Burridge Unbound (31 page)

Another life.

I kneel in the courtyard, hold a small railing, the water flooding around me like an ocean tide. What are we going to do about the IS? A small part of my brain still functioning in that old way. There’s a houseful of them, armed to the teeth. How are we supposed to arrest them? But even as I’m thinking this the police arrive. Called by Sin Vello, no doubt.
He is his own man
, I remember Suli saying.

His own man.

And police are arresting IS, who stand around in shock, demoralized, some now vomiting in the rain beside me. It’s as if this discovery has taken them by surprise, that it wasn’t real before. A fridge full of heads!

It’s the guillotine. They always knew it was there. That someday the crowds would come. The heads would be their own. That’s why they’re vomiting, being led like sheep into police wagons. The heads in the fridge are their own.

“I
was coming down the right side and started to fall over? So I shot my first slapshot. Ever! But it wasn’t a raise. It went right along the ice and into the net. Everybody came out and mobbed me.”

“I wish I’d been there.”

Patrick tells me more about the hockey game, his voice so young, almost pushing everything else out of my head. Almost. Except for the stench in that house – it’s clinging to my clothes, skin, imagination. I am back in the safety of my suite at the Merioka, a full day has passed, but nothing can scrub off the stench. Where are the bodies? The police are investigating. They’re going to find them somewhere, and there will be marks of torture, of unspeakable things done in that little grey house in that peaceful little suburb in Aaden.

“Why didn’t you write me any e-mails?” Patrick asks.

“I’m sorry,” I find myself saying, hollow little words, nothing against the disappointment in his voice.

“We saw your picture,” he says. “What were you doing in the rain?”

The whole world has seen my picture. Kneeling in the deluge, grasping that railing, almost prayer-like in supplication. For one day the one picture shown everywhere, in every newspaper.

Reporters are waiting for me downstairs, have been feeding from me all day. Not just locals, but international journalists flying in from everywhere. A new twist to the story of Suli Nylioko and the Santa Irenian miracle: a fridge full of heads, a houseful of
IS
men arrested, led away like cattle.

Maryse comes on the line. “Are you all right?” Her perennial first question, and how she must hate to ask it. What we never seem to get past. Am I all right?

“Yes. And you?”

“You’re amazing for getting headlines.”

As if that’s all it is. Whole blocks of arguments rise like icebergs suddenly tipped over so that the huge base is now forty storeys in the air, supported by the tiny tip that usually never gets wet. Ignore it, ignore it. It’s the only way.

“Things are happening. It wasn’t me, really. I was just the one in the picture.”

“The paper said more than that.”

“Yes.” Easier to agree. Breathe and breathe. She asks about Joanne and I explain about her going home and how I haven’t been able to get in touch with her, or Derrick, for that matter.

“When was the last time you talked to him?” she asks.

“I don’t know. It’s been quite a while. I’m afraid I haven’t kept in touch the way …” Blah blah blah. She picks it out of my voice and changes the subject.

“It’s just I didn’t get my cheque this month.”

“Ah,” I say. “I guess I know that, and I’m sorry. There’s been a delay in the payments here, nothing to worry about, the money should be on its way soon. I’ve got the president of the country working on it.”

“Well, maybe the president could phone my landlord, get him off my back.” For a second I think she’s serious.

“I suppose I could ask–”

“It’s a joke,” she says. Then – “I’m really scared for you, Bill. Have you done enough? When are you coming home?”

“I know, I know,” I say. “I am planning to come home, maybe very soon. It depends on Joanne, I just have to talk to her. I won’t stay here long without her. I do need her help. I recognize that. Anyway, I didn’t think you’d be that concerned.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I say, but bitterly, I can’t help it. Simmer down, I think.

She doesn’t take the bait. “Don’t wait too long,” she says instead. “I’m really worried. And certain members wait by the computer worshipping you. I’m not nagging, you know, I just don’t know how else to say it. But a quick note now and again would mean so much to him.”

“I’m sorry about the e-mails,” I say, too angry to really sound sorry. “I’ve been so caught up.”

“Yes.”
She could say something gentle to let me off the hook, but she doesn’t.

