Burridge Unbound

by Alan Cumyn

  “What about the blood on the floor?”

  The blood on the floor. The blood.

  “It was chicken blood. I’d tried to get dinner, only the chicken was fatty, I pulled off the skin and dropped some of the chicken on the floor. It was a big mess. In those days I started a lot of things and then lost heart and so there would be these projects in mid- … in mid-whatever. Mid-orbit. All over the house. I had jigsaw puzzles, and a windmill, I was building a windmill. It was a birthday present someone had given to Patrick, a model windmill, one of those hopelessly complicated toys people give to kids knowing their parents are going to have to put it together. Probably while the kid watches television.”

  I have the horrible taste of carrot juice in my mouth.

  “So there was blood on the floor?”

  She keeps bringing me back. Believe me, I can focus. All too well.

  “I wasn’t in the kitchen any more. I don’t know what I was doing. Well, if I think of it I can tell you what I was doing. Is that important?”

  “If you think it’s important.”

  “I was … I was trying to fold socks. Laundry. It’s very ordered and clean and it smells nice. Very satisfying. I’d reached a block with the chicken. You know, I’d started it but then things got bad, my head started to fester–” There’s a good word, that’s the word I’m going to remember from this afternoon. I say it again. “My head was festering so I decided to try something else. Just for a break. But that’s when they came home. Patrick ran in first. He was always doing that. He was a running-in-first kind of kid. He saw the blood on the kitchen floor and started to scream. He thought it was me. I’d already tried to kill myself, he’d already seen my blood, all over the living room. He was scared for me and tried to protect me and I don’t know why he ran in first like that. Maybe he wanted to see me all bloody. But he just started screaming. And he couldn’t stop. Even when I walked into the kitchen with a clean pair of socks in my hands, normal as I can be. He screamed even more. And it was my scream, my scream from the black box, terrifying. He wouldn’t stop. I held him and he wouldn’t stop.”

  I have another sip of carrot juice just to quit talking. It’s silly to go over it all again and again. I have better things to do. Not here. Not with this stranger in this fine house we could never have afforded in this life we never got.

  “You’re shaking,” she says.

  Well, of course I’m shaking. I have earthquakes inside me all the time.

  “You say your wife is a not a nurturing person. Is that what you need now? Do you–?”

  “I’m sorry, I need to go, is what I need. I’m sorry.” I get up too quickly, nearly bump my head on her pretty, professional, leaning-in chin.

  “I’d like to do some visualization with you–”

  “Yes,” I say, meaning no, never, I’d rather not visualize. I’m already walking out.

  “I think that there’s more–”

  I turn, nearly furious. “With the black box,” I say, “they attached the wires to my nipples. They attached them to my tongue, to my penis and testicles. And they shocked me. There’s no way I can tell you what that felt like. No way in the world. They did it again and again until I passed out, probably long after I passed out. And not just once. It was days and days like that, and then they’d do something else. They’d rape me or they’d kick me. They stretched my arms behind my back. I lost my teeth. They kept me–” Now I really am losing it. I’m so angry and she wants this, it’s what therapists do, they want to unleash the tears again and again. Well, I won’t have it. Breathe, breathe, calm down.

  I tell her, “You ask me, but that’s all I can tell you and telling you means some part of me has to go through it over and over. I’m not a masochist!”

  Time to go. Past time!

  “Don’t leave like that,” she says. It isn’t a steel voice but silk, so strong it stretches and binds, weighs nothing, but won’t let me go. “We’re getting you out of the pit, that’s what we’re doing. It means you’re going to have to dig. You’re going to have to reimagine the darkness and name the evil. You’re going to have to see it again from the inside and outside, for what it was and what you thought it was. We’ll work together, there are ways to do it safely. But you can’t leave your heart outside the door. This is going to be as much work as your physical survival. There’s no way around it.”

  I can’t do it. She’s asking too much. With no guarantee of anything but more pain. I’ve had enough of professional bullshit and platitudes. I can’t sit still and suffer any more. I have to go!

