Burridge Unbound

by Alan Cumyn

  Rubble, collapsed walls, charred wood. The jungle already growing over a good part of it, well on the way to wiping it clean.

  In increasing darkness we head back down the hill to where the soldiers have been erecting our tents. I’m wet and dirty and bone-tired just from sitting all day as a piece of baggage. But it feels good to get out of the hearing room and away from the silent expectation of the sorialos. I hadn’t realized how relentless the pressure was becoming, as if somehow our little commission is going to relieve the pain of thousands.

  The tents are grey canvas, ripped in some spots with no floors and therefore no real refuge from mosquitoes. Fortunately we’re high enough to be out of malaria danger, but Joanne has us on anti-malarials anyway. What’s another pill among the crowd? I hang my kerosene lamp from the centre pole and try to weigh down the bottom tent fringes with rocks and bits of luggage. It’s pointless, I know – Santa Irenian mosquitoes drill you, then move off quick as houseflies, so you rarely get the satisfaction of killing them.

  Fortunately Joanne brings a mosquito coil and lights it for me. Then a soldier arrives with a pan of hot water and some towels and I wash myself, retrieve some clean clothes from my luggage. Such a simple act, and yet I feel renewed, like Joanne’s Hindu woman on the train. I extinguish my light, then grope for the tent flap and step into the night. Joanne’s tent is next to mine; I find her outside it in a yellow rain jacket, seated on a wet log with her knees pulled up, eyes closed, face covered in mist and turned skyward. The whole encampment has a ghostly look to it: the white tents disappearing in black shadows, the lamps glowing eerily in the mist, the press of the jungle, sky and mountains all around us, swallowed in black.

  Some soldiers stand around a fire, their weapons leaning teepee-fashion a little ways off. I hesitate, but pass on.

  “I used to have visions of a place like this,” I say.

  “What’s that?” Joanne asks.

  “In captivity. They gave me drugs and I had visions of a mountain encampment like this – the fire, the weapons leaning like that, the blackness. I remember a really light feeling – like flying, hovering. And Josef was there. My keeper. He kept telling me I was dead, to leave him alone. It was just like this. Only there were children quite often. It was a Kartouf camp, not army.”

  We find the mess tent – circus-sized, almost, with eight or ten tables surrounded by metal chairs. Justice Sin, changed now into a newly pressed safari suit that looks big enough to clothe a tank, motions for us to join him at his table. We pull up chairs, and Luki, the translator, frees herself from talking with a young, mud-covered soldier and sits between us and the justice. The conversation is light and friendly – “What a day!” we say in various ways, laughing and nodding. Dinner is some sort of spiced stew with a bean sauce and supira. I ask for water, but the cook insists I try a type of jelly instead. As soon as I see it my stomach convulses.

  “God, Bill, what is it?”

  “Take it away. Take it!”

  The cook starts to explain what it is so I grab the plate and hurl it off the table.

  “I’m sorry! But I can’t have it. Damn!”

  Sudden rage blotting out everything else.

  “This is not harmful. This is–” Luki starts to say.

  “I know what it is!” It seems impossible to explain so I rise and leave, fists doubled, face on fire. Jesus! One of the soldiers looks up from his meal and for a moment I imagine my thumbs at his throat. I surge past him, through the flaps of the tent and into the darkness.

  “Bill!”

  Jesus.

  I keep walking, but they won’t let you. They keep after you, so I turn suddenly and knock her down. Joanne scurries back in the mud and I try to breathe, calm myself.

  “Bill, it’s me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you all right?’

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing?”

  A crowd of soldiers around me now. Even Sin Vello has made it to his feet to see what’s happening.

  “It’s nothing. I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you breathing like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re about to go to war.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

  Slowly, slowly, I loosen my fists. I won’t let them get me. Clearly I won’t. It’s not going to be like last time.

  I make it to my tent, sit inside with the poison of the mosquito coil. This flimsy cot. At least it’s off the ground. I’ve done my share of sleeping on the ground.

