Behold the Dreamers Read online

  Copyright

  Fourth Estate

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.4thestate.co.uk

  This eBook first published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2016

  First published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York in 2016

  Copyright © 2016 Imbolo Mbue

  Imbolo Mbue asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

  Source ISBN: 9780008158149

  Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008158132

  Version: 2016-07-30

  Praise

  ‘It’s rare that a book is so fascinating, so emotionally compelling and so beautiful that I literally can’t put it down. I picked Behold the Dreamers up one evening before bed. I turned the last page at dawn. It ruined the next day for me – I wasn’t much good for anything but a nap – but it was worth every lost hour’

  AYELET WALDMAN, New York Times

  bestselling author of Love and Treasure

  ‘Dazzling, fast-paced and exquisitely written, Behold the Dreamers is one of those rare novels that will change the way you see the world. Imbolo Mbue is a breathtaking talent’

  CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE, New York Times

  bestselling author of Orphan Train

  ‘Who is this Imbolo Mbue and where has she been hiding? Her writing is startlingly beautiful, thoughtful and both timely and timeless. She’s taking on everything from family to the Great Recession to immigration while deftly reminding us what it means to truly believe in “the American Dream”’

  JACQUELINE WOODSON, National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming

  ‘Among the spate of novels forged in the crucible of the previous decade, Mbue’s impressive debut deserves a singular place … Realistic, tragic, and still remarkably kind to all its characters, this is a special book’

  Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  Dedication

  For my beautiful AMR

  with gratitude

  for walking with me into the Mystery

  Epigraph

  For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig-trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

  Deuteronomy 8:7–9

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  One

  HE’D NEVER BEEN ASKED TO WEAR A SUIT TO A JOB INTERVIEW. NEVER been told to bring along a copy of his résumé. He hadn’t even owned a résumé until the previous week when he’d gone to the library on Thirty-fourth and Madison and a volunteer career counselor had written one for him, detailed his work history to suggest he was a man of grand accomplishments: farmer responsible for tilling land and growing healthy crops; street cleaner responsible for making sure the town of Limbe looked beautiful and pristine; dishwasher in Manhattan restaurant, in charge of ensuring patrons ate from clean and germ-free plates; livery cabdriver in the Bronx, responsible for taking passengers safely from place to place.

  He’d never had to worry about whether his experience would be appropriate, whether his English would be perfect, whether he would succeed in coming across as intelligent enough. But today, dressed in the green double-breasted pinstripe suit he’d worn the day he entered America, his ability to impress a man he’d never met was all he could think about. Try as he might, he could do nothing but think about the questions he might be asked, the answers he would need to give, the way he would have to walk and talk and sit, the times he would need to speak or listen and nod, the things he would have to say or not say, the response he would need to give if asked about his legal status in the country. His throat went dry. His palms moistened. Unable to reach for his handkerchief in the packed downtown subway, he wiped both palms on his pants.

  “Good morning, please,” he said to the security guard in the lobby when he arrived at Lehman Brothers. “My name is Jende Jonga. I am here for Mr. Edwards. Mr. Clark Edwards.”

  The guard, goateed and freckled, asked for his ID, which he quickly pulled out of his brown bifold wallet. The man took it, examined it front and back, looked up at his face, looked down at his suit, smiled, and asked if he was trying to become a stockbroker or something.

  Jende shook his head. “No,” he replied without smiling back. “A chauffeur.”

  “Right on,” the guard said as he handed him a visitor pass. “Good luck with that.”

  This time Jende smiled. “Thank you, my brother,” he said. “I really need all that good luck today.”

  Alone in the elevator to the twenty-eighth floor, he inspected his fingernails (no dirt, thankfully). H
e adjusted his clip-on tie using the security mirror above his head; reexamined his teeth and found no visible remnants of the fried ripe plantains and beans he’d eaten for breakfast. He cleared his throat and wiped off whatever saliva had crusted on the sides of his lips. When the doors opened he straightened his shoulders and introduced himself to the receptionist, who, after responding with a nod and a display of extraordinarily white teeth, made a phone call and asked him to follow her. They walked through an open space where young men in blue shirts sat in cubicles with multiple screens, down a corridor, past another open space of cluttered cubicles and into a sunny office with a four-paneled glass window running from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, the thousand autumn-drenched trees and proud towers of Manhattan standing outside. For a second his mouth fell open, at the view outside—the likes of which he’d never seen—and the exquisiteness inside. There was a lounging section (black leather sofa, two black leather chairs, glass coffee table) to his right, an executive desk (oval, cherry, black leather reclining chair for the executive, two green leather armchairs for visitors) in the center, and a wall unit (cherry, glass doors, white folders in neat rows) to his left, in front of which Clark Edwards, in a dark suit, was standing and feeding sheets of paper into a pullout shredder.

