Amriika (12 page)

“They’re using the foreign students … one of them is right here, putting flyers in mailboxes, another’s on his way to the west side … I’ve got one here.…You’re free to express your opinion it says …”

It was Steve Mittel, on duty at reception, talking on the phone. A solitary guy, Mittel — tall and athletic-looking, often seen manning the late shift here while absorbed in his course assignments. He was at his table now, round the corner from the wall of mailboxes so Sona couldn’t see him. Who is he speaking to so intently, passing on information? What can they do — who
are
they? The
FBI
? Is this guy an informer? A quiet chap, but his close-cropped hair, his button-down shirt and trouser pants are a statement of sorts.

Shaken and disheartened, he continued the chore. The more he stuffed, the more worried he became. He had never shown his hand on the issues; this was the first time, and it was almost a neutral hand, yet here he was face to face with opposition. “They’re using foreign students” — when there is a “they” there is also a “we.” Would his name be filed on a record somewhere? A frightening thought, all he seriously desired was to be able to do his beloved research. When he had finished the job, from one of the phone booths in the lobby, so he couldn’t be overheard, he called his own dorm in the west campus where Ramji had gone with his share of the flyers.

“Has a tall guy come there with flyers … a tall Indian … no? If he comes —” What, if he comes? “Tell him to wait there, his
friend Sona is coming.…Yes, Sona, without the ‘r’ at the end. It’s urgent. He shouldn’t move.” The joke about his name was getting pretty stale, he thought.

He hurried towards the west campus. The long walk through the Tech tunnel-corridor allowed him to compose himself. Perhaps he had overreacted, there was no real urgency; but it was no idle gossip he’d heard — not from Mittel’s mouth. He’d sensed menace, and instinct told him to find Ramji right away.

As he crossed Mass Ave, the rhythms of music from a party came throbbing down from the direction of the Student Center. It’s either the homosexual party or the Thai party, he thought. He’d seen posters around for both events. Tekle the Ethiopian passed him with a wave, on his way to spend the night at the Student Center library. Isaac the Cameroonian and Stavros the Greek had spent a fruitless time hunting American girls at a singles club, and were now also on their way to the Student Center. The sight of the building reminded Sona that he himself had a date there in fifteen minutes on which he had placed rather high hopes. Earlier in the day, while delivering an overdue homework assignment, he’d befriended Amy Burton, the professor’s secretary, who actually also was an Eng Lit student. She had agreed to meet him for coffee that night. And what a lovely night, cool but not cold.

Where is Ramji?

When Sona reached the chapel, across the green from the Student Center, where the residences also were located, he ran into an odd-looking threesome emerging from the alley: Ramji supported by a guy on either side.

“Ramji!”

“He got mugged,” one of the guys said. Ramji nodded wearily.

“It’s all right,” Sona said, “I’ll take over from here.”

“Thanks, guys,” Ramji said gratefully, “I won’t bother you anymore,” and the two Americans disappeared. Ramji hobbled along beside Sona, using a shoulder for support.

“So what happened?” Sona asked, and Ramji told him. He had been not mugged but jumped on by
YAP
s, who had been waiting for him.

Ramji had first visited MacDonald House, the newest of the west campus dorms. Having finished stuffing mailboxes there he came out the back door, pulling up the collar of his coat against a wind gusting from the river, wondering if there was any point at all in doing the rich dorms with their carpeted corridors and panelled walls. He was walking in the dark alley between the chapel and Mac House when he heard simultaneously a brief shuffle of footsteps and a mutter behind him, some fifteen feet away, he sensed. He became instantly nervous, his hairs tingling, throat constricted; he reached out to feel his wallet in his pants pocket, as if that would make a difference if he was going to get mugged. He started to run, when from behind a dumpster ahead of him a big guy in an open overcoat stepped out. If Ramji had continued running, he would have been tripped, so he stopped, and said, “What do you want?”

“Got you.”

Someone seized him in a tight neck hold from behind, pressing against him, another knocked the flyers from his helpless hands, and the third, the guy in front, punched him several times in the stomach. He was let go and crumpled to the ground.

“Fucking wog! If you don’t like America, go climb up the tree you came from.”

Ramji looked up, recognized a face. “I know who you are,” he said, clutching his stomach in pain. It was the
YAP
he thought of as
Chunky Crewcut, the guy who went about writing over Shawn’s graffiti. He was holding a camera.

“Hey!” There was a shout and approaching footsteps, and the three attackers disappeared.

“When I was down, they had the audacity to take a photo of me,” Ramji said to Sona as they walked back to Rutherford. “I think they were right,” he muttered, after a moment, “I should go climb up my tree —”

“Nonsense! This is America, everyone has a right to be here, even to protest.”

“Tell that to the
YAP
s. What would they want with my photo anyhow — they can get a better one from the yearbook, or the registrar. You think they took it as a trophy?”

Then Sona told Ramji about Steve Mittel and the telephone conversation he’d overheard and how he’d suspected that Mittel might be a police informer. They mulled over that awhile, then concluded they’d done nothing wrong.

Sona walked Ramji to his room, then went to the Student Center coffee house to meet Amy Burton. At his desk at the Rutherford House reception, Steve Mittel was painstakingly writing up his homework.

