Beneath the Darkening Sky

by Majok Tulba

  We tumble the five boys over the edge. I stand for a moment, hypnotised by the five fresh corpses, their flesh ripped shreds, barely people. They lie on top of the half-eaten who came before them.

  ‘First time, huh?’ one of the soldiers says. He takes me by the shoulder and guides me back to camp. ‘Don’t stare at the bodies. They don’t exist any more. And you don’t look too good anyway,’ he laughs.

  When I arrive back at camp, the Commander tells everyone I’m to be rewarded for my service to the revolution. I played that song under orders, to flush out the traitors, to inspire the weak to run.

  ‘We knew,’ he says, ‘that some among you did not truly believe in the revolution. So this brave soldier volunteered to be the smoke in their snake hole. He even volunteered to be tortured, to make the deception complete. He is the bravest soldier I’ve ever known. He is a hero of the revolution, the smoke in the eyes of traitors, the fire of the people! Cheer for the People’s Fire!’

  Baboon’s Ass is gone.

  I’m given my own tent and cot away from the barracks. Alone in the dark, under this green canvas, I feel more exposed than on my nights in the cage, and I miss the safety of the barracks. No matter how many horrors I see in the camp, I’m still most scared by what I cannot see, but can feel.

  I am excused from morning drills. I sleep as late as I want. Every day, I return to the barracks so that a girl from the hospitality house can change the bandages on my arm. The Commander wants everyone to see how well I’m treated, although mostly everyone’s gone by the time I arrive. The girl massages my legs, or tries to. It doesn’t take long for the massage to make my penis hard. When that happens I don’t know what to do. If it was Parasite, he would tell everyone about it, or stand up and wave it around and try to get her to touch it, but that’s the last thing I want to do. I just want everyone to go away, I want it all to stop. It would be easier to shoot someone than to have her here when my penis goes like that. When she leaves, sometimes smiling, I go for a walk.

  One day when the girl arrives, Parasite is there. The same thing happens, and I tell her to stop, and that she can go.

  ‘What was that?’ Parasite asks, outraged. ‘She was pretty, why didn’t you fuck her?’ One of his hands is rubbing his rifle, slowly up and down.

  I have no reply, and he laughs again. ‘Oh man, you’ve never fucked, have you?’ This is hysterical to him.

  ‘I’m going to take a walk now,’ I say.

  ‘Good plan, man. Maybe you’ll come across some animals humping and you’ll figure out what a woman is for.’

  My tent is painfully hot during the day, so after lunch I spend my day outside. In the evenings, I return and the temperature is just right.

  A few days after I move into the tent, the General returns from his inspection of the captured town. When he is told of my noble work in the name of the cause, he comes to inform me of my next mission.

  I have never been anywhere near the General, and now he’s in my small tent, with the Commander too. I feel like I am a baby gazelle between two lions, or just plain grass under elephant feet.

  With the Commander grinning behind him the General tells me, ‘I know you may not think you’re ready.’ He puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘But we’ll make it easy on you this first time. Tell me, what do you know about lions?’

  I have no answer, and hold back the vomit rising in my throat.

  ‘When a mother lion is teaching her cubs to hunt,’ he says, his voice gentle, ‘she will wound the prey so that it is weak enough for the cubs to kill themselves. So, my little lion cub, don’t worry. We will teach you all we can here and make sure you don’t get in too deep out there.’

  He salutes. I salute back. The Commander and the General leave me in my tent, alone. Black dread fills me. A mission, a real gun. The stories of blood and rape and fire pour out of my memory. For how long have I fought their lessons? Now there’s no escape.

  I go to visit Priest. When I tell him he nods slowly. We both know I must be prepared to kill the villagers or I will be killed myself. He has tried to help me prepare for this day, but now I am alone.

  ‘Aim for the head,’ he says.

  Later that night, I’m lying on my cot when the tent flap is pushed open. I sit up quickly – is it the General or the Commander? My throat tightens and I can feel tears coming. It’s Mouse, standing with her hip jutting to one side, chin in the air. I’m so surprised I can’t think of anything to say.