“Before I left, you said something about taking the next step. What does that mean exactly?” I ask.

“We don’t have to talk about it now,” she says. I know the way she’s looking, her jaw clenched, her eyes so narrow and hurt.

“Do you mean a divorce? You want things finalized?” My heart suddenly pounding in my head.

“I’m not going to talk to you about it on the phone,” she says, managing to keep control of her voice. “When you’re back. It’s just – life isn’t standing still here.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“Bill,” she says, and I try to calm myself. “Just come back safely. Soon, all right?”

In a small meeting room off the hotel lobby I meet with journalists from the BBC, Reuters, AP, AFP, and
South China Morning Post
, among others. No Canadian journalists – they’ll get the story off the wire feeds. And no big names either. For the most part young, informal, hungry types, earnest, insistent in their questioning, as if truth can be levered out of memory and consciousness. Reporters can be levered out, anyway. One good photo and the Merioka is back in business, no doubt charging their old rates in fat American dollars.

“How far can the Truth Commission go in healing the wounds of this society?”

“Do you trust the police to properly investigate abuses by the IS, and would you trust the
IS
to investigate the police?”

“Who is there to investigate the military?”

“How much leeway has your commission be given in its work?”

“Now that the
IS
has been directly implicated in atrocities, do you fear for your own safety?”

College-educated questions that I try to answer patiently, as if my own thoughts can have some bearing on reality.

“The day before the
IS
detention-centre bust you were reported to be trying to leave the country. Can you comment on those reports and what your participation in the commission has meant to you personally?”

Personally.

Words form like they do in these interviews, well-shaped responses, apparently thoughtful, one sentence leading to
another.
Atrocities … abuses … extrajudicial executions … natural justice … corruption … time for healing and redemption … institution-building and renewal
.

I go slowly, do my best to push some sort of light into dark corners. But shine one way and something else falls dim. Nothing stays clear.
Life isn’t standing still here. My first slapshot. Ever! I love you too. Don’t really know what I think about that
.

Don’t really know.

The reporter stops writing, looks in some surprise. Not one of the young men, but a grey beard, balding, heavy, wearing too many clothes for this climate. “Pardon?” he says.

“I don’t really know what sorts of conclusions we might reach,” my voice says, “or how all this is going to help in the end. But holding perpetrators accountable for atrocities is important. Don’t you think? If we ever want to move beyond these cycles of violence.”

Cycles of violence
. Another handsome phrase. Sounds like a particularly vigorous bicycle race.

Not like the stench of that house. Where are the bodies? You can’t have heads without bodies.

“I’m just not certain what’s beyond the cycles,” I say.

“Do you mean what it takes to break the cycle?”

I love you too. Don’t really know what I think about that
.

“I haven’t been able to move beyond the cycles myself,” I say.

“You yourself are caught in the cycles of violence?”

I keep thinking of a bicycle race. I can’t get off the course. Shoes locked to the pedals.

“Yes, that’s right. Because of what was done to me, you see. I’m still caught in cycles of violence.”

Pens scribbling, tape recorders turning, eyes watching, questioning, but not understanding. They could never understand.
I see it now clearly. Whatever they write from this, whatever story gets reported and read around the world as if the closest to truth we can get – garbage. Clever phrasing. It can’t approach the darkness of that house. The utter darkness.

After the session I rise and walk to the elevator, encased in the same weariness I felt getting off the plane in the wheelchair, home from the Kartouf. It’s as if it all hits me again, the strangeness of this journey, the withering knowledge once more of what we can do to one another.

Back upstairs, there’s a call waiting on my phone. I retrieve the message and feel of flood of relief to hear Joanne’s voice. “Bill!” she says. “I’m calling from somewhere over the Rockies – I was hung up in Sydney, it’s a long story. I can’t tell you how frustrated I feel, not being home yet. But I saw your picture in the paper this morning. My God, I nearly spilled breakfast all over myself. Are you all right? I wish I could talk to you. I’m so sorry to leave like this. I’ll try to call Derrick when I get in, but you can get me at my parents’ home in Toronto.” She’s left the number; I scramble for a free piece of paper, the back of someone’s testimony, and scribble it down. “Look, I’ll call you when I know more. My mother’s hanging in there, but it doesn’t look good.” There’s a series of crackles on the recording and she says, “Turbulence or something. Talk to you later!”

