Forgive Me (3 page)

Five

“P
lease,” said Nadine. “I’m going. Send me to Lima. I can get in with the Shining Path.” Nadine’s hand rested on the newspaper spread across her lap. Her room was filled with papers, and news blared on the television. She had pulled the gingham curtains closed, and she fought to ignore the searing pain between her temples.

“It’s a standoff, Nadine,” said Ian. “Nobody’s coming in or out. And I’m not sending you anywhere until you get your doctor to give the good word. Nadine, honestly. Are you listening?”

“Ian…,” said Nadine. She drained her soda and stacked it on top of the other Diet Coke cans on her bedside table.

“We’ve already sent Clay anyway. By the time it’s in the paper, we have someone there. You know that.”

“Well where, then? Where do you need someone?” Nadine opened another soda.

“Where do we need a nutcase with a broken wrist?” said Ian. “We’ll talk next year, okay? I’ve got to run.”

“Next year?”

“It’s Christmas,” said Ian. “It’s Kwanzaa. Hanukkah. The holiday season. Kiss someone under the mistletoe. Recover, Nadine. I’ll be in touch.”

“You can’t—” said Nadine.

“Happy holidays,” said Ian.

Tucking the phone under her chin, Nadine clamped a cigarette between her lips and lit it with her right hand. She swallowed, and decided to play her final card. “How about sending me back to South Africa? When I took the Mexico City job, you made me a promise.” She tapped her cigarette on the scallop shell she was using as an ashtray.

“And I intend to keep it. I know your heart’s in Cape Town, Nadine, but you’re not strong enough to go anywhere yet.”

“My heart? Ian, please.”

“Do you have any idea how much you talk about it?” said Ian.

Nadine laughed, blowing smoke. “What?”

“Will Mandela bring peace to South Africa, what about the townships, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission…and on and on.”

“Really?”

“Everyone has a story that sticks in their craw,” said Ian.

There was silence, and then Nadine said, “But seriously, Ian? I need to get back to work.”

“Dear?” Gwen’s voice was tentative from the hallway.

“One second!” said Nadine.

Ian’s tone was kind. “Talk soon, Nadine.”

“But—”

“Good-bye,” said Ian.

“Wait,” said Nadine, but Ian had hung up.

“Nadine?” said Gwen.

“Come in.”

“Are you still on the phone?” said Gwen, opening the door. She came into view wearing a sweatshirt with a reindeer appliqué. In her ears were tiny ornaments, and she held an old shoe box.

“No,” said Nadine. “I’ll pay you back for the long distance,” she added.

“Don’t worry about that, dear,” said Gwen. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“I brought you something,” said Gwen.

“For the love of God,” said Nadine. “Please, no more crossword puzzles.”

“Well,” said Gwen. She stood in the doorway for a moment, and then she said, “There’s no need to be nasty.”

“I know,” said Nadine. “I don’t mean to be. It’s just…Gwen, I don’t need mothering. I’m happy for you and my dad, and I’m just ready to get back to Mexico.”

“Speaking of lovebirds…,” said Gwen, settling on the corner of Nadine’s bed, tracing a circle on the coverlet.

“Hm?” Nadine put down
The New York Times
and opened the
Boston Tribune.

“What about you settling down? Getting married? Babies?”

“Don’t think babies are in the cards for me.”

“You still have time,” said Gwen. “Well, a little.”

“I guess I’m missing the mommy gene,” said Nadine.

“You’re so pretty,” said Gwen. “And you have lovely panties. Are they French? You could get a man, Nadine.”

“I don’t want a man,” said Nadine. “I want to get back to work.”

“What about that nice Dr. Duarte?” said Gwen. “Everyone has a past, you can’t fault him for that.”

“What?”

“Poor Dr. Duarte,” said Gwen, leaning in. “I really shouldn’t gossip.”

Nadine was silent.

“Okay,” said Gwen. “Twist my arm. His wife ran off with a Greek man she met on a cruise ship!”

“Jesus,” said Nadine.

“A Carnival Cruise,” said Gwen in wonderment. “Now she lives on Mykonos and has two children. Both Greek. So Dr. Duarte moved here.”

“I’m missing something,” said Nadine.

“Oh, he used to work in the city. Some terrible emergency room. He worked all day and night.” Gwen warmed to her story. “So Maryjane finally convinces him to take a break. They go on a Caribbean cruise. A Carnival Cruise, did I mention?”

“Yes, Gwen, you did.”