  They leave me alone for a while and then Joanne comes.

  “Bill?”

  Breathing. For days and days I’ve forgotten my breathing.

  “I’ve got some food. Why are you sitting in the dark?” I don’t answer. She brushes aside the flap. “Can I come in?”

  “Have you brought the straitjacket?”

  She steps in and puts the tray of food on the ground, then fumbles for a moment and lights my lamp. The suddenness of it strains my eyes, makes everything overwhelmingly white for a time. Another reminder. This wasn’t such a good idea after all. I should’ve stayed in the Merioka where practically nothing would remind me of this country.

  She hands me the tray, then sits beside me on the cot and we nearly tip it. When we’re righted she puts her hand on the back of my neck. “You never need to hit me,” she says.

  “No.”

  “You never do. It’s just me. And you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “If it happens again I’ll sue you for millions.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not loros either.”

  “U.S. dollars?”

  “Huge ones.”

  The smoke from the mosquito coil poisoning the air. The smell of the lamp. Darkness pressing in from outside.

  “They served me linala,” I say. “That jelly stuff. It’s made somehow from tree bark. Try some. It’s not completely tasteless, but it has so little taste it’s revolting. And there’s no nutrition. Zero. For months it was the only the thing the Kartouf fed me.”

  “Did you use your life preserver?” she asks.

  I’m looking at it, I think. Of course I used it. If you hadn’t been there – “Yes. It could’ve been worse,” I reply, and I ask her to tell me a story.

  “What story?”

  “I don’t know. One of your stories. The one about the Hindu lady.”

  “I told you that already.”

  “If you can’t think of another one then tell me that again. I just want to sit here and breathe poison and listen to your voice while you rub my neck.”

  “So it doesn’t matter what I say, just how I say it?”

  “You know I’d fall apart without you.”

  “Would you?”

  Breathing the smoke deep into my lungs. No mosquitoes going to get me, hoo boy!

  “I’d be dead or in the loony bin. I’ve no doubt.”

  I spoon in the food, chew it joylessly. After a few minutes I put the tray on the ground, careful not to spill the glass of water.

  “Tell me about one of your boyfriends. The most important one.”

  “Oh God,” she says.

  “Was it Jeremy? The guy who abandoned you in Lagos?”

  “No,” she says, sighing deeply. This might not be the right thing to ask about. But she responds after a moment.

  “There was a New Zealander,” she says, “a young doctor, Daniel. Tall and wiry with bright hazel eyes and beautiful hands. A pianist’s hands – long, tapered, strong fingers. He played the piano like he was born to it.”

  “I hate him already,” I say, and she laughs. My hands are thin but not graceful, not skilled.

  “We were a team. I met him in Mozambique, and we were together in Sudan, and went travelling in Nepal. I visited his family in Auckland, and he came to Ottawa in February, hated the snow. It was very, very intense. Everything gets magnified, you know, when you’re dog-tired and filthy and stretched past what you t
hink you can do. That’s just how he wants his life. He got sick in Nepal, but wouldn’t slow down. It turned into pneumonia and he still wanted to trek in the Himalayas. He couldn’t turn anything down, it was all experience.”

  “But he was all right?”

  “Oh, he survived. He always does. But he had a hard time turning down other women. He has a very magnetic personality, shall we say. The first couple of times I figured it was the stress of the situation. But he could be relentless. Especially after you break up with him.”

  She goes quiet, the hiss of the lamp, her soft breathing.

  “So it took some willpower to keep the separation?”

  “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “But I had to seize responsibility. That’s what I told myself. It sounds like something from a self-help book. But it’s true. If you keep making bad decisions you can’t expect your life to turn out.”

  There’s a lot more she could say, I’m sure, but she lapses into silence.

  “Where is he now?” I ask.

  “Bosnia. I didn’t want to make the trip.”

  No. You came here with me instead.

  I change tack. “What about your first kiss?” I ask, and she knocks my shoulder sharply.

