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- [00:01]
Debra Treisman
Support for this podcast comes from Odoo. Imagine relying on a dozen different software programs to run your business, none of which are connected, and each one more expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful. Now imagine Odoo. Odoo has all the programs you'll ever need, and they're all connected on one platform. Doesn't Odoo sound amazing? Let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. Sign up today@odoo.com that's O-O-O.com this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker Magazine. I'm Debra Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month we're going to hear Two Men Arrive in a Village by Zadie Smith, which appeared in the New Yorker in June of 2016.
- [01:24]
Edwidge Danticat
How proud we are, in retrospect, of our women who stood in formation, arms linked, the one to the next in a ring around our girls, as the tall, dim man became agitated and spat on the floor.
- [01:41]
Debra Treisman
The story was chosen by Edwidge Danticat, whose works of fiction include the story collection's Everything Inside and the Dew Breaker, both of which won the story prize. Hi, Edwidge.
- [01:53]
Edwidge Danticat
Hi, Deborah.
- [01:53]
Debra Treisman
It's really, really nice to have you back on the podcast.
- [01:57]
Edwidge Danticat
It's nice to be back. It's been a while.
- [01:58]
Debra Treisman
It's been a while. And I will never forget that you were the second guest ever on the podcast back in 2007, and people weren't.
- [02:06]
Edwidge Danticat
Even doing that many podcasts back then.
- [02:08]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. So what made you want to talk about this story, Two Men Arrive in a Village by Zadie Smith?
- [02:16]
Edwidge Danticat
Well, I read the story when it was first published in the magazine, and I read the interview that accompanied it. And, you know, I'm interested in all things Annie Smith. I'm like a big fan. And this year I started thinking about it because, you know, in my birthplace in Haiti, there's so many situations like that right now where many young men are walking in villages and causing terrible harm and harming women and harming children and displacing people. And, like, as someone who, you know, has written about but has also followed instances of violence like this, I grew up doing a dictatorship where, you know, they were like henchmen of the dictatorship who had all these privileges who can cause this kind of violence. And so I revisited it with that experience in mind and just found really, like, as I'm in conversations with my family members in Haiti or sort of living through similar things, it just hit me, like, in a very profound and personal way.
- [03:29]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. And so you were always a fan of Zadie Smith's writing. When you read this story, did it stand out as something different or in keeping with what she was doing?
- [03:40]
Edwidge Danticat
It felt different. I mean, I think you have certainly the Smith sentences, the very long sentences, but there's something also very sort of like the repeating of certain words. There's a kind of lyricism, like it's almost poetry. I mean, it's described in the story as a kind of parable, and it has that feel to it that I think was a little bit different than her other short fiction.
- [04:06]
Debra Treisman
Right, right. It's sort of incantatory. Yeah. Well, we'll talk some more after the story. And now here's Edwidge Danticat reading. Two Men Arrive in a Village by Zadie Smith.
- [04:18]
Edwidge Danticat
Two men arrive in a village, sometimes on horseback, sometimes by foot in a car or astride motorbikes, occasionally in a tank, having strayed far from the main phalanx, and every now and then from above in helicopters. But if we look at the largest possible picture, the longest view, we must admit that it is by foot that they have mostly come. And so in this sense, at least, our example is representative. In fact, it has the perfection of parable. Two men arrive in a village by foot, and always a village, never a town. If two men arrive in a town, they will obviously arrive with more men and far more in the way of supplies. That's simple common sense. But when two men arrive in a village, their only tools may be their own dark or light hands, depending. Though most often they will have in these hands a blade of some kind, a spear, a long sword, a dagger, a flake knife, a machete, or just a couple of rusty old razors, sometimes a gun. It has depended and continues to depend. What we can say with surety is that when these two men arrived in the village, we spotted them at once at the horizon point where the long road that leads to the next village meets the setting sun. And we understood what they meant by coming at this time. Sunset has historically been a good time for the two men wherever they have arrived, for at sunset we are all still together, the women only just back from the desert or the farms or the city offices or the icy mountains. The children are playing in dust near the chickens or in the communal garden outside the towering apartment block. The boys are lying in the shade of cashew trees, seeking relief from the terrible heat, if they are not in a far colder country tagging the underside of a railway bridge. And most important, perhaps the teenage girls are out in front of their huts or houses wearing their jeans or their saris or their veils or their Lycra miniskirts, cleaning or preparing food or grinding meat or texting on their phones, depending. And the able bodied