by James Green
The other Sisters were now standing together by the door. Sister Philomena turned to them.
‘Collect only what you can carry in one hand and come out to the Land Rovers.’
‘And you, Sister, are you coming?’ asked the priest.
She wanted with all her heart to go, but leaving the girls alone to face whatever was coming would haunt her for as long as she lived and destroy finally and forever the small idea of faith she fought daily to keep alive. To leave would be to kill even a pretence of belief. It would, in a sense, kill her as surely as a bullet in the head. Yet she feared death, the kind of death that might be coming, and she feared even more what might come before death. A good driver in the bush, she had sometimes gone out with the Medical Sisters. If she did the driving, more people could be seen. Twice in the past year they had come upon evidence of where the soldiers or police had been. The shock had lasted days. It was not just death or the dead. She had seen the dead and the dying before, but only from old age, disease or accident, not from butchery. She always blotted out these scenes, refused to remember.
But now a memory came, the crying baby sitting in the dust next to its gutted mother, who had no face. The other bodies, women, children, babies or the old, all in odd and awkward positions and all mutilated in some way or another. Only this one crying baby left unaccountably alive. She didn’t remember much about leaving that place of horror. She vaguely remembered the Sisters helping one or two survivors who had crept out of the bush and she remembered being given the baby to carry. They had left the place as quickly as possible, because the scene was quite fresh and the perpetrators would still have been nearby.
The next time it was a family: mother, father, two young children and a baby. The heat, flies, and scavengers had had about two days to reduce the corpses to what they found by the roadside. The Sisters took the spades from the top of their Land Rover and buried what there was. She had been able to help bury the bodies and join in the prayers and drive on.
The Medical Sisters, who saw such things more often than she did, had told her that they were prepared to take calculated risks with their lives. They knew the army or police would come for them one day, but they would stay and work until that day came.
Now that day had come. Finally Sister Philomena spoke.
‘I’ll stay, Father. I’ll try and get as many girls away as I can. After that, we’re in God’s hands.’
The Irish and the Belgian Sisters came out of the school, walked past and got into the second Land Rover. The young Ugandan Sister came and stood beside her.
‘May I stay also?’
‘Would it do any good to talk to you about this?’ the priest asked her in a resigned voice.
The young Sister shook her head and looked at the ground.
‘I’ll pray for you,’ he said and looked towards the school, ‘pray for you all.’
‘I hope you all reach somewhere safe,’ Sister Philomena said. ‘Goodbye Thad,’ she added fondly.
Neither smiled. It wasn’t that sort of farewell.
The Land Rovers pulled away and were almost immediately lost to sight in their own dust. Silence returned. The heat of the day was beginning to make itself felt.
The two women turned and went back into the school.
Sister Philomena sorted out a group of about sixty who came from places which could be reached by three days’ walking and split them into four groups, according to the direction of their villages. She allocated the most sensible girls to be in charge and added five of the very youngest from the distant villages to each group, bringing the total to eighty. She briefly instructed them in the rudiments of direction-finding, explained about resting and spacing food stops, and made very clear the importance of avoiding any vehicles which might carry police or soldiers. She equipped and provisioned them as best she could, prayed with them, and sent them on their way. She knew that groups of twenty were far too big, but by sending eighty girls away and keeping twenty at the school she had balanced the probabilities as best she could. Now all she could do was wait.
It was soldiers who came, not police. They arrived at dusk on the same day, about thirty of them in an open Land Rover and four lorries. Sister Philomena went out and stood in front of the school as soon as she heard them coming.
The soldiers jumped out of the lorries and stood silent, looking at her. She had come out alone, instructing the young Ugandan Sister to stay with the remaining girls in the dining hall. The soldiers were heavily armed. They were quiet but it was the quiet of interest and anticipation, not of discipline. An officer got out of the Land Rover, dusting his uniform as he walked towards her. He came to attention in front of her and, surprising her, gave a smart salute.
‘Good evening, Sister. I am Captain Nduma. We will be requisitioning equipment from the school and staying for the night. We will leave tomorrow. I trust we will have your full co-operation?’
He spoke very good English and gave her a beautiful smile. His combat uniform was clean and smart, his leather belt and holster highly polished. He was a big man in his early to mid-twenties. He gave no impression of malevolence, rather the reverse.
Against the odds, she began to hope.
‘You may take what you need. Will I get something in writing to show what you have taken?’
He laughed. He had an attractive laugh. ‘Of course, Sister. This is the army, not a group of bandits. Everything will be properly done. May we go to your office? My sergeant will take the men and look over the school and see what we require.’
She turned and walked towards the school. ‘Come with me, please.’
The captain motioned to a sergeant who in turn began to give orders to the men. Captain Nduma went with Sister Philomena to her office, where he took off his cap.
‘May I use your desk, Sister?’
This was not what she had expected. His correctness unnerved her.
‘Of course.’
Captain Nduma went to her chair, put his peaked cap on the desk, undid his belt, and put his holster next to his cap. Sister Philomena noticed that the holster flap was undone.
