Purgatory

by Guido Eekhaut

  “We don’t really know if we were supposed to find out. If your informant—”

  “Still, it wouldn’t go unnoticed forever.” She glanced at the counter as if considering another éclair. “Not even in the Ardennes.”

  “Your informant had nothing further to share about the subject?”

  “He was, as usual, very discreet. And concise. I never get more than a few sentences on paper, a vague picture that might mean something, that sort of thing. It’s not like all of a sudden a detailed map concerning the society lands on my desk. And a compendium with names and biographical details. I don’t even expect his information to lead to a breakthrough. Coordinates, that’s all I got. And I’m still in the dark about his motives.”

  “Can’t you contact him?”

  “He made sure I couldn’t. It’s a one-way street. He is careful, obviously. He’s aware, I guess, of the punishment for treason. Can’t blame him for being careful.”

  7

  LINDA WEISMAN TRAVELED IN the jeep with Lieutenant Odinga, who drove carefully for lack of road. The vehicle seemed as good as new and was painted a pale reddish-brown to make it disappear in the scenery. They drove south with old, jagged mountains looming in the distance. The other members of the medical team had warned her about those mountains. That’s where the rebels came from. At least according to the refugees. Since the arrival of the team and the Kenyan contingent of Blue Helmets, no rebels had been seen. A couple of times there had been gunfire in the distance, but sound carried far across the open plain. Perhaps it had been hunters or poachers, who didn’t seem bothered by the presence of the soldiers in the area.

  She glanced over her shoulder, but the camp was no longer visible. The jeep threw a cloud of dust that was heavy and soon settled again. It had a sharp, metallic smell, like blood. She couldn’t escape the dust. This world seemed uniquely made from sand and dust.

  For a moment, she considered asking the lieutenant again what he wanted to show her. But the stern look on his face made her decide otherwise. He would probably not find the right words to explain what he and the soldiers had discovered over there. She still wondered why he had spoken to her about it. For the last three weeks, he had hardly been paying attention to her. He conversed with his sergeants, with the doctors, with the two officials from the United Nations, and he even talked to some of the older refugees. But he chose to ignore her.

  Then, suddenly, there was this. This special treatment. Even more unusual because he had asked her to be discreet about their sortie.

  No, she hadn’t told her team leader where she was going. In her spare time, she did as she pleased. She wasn’t accountable to anyone. She wouldn’t be patronized. There had been plenty of that in her previous occupation. An occupation that left her with the certainty that she was not, and would never be, appreciated. Not by her boss and not by the other employees. A job she had quit after four years.

  She had been honest with Walter: she needed time away from Amsterdam and from the Netherlands. Her feelings had nothing to do with him. He was probably the only reason ever to return to Amsterdam. He had understood. She hoped he had understood. She wanted to distance herself from her former life, find new horizons, although she was ashamed of the cliché. At the same time, she could help people who were in dire need, she could help alleviate the world of poverty, or whatever. Walter believed that the solution to third-world poverty was to provide interest-free loans to farmers in particular, provide knowledge on a large scale, and open fair international markets for these countries. But these were not the things she could help with. She wanted to go over there and get her hands dirty.

  It’s a war zone, she told him. There’s no economic activity. What they need is urgent medical care and equipment for digging wells and for tents, water filters, those sorts of things. She recalled that as a kid, she sold paper flowers for poor countries and aid organizations. Walter recalled almost the same things. He collected bottle caps for the missionaries to sell and collect money for poor people in the former Belgian colony.

  But her main reason remained the oppressive feeling she had in Holland. It had become too small, too restricted. No free spaces, no real landscapes—just houses and office buildings and football stadiums and factories and more office buildings. Then there was the way people shuffled through life, bound by that typically Dutch necessity to conform, to be exactly like everybody else. It had driven her almost insane. On the job, people always watching you. Making sure you didn’t stick out. Being afraid to be different. It permeated their entire society.

  She looked skyward. She would try again to call Walter tonight. It hadn’t worked out earlier with the satellite phone. The UN people had a shortwave transmitter, but she could hardly use that to call Walter.

  She needed a functional mobile phone. That was what she was thinking, deep in Africa, in a jeep.

  “We’re not going far, I hope?” she said.

  Lieutenant Odinga turned his head slightly toward her without taking his eyes off the nonexistent road. “We don’t measure distances here like you do in Europe,” he said. “We might travel two hundred miles in four days to meet a neighbor. Just for a chat, to see someone who isn’t even related. Two hundred, that’s a trip, not a voyage, to us.” There was suddenly amusement in his voice. “We’re a bit like Americans in that respect.”

  They approached the foothills of the mountains. Red rocks, barely affected by erosion. Sand and wind had had hardly any impact on the hard material. Or it was a recently formed rock formation, geologically speaking. Sometimes she imagined buildings concealed under these rocks. A lost civilization no one had ever heard of, deep in the African heartland.

