by Robin Winter
May 1968
Uli, Biafra
Wilton's blue Citroën bumped into the driveway and stopped by the back door of the clinic. Gilman could see the mud-spattered side of the car through her window in the office. A long pause before the doors swung open, but Gilman had already stripped off her gloves, choking on hope and excitement. Or was it fear?
Yes, she could see the other figures in the car. Wilton had done it. She'd managed to get Lindsey into Biafra. Out stepped Lindsey and a man who must be her bodyguard. Familiar, but she couldn't place him until he took out a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. The man she'd met in Wilton's house years ago. A man with no facial scars, no diagnostic features of tribal affinity. Excellent. She wouldn't have to protect him from Biafrans if no one could tell what he was. Wilton slid out from the driver's seat.
Two Federals smuggled across the lines by God and Wilton. Gilman could only guess how Wilton had done it. Bribes and friends? Gilman stopped on the porch looking down at the tall white woman walking toward the steps, mounting them with her slight swagger. Lindsey seemed to breathe fast. She met Gilman's eyes, but there was only that quickening in her breathing to show any emotion. Was it possible that Lindsey felt glad to see her?
"Dr. Gilman, I presume." Lindsey offered her hand.
"You came, Lindsey, you came." Gilman felt that she should hug her, but some doubt passed between them. She held Lindsey's hand between her own instead, a Nigerian greeting. "I see you, my friend."
Sunlight broke between them and the patter of rain swept through like an afterthought from the scurrying clouds overhead. Had Lindsey's face changed, shifted in expression? How calm and distant, how simply dressed in her lavender shirtwaist, a few darker spots on it from the rain, her hair in a neat chignon.
"You're looking pretty good," Lindsey said. Maybe Lindsey had always thought Gilman should lose weight. Gilman stamped on the thought.
"Oh, come on," Gilman said and waved Lindsey toward the nearest door, past the crowd of patients sitting and leaning in ragged rows. People still as pieces of wood, without the usual gossip and chatter of the days before the war. Conserving what little strength they had left.
Would Lindsey understand after today that what happened in this war happened to real people? People with plans, children and parents, lost treasures, lost land and still sheltering a little hope? Not the pages of numbers Lindsey received on her desk, but hungry humans with trembling hands, so starved they would fill their bellies with clay in order to sleep? After today, would she feel it?
Chapter 41: Lindsey
May 1968
Uli, Biafra
That same evening, returning from her Jeep tour of the area with Gilman and Oroko, Lindsey left Gilman to her work in the clinic and walked through the crowded compound. She felt Oroko's presence behind her.
People everywhere, she had to watch her step, because none seemed to have the energy to move out of her way. But could some be faking, could anyone here be more than he seemed? Oroko drifted in his silent way a few steps back. Thank God he didn't do that constantly in Ibadan, but here, he might be justified.
She spotted Wilton sitting by herself in a corner of the porch outside the hospital. Lindsey walked up the concrete stairs and nodded when Wilton did. She leaned over the porch wall and looked about. Oroko stood against the wall behind her.
The yard held massed people, unnaturally silent for a crowd in Africa. Nothing like the seethe and riot of a friendly marketplace. Most of those in line for the clinic sat on the ground and it seemed that even the slow shuffle forward taxed them. A baby whimpered, questing after a dry breast. Seeking comfort perhaps, the remembered ghost of what mother means. But it cost too much effort. Lindsey saw the baby slump back, the mother not seeming to note the whimpering as it drifted down into restive sleep. The mother's hand as wrinkled and old as a grandmother's curved around the baby's skull, her huge eyes unfocused on some inner distance.
Lindsey looked back and wondered what Oroko felt. Maybe nothing. These weren't his people. He seemed to her like a man with no one of his own. Always exquisitely remote. She hadn't seen him express much, ever, except when he laughed at some of the things Sandy said. He was like her—a male Lindsey concentrated on being nobody's fool, efficient, productive, free of sentiment when he cast his cold clear gaze on everything passing by.
