Pierce put him at a good ten years older than Marissa; small and bright-eyed, he awaited his turn with an obvious restiveness. When at last the professor finished his peroration, Marissa leaned forward in anticipation, and Pierce wondered what about this diminutive figure Marissa found so captivating.

The first seconds were not promising—Bobby Okari looked barely taller than the podium. With an engaging smile, he stood briefly on his toes, accenting the moment of unintended comedy. “I don’t worry if you can’t see me,” he assured his audience in a resonant voice. “If you can hear me, you can also hear my people.”

For the next half hour, Bobby Okari enthralled his audience as completely as, judging from her rapt expression, he enthralled Marissa Brand. In mesmeric cadences, he limned the paradox through which oil riches in the hands of kleptocrats and oil companies deepened the Asari people’s misery. Nor did he exempt his listeners. “When you use our oil,” he told them, “you facilitate our exploitation.

“Without knowing it you help them steal our land, enslave our children, turn our girls into prostitutes who service the men who fill your gas tanks. Nor can you alleviate our suffering merely by developing more gas-efficient cars.”

This drew a ripple of nervous laughter. “When the white man came to Luandia,” Bobby continued, “our people had the land and the white man had the Bible. Now the Asari have the Bible and the white man has our land. As in so many things, this reflects the toxins of Western society—racism and greed.”

Seeing Marissa’s mouth curl in a bitter smile, Pierce divined that much of her response to Bobby was visceral, and perhaps involved race. “When Luandians hate Americans,” he said, “it is because Americans allow the oil
companies to embody the evils you claim to deplore.” Pausing, Bobby surveyed his audience as though looking into each face and heart, and then his voice softened. “But I do not come here to abuse you.

“So many of you were once soldiers of conscience in the struggle to make your country what it claims to be.
All
of you can be that now. Today, your moral imperative must be to improve the lot of humanity—not just among the your own people but in the world. Even, I dare to hope, in Luandia.”

The audience applauded warmly. But for Bobby Okari, Pierce knew, this night was merely practice for an enterprise more challenging than pricking the nerve ends of Berkeley progressives. Touching Marissa’s arm, he murmured, “I’d very much like to meet him.”

“I
HAVE A
modest goal,” Bobby told Pierce wryly. “To start a movement among the Asari, like that of Martin Luther King, which will spread throughout the delta until we are too mighty to resist.”

They sat in a Thai restaurant on Shattuck Avenue, a favorite of Bobby and Marissa’s. To Pierce, Bobby’s entire being belied his self-deprecating tone: his eyes were filled with hope, even confidence, and his slender frame radiated a kinetic energy. With a smile that mingled challenge with humor, Bobby said, “You are skeptical, I see.”

Marissa looked from Bobby to Pierce. “It’s a reflex,” Pierce answered with a laugh. “I’m Irish—caught between an immigrant’s optimism and a certainty that the world is about to break your heart.”

Bobby’s smile lingered. “You’re also a lawyer, Damon. Lawyers shun delusion and cherish facts. And so, the facts. The Asari are poor, uneducated, unarmed, and scorned by the many ethnic groups who far outnumber them. When nonviolence is one’s only choice, it is best to embrace the moral high ground.

“To paraphrase Robert Kennedy, even the humblest among us can create ripples of hope and daring which, when they cross, create a wave so powerful that it overcomes the mightiest wall of oppression. Kennedy said this in South Africa. In the quarter century that followed, Mandela and a handful of prisoners overcame apartheid by seizing the imagination of the world.”