  The jeep slowed. She wondered how the lieutenant knew where to go. Maybe he saw familiar details in the landscape that escaped her. He drove confidently enough, as if driving on a paved road. Then she noticed he was simply following a row of stones, marking a path, set a hundred meters apart from each other. Primitive but effective, although eventually the boulders would disappear under the sand.

  “How long do you intend to stay?” Odinga inquired.

  The question was obvious enough. It was the sort of small talk people used to avoid more difficult subjects. Except that this question seemed to have a very specific meaning, in a country without past or history and certainly without much of a future. He wanted to know to what extent she felt connected to the refugees, to the land itself. He wanted to find out the extent of her commitment.

  “I’m staying for six months,” she said. This wasn’t entirely true but not really a lie either. She could leave whenever she wanted. A plane would be expected every week. She could be on it anytime she wanted. Nobody could keep her longer than she wanted, and nobody would blame her for leaving.

  He nodded. Six months had been an eternity to her when she arrived. If she went back earlier, it would be because of Walter and for no other reason.

  But after these past weeks, she had come to realize people here depended on her.

  No, she wouldn’t be drawn into that trap. Don’t let things get personal, as she had been advised before coming here. Don’t get involved. Emotionally or otherwise. Because there is very little you can do for these people, except for temporarily tending to their most pressing needs. After that, you need to return to your own reality.

  These people cannot be saved just by sending medical teams or soldiers. Their problems, and those of this part of the continent, are much more fundamental. It all comes down to the basic problems of global capitalism. The widening gap between the very few rich and the very many poor. Soon, there will no longer be a middle ground, no middle class, no upward mobility for most of the human race.

  That’s what she had been told in Amsterdam by the people who had contacted her. What we do in places like Somalia, they warned her, is tending to the superficial wounds of the body, while that same body is rotting away. So while you might feel a personal responsibility to these desperate people, you must keep in mind that
you’re not part of the solution. And never will be.

  But then, after arriving here and meeting the people, especially the children, she knew the real world, the world of hunger and sand, needed mending. And that politics, exactly like global capitalism, was a ghost, certainly to these people. They were hungry, needed clean water and basic medical help. She wasn’t a doctor, nor a nurse. She managed supplies, work schedules, communication, the practical stuff the medical team needed regularly. Quartermaster and occasional cook, pencil pusher and gopher. That was who she was. She didn’t need to encounter any of the refugees at all.

  But the children soon found out what she was responsible for and what sort of stuff they could beg from her, like a bit more food and luxuries—sugar, chocolate, tea, coffee.

  “What you are going to see,” Odinga suddenly said, waking her from her reveries, “will shock you. I want you to be prepared.”

  “Then why show it to me? If it’s shocking, isn’t it your responsibility to keep me far away from it? Shouldn’t you be involving the UN people instead?”

  “Nothing is ever that simple, Miss Weisman. I assume I’ll need to confer with an anthropologist, and maybe I should get one from Mombasa. Or perhaps a criminologist or a pathologist. You see, I’m familiar with all these terms. But who knows what sort of specialists we need?”

  She silently wondered what he was talking about. A criminologist? Here, in this place where crimes silently disappeared under the sand?

  What was he talking about?

  And why did he need her?

  “Do you keep an open mind about things that are difficult to comprehend, Miss Weisman? In the sense that you do not jump to conclusions about certain things you might see?”

  “I don’t know. I see myself as someone who wants to learn about what makes people tick, I guess. Maybe, yes, I keep an open mind.”

  “Well,” he said, “I assumed you are that person. Not at all superstitious.”

  The jeep climbed between sharp rocks. The track now looked like a narrow river, running between banks of rocks. At least there was some sort of track the vehicle could follow. Otherwise, they would have been obliged to climb on foot.

  Lieutenant Odinga steered the vehicle confidently through tight corners and on slopes. They reached a small plateau in front of a steep cliff that seemed to extend all the way to the top of the hill. She glanced upward. The reddish peaks and fractures of the cliff contrasted neatly with the clear blue sky. She would have taken a picture, but she had no camera.

  The lieutenant turned the engine off. A disturbing silence descended over the desert. All she heard was a soft vibration, perhaps from the blood in her ears or the atmosphere heating up. There were no other sounds. It was never quiet in and around the camp with so many people. So many thousands of them. And then there was the almost constant wind over the plain, whistling through tent flaps and dry brushes. Now and then some animal could be heard, in the distance.

  There was nothing of that here.

  Only silence.

  Interrupted by the ticking of the cooling jeep engine.

  She glanced at Lieutenant Odinga. It was already hot between these rocks, even this early in the day. No breeze blew in from the plain. “Is this it?” she asked, imagining he had brought her to admire the beauty of the landscape.

  She felt a bit uncomfortable. Assuming his plan was less courteous, how would she react? Nobody knew where they were. No one would come to her aid. Why had she been this naive?

  Or did she almost unconsciously hope for a little spicy adventure out in the wilds, if necessary with Lieutenant Odinga?

  Don’t be silly, she thought. That thought never crossed your damn mind. Not in the least. Did it? Unless you’re developing a second personality—a concept she knew was scientifically unfounded—that cherishes such intentions in its perverse soul.

