The Cinnamon Tree

by Aubrey Flegg

  ‘The name is Murabende all right, but it is a different country. It is just over the river from Nopani, the town where I live. We don’t like them because they supported the rebels during our civil war, letting them have training camps and things.’ Suddenly, Yola felt she was being churlish. ‘This must be good news for your father.’

  ‘It should be, Yola, but there is something wrong. I feel it, but I can’t see it.’

  ‘Like when you knew I was screaming just to get attention,’ she said ruefully.

  ‘I could hear that and see it!’ he laughed. ‘I really don’t know. It is something to do with Dad’s agent, this Mr Birthistle – he’s just too good to be true. I like him, but I think I’m frightened of him at the same time.’

  ‘You can mind-read Fintan, you really can. Be careful!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean be careful of your Mr Bithwistle.’

  ‘Birthistle,’ he corrected her absentmindedly. ‘I wish you …’ He sighed, and then looked at his watch. I’m really sorry Yola, but I have to go soon and tidy up. You see, I’m going home tomorrow.’

  Yola was dismayed. This was all wrong; he couldn’t just walk out of her life like this. There were so many things unanswered. Before she could stop herself she had blurted out, ‘But your flute, you haven’t told me.’ She had to know what had happened to his flute. ‘That’s what you really want! To be a musician, a player of the flute, isn’t it?’

  For a second she thought she had gone too far. He had stopped in the act of getting up and was looking at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. When he spoke, it was quietly and matter of factly.

  ‘He broke it … Dad … he broke my flute. He didn’t mean to, but he did, it was at the worst time. I drove him to distraction practising. He has a temper and … well, we were both to blame.’

  Yola didn’t know what to say, her mouth had gone dry, she dropped her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  Fintan leaned across the table and lifted her chin. ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s just I haven’t been able to tell anyone before, but it’s a secret between us, ok?’ She forced a smile and nodded. ‘I’ll come and visit you in Africa!’ He was laughing at her now.

  Yola wanted to mark the occasion; she opened her purse and, by chance, found one of Hans’s business cards. She pulled it out and said grandly, ‘Our card!’ Something flashed in the light, shot across the table and clattered to the floor. It was the saint’s medal that the woman on the plane had given her.

  Fintan picked it up.

  ‘That’s St Christopher,’ he commented, turning the medal over. ‘He’ll look after you – he looks after travellers.’

  He took her hand and pressed the medal into her palm, closing her fingers over it. Picking up Hans’s card he said, ‘Bye so,’ and walked out through the nearly empty canteen.

  12

  The Silver Chain

  For Christ’s sake Fintan, grow up and cop on. She’s fourteen, two years younger than you, and she’s engaged to a six-foot tall, black warrior and you don’t care!

  The parallel bars seemed to stretch to infinity before her. She was aware of her new leg because of the suction on her stump. She was about to take her first step on her own.

  ‘Now, look Yola, this is no big deal. Your new leg will feel strange, but really, once you get used to it, it will be just like your old one. Think of it as a friend you are getting to know.’

  ‘It feels far too long, Mr Dwyer,’ she complained.

  ‘That’s because you’ve been walking on one leg for so long. Your hip has dropped down on the other side. We will have to lengthen this new leg bit by bit until you are even again.’

  She could feel the tension in the room. They were waiting for her, apprehensive perhaps; she had a reputation after all. The physiotherapist put her crutches to one side and stood next to her. There was nothing left for her to do but to try. Looking ahead, as she had been told to, so that her body was in a good posture, she lifted her hip and swung her stump forward. Below her eye-level she saw a foot flash into view. For a split second this appeared to her to be her own, her real foot, returned to her and undamaged. For months and months there had been nothing in that space, no leg, no foot, just the ground. She gave an involuntary gasp; the physiotherapist looked up at her quickly. Taking a measured breath she gripped the parallel bars and pulled her weight on to the new leg. She could feel the soft socket around her stump adjusting and redistributing her weight. She was standing! Amazingly, the mechanical knee did not collapse under her. Her good leg, her right one, came forward as if it approved of the new arrangement; she had taken her first step.