  ‘The Commander told me about your mission,’ she says in the darkness of the tent entrance. ‘My girls tell me you don’t know what to do with a woman.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They come to bandage and mend the great People’s Fire and you turn them away just as it’s getting good. Or do you not like girls?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, do you like to stick your dick up other boys’ bums?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘All right then, when you hit a village, you need to fuck at least one of the village girls. If she’s smart, she’ll just throw herself at a soldier. If the stupid bitch resists, you’ll have to fuck some sense into her.’ Mouse says this like she’s explaining how to clean a shirt. ‘Either way, you’re going to need to know what to do with her. So, Priest sent me.’

  I want to escape. I can’t for my life say exactly what I’m afraid of, all I know is I want to leave. Run out of the tent, across the training field, through the creek, up the hill. Away. Anywhere.

  ‘Okay.’ Mouse grabs my ankles. ‘First things first.’ With one hand on my ankle, she grabs at my shorts with the other. I try to swat her away and pull my leg free, but she smacks me in the balls, which paralyses me for a second. ‘Hey, this is for your own good. If you can’t do this, the other soldiers will mock you to death. They will teach you themselves.’

  In the back of my mind I hear Parasite whispering about the officers raping recruits out of boredom. I stop resisting. Shame courses through my body as she slides my shorts down to my ankles, but there in the darkness, all I see are phantoms. The soldiers are brutal in camp, but out in the villages I’ve seen pure horror.

  Mouse’s hands run along my bare legs and my body responds. I flush with shame at my erection, but that feeling is replaced by something else as her hand closes around it. I’ve done this to myself before, in the privacy of the jungle, but this is completely different. Then, hot wind. Her breath sends a vibration up my spine and my body has no idea how to respond. A new warmth, soft and wet, envelopes me. I’m clawing at the sides of my cot. My legs convulse as every nerve below my waist explodes.

  Light-headed, my heart pounds, my breath races.

  ‘All right,’ she says. ‘That’ll do for now. I just got in a couple of new girls that need to be broken in. I’d have saved you one, so you can learn to be in charge, but you’re not invited to the party. The Captain is crazy about brand-new.’

  Something more is coming tomorrow. The dread of a mission is crowded out by a strange blend of fear and excitement at the thought of what I have to go through first.

  When one of Mouse’s girls changes my bandages the next day, she leaves without touching my legs. Twenty-four hours ago, I had been terrified by her touch. Now I want it. Somewhere in my mind, a switch has been flipped.

  So I spend my day with Priest. We practise shooting, matching each other shot for shot. He repeats some of the things he’s told me before about what to do on a mission. I am full of horror but understand he is trying to save my life. Priest tells me – like Akot did – to get smarter or we’ll both end up dead. He tells me I have to act the part of the revolutionary soldier if I am to survive, just like he has to. Any other thoughts I must keep to myself.

  All the time he’s talking, I wait. And I think. Wait for the night. Wait for Mouse.

  Mouse is laughing when she comes for me. I’ve been hanging around the hospitality house since sunset, kicking stones and watching the trees. She smiles as she takes my hand and leads me insi
de.

  It’s one of the largest buildings in the camp, with walls of corrugated metal and uneven wooden floorboard running down one long hallway. The doorways are just openings with simple curtains pinned across them. The girls who are available have their curtains pulled open. Akidi must be in here somewhere.

  Two girls are sitting in the hall, leaning against one wall, whispering to each other and smoking. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone smoking. Not a cigarette, at least. The officers have cigars sometimes, but these two women sharing a pack of cigarettes is so non-military that I’m confused about where I am.

  Mouse leads me past them to an open room at the far end of the house. She steps inside and pulls me along, closing the curtain behind us. In the far corner is a girl I’ve seen a few times around the camp, though I’ve never spoken to her. She is reclining on a great heap of old blankets and discoloured pillows. The lazy look in her eyes and the careless way she sits make me uncomfortable in a way I can’t name.