T
he great hall of Building 10, under the second classical-style dome of the Tech, overlooks Mem Drive and the Charles exactly halfway down the main corridor — where every moment of the working day scores of people are scurrying along in either direction, like neurons in a throbbing central nervous system going about their tasks acquiring fresh information, new knowledge. To take a break from this frantic activity is to feel wilted, redundant. And yet there are three tables set up here offering respite. Behind the middle table sits Ramji, eyeing intently the urgent traffic moving past. The white manila banner hanging from the table’s edge proclaims in large red and black letters: “
MARCH ON WASHINGTON: SIGN UP!
” His pocket transistor is tuned to mellow
WBZ-FM
. Beside it on the table a ballpoint pen, coupons for bus reservations (seventeen dollars per round trip), an envelope full of money, a pile of pamphlets from the Mobe, the group that has organized the march. And he’s also allowed a liberal space at one end for pamphlets left by assorted radical groups. You just can’t refuse them, even the completely screwball ones (“The story of Dick the little Prick with
BIG DREAMS
”) or the cockeyed ones
demanding a
STOP
or
END
to almost everything. Before you know it you are part of the movement, you learn to live with the differences. The important thing is to end the war.

High on the white marble walls of this great hall, to either side of him, is a reminder of the two world wars: etched in gold, a roll-call of the Tech’s contribution of lives. Only names on the walls now, all those young lives that once hustled through these very corridors twenty-five, fifty years ago. Where will
I
be a quarter century from now? … Bright sunlight pours in refreshingly through framed doors and windows behind him, beyond which lies a peaceful, lush green lawn.

Two Afghanis mind the stand to his left, their tape recorder playing lilting string melodies. And to his right is the
SDS
table crowded with its assortment of causes: support the dining workers’ demands; support Maria Delgado, fired from the libraries for her political views; join the rally against Poseidon-
MIRV
-
ABM
; etc. Behind it sits an amiable guy with small goatee called Eddie Shapiro. The two Afghanis are fair green-eyed men, soft-spoken and polite. They have an open album of photographs on their table depicting the victims of torture carried out in their country, an article cut out from the
New York Times
, and for some reason pamphlets in Afghan. Eddie walks over to them every now and then to ask pointed questions. Finally they look at each other in exasperation as he arrives, and he walks back to his post guiltily, and stays put. But when the Afghanis have netted another interested party, he leans over and says to Ramji: “
CIA
— they work for the
CIA
, you can bet on it.”

“Really?” Ramji replies. Just when he was thinking how nice they were, how as a fellow Asian he could identify with their reserve and politeness, even their music.

Two of the
YAP
s from the other night, Chunky Crewcut and companion, have passed by with the day’s traffic, perhaps too many times, and he’s met their looks squarely. He’s filled with a new confidence, there’s not going to be another instance of physical aggression from them, not without his making such a noise, they’ll be sorry.

I’m going to D.C., he said to Ginnie when she phoned him last, three days before. And he told her what he’d been up to the past month. First the Moratorium, now the March. And she, bubbling over with her usual enthusiasm: Chris is home, he twisted his ankle playing lacrosse.…And Junior should get married to his girl by springtime. You can’t hold back the hormones, Mormon or not.

What did she think of the war? What did
they
think of the war? They never mentioned the subject, expressed no opinion in front of him. He assumed that John, veteran and former intelligence gatherer — his job had been to cut clippings from newspapers, he once told Ramji — must support the military. And Ginnie would simply want the war to be over, regardless of the politics.

“Call me when you get to Washington,” she said. “Call collect. You should come and see me before I go to the hospital.”

“You’re going to the hospital?”

“A minor operation, the doctor thinks I could do without some parts of my body and be no worse.”

“I’ll call.” His heart sank.

Thursday, November 13, 1969.

Buses waited at Freedom Square on Mount Auburn early in the afternoon to take Boston-area protesters to D.C. All was orderly, even subdued. Mobe officials were at hand to assist, and policemen looked on, arms folded; the only evidence of the impending protest was the placards, at this stage simply extra luggage with the backpacks. Ramji arrived at the square with his fifth-floor buddies the Ethiopians, but having found their bus they were quickly dispersed in the mad scramble for seats and acquaintances. A girl from the Weathermen group had commandeered the quiet, studious Tekle and sat beside him, Ebrahim and Marek had found a seat together.

“Hi there,” said a voice as Ramji stood perusing the available seats from the aisle. “Here’s a place —” He felt a tug at his sleeve. “Seems you’re looking for a window — here, I’ll move over — you can have the window.”

It was Lucy-Anne the radical, whom he’d met at the Student House some months before, looking rather different today — though no less enigmatic. He paused a moment before accepting with thanks. She had on an oversized faded army jacket over blue jeans, with a red beret and boots. Rather small feet, he observed as he sat down. As on the previous occasion beside her, his heart began doing a nervous double-time.

“I had a ride, you know, yesterday, could have saved a few bucks,” she said, abruptly beginning conversation.

“Then why didn’t you take it?”

“Oh.” She was taken by surprise. “Very forthright aren’t we. That’s good. A fight, that’s why. A lot of factionalism and politics. Informers. You’re not an informer, are you? … No, you don’t know half of what I’m talking about.”