Accusation

by Catherine Bush

  To Addis?

  Abiye nodded.

  Do you believe Mr. Leo had a job for him?

  He looked at her as if she were a fool. No.

  There’s a man, Mr. Raymond, who runs a children’s circus in —

  Oh. Something sprang open in Abiye at the sound of this: joy, excitement travelling out through his legs, his arms. You know it? The circus come. They do it here. The jugglery, the acrobatic. They teach us it.

  Abiye, the circus man, Mr. Raymond, did he ever approach any children here, or the children in his circus, did any of them say anything about him doing the bad things Mr. Mark did?

  No. One time, Mr. Mark he takèd me and Tedesse and Gerard to see circus in Shashemene.

  Gerard came?

  Yes. To the big football place, how you say?

  A stadium?

  That is it. Maybe thousands, so many see it. Lights. Big music. And children, they make all of it.

  Do you know if Mr. Mark and Mr. Raymond are friends?

  Maybe. Mr. Raymond, he say to me, I make circus here.

  He was going to start a circus in the Village?

  They teachèd us. The ball toss. The hand walk. I show you.

  Abiye scrambled to his feet, lowered his hands to the ground, and tipped himself upside down, flip-flops still attached to his toes, his jacket bunching around his upper arms. Hand over hand, legs in the air, he shuffled over the cement floor.

  Abiye, take off your jacket. It looks dangerous, caught around your head like that.

  Sara, too, clambered to her feet as Abiye lowered his legs with a thump, stripped his jacket from his arms before upending himself once more, and, legs waggling but perpendicular, made his way along the cement, slap, slap, slap. Out of sight, from around the curve of the porch, came the uneven skitter of his turn, then he reappeared, still up-ended, and made his way back to her. Coming to a standstill, he arched his legs all the way over until his feet met the ground in a backbend, and from there leaped breathlessly upright, then sprang into another, and another backbend. Sara clapped; he was not as agile as the children of Cirkus Mirak but made up for that in strength and the ferocity of his attention and the wildness of his pleasure. And she found pleasure in the presence of his.

  Abiye, can I take your photograph?

  Someone’s feet made a swift passage across the yard. Abiye stopped abruptly as Sara turned, and Olaf Olafsson raised a hand to her.

  Abiye said quietly, When Mr. Raymond come, I show him what I do. Or I go to circus in Addis Ababa.

  No, Abiye. That’s probably not a good plan. Addis is dangerous and a long way off. And, listen, I know Mr. Raymond said he’d come, but I don’t think he can come now. He went away. Another man, Tamrat Asfaw, runs the circus.

  She’d dealt him a blow. Once more something in his body contracted: a dream that he’d been holding on to snatched away. This was what she’d done for him, ripped away his last, best hope.

  Abiye, it’s better for you to stay here. Can you do circus here? Make a circus of your own. In the Village. With the other children. There are circuses starting up in other towns too.

  Mr. Richard does not like it.

  Circus? No, I don’t think he does. Can you do it even so? Or do it in secret. Remember the things you saw the children do in the stadium. Practise. Here, in this place. Make up your own acts.

  The scraping back of wooden benches sounded through the windows of the classrooms and children’s voices rose, along with the clapping of a pair of hands and a man’s voice trying to establish order.

  Sara pulled her camera out of her bag. Here she was, hypocrite, suggesting Abiye contain another secret. And stay in the place where he’d been violated. Richard Langley might well try to put a stop to any breath of circus. Yet how in her right mind could she counsel Abiye to set off for Addis?

  Through the dirt yard, the other children were making their way toward the refectory in weaving lines.

  When Abiye asked her if she was coming back, she said, It’s not likely. Not soon. I have to go home to Canada. But I will tell Mr. Asfaw about you and the Awassa circus.

  The Awassa circus?

  Your circus.

  She would attempt to tell Tamrat, anyway. She scribbled the Cirkus Mirak phone number on a piece of paper torn from her notebook and handed it to Abiye, knowing how unlikely it was that he would be able to make a phone call, but whatever he chose to do, at least he would have this talisman, and he folded the paper carefully and tucked it in the pocket of his shorts.