  You see the hospitality girls in the camp, but not often, so it’s easy to imagine that they have an easy life, cooking and occasionally doing laundry with the other girls. But seeing this girl sprawled across these stained rags – it’s not ease but something more like a coma, a waking coma. And although the scene repulses me, it also stirs me. It divides me.

  ‘Okay,’ Mouse says, sitting by the door of the cramped room. ‘You’ve had your first proper cum.’

  The other girl snickers.

  ‘This is Sittina,’ Mouse continues. ‘She’s going to give you your first real fuck.’

  Just the word, here, starts the blood thumping in my ears. I stand petrified in front of Sittina. She looks up at me with a slow grin. How much time passes? I don’t know. The two girls start laughing.

  ‘Well,’ Sittina says, her voice prodding. ‘You’re going to need your dick out.’ She and Mouse laugh again. ‘Are you sure he isn’t one of the bodyguards?’

  ‘He couldn’t be,’ Mouse replies. ‘He’s too skinny.’

  Sittina leans forward a bit and notices my eyes moving along with her. ‘Oh, I think I know how to get this moving.’ She takes hold of the knot in the sarong tied around her torso and tugs it open, revealing her body to me. In the dim light filtering in from between wall and ceiling, I can see she has wide nipples the colour of chocolate. And there’s hair between her legs. I didn’t know girls had that.

  My mouth is dry.

  ‘I can’t tell if he’s shy or just a pervert,’ says Sittina.

  She reaches up and grabs one breast. Giggling, she starts to massage herself as I watch, helpless. Everything outside what I can feel and see seems not to exist. My body is weightless and alive. For a second my eyes blur, I feel like I’m falling asleep, just for a second.

  Sudden laughter brings me back to the room. My crotch is warm, and looking down I see a dark spot growing in my shorts. Both girls howl with laughter. Mouse is laughing so hard she’s actually crying.

  ‘A pervert,’ she chokes out between breaths. ‘If only it was always that easy.’

  Everything settles into its proper place. I think of a dozen things to say, but none of them makes sense. My face burns at their laughter. I don’t really know what I’ve done wrong, but I know that it’s bad, and more shameful than anything I’ve felt before.

  I run. I punch through the curtain and race down the hall, bursting past the smoking girls and outside. I pause for a second, not knowing where to go. I can’t go to the barracks, or face Priest with my failure, and my tent has been taken, now that I’m a soldier going on a mission. So I follow the path through the darkness to the creek. At least I can clean myself up before returning to the barracks for lights out.

  Hitting the icy water is like dropping a heavy pack after a long run. Everything is instantly swept away. My mind washes clear. I pull off my shorts and kneel in the water, cleaning myself. My thoughts clarify – who are they to laugh at me?

  They are hardly even real prostitutes. They get their room and their food, same as the soldiers, and then they sleep with whoever comes in. They don’t even get real money for it. Yet they laugh at me. The officers are all disgusting animals, what do they like doing? I can’t even imagine.

  After a bit more scrubbing, bare hands on my wet shorts, I return to the barracks. Parasite isn’t there. At first I’m relieved not to have to explain why I’m wet, but then I realise that the only place he could be is the hospitality house. I fall asleep before he comes back.

  In the morning I see him whispering to another soldier and pointing at me. What has he been told? What is he telling?

  That day, Sittina is sent to change my bandages, as though Mouse is taunting me. I don’t talk to her as she sees to my wounds, I don’t even look at her.

  She seems unaware of my anger. ‘You shouldn’t have left so quickly,’ she says, pulling the cloth off my arm. ‘You’re young. Young men bounce back very quickly.’ This is loud enough for anyone to hear.

  Her laughing echoes in my head and I repress the urge to hit out at her. The few other boys in the barracks laugh a bit. I want to tell her to shut up, but that will make me look weak.

  ‘We could’ve had some real fun.’

  A real laugh bursts from one boy, though he tries to hide it. When she finally leaves I go for a walk, escaping the chuckling boys.

  I go to Priest’s hut, but it’s empty. I ask around and find out that he’s been sent to the captured government town. A few adult soldiers were killed, and they need more men to stand guard while they gather the new recruits. I miss my friend, but to show that would put us both at risk. With no guitar to distract me, I waste the day trying to work out how many people know of my shame.

