The Execution, page 12
Eventually I turned off the shower taps. I felt warm and clean but unclean at the same time. I could hear Marianne listening to music in the sitting room, which she often does at night. There was this terrible weariness in me, a total bodily exhaustion I’d never felt before. It was too good to finally escape the relentlessness of my thoughts and retreat into bed – I was momentarily invaded by this feeling of security that I’d dredged up from my childhood. Beside the bed was something Marianne was reading, a battered copy of Pascal’s Pensées. As a student I’d written an essay about it but that seemed very far away indeed. I flicked through the pages, too tired to decipher much of the French. I tried to remember what it was that might have interested me about this book but it was hard. It was like trying to resurrect a person I’d killed off years ago.
Then another wave of tiredness submerged me. It felt as if all the events of the day were crushing me into unconsciousness and it was impossible to resist. The book slipped from my fingers and I knew that I would sleep a dreamless sleep. It was as if I were falling toward some kind of death.
X
Jo called out to me as I passed by her office: ‘Heard the news? Jarawa lost his appeal. They’ve fixed the execution date. Twenty-second of August.’
‘The twenty-second? But that’s my birthday. It can’t be true.’
Her words had a weird physical effect on me, winding me like a sudden blow to the stomach. I must have gone pale as well because Jo was looking at me strangely: ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little dizzy. I need some water or something.’
‘Come in. Sit down for a minute.’
Jo poured me water from a plastic bottle. I drank it slowly and we didn’t say anything for a while. I glanced over the tiny office space she’d been allocated. She’d made an effort with it though, she’d made it feel homely. There was a Japanese print on the wall, pot plants, a framed photo of her parents on the desk. I hadn’t bothered to do anything like that with my much larger office. I hadn’t appropriated it in the same way. I couldn’t help feeling that this fact diminished me in some way but in any case it was too late now. It was too late for the photo of Marianne and Jessica on the desk. For a second or two a feeling of intense loss swept over me but then it was gone before I had time to wonder where it had come from and what it meant.
I could feel Jo’s curiosity burning into me as I drank the water. Finally she asked if I was all right again and I said yeah. I could tell she wasn’t satisfied with that but she didn’t say anything more about it for the moment. Instead she handed me a page she’d printed off from some news website, with the announcement about Jarawa’s execution. It also mentioned that he’d been moved from police detention to a notorious prison outside the capital, used solely for lifers and condemned men, nicknamed ‘Paradise’ because no one is supposed to return from it. Once again there was that old photo of Jarawa, like some icon I was seeing everywhere.
Jo and I talked for a while about strategy. It was the first time we’d discussed anything in detail for ages. In fact we’d barely talked at all since I found out about Marianne. I let Jo run on to begin with, since in a way I was still trying to digest the news about Jarawa. I found it almost impossible to believe that they’d actually announced the execution date. I’d always assumed that if they did kill him, news of the execution would surface only once it had taken place. Why had I assumed that? Perhaps because shameful acts are generally committed in secret. Instead they were announcing it as if it were an upcoming spectacle. Maybe that’s exactly what it was.
Jo was wondering out loud whether she should cancel the trip to Paris which she’d lined up for the summit of French-speaking countries. She kept rubbing her face and fingering a scar she had high up on her forehead by the hairline. When she rubbed it, it went from white to red. I was listening to her and making suggestions, but at the same time I was remembering an incident from a year, maybe fourteen months ago. It was just after Jo had been taken on. Previously she’d been doing some work for some other human rights organisation on the Samson Peters case. Peters had been found guilty of a double murder in the state of Texas and had been sentenced to death. The date for his execution had been set on several occasions but each time his legal team had got a postponement. Once Peters had been only minutes from death when the stay of execution had finally come through. Eventually DNA evidence proving his innocence came to light and he was pardoned. There’d been a TV programme about the case, in which Peters had talked about how he’d felt during those hours before the stay of execution, how he’d refused to give up hope, how he’d fought for his life every inch of the way. And yet not too long after being released, Peters had killed himself – his wife had found him hanged in the bathroom, his face turned to the door.
I remembered coming into the office one day to find that Jo hadn’t done something important I’d asked her to do. When I’d asked her why she’d suddenly burst into tears. Later I found out that she’d been extremely upset about Peters’ suicide. What I’d found jarring at the time was this emotional reaction to the death of someone she’d never even met. But looking back now that’s not how it strikes me at all. Rather it’s Peters’ suicide itself that seems so odd. Because how could you go and kill yourself after you’d fought so hard to live? How could you do that? It made no sense at all.
I was thinking about that and then we started working out the details for the press conference. Eventually I said if we’re going to have the press release ready by lunch, then one of us had better get writing. As I got up to leave, Jo said: ‘By the way, I saw Christian yesterday. He said you’d been in touch. He said you’d spent the day together recently.’
‘He said that? He said that? What else did he say?’
The words spilled out too fast and Jo looked up at me questioningly: ‘Not much. He’s sold his house. He’s staying with friends in Hackney or something. Said he wants to get away for a while. Maybe do some volunteer work in West Africa. He asked me to mention it to people in the office, in case anyone has any ideas. That’s why I brought it up.’