  You can do this, she said, because, having stolen his story, it seemed the best thing that she had to give him.

  Lunch was eaten at one end of the refectory, Sara seated with the two teachers, Richard Langley at her elbow, each of them chewing on the same moist pasta as everybody else. There was something subdued about all the children: she did not know if this was because of what they had been through or was an effect of Richard Langley’s new reign of order.

  After lunch, he directed her to the free office, as Abiye had called it, which had been Gerard’s, although Richard Langley did not mention this provenance and the office had been stripped bare of any personal effects, leaving nothing but two chairs and a desk. He brought two more boys to her: Tesfaye, then Daniel, both younger than Abiye, perhaps ten or eleven or twelve. Sara was aware of their round heads, the delicate shape of their skulls through their cropped hair, as she listened to them, their voices higher, softer, their English more halting than Abiye’s. She could have called for Alazar’s help. She didn’t. The dinners, the special English lessons, the things the man had done to them. What about the circus man? They shook their heads. Tesfaye said, I do the jugglery. And Daniel said, I do backflip. As if these, too, were messages they needed to get out to the world. So there was this trace and legacy of Raymond Renaud. And as yet no confirmation of his participation in any ring.

  A hoarse-voiced boy named Solomon sat working pleats into his trouser legs, swinging his feet in dirty pink plastic sandals, and muttered, He tell me to say the untrue thing.

  Who did?

  Gerard did it.

  The next day, back in Addis Ababa, Sara called the counsellor, Fasika Azeze, who did not seem happy to hear from her but was prepared to talk despite her concern about the possible effects of any public attention on the children.

  It is their shame I worry about — Ms. Azeze, at her end of the line, seemed to be thinking out loud. Restitution, it is important, and it is important for them to tell their story when they wish it, but there is the problem of their shame. Yet it is terrible for perpetrators to get away with such crimes, and it is a danger to keep these things hidden.

  In person, in her office off the Bole Road, Fasika Azeze was both fierce and polite, a woman of about Sara’s age, a scattering of dark freckles across the bridge of her cheeks, her nails painted to a pearly sheen. The room bore a scent of hair oil. She had spent ten years in Italy, working with immigrant women and sexual abuse cases there, she said. Born in Addis. She’d heard about the circus, the allegations, knew only that there would be an investigation. She travelled down to Awassa every other week. I do not think they will tell you all of it. Her voice was reedy but firm. Because they are too damaged. Something in Sara balked at the insistence on their damage.

  Because they are confused and frightened, Fasika Azeze went on. They do not know what they should say and they want to say what they think is the right thing to say. I would not nor I cannot tell you exactly what went on in that place, or precisely how many children or for certain how many men. I do not know it yet. Maybe more, but they have all been betrayed.

  In the yellow Lada, Sara and Alazar bumped along the maze of dirt and stone-laden streets that led to Yitbarek Abera’s house. A dog slunk along beside the car, beneath the overhang of a cinder-block building. A goat stared hypnotically in their direction before bolting out of the way. This time, the flimsy corrugated metal gate was not clamped with a padlock. When Alazar stepped out of the car and knock
ed upon the metal, the whole expanse shook. He cupped his hand around his mouth and shouted, and a moment later the gate began to judder open, backward upon its shaky hinges, in clanky reverberations, drawn by an as yet invisible person. Alazar drove them through into a small, bare yard in front of a small house. Weedy bamboo pushed up through the corners of the fencing. Behind them, a middle-aged woman in a saffron sweater and flowered housedress fought to close the gate. Three limber boys in the white shirts and dark shorts of school uniforms had slipped out through the open door of the house and stood staring at the car, shifting their balance from foot to foot like delicate storks, until the woman shooed them back inside. Circus children: they looked familiar. The introductions were all in Amharic, Alazar doing his convivial best — Sara caught her own name, and the woman’s, Dassala. She is Yitbarek’s aunt, Alazar said, as Dassala led them, Sara with her knapsack in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other, through the front door.