She stared at Wilton's dark head, recognizing threads of early silver. She supposed Wilton and Sandy were her people when you came down to it. She felt safe worrying about Wilton. In the long run Wilton was someone she could take care of and protect. Come to that, how was Wilton doing? When had Wilton last painted a painting? Lindsey remembered the great dragon that cavorted over the wall of Wilton's dormitory room at Wellesley. The paintings with birds of delicate feather and glorious color. Sketches with blurring splashes of scarlet and daffodil, ivory black and the lapis of falling night.
The Nigeria of memory with all its chaos and color and jubilant noise had fled. Perhaps there wasn't anything left to paint. Now this graveyard hush of gray human shapes moving in slow dance through the courtyard. Lindsey looked out at the people and she saw both past and present like a collage of crazy spliced images.
The sun neared the horizon and shadows raced, stretched and deepened from violet to indigo. Lindsey's sweat marked the porous concrete where her palms pressed. She'd done her job, toured the facilities here, heard the stories, felt hope and need beating on her from every foreign volunteer who'd come to serve these desperate people. But couldn't they see it? This wasn't a time for charity. It was time for the swift killing blow, the end of pain and suffering. Hope meant stringing death out, beat by beat. Hope here equaled ever greater suffering. Then Wilton spoke.
"This is far from the entire story." Wilton sounded as if she read aloud from a book. "Most here are minorities, the small remnants of ancient peoples who haven't the infrastructure to support them in a time of disruption. Forced from their lands they flee the guns, not trusting the Federals to discriminate between the real rebel, and their own bad luck in living in the wrong region."
"Are you telling me the Biafrans themselves aren't unified?" Lindsey asked.
"The Biafrans are resourceful and intent. And they believe the Nigerian Federals have genocide on their agenda."
"You were right before," Lindsey said. "You told me the foreign do-gooders had to leave Biafra, that they would keep this war going with their misguided charity. We have to take off the controls on how we deal with them. We must get them out."
"But how can any of us look at this and not put out her hand?" Wilton asked.
Wilton's eyes held no pity and Lindsey could not understand what she wanted. How could she answer that? Did Wilton want her charity for this and by getting it continue this travesty even longer? Rationally that wasn't excusable.
"You will want to push the bombing of civilian targets," Wilton said. "You must give me time, let me know exactly when that permission is granted. I have people I must relocate. We'll talk on our drive back."
Lindsey glanced away, her attention caught by Gilman emerging from the next building. Gilman had already pulled off her green scrubs and now yanked the strings on her mask, wadding them together and throwing them back into the room she'd left. Into a basket, Lindsey assumed, not on a floor. After all they were supposed to be grown up now. Even here, in the anteroom of Gehenna.
"Hey guys."
Gilman sounded tired. Lindsey wondered how much was lack of food. Simple. An equation based on energy. How many calories to burn. Those blue eyes seemed enormous. Someone else must be taking over her duties while she hosted Lindsey.
"We should eat—they'll be waiting for us in the mess. And it is a mess, let me tell you."
Lindsey felt her stomach growl. An obscenity that she could feel hunger here and now.
Wilton rose to her feet. If anything Wilton had become even more otherworldly. With all these ghosts around, no wonder. She looked as though she could vanish into shadow, slip int
o darkness. Lindsey shrugged away the fancy. She'd persuade Wilton to stay in the West, stay safe with her and Sandy. Sooner or later, Wilton must see sense and agree.
Lindsey arranged the contracts and supplies for the government that made the Federal army's advances possible. Why should she feel guilty for doing the job? She must do it better, faster, with greater efficiency. If she'd learned nothing else, Biafra must fall. She belonged to Nigeria, should never have come to Biafra, never have let curiosity and an inappropriate awareness of shame drive her to say yes to Wilton's request to come see this doomed rebellion.
Chapter 42: Gilman
May 1968
Umuahia, Biafra
The next morning came in gray. They walked together down the concrete steps out to the car waiting in the open yard. Four thirty with the little birds singing. Birds too small to eat, all feather and bones. Early for anyone to have the wit to talk, but Gilman heard her own voice going on and on.