‘No what I meant is, what else did he say about me?’
‘Nothing … nothing.’ She was looking at me strangely again. ‘Listen, I know it’s none of my business or anything, but I mean if there’s anything you want to talk about …’
‘Like what?’
I put my hand to my chin, ostensibly to rub it but the psychological impulse was more to do with covering my face.
‘Well, for a few weeks you hardly come in to work at all … when you do you’re like a ghost. Now all of a sudden you’re in here all the time working twelve hours a day or whatever. I just get the feeling that something’s not right.’
‘There’s nothing wrong.’ It sounded flat and I stumbled on: ‘You know … sometimes there are difficulties … personal things … you know …’
Jo shrugged her shoulders: ‘OK. It’s your business.’
I went back to my office. I considered phoning Christian and almost did but then thought better of it. There’d been several times over the past few days when I’d had to fight an almost irresistible urge to phone Christian. The way I got over it was to close my eyes and sort of stop thinking for a while. It’s this strange state I seem to be able to put myself in now. The trouble is I can’t control it so well. I’ve no idea of whether it’s going to last a minute or half an hour. But when I snap out of it I feel quite calm. It’s as if I’d had eight hours’ sleep.
Papers were lying scattered all over my desk, I’d been working on half a dozen things at once – it wasn’t so much that I wanted to occupy my mind as to confuse it. Aspects of the Jarawa case surrounded me, submerged me. I noticed the piece of paper where I’d scribbled down the London phone number for Jarawa’s wife. I’d already left her several messages and had also sent a letter to the address I’d been given but had had no reply. As I punched in the number on the phone I mentally prepared another message to leave on her machine and it took me by surprise when a female voice answered. I introduced myself but then she abruptly interrupted me: ‘Look. I did get your messages. I did get your letter and I’m sorry I never got in touch. That was wrong of me. But I’m sure you can understand that I’ve been very busy. And I decided from the outset not to get involved in any public campaign. All I can say is, I don’t think it would be appropriate.’
‘You don’t want to get involved, even if it might help your husband.’
‘I don’t want to get involved in your campaign, no. Please understand.’
There was an unpleasant pause – icy distaste crackled along the line.
‘I’m sorry. But I’m not sure that I do understand. I appreciate how terrible things must be for you … The fact is that if you’d only let me, I could explain ways in which you could help your …’
‘No. I didn’t say I was unwilling to help my husband. I said I didn’t want to get involved in any kind of public campaign. Beyond that I don’t really feel at liberty to speak. I’m afraid that’s all I have to say. Thank you for calling.’
She’d hung up on me. Well, of all the … I put down the phone and sat back down in my chair -I hadn’t even realised that I’d got up from it. I could feel this uncontrollable anger rise up in me and a desire to pick up the phone again and hurl it across the room. Moments later the desire and the anger were quite gone and I felt totally calm. It was these instant mood changes that were so hard to get used to. What did it matter to me if Jarawa’s wife didn’t want to get involved? What did it matter to Jarawa? Surely he was far from all that now, and somewhere deep within himself. Surely there was nothing further I or anyone else could do for him. But I couldn’t stop myself envisaging the horror of his end and I could see him being led to the execution site, hood on head, almost as if it were me and not him.
I remembered that I still didn’t know exactly how Jarawa was to be killed. I remembered also how when I was thirteen or fourteen I’d once seen actual footage of an execution on TV, which I now realised coloured all my images of such things. It was a Vietnamese guy kneeling down in the street, hands tied behind his back, and an officer shooting him with a pistol to his head. It was not so much the brutality of it that had struck me at the time but the matter-of-factness and flatness of it, which was how you knew it was real and not a movie.
Afterwards I had a coffee then went to see Jamie. I had to talk to him about visa applications. Jamie was leaning back on his chair so that it stood balanced only on its two back legs, which was kind of dangerous considering his weight. He was reading some report and chuckling to himself. He glanced up at me briefly and said listen to this will you? He started reading out bits of the report to me. It was about British arms exports to Africa. Apparently there’s a new trend in the arms industry: ‘green’ weaponry. Lead-free ammunition, missile propulsion systems that don’t use CFC gases, etc. It’s fantastic, Jamie was saying. I mean, where the hell do they go from there? Equal opportunity bombs?
We talked for a while about sending a representative out to Africa incognito, since all our visa applications had been rejected. Jamie was against it though. He said it was too late in the day for it to do any good now, and we were too tight for money anyway. I felt strangely relieved to hear him say that. The idea that anyone else from Africa Action might get to see Jarawa rather than me perturbed me for some reason. Finally I got up to leave: ‘I have to get going. I’ve got the World Service thing.’
‘Excellent. Now listen …’ Jamie was rubbing his chin, as if deep in thought. ‘When are we going to play squash again? We haven’t had a game in ages.’
‘Whenever you want, Jamie.’