  There were murmurs of approval. She could hear the voice of the physiotherapist talking, encouraging and instructing her, but it could have been coming from another planet. She wasn’t listening. Another step and confidence came flooding into her. For the next step, however, she tried too hard, and her new leg swung forward in a too-willing stride. Instead of riding over it, she lunged into it and drove her stump painfully into the socket, jarring to a halt. She shook her head in determination and muttered something in Kasembi. Then she pulled the over-enthusiastic leg back.

  ‘Small paces, Yola! Take it easy, rise up over the leg, don’t drive into it, ripples for the moment, not waves.’

  She was prepared to listen to instructions now. Ripples and not waves, ripples … one step, two, another, and another. She had a rhythm going now and the perspective between the bars was shortening. When she got to the end she had half a mind just to walk off across the room, but the physiotherapist’s hand restrained her.

  ‘Go easy, easy, Yola.’

  But Yola was flying. She gave the surprised woman a hug of delight. Mr Dwyer came up with a screwdriver to make some adjustments, so she hugged him as well.

  ‘Well, that’s all we can do for you now. It’s over to you and the physiotherapists.’

  Yola spent hours in the gym. She had never realised that one walked with one’s whole body. She would come back to the ward between sessions too exhausted to read. Any book that interested her had too many words she didn’t understand. When Catherine was discharged it was as if the sun had gone in. One evening, Yola collapsed into the chair beside Brigid, undid the screw behind her knee and sighed with relief as the vacuum was released. She must remember that the leg might fall off when she stood up next. She told Brigid about her work on the treadmill and the stepping stones. There was a terrible wobble board thing, like a seesaw, which she worked on, back and forth, in front of a huge mirror so that she could check her posture and balance. Then, simply because she was too tired to think of anything else to say, she said, ‘Tell me about yourself Brigid. Tell me about your accident?’ She closed her eyes, not really expecting a reply. Everyone knew that Brigid couldn’t remember, or didn’t dare to think about it.

  Perhaps Yola had dozed off for a second, because suddenly she realised that Brigid was speaking. Not about the hospital, or about Catherine or Fintan, but about the car she had been driving in, and it was going faster and faster.

  ‘I told him to slow down but he said he drove better after a jar.’

  Yola wondered what a ‘jar’ was, but it didn’t matter. She dared not move; she hardly dared to breathe. Then Brigid stopped. Go on, Yola willed. It was agonising – if the thread were dropped now, surely Brigid would never start again. Yola remembered how, when she was upset, her mother would listen to her, not saying anything but eeeh … eeeh. With hardly any breath behind her voice she heard herself imitating the sound, ‘eeeh’, and then again, ‘eeeh’. She knew that to Brigid it was a foreign sound, but she was foreign. I am listening, I am not judging, I am here for you, it said. And so she got Brigid to tell it all. It was as well she was tired and half anaesthetised by her own voice, because what Brigid told of that drive, of her crash and of the hours before her rescue were beyond belief.

  ‘Eeeh,’ she said yet again, but Brigid’s voice had stopped; this time she ha
d talked herself to sleep.

  Later that evening a nurse came into the ward to check on the patients. Yola noticed her staring at Brigid, who was lying in bed on her side, as usual. The nurse went up and listened to her breathing and then turned to Yola with a smile. It was then that Yola noticed what had caught the nurse’s professional eye: there was a change in the way the girl was lying. She remembered her very first day in the ward. Catherine had called Brigid … what was it … The Hump. Well, the hump was gone; the frightened, defensive knot of fear and anxiety had come undone and Brigid was lying stretched out, full-length, relaxed in sleep like any other girl.

