Burridge Unbound

by Alan Cumyn

  Joanne peels me down and wipes me. Slowly, calmly, rinsing her cloth from time to time, soiling the beautiful sink. Does the world know what expenses have been lavished on the United Nations’ washrooms?

  “I was travelling once in India,” a voice says. I hear it as in a dream. “On a train, in Maharashtra. Third class. I thought it was all I could afford.” Such a voice, I’m thinking, my head down, my eyes shut tight. Joanne daubing me clean. What if someone comes in? I don’t even know if this is the men’s washroom or the women’s. I didn’t notice urinals. I wasn’t looking for them.

  “It was alarmingly hot, and we were wedged in like cattle. You know those trains, the peasants riding on the roofs with all their bags. I actually had a seat inside, but I didn’t dare get up to pee because five different people had been standing for a hundred miles staring at me and my seat. I was twenty-one, I didn’t know any better. I just crossed my legs. Sometime in the night my period came, and I still didn’t want to get up. I thought everybody knew. They could smell me. Some of them slept standing up. One little man fell asleep on the floor with his head under my seat. I thought I was going to drip on him.”

  Daubing, wiping, cleaning the cloth. Cool on my legs. Of course the voice is Joanne’s.

  “It was so hot. I’d sweated through my clothes, I thought everyone could see right into my underwear. The train eased along at about twenty miles an hour and we were stewing. I felt like the frog in the pot that just keeps heating up. Why didn’t I buy a first-class ticket? I had two hundred dollars’ safety money sewn into my bra. I was saving it for a real emergency. But something happens to your brain in the heat. After a time I knew I was going to die but I decided I’d go nobly. Without a word. I’d just … expire in my seat.”

  The cool cloth on my legs, bum, testicles. Those silly, useless ornaments. A beautiful woman is washing my body. If I were a teenager I would’ve exploded already. Now – sagging meat. Pitiful.

  “Somehow I lasted the entire night without moving. I willed myself into another state. I think I was seeing angels by the morning. I finally got up and went to the bathroom. My God. The door was broken. There was absolutely no privacy. I didn’t care by then, I was in such need. But from where I crouched I could see in a cracked mirror a Hindu woman performing her morning ablutions. She had almost nothing – her sari, her fingers, a bit of saliva. But in five minutes she’d washed herself completely, had wiped away the dirt and fatigue, the grinding desperation of that journey. Just rubbing herself here and there. She emerged the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen: refreshed, radiant, like she was floating a few feet above everything.”

  Joanne tosses my underwear in the sink. I tell her to just throw it out, but she soaps and rinses it instead, wrings it with her strong, competent hands. “Whenever things got really bad in the camps,” she says, “I thought of that Hindu woman. And I always made sure that I cleaned myself at the start and end of every day.”

  She fits me with an adult diaper. There’s another name for them. She’d suggested I wear one in the first place but I told her I wasn’t going to the United Nations wearing a diaper. Idiot. It feels bulky and completely conspicuous. Everyone will know instantly. Why does such a skinny man have such a huge butt? But it doesn’t matter. “Thank you,” I say, again and again, as she rinses out my trousers.

  “Did you hear about the bombing in the New York City police department?” she asks gravely.

  “No. There was a bombing?”

  “In the washroom,” she says. “They’ve just started their investigation. So far police have nothing to go on.”

  Her smile. That’s the best part of any joke she tells. Like a sly bend of a creek in sunshine, heading back into shadows. It’s such a slight and ridiculous straw, you’d never suspect it could hold the weight of a grown man’s life, through days like this of sewage and despair and worse, I’m afraid, far worse.

  “How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” she continues, now using the hand-drying hot-air blower to dry my pants.

  I shake my head.

  “One to nail the bicycle to the wall, and three more to put the giraffe in the bathtub.”

  “Yes,” I say, standing in a diaper in the United Nations, waiting for the streak of sunlight on the bend in the creek.

