Reconciliation for the Dead

by Paul E. Hardisty

  Commissioner Ksole: Please continue, Mister Straker.

  Witness: Yes, sir. The second and third photos are of documents from the same dossier. They state: Human testing is essential. Authorisation to test promising formulations on enemies of the state. If genetic targeting cannot be developed in time, direct delivery methods are to be sought.

  Commissioner Rotzenburg: If these documents are real, as the witness claims, then the question again arises, as it has before, of the witness’s own involvement in these activities.

  Commissioner Barbour: Is that all, son?

  Witness: No, sir.

  Commissioner Barbour: Proceed.

  Witness: Photograph Four: by authorisation of the President of the Republic.

  37

  Heavenward

  The face was young, the skin like polished wood.

  Clay narrowed his eyes against the day. Light streamed through the trees in thick woolly beams, haloing the boy’s head.

  ‘África do Sul?’ the boy said.

  ‘Sim,’ said Clay. Yes.

  The boy pointed at Clay’s side. ‘Hiena?’ he said.

  Clay looked past the boy. A spotted hyena lay motionless on the ground, not far from the dead ash of the fire. Its coarse fur was matted with blood.

  Clay nodded.

  The boy handed him a gourd. ‘Agua,’ he said.

  Clay raised himself, drank, collapsed back to the ground.

  The boy stood, spoke something in Xitsonga that Clay could not understand. Then he stooped to pick something up. It was Clay’s Berretta. The boy held the weapon in his little hands, gazing at it as if it were some precious treasure.

  Clay reached out a hand, grunting in pain. ‘Por favor,’ he said.

  The boy stared into Clay’s eyes a moment, handed him the gun, then turned and ran barefoot into the trees.

  Clay reached for Brigade’s pack, checked its contents. Nothing was missing. He must have passed out right after the hyenas attacked. He only remembered firing one shot, but he counted three 9 mm shell casings scattered about him. The pain in his side had bloomed into a constant aching roar, and he could feel the fever pulsing through his body. Every movement drove spikes of pain into his side.

  Sometime later, the boy reappeared. An old man was with him, his skin like weathered hide. He had a small white beard and carried a wooden spear. The old man and the boy helped Clay to his feet, gathered his things, and started walking him through the forest.

  It was slow going. Clay was much bigger than the villagers, and they struggled to support him. Every few metres they had to stop, panting, glistening with sweat, and prop him against the trunk of a tree. After a few minutes of rest they would wedge themselves beneath his shoulders and hoist him up again, coax him forward.

  Clay fought to stay conscious, to keep moving. His legs felt like stone columns, rigid and impossibly heavy. Every step sent exquisite shards of pain slicing through his torso. Fever raged through him. He was bleeding again, and the old man kept looking down at Clay’s side, pushing his withered bony hand against the wound. Had something ruptured inside, where the shrapnel had torn through his insides? Infection had set in. He could feel it. What he needed was a doctor. He needed Vivian. She was a doctor. Where had she gone? She’d been with him in the car. Yes. With Brigade. Maybe she’d gone to pray. Someone call for a casevac. Where the hell was Eben? Call for a casevac.

  Light strobed through the trees. Emerging into some sort of clearing, he stumbled, fell to the ground. And then voices, a sensation of being lifted, carried. The sounds of gunfire, close now, the whump of the Puma’s rotors, the arc cut of metal rupturing air, confusion, dust swirling in the wash, the whine of the turbines, the magnetic chop of the door guns. The casevac was on the way. They were coming for him.

  When he opened his eyes he was looking up into the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. It was Saint Giles, in Edinburgh. He’d only seen it once, as a boy, on his only trip ‘home’ with his parents. He’d been nine years old. Stone pillars of ancient mopane towered above him. Spreading boughs arched across the sky. Sun streamed through the golden leaves of medieval stained glass. He turned his head, looked out across the dry earthen nave. A thornbush palisade. A thatched rondavel pulpit, another beyond. Wood smoke wisping heavenward.