“So who knows? I heard she met the Greek in the buffet line. I keep telling your father: they have really good food on those cruises. Everybody says so. And things like Tex Mex night, sushi night, what have you.”

“I am really tired,” said Nadine.

“Tex Mex night with margaritas. He’d like it, don’t you think?”

“Gwen,” said Nadine, “I’m going to take a nap now.”

“Oh.” Gwen was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Well, I just had to show you what I found in your daddy’s things.” She held out the shoe box.

“Sneakers?”

“No, silly,” said Gwen. “It’s all your articles.” She lifted newspaper clippings. “He saved every one,” she said.

One of the clippings fell from her hand, and Nadine held it up. It was a story she’d reported from South Africa:
EVELINA MALEFANE
:
MURDERER OR MARTYR
? Nadine’s stomach clenched.

“That is the most terrifying story,” said Gwen. “That little African girl! How could she have killed an American? And a boy from Nantucket, no less.”

“Jason Irving,” said Nadine.

“Right. What a sicko. Did she get executed? I certainly hope so.”

“She’s in jail,” said Nadine.

“I would have voted for execution, myself,” said Gwen.

“She was fifteen,” said Nadine.

“A bad apple,” said Gwen, standing, “is a bad apple, any way you slice it.”

“Actually, she’s getting out of jail, if you really want to know,” said Nadine.

“Out?” said Gwen, sitting back down.

“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission. TRC, for short.”

“You have lost me, Nadine,” said Gwen.

“Under apartheid—” Nadine began.

“Oh Lord,” said Gwen, holding up her palm to stop Nadine.

“What?”

“Well, to be honest, sweetheart,” said Gwen, “I’m just not interested in history.”

Nadine sighed.

“What? A bunch of people over in Africa killed each other. I mean, what can you do?” She lifted her hands, a gesture of helplessness. “Anyhoo, I just wanted you to know about this shoe box. Your daddy’s cut out every article you’ve ever written. He cares, Nadine, is what I’m saying.”

“Evelina’s appearing before the TRC,” said Nadine. “She could be given amnesty.”

“You’re like an onion,” said Gwen. “Lots of layers. I mean that.”

“Okay,” said Nadine.

“An onion,” said Gwen. “Seems all rough, but then it’s tender underneath. Makes you cry. Best when softened up a little…”

“I get the picture,” said Nadine.

“Anyhoo,” said Gwen, “I’m real glad we had this little chat.”

When she was alone, Nadine stared at the article, which she had written almost ten years before.

Six

T
he summer she flew from JFK to Cape Town International Airport, Nadine was twenty-five, her hair in a long braid down her back. On her face, Nadine wore only sunscreen and ChapStick, and she was often mistaken for a student. But the lines in her forehead and the coldness in her eyes, her angry cynicism, betrayed her experience. By twenty-five, Nadine had been to Bhopal, India, where she had seen and reported on hundreds of dead bodies, victims of a slow, lethal leak in a Liberty Union methyl-isocyanate plant. She had comforted dying children in an emergency feeding center on the edge of Ethiopia’s Danakil Desert, filing detailed accounts for the
Boston Tribune.
Her articles about the torture wrought in Haiti by the Tonton Macoutes won her a five-hundred-dollar award, which she put toward credit card bills. She didn’t shy away from the gruesome details. In fact, as her
Tribune
editor, Eugenia, said, Nadine was “hot for gore.”

Nadine was ready to stare the worst in the face. But a steady paycheck still eluded her. It was part of the job: stringers paid their own way, hoping to sell enough stories to cover plane tickets, hotels (or crummy apartments), meals. Sometimes Nadine was forced to share a room with a more established reporter. Eugenia often bought Nadine’s stories, but Nadine dreamed of a steady position. Or the ultimate prize: paid expenses.

Eugenia called Nadine first when something unimaginable happened in a far corner of the world. “I don’t know how she handles it,” Nadine once overheard Eugenia telling another editor, “but she handles it. For now, anyway.” Eugenia had a foul mouth and a nose for ratings. “Nadine, babe,” she’d say, “I’m FedExing tickets to Haiti. Can you smell the blood?”

In Port-au-Prince, Nadine met Padget Thompson, the bureau chief for
The New York Times.
One night, as they drank whiskey at the Hotel Oloffson, Padget fixed her with a stare. “May I give you some advice, my dear?” he said.

“Of course,” said Nadine. She sipped her drink quickly, trying to pry her mind away from the boy she had seen that morning, killed in a voodoo ceremony.

“Your work is shocking. It’s fresh and energetic.”