"American firms make scads of money for the Nigerian Federal Government. You, Lindsey, make those relationships work. So you can tell people to listen. Tell them what they hear about our suffering is real. You could do a kind of blackmail, maybe? Lindsey, the relief flights coming in to Biafra must be protected. Stop Federal mercenaries from gunning them down. You can make policies change. I know you have more power than you like to show."
She heard the begging note in her own voice. "You see we provide for children. Women. The elderly. The dispossessed. Most not even Igbo—minority tribes caught between. Children and mothers and elderly refugees, raped, maimed, forced from their homes and meager resources where they once scraped by. Now starving inch by inch. Lindsey, you must see."
Gilman touched Lindsey's arms as if she could stop her here until an agreement formed between them.
"I see, so much." Lindsey said.
Lindsey's face held renewed calm, but Gilman remembered yesterday Lindsey wiping her mouth after vomiting, both of them caught for a moment in revolting immediacy. It had taken such a small thing. A dead woman: no more than offal crawling with maggots, the simple detail of an eyeball skinned over, a fly walking on it. That was all it took. Gilman hadn't even noticed until she turned at the strange noise and saw Lindsey bent over. Then all she had thought for a terrible instant was—what a waste of good food.
What is left to move us? Facing Lindsey now, her hands tightened on Lindsey's forearms until she saw Lindsey flinch. She hadn't meant to do that, hadn't meant to make Lindsey feel her own weakness and she couldn't tell if Lindsey would forgive.
Wilton broke their intensity.
"I've got to get Lindsey back across the battle lines before the situation changes. We must get on the road. There's a petrol place a few miles down. If I don't reach them early they'll be out of fuel. We have much to discuss on the way."
Gilman stood watching, waving until the blue vehicle turned the corner, Lindsey's hand raised in good-bye out the front window.
Chapter 43: Gilman
June 1968
Uli Area, Biafra
Only days after Lindsey's visit, Gilman heard rumor of a new Biafran offensive. Action at last. Smuggled hoarded whiskey popped out of hidden caches and a celebration began. Gilman wanted a party, wanted a change. She felt as if Lindsey's visit had wound her tighter than ever.
"Hey, Doc," Jantor said. "Let's go have a drink. Biafra Rises Bar."
"Sure," Allingham said behind her. After a moment's hesitation, Gilman accepted too. He'd probably meant her alone but since Allingham included himself in the invitation, there couldn't be any risk.
The streets throbbed that afternoon with pride and sentimentality. Radios crackled a chaos of songs. She hurried along at Jantor's side, glancing up once to note his tense focus. The music was so loud in the air that she felt the hard earth pulse beneath her sandals. The crowd thickened, bumping them in good spirits. Jantor reached out and put his arm lightly around her, resting his hand on her elbow. She stiffened, then accepted the touch. She caught the look of distaste that flashed over Allingham's face and felt a surge of defiance. So what if Mr. Pukeface didn't like it?
Jantor ducked his head to pass through the low doorway. In the small bar, about fifteen men crowded around the tables, talking and laughing. Two were white mercenaries she didn't recognize. All knew Jantor, waved, raised their glasses.
Jantor approached a corner crate for their table, a cluster of Biafran soldiers melting away, waving them to it like an offering. Allingham drifted in another direction as if unwilling to sit with them, then returned when Jantor began to pour the whiskey.
It took a drink before Gilman could relax enough to talk again with Jantor. Allingham, sullen, sat consuming whiskey. Gilman felt a twinge of pity for him. He wasn't a bad doctor really, even if he was a bit of an ass. And thank God he'd been willing to stay in this chaos. Two men died on his table this afternoon, messy cases. She looked up and found Jantor staring at her. He poured her another drink. It was good whiskey.
"What about a dance?" He cocked his head at her.
Gilman always hated the blaring nationalistic tunes, but tonight they seemed fitting. All evening the rhythm had drawn her into a restless yearning. God, she'd really lost it hadn't she? Foolish? Perhaps, but she no longer cared. She smiled back.
"Sure," she said.
The room filled, couples dancing belly to belly and breast to chest with the light of alcohol in their eyes. Jantor pulled her close against him, his features harsh in the uncertain shadows.