  A small black girl emerged from behind one of the huts. She wore a colourful skirt and her hair was elaborately braided. She toddled out towards him, distracted by something in the trees, a bird or a butterfly. Suddenly she stopped, swaying on unsteady legs, looking at Clay, eyes wide. She blinked once, twice. Her mouth fell open in a silent cry. Then she turned and ran screaming back from where she’d come.

  Sometime later, two men came. They carried him into one of the huts, lay him on a bed of dry grass covered in a coarse woollen blanket. Inside, it was dark, close. The boy appeared, the one who’d first found him in the bush. With him was the old man.

  ‘Médico,’ the boy said in Portuguese. Doctor.

  ‘Sim,’ said Clay. Yes.

  ‘He will fix.’

  The old man kneeled in the earth beside Clay. He was bare chested and wore some kind of headdress. There were deep scars across his torso, three parallel troughs, as if he’d been raked by a set of claws. He inspected Clay’s side, bent his head to the wound and sniffed it.

  ‘Hambanisa,’ he said, frowning.

  Clay looked at the boy. ‘What does he say?’

  ‘A bad spirit,’ said the boy in Portuguese, tapping his own chest. ‘Inside.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Clay. Yes.

  The old man spoke again.

  The boy translated. ‘He says, this is the country of spirits.’

  The old man rocked back on his heels and said something to the boy, who immediately disappeared. With a surprising gentleness, the old man cut away the strips of material that Clay had used to bind the wound, and dropped them into a small, wooden bowl.

  ‘Hlantswa,’ said the old man, pointing to the wound. His voice was soft, like a woman’s. Then he reached into a small bok-skin pouch and withdrew a small spike of polished bone. ‘Rhunga,’ he said. ‘Rhunga.’

  Clay shook his head. ‘Don’t understand you, old man,’ he said in Afrikaans. And then in Portuguese: ‘Não entendo.’

  The man smiled, made a dipping motion with the spike, holding it between his thumb and index finger.

  The boy reappeared with two steaming bowls, one in each hand. He set one of the bowls down and handed the other to the old man. The old man reached his hand behind Clay’s head and brought the bowl to his lips.

  ‘Drink,’ said the boy in Portuguese. ‘It will make you sleep. Then he will clean and sew you.’

  Clay drank. ‘Ask him, can he make the spirit go away?’

  The boy spoke. The old man listened, rubbed his chin, looked into Clay’s eyes. Then he smiled, said something in Xitsonga.

  ‘My grandfather says no. He says you must learn to live with it.’

  Clay let his head sink back onto the straw and closed his eyes.

  Thirteen years later, back in that same country again, he would come to see that the old man had been right. He was possessed. For more than a decade he had tried to apply mathematics and the laws of physics to something that no logic could explain. Later, after he’d met Rania, he’d even tried religion, in his own way. How or exactly when the spirit had entered his soul, if that was where it resided, and indeed if such a place existed, he could only guess. What were the origins of this visitant? Was it perhaps the essence of one of those he’d murdered? What, exactly, did it want of him? For more than a decade, he’d done as the old man had counselled – tried to live with it, locked in an uneasy truce. But he’d always held to the hope that one day exorcism might be possible. That’s why he’d come back.

  When he woke, it was dark.

  A small flame glowed in the hut’s stone hearth. He pushed back the blanket. Underneath, he was naked. The wound was closed, packed with some kind of poultice. The bleeding had stop
ped. His fever was gone. The pain was still there – his side throbbed – but the jagged white heat of before was gone. Beside him, set on a piece of hide, were his few things: the Beretta, the small pouch with the diamond, the film, the notebook, and Brigade’s backpack.

  Clay tried to sit up, but the pain in his side sent him back. He closed his eyes. He knew that he needed to rest now, to let the wound heal properly. That’s what Vivian would have said. What she had said. A vision of her face came to him, pale in the bottom of the grave he’d dug for her, the red earth raining down on that beautiful, flawlessly freckled skin.

  He jerked his eyes open.

  The boy was standing above him, holding a small oil lamp. Flame light danced across the thatched weave of the hut’s walls.

  ‘You shouted,’ said the boy.