Then as I opened the door he looked up at me as if he’d just had some great revelation, something really incisive to impart to me. But in the end all he said was: ‘Good to see you back on the ball. Sorted your problems out then?’
‘Problems?’
‘Your, um, “domestic” problems.’
I nodded slowly: ‘Yeah. I’ve sorted them out.’
I drove to Bush House, taking a detour to avoid Marble Arch for some reason. As I drove an almost intolerable gnawing tension was building up in me – I could feel an oily sweat on my palms as I gripped the wheel and I wiped my hands on my trousers at the red lights.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Jarawa’s lost appeal and the execution now set to take place on my birthday. These two things seemed to bear down on me with all the weight of a personal failure. An image of Jarawa lying on a trolley in a morgue floated into my mind. The trouble was that I couldn’t keep him dead for long. He kept opening his eyes and smiling, he wanted to talk. I even opened my mouth to say something to him but then I remembered where I was and what I was doing. I pulled over for a minute or two and kind of slapped myself about the face, as if to wake myself up. It was true, I was very tired, I hadn’t been sleeping properly. In my mind’s eye I could still see the morgue trolley, which I realised was the same as the one Susan Tedeschi’s body had been on. It was fitted with a little headrest, as if to keep the body as comfortable as possible. It occurred to me that it must be somebody’s job to design those trolleys, with their little headrests.
I’d arrived at the studios. A nervous young Oxbridge type, a trainee maybe, came down to reception to get me: ‘Gosh, you’re cutting it a bit fine aren’t you?’
‘Really? What’s the time?’
‘Twenty-five past six.’
‘Sorry. I got held up. Could you just show me where the loos are before we go up?’
‘Umm, you’d better make it quick. You’re on in five minutes.’
I splashed some water over my face and head and stared into the mirror, cursing myself for leaving no time to prepare. It’s been like this ever since my watch stopped working. I even contemplated pulling out of the programme but then it was like I could see Jarawa’s face instead of my own in the mirror. The paradoxical idea struck me that although it was my job to campaign for his reprieve, perhaps I’d in fact got things the wrong way round. Perhaps it was Jarawa who was watching over me. To what end? All of a sudden I felt better though, and I shook my head like a dog, to get the water out of my hair.
The Oxbridge type hustled me into the studio. The presenter was there, he was already talking, and on the other side of the room sat a big black guy with a shaved head. I recognised him at once, of course. He was the official I’d talked to at the embassy, the day I’d found out about Marianne.
The presenter was talking about Jarawa, then he introduced us and asked the embassy official a question. The guy started speaking in this very smooth, hypnotic tone. He was plying the same line as before – how Jarawa had been found guilty of a criminal and not a political offence. Then he started on about the arrogance of Western governments and organisations. He turned to me. He seemed to be accusing me in an almost personal way: It’s your arrogance, he was saying, thinking you have the right to interfere, an arrogance which is simply exacerbating the situation, making it even more likely that miscarriages of justice will occur …
I let him go on for a while in this vein before interrupting him. A flow of words seemed to emanate from me without my quite knowing where it came from. I heard myself saying: He’s carrying on as if I were the one who was condemning people to death, as if I were the murderer … The man tried to speak again but I could feel the adrenaline prickling under my skin and I raised my voice. My own fluidity astonished me but even as I marvelled at it the words started to dry up and I began to stutter. Now the man was smiling, no longer trying to cut in. I could feel the presenter watching me as well. A reflection of myself stared back from the glass wall that divided the studio from the mixing desks. It was a disturbingly alien face, with holes instead of eyes.
I found myself talking again. The human rights issues are much broader, I was saying. For instance, we know for a fact that Mr. Jarawa has been tortured … I went into some detail about the kinds of torture he might have been subjected to. I was just rehashing descriptions from reports I’d read while covering the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa. But the fact was that I had no idea whether or not Jarawa had been tortured. Jo and I had certainly discussed its likelihood and had tried to get information from our contacts on the ground, but that was as far as it had gone. I was speaking with a real passion though, I was hot with affront and for a minute or two I really was sure that Jarawa had been tortured. I turned to the man, expecting a denial. He was simply smiling at me though, and it felt like there was everything in that smile.
There was Frank and Phil’s housewarming so I went straight home from the studios. But the house was so dark and deathly quiet that at first I wondered whether Marianne had gone. Left for good I mean, taking Jessica with her. The thought didn’t make me feel anything in particular. It was this numbness that had cut me off from home life for days now. I opened the door to Jessica’s room. She was still there. Her little bedside lamp was on which is how she likes to sleep. I stood there for a long time watching her as she breathed and snuffled and murmured occasionally. She was in her banana-pattern pyjamas, lying on the bed instead of tucked up in it which was unusual. The bedroom was a mess as well, with clothes and toys and picture books lying haphazardly all over the place. It was odd because Marianne usually puts everything away and makes sure the room is tidy before putting Jessica to bed. I noticed the teddy bear abandoned in a corner. His head was hanging on by only a thread now and the stitching of his mouth had come unpicked as well, giving him a lopsided sneer.