  It was towards the end of her stay in hospital that Yola received a padded envelope in the post. The postmark was smudged. She opened it in the loo, as the ward was now full of people she didn’t know. She pulled out a piece of paper. On it were the words: For St Christopher. Love F. There didn’t seem to be anything else in the envelope. She tipped it up to be sure, and a silver chain spilled like sand into her palm.

  Stormy times at home. I’m not going to have it out with Dad again. He wins. I think I thought that, with the music, the leaving cert. would somehow melt away, but it won’t. Plastics win (for now). Mr Birthistle – of the air bag project – was here when I got home and was in on some of my confrontation with Dad. I must say he was great and came to my support. I don’t know why I felt uneasy about him. It’s just his way of talking, as if life were some sort of board game. I can go along with this, but Dad hasn’t a clue. A spade is a spade to Dad. I told him that Birthistle was hinting that there was more to the air bag project than met the eye. But Dad just snapped at me: ‘That man’s a fool! I have all the certificates of approval here from every competent authority short of the Pope. I’m not looking for trouble; no more are you boy. In your Grandfather’s time …’ There we go, ‘Fifty sweaty men …’ blah, blah, blah.

  The trouble is Dad doesn’t know when he’s won. I’ve been thinking about Yola a lot. I can’t just let her walk out of my life like this. I went down town and got her a silver chain for St Christopher. I put it in an envelope with a short note and a big chunk of emotion. Perhaps that’s that?

  13

  The Hangman’s Noose

  ‘Hey! Anyone seen Hopalong?’ a cheerful voice rang through the room. ‘Oh, Yola,’ it went on, ‘Mother Hen wants to see you.’

  Yola heaved herself to her feet and made for the door. She had abandoned her crutches when indoors but her leg still thumped on the floor. The owner of the cheerful voice, Elaine, held the door for her.

  ‘And remember, it’s Mother Superior, Yola, not Mother Hen like last time, ok?’

  The door swung to behind Yola and the ripple of laughter was shut off. She just loved being teased. It had started after Christmas, when Elaine had invited her to stay at her house for the holidays. She had learned so much: how to use an electric beater, how to decorate a Christmas tree, how to operate the remote control on the video. Elaine had begun to tease her then. When they got back to school after the holiday, Elaine kept it up and soon the other girls began to tease her too; Yola felt that they had accepted her. A lot of it was over her eagerness for lessons. How could they know what it was like for her to have one class after another, each one more interesting than the next. To feel like … like the sun-sucked soil when the rains come in huge, spattering drops onto the dry earth. You can even hear a faint hiss from the soil as the first drops are pulled down greedily. Then green shoots begin to heave the crust apart and sudden flowers pop their buds in unexpected bursts of colour.

  New ideas burst inside Yola’s brain like sudden flowers. She wanted it to go on, it had to go on, but now, just like when the rains fail, it had petered out. She knocked on the polished wooden door of the principal’s office. A statue of a saint looked down from a niche above the door. Elaine had assured her that it was St Jude – the saint for lost causes. A voice called her in.

  My dear Mother,

  When Mother Superior told me that my ticket had come for me to go home I was very sad. But now I have nothing to do because all my friends do exams and there is no class. I did some exams, called Mok and passed some, in Geography I did ‘C’, which is good for me but I still write too slow.

  My friend Elaine asks me to stay with her but I think I must come home to my dear Mother. Sister Attracta will take me to Dublin so I can get some presents. What would Gabbin like and I will not forget mother Sindu. There is no plane to land in Nopani, so I must go on to Simbada. Perhaps I see Isabella there.

  I see you, Mother. Your loving daughter,

  Yola.

  Yola didn’t want a window seat. She didn’t want to look out. She lifted her new knee with both hands so that it straightened out in to the aisle. It gave a slight click. She sighed; it was silly to have got tearful at the airport.

