African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [201]
Yes there is a law, for he passes it, making it illegal for Ministers and Public Servants to own more than a certain amount–one house, for instance.
They take no notice of this law. The citizens wait for him to enforce the law, and stand by them, his people, who put him into power, who trust him to be on their side and with the Purity of the Revolution/the Party/the War of Independence. He does nothing. They do not understand why not. They do not yet know the Mother of the Nation has her fingers in many tills, though they keep a cold eye on the Ministers and Party Bosses and know exactly what they are up to.
The Leader watches his wife whom he loves, whom he depends on for vital contact with the world, gaily and even proudly and certainly shamelessly making herself a rich woman. There is a scandal and it is impossible to avoid putting certain public figures on trial. They are proved guilty. The nation waits for them to be punished And now the whispers begin: he cannot let Justice take its course, because the guilty ones have said that if they are punished they will expose his wife.
What hurts him more than anything is that she never understands how she is damaging him, always talks as if it is his ‘shyness’ that makes him so finicky. It is not until the corrupt regimes of Eastern Europe and the countries of the old Soviet Union begin to fall, one after another, because of the loathing of the citizens, that she–for the first time–wonders if her husband’s ‘stick-in-the-mud’ ways might be an advantage. She is in fact secretly angry about the criticisms of the old communist leaders, whom she has admired for precisely those qualities her husband has sometimes expressed doubt about. She likes ruthlessness. She is not shocked by tortures, ‘the strong methods’, of dictators. She thinks their own country would be better, ‘make a good impression’–as she puts it, if they, too, made citizens fear their government. And she encourages the bully-boys of the Party to intimidate opponents, rig elections, beat critics up.
Now, suddenly, her husband is putting his foot down, saying Enough–and shouting at her, with the barking desperation of a man who feels everything is slipping away from him. The regimes that he has chosen as allies are all collapsing, to the accompaniment of choruses of hatred and contempt, and now this woman, this force of Nature, who is everything to him, has had to be checked…as she shuts herself down, banks her fires, sulks, shows her hurt in a thousand ways, he closes up more and more, just like that acacia frond, subtly trembling even at the approach of a finger. When he shouts at her, forcing her because of his position of authority into obedience, he feels he is cutting himself off from all the secret powers of Nature, while she, obedient, feels that the rush forward of her life, which is based on a confident instinct that lays hold of everything it touches has been checked…unkindly checked, above all unfairly, so now she is a prisoner of his cold cautions.
The final scene could be in an airport. He, she, and their entourage are on their way to some International Conference. A terrorist bomb has wrecked the Distinguished Persons’ Lounge, and they are all in a hastily-contrived fenced-off part of the ordinary Departure Lounge. Today they have heard of yet another country’s collapse, and she sees about her faces that were until recently those of Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers, still among the small gathering of Distinguished Persons, though probably they will not be entitled to be here for much longer. Into this area comes that day’s fallen Leader, with his family, and he goes straight to her husband, begging him for shelter. He is bluffing and boasting, pretending it is only a temporary rejection by his People, and he will soon be back in power. She whispers to her husband that on no account must this fugitive be given asylum, because they will be associated with him in the public mind. She is speaking out of the ancient instinct that to be near defeat is bad luck, though she uses the language of reason.