men are not yet back from wherever they have been. Night, too, has its advantages, and no one can deny that the two men have arrived in the middle of the night, on horseback, or barefoot, or clinging to each other on a Suzuki scooter or riding atop a commandeered government jeep, therefore taking advantage of the element of surprise. But darkness also has its disadvantages, and because the two men always arrive in villages and never in towns, if they come by night, they are almost always met with absolute darkness, no matter where in the world or their long history you may come across them, and in such darkness it you cannot be exactly sure whose ankle it is you have hold of a crone, a wife, or a girl in the first flush of youth. It goes without saying that one of the men is tall, rather handsome in a vulgar, way, a little dim and vicious, while the other man is shorter, weasel faced and sly. The short, sly man leaned on the Coca Cola hoarding that marked the entrance to the village and raised a hand in friendly greeting, while his companion took the small stick that he had up to that point been chewing, threw it on the ground, and smiled. There could just as well have been leaning on a lamppost and chewing gum, and the smell of borscht could have been in the air. But in our village we do not make borscht. We eat couscous and tilefish, and that was the smell in the air. Tilefish, which even to this day we can hardly bear to smell because it reminds us of the day the two men arrived in the village. The tall one raised his hand in friendly greeting, at which moment the cousin of the wife of the chief, who happened to be crossing the long road that leads to the next village, felt she had no choice but to stop opposite the tall man, his machete glorious in the sun and raise her hand, though her whole arm shook as she did so. The two men like to arrive in this manner with a more or less friendly greeting, and this might remind us of the fact that all humans, no matter what they do, like very much to be liked, even if it's for only an hour or so before they are feared or hated. Or maybe it would be better to say that they like the fear that they inspire, to be leavened with other things such as desire or curiosity, even if, in the final analysis, fear is always the greater part of what they want. Food is cooked for them. We offer to make them food, or else they demand it, depending at other times, on the 14th floor of a derelict apartment building covered in snow in which a village lives vertically, the two men will squeeze onto a family sofa in front of their television and watch the new government's broadcast, the new government they have just established by couple, and the two men will laugh at their new leader marching up and down the parade ground in that stupid hat. And as they laugh, they will hold the oldest girl, watching television by her shoulder in a supposedly comradely manner, but a little too tightly while she weeps. Aren't we friends? The tall, dim man will ask her. Aren't we all friends here? This is one way they arrive, though they did not arrive that way here we have no televisions here and no snow, and have never lived above the level of the ground, and yet the effect was the same, the dread stillness and the anticipation. Another girl, younger, brought the plates of food for the two men, or, as is the custom in our village, the single bowl. This is good shit, the tall, handsome stupid one said, scooping up tile fish with his dirty fingers, and the little sly one with the face of a rat said, ah, my mother used to make it like this, God rest her shitty old soul. And as they ate, they bounced a girl each on their laps while the older women pressed themselves against the compound walls and wept. After eating and drinking, if it is a village in which alcohol is permitted, the two men will take a walk around to see what is to be seen, this is the time of stealing. The two men will always steal things, though for some reason they do not like to use the word, and as they reach out for your watch or cigarettes or wallet or phone or daughter, the short one in particular will say solemn things like thank you for your gift, or we appreciate the sacrifice you are making for the cause, though this will set the tall one laughing and thus ruin whatever dignified effect the short one was trying to achieve. At some point as they move from home to home, taking whatever they please, a brave boy will leap out from behind his mother's skirts and try to overpower the short, sly man in our village. This boy was a 14 year old we all used to call King Frog, owing to the fact that once, when he was 4 or 5 years old, somebody asked him who had the most power in our village, and he pointed to a big ugly toad in the yard and said, him, King Frog. And when asked why, explained, because even my father is afraid of him. At 14 he was brave but reckless, which was why his wide hipped mother had thought to tuck him behind her skirts as if he were a baby. But there is such a thing as physical courage. Real persistent, very hard to explain, existing in tiny pockets here, there and everywhere. And though almost always useless, it is still something you don't easily forget once you've seen it. Like a very beautiful face or a giant mountain range, it sets a limit somehow on your own hopes for yourself. And sensing this, maybe, the tall dimwan raised his gleaming machete and with the same fluid yet effortless gesture with which you might take the head off a flower, separated the boy from his life. Once blood has been shed, especially such a quantity of blood, a kind of