‘Will you have a chair, Sister?’
She brought a chair from a corner of the room and sat down, facing him.
‘Is your school well equipped?’
‘Yes, I think so, all things taken into account.’
Captain Nduma smiled again.
‘Everything is always taken into account. You understand, we will have to take many things. We have a wide area to cover and we must be as well equipped as possible to round up the insurgents.’
‘Insurgents? There are no insurgents here.’
‘Indeed, Sister? You sound very sure. Is that because you have specific information?’
She recognised at once her incaution.
‘No, I have no specific information, no information at all. I don’t know anything about insurgents.’
‘So often, people tell me that they know nothing at all about insurgents, assuring me that there are none in their district. They fail to see the essential inconsistency of that position. That is because they are not educated people like you and I.’ His smile disappeared and his voice changed. ‘If you know anything, Sister, it would be better to tell me now. If you do know anything, you will certainly tell me before I leave.’
‘Is that a threat, Captain?’
She was trying hard to get the headmistress into her tone.
Captain Nduma smiled again.
‘Very much so, Sister. Would you like me to give you some demonstration of just how much a threat it is?’
He pulled his automatic from its holster and laid it in front of him. The Sister and the headmistress both disappeared at once and Philomena, the frightened, powerless woman, was in their place.
‘No, I need no demonstration.’
In the pause that followed, she became aware of a confused noise beyond the office door, bangs and crashes and, further off, screams.
‘What is happening, Capta
in?’
She had stayed voluntarily. Now she must do her duty. If she had nothing else, she still had her duty. She was a professed Sister and knew and respected the discipline of her order. Her voice now carried some authority, without confrontation but also without fear. She had a right and a duty to ask. She asked again. Captain Nduma fingered his pistol and kept his eyes on her. He was thinking, making a decision. Then he made up his mind.
‘My men are taking what we need, everything else will be rendered useless. Nothing,’ he continued pointedly, ‘will be left which might give aid or comfort to the enemy, nothing at all.’
She understood perfectly.
Suddenly the door burst open. It was the young Sister. She was breathless.
‘They’re breaking everything, everything, and taking everything they don’t break. They say they’ll take the girls when they go.’
Sister Philomena stood up. The sergeant appeared in the doorway, casually pointing his automatic rifle in their general direction.
The young Sister came to the desk and faced the captain.
‘Make them stop. You can’t do this.’
Captain Nduma picked up his pistol and shot her once through the face. The noise of the shot exploded off the concrete walls and filled the room. Philomena was only vaguely aware of the way the young nun’s head was thrown back, pulling her whole body into the air before she fell dead on the floor. As she recovered from the noise, Captain Nduma rose and, still holding his pistol, came around the desk. She tried to think of a prayer but nothing came, only the echoes of the terrible bang. He strode past Philomena and shouted at the sergeant, who left sullenly, then returned to the desk and sat down, putting his pistol back in its holster.
Sister Philomena looked at the body on the floor. A dark red pool was forming under the young nun’s headwear, which was already blood-soaked. There was a hole between the bridge of her nose and her left eye, out of which a small amount of blood oozed.
From the desk, Captain Nduma spoke calmly.
‘Please, Sister, be seated again, everything is in order.’
Philomena obeyed. Captain Nduma smiled and pulled his chair closer to the desk.
‘I’m afraid my sergeant will now be more brutal than is essentially necessary. I had to tell him that if he ever points his weapon in my direction again it will be him I kill and not anyone standing between us. He does not take reprimands well.’
As he spoke, the screams, closer now, began again. Philomena, lonely and afraid, sat staring at her hands in her lap.
‘What will happen to me?’
‘You will be killed, Sister. But don’t worry, that is all that will happen to you. You have my word. In fact,’ his voice became softer, ‘I will do it myself. You will feel nothing. I don’t make a mess of such things.’
It was as if thanks were expected. ‘Are you taking the girls?’
‘The men need them.’
‘And what will happen to them?’
‘What do you think?’
‘But after, what will happen to them … after?’
‘If we are in a position to sell them, we shall. If not, we will leave them at some village or other. If we are in the bush,’ and he shrugged, ‘we will kill them. It would not be an act of kindness to leave them in the bush alone, without resources.’
‘Just like …’ she inclined her head towards the body.
‘That was quite different. She was young and pretty and certainly a virgin. There might have been trouble sharing her out. Sometimes it is necessary for me to assert my authority by depriving my men of something they want. I knew I would have to kill her as soon as I saw her. She was kind enough to co-operate, however unknowingly. She was what the Sisters used to call “One of God’s good little acts”.’
‘Sisters? What Sisters?’
‘I was educated by Sisters like yourself until I was eleven, I have fond memories of them. They were among the few really kind people I have ever known. They gave me a good education, love, they even gave me their faith.’
Philomena sat still and listened. Captain Nduma was disposed to talk. He seemed oblivious of the noises coming from outside the office. It was as if they were friends chatting together.
