Burridge Unbound

by Alan Cumyn

  I make a note and Joanne drubs me in cribbage and then I fall into bed and fail to sleep. But it’s a safe lack of sleep. It’s full of Joanne dealing me sevens and eights, of her soft voice and a story she told me about going fishing with her grandfather, how at dawn they would creep up to the stream on their bellies to avoid scaring the fish. “He used to tie his own flies,” she says, in my warm unsleep. “And he’d cut off the barbs – what was the point of fishing if you weren’t sportsman enough to cut off the barbs? That way you had to waltz the fish in so gently, and a little brook trout could keep you going for half an hour. And I remember him laughing at me whenever I got tired or hungry or fell in the water. He had a saying, it was almost like a zen koan: ‘No use complaining, because this is what is happening!’ ”

  This is, I think, in my tired unsleep. This is what is happening.

  We spend three days on Lorumptindu, then two more on a similar massacre at Hindluv, and then three on the burning of a village called Toygoptu. Through it all Sin Vello leans forward in his chair, cutting in with his questions, sometimes apparently trying to discredit witnesses, other times drawing them out. I interject from time to time, Mrs. Grakala less frequently, appearing usually to be either deep in thought or asleep.

  The testimony is relentless.

  “Where were you when the helicopter arrived?” Sin Vello asks Vegu Lat, an unusually dark-skinned young man with nervous, roaming eyes. He’s another villager in the capital for the first time.

  “I was in my shop in the village.”

  “You are a silversmith?”

  “Copper, silver, bronze. I make jewellery and some tools.”

  “Had helicopters arrived before?”

  “Never.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I left my shop and saw that the children were running to greet the helicopter in the square. I yelled at them to stop, stop, but they couldn’t hear me. They just ran right to it. I could see the soldier in a white helmet behind the gun. He had dark glasses. He didn’t look like a man. No man could kill children like that.”

  “He shot them down?”

  He pauses to stare empty-eyed. I remember the helicopters during my rescue. I remember the little boy in the village a few feet away from me. How he turned and held his hip, then twisted violently and fell in the mud. How his body came apart when I reached for him. I glance behind me at Joanne, who has been listening raptly to the testimony. My life preserver.

  “… and then the women who ran after the children and the men who ran after the women,” Vegu Lat continues. “We all ran to the helicopter to be shot. When I close my eyes now there is blood everywhere.”

  “But you were not shot?”

  “I was hit in the shoulder and my father dragged me away. We stayed in the jungle for seven days after the fire. I was in a bad fever and should have died. My father carried me to the next village where there was a clinic.”

  “Have you been back to your village?” I ask, as much as anything to keep myself here, not to dwell on my own blackness.

  “No.”

  “Do you know why you were attacked?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Did your village support the Kartouf?” Sin Vello asks.

  “We fed some starving men who came to us. That was months before. We also fed soldiers and some of our daughters went away with the soldiers.”

  Sin Vello’s eyes narrow with this last detail. “Did they go willingly?” he asks.

  “Some of the soldiers paid money … for some of the daughters.”

  “You sold your daughters to soldiers?” Sin Vello presses.

  “Some did.”

  “How much did they pay?”

  The man’s cracked nails beat nervously on the table.

  “It was uncertain.”

  “Different prices for different daughters?”

  “Some people were very poor.”

  “But not you?”

  “My daughters died in childbirth.”

  “Had the soldiers come back to get more daughters?”

  “When they came to get daughters they came in Jeeps.”

  “So this was different?”

  “They came to kill us.”

  During a break I look through the bars on the window at the line-up outside the Justico kampi, which winds now like a fat river all through the parking lot, across the great lawn and onto Cardinal Avenue. Whole families camp here, waiting to testify: grandmothers in torn clothing looking after babies wrapped within an inch of their lives; middle-aged men squatting in twos and threes and fours, smoking, drinking homemade beer sold in the street by the glass; mothers cooking flatcakes over tiny fires, burning wood that must’ve been stripped from the few remaining trees in the downtown core or else carried with them. Ever since the first day, they’ve been arriving in family clumps, disgorged from tritos or buses, or sometimes come on foot, erecting lean-tos of bamboo and plastic sheeting to shelter them from the rain, putting out bottles to catch the water, shitting and bathing and cleaning their food and dishes all in the same stream that passes a few blocks away and empties into the harbour. The press has a name for them: the sorialos, “shadows waiting to speak.”