wildness descends, a bloody chaos into which all the formal gestures of welcome and food and threat seem instantly to dissolve. More drink is generally taken at this point, and what is strange is that the old men in the village, who, though men have no defense, will often now grab at the bottles themselves, drinking deeply and weeping. For you need courage not only to commit bloody chaos, but also to sit by and watch it happen. But the women, how proud we are in retrospect, of our women, who stood in formation, arms linked, the one to the next in a ring around our girls, as the tall, dim man became agitated and spat on the floor. What's wrong with these bitches? Waiting is over. Any longer and I'll be too drunk. And the short, sly one stroked the face of the chief's wife's cousin. The chief's wife was in the next village visiting family, and spoke in low conspiratorial tones of the coming babies of the revolution. We understand that women stood so in ancient times beside white stone and blue seas, and more recently in the villages of the Elephant God, and in many other places, old and new. Still, there was something especially moving about the pointless courage of our women at that moment, though it could not keep two men from arriving in the village and doing their worst. It never has and never will, and yet there came that brief moment when the tall, dim one seemed cowed and unsure, as if the woman now spitting at him were his own mother. Which passed soon enough when the short, sly one kicked the spitting woman in her groin and the formation broke and bloody chaos found no more obstruction to its usual plans. The next day the story of what happened is retold and partial broken versions that change depending very much on who is asking. A soldier, a husband, a woman with a clipboard, a morbidly curious visitor from the next village, or the chief's wife returned from her sister in law's compound. Most will put a great emphasis on certain who were they? Who were these men? What were their names? What language did they speak? What marks were on their hands and faces? But in our village we are very fortunate to have no rigid bureaucrats, but instead the chief's wife, who is, when all is said and done, more of a chief to us than the chief has ever been. She's tall and handsome and and sly and courageous. She believes in the gaara mata, that wind which blows here hot, here cold, depending and which everybody breathes in. You cannot help but breathe it in, though only some will breathe out in bloody chaos. For her, such people become nothing more than ga hara mata. They lose themselves, their names and faces, and can no longer claim merely to bring the whirlwind. They are that wind. This is of course a metaphor, but she lives by it. She went straight to the girls and asked for their account, and found one who, encouraged by the sympathetic manner of the chief's wife, told her story in full, the end of which was the most strange, for the short, sly one had thought himself in love, and afterward, laying his sweaty head on this girl's bare chest, had told her that he too was an orphan, though it was harder for him, for he had been an orphan for many years rather than mere hours, and that he had a name and a life, and was not just a monster, but a boy who had suffered as all men suffer, and had seen horror and wanted now only to have babies with this girl from our village. Many boy babies, strong and beautiful. And girls too. Yes, why not girls? And live far from all villages and towns, with this army of children encircling and protecting the couple all their days. He wanted me to know his name. The girl exclaimed, still stunned by the idea. He had no shame, he said. He did not want to think that he had passed through my village, through my body, without anybody caring what he was called. It is probably not his real name, but he said his name was. But our chief's wife stood up, suddenly left the room and walked out into the yard.
- [19:58]
Debra Treisman
That was Edwidge Danticat reading Two Men Arrive in a Village by Zadie Smith. The story appeared in the New Yorker in June of 2016 and was included in Smith's story collection, Grand Union, which was published by Penguin Press in 2019. So, Edwidge, this story opens with a sentence that's not a sentence unless it's a continuation of the title, with this kind of litany of means of arrival. You know, sometimes on horseback, sometimes by foot in a car or astride motorbikes, occasionally in a tank, having strayed far from the main phalanx, and every now and then from above in helicopters. What do you think that does to set up the story? What do you feel as a reader when that's your first sentence?
- [20:45]
Edwidge Danticat
Well, you're sort of in this disorienting situation that I would imagine wherever or whatever the village would be that the folks in the village would also be in. And I've been in villages like this across Haiti where people are used to welcoming strangers. But then suddenly, if it shift a certain kind of stranger, then the danger is felt by everybody, and then the village is suddenly going from disorienting to having to organize. So I think it places us in this somewhat universal situation that offers many possibilities. And one of the descriptions of the village that I find most interesting is this idea of the vertical village. Right. Like these apartment blocks, where these things can also happen. So we're not only traveling across right at the beginning, even in time, the horseback. Right, from the horseback to the apartment.
- [21:43]
Debra Treisman
And the helicopters from the helicopters.
