The Boiling Season Read online

  “Of course,” I said.

  “How does Senator Marcus feel, knowing this new constitution could allow the president to dissolve the legislature at will? Will the senator vote to put his own job in jeopardy?”

  It was for Senator Marcus to say what Senator Marcus felt. I simply shook my head and said I had no idea.

  “Do you believe Mr. Mailodet’s presidency is headed down the same path as those of his predecessors?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Will this end in violence?”

  “Of course not,” I said, ready now to be on my way. “We elected President Mailodet because we trusted him to do what was best for us. Now we owe him our allegiance.” To show him the conversation was over, I turned to walk away, but in my haste I failed to notice Senator Marcus and the minister of health, dressed once again in their suits, standing in my path.

  The expression on Senator Marcus’s face was peculiar—both bemused and perplexed. He looked at me as if I were someone he recognized but could not quite place.

  “Did you hear that?” he said to the minister of health, clapping his hands together for a brief applause. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  I must have been the last to notice their arrival, for by now the rest of the reporters and photographers had risen from their seats, standing in a circle around Senator Marcus and the minister of health. The reporters were tossing out questions, and Senator Marcus was speaking loudly in his near-fluent English. I marveled at the ease with which he held them there.

  The reporter with the bushy mustache repeated to the Senator precisely the same questions he had asked me, and I understood now that he had rehearsed them in advance.

  “This,” Senator Marcus said, “is an all-too-familiar instance of feckless agitators working to stir up unrest for their own ends. Such rumors as these,” he said with a gentle smile, “are not worth the attention of intelligent men.

  “As my colleague has said”—and with a grand, sweeping gesture from Senator Marcus, the reporters’ heads turned my way—“we stand united. Now if you’ll forgive me, gentlemen, I’m afraid that’s all the time I have.”

  At that, Senator Marcus took the minister of health by the arm, leading him to a table in the corner. The reporters dispersed, returning sullenly to their seats and their glasses, and the conversation I had interrupted when I came in appeared to pick up where it had left off.

  A minute later, when I brought over their drinks, Senator Marcus and the minister of health were in the middle of a conversation of their own. I was hoping to slip away without their noticing. But Senator Marcus glanced up when I set his glass on the table, and he pointed to an empty chair and motioned for me to sit. I did so willingly, knowing what was to come, that I was about to receive the punishment I deserved for speaking so foolishly of things I knew nothing about. I thought to apologize, to show Senator Marcus I regretted having embarrassed him, but I was too ashamed to speak.

  Senator Marcus nodded toward the tennis courts and said to the minister of health, “We’re damn near unbeatable out there.”

  The minister of health swished the sweet drink in his mouth with the face of one prepared to swallow something bitter. “We would have beaten them in straight sets,” he said, “if the net had been regulation height.”

  Senator Marcus rolled his eyes. “There was nothing wrong with the net.”

  The minister of health brought his glass down so suddenly, it was as though he meant to crush a fly. “They’d been playing for an hour before we got here. They’d monkeyed with the net, and they were practicing so they’d be used to it.”

  “You should hear him when we lose,” Senator Marcus said to me with a wink.

  “Joke if you will.” The minister of health tugged irritably at the cuffs of his shirt, fishing them out of his jacket sleeves and lining them up with the tops of his wrists. I was amazed they reached that far. Given his odd proportions, they had to have been custom-made.

  In an effort to pacify him, Senator Marcus changed the subject, but he continued to make gentle fun of the minister of health, who had recently come under scrutiny after funds intended for several rural clinics had gone missing.

  “Don’t insult me,” said the minister of health. “If I had that sort of money, do you think I’d be playing at these miserable courts?” He snorted viciously. “I’d build my own.”

  When Senator Marcus and I left an hour later, having finished lunch, the minister of health was still grumbling, and I was still at a loss to explain what had happened. I had made a fool of myself, and yet Senator Marcus had asked me to sit at his table and take part in a conversation, as if we truly were colleagues, not master and servant.

  Chapter Five

  In the beginning of May, just a few weeks after Senator Marcus’s victorious rematch, I learned that the reporters in the club room of the Hotel Erdrich had been correct in their assertions about the existence of a new constitution. But they were wildly wrong about its contents.

  At a surprise press conference in the library of the palace, President Mailodet held up the hefty document, cradling it like a fragile treasure. To a cascade of applause he listed five new reforms, one for each of his gentle fingers, which he unfolded in order, starting with the smallest: a fairer tax code, certain legal protections, expanded electoral reform, the elimination of several unpopular government offices, the naming of a special committee to oversee police activity.

  “The people have spoken,” the president said. “And now I am giving them what they asked for.”

  The following Sunday, the day before the constitution was to be put to a public vote, my father and I went after the morning’s mass to a gathering at a neighbor’s house. Except within earshot of my father, whose intolerance for politics was well known, everyone was talking about the vote. Even though no one but Paul knew I was working for a senator, the fact of my living now in Lyonville was enough for people to come to me for advice. I felt proud to be able to tell them with confidence that the new constitution was a necessary step toward progress.

