Continent (4 page)

I
HAVE
stood at the window and watched Corporal Beyat as he goes off duty through the wire gate. The women press forward and shout the names of the sons and husbands who have disappeared. They push leaflets into his pockets. They whisper subversion as he squeezes through them and out onto the open pavement of Government Drive. ’Freti tags along without a word from him. Once he turned and shouted, ‘Keep away’ perhaps, or ‘Leave me alone. You’re getting on my nerves.’ Might he have mentioned me? He pushed her back. But she took no notice. She had found someone to love and that was that. By the time they had taken ten steps they were out of sight, masked by the wall of the regimental offices, and I could only guess at my sister’s insistent courtship, her coquetry, her blandishments, the candour of her face.

I can only guess, too, at what will happen to me here. No one has come to ask me questions. There has been no opportunity for me to clear my name, or to answer any charges or complaints. Those other young men whom I meet in the latrines or in the
shower block are firebrands from the university or leafleteers or the sort who pontificate on platforms. They sing defiant songs as they wash. I do not know the words – or tunes. From them I hear about ‘the kitchen’ where, they say, all prisoners are overwhelmed, stretched out naked on an unhinged door and clipped by ear and toe to magnetos. There are hoods and chains and electric prods. There is a punishment called the crate. Another called the handstand. Sometimes it is silent in the kitchen; that is when, they say, electrodes have been placed upon a detainee’s teeth and the current switched on. Then, no one ever screams.

Sometimes I talk to a man who is more my own age. He, too, like me, was taken from the street. But he was carrying posters and a pot of paste. Our only hope, he says, is the women at the wire gate. If only our names could be smuggled those few yards, then we would be safe. Do I know people who could set us free? But others warn me not to answer. They say this man is a soldier in disguise, an informer. Then they engage me, too, in whispers. Which soldiers do I think would take a bribe to carry a note outside or to mutter a name at the gate? To what lawyers in the town should they address their messages? What am I, other than a legal clerk, unmarried, underpaid, unremarkable in every way? What faction do I represent? They do not trust my answers – so I tell them about
Beyat, my sister and my hope that he has taken word of me to her. ‘You must talk to him,’ they say, insisting that I remember all their names. ‘Perhaps he will be our postman.’

F
OR MUCH OF
the day I stand on my bunk and look out, with one eye shut, upon the town. I have devised my own clock by the comings and the goings at the gate, by the shifts of soldiers passing through the frontier of wire, by the exercising squads in the barracks yard, by the times when the kerosene lanterns are lit on the nut stalls in the street. I know that when the raffia screen is lifted in the nearest window of the regimental offices, the woman clerk who sits there will light a cigarette to start her working day. A match flares in the glass. I know that when the klaxon calls, conscripts will run across the yard below to queue for their soup and potato at the canteen door. I know which conscripts will squat in a circle, playing dice, which will kick a ball against my wall, and which will sit alone. I know when work is done: the raffia screen comes down again, the office workers and the off-duty soldiers make their way into town, the army chauffeurs button their coats and start the engines of the government cars, and the soldiers at the wire gate push back the women waiting there. There is the woman with the headscarf. She comes at lunch time and stands immobile with an unfurled portrait of a man. There
are the white-haired women in the black clothes who have the energy of pedlars, blocking the way of every man who exits, holding up their lists. There is the fat girl with the flag, the tall woman with three children, the bandy one, the girl with short hair, the stocky woman who bangs on the bonnets of passing cars. There is the pulse of flame from their charcoal brazier at night.

‘H
OW’S
my sister?’ I asked Beyat while he stood and supervised the cleaning of my cell. ‘Old Slobberjowl?’ he said, and made a gaping, lovelorn face. ‘She hangs around outside the barracks. Where I go, she goes. She makes a fool of me.’ ‘You made a fool of her,’ I said. Beyat nodded. He was embarrassed. He was only half to blame, he claimed. She was a temptress for all her innocence. She had clung to him, had she not? She had let him lift her and transport her round the bar. She had behaved, well, like a whore, tugging at his arm and pulling at his uniform. Was he to blame if he had weakened for a little fun? Any soldier in the bar would have done the same, would – so provoked – have carried ’Freti to the jeep and driven off to find a spot amongst the trees of Deliverance Park, where lovers who could not afford a hotel room could lie amongst the shrubs. They did have sex, he said. And endearments were exchanged, polite and intimate as suited such a time, with my sister’s bright
and grotesque clothes cast off, the soldier tender-tough, intractable, and shanty boys (attracted to the place by the abandoned army jeep) watching and whistling from behind the trees.

