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boyhood as he worried for them both.

3

    A S THE FIRST LIGHT DAWNED , M ARISSA STOOD AT THE CENTER OF Goro—seven days ago the scene of her husband’s greatest triumph—awaiting the passage of the sun with far more apprehension than she had expressed to Damon Pierce.
    Around her the village stirred to life. Children arose for school; Omo arrived at the marketplace to prepare her mother’s stall; the few remaining fishermen paddled ancient canoes out to sea and cast their fishing nets, a snapshot of a timeless way of life. Soon more villagers would leave their thatched huts, and struggling enterprises like the Happy Fingers Saloon—a hairdresser, to Marissa’s persistent amusement—would open at idiosyncratic hours. In the freshness of dawn, the grass beside the polluted creek was verdant, and the sandy beach where it met the ocean un-streaked with oil. But Marissa feared that this day, already marked by nature, would be unlike any other.
    Inside their house, Bobby was at his desk, awaiting word from his lieutenants across Asariland. His father, Femi, peered out his door. Today he wore the robes of a chief, the formal vestige of a power that had dwindled as his son rose and youth fell away. Now he gazed up at the sun with a misgiving as palpable as that which Marissa chose to conceal.
    At precisely 10:17, the astronomers said, a total eclipse of the sun would cast the village into darkness, relieved only by the unrelenting glare of oil flaring. It was Bobby’s luck, or fate, that nature would cause this to occur six days after General Karama had forbidden all nighttime gatherings, citing the lynchings that had ended Asari Day.
    For two days Bobby had stirred a debate among his cadre by cell phone and e-mail. “We cannot crawl back into our holes,” he concluded. “And not even Savior Karama can stop the movement of the planets.”
    His plan was provocative: a mass demonstration that would conform to Karama’s edict due only to the intervention of the moon, the Asari people’s defiance signaled by lighters thrust toward the dark of the sun. Karama’s response was to close the major airports; cordon off Asariland; and expel all foreign journalists from the Luandian Delta. His directive did not mention Bobby’s plan: the fact that PGL had simultaneously shut down operations provided Karama, in Marissa’s mind, with sufficient pretext for whatever he chose to do.
    Since this edict Bobby had barely slept.
    Restless, Marissa crossed the muddy clay and reentered their house. On another day, she would have found its character fondly familiar: a balky fax machine, an erratic cell phone, the generator whirring, cartons jammed with speeches and manifestos, documents strewn across Bobby’s desk in a chaotic jumble he allowed no one to touch, the sturdy but sclerotic ceiling fan whose revolutions barely disturbed the listless air. Bobby sat with his back to her. Beside him, signed the day before, was a final iteration of his will.
    Now he was writing his speech in longhand, so focused on this task that he did not hear his wife. Only the sound of helicopter blades caused his hand to pause.
    Marissa preceded him to the door. Hovering above the line of palms was a helicopter with the black logo: PGL. From behind her, Bobby murmured, “I thought they were gone.”
    Marissa faced him. Reading her face, he spoke with quiet urgency. “If I back down, the movement ends. I’m the one they trust, and the world community sees them through what I say or do.”
    “What about your writing?”
    Bobby shook his head. “It is not the same as action—not to the world, and surely not to our people.” This last phrase, pointedly inclusive of Marissa, was followed by a fleeting smile. “However brilliant, my prose cannot rally a semiliterate populace. That’s why I schooled myself, frail vessel though I am, to not just speak but to act as a symbol for them and others.”
    Outside, the deep beating of chopper blades slowly receded.