  “Please, sir, good morning,” Jende said, turning toward him and half-bowing.

  “Have a seat,” Clark said without lifting his eyes from the shredder.

  Jende hurried to the armchair on the left. He pulled a résumé from his folder and placed it in front of Clark’s seat, careful not to disturb the layers of white papers and Wall Street Journals strewn across the desk in a jumble. One of the Journal pages, peeking from beneath sheets of numbers and graphs, had the headline: WHITES’ GREAT HOPE? BARACK OBAMA AND THE DREAM OF A COLOR-BLIND AMERICA. Jende leaned forward to read the story, fascinated as he was by the young ambitious senator, but immediately sat upright when he remembered where he was, why he was there, what was about to happen.

  “Do you have any outstanding tickets you need to resolve?” Clark asked as he sat down.

  “No, sir,” Jende replied.

  “And you haven’t been in any serious accidents, right?”

  “No, Mr. Edwards.”

  Clark picked up the résumé from his desk, wrinkled and moist like the man whose history it held. His eyes remained on it for several seconds while Jende’s darted back and forth, from the Central Park treetops far beyond the window to the office walls lined with abstract paintings and portraits of white men wearing bow ties. He could feel beads of sweat rising out of his forehead.

  “Well, Jende,” Clark said, putting the résumé down and leaning back in his chair. “Tell me about yourself.”

  Jende perked up. This was the question he and his wife, Neni, had discussed the previous night; the one they’d read about when they Googled “the one question they ask at every job interview.” They had spent an hour hunched over the cranky desktop, searching for the best answer, reading much-too-similar pieces of advice on the first ten sites Google delivered, before deciding it would be best if Jende spoke of his strong character and dependability, and of how he had everything a busy executive like Mr. Edwards needed in a chauffeur. Neni had suggested he also highlight his wonderful sense of humor, perhaps with a joke. After all, she had said, which Wall Street executive, after spending hours racking his brain on how to make more money, wouldn’t appreciate entering his car to find his chauffeur ready with a good joke? Jende had agreed and prepared an answer, a brief monologue which concluded with a joke about a cow at a supermarket. That should work very well, Neni had said. And he had believed so, too. But when he began to speak, he forgot his prepared answer.

  “Okay, sir,” he said instead. “I live in Harlem with my wife and with my six-years-old son. And I am from Cameroon, in Central Africa, or West Africa. Depends on who you ask, sir. I am from a little town on the Atlantic Ocean called Limbe.”

  “I see.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Edwards,” he said, his voice quivering, unsure of what he was thankful for.

  “And what kind of papers do you have in this country?”

  “I have papers, sir,” he blurted out, leaning forward and nodding repeatedly, goose bumps shooting up all over his body like black balls out of a cannon.

  “I said what kind of papers?”

  “Oh, I am sorry, sir. I have EAD. EAD, sir … that is what I have right now.”

  “What’s that supposed—” The BlackBerry on the desk buzzed. Clark quickly picked it up. “What does that mean?” he asked, looking down at the phone.

  “It means Employment Authorization Document, sir,” Jende replied, shifting in his seat. Clark neither responded nor gestured. He kept his head down, his eyes on the smartphone, his soft-looking fingers jumping all over the keypad, lithely and speedily—up, left, right, down.

  “It is a work permit, sir,” Jende added. He looked at Clark’s fingers, then his forehead, and his fingers again, uncertain of how else to obey the rules of eye contact when eyes were not available for contact. “It means I am allowed to work, sir. Until I get my green card.”

  Clark half-nodded and continued typing.

  Jende looked out the window, hoping he wasn’t sweating too profusely.

  “And how long will it take for you to get this green card?” Clark asked as he put down the BlackBerry.