“Thanks,” mumbled Nadine.

“But there will come a day when shocking people will grow tiresome. You’ll want to teach, to change things.”

“I’m hardly a tabloid reporter.”

“Oh?” said Padget. He ran a hand over thinning hair. “I don’t have a daughter,” he said. “Indulge me my fatherly tendencies.”

Nadine sighed, but revolved her hand to say
go on.

“What you do is good. You rush in, detail the facts. You’re courageous. But to get better, to become a great reporter, you’re going to have to learn what it is you’re doing. You need to take it apart and put it back together with thought. You need to go to graduate school, and then stay in one place for a while. Your work needs perspective. Yes, horrible things are happening, and thank you for telling us. But
why,
Nadine? And what can we do about it?”

Nadine ordered another drink. She was quiet.

“For example,” said Padget. “When Duvalier flees the country, which he will, what’s going to happen? He’s a vicious asshole, yes. But who’s going to replace him? And what will become of Haiti then?”

Nadine looked up. “Whatever comes,” she said, “it will be better than Baby Doc.”

“Are you sure?” said Padget. “In ’57, Baby Doc was the great hope.”

Nadine sipped her drink. “I never…,” she said. “I guess I hadn’t thought.”

“Thanks for listening,” said Padget. “Just a few words from an old man.”

“You’re not old,” said Nadine.

“Got to pass the torch sometime.”

In the morning, Nadine called the NYU School of Journalism, Padget’s alma mater.

N
adine studied writing, photography, and history at NYU. One of her professors was South African, and she urged Nadine to head to Johannesburg or Cape Town for the summer. “I’d give my arm to go back,” said Renata. “The Young Lions are changing the world. They’re braver—and dumber—than we were.”

Nelson Mandela’s struggle for a nonviolent takeover had come to nothing, Renata explained. Mandela was in prison, and many of his ardent supporters—including Renata, a white journalist who had questioned the mysterious deaths of jailed activists—were dead, missing, or exiled. Black youth, born and bred in the townships that surrounded South Africa’s cities, stripped of rights, material pleasures, and education, had grown up angry. “Their parents were too scared to fight. They had jobs, and they didn’t want to lose them,” said Renata. “But these kids? They’ve got nothing. They don’t have one thing to lose.”

They called themselves the Young Lions, and they were coming of age, embracing violence as a way to take back their county, which had been ruled by whites since 1948. South Africa was going to ignite, Renata said, “like a fucking bomb.

“For God’s sake, they just beat that American boy to death for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I don’t get it,” said Nadine. “I mean, why did they kill him? How could that help anything?”

“It’s the mind-set,” said Renata. “These kids feel like violence is the only way. Maybe they’re right. If they kill people, blow things up, the government will have to take notice. Everyone will stop ignoring apartheid. Jason Irving’s face was on the front page of every paper in the world.”

“But Jason Irving was American. He was teaching in the townships—”

“This isn’t subtle, Nadine. It’s not about thinking actions through. If you see a white person, kill them. If you announce a strike—nobody go to work for the white man—and some people take the train to work, blow up the train. It’s cut-and-dried, desperate. The kids who killed Jason, they had just left a rally. They’d been told to kill. One settler equals one bullet. A simple equation, in a country where there’s no room for nuance.”

“It’s insanity,” said Nadine.

“It’s
news,
” said Renata.

Nadine went to Boston to meet with Eugenia, who was skeptical. “First you ditch me for graduate school,” she said disdainfully, lighting a cigarette in her cluttered office, “and now South Africa? I don’t know, babe. What about Sudan? Starving orphans, Nadine. Hundreds of ’em. We’ve got Bill there, but you’re better at the misery and death stuff. Hell, Nadine, orphans are your specialty.”

“But I know I could do great work in South Africa,” said Nadine. “My professor, Renata Jorgensen, she fled the country with her notes on Steve Biko—”

“Spare me,” said Eugenia. She touched her springy red curls and then stubbed out her cigarette. “I’ll advance you the plane ticket and one month’s rent. Find something cheap.”

“Thanks, Eugenia. I promise, you’ll be glad.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Eugenia. “Let’s go pig out on pizza.”

F
rom the moment she stepped outside the airport, Nadine was entranced by Cape Town. She loved the way the city wrapped itself around majestic Table Mountain, embracing the peak on three sides and spilling out to Table Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Sun-drenched vineyards climbed the eastern slopes of the mountain, their picturesque wineries wreathed in oak and pine trees.