  But where to, exactly? Joanne has been waiting for me on the porch, reading her novel. She has to phone for a taxi and so we have to wait. She looks at me with concern and at Dr. what’s-her-face – Joanne knows her name, that’s what’s important – and she can sense what a disaster this has been.

  “When’s the next appointment?” she asks, trying for humour where there is none.

  11

  Days later, back at the apartment, Waylu calls. I’m still in a state, I hardly know what to say. “I am sorry, Mr. Burridge,” he says, his voice softer somehow, not what I expect, “but I am calling in the hopes that you will reconsider. We did not really get a chance to discuss the proposal. Perhaps we could set a time. Perhaps you have specific fears and concerns that we could allay.”

  Perhaps, but I can hardly talk with him. The air leaves the room and I have to leave with it. “I support the establishment and the work of a truth commission wholeheartedly,” I hear myself saying. That rational voice that seems to function no matter what the inner turmoil. “But for me a return to Santa Irene is out of the question. The issue is too personally charged. My health is too frail.”

  He starts to say something else, something polite and oiled and professional. I cut him off. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry. But I have to go out.” And I do, there’s no more air. I rush out and down the elevator and onto the street, crowded now with traffic, people hurrying home from their day. It’s cold, I haven’t worn a sweater, I pull my collar close and start walking anywhere. A woman holds out a hand and stops me from stepping off the curb against the traffic light. “Careful,” she says, then ducks her head and steps out herself. But the light is green now.

  I walk aimlessly and then I’m not walking, I’m leaning against a stone building crying like a fool. Weeping for nothing, but I can’t stop myself. People hurry by, assuming I’m drunk, I suppose, a vagrant. It’s cold and winter is coming, that’s why I’m crying. I’m cold and I’m coming apart.

  More days bleed by. In the silence of my sanctuary, my apartment in the sky, I watch the clouds shift as the afternoon drains away, an argument taking me this way then that, another replacing it, a voice, a possibility, a sense of importance and dread. Why can’t they let go of me? Why can’t I let this go myself?

  The phone rings and I’m certain it’s Waylu again. I shouldn’t answer but I can’t stop myself.

  “Hello, Bill.” Not Waylu. “Bill,” Maryse says, “I got your letter.” Letter? I think. Letter. Of course. My letter. It seems like a hundred years since I sent that letter. One more thing that was going to save my life.

  “Yes, yes,” I say, trying to recover. There is a long pause which, I suppose, I’m expected to fill, perhaps to restate what I said in my letter. But my mind is jamming.

  “Well,” she says finally, her voice now edgy. My fault, it’s all my fault. My focus has been elsewhere. As always. I’m blowing it again.

  “I meant it,” I blurt desperately.

  “Meant what?”

  “What I said in the letter. I meant it.”

  Pathetic. I can’t even sum up my feelings. I’m lying limp in front of her feet. As if any woman could be won back like that.

  “Well,” she says again. Reluctantly. Against her better judgement. “I guess we could come for a picnic.”

  “Yes. Yes! That’s all it would be,” I say. “Something civil.”

  “That would be a
change.”

  “Yes.” I let her have her dig. She deserves it. We make the arrangements and then seconds after I put down the phone it rings again.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello? Mr. Burridge?” An English accent, a woman’s voice. “Mr. Burridge,” she says, “perhaps you have heard of me. My name is Suli Nylioko.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” I say, as if I’m not in shock, have been expecting her call all along. What time is it in Santa Irene? It must be two o’clock in the morning.

  “Mr. Burridge,” she says, and I’m struck by how ordinary her voice sounds. Just another person calling from the other side of the planet. “It is an honour to talk with you. Please accept my apologies for approaching you about participating on the planned Truth Commission. Mr. Waylu Tariola has reported to me your level of distress and I thought it perhaps appropriate for me to call. We had no desire to further your suffering. Indeed, many of us are mortified by what happened to you two years ago. Whatever our present troubles, there’s no explanation, no way to condone the abominations that were visited upon you. Please believe me, I had no wish to compound your distress through this invitation.”