  They won’t leave until they’ve been heard. That’s the wondrous, frightening thing – they all want to be heard, and we’re proceeding at a snail’s pace as it is.

  “When did your son disappear?” Sin Vello asks, impatient to get to the important details now that our pile of testimony is beginning to grow. The new witness, Mrs. Dindympte, is a plump woman in a satiny purple cocktail dress – her best outfit, no doubt – with yellow pumps and a sequinned brooch in the shape of a butterfly.

  “October third.”

  “What year?”

  “1994.”

  “Can you tell us what happened?”

  “We never heard a thing.”

  “Was he taken away?” Sin Vello presses.

  “Of course!”

  “Who took him away?”

  “We never learned.”

  “When was the last time you saw your son?”

  “He had just come home from school.”

  “Please be specific.”

  “And he said he was hungry, so I served him his dinner early.”

  “Yes?” Sin Vello’s eyes widen incredulously.

  “He ate everything.”

  “And what happened?”

  “He studied very hard.”

  “Yes?”

  “He always worked very hard.”

  “Yes. But can you tell us–?”

  “He was going to be a travel agent.”

  “Mrs. Dindympte–”

  “We never discouraged him. He always believed he could do it.”

  “Was your son taken away by soldiers or the police?”

  “I think he must have been.”

  “Tell us what happened!”

  “We did receive a card once, but it could not have been true. He would never have married without our permission.”

  “What did the card say?”

  “It said Sonny had moved to the Philippines, but we did not believe it. It was his handwriting, but I don’t believe he would do that to us.”

  Joanne and I go over the stacks of testimony in the hotel room every evening, the day’s work spilling over in a natural rhythm. I need her mind to help me keep the witnesses straight, the incidents and explanations, the various versions, the place names and timelines. On the wall by the piano she tapes a huge map of the teardrop island and within days it becomes covered with sticky notes crowded in her tiny writing. On many nights we find the telephone system either down or too sluggish to bother with, but when it’s working she handles most of the e-mails – by mid-evening now my eyes are too tired to cope with the computer.

  But one night she erupts. “You don’t listen to anything I say!” she says. “I might as well be a piece of lint on the wall!”

  “What?” I ask, startled.

  She gets up, snap
s the laptop shut, paces. “I need to get out of here!” she says.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Did you get back to the ministry people about the pay back-up?” she asks. “Derrick is apoplectic.”

  “Tell him to speak to the bank people again,” I say, tired, uncertain how to deal with her sudden anger. “The money is coming. I’ve had assurances.”

  “The bank people won’t move unless you talk to them.”

  “Fine. I’ll talk to them.”

  “That’s the third time you’ve said–”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, exhausted. “There’ve been a few things to do.”

  “And you will write Patrick, yes? Just a quick note. It would be good for him to hear from you.”

  “Yes. I will.” As soon as the pace lets up, I think – but I don’t say it because I know what she’ll reply, that the pace isn’t going to let up. It’s just begun.

  “What about cribbage?” I ask after a time.

  “You play,” she says, and snaps the cards in front of me. “I need to go out.”

  In a moment she is gone, the luxury suite resoundingly empty without her. A terrible mess, I suddenly realize: stacks of testimony everywhere, my bed covered by the remains of our dinner – plates of pineapple burgers and french fries with a sickly sweet “ketchup” sauce made from bananas and food colouring.

  I’m unsettled by her sudden moodiness. But of course she doesn’t want to be here. These demons that we’re exorcising, they don’t belong to her. They’re mine.

  I call home. The phone rings just once before it’s picked up.