  The room they entered was disorientingly dark. Then: in the dim, far corner of the room, a boy lying upon a cot turned his head in their direction. The bright flash of his eyes. The other boys, murmuring, moved toward him and cut him off from sight. A television, high on a wooden console in the opposite corner, was flickering greenly at low volume, girls in white shaking their shoulders, folkloric dancing that no one seemed to be watching. Along the near wall, a pair of crutches leaned against a stuffed armchair. There was a second armchair; both had white antimacassars folded over their tops. A cement floor. A curled bedroll tied with a rope was stuffed behind the first chair. At the foot of the cot, a rudimentary wheelchair was parked, the folding kind, with canvas seat and back unfolded, and on the seat lay a square of foam molded in the bumpy shape of egg cartons. David had mentioned using such foam at the worst points of Greta’s illness, when she’d been bedridden, to prevent bedsores.

  At the end of the cot stood a metal walking frame, and beneath the cot two leg braces were stashed. There were plastic balls — juggling balls? — piled in a plastic bucket. Sara wondered if any of the equipment had been brought back from Montreal by Raymond Renaud in July. Hadn’t he mentioned, in his urgency to get to Montreal, his need to pick up some supplies?

  The boys were doing something to the boy in the bed, or he was doing something. They were all talking in the insistent monotone beat of spoken Amharic, and Dassala in turn was talking at them. One of the boys, the tallest, pushed the wheelchair close to the side of the bed, and Yitbarek reached for its frame with one hand and pulled himself to sitting, leaning forward and bracing himself with his other arm, while one of the other boys helped or tried to help by giving him a push or support from behind. The mattress beneath Yitbarek was covered by a blue vinyl gym mat like those the circus children used in the rehearsal hall. The boys, and the aunt, gave little yips of encouragement and clapped when Yitbarek sat, braced on both arms, thin legs outstretched. A slight boy: there were socks on his feet but his legs were bare, the muscles obviously atrophied. Paralyzed, at least in the legs: here was evidence that his injury looked as bad as Raymond had feared. And was all this a kind of performance for the benefit of visitors, for her, the presence of strangers heightening his desire to prove he could get up and do as much as possible on his own.

  The tall boy, who had performed the chair act in the street show that Sara had seen, stood beside Yitbarek, and although Dassala tried to shoo him away, he waved her off and said in English, I do it. He helped Yitbarek manoeuvre his inert legs over the edge of the bed, first one then the other, feet to the floor, then placed Yitbarek’s hands on his shoulders and his own around Yitbarek’s waist and lifted him, or helped lift him, into the wheelchair. When Yitbarek’s blue sweater rucked above his waist, a stretch of leather brace, clasped around his torso, briefly revealed itself. And any thought that this wasn’t how things ought to be done, children caring for a disabled child, had to be chucked away, for here and now this was how things were being done.

  Dassala made a universally comprehensible scooting motion in the direction of the three limber-limbed boys. Three nylon knapsacks lay in a tumble on the floor beneath the TV.

  Wait, Sara said. Alazar, can you ask their names, and where they live, and if we can talk to them too. And can you ask if any of them lived with Yitbarek at Raymond Renaud’s house?

  We go to circus, the tallest said. His name was Birook.

  Later then. Can we talk to you later?

  Yes, we can do it.

  Alazar said, Moses — the middle one, who had been one of the unicycling fire jugglers — lived in that house and now lives here. As Moses pointed to the bedroll behind the armchair, then to his chest, and said in English, Me, me, me.

  That’s his bed, Alazar said.

  The third boy, Asefa, one of the acrobats in the street show, having folded the blue vinyl mat into segments, balanced it upright against the wall. On the cot, through the now-exposed sheet, the bumps of more egg crate foam could be seen.

  Everything felt chaotic, a jumble of bodies and objects in a space that seemed to shrink around them. Sara tried to hand the plastic bag of Nescafé and long-life milk and cooking oil and biscuits to Dassala, who, still talking to the boys, shook her head and waved her arms as if she could not accept the gift.

  Alazar, can you tell her that we brought these things for her. It’s a small thing.

  What must it be like for Yitbarek to be surrounded by the other boys’ bodies, still so limber and racing with fluidity? His face, the beautiful arched brows, the lips, much as when seen in the photographs and on film, caught now out of the corner of Sara’s eye, looked watchful, stripped of the animation of previous moments.