  2

  Dear Bill Burridge,

  Punjab police came for me yesterday morning it was about 6:30 am in Chandigarh I was visiting friends of my father’s. It was exactly as if they were coming for him they burst in swinging lathis destroyed my friend’s television and then I was on foot out the back way I hid behind a vegetable stall and some friends came by and sped me away. I don’t know why they would bother with me now except we have pressed for action on the disappearances cases especially Khalra. So much for this being the peaceful Punjab. I have heard that the police took my friend’s wife for questioning about me and I am fearful for what the brutes have probably done to her. Please do your magic like the last time and maybe the dogs will be loosed from our necks.

  Thank you, your friend in need, Jaswant Kashmir Singh

  Sometimes when I sit in my corner office in my apartment, twenty-seven flights above the ground, I have the illusion of flying. Not as in an airplane, but like an eagle, soaring over the city at dawn, the sun reflecting purple on the Gatineau Hills, pouring liquid light into the Ottawa River. The whole world stretches before me. It doesn’t look like a wounded place, but large, big-shouldered, impassive in the face of what we’re doing to one another.

  Bill–

  We’re in a state here after the bombing. Police are back to cordon and searches of entire neighbourhoods. My cousin stammered at a roadblock on his way to work and they decided to take him in even though he had all his papers and has been going through that roadblock every morning for five years. My sister phoned me at work and I went straight to the police station. They disclaimed all knowledge of him. “But I have five witnesses who saw you take him to this station!” They gave me a form to fill out, which I did, in triplicate. The station clerk said I should come back tomorrow. I refused. “I want to talk to the SSP!” Impossible. The SSP could not be disturbed. I said I would wait. The clerk said I could do as I wished. And so I sat in that sweaty police station for sixteen hours, praying that they would not light into a prisoner knowing that his relative is waiting outside.

  Finally enough was enough. “If you do not let me see him this minute I will get the Minister to fry you on a stick!”

  “Which minister?” the clerk asked. Cheeky lad. Bloody Sinhalese bastards.

  “What is your name?” I screamed, pulling out my pad. He would not tell me. I reached across the counter and started launching files into the air. Three police goons suddenly had me twisted on the floor in agony. I thought I was destined for a cell myself. But they pitched me outside instead.

  It has been three days now. My sister is beside herself. The last time Vijay was arrested he came back swollen and blue and did not talk for two months. He is an innocent boy. He works in a photocopy shop.

  If you do not hear from me in two more days please post this as widely as you can. I am afraid the police will not appreciate my efforts to free my cousin. Most probably they are looking for a large bribe and I am raising the money now.

  All the best to you and your family.

  TJ Villaiparram

  Clouds move in slowly and the light turns ordinary. The traffic starts to build on the bridges across the river, and the deep green of the trees surrounding Parliament Hill turns dull and unremarkable as the morning stretches. From where I sit I can even see the smog line and the blue above it. It’s late August – no leaves have turned yet, but we know what’s brewing.

  dear mr burridge

  it feels strange to write you cuz i feel ive known you all my life:-} i know what you went through was terrible and im looking forward to reading your book – my mom has it now and says its too violent for me to read so i really want to! im writing now tho becau
se i saw on your website some information about sleep disorders for victims of ptsd and they really rocked me! i thought – no way! because this is exactly the type of dream i have:-[ everything is great and then all of a sudden i cant move i cant turn over or lift my hand or wake up. i know im asleep but i want to wake up i just cant and its terrible its total sleep paralysis but as i think about it more and more i realize whats happening – you wont believe this but im remembering detailed episodes of alien abductions!!! cuz when i was a little girl my father disappeared ive never seen him in like twelve years and my mom says there hasnt even been a card or anything and he wasnt bad news before that i think we were both abducted and hes still being held while i had my memory erased only it comes out in sleep paralysis so maybe what you experienced wasnt terrorists holding you but these same aliens!! i cant really see them clearly but they have a weird smell and creepy long fingers with lights at the ends

  its great to be able to write to you i wrote to Stephen King too but he never replied:-[

  Cheryl Ann Tyson

  Tulsa

  Behind the flat screen of the computer words fly around the planet, pulsing with life and meaning. In seconds I can connect with Amnesty International in London, Human Rights Watch in New York, a State Department friend in Washington, a journalist in Karachi, an amateur human-rights observer from Thailand who now lives in Moose Jaw … and with thousands of people I’ll never meet. Eight hundred and two logged onto my Web site while I was in New York panicking at the United Nations.