‘Are you a Catholic?’ she asked him.
‘Oh yes. Does that surprise you?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I became a member of the Catholic Church when I was a small child and it played a very important part in my early life. Perhaps it will again, one day. The Sisters taught me about God’s love, His unconditional love. After I was eleven, I was taught by priests. But they taught me all about sin and another Christian God, an angry, vengeful God. The priests were very frightened of Him and they tried hard to pass on that fear. Their fear and guilt were their faith.’
‘Did they succeed?’
‘I might have become a priest or brother myself, but two things combined against that. The memory of the nuns’ God, and then there was the foolishness of it. I saw and have seen many cruel, even very wicked acts, but I never saw God’s hand perform them, always men’s hands, Sister, always the hands of men.’
‘Your hands?’
‘Yes, nowadays sometimes even my hands.’
‘Are you still a Catholic?’
‘Oh yes. If I survive all this I shall go to Confession to a suitable priest, say my penance and then begin again to be a good Catholic.’
‘Could you not have continued to be a good Catholic despite everything?’
‘And go to heaven as a martyr? No, Sister, neither I nor my soul are ready to face our Maker yet. I would have liked to have stayed a good Catholic but, very quickly, I would have been a dead Catholic. So, for a time, I must be a good soldier and a bad Catholic and do what I have to do.’
‘Including killing me?’
‘Yes, Sister, that as well.’
‘How can I be of use to the insurgents, even supposing there are any?’
‘Oh, there will be insurgents, Sister. If there are none now, there soon will be after we have begun our work. And, yes, you could be of great help to them.’
‘How? I couldn’t even help my school, my girls, or even, God forgive me, that poor dead Sister.’
‘But you know things.’
‘What things?’
‘You know how many of us there are. How well armed we are. What vehicles we have. And you can identify me personally, even by name. Now, or perhaps in the future, when accounts come to be settled, what you know may be very important. You have seen so much. I’m sure you understand.’
She understood.
‘Do you still believe in God?’
‘Yes, Sister.’
‘And do you feel you will have to answer to Him for all of this?’
‘Let me put it this way. I believe in God, in His justice and His mercy. I would have liked to have walked in the paths of righteousness all the days of my life. But now there are no paths of righteousness. The times require that in order to survive it is necessary to be, how shall I put it, company for the Devil. Mine was not a completely free choice, therefore it does not count as a mortal sin. Even if I die, God, in His infinite love, will give me mercy.’
‘Even though you give no mercy yourself?’
‘I am not God, mercy is too expensive for me. Only the most powerful can afford it.’
‘So you will go on like this?’
Captain Nduma picked up his holster and cap. He got up. ‘God’s good little acts, Sister,’ he gestured to the body. ‘Would you rather I had let my men have her? The Sisters were good people even though they knew how wicked the world was. They told me how educated Western people often called floods, earthquakes and the like Acts of God, and saw God as indifferent to the suffering He caused. But the Sisters said that for every flood or earthquake there will be millions of unnoticed little acts of God which will have brought comfort and help. That may very well be true, but for all God’s little acts of kindness the world is wicked. The educated people are right and the Sisters were wro
ng. God’s good little acts have to take place in a wicked world and, unfortunately, they are powerless to change it.’
He moved to the door. ‘I will make sure that you will be safe if you stay here in this room tonight. Think of it as one small act of kindness from one Catholic to another.’
And the door closed.
Sister Philomena sat listening to her school being destroyed and her girls becoming the property of the soldiers. Suddenly the door opened and the sergeant was striding in, his automatic in his hands. He walked past her, reached up and, with the muzzle of his gun, smashed the single bulb that hung from the ceiling. She froze. In the darkness she heard the sergeant’s boots on the concrete floor. Then the door closed.
After what seemed a very long time she realised she was again alone in the room. She began to cry quietly. A quick death, a bullet in the head and nothing else, one of God’s good little acts. Then, still crying, she got up and felt her way to the young Sister’s body, knelt down and began to pray.
‘May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.’ Then, ‘The first Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, the Agony in the Garden, Our Father who art in heaven …’
The buzzing of the flies swarming on the corpse woke her. At that moment, the door opened and Captain Nduma came in and stood over her.
‘Good morning, Sister. We will soon be leaving. The lorries are being loaded.’
‘Is it time?’ She got up awkwardly.
‘Time, Sister?’
‘For me.’
‘I have been thinking about that. One dead Sister, more or less, matters very little. If I am ever called to answer for my actions, to someone other than God I mean, then a Sister alive here when I leave may turn out to be more useful than a dead one.’
‘You are not going to kill me?’
‘On balance I think not. But don’t be here when I return. I will be back in a week, two at the most. Don’t be here then.’
‘Isn’t that information of value to the insurgents, Captain?’
He grinned. ‘What insurgents? There are no insurgents in this area, everyone knows that. You reassured me of that yourself.’
‘Why are you letting me live?’