- [21:44]
Edwidge Danticat
Exactly. We're traveling through both time and space in terms of just how strangers have always arrived, especially strangers who arrived with the idea of conquering a village.
- [21:55]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. The way she sets up the story, it's like a choose your own adventure in a way, in a very dark way. I feel like you could pick motorbikes and flick knives and boys tagging the underside of a railway bridge, and you would get a form of the same story as we get here. And I suppose it's a matter of using these quite specific details to create a sense of universality.
- [22:29]
Edwidge Danticat
And specificity at the same time, because there are things that you can instantly see, like arriving on the Suzuki motorbikes, like, clinging to each other. I mean, we also, in a kind of story like this, you have to acknowledge, and I think Zaidie did in her interview, the fact that people have also so many images from films and, you know, from National Geographic, let's say, or from these very, like, visual photojournalism that sometimes gives us these types of images. So imagining. There's also another reading of it where you're sort of consuming that, as everybody is these days, very briefly. And then you get this deeper stories through these, like, specific examples.
- [23:17]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. It's both a kind of timelessness and very vivid visual information. I feel as though even the story that we do get continues, that it continues to have its moments of complete specificity, like, you know, King Frog or couscous and tilefish, and then to have its moments that could be in any of these situations.
- [23:43]
Edwidge Danticat
Yeah. I mean, and there's the chief's wife, who, I guess, emerges as the heroine of the story. And the story even offers us this moment at the end where someone with the person with the clipboard who is one of the many. You know, just as there are many possible places or possible entries, there are also many possible recorders of the story, one of whom might possibly be, like, Zaidie herself. Right. The person recounting the story is at the end. And it's also another ways that these stories are told to the outside world by observers, by journalists, by human rights people. And in a way, the way that the story returns the narrative to this young woman who tells this. Who actually tells this unexpected kind of story. And you ask yourself, yes, or when two men walk in the village, how much grace are you supposed to grant them? And that leaves a very heavy. Because that, you know, we start to think, okay, what caused them to do that? Especially if they look like us. Especially, they're from our own, you know, our own communities. And the writer always wants to. We always want the backstory, like the person with the clipboard, in a way. And the story also tries to address that, but the chief's wife is not having any of it. I love that.
- [25:15]
Debra Treisman
Yeah, let's talk about that ending. So, first of all, in a way, it's the most shocking part of the story. And. Well, I guess. Why do you think that is? For me, it's one of the most shocking parts of the story, alongside the moment when King Frog is killed.
- [25:32]
Edwidge Danticat
I mean, writing these types of stories, and I've written a few myself, where you don't want to always write villains that are devils with horns. Even if they are devils with horns, you want to understand why they've become that. And I don't think the story itself is trying to explain that, but I think it's also something that is thrown into this sort of communal voice. Right. Like, it's like, how do we make sense of that? And this is one way that is offered because it's retold by this young woman who's had this horrific experience. Right. But that's what she chooses to recount. But then she also resists. Like, he wants me to remember his name after he's been through my life, through my body. Right.
- [26:29]
Debra Treisman
Yeah.
- [26:29]
Edwidge Danticat
And so there's something very, I would say, less shocking than sort of like, I think it's kind of the quest for answers, that obviously this community, like every community who's gone through a horrific experience like that Will be trying to make sense for a long time. And there are no easy answers given here, except we do get a glimpse. Like, the two men in the village don't just remain shadows, but they're also not pardoned, let's say.
- [26:59]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like there's this conflict between the chief's wife and the young woman, in a sense, in that the chief's wife is insisting that these aren't individual men. These are people who breathed in the gaarmata, the harmattan wind, and it has possessed them. And then they are the wind, and they're no longer men. And then you have the girl telling the story of a specific man and what he said. Why would the chief's wife kind of insist on that view?