I try to call Joanne’s parents’ home in Toronto, but the international circuits are busy. I try Derrick’s number too, but can’t get through there either. Sometimes the phones just don’t work here.

Nothing to do but wait. This is the problem. Stuck in now, waiting for later, through the aching stretch of darkness. Last night I sat for hours by the window wide-eyed, peering into the black, trying to keep the images from my mind: that rat in
the kitchen, the black box, the look of triumph on Dorut Kul’s face. The kids waiting in the rain by the fence, peering through the gates of hell.

Those
IS
men vomiting as if they didn’t know.

The door of the fridge. My hand on the grubby handle, pulling it open.

I have to replace them all one by one. Joanne in her T-shirt, her long legs, her eyes. Joanne leaning over the menu at the Happy Mouth Lounge. Joanne cradling me in this stupidly luxurious bed after my collapse that time. Her feel, her smell. It’s insanity otherwise. The filth in that kitchen. The stench that I can’t seem to wash off my skin.

There’s a mountain of things to read, but I shouldn’t do that tonight. I need to keep a clear head, safe thoughts.

I need to go home.

I try the phones again and again through the night, finally doze restlessly near dawn. Luki tells me later at the
Justico kampi
that sometimes the telephone grid malfunctions on windy days – the wires can’t handle the vibrations. But it’s not particularly windy here. Perhaps somewhere else.

“We just wait,” she says, “until the system is working again.”

I’m distracted in the hearing room, have a hard time following the testimony of a colonel who apparently had no idea what anybody under his command was doing most of the time. Sin Vello gets him to admit that his parents bought his commission for him, and that he spent much of the year at the family villa at Bolo Beach. Dorut Kul seems particularly interested in the testimony. He takes copious notes from the tiny visitors’ gallery, several times makes eye contact with me.

My mind is stuck on the thought that I shouldn’t be here.
Joanne won’t be returning soon, I’m sure of it. But I should actually talk to her before I make my announcement. I’m bone-tired listening to the colonel, but the idea of returning home is so compelling I’m almost ready to tell Sin Vello.

In the afternoon an
IS
commander scheduled to testify fails to appear. During the wait I try to call Joanne’s parents from Minister Tjodja’s office, but the phones still aren’t working. I tell Tjodja that I’m strongly considering returning to Canada because of Joanne’s departure.

“But I can provide you with any number of personal assistants, Mr. Burridge!” he exclaims.

“It wouldn’t be the same,” I tell him. Then when he gets really anxious I relent a little, say that my mind is not completely made up. “I have to talk to her, that’s all,” I say. “Before I can really know what’s going on. But my health is precarious, as you know.”

“We will do everything in our power to help you, Mr. Burridge.”

I think of telling him he could start by paying me, but I shy away – he might get the idea I’m leaving over money. It would take a whole other conversation to extricate myself from the room; I’m too tired to deal with it now. Instead I thank him, return to the hearing room filled with the certainty that this is the right decision. I gather my papers, wait, ready to approach Sin Vello and Mrs. Grakala with the news. But Sin Vello has been called away on something urgent; Mrs. Grakala has already left. The afternoon’s session is postponed.

On t
he Justico kampi
steps, as Nito is getting our taxi, Dorut Kul approaches me in some agitation. “We need to talk, Mr. Burridge,” he says quickly, under his breath, without quite looking at me.

“About what?” I ask.

He thrusts a padded envelope under my arm. I’m already burdened with too many papers.

“Not now,” he says and walks away. In my surprise I drop the package, bend over awkwardly to retrieve it. So much for secrecy, I think. If that’s what he wanted.

I return to my hotel room tired, distracted, suddenly weighed down by details. If I’m to leave I’ll need to buy an airline ticket. Perhaps Luki can help me out. What about money? Do I have enough credit left to purchase the ticket? If I go home now I may never be paid for the work I have done. I’ll need to talk to Derrick. But the phones are still out. Must be a hell of a windstorm. I could start packing. What will I do with all these documents? I’ll have to talk to Tjodja about them.