  ‘I was dreaming.’

  ‘It is the spirit.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. This is what my grandfather says.’

  ‘It was a dream.’

  ‘You have been shouting all night, all day.’

  ‘How long?’

  The boy held up two fingers. Two days. Then he placed a steaming bowl on the ground beside Clay. ‘Eat.’

  Clay pulled down the blanket, pointed to the poultice covering the wound. ‘What is this?’

  The boy pointed to the ceiling. ‘Mopane leaves.’ He raised his fingers to his mouth, made a chewing motion. ‘It heals, and cleans.’

  Clay nodded. ‘Thank you. And thank your grandfather.’

  The boy looked down at the gun. ‘Where do you go?’

  ‘Maputo.’

  ‘There is war.’

  ‘There is war everywhere.’

  ‘And you are a soldier?’

  ‘No. Not now.’

  ‘Soldiers come here sometimes. But they are not like you.’

  ‘Which soldiers?’

  ‘Black men. From the coast.’

  ‘Government soldiers?’

  ‘No. Not.’

  ‘RENAMO?’

  The boy nodded. ‘They take things.’

  ‘Take things?’

  ‘Yes. Goats. Fruit. They wanted to take my sister, but my father stopped them.’

  Clay said nothing, pushed back everything that came flooding at him.

  ‘My sisters are very afraid of you.’

  ‘I am not like those soldiers.’ He said it, heard the words leave his mouth and inhabit this small place, felt the falsity echo back towards him.

  ‘That is good,’ said the boy. ‘Miringo is sixteen. I know why the soldiers want to take her.’

  ‘Please tell your family not to worry.’

  The boy nodded. ‘But my littlest sister will still be afraid.’

  Clay glanced at the Beretta. ‘Because of this?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘No. She thinks you are fantasma. A ghost.’

  ‘The evil spirit.’

  ‘No,’ said the boy. ‘She has never seen a white man before. As children we learn, white man is ghost. Walking dead.’

  Clay swallowed hard, took a few shallow breaths. ‘The shouting.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell her I am not dead.’

  The boy smiled. ‘Grandfather says eat and sleep.’

  The boy made to leave.

  ‘Wait,’ said Clay.

  The boy turned back to face him.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Matimu. It means history.’

  ‘Matimu. History. This spirit. Inside me. What does it want?’

  The boy frowned. ‘Bad things.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Grandfather has been speaking with it. While you are sleeping.’

  Clay took a shallow breath. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It is attached to you very strongly, Grandfather says.’

  ‘What does it want?’

  ‘It wants to kill.’

  Clay looked away. The boy didn’t move. ‘Please bring me some of that drink, Matimu,’ Clay said. ‘The one that makes you sleep.’

  38

  Nothing Here Is Yours

  When he awoke it was to shouting.

  But it wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t his own screams that tore him from the deep, dreamless sleep he’d fallen into. For the briefest moment, he thought he was back on Fireforce standby at Ondangwa, and the shouting was the senior NCOs rousing the men, sending them to the waiting helicopters. And then it registered: the slivered shafts of sunlight streaming through the gaps in the thatching, the smell of charcoal and mopane leaves, the bleating of goats, the feel of the wool blanket against his skin. And now, the screams of women, adding to the crescendo.

  Clay pushed himself up onto his knees, grabbed the Beretta, chambered a round. He swayed a moment, breathing hard, letting the pain move through him. The hut was too small for him to stand upright, so he crawled to the entrance and peered through a gap between the thatch and the flap.

  Two black men in jungle camouflage uniforms stood in the middle of the kraal, facing Matimu, his father and grandfather. One of the soldiers – if that’s what they were – was older, heavier and carried an R4. The other, younger, taller, appeared unarmed except for a knife in a scabbard at his belt. His hand was clasped around the wrist of a young girl. She looked to be about sixteen, and was naked except for a short skirt fashioned from some kind of hide, and colourful beaded anklets.