  I’m trying to find my voice but am suddenly swimming in emotion. She waits for me to speak, then when I don’t she adds, “I know forgiveness cannot be hoped for, but I pray that someday you will find the peace that you deserve. Please know that even if you cannot be here in body, we know you will be in spirit. That’s all that I am calling to say. Please accept my apologies.”

  “Yes,” I say, somehow, and that breaks the dam so more words can come. “Yes, thank you, I’ve certainly been following your work and am a great admirer.”

  She says, “You know something, I think, of what I am trying to accomplish here. This is an ancient and very beautiful country trying to overcome the brutality of its recent history. We focus on Minitzh, the dictator, but it stretches back before him. We have been terrorized into feeling small and inferior, shown how to grind whole peoples into the soil without a thought for justice, for consequences, for what it has done to our soul.”

  “That’s why you need a truth commission,” I say. Safe enough, now that it’s settled I won’t be going. “You need to air the abuses of the past or the wounds will never heal properly.”

  “Precisely! It must be done right. Fair and thorough. It’s going to be so difficult to find commissioners who are as untainted as you.”

  Untainted. An odd description for a torture survivor. And yet when she uses it I can see how it fits.

  “The symbolism is so important,” she says. “I know you know about that. How vital it was for you to speak out after what you had survived. This is what we need for our commission. Someone who can be the moral authority of the body.”

  There’s a pause while I try to think how to respond.

  “I appreciate your call,” I tell her. “I feel badly I can’t contribute more.”

  She says, “There will be a time, I hope, when you will feel safe enough to revisit this land. If we can heal this one corner, then think of what it will mean.” She asks if she can call again to “consult” with me and I readily agree; she invites me to contact her any time and leaves her private number. When she hangs up I sit in an odd, breathless glow.

  I walk to the window, watch the traffic stalled around late-season construction crews pawing at the streets in a desultory effort to finish before winter shuts them down. A man with a scruffy beard wearing a hard hat stands by the hole he’s making with his jackhammer, smoking and talking with a friend.

  It’s settled. But is this what relief is supposed to feel like? I thought it would feel better. Like freedom is supposed to feel. But this isn’t freedom. There are still eight hundred articles on human-rights abuses littered around my apartment. There’s still no place for me to sleep. I pick up the phone to call Joanne and tell her, that’s it, I’ve decided, but in the middle of dialling the number I think, well, of course, I had decided already. I had decided when I told Waylu to forget it.

  So there’s nothing really to say. I put down the phone.

  I’ve got to get back on track. Tomorrow I will make my calls. To my contacts at Foreign Affairs, at the State Department, in Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. To let them know it’s me, I’m fine. It was just a little meltdown.

  Slowly I become aware of a touch of smoke, a cigarette burning somewhere nearby. Down the hall? Strange. It smells as if it’s in the apartment. Couldn’t be. No one came in. But there it is again, stronger now. Not a Canadian cigarette, but spiced with cloves, harsher.

  Stay calm. I walk to the kitchen, look in the bedroom. There’s no one there. Of course not. How could there be? The door’s locked. No one came in. But I should phone Joanne anyway. I walk back to the front room. Something’s different. The smell is stronger.

  “Hello?” I say, get spooked at the sound of my own voice. Stupid. Talking to myself in my own apartment.

  I’ll just phone Joanne. She’ll be interested that Suli Nylioko called. That I’ve finally made up my mind.

  “Who are you?”

  It’s dark suddenly, even though it should be the middle of the afternoon. The air so heavy and hot. Strange to have no one at the checkpoint. I’m driving, I don’t know how, but I have to pay attention. The sad, huge, drooping leaves of the banana trees. Some kind of plantation by the highway. Deserted.

  “Don’t!” I say, because I know what’s going to happen. But I’m ready this time. It’s not going to be the same. I’m not going to hit the spike on the road. Have to keep my eyes sharp. But the car is going so fast. I try to slow down but the brakes are dead, the accelerator is stuck. Faster, faster. Men now, out of the corner of my eye, in bright colours. Wham! There goes the tire. But I’m not going to stop. I know better this time. Can’t see them clearly, just bleeding colours on the edge of my vision.