  “I just really don’t know, sir. Immigration is slow, sir; very funny how they work.”

  “But you’re in the country legally for the long term, correct?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Jende said. He nodded repeatedly again, a pained smile on his face, his eyes unblinking. “I am very legal, sir. I just am still waiting for my green card.”

  For a long second Clark stared at Jende, his vacant green eyes giving no clue to his thoughts. Hot sweat was flowing down Jende’s back, soaking the white shirt Neni had bought for him from a street vendor on 125th Street. The desk phone rang.

  “Very well, then,” Clark said, picking up the phone. “As long as you’re legal.”

  Jende Jonga exhaled.

  The terror that had gripped his chest when Clark Edwards mentioned the word “papers” slowly loosened. He closed his eyes and offered thanks to a merciful Being, grateful half the truth had been sufficient. What would he have said if Mr. Edwards had asked more questions? How would he have explained that his work permit and driver’s license were valid only for as long as his asylum application was pending or approved, and that if his application were to be denied, all his documents would become invalid and there would be no green card? How could he have possibly explained his asylum application? Would there have been a way to convince Mr. Edwards that he was an honest man, a very honest man, actually, but one who was now telling a thousand tales to Immigration just so he could one day become an American citizen and live in this great nation forever?

  “And you’ve been here for how long?” Clark asked after putting down the receiver.

  “Three years, sir. I came in 2004, in the month—”

  He paused, startled by Clark’s thunderous sneeze.

  “May God bless you, sir,” he said as the executive placed his wrist under his nose and let loose another sneeze, louder than the first. “Ashia, sir,” he added. “May God bless you again.”

  Clark leaned forward and picked up a bottle of water on the right side of his desk. Behind him, far beyond the spotless glass window, a red helicopter flew above the park, going from west to east under the cloudless morning sky. Jende returned his gaze to Clark and watched as he took a few sips from the bottle. He yearned for a sip of water, too, to erase the dryness in his throat, but dared not change the trajectory of the interview by asking for some. No, he couldn’t dare. Certainly not right now. His throat could be the driest spot in the Kalahari and it wouldn’t matter right now—he was doing well. Okay, maybe not too well. But he wasn’t doing too badly, either.

  “All right,” Clark said, putting down the bottle. “Let me te
ll you what I want in a driver.” Jende swallowed and nodded. “I demand loyalty. I demand dependability. I demand punctuality, and I demand that you do as I say and ask no questions. Works for you?”

  “Yes, sir, of course, Mr. Edwards.”

  “You’re going to sign a confidentiality agreement that you’ll never say anything about what you hear me say or see me do. Never. To anyone. Absolutely no one. Do you understand?”

  “I understand you very clearly, sir.”

  “Good. I’ll treat you right, but you must treat me right first. I’ll be your main priority, and when I don’t need you, you’ll take care of my family. I’m a busy man, so don’t expect me to supervise you. You’ve come to me very highly recommended.”

  “I give you my word, sir. I promise. My full word.”

  “Very good, Jende,” Clark said. He smirked, nodded, and said again, “Very good.”

  Jende pulled his handkerchief from his pants pocket and dabbed his forehead. He took a deep breath and waited for Clark to scan his résumé one more time.

  “Do you have any questions for me?” Clark asked, moving the résumé to a pile of papers on the left side of his desk.

  “No, Mr. Edwards. You have told me what I need to know very well, sir.”

  “I’ve got one more interview tomorrow morning, then I’ll make my decision. You’ll hear from me, maybe later tomorrow. My secretary will call you.”

  “Thank you so much, sir. You are very kind.”

  Clark stood up.

  Jende quickly pushed back his chair and stood up, too. He straightened his tie, which over the course of the interview had become as tilted as a willowy tree in a wild storm.

  “By the way,” Clark said, looking at the tie, “if you hope to further your career, you’ll get a better suit. Black, blue, or gray. And a real tie.”

  “Not a problem at all, sir,” Jende replied. “I can find a new suit, sir. I surely can.”

  He nodded and smiled awkwardly, revealing his crowded teeth and promptly shutting his mouth. Clark, without smiling back, offered a hand, which Jende took with both of his and shook with great care, his head bowed. Thank you so much in advance, sir, he wanted to say again. I will be the best chauffeur ever if you give me this job, he almost said.