Borderlines. Michela Wrong

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СКАЧАТЬ and, knowing my predilections, they consigned their collections to me. Which accounts for the slightly eccentric range you see before you,’ he said. ‘I even own a five-volume encyclopaedia of equine diseases. A more rigorous archivist would cull a few topics, but I cannot bear destroying books. It feels like an atrocity. Look.’ Extending one index finger, he levered out the first of eight plum-coloured volumes – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – and slowly ruffled its pages with his thumb. Each page had a thin gold rind; the layering leaves formed a block of iridescence. ‘Just like a peacock … Such beauty.’

      ‘And they came through all the occupations and rebel attacks unscathed?’

      ‘Oh, fighting men are greedy for many things – beer, women, pornography, pills. But the one thing they won’t bother looting is a good read.’

      He shouted instructions down the corridor and one of the cleaning ladies brought tea, served in glasses with a dissolving inch of sugar and a segment of green lemon no bigger than a baby’s fingertip. As I sipped, I gazed around the room. The shelves behind him were crammed with neon-coloured files, tatty notebooks covered with Post-it notes and piles of black floppy disks, all carefully labelled.

      ‘What do you do when you’re not writing statements for our office, Dr Berhane? Winston told me you’re a historian.’

      ‘A historian by inclination, but with no formal education. I originally trained as a quantity surveyor, but there’s not much call for such skills when your country is occupied. What you see here are my preparations for a post-colonial history of this country. I realised a few years ago that the men and women who had witnessed or, rather, masterminded my country’s independence struggle were dying off. We do not live long here. Loss and hardship wear us out. So I set about recording what was left before it was too late. Those files and floppies contain interviews with scarred old fighters, fragile former politicians, Supreme Court judges. Bar girls who were once mistresses to generals – withered hags no man would want to touch now.’ He barked with laughter. ‘Snipers who assassinated colonels, active young men now anchored in wheelchairs. They are all captured there, in my notebooks and my disks. Some of them spoke to me when they were already on oxygen masks in hospital. I caught what were literally their dying words, snatched between breaths. They were so glad to tell their story before the last silence descended. For me, as a patriot, it was an honour.’

      ‘It sounds an absolutely priceless resource.’

      ‘It is. It would be in any society, but particularly this one. Correct me if I’m wrong but in your country, in all Western countries, there is a general agreement, a consensus as to what occurred, wouldn’t you say?’ He was looking at me with a whimsical expression, knowingly provocative.

      ‘Er, well, I’m not sure about that.’ He had caught me off-guard. I hadn’t been expecting a discussion on truth and meaning. ‘Isn’t there always some academic spat going on over whether or not General Custer was a moron or Richard Nixon much misunderstood? Isn’t history constantly being revised?’

      He shook his head. ‘Not in its grand lines, I would suggest. What you are describing is really froth on the surface, wrestling matches for the hyper-educated. I’m talking about the mass of the people. The mass of Britons, for example, agree they behaved superbly during the Blitz. The mass of Europe knows Nazism was an evil aberration, and the entire world today signs up to the American capitalist dream, which is why our own boys and girls keep drowning in the Mediterranean trying to reach it! Think of it as the kind of history you whisper in the ear of a seven-year-old when you are walking through a museum hand-in-hand. “Mummy, why is she crying?” the child asks, as you pass that famous photograph of the Vietnamese girl running naked from the napalm attack. And you mutter something about Communism and the domino theory. That’s the kind of history I’m talking about. The broad lines of the narrative. And here, in this region, that has still to be written.’

      He paused, tilted back in his chair and stared at the ceiling as he spun his spectacles around with one hand. He had given this speech before, I could tell. It was his way of reassuring himself, aloud, as to the purpose of his life.

      ‘Why do you think that is?’

      ‘Not enough intellectuals like me around!’ He laughed again. ‘No, that’s not the reason. Partly it’s because it’s all too fresh. Our story still hurts. But it’s also the nature of this society. We pride ourselves on our discretion. Blabbing and wallowing are not admired. The people now running this country created a Trotskyite rebel movement in an occupied land, which depended on secrecy for its survival. The member of one operational cell might be best friends, share a house, or even be having sex with the member of another and never know it. Those instincts die hard. Even in today’s free Lira, no one will ever tell you anything important on the phone. We got so used to being bugged, we internalised the police state. Former rebels have a mental block about writing their memoirs. So I will do it for them.’

      ‘How much have you written?’

      There was a long moment of stillness. Outside in the street I heard the jingle of a mule’s bridle. I wondered if a cloud had crossed the sun, for the office suddenly seemed darker. He darted a sideways glance at me and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, I have not yet reached that stage. I am bringing in the sheaves, like any good harvester, stockpiling my grain, making sure conditions are nice and dry and there are no mites.

      ‘The time for writing will come,’ he continued. ‘But that is why the award you and Mr Peabody will win for us in The Hague – because I have no doubt you will win – is so important. It will be one of the building blocks of the consensus I am talking about, a message written on school blackboards and explained in museum cabinets. You, too, are writing our history. So, here, my modest contribution.’ He passed me a stapled wad of paper, covered with double-spaced text, then placed a floppy disk on the desk. ‘And here’s the digital version. Your system can still read these?’

      ‘Yes.’ I leafed swiftly through his statement, experiencing an unexpected rush of pleasure at the elegance of his prose. ‘You write well, Dr Berhane,’ I blurted out. ‘Very well.’

      He bowed his head in self-deprecation, but it was clear he was enormously pleased. ‘The skill that validates my existence. We each have one, no?’

      I wondered for a moment what mine was. Knowing how to smoke in a US law firm’s WC without setting off the fire alarm? It had taken years of practice.

      ‘And, finally, what I discussed earlier with Mr Peabody. He will know what this is about.’ It was a Moleskine exercise book, well thumbed and dog-eared, the paper so fine it was almost translucent.

      Back at the office, I placed the package on Winston’s desk. He picked up the exercise book and leafed carefully through the fragile pages.

      ‘Aha. Captain Peter Lewisham’s diary. Dr Berhane came across it when he was cataloguing some books. Looks authentic. Captain Lewisham – retired – worked here briefly after the Italians were defeated in the Second World War and the British grudgingly took over Mussolini’s favourite colony. He was posted to Kakardi, which is up in the highlands about two hundred kilometres south-west of Sanasa, where he ran a police station. Berhane says he talks a lot about trouble with the shiftas.’

      ‘Shiftas?’

      ‘Bandits. Most of the local men recruited by the Italians to fight on Mussolini’s side – the askaris – were demobilised, but some disappeared into the hills with their guns. I guess they were the forerunners of the rebels who eventually won independence. Anyway, there might be something in there. Think you can decipher it?’

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