  “Hello?” I say.

  “Grey?”

  It’s my father. “Dad,” I say. “Hi. How are you? It’s Bill.”

  “Grey?”

  “No Dad, it’s Bill. How are you? It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  “Time to come in for supper,” he announces. “Where’s Grey?”

  “Dad, it’s Bill on the line. I’m phoning all the way from Santa Irene. How are you? What have you been up to?”

  “Your mother’s getting angry ’cause it’s spaghetti. Just wanted to tell you. Time to get back to the house.”

  “Dad–”

  “And tell your brother.” The phone goes dead.

  “Dad!”

  I call again immediately but just get a busy signal – it could be anything: the hotel operator taking a break; the overseas network overloaded somewhere; Dad playing with the phone on his end. Grey. He was thinking of Graham.

  At midnight, when Joanne still hasn’t returned, I begin to worry. I go down to the lobby but don’t see her anywhere. I return to the room and pace. I need to talk to Maryse and Derrick, try my parents again. But suddenly I can’t think of what I would say. Tomorrow.

  Joanne comes in after one. I am propped up in bed, flipping cards. “It’s not safe!” I say immediately. “You shouldn’t go out on your own at night!”

  “I know,” she says, calmer now. “But I needed to get out of this room, Bill. Are you all right?” When I nod she says, “Good. I’ll see you in the morning,” disappears into her room, and we don’t speak of it again.

  Every daylight hour, new clumps of sorialos arrive. After the first week the lawn in front of the Justico kampi is completely full, so the tent city leaks onto Cardinal Avenue and no one dares move them away. Suli arrives one afternoon with rice and kerosene and the pace of arrivals picks up. Most of those who’ve had their say stay on because this is suddenly a happening, an event, there’s an air of anticipation. But what can we do? The testimony gathers in great stacks of paper, details upon details that serve mainly to blur, it seems, rather than clarify. We know already about the killings, the disappearances, the massacres. We don’t know who ordered them, who to call to blame.

  From my chair in the corner I gaze for a moment out the window in the late-afternoon sun down on the sorialos stretching below us, a lake of quiet humanity going about their business of eating and sleeping, shitting and loving, talking and playing. I can hear, somewhere in the ceiling above me, our good-luck beacon: tokay, tokay, tokay. Six, seven, eight. On the lawn a boy and a girl pull on a piece of cloth, and in between some of the tents a strange game of soccer breaks out, the ball a lumpy mass of wire and plastic that bounces erratically off the sides of the various dwellings, the kids racing and laughing, nearly upending someone’s chamber pot, tripping over a pole then scrambling up and running on. For a moment I imagine the ball smashing over a kerosene stove and setting fire to a tent, the flames leaping up and igniting other tents then others. We have the makings of a disaster right here at our feet, but no one can bear to move them on, to tell them they can’t be heard.

  There’s no fire. The ball bounces off an old man who turns, smiling, and kicks at it awkwardly. Two other men join in and one spills his glass of beer stretching for the ball. The voice behind me continues and the stacks of paper grow and I wonder, how long will this take? My contract is simply for three months. I have no doubt this national grieving could continue a year, or two, or five, for that matter. But Joanne won’t stay past the three months, and I won’t stay without Joanne.

  “State your name,” Justice Sin says, and another ragged witness sits before us to have his say.

  18

  “Maybe we should have gone by helicopter after all,” Joanne says with a rueful smile when the Jeep gets stuck in the mud for the sixth or seventh time. We’re all covered in it, red-brown, soaked in everlasting rain, on this road now for five hours. I was the one who didn’t think we should arrive at Hoyaitnut by helicopter, like the soldiers who burned the place down. Bad optics. Symbolism isn’t everything we’re about, but it’s something.

  But maybe this is worse: Commission mired in mud. Someone simply could’ve spoken up, said we couldn’t get there by road this time of year. I wouldn’t have insisted if I’d known. Mrs. Grakala decided to stay in the capital – the conditions in the mountains are too rough for her. She said she would eagerly await our report.