  “The president is a very kind man,” I said again and again.

  “Have you met him?” one of my father’s neighbors wanted to know.

  “I see him often,” I said. “He’s a very gentle man.”

  “Are you voting for it?” asked another.

  “Of course,” I said, though privately I doubted I would have a chance. The Senator and I had a great deal to accomplish on Monday.

  Only Paul seemed unimpressed. As the afternoon turned to dusk, we finally had a moment to ourselves. Ducking behind a pair of towering reed baskets, Paul produced a glass flask and uncorked the top.

  “He’s just another tyrant,” Paul said between sips. “No different from any of the others.”

  Across the yard a calico cat, its fur spiked with grime, tore into the tough, stringy flesh of a snake, pinning the limp brown body with one of its paws.

  “President Mailodet isn’t like the others,” I said, refusing his offer of a drink. “He’s a good man.”

  “How do you know?” His voice echoed from the mouth of the bottle. “Did the senator tell you so?”

  “You don’t know the slightest thing about either one of them,” I said.

  Without even glancing, Paul tossed the empty bottle over his shoulder. “What do I know? I’m just a humble businessman.” Then he reached down into his tattered bag and pulled out something square wrapped in heavy paper. There were words in gold script on the label: LAVENDER SOAP. He handed it to me.

  “Just in case your senator doesn’t turn out to be so clean after all.”

  * * *

  The following day, as Senator Marcus knew it would, the constitution was approved by an overwhelming margin. On Tuesday, the measure came before the Senate, and after several more days of contentious debate—led on one side by Senator Marcus—the new constitution passed. The margin was three votes.

  That evening, when we pulled into the drive
way, Mme Marcus was waiting at the top of the steps with the rest of the staff. I opened the door of the car, and the Senator emerged to a chorus of cheers.

  Inside, the new footman poured champagne.

  At the Erdrich the next day, every table in the club room and every stool at the bar was taken. Never had I seen so many white people in the same place. The international press corps had arrived. Overnight their numbers had multiplied exponentially, and we were turned away for lunch. There was nothing left from the menu to serve.

  “Think how disappointed they’ll be when they don’t get their bloodshed,” I heard Senator Marcus say.

  “Make no mistake,” scoffed the minister of health, who met us there. “They’ll get it. One way or another. Even if they have to provoke it themselves.”

  * * *

  It was university students who took to the streets first, much to Senator Marcus’s bemusement. “They’ll take any excuse they can to cut class,” he said, flipping through the morning paper.

  He predicted they would grow bored of it soon enough.

  All that week, one could not drive through the capital without running into the students and their picket signs and their songs and the tracts they batted at every passing car. And everywhere one looked one saw sweaty white faces, tongues curling in concentration as they tried to write down every gritty detail. I learned that if I sped up when I saw the protesters coming, they knew enough to get out of the way.

  One night, as I was bringing Senator Marcus coffee, I spotted one of the tracts on his desk, a piece of shoddily mimeographed propaganda. They had replaced President Mailodet’s suit and derby with a general’s khakis and stripes, but the contrast between the outfit and the president’s milky expression was so extreme the image came off as not sinister, but absurd. The message accompanying it, that President Mailodet was maneuvering to secure himself a dictatorship, struck me as laughable. I was as likely a dictator as he.

  For most of the week, President Mailodet permitted the protests, allowing the schools to remain closed. Through radio broadcasts, a few of which I overheard while passing in the corridor outside Senator Marcus’s study, the president urged calm.

  At breakfast one morning, face hidden by the paper, the Senator confided warily to his wife, “I’m afraid it will get worse before it gets better.”

  He was not mistaken. When another week passed and the unrest still showed no sign of abating, the president called on the police to restore order.

  The morning the riot troops appeared on the streets, we were in the Senator’s office, two blocks away. Through the one small window facing the square we could hear the frenzied chanting, but we could see nothing other than a corner of the building next door. Still, the noise was enough to paint a picture of the mob of well-dressed students frothing with righteousness, and the smaller mob of their admirers, with sunburned faces bent over notepads ballooning with heroic adjectives. Out of the sea of sound an identifiable slogan would occasionally rise, but then it would be madness again. What was the point of such hysteria? Surely they could not have expected anyone who mattered to listen.

  When at last the police burst through the din with their bullhorn, the protesters only seemed to grow further inflamed.

  “If you do not disperse, we will have no choice but to fire,” the same stern voice commanded three and then four and then five times. We heard it clearly. How could the protesters have not? Or did they not believe it? Or had they driven themselves into such a state that they were no longer capable of reason?

  The first shots must have been drowned out by the chants, and then by the screams. By the time the Senator opened his door, a few seconds later, all we could hear were the wails of police whistles. Here and there were pops, like a child running a stick along a picket fence. After the mania of the protesters, it was surprising how innocent the guns sounded.