- [27:34]
Edwidge Danticat
I mean, I imagine, you know, I'm thinking again back to the experience of Haiti. Like, we have young men like this now who have basically taken over the capitol. And one of the ways that, like, the older people in my family would refer to them, you know, like, generally people call them their gangs or paramilitaries, because I have all these weapons. But the older people in my family will just refer to them sometimes as samama, like, people without mothers. And it's a very layered meaning in the sense, like, you have no accountability. Right. And so I see this in the sense that the chief's wife is thinking like, they're no longer of us. Right. They've sort of surrender the right to be part of our community, to have children with our daughters, because they just take. You know, the story says they steal, they steal. So for her, it's just like, they're not of us. They're just some outside force that just comes and invades and robs and steals and leaves us, like, bleeding. Right. That story of all the blood, the quantity of blood that the story describes. So I think that's her perspective. And maybe this young woman and Even retelling that story just feels a sense of maybe solidarity that an older generation may not, like, sees more as, like, you, a choice. And there is, like, this idealism presented. Right. Like, the excuse for doing these things that, like, you know, you're part of the revolution, you're part of this reconstruction. And how true is that? And maybe the young woman still in some ways, kind of believes, or maybe that's one way to deal with this trauma. To be like, maybe there was some good that can come out of this.
- [29:31]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. I mean, I suppose in a way similar to the chief's wife. She's saying here he was insisting on his individuality. Why does he think he has that right? You know, he's kind of given it up by doing these things.
- [29:46]
Edwidge Danticat
And does he do that in every.
- [29:47]
Debra Treisman
Village, or is he actually imagining a different life?
- [29:53]
Edwidge Danticat
I guess because it's so much in the present, too, that brings to mind that version of the story where it's after a coup, where this person has gone into the building, is watching the leader is having laughs and drinks. And so there are all these very different versions of this person, too. And then just, like, the steps that it takes, it's kind of like, you know, we come in peace. Like, they seem friendly, and then it gets gradually, like, more horrifying.
- [30:23]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. I mean, there's a pretense to what they do, but they always know where it's going. There's a certain point where the tall man says he's gonna get too drunk to fulfill the plan for the night. And I feel as though the sly, shorter man stands out because the tall one is not going to try to be an individual, you know, because there is that safety. If you're becoming an archetype, you can just be that archetype. You can be the wind of chaos. If you're an individual, maybe you do have to take accountability for what you're doing.
- [30:57]
Edwidge Danticat
Yeah. And that might be. It seems also presented in a way that it's generational, both with the young woman and the chief's wife, and then also the sly man and the tall man, and that there are certain things that, like the tall man, who I assume is older, is just past pretense, whereas this younger man or this younger generation might still have a little bit of idealism left. Right.
- [31:24]
Debra Treisman
There's the moment when the woman spits on him and he sort of pauses as if might be his mother.
- [31:30]
Edwidge Danticat
His mother.
- [31:31]
Debra Treisman
And then the taller one just dives in and kicks her.
- [31:34]
Edwidge Danticat
Yeah. And in that moment, he's not A samawah. Like, he still has a mother. And that's this idea of, like, there's still somebody. He might be accountable for that.
- [31:43]
Debra Treisman
Yeah.
- [31:44]
Edwidge Danticat
That he might see in this stranger. And there's the trope often in these situations where people like, I'm a mother. I have to, you know, like, you start reciting your life, you're humanizing yourself as they see in the movies. Right. And it was strange in this case that it was the attacker who was trying to humanize himself to the victim.
- [32:05]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. He just was not ready to see himself as someone doing what he was doing. I think that that's a psychology that happens sometimes with rapists where they, you know, say thank you at the end and expect to see the person again. There was a famous case where that was what happened. And so it's like there's this almost absenting oneself from one's actions and trying to normalize them.
- [32:31]
Edwidge Danticat
Yeah. I mean, in this case, it went even further. Right. With that vision of a bunch of children for the revolution. And what does that even mean? Like, a bunch of children across the country?
- [32:45]
Debra Treisman
What's really interesting to me in that moment is that he wants a bunch of children to surround them and protect them away from villages and cities and towns. And here he's just seen a bunch of grown women trying to surround the children and protect them. He wants to be one of those children.
- [33:02]
Edwidge Danticat
Yeah, I hadn't thought of that parallel between, like, his dream and that moment, which I think is one of the most beautiful moments in the story, where the women rise up and link arms. Yeah. And not sentimental. Like, you could see that actually happening. And as Zeta describes it, there's a uselessness to it, but the beauty and resisting in that moment is just like. It's such a gorgeously described moment.
- [33:30]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. Let's talk about the voice of the story, because it's sort of anthropological. Well, it goes back and forth. First, it's anthropological. Could have been this. It could be that. It could be this. And this is how people behave in the situation, and this is what they always do, and these are the customs. And then every now and then, it breaks in with the. Well, we saw them. We saw him leaning on the Coca Cola hoarding. And you get the. We're so proud of our girls. What is that shift doing?