  He turned his attention to her. “We have to walk through the gap,” he said.

  Gap? She wondered what he meant.

  He pointed it out to her. In the cliff she noticed an elongated shadow. A gap?

  “Come,” he said. “It will only get hotter the longer we wait. And I’ve brought almost no water. My men are waiting for us.”

  This sounded even more ominous, but she followed him as he approached the shadow that turned into a tall, narrow chasm that seemed to split the steep side of the hill in half. Inside the gap the air felt cool.

  They didn’t have far to go. This was not a large mountain. After no more than a score of meters, they stood at the edge of another open space, larger this time, like a bowl with an edge of irregular rocks.

  A dozen soldiers rested against the rim of the open space, and each of them got up when they saw the lieutenant. Their weapons stood neatly against the rock, in the shadows.

  Nothing of this caught her attention. The soldiers, the sandy bowl bordered by rocks, the blue sky overhead, the shadows—all that belonged to the ordinary, everyday world. This was the world she was familiar with, even this far from home.

  What she saw in the middle of the bowl made her doubt her own sanity and that of the world.

  Instinctively, she counted them. Eleven. Eleven human figures, standing straight up, black as the night, possibly even more black, as was the ground where they stood. Eleven figures, each of them formerly a human being, and now the only witness to an intense suffering.

  Nothing could be further from the mundane world.

  She stepped forward. She knew the soldiers and the lieutenant watched her, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t even wonder why Odinga had brought her here. She didn’t think about his motives. Perhaps he wanted to frighten her. Perhaps he needed a neutral witness. There might be a sensible explanation, but given what she witnessed here, it would be meaningless.

  She stopped. The rational part of her brain registered details. The arms of the figures had been tied behind their backs with what must have been belts or wires or ropes, she couldn’t tell. The heat had fused the material of these bindings, along with what remained of the clothes, to the bodies. She noticed wide-open mouths, heads with all flesh burned off, blackened teeth. These figures, arranged in a circle, once had been human, some time ago, but the fire had reduced them to almost abstract objects. The whole setup appeared as an apocalyptic sculpture, here in this remote part of the desert.

  She turned toward the lieutenant, who stood back from her, his gaze fixed on the sand in front of him as if the sight of these figures were blasphemy to him.

  “When did this happen?” she asked.

  But she knew right away it was a ridiculous question. How could the lieutenant know? There should be other questions. Questions within the range of the lieutenant’s knowledge.

  “A long time ago,” he whispered, not wanting to disturb the dead.

  She said nothing.

  “This is an arid desert,” he continued in a normal voice. “The lack of moisture has ensured that the bodies remain well preserved. This did not happen recently. We have spoken discreetly to local people, as far as there are any local people, concerning things that happened in the past. About the stories they preserve for posterity.”

  “And?”

  “They have no stories for this,” he said.

  “Nobody recalls having seen this, or heard about it, in recent times?”

  “It isn’t the discovery we want to share with local people,” Odinga said. “This may have been a public execution or a ritual. I’m no anthropologist, Miss Weisman. Perhaps once there was a people here who burned others alive like this, as a ritual. But that is highly unlikely since the locals have no such tradition.”

  “But this didn’t happen recently?”

  “Not this, no.”

  “How old then do you think—” She looked at him intently. “What do you mean, not this? Are there other . . .?”

  He pointed. She turned around. Behind her, on the other side of the bowl, the rocks made a dip, and she now noticed another gap. He stepped past her and headed th
at way. She followed him. The soldiers remained.

  “I warn you again,” he said, “for what you are to see.”

  But she knew what to expect.

  They entered another depression, another bowl-like natural edifice between rocks. They stood in front of a large open area with rugged plateaus and cliffs that exuded in all directions. Behind a ledge, the almost colorless savanna stretched toward the horizon, never meeting the sky.

  Again, a circle of bodies. Seven this time. These were not yet petrified like the others. Some were only partially charred. A few heads were still intact. The heat had been less intense. The victims were all Africans, and at least one of them was a woman.

  She turned her head away. “Dear God,” she whispered.

  “Oh,” Odinga said succinctly, “God had very little to do with this. This is the work of men, Miss Weisman. This is the doings of people. Cruel, perverse people who are led to believe it is necessary to torture and maim other humans.”

  “Who are these victims? Do you have any idea?”

  “I fear the question will find no answer. And as to your inevitable next question, this second location is no older than a few weeks. Again, because of the climate here, the flesh hasn’t rotted yet. I had one of my men take pictures of the victims that might still be recognizable, and we will again talk to the locals, but we . . .” He made a gesture, indicating the futility of the effort.

  “When did you find this?”

  “Three days ago, only. We didn’t discover it ourselves. A couple of refugees entered the gorge in search of water and perhaps small animals for food, and when they returned to the camp, they told us about this place. I dissuaded them from talking to others, but I cannot guarantee they will keep quiet. This discovery will not remain a secret for long. This is great sorcery, ma’am. In this country, this is powerful magic. Whoever did this had a special kind of power.”