  “I can’t talk about that,” she says. “It’s too painful!” But she does anyway. “Danny McDougall. Oh, he was beautiful. Long wispy blond hair, blue eyes, those high cheekbones. His skin was so smooth. I wanted to have his skin. Grade five.”

  “You had your first boyfriend in grade five?”

  “He was a choirboy, had this crystal-clear voice. He got to do all the solos. But I desperately wanted to sing ‘Silent Night’ in the Christmas pageant. There was an audition. I remember my mother came and I had on a green velvet dress with white ribbons, my hair was in braids like Anne of Green Gables. And Danny McDougall came up to me a minute before I was supposed to go on. He just put his hand behind my head and kissed me as if he’d been doing it for years. Then I stumbled onto the stage, flustered, and sang dead flat. Mrs. Dorchester at the piano actually stopped halfway through the first verse and had me start again, but I couldn’t get it. He was perfect, of course. And he never spoke to me after that. Years later and I still couldn’t figure out if I wanted to break his teeth or have him kiss me again.”

  “Could you sing it now?” I ask.

  “Oh no,” she says and looks away, a little flustered.

  “Please.” I put my hand on her arm.

  “I wouldn’t be any better.”

  “Sure you would.” She takes a deep breath, silently pleased, I think, at the invitation. And then she sings, quietly, beautifully, her eyes soft and happy, mouth round and full and tender-looking.

  “Thank you,” I say, and applaud, and she turns down all other requests, lays me down on the cot instead and starts to rub my back.

  “What about your first kiss?” she asks.

  But I tell her a different story. I tell her about the time my brother Graham fell off the roof on a construction job, how he stayed in mid-air all night long, or at least that’s what it felt like. He was in Edmonton, my parents in Ottawa, and I was in Kingston going to school. My mother phoned to say Graham had fallen off a roof but she didn’t know how bad it was, she and Dad were just getting on the plane, she’d call in the morning. So all night long Graham was floating in my mind. I didn’t think to call the hospital. In a way I wasn’t in a hurry to know. If he was dead he’d be dead a long time. This way at least he was still possibly alive.

  I talk stupidly about the girl I’d met that evening at a party, of all things. How I was distracted by the news of my brother but not distracted enough that I didn’t find her attractive. Only I didn’t follow up on it right away. It was only much later, at the end of the school year, the day before my final exam, that I saw her again, in a laundromat. She’d remembered my talking about Graham and had asked how he was, and I said he was making a full recovery, isn’t that great? Some really lucky things happen in life. She was wearing a tank top and short shorts and was reading Hegel. And all the way home I thought, why didn’t I ask her out this time? Because it was the end of the year and I was graduating and it was too late.… I got all the way home, dumped my laundry, and ran back to see her, but she was gone by then. This silly question of timing. Of knowing when to do the right thing.

  I tell the story and Joanne rubs my back and I think, what if I turn over and pull her towards me? It seems as if it would be the easiest thing to do. Well, if the cot were bigger or more stable. I imagine myself rolling over and dumping us both. Would that be so bad? We’d laugh and then I could pull her towards me …

  I think about it but can’t make myself move. There’s every reason not to, starting with the fact that I’m married – still married, it still means something to me. Doesn’t it? But such a simple act – turning and reaching. Men fall in love with their nurses all the time; sometimes nurses with their patients. Sometimes.

  “You’ve stopped talking,” she says, leaning close so I’m filled with the smell of her. Nothing store-bought – just pure, alive, mountain-camp woman. There’s a right time, I think. It can’t be missed.

  “Are you asleep?” she asks.

  Breathing, breathing. There’s a right time and it can’t be missed.

  She rises, extinguishes the light.

  “Joanne.”

  “Yes?”

  Breathing, breathing. In the next moment everything will be different. One way or the other. I turn and was right – catch myself tipping. Joanne bends down to help and I pull her so that she falls on top of me.

  “Aak!” she says, starting backwards. I let go reluctantly.

