What had caught me was the shocking idea that I might be sending someone to kill Benji in Zanzibar. I could not know. You never could know. It rose up in me that there could be no life for me, no life of any sort, if Benji died and I was the cause of it. If I killed the only one I loved, my only responsibility in this world, what would be left for me but a wretchedness worse than death? Did I imagine that I was preventing anything by taking Ashraf’s gun, that they did not have a thousand guns? Did I really believe that Ashraf could be trusted and that I could bet Benji’s life on the soundness of my bright idea? I thought of the newspaper photos of the dead Indians in South Africa, the blankness of their eyes. I removed my arm from the hole and my frozen fingers were still closed around the gun.
Ashraf was moving towards me. As I strained in his direction, I heard him curse and remembered the shiny, unsuitable city shoes he wore. I made out a shadow that was gradually turning into a person. Before he came close, I moved away, my boots more suitable, calling out, “Ashraf, how can I trust you? How can I be sure you will not go to Zanzibar and harm Benji? Or that someone else won’t? "You’re a mercenary. I can’t pay you. And when have Benji’s plans ever really worked out? I shouldn’t trust you.”
“Marcella, Marcella.” His voice was quiet and calm, inviting me to stay close. “What are you talking about? Nobody’s going to be harmed.”
I moved off again, into deeper snow, which powdered over the tops of my boots.
“Marcella, where are you going? Wait! I can’t walk through this stuff... You’re right not to trust me. You should never trust anyone completely. But make a judgement. You used to be good at judgements. I’m tired of this life. And Benji is my friend. You know I don’t hurt my friends.”
“People die in Zanzibar.” This sounded pathetic to my ears.
“I’ll make sure nothing happens to Benji in Zanzibar. I promise.” Ashraf was keeping up with me now in spite of his shoes. He had learned to master the snow. “Hey, Marcella, stop. This stuff is cold. I’m not dressed for a hike. You’re from the tropics, remember? You’re from Zanzibar.”
The falling snow was so dense now we were out in the open field that I could no longer make out where the sky ended and the ground began. I lost Ashraf and looked back down the field, straining to see him materialise again. Then his voice reached me, not very far away. “Hey, Zanzibar girl!” Only Benji called me that.
If I was to act at all, this was the time to act. I tried to make a calculation. There was Benji in Zanzibar, with his hopes. There was prison, the awfulness of that, but also the notion that society owed me a crime. I remembered fear, the unacceptability of living with it, and violence, and how it had always dogged me in spite of my refusal. In London, it was Ashraf who had come into my home and brought violence with him. I thought of the Vermont life that I would lose, and then that this was of little consequence. I calculated that a body here would not be discovered until spring. I thought of Ashraf’s dangerous ability to survive, and that I should act before he came within the span of a deer’s leap.
I pointed the gun into the unreal whiteness, moved the catch, and when I thought I saw a greying of the snow that might be the shadow of a figure, I pulled the trigger, astounded really that it worked, surprised to be transported into American TV land, and affronted to discover that the gun had a spiteful little will of its own, kicking back at me. There was no response from Ashraf except that the shadow became larger and denser, bordering on the corporeal. But, my decision made, I thought at least I must be its good manager, so I fired again and again and again.
Ashraf’s shape loomed bigger, then abruptly smaller, then disappeared, falling, diminishing to nothing far too rapidly for flight. I stood still, quite calm, in the perfect quiet. Is there anything else in the world like falling snow, so immense an event without the slightest sound? The friendly snow with its soft persistence overcame my shoulders, making them white, and while I stood listening, it completed its make-over of me by filling in the remaining black on my coat’s sleeves and chest. There was no sound, no movement. I wiped the gun clean with a tissue from my pocket, then let it drop, leaving both it and Ashraf to the kindness of the snow.
THERE SHOULD BE SOMEWHERE I COULD GO, WHERE I
would be met with a warm embrace and the comfort of the familiar, but there is not. I had weighed the no place of the road against the place of Zanzibar—its smallness, its ghosts, the light-sleeping lions, Saint Frankie’s little finger—and had chosen no place. I had weighed no one against Benji—his warm body, the hair of his chest, the ancient memory of being held—and had chosen no one.
There is no going back. The devils