  The world doesn’t sleep. Bombs rip through U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and tear up a shopping district in Northern Ireland – places where peace was supposed to reign. The Russian ruble loses half its value overnight and Serbs murder Albanians with NATO looking on. Famine seeps soundlessly through Sudan while Chinese doctors remove organs from condemned prisoners for use by aging cadres and Israeli guards legally torture prisoners for information. Indian and Pakistani generals ponder nuclear war over the mountains of Kashmir, and Aung San Suu Kyi sits on a bridge for endless days in Burma in a stalemate with the military.

  The world doesn’t sleep, why should I? Why should I submit to the degrading treatment of my own mind? Alien abductions! If only it were so simple, Cheryl Ann. I’d welcome those long fingers with light at the tips. My dreams are of cold darkness and they don’t end with any sort of rosy dawn or willed waking of the mind and spirit. They last the entire period of my own abduction and include every electroshock, rape, hallucination, humiliation, starvation. My magnificent brain has saved and stored each morsel in sequence and can play them back, beginning at any time and ending only with the soul’s near-total exhaustion, with Joanne wrapping me in sheets for my own protection and my body thrashed and wasted. If only I could have a nice alien abduction! Maybe I’d meet your father, Cheryl Ann, and we’d tell tales about our children and what the food is like in captivity.

  Dear Daddy,

  How was New York? Where you ok on the plane? I was afraide you might have bad memories and I prayed for you to be ok. The cottage has been fine. Buster got sand in the computor but it still works. Mommy works all the time on her art. There’s a studio and all she does is stuff for her show. Buster and I run up and down the beach but he doesn’t like going in the water.

  I wish you could come to visit us but Mommy says your very sick still. Maybe you should stay in bed and not go to New York any more. I heard there was a big terror bomb there.

  Write right away please so I know that your ok.

  Patrick (your son)

  Heat bakes the city most of the day and then strong winds bring a new front through, so that by the time the cars are stalled on the bridges for their homeward journey rain lashes my windows and we slide into a premature night. Derrick calls to remind me he’s starting his two-week holiday and Joanne brings dinner and pills, but she can’t stay – some friends from Médecins sans frontières are organizing a mock refugee camp downtown to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – as long as I’m all right, she asks, and I am. This is home, safe and aloof and connected at the same time. I haven’t had a twister originate from this apartment in several months, and I can usually tell now when they’re coming on – my anxiety level rises, my jaw clamps, my heartburn flares, my breathing races shallow and fast. I can almost believe I’m more or less a whole person, talking like this, the smell of stir-fry on the table.

  She really must go, she says. Yes, but she stays while I tell her today’s e-mails. I have her cellphone number. She’s taken a room nearby so that she can be here in minutes. The stir-fry has ginger and garlic and strips of chicken and vegetables coloured with extra vibrancy as if auditioning for a spot in a glossy magazine advertisement.

  Then Joanne leaves and I’m stunned by how completely she takes all vitality with her. In a moment the apartment is a cave of gloom. The storm outside intensifies and my insides protest the richness of the food just as a headache arrives and the walls start to close in. I settle back in front of my computer, my steady friend, my refuge. The night stretches in violent wonder pulsing around our planet at the speed of electricity. And so conveniently in English! Thank God for the British Empire and American know-how. The South China Morning Post and Hong Kong Standard publish pictures of the flooding Yangtze River, run stories on the villages officials have decided to sacrifice in order to save the large city of Wuhan. Dawn and The International in Karachi write about the suspect caught there in the African bombings of U.S. embassies, and about the MQM factions killing one another in the streets. The Colombo Daily News speculates on the standing of Clinton after the confession of his “inappropriate relationship” with Monica Lewinsky. And in Santa Irene, AP reports a protest of students about the tripling of tuition fees and inflation in general. The Asian economic crisis has even affected drug profits, the article says.