Nadine took a rare day to herself, heading south of the city, to the Cape of Good Hope, and hiking out to its craggy point. High above two oceans, she breathed deeply. In the nature reserve, she saw a zebra and ostriches. Small but fierce baboons grabbed at the remains of her picnic lunch.

For the first time on assignment, Nadine looked just like the locals around her: black Cape Townians were not allowed in white areas after dark, and Nadine blended in with the white South Africans as she wandered among the Dutch and British colonial buildings, the cathedrals, shops, and the old slave market, now a shady square lined with upscale restaurants. Only Nadine’s American accent gave her away.

Nadine studied guidebooks and maps of the city. A blank section on most maps between the peninsula and the African mainland was designated
CAPE FLATS
. Nadine knew this bleak place plagued by wind-driven sand was where the city’s millions of non-whites lived. She visited District Six, once a thriving mixed-race neighborhood in one of the most beautiful parts of Cape Town. It had been “bleached” by the government, its buildings bulldozed, its residents sent to the Flats. Now it was a wasteland of rubble, plans for its revival mired in red tape.

Nadine stayed at a hostel on raucous Long Street for a week, examining the classified ads in the white edition of the
Cape Argus.
She’d heard there was a “native edition,” but no one was selling it on Long Street. Finally, Nadine called the number on an index card tacked to the hallway bulletin board:
OBS HOUSE NEEDS ROOMIE
. 17
NUTTHALL ROAD
.
CALL MAXIM AT
448-6363.

She spoke with Maxim, who was short on the phone. “Come see the place,” he said in a strong Afrikaans accent. “Then we can talk,” he said.

Nadine tried to take a bus to Observatory, but all the buses were labeled
NON-WHITES ONLY
, and the drivers wouldn’t let her on. Finally, she took a taxi to 17 Nutthall Road, a ramshackle house with a sagging front porch. Nadine climbed the steps and pressed the buzzer. Nothing happened. She wiped perspiration from her brow: the southeast wind the guidebooks called “the Cape Doctor” was hot as hell and she was tired. She carried a bulging backpack. Finally, she banged on the door, and it opened. A guy her age stood in front of her, wearing only a towel.

“Uh,” said Nadine, “are you Maxim?”

“No, darling,” said the guy. “I’m George.” He was lean and muscled, his shoulder-length dark hair combed back from his boyish face. Even his accent was charming—almost British, but not quite. Nadine would later learn that he was American: the accent was complete artifice. He held a cigarette. He leaned against the doorjamb and crossed one leg over the other. He watched Nadine, a smirk playing across his face.

“Can I have a cigarette?” she asked.

“That depends,” said George.

“On what?”

“Well, who are you?” said George. “And why are you wearing an enormous bag on your shoulders?”

“I’m Nadine Morgan. I’m a journalist, and I need a place to live. I saw the ad and spoke with Maxim.”

“Good enough,” said George, holding his towel while he turned. “Come in,” he called, and Nadine followed him. The floor was cracked linoleum, and the apartment reeked of pot and beer.

“Three bedrooms off the hallway,” said George. “Shared bathroom and kitchen. And one common room.” The apartment was filled with photographs: chilling scenes of beatings and people lying in the street, dead or dying. Peaceful pictures of rolling South African farmland—Maxim’s home, George explained—and a beautiful blonde woman: Maxim’s mother. There were photos of dancers. One girl had her head thrown back in ecstasy, her muscled leg kicking high. The power of her body brought her joy, it was clear. Nadine was unnerved to see a similar facial expression in another photograph: a woman in an angry mob, beating a man to his death.

George walked briskly and turned a doorknob. “My love,” he called, “can you bring a cigarette for my new roommate?”

“Of course,” came a voice from inside the bedroom.

“Um,” said Nadine, “is Maxim here?”

“He’s at work,” said George. “Taking pictures in Cape Flats.”

“And you…”

“Oh, me,” said George, still holding his towel. “I’m waiting tables and writing a novel. It’s terrible. I’m also trying to convince this woman to marry me.” He extended his arm, and a stunning black woman in a gray dress came into the hallway. Her hair was cut short. Unsmiling, she handed a pack of Marlboros to Nadine. With her perfect posture, she seemed six feet tall, though her lips only reached George’s bare shoulder, which she kissed. “Nadine,” said George, “this is Tholakele.”

“Put on some clothing, George,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you, Nadine.”

“Your wish,” said George, touching her hair, “is my command.”

“Do you live here as well?” Nadine asked. Tholakele laughed. “I could go to jail for spending the night,” she said angrily. “Or for loving that boy.”