"Biafran style," he said and they began to move to the music.
Though surprised, she didn't tense—too relaxed by the whiskey, she enjoyed his warm length against her. She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked up at him. The flickering light of the kerosene lanterns gave his face an intoxicating ruthlessness. He bent his head down to watch her face, firm hands drawing her with him. He said nothing and had lost his smile.
Gilman caught a glimpse of Allingham staring after them. Gilman saw him pour another glass, the bottle glittering. She no longer felt ridiculous—the whiskey gave everything an attractive blurred quality. Allingham didn't matter anyway. The muscles of Jantor's arm moved under her fingers. Gilman heard herself sigh and abandoned herself to the pleasures of the dance, delighting in the feel of his body against her.
After a time they sat again, Gilman with reluctance. It was a damn good thing no one could read her mind. She drank her whiskey and felt the disorienting burn of the alcohol reassure her. Allingham swallowed loudly, but Gilman scarcely noticed, heeding the distracting gentleness in Jantor's gaze. The throbbing restless Biafran hymn on the radio jarred her into remembering the coming offensive. Fear for this man hit her, shocking her by its intensity. She pulled her gaze away from him.
"Want another?" Jantor touched the nearly empty bottle of Scotch.
"Umm..." a surge of dizzy warmth told her she'd had more than enough, but she didn't want responsibility. After all, how often did one have the chance to celebrate death in advance? Dear God, now she was thinking like Wilton. She hadn't thought much about Wilton since Jantor first showed up. Odd, that.
"Sure," she said aloud. What the hell, why not. "It's a fine Scotch."
"Damn right. Only the best." He filled her glass again.
"Jesus!" Allingham exploded from the table, with a violence that startled both of them. He headed for the door and vanished in the mob.
"What's wrong with him?" Gilman asked, puzzled.
"Oh, I don't know." Jantor turned his glass in his fingers and smiled at the crate top. "Probably time for his nightly cold shower."
Gilman laughed. She cut it short and took another swallow of whiskey. Slow down.
"He's a good doctor, but he's still such an ass."
"Yeah, so I've seen." He continued to play with the glass after one quick, almost apprehensive glance at her. Gilman watched the rough brown fingers with drunken fascination. Strong hands, long boned. Attractive hands. Absently she reached out to finger the edge of his
sleeve, absorbed in the play of his fingers against the clear glass and amber whiskey.
"We're both a bit under the influence," Jantor said. "How about a walk?"
Gilman lifted her head, her heart giving a lurch of expectation.
"All right. I need some fresh air." That at least, was true.
They threaded their way between the haphazard tables and guzzling soldiers to the door. Jantor put his arm around her, steadying her with his body. Funny how the assertive contact seemed to increase the unsteadiness of her knees.
Outside the streets had emptied, dusk had fallen, dimming the outlines of buildings in a deep lavender haze, black-out shades allowing a gleam of light to edge an occasional window while sounds of merriment came from within. A few steps past a half-destroyed hotel, Jantor stopped. He turned her to face him and pulled her with an edge of roughness into his arms to kiss her. A sense of being trapped rose in Gilman, but when his hold slackened again, she no longer wanted flight. She reached up with intoxicated wonder to touch his mouth. It wasn't just the whiskey that made her tremble. He kissed her again, taking his time.
"Let's go," she said, and he loosened his hold with reluctance, keeping her against his side. They made their way along the street, through the black evening to her deserted tent, and to her astonishment he stopped short before her door.
"You're sure?" his voice husky in the black shadows.
She tried to laugh and grasped his hands, drawing him after her.
It was dark in the tent, and darker still when Jantor closed and locked the door. He moved away from her, as though he'd memorized where to find her lantern, leaving her alone, shaken by the pounding of her own blood. She tasted panic and exultation and she realized she'd passed the point of no return. Gilman suppressed an urge to laugh wildly at her own recklessness.
The flare of a match startled her. Jantor bent over the Coleman lantern, pumping up the kerosene, his hard face strangely altered by the warm dim light and flickering shadows thrown by the match.