  On and on I travel and read, but I’m one man against the night and the odds are ruinous. Eventually the screen dulls, my eyes tire. I breathe and breathe – little sips of air, but from the diaphragm, a qigong meditation that sometimes sends subtle waves of energy through my body. But tonight the air has a hard time passing my throat. And now my leg makes it impossible to sit anyway. I pace the short section of rug past the west window to the north and back, try to keep track of how many times I turn around (as if that statistic will somehow keep me anchored). I should have exercised today. Why didn’t I? Everything was so good. I felt as if I could go forever. Who needs to eat, walk, touch the earth, talk to a human being face to face?

  It all sours so fast. What kind of wonderland was I inhabiting? This is my true reality. Total exhaustion. But stay away from sleep. Sleep is torture. The Kartouf own sleep and Burridge has been banished from its gates. I dial Joanne. I should just let her have her evening but I can’t. I need to know that she’ll be able to come.

  “Bill? Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” I breathe for a moment. It’s true. Just having her to call has calmed my heart. I’m still pacing, but it’s manageable now. I’m okay. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I had some anxiety, but it really wasn’t so bad and now it’s fine. I shouldn’t have bothered you. How’s the refugee camp?’

  “Soaked with rain,” she says. “It seems like old times. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I seem to be fine. I think I just needed to know I could reach you. I’ll do some more computer.”

  “How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?” she asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not funny!” she says. “You should put on Abbott and Costello.”

  I tell her I will. Slapstick suits me fine most of the time. Buster Keaton, Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers. Nothing too lowbrow for my taste. I have a nice collection. They remind me of childhood Saturday mornings watching cartoons with my brother Graham. Bugs Bunny and Road-runner. Woody Woodpecker. Popeye and Olive Oyl. Just reading the video titles starts to cheer me up. Su
ddenly I wish to God Patrick were here to watch with me. We’d snuggle on the couch and share a blanket, stuff ourselves with milk and cookies. Charlie Brown. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. That little puppy pulling the huge sleigh, teetering on the brink of oblivion. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The two outlaws trapped on the cliff. Sundance won’t jump because he can’t swim. Why does Sundance end up with Katharine Ross?

  Katharine Ross. Whatever happened to Katharine Ross? I’m soaked suddenly in sadness about her. She was so beautiful in The Graduate, but why did she go for Dustin Hoffman? He was bad news for her in that movie. Bad news or good news? I would’ve crashed the church at her wedding too to get her. That final look as they pull away on the bus. Now what?

  Now what? Now the night stands before me. I’m pacing again. I take the uneaten portion of Joanne’s stir-fry and mulch it in the trash compactor. I’d go out for a walk, but the storm is blowing too hard. A cold rain like that could land me with pneumonia. Just what I need. I sit back at the computer but my leg jumps – whack! – within seconds. A hot bath. I head for the bathroom, change my mind, pace some more. If only I could sleep. It would make everything better. Maybe I’m on an even keel again and it’s the lack of sleep that’s throwing everything off. If I just went to sleep I’d be fine.

  I try to clear room on the bed. It’s covered in old newspapers, magazines, Action Alert printouts, Death Penalty logs, and the like. The slaughter of the Kurds. Ethnic cleansing in Albania. Sixty-three bodies with slit throats in Algeria. A crackdown on religious minorities in China. The Silent Slaughter. I push them all aside and lie with my face in my pillow.

  This isn’t how to go to sleep. I have a vague memory. I need to take off my clothes and put on pyjamas. Sip hot milk, take out and brush my teeth. Read something light before turning off the lamp. Any one of the above would be an improvement. But my body doesn’t move. I need to take off my shoes and socks.