Didymus gave evidence about the camps. It became necessary, for the cause, to go further than a report. He was to speak in open inquiry of what he had had to keep to himself. A change of self-discipline; in a career of exile, infiltration, guerrilla battle, spy and spied upon, he was accustomed to such switches. The Movement itself announced to the press and conducted the investigation.
What is the difference between a criminal and a hero? He had thought about this with the particular form of revolutionary sophistication — the nearest to irony a revolution may allow itself to get, because irony is distancing, a luxury, like expecting a soft bed when waiting in ambush to kill. While standing ‘trial’ before his comrades instead of the last white government’s courts, it’s hardly a matter of justifying his actions in the name of a just cause, the end against the means. It’s a matter of fulfilling whatever is needed by the Movement to show its integrity to the truth, its capacity for self-examination and condemnation because it is strong enough to survive these, a capacity others dare not attempt. He tells as much as is needed to demonstrate that the Movement may emerge with a cleansed conscience. He tells himself it is a mission like any other, suited, as all have been, to a particular stage in liberation.
When the press badger him with questions contrived to make him express bitterness etc. so that they may have a sensational story about divisions within what they call the ‘upper echelons’ of the Movement, he disappoints them effortlessly with a well-worn formulation, one of the printer’s lugs of rhetoric. — I’m in complete agreement with the principle of accountability we have always rigorously followed.—
They scamper after him with the weapon of their microphones. — You don’t feel you’re the fall guy? You’ve been victimized?—
— How? — He appears indulgent of stupidity. — After more than three hundred and fifty years of victimization by one white power after another, I should feel ‘victimized’ by a normal process within my own liberation movement?—
And afterwards, although there’s now no possibility of concealing his involvement with the camps, there is also no need for this in order to ensure that Sibongile’s advancement will not be prejudiced. The death threat provides the highest proof of political correctness of the potential victim. Paradoxically, the reputation of Sibongile is unassailable.
Vera and Didymus suddenly caught sight of one another as each was approaching the pay booth in an underground parking garage. He walked with Vera to her car and at a gesture both made at the same time, got into the seat beside her. There was something clandestine about the vast dim cellar of a place, evilsmelling of fuel fumes, and cold; as if the context of their encounters, just as some people are likely to meet at concerts, bars or libraries, was set when the umfundisi stepped into her house and she kicked the door shut behind him. They didn’t talk of the inquiry; if Vera was curious she knew enough about him to keep her curiosity to herself. They talked of Sally. She was the one on missions all about the world, now, delegate to this country and that in search of funds for the election campaign. She was tipped for a portfolio in the cabinet when it came. There were newspaper photographs in which she could be picked out among Japanese and German dignitaries and Scandinavian politicians; Vera saw that the Portobello Market boots and African robes had been succeeded by a wardrobe of suitable international elegance for her position. The two in the car were proud of her, as if from the same perspective; when someone becomes a public personality and gains an image distinct from an intimate one, he or she regains the remove of being ‘someone else’; Didymus spoke of her as of a stranger rather than one whose being is dulled by familiarity. — At least she’s safer when she’s overseas. And she’s doing so well! She has this way of getting to people and dealing with these institutions — you can tell she does her homework, when she meets them she knows exactly what their resources are, their pet prejudices, what they like to fund. And tough! No pledges, she says: cheques, not promises. And she gets them, too. How she can charm … just watch her, sometimes …—
— She’s always been beautiful, that helps.—
— But now! — The two words are almost a boast. Vera understands something else about any kind of public distinction: the individual with such an image remains sexually tantalizing despite the passing of years. Ben beckons distantly. She catches at a disembodied wisp of telephone voice, words that are going round lost in her space. — Ben saw her in the foyer of some hotel. One day in London. He said she was splendid.—
— Ben in London? When did that happen? When’d he go?—