  Then the other boys, white shirts tucked in, arms thrust through the sleeves of their sweaters, Moses with a nylon gym bag, Birook and Asefa with knapsacks flung over their shoulders, were gone, and the room felt empty without them, and Dassala was holding the plastic bag of groceries and saying, Amesegenallo, and something else.

  Alazar said, She wishes to offer us the coffee ceremony. His eyebrows rose in meaningful communication: they’d discussed this in the car, what to do should this occur. It was partly why they’d brought the Nescafé and long-life milk, so it was possible to say no, but we would love a Nescafé, without making their hostess seem inhospitable.

  I would actually really love a Nescafé, Sara said to Alazar, who nodded, and spoke to Dassala in Amharic.

  There were two doorways that led off the main room, one in the middle of the wall to Sara’s left, which was closed off by a length of brocaded fabric slung over a stretch of rope, the other an open doorway through which Dassala in her flowered housedress passed, the room beyond a glimpse of unpainted plank walls, plates on open shelves, a sink, a squat green single-burner kerosene stove set on the floor.

  Yitbarek, I’m Sara. She held out her hand to him in his wheelchair and his hand in hers was cold. The air wasn’t warm. Yitbarek wore a zip-up cardigan, a blanket thrown over his bare legs, Sara her fleece jacket, only Alazar braving bare arms and a soccer shirt, but perhaps Yitbarek was also cold because he moved less.

  How are you, he asked, beating her to it, his voice having the same staccato rhythms as the voices of the other children she’d encountered, each word bearing equal weight.

  I’m fine. How are you?

  It was an impossible question and impossible not to ask it.

  I am well, he said, three even notes, and smiled, and there was curiosity and attentiveness in him if not great force behind the smile.

  Once she and Alazar had seated themselves in the armchairs, Yitbarek wheeled himself between them, Dassala calling out something from the kitchen. She says it is okay to move the chairs if we wish it, Alazar said, but there was no need, the two of them like parents on either side of their child. There was room on the upholstered armrest for Sara to lay her tape recorder upon it.

  Did you ask if it’s okay for me to tape the conversation? Sara said to Alazar, who nodded. She’d told him to explain that she wa
s a journalist visiting from Canada and might be writing about the circus. To tell Yitbarek she’d seen him perform in Copenhagen. To ask his aunt if it was okay to talk to him. To ask Yitbarek if he wanted to talk. It is possible, Alazar said. Yitbarek, she thought, was the one whom Raymond had taught to juggle with fire.

  You see me, Yitbarek said in English.

  I did, I saw you perform in Denmark. She’d worried that mentioning this, recalling the past to him, might be painful but instead Yitbarek smiled and looked pleased.

  Dassala was again saying something in Amharic from the kitchen.

  They are in this house one month, Alazar said. Before they were for one month in Mr. Raymond’s house. Before that Yitbarek was in the hospital. She has come from their town, which is Dessie, to look after him. Now she works some time as the cook for the circus. His parents, they have a shop, so they cannot come, and it is decided it is best for him to stay here right now. Mr. Raymond found this house and he pays for it, even since he has gone away. He says they are not to worry, he will pay.

  Do they know where he’s gone or for how long?

  And this was so much more the way interviews often went, especially in certain parts of the world, and when translators were involved, not the unusual privacy that she’d shared with Abiye, but something more communal and interrupted. Alazar and Dassala shared another exchange. She does not know, Alazar said. When Alazar spoke in English, Yitbarek watched him intently and sometimes glanced at Sara, while his fingers rubbed back and forth over the blanket or the narrow wooden arms of his wheelchair. He did not say where he is going but it does not seem he will come back soon, Alazar said. He came to say goodbye and to say he is sorry but he must leave and he is crying.

  He’s crying.

  Yes.

  Why was he crying? And why did he say he was sorry?

  Another exchange, to a chiming of tin against tin in the kitchen, after which Alazar said, He promised to take care of Yitbarek and he is sad to go. It is the turn of Tamrat to look after the circus so he must find another job.