‘She’d led me on,’ he said. ‘And I told her so, after we had done. I told her that I had a girl back home. She said it didn’t matter, that she could be my girl in town.’ Once again he made a gaping, lovelorn face. How could she be his girl in town, with a mouth and eyes like that? He listed all the times when he had turned his back on her, when he had passed her in the street or at the gate. Only once, when he was drunk, and she had trapped him in a bar, defences down, had they visited the Park again, at night. Two other soldiers had come, too. ‘See what she has started?’ he said, and I believe he could have wept at the anguish that she caused if the captain had not entered at that time and led me to the kitchen.

The reports of the firebrands and the leafleteers had been exaggerated. The room was no more than an office – a desk, a table lamp, two chairs, a cabinet, a sink. The captain stood behind me at the door. A man in an open-necked shirt sat at the desk with a pile of folders. ‘We have some simple questions, then you can be released or transferred to another place,’ he said. ‘Please sit.’ He asked my name, my occupation, my address in the town. And then: ‘With which political groupings are you associated?’ I told him,
None. He nodded and wrote for a few moments. ‘Well, we are in no hurry,’ he said. ‘We will take our time. Come and see me here tomorrow. And in the meantime give some thought to your position. If you will not answer questions then our hands are tied. We might need to be more forceful. Either way, it’s up to you, so long as we have answers. Think of yourself –there’s no one else to keep an eye on you. No one knows you’re here.’ ‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘Perhaps, my sister knows I’m here. She’s with the women at the gate.’ He smiled. ‘My family knows I’m here,’ I added. ‘The lawyers at my office know I’m here. The women at the gate have all the names.’ The captain shook his head. ‘You think that it’s not possible,’ I said. ‘We have our postmen. I have friends inside and out who can attest that I am innocent of everything.’ I extemporized the petitions and the affidavits that they might expect if I were not released. Once again I used words and phrases which I had typed in legal papers. ‘Such bravado,’ said the man in the shirt, ‘does not impress.’ He signalled to the captain that I should leave. The captain led me back along the corridor and up the stairs to my cell. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘who are the postmen?’ I thought of my splashed clothes, of the beer that I’d been forced to drink, of Beyat and the two soldiers, the parked jeep amongst the trees, ’Freti with her loose eyes and the indelible smile. Was
it too late to intervene? ‘Who do you think?’ I said. ‘Who’s sleeping with whose sister?’

B
EYAT
came again, as I stood on the bunk watching the women at the gate. ‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘What did you tell the captain? He wants to know if there are soldiers who have any contact with the sister of a prisoner. You’re going to get a beating if you’ve played the big mouth once again.’ I shook my head. ‘Know who’s to blame?’ he said. ‘Your witless sister. You know what’ll happen, don’t you? I’ll get posted to some upcountry dump, thanks to you and her.’ I nodded at the window and said, ‘You see, she’s waiting for you all the time. Sooner or later the captain was bound to know.’ He stepped up to stand beside me and look out. ‘Press your head against the wall,’ I told him, ‘and shut one eye.’ ‘She’s there again,’ he said. He pushed me up against the wall and jabbed at my stomach with each word: ‘And what suggestions has the witless brother got for clearing up this mess?’ ‘Why don’t you let me have a word with her?’ I said.

‘You have a word with her?’ Beyat thought that funny. ‘How will you have a word with her? You’re in here, and she’s out there.’ ‘I’ll write,’ I said. He tore a sheet from his report book and handed me a pencil: ‘It’d better work!’ I wrote five lines and pushed the square of paper into Beyat’s uniform pocket. He took
it out and read it. I had written, ‘Dear ’Freti, I’m in the barracks, in a cell. Corporal Beyat is one of my warders and he will see that I come to no harm. But if he is spotted with you, my sister, then who knows what his officers might think? You place him and me in danger – so, I beg you, if you love us, stay away. Please show this letter to my mother and our friends. Your devoted brother.’ ‘That might cool her off,’ I said, ‘though she can’t read. You’ll have to read it to her.’

Later that day, I watched from the window as for the first time Beyat acknowledged ’Freti at the gate and they walked off side by side.

W
ITHIN
an hour he had returned. The captain brought him to the cell. ‘What’s this?’ he said, holding up the page from Beyat’s report book. ‘A letter for your postman?’ He crumpled up the note and tossed it to Beyat. ‘What kind of barracks are we running here?’ I looked at Beyat for the answer. Had he gone straight with my note to the captain? Or had they followed him, scooped him from my sister’s side, in their expert fashion, as he took the note from his pocket, read my words to her and pressed it in her hand? And my sister, did she stand, slack-mouthed, wide-eyed and silent, as the car with Beyat sped out of sight? Or did she struggle with them in the street, screaming out to leave her love alone? What would
she do now that he was gone? Beyat’s face said nothing, except that he was fearful and that there were bruises on his cheek and chin. I kept silent, too. I stood with my