  Senator Marcus glanced at us with heavily lidded eyes and shook his head. “What did they expect?” he asked no one in particular.

  Although there was nothing to see but a fog of gas slowly dissipating toward the roofline, no one in the office seemed willing to leave. We were still clustered by the window, perhaps twenty minutes later, when the one clerk who had briefly slipped outside returned.

  “They say six of them are dead,” he reported, struggling to catch his breath. I thought perhaps that he had been running, but there was scarcely any blood in his cheeks.

  The Senator laced his fingers atop his head. “What a waste,” he sighed, and with an uncharacteristically tired shuffle he slipped back into his office and closed the door.

  We had no place to be until lunch, so I returned to my seat in the lobby, still not entirely clear about what had happened. It all seemed vaguely unreal. Why could they not see where this would lead and simply return to their classes? What did they possibly think they would gain?

  It was only eleven o’clock when Senator Marcus appeared in the doorway and announced it was time to leave.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “An appointment,” he muttered. His hat sat crookedly upon his head.

  Even once we were in the car, the Senator would not say where the appointment was.

  “Just drive,” he said, but when I started down the road away from the palace, he made me turn around.

  “Perhaps it would be best if we avoided the square,” I suggested, but the Senator mumbled that I should go.

  The police were mostly gone, although a few remained, smoking with their backs to the iron fence surrounding the grass and the fountain. As we drove past, they barely lifted their eyes. At their backs a single blue balloon tied to the fence tried to tug itself free from its tether.

  It was as if nothing at all had happened, as if the bodies still lying on the blood-stained cement were entirely in our imagination. I counted four, but there could have been others. They lay as they had fallen, uncovered, baking in the sun. And there was more blood still, clots of it splattered in the street, but whomever it belonged to appeared to have gotten away.

  “The reporters got their wish,” Senator Marcus observed as we went around the bend. “Plenty of bloody photos to send back home to their editors.”

  All I could think to say was, “What a waste.”

  Despite the coverage of the student deaths, over the next several days the protests spread. Several unions joined the students. There were so many people in the streets surrounding the National Palace that it became nearly impossible to drive, and I had to seek out lengthy alternate routes whenever we needed to go anywhere.

  Stores along the waterfront, many of them favorites of Mme Marcus, closed out of fear of looting.

  Within Senator Marcus’s household, we had always been able to sense when something was wrong, even when we were uncertain what it might be. Perhaps the same could be said of most households, for servants are invariably the first to feel the effects of a master’s foul temper. But what made Senator Marcus unique was that he threw no fits or tirades. With him, the signs were always subtle: the amount of food untouched on his plate; the severity with which he knotted his ties. They were signs that, had the Senator been less kind, we never would have noticed. That he displayed none of these during this period I took as an indication that everything was as it should be.

  Yet over the next few weeks conditions continued to worsen. One afternoon toward the end of May there was another violent clash between protesters and police, and that night I heard the Senator inform Mme Marcus that the president was shutting down the newspapers and all but the government-run radio station until the state of emergency was over.

  The next day, President Mailodet made use of another of his new constitutional powers—one never mentioned in any of his speeches—calling in the army to patrol the streets.

  On the first Wednesday in June, I was sitting in the anteroom of Senator Marcus’s office, waiting to drive him to his tennis match, when one of his clerks—a thin, forgettable young man—came rushing through the door. S
eeing the dazed look on his face, the secretary came forward to see what was wrong. Someone went to get the Senator, and the clerk was rushed into the offices.

  I watched everyone disappear into one of the back rooms.

  When they came back out a few minutes later, everyone looked ashen. “It’s just temporary,” Senator Marcus said from the doorway behind them, betraying no sign of worry. “Consider it a vacation.”

  He did not say it, but I understood. The legislature had been dismissed.

  When everyone else was gone, he picked up his briefcase. “Come on,” he said to me, “we don’t want to be late.” He seemed determined to go about his day as if nothing had changed.

  At the Hotel Erdrich a few minutes later, the minister of health was waiting, sunk into one of the overstuffed chairs in the lobby. He made no move to extract himself as we approached.

  “Well,” he said with a faint nod toward Senator Marcus, his tone even more caustic than usual, “at least now you’ll have more time to practice.”

  It was the first joke I had ever heard him make. It seemed an odd time for him to be trying his hand at humor.

  Senator Marcus chuckled all the same.

  “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen,” the Senator said with a smile. Taking from me the bag containing his tennis clothes, he went off to the locker room to change.

  Five minutes passed. Then ten.

  After fifteen minutes I went in to check on him.

  On a bench in front of his locker, still dressed in his suit, Senator Marcus sat with his head in his hands. Suddenly I too felt faint, and I wished I could sit down beside him and wait for the dizziness to pass. But then I thought of the reporters in the club room, laughing into their glasses of rum.

  “Senator,” I said, more sternly than I would have imagined myself capable.

  Linking his arm with mine, I pulled him to his feet.

  Over the next three weeks, the state of siege finally subsided. We waited anxiously for the legislature to be restored.