  Clay crawled to the other side of the flap, surveyed the rest of the kraal. There were no other soldiers that he could see. The rest of their unit couldn’t be far, though. Perhaps they were waiting outside the kraal, in the clearing, or in the forest beyond. If they were RENAMO – and judging by the R4 the guy was carrying, they were – then they were ostensibly friends, supported by South Africa in their fight against the communists. Were these the soldiers Matimu had spoken of, the ones who came to take?

  A high-pitched scream sent Clay scuttling back to the other side of the flap. The girl was struggling, trying to pull her arm free of the soldier’s grasp. The father was pleading with the men now in rapid Xitsonga, waving his hands. Suddenly, Matimu broke from the group and ran towards the inner kraal. He emerged a few moments later with a pair of goats on twine leads. He led the animals to where the men stood, handed the leads to his father. His father stepped towards the soldiers and offered them the animals.

  The younger soldier laughed, pulling the girl to him, and wrapped his hand around her waist, grabbed for her breasts. She wailed, struggling to free herself. The soldier held her a moment, but she was strong. She whipped her head to the side and sank her teeth into the man’s ear, jerking her head back. The soldier screamed and fell to the ground, one hand raised to what was left of his ear. The girl spat something to the ground and ran to her father, blood pouring from her mouth.

  The other soldier glanced down at his companion and levelled his rifle at the family. The girl was sobbing, clutching her father. They all stood there – the soldier, the father and grandfather, the girl, Matimu – staring at each other. No one spoke.

  Clay froze. This was not his war, not his country, perhaps not even his continent anymore, now that he had determined to leave it behind. Certainly, these were not his people. They had offered him succour, probably saved his life. But they were of a different race. A race he’d been taught to consider as inferior, as not quite human, not like us.

  It was, in the end, the final unveiling. And as he stepped from the hut, naked but for his scars, Beretta steady in his right hand, the left supporting the base of the pistol and his right hand as he’d been taught, careful to keep the left thumb down to avoid the recoil of the slide, he knew that everything he’d been told, everything he’d learned in school, his whole life, had been a lie. And it wasn’t the brutality of the war, or the banality of the things that he’d grown up with every day, or the chemicals, or the experiments, or even the way Vivian had died in his arms. It wasn’t any of that. It was this. Right now. This poor family who’d taken him in, rather than leaving him
to the hyenas.

  ‘Pare,’ Clay shouted, advancing towards the soldiers. Stop.

  The soldier with the R4 swivelled towards him, rifle at his hip. He looked surprised, upset at being interrupted. But immediately his countenance changed and he lowered his weapon. ‘My friend,’ he said in Afrikaans, smiling as he looked Clay up and down.

  Clay kept his pistol trained on the man’s chest.

  ‘South Africa?’ the soldier said.

  Clay nodded.

  ‘Special Forces?’

  ‘That’s right, bru.’ He’d heard that special units of the SADF were operating inside Mozambique, but he’d always considered it to be rumour, like so much of the other bullshit the men passed around on a daily basis.

  ‘We are RENAMO,’ said the soldier. ‘Allies.’

  ‘This is my village,’ said Clay. ‘Please leave.’

  The soldier glanced at the young girl. A smiled creased his face. ‘Yes, I understand.’

  ‘Understand whatever you like.’

  ‘Fok jou,’ screamed the younger soldier.

  Clay stood impassive, gun aimed at the armed man’s chest.

  The elder soldier frowned, hefted the R4 in his hands, as if assessing its power in this situation. By now, his younger companion had staggered to his feet, hand clamped to the side of his head. Blood flowed through his fingers and dripped onto his uniform. He glared at the girl, muttering to himself.

  ‘We will be back,’ said the elder soldier.

  ‘I’ll be here,’ said Clay.

  The soldier shrugged, shouldered the R4, took his injured colleague by the arm and started guiding him towards the palisade. Clay exhaled, lowered his pistol, watched them go.

  The soldiers were almost to the gate when the younger man stopped and turned and faced Clay.

  ‘Nothing here is yours, white man,’ he shouted in Afrikaans, fists clenched at his sides. ‘Do you hear me? Nothing.’

  39

  You Could Show Me How

  Slowly, Clay healed.