He laughed along with me, sucked the blood off his thumb, and went on. "The University never
As 273 a
FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS
amounted to much. It was a Corporation ploy — let the assets pretend they're going to college. During the last years of the War it was closed down. Since Liberation Day it's reopened and crawled along with no one taking much notice of it. The faculty are
mostly old. They came back to it after the War. The National Government gives it a subsidy because it sounds well to have a University of Yeowe, but they don't pay it any attention, because it has no prestige. And because many of them are unenlightened men." He said this without scorn, descriptively. "It does have a printing house."
"I know," 1 said. I reached out for my old book and showed it to him.
He looked through it for a few minutes. His face was curiously tender as he did so. I could not help watching him. It was like watching a woman with a baby, a constant, changing play of attention and response.
"Full of propaganda and errors and hope," he said at last, and his voice too was tender. "Well, I think this could be improved upon. Don't you? All that's needed is an editor. And some authors."
"Inspectors." I warned, imitating Dr. Yeron.
"Academic freedom is an easy issue for the
Ekumen to have some influence upon," he said, "because we invite people to attend the Ekumenical Schools on Hain and Ve. We certainly want to invite graduates of the University of Yeowe. But of course, if their education is severely defective because of the lack of books, of information ..."
I said, "Mr. Yehedarhed, are you supposed to subvert government policies?" The question broke out of me unawares.
A Woman's Liberation
He did not laugh. He paused for quite a long time before he answered. "I don't know," he said.
"So far the Ambassador has backed me- We may both get reprimanded. Or fired. What I'd like to do . .." His strange eyes were right on me again. He looked down at the book he still held. "What I'd like is to become a Yeowan citizen," he said. "But my usefulness to Yeowe, and to the Liberation Movement, is my position with the Ekumen. So I'll go on using that, or misusing it, till they tell me to stop."
When he left I had to think about what he had
asked me to do. That was to go to the University as a teacher of history, and once there to volunteer for the editorship of the press. That all seemed so preposterous, for a woman of my background and my little learning, that I thought I must be misunderstanding him. When he convinced me that I had understood him, I thought he must have very badly misunderstood who ( was and what I was capable of. After we had talked about that for a little while, he left, evidently feeling that he was making me uncomfortable, and perhaps feeling uncomfortable himself, though in fact we laughed a good deal and I did not feel uncomfortable, only a tittle as if I were crazy.
I tried to think about what he had asked me to do, to step so far beyond myself. 1 found it difficult to think about. It was as if it hung over me, this huge choice I must make, this future I could not imagine. But what I thought about was him, Yehedarhed Havzhiva. I kept seeing him sitting there in my old chair, stooping down to stroke Owner. Sucking blood off his thumb. Laughing.
*A»s 275 s9.s
FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS
Looking at me with his white-cornered eyes. I saw his red-brown face and red-brown hands, the color of pottery. His quiet voice was in my mind.
I picked up the kitten, half-grown now, and looked at its hinder end. There was no sign of any male parts. The little black silky body squirmed in my hands. I thought of him saying, "Your Owner is a lady," and I wanted to laugh again, and to cry. I stroked the kitten and set her down, and she sat sedately beside me, washing her shoulder. "Oh poor little lady," I said. I don't know who I meant. The kitten, or Lady Tazeu, or myself.
He had said to take my time thinking about his proposal, all the time I wanted. But I had not really thought about it at all when, the next day but one, there he was, on foot, waiting for me as I came out of the school. "Would you like to walk on the levee?" he said.
I looked around.
"There they are," he said, indicating his coldeyed bodyguards. "Everywhere I am, they are, three to five meters away. Walking with me is dull, but safe. My virtue is guaranteed."
We walked down through the streets to the levee and up onto it in the long early evening light, warm and pink-gold, smelling of river and mud and reeds. The two women with guns walked along just about four meters behind us.
"If you do go to the University," he said after a long silence, "I'll be there constantly."
" 1 haven't yet —" I stammered.
"If you stay here, I'll be here constantly," he said. "That is/ if it's all right with you."
I said nothing. He looked at me without turning
S-MS' 276 A*-s
A Woman's Liberation
his head. I said without intending to, "I like it that I can see where you're looking."
"I like it that I can't see where you're looking," he said, looking directly at me.
We walked on. A heron rose up out of a reed islet and its great wings beat over the water, away. We were walking south, downriver. All the western sky was full of light as the sun went down behind the city in smoke and haze.
"Rakam, I would like to know where you came from, what your life on Werel was," he said very softly
I drew a long breath. "It's all gone," I said.
"Past."
"We are our past. Though not only that. I want to know you. Forgive me. 1 want very much to know you."
After a while I said, " 1 want to tell you. But it's so bad. It's so ugly. Here, now, it's beautiful. I don't want to lose it."
"Whatever you tell me I will hold valuable," he said, in his quiet voice that went to my heart. So I told him what I could about Shomeke compound, and then hurried on through the rest of my story. Sometimes he asked a question. Mostly he listened. At some time in my telling he had taken my arm, I scarcely noticing at the time. When he let me go, thinking some movement I made meant I wanted to be released, I missed that light touch. His hand was cool. I could feel it on my forearm after it was gone.
"Mr. Yehedarhed," said a voice behind us: one of the bodyguards. The sun was down, the sky flushed with gold and red. "Better head back?"
a?-® 277 -A-s>
FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS
"Yes," he said, "thanks." As we turned I took his arm. I felt him catch his breath.
I had not desired a man or a woman — this is
the truth — since Shomeke. I had loved people, and I had touched them with love, but never with desire, My gate was locked.
Now it was open. Now I was so weak that at the touch of his hand I could scarcely walk on.
I said, "It's a good thing walking with you is so safe."
I hardly knew what 1 meant. I was thirty years old but 1 was like a young girl. I had never been that
girl.
He said nothing. We walked along in silence between the river and the city in a glory of failing light.
"Will you come home with me, Rakam?" he said.
Now I said nothing.
"They don't come in with us," he said, very low, in my ear, so that I felt his breath.
"Don't make me laugh!" I said, and began crying. I wept all the way back along the levee. I sobbed and thought the sobs were ceasing and then sobbed again. I cried for all my sorrows, all my shames. I cried because they were with me now and always would be. I cried because the gate was open and I could go through at last, go into the country on the other side, but I was afraid to.
When we got into the car, up near my school, he took me in his arms and simply held me, silent.
The two women in the front seat never looked round.