  We climb out of the vehicle, step as carefully as we can onto the soggy grasses away from the mud, and watch while the soldiers winch us out. Ten minutes later we’re stalled again. This time it’s Sin Vello’s Jeep, and the road is so narrow there’s no way past. We’re in the mountains, though it’s hard to tell, the visibility is so poor. But there is a slight chill in the air, which seems joyously fresh, a relief after the stultifying heat and smog of the city. And a good diversion for Joanne – even with the mud her spirits have improved remarkably since we left the city. Maybe it’s her traveller’s soul, I think.

  We shelter under some enormous-leafed trees and soon are joined by the American Dr. Parker. He must be six foot-five and at least two hundred and fifty pounds, white-bearded and pink-skinned, his light blue eyes peering out of rain-fogged glasses.

  “We’re within ten klicks,” he says.

  “Does the road get any better?” Joanne asks.

  “It wasn’t this bad coming down.”

  We stand quietly for some minutes. Parker seems happy just to listen to the rain, watch the soldiers pull and pry the Jeep. The justice remains in the back. The faster the wheels spin the more liquid the road becomes beneath him.

  “Helicopters aren’t much fun in the rain either,” Parker says finally. “I lost three crew in Guatemala in a helicopter crash. Went right into the side of a mountain. This way at least we can walk in if it comes to that.”

  Joanne asks him about Guatemala and he shakes his head. “I’ve never felt more frightened for my staff. These were medical people, and I trained them in forensics myself. One of them had spent much of his career falsifying reports for the army – covering up torture, helping to keep political prisoners alive for more punishment. More than anybody else he knew what to look for. That was his problem – the army didn’t want him working for me. Velasquez. They hanged him in the village square, threw his arms and feet to the dogs down the road.”

  This little smile on his profes
sorial face, as if he isn’t saying the words he’s saying.

  The soldiers attach three different winches, strain like horses. One loses his footing and falls face-first into the slop; another pushes from behind and is sprayed by the spinning tires. Sin Vello sits in the back apparently unaware, a briefcase on his knees, files open.

  “Did you ever fear for your own life?” Joanne asks.

  “Not as much as I should’ve, probably,” Parker says. “I had my American passport. I thought, stupidly, they’d never dare do anything to me. It was supposed to be part of the reconciliation anyway. Then when they got Velasquez … Some men go home, you know, and some lash out. But I got very calm, and tried as hard as I could to keep it on a scientific level. They’re not used to it – it’s one of the things missing in so many of these countries. They’ve no investigatory skills. Instead the police just seize and terrorize people till they talk. They never think they’ll be held accountable.”

  Lower, lower in the mud until I’m sure the Jeep will never move again, and then improbably the winches take effect and Justice Sin’s Jeep is pulled free. Now there’s a rush of activity getting us all back in our vehicles before they bog down again. Our driver slams the gears, swears, bounces us off trees, but somehow we keep going despite the rain and mud.

  We arrive at Hoyaitnut much later in the day, after the rains have stopped but still with the humidity so thick we seem to be living in a cloud. There’s not much anyone would call a village here now, although Dr. Parker’s advance crew has erected several tents, and in some areas of intense green foliage there’s still evidence of charred remains. It’s only a few minutes to six and sundown happens in an eyeblink, but Parker takes us anyway to the old church ground. The area is so small I have a hard time imagining what sort of building might have stood here – perhaps a one-room shack, hardly space enough for ten people, not the sixty or seventy who supposedly crowded in for refuge.

  “Nobody was buried here,” Parker says soberly. Luki, the young woman who translates for the aides – Justice Sin didn’t walk up the steep slope – is hardly higher than Parker’s elbow. It’s her voice behind the earphones in the hearing room. In Kuantij she is velvety smooth. Parker points back to a clearing barely the size of a couple of driveways. “That’s where the helicopters landed,” he says. “The soldiers ran up the hill to get here. We scoured the area but all the spent casings were here. They seemed to know where to go and what they’d find.”