- [33:58]
Edwidge Danticat
I mean, it's the choral voice in a way. Like, it's like the whole village speaking. And then at times, like, you have the departure because you're separating out the men to separate out the women. And King Frog is probably like the one child, but you have a sense that there are other children. There's a moment where it says, we don't have borch. Like, it's. So it's.
- [34:26]
Debra Treisman
You could be smelling borscht, but we.
- [34:27]
Edwidge Danticat
Don'T make that, and we don't have snow, and we don't have a bureaucracy that sort of documents our losses. At the end, it said, so almost by elimination, you narrow to a singular community, where at the beginning, it's sort of like this much larger community, but it is. It's almost individual. It's like we are proud of our girls, like a group of people speaking in one voice. But there's this also this idea. Once we get to the gaha Mata, we have some specificity, and there's also. We're now then again, in a kind of tradition, like, it's a tradition of, like, West African tradition of a guy like the village storyteller, which can also be that story that's sort of like the story that is told about that day that then is told to the next village where the chief's wife might have been visiting. Right, right. So there is that element to the story of a story that's also traveling. Right. Because we have these African. African diaspora traditions where someone goes from like, village to a village to tell a story. And this could be that story because the griot is speaking for the whole village is telling this communal story as opposed to an individual story.
- [35:46]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. So that alternates with this kind of more documentary, academic voice somehow. This is how these situations are set up.
- [35:56]
Edwidge Danticat
Yeah. It offers, like, all these different ways that it's being retold. Right. The next day, the story of what happened is retold and partial, broken versions. So the story starts in a partial broken version, but in a voice that's also, as you're saying, academic, is also very much aware of things that are happening in other parts of the world. You know, like maybe in our village, the helicopters don't come, but they might come to other villages. And so that expands the story in ways that acknowledges other untold stories that are just, like, touched on in partial ways and hinted at, but we get to tell, like, at least our version of the story.
- [36:40]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. Why do you think Zadie chose this particular version?
- [36:45]
Edwidge Danticat
Oh, that's so dangerous for a writer to speculate about another writer's story.
- [36:52]
Debra Treisman
Yeah.
- [36:52]
Edwidge Danticat
I guess we'd have to ask of.
- [36:54]
Debra Treisman
All of the options, of all of the options here, which would you have chosen?
- [36:59]
Edwidge Danticat
I mean, probably the village storyteller version. I love the incantation. I'm just attracted to that kind of voice. Like, there's that moment with, like, we're part of this ancient tradition of women who stand by stone. Like, that's. I just love that. Just love that. This idea of, like, this history being passed on in a way that helps survive current horrors. For me, that's like, a really powerful trend of lineage. And I think people do pull on things like that, like what our ancestors survived and what we must.
- [37:34]
Debra Treisman
I mean, that's why we still read the Iliad, for instance.
- [37:38]
Edwidge Danticat
Exactly. Yeah.
- [37:40]
Debra Treisman
I guess with this issue of individuality and whether or not it's granted to these men, the story sort of raises the question of who has the right to grant them individuality. I think that, like, final moment, when the young woman is about to say the name and the chief's wife storms out of the room, is not going to hear it. And I wonder what you think is happening in that moment, because it's, you.
- [38:06]
Edwidge Danticat
Know, it's at the end of the story, obviously, it's a moment with great weight.
- [38:10]
Debra Treisman
Yeah.
- [38:11]
Edwidge Danticat
And no one has a name, so why should they? Except.
- [38:17]
Debra Treisman
Except King Frog.
- [38:18]
Edwidge Danticat
King Frog. Who has a nickname.
- [38:20]
Debra Treisman
A nickname. Yeah.
- [38:21]
Edwidge Danticat
Yeah. So it reads to me almost like, for further intrusion of now, this woman having to bear, like, knowing this name and this situation's like, the sequel to this story might possibly this woman actually having to bear a child of this rapist. And so now there's a knee. Like, she's forever tied to him in this way. So I think one of the things that the chief's wife is resisting and that this intrusion, like this invasion of the village, if you will, is not just for one night.
- [39:05]
Debra Treisman
Yeah.
- [39:05]
Edwidge Danticat
It's something that might continue for generations.
- [39:08]
Debra Treisman
Right. And the young woman has been orphaned that night, so the loss is permanent. It's almost as though, for the chief's wife and for all of them, you know, the women have so little power. They can't escape this. Once those two men arrive, that's it for them. And that's. I suppose maybe the chief's wife's one form of power is to refuse to hear it.