  Something has to be done. The sun is at the treetops when I burst into the hospitality house. I march down the hallway towards the end, where I guess Mouse’s room is. It’s the only one with real furniture. A plastic chair with a big blanket thrown over it, and a wooden rack with three dresses draped over its rungs.

  Her bed isn’t much better than the other girls’, but her blankets and pillows are cleaner, newer. When I look in, she is propped up against the corner of her room, among the blankets and pillows of her bed. Her eyes are half closed and a ragged grin rests on her lips. With one hand she clumsily strokes her hair, the other holds a glass bottle of clear liquid, almost empty. There’s a bitter scent in the air that I don’t know, but I know that look. She’s drunk.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’ Just saying the words makes me feel smaller.

  Mouse giggles and checks her bottle to make sure it isn’t completely empty. ‘Oh, you’re just young.’ She laughs again.

  As she takes a sip some liquid splashes out and rolls down her cheek. ‘It takes most of the old guys forever. And they can’t even get it up if you don’t act all “Oh, please don’t hurt me!”’

  She roars with laughter and rolls over on her blankets, careful to keep the bottle upright. ‘Such fucking bastards. It’s like, it’s like . . . they don’t even like girls. Or boys. Fuck, they don’t like fucking.’ She looks up at me with sleepy, lazy eyes. ‘Where have the real men gone, eh? What happened to them?’

  I want to punch her. I speak quietly, trying to hold it in. ‘Did you tell anyone?’

  ‘What?’

  Now I’m yelling. ‘Did you tell Parasite about me?’

  ‘That prick? Fuck, no.’ Then she giggles again and tips the bottle to her mouth. ‘You know about that guy? He likes getting slapped. I’m serious, he tells the girls to slap him. He calls them “mommy”. Isn’t that fucking hysterical? He wants to fuck his mama while she tells him he’s been naughty.’

  ‘So you didn’t tell him?’

  ‘No. But now that I know you don’t want me to . . . I’m joking! I don’t talk to that piece of shit. Come here, People’s Fire. You gonna learn to be a real man?’

  I leave Mouse to her drink. I want to look for Akidi. But by now she’ll be one of them, she’ll laugh at me too. And she will
be safer if I don’t look for her. I have already put Priest’s life at risk. I must think smarter and not endanger my friends.

  The next morning, I’m still not cleared to return to training. Apparently Sittina said I didn’t have the strength for it. Was that a kindness or an insult? Things heal slowly in the camp, and death from a minor wound is not uncommon.

  I’m not living soft out of privilege. I’m walking death, a constant reminder to the other young soldiers that even talking about escape is punishable. I have reported two recruits for sleeping on sentry duty, and discovered five more who wanted escape. I ordered their execution. So, where another boy would have been back in the training field after a day, I’ve had a week to relax, recover, and act as a threat.

  Sittina doesn’t come for my bandages until after lunch, the hottest part of the day. The soldiers have been given this time off – the officers don’t want to run about in the sun – and some go to target practice or lie in the shade. Some hang around the barracks, blasting music, playing games, wrestling.

  When Sittina arrives she causes even more ruckus. She winks and sways through the clusters of boys at games or cleaning weapons. Finally she sits on my cot.

  ‘How does it feel today?’ she asks, a sly note in her voice.

  ‘Fine,’ I say.

  ‘It’s not like he uses that arm!’ a boy two cots over shouts, then mimes masturbating. The other boys laugh.

  ‘Well,’ Sittina says, smirking at me, ‘People’s Fire doesn’t have to.’

  A chorus of ‘Oooh’ goes up.

  A trace of fear flashes across my face. Sittina giggles.

  ‘Of course,’ she says, louder than before, ‘he doesn’t need a woman either.’ A kind of stunned silence follows. Now everyone is paying attention. ‘Or an ass, for that matter.’ Laughter everywhere. The noise of a whole year’s thunderstorms is a whisper compared to this sound.

  ‘What?’ Parasite asks. He’s feigning innocence.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Sittina says, standing to address the entire barracks.