  An airhostess was moving down the aisle offering morning papers. Yola took a copy of the Irish Times; it was the only paper left. A headline on the front page read: ‘Major Peace Conference for Ireland’. In smaller print below this was an explanation: ‘Ireland has been chosen as the venue for a major conference on arms limitation to be held in Dublin in October of this year. A spokesman for the International Committee stated yesterday that Ireland’s neutrality and non-involvement in arms manufacture has been a major factor in bringing this conference to Ireland.’

  She struggled briefly with the article but was soon defeated. Hans would be interested though, so she slipped the paper into the seat pocket in front of her.

  ‘Cabin crew: arm doors and cross-check.’

  She closed her eyes and imagined herself walking importantly across the tarmac, the Irish Times under her arm. Hans would be waiting for her. She smoothed away her smile with her hand. A new fear gripped her – perhaps Hans had gone back to Norway, perhaps no one would meet her in Simbada. The man beside her lowered his paper for a moment and she had a brief glimpse of green grass and blue sky in the frame of the window.

  ‘Cabin crew: prepare for take-off.’

  It seemed such a short time since she had landed in Dublin, but so much had happened. St Christopher nestled in the hollow of her throat; she ran her fingers over the chain. She was comfortable with her artificial leg now and needed only one crutch to give her confidence. She had had a Christmas card from Fintan showing a pig playing a flute. He said he was busy preparing for his Leaving Certificate. The engines roared and she could feel herself being pressed back into the seat as the plane surged forward; she was on her way home. She had bought Gabbin a nice T-shirt with a map of Ireland, showing the four provinces in bright colours.

  The long night had passed. The change of engine noise woke her. All but a few of the blinds were drawn against the dawn outside, but Africa was out there! Taking advantage of her aisle seat, she fished her toothpaste and brush out of her flight bag and joined a short queue for the toilets. There was a small porthole window at the end of the side-aisle and she peered down. Far below, forest rolled like a green carpet. A scratch of red-brown earth marked a road cutting through it like a thread. There were fields and compounds at irregular intervals along the road, but they were flying too high for her to be able to see huts or people. There are people down there, she thought, and it seemed strange to think of them getting up just now to start the day while she was up here.

  Gradually the view changed. The forest gave way to a wide chequer of fields, a valley perhaps because a dark river snaked through them. Then, suddenly, Yola recognised where she was and banged her head on the plastic rim of the window as she tried to see more clearly. There, almost directly below, was a town, its streets and houses still in shade, waiting for the sun. But yes, there was the bridge, the two bridges: one for the road, one for the railway. It was Nopani – it was home! If only the plane would sweep her down and land there now!

  What really gave it away was the inky ribbon of the river that formed the boundary between Kasemba and Murabende to the north. She could see the Hangman’s Noose – a meander in th
e river so extreme that only a thin strip of land prevented the river cutting straight through its narrow neck. It really did look like a noose from up here.

  It was a big area that belonged to Kasemba and had once had over a hundred farms, but now it was empty. Five years ago there were elections in Kasemba and a socialist government was elected. They said they would nationalise oil reserves, and the mineral mines in the north of the country. Political agitators got to work on the people in these mining districts and incited them to rebel. In this way the Kasemba Liberation Army, or KLA, was formed. The KLA received guns and training from the Murabende government by promising them oil and minerals in return – they even promised them the land within the Noose in return for their help. The fighting for Yola’s home town, Nopani, had been fierce because it commanded the bridges over the river, and it had been during that fighting that the mine she had stepped on had been laid.

  Eventually the KLA were defeated by the government forces. The border with Murabende opened again, but the dispute over the Noose lands lingered on – and not all the rebel guns had been handed in. Before they surrendered, the KLA had laid a dense minefield across the neck of the Noose. Because of this, the hundreds of Kasembans who had fled the fighting could no longer get to their land. Hans was itching to get at that minefield because then the farmers and their families could go back home and work the land again. But because it could cause trouble with Murabende, he was not allowed to touch it.