- [39:32]
Edwidge Danticat
Mm. I mean, and the thing is, I think the chief's wife, probably because of her age and experience, knows that two men arriving like Columbus arriving, those kind of things change the course of the village. Like, the village will never be the same.
- [39:51]
Debra Treisman
Yeah.
- [39:51]
Edwidge Danticat
And whether it's an apartment building village or, like, following a coup, or this kind of village that's described with more specificity here, that this is the kind of thing that just changes forever in a way. Maybe that image of the circle of these women, they were like, this was our last effort. We tried Inoue and then everything will change.
- [40:14]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. Where's the chief?
- [40:19]
Edwidge Danticat
Yeah. I don't know. We have to ask Zaidie. Where are the men?
- [40:22]
Debra Treisman
They never come back.
- [40:23]
Edwidge Danticat
Where are the men?
- [40:23]
Debra Treisman
The able bodied men, they're just gone. And the old men and have to give up.
- [40:27]
Edwidge Danticat
Often before these men come in these villages, the men are already decimated, probably, or they're at war. I mean, that's a really good question in the sense that could the men in this village be doing this in other villages? And there are older men, There are.
- [40:49]
Debra Treisman
Older men who can't do anything.
- [40:51]
Edwidge Danticat
And so the younger men might be at war or. Because you have the women as children and the older men left behind.
- [41:00]
Debra Treisman
Yeah, Yeah. I hadn't thought about the idea that their men might be off doing this elsewhere. That's an awful thought. Or terrible.
- [41:10]
Edwidge Danticat
Or fighting in some war.
- [41:12]
Debra Treisman
Fighting, yeah. Yeah. Defending the overthrown leader or vice versa. Ultimately, what do you walk away with from the story? What do you think it is about? Is it about this sort of eternal cycle of violence against women? Is it about colonialism? Is it about sort of powerlessness or group versus individual? You know, there's so many things happening.
- [41:42]
Edwidge Danticat
I think it's all of the above, certainly about vulnerability in the sense that certain groups, certainly the women in this story and the older men and the children in this village, but we're now watching war all the time on television where people are livestreaming their destruction. And so in one part of the story, there's this idea of, like, if it's a certain kind of place, it would be more than two men.
- [42:12]
Debra Treisman
Right.
- [42:13]
Edwidge Danticat
And they say it is. And certainly a story about war, the horrors of war, but also the endless cycle of it. Certainly, like through colonialism to imperialism to settler colonialism. All of them.
- [42:32]
Debra Treisman
Yeah.
- [42:33]
Edwidge Danticat
But, yeah, it gives us a lot to think about as sort of like more and more war looms on our horizons. And this idea of, like, the illusion of peace that these people have when the story begins that suddenly is fractured and gone. I think that's something most of us can identify with.
- [42:57]
Debra Treisman
Yeah. Zaidie said in that interview about the story that she wanted to write a story in such a way that it implicated everybody.
- [43:07]
Edwidge Danticat
Mm. Yeah, she has. And in the past, present, and hopefully not the future, but possibly.
- [43:17]
Debra Treisman
Yeah, probably the future too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Edwidge.
- [43:23]
Edwidge Danticat
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
- [43:29]
Debra Treisman
Zadie Smith is the author of eight books of fiction, including the story collection Grand Union and the novels White Teeth, a winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and the James Tate Black Memorial Prize on Beauty, which won the Orange Prize for fiction in 2006, and the fraud, which was published in 2023. She's been publishing fiction and nonfiction in the New Yorker since 1999. Edwidge Danticat, a MacArthur Fellow and winner of the Vilcek Prize in Literature, has published six books of fiction, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, the Farming of Bones, Claire of the Sea Light, and Everything Inside. Her memoir, Brother I'm Dying, won the National Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among others. She has been publishing fiction and nonfiction in the New Yorker since 1999. You can download more than 210 previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, including ones in which Edwidge Dantiket reads and discusses stories by Junot Diaz and Jamaica Kincaid, or subscribe to the podcast for free in Apple Podcasts. On the Writer's Voice podcast you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find the writers, Voice, Voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts. This episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast was produced by Chloe Prenos. I'm Deborah Treisman. Thanks for listening.
- [45:07]
Edwidge Danticat
From PRX.