  The car slows. No! I can’t figure it. I pump the accelerator and it slows even more. They must have switched the pedals. I try the brake too late. Now I’m stopped. I’m stopped, so I have to get out of the car. I don’t want to but there’s no other choice. I look around – no men anywhere. They’ve gone. It’s different this time.

  I open the door. One step, two. It’s different. No men anywhere. But it’s so hot, just the roots of the mountains showing in the distance. It was clear the first time. So this is different, I think. If I go quickly I can finish before they get here. It’s the back right tire. I open the trunk. This too is different – the tire irons, jack, and spare aren’t where they should be. The trunk is too small. There isn’t even the extra container of gas. I know I put it in there.

  They’ve changed my car!

  The spare is in the very back. A tiny wheel, but it’s extraordinarily heavy. I can barely budge it. I pull and pull. So hot! I don’t have time for this! I just need to get it out and on the car and away. They’re coming, I know they are. Don’t look! No time for that. Just pull.

  I yank it free, turn, and there they are, fuck! A dozen of them, in bright, blurry colours, like a photograph not set properly, a glaring orange bleeding into blue and red. They’re bigger than before. But I’m different too. I roar with rage, spin and fling the extra tire – light now, it dissolves into paper, they laugh at it floating past them. An arm comes out for me and I snap at it, the pang, how surprised he looks! Crack! His arm is twisted, broken, but I don’t stop there. I jerk it towards me, strike his throat with the side of my hand then drive my knuckle into the same spot. He groans, gasps for breath, collapses.

  They aren’t going to take me this time! I push past several others, rip the car door open, slam it shut behind me, hit the autolock, and turn the ignition key. Concentrate. No jamming the gears this time. The engine roars, I feel for the clutch with my foot … but they’ve changed the pedals again! The accelerator is the brake, the clutch is reverse. I don’t want to go back! Struggling, trying to keep hold of the gearshift, it’s so slippery now with the heat.

  Mustn’
t look. That was my mistake before, I looked and the tire iron came crashing through the window. That’s when they got me. I looked.

  Stalled! I try the key again, turn, and the glass explodes in my face. Oh! Unbelievable pain, the blood now filling my eyes, the skin on my face shredded. Hands pull me out through the window, the shards cut my arms, chest, legs as I’m scraped past.

  It’s different than before. It’s worse. The boot lands in my kidneys and I cough blood right away. Again, and it’s worse. They drag me on the pavement, it’s so hot, it’s been laced with chilli peppers, burns my skin and throat and eyes.

  My eyes! I don’t want to see this but I can’t close my eyes. Everything through blood now. The trunk is so small. They’re stuffing me in, they have to use the shovel to pack me in the corners.

  Dust and gasoline and chillis burning my insides. It’s worse than ever. I caved and they know it. Now there’s no escape ever. I’m in the trunk bleeding from the eyes and it’s just the beginning again.

  12

  There’s a sliver of sunlight in late October. It falls upon the patch of grass by the water and warms the blanket I’ve brought. No wind here, and even the water looks warmer than it really is. Focus on this, I think. Breathe and focus on this. The cliff edge is russet with tinges of yellow and grey and black; the Gothic dull green towers of Parliament point impassively to a purple sky made more dramatic by the low sun. I look down at my silly picnic basket bought at an outrageous price from the tourist store on the Sparks Street Mall, the kind of store that sells ceramic Mounties and fake-furry beaver dolls and flimsy T-shirts that say I OTTAWA. I don’t even know what foods Patrick likes, so I have brought as many different things as I could pack – three types of cheese, two breads, apples, bananas, pickles, olives, boiled eggs, fried chicken, Lebanese cheese pies, three juices, a salad.… The picnic basket comes with cutlery, plastic glasses, napkins, a tablecloth. I have red and white wine and flowers, a cutting board and knife, butter, mayonnaise, hummus. I’ve spread the blanket, laid out the food, am sitting with the sun gently warming my face, the grass breathing so softly, my dentures knocking together …