  “Did I hurt you?” I ask. We scramble to our feet clumsily in the dark. There’s a right time and it can’t be missed … but this isn’t it. Words come out – fine, okay, sorry – and the moment passes. Joanne steps on the plate and knocks over my water. It doesn’t matter. Her haste to leave. I step towards her and kick over the cot by mistake. We could never fit on it anyway. Stupid.

  “Good night,” she says while I’m struggling with the cot. I don’t have any matches either to relight the lamp. I mean to ask her but shouldn’t – just let her go.

  I pee into the waterglass and fling it into the darkness outside my tent, lie on the cot rigid, breathing poison, listening for mosquitoes.

  19

  “When we’ve located the field,” Dr. Parker says, “the first thing we do is mark it off with cords and pickets. In this case, because of the rain, we’ve put up the tent to keep the ground dry. We don’t want people running around, digging indiscriminately.” His voice becomes oddly modulated when speaking to us, as if he’s narrating a nature show, talking to a camera. He pauses and Luki fills in the Kuantij for Justice Sin, who is balanced in a canvas field chair – I’m not sure how it supports his weight.

  “We scrape off the entire overburden first,” Parker says. “The first several inches – grass, shrubbery, loose sticks. Just enough to expose the soil. The key is to make sure nobody roars ahead and starts digging up particular spots. It must be done systematically, like an archaeological dig.”

  There’s an odd light in this huge tent. It’s raining outside and grey, but the tent glows, and Parker, especially in his khaki clothes, looks almost fluorescent. He has several assistants with him – young master’s students who dress in jeans and old army shirts, the men all sporting new beards, the one woman striking-looking with a beaked nose, long, greasy blonde hair, and large-veined hands.

  “You can tell by the way the soil is drying just where the graves are,” Parker says. “The older soil is greyish on top. The earth that was disrupted more recently has a darker tinge to it. It isn’t settled and packed in the same way. Can you see that?” He points to a faint oblong patch in the dirt. Once my eyes get accustomed I pick out seven or eight similarly discoloured areas in the space around us. “No picks, no shovels, no hoes. We know where we’re digging. Slow and steady, trowels and bru
shes. We don’t disturb anything, we’re just – exposing it.” Parker bends as he talks, whisks at the dirt with a small brush. Two of his students join in. Nothing happens quickly. It’s even slower, in a way, than listening to testimony. My legs start to tremble, so I walk for a bit then come back, stand while they poke and whisk. Some while later I have to go out again, and when I come back this time something starts to emerge from the dirt.

  “All right, we have a ribcage,” Parker says finally, his voice still calm, still narrating the documentary. “Notice that we don’t pull anything out. We want to leave everything as intact as possible. Notice too that we’re being very careful to observe every small piece of evidence in the vicinity. Is there a bullet nearby? Is there anything that will give a clue as to the cause of death? If we want to put the perpetrators away we need evidence. It’s as simple as that. Don’t get too close.”

  The ribcage seems small, the bones stained with black soil and some green mould. They’re only down a foot or two, but the dug-up dirt is already accumulating on the side. One of Parker’s students combs through it to see if anything has been overlooked. It takes so long, but this time I can’t pull away, I’m chained here, fascinated, as the skeleton slowly emerges – twisted, shrunken, strangely peaceful, a deflated person with stained trousers, bits of shirt, belt still intact. The sandals made from old rubber tires. The blue kerchief still tied around the eyes. Parker marks down everything in excruciating detail – the name and position of every bone found, the numbers of the photographs his assistants take, the condition of the artifacts.

  “Note the twine that we’ve found down here, the position of the hands and wrists. How do we know that it’s a male? By the arch in the iliac crest of the pelvis, the narrow sciatic notch, the triangular pubis. In the cranium the large mastoid processes, the strongly developed nuchal musculature ridges. We can tell that the victim is left-handed because of the relative length of the left upper-extremity bones compared to the right. As well, note the extra bevelling on the scapular posterior glenoid rim which is not evident on the right side. Now, when we look at the cranium, we can see from the bevelling here that the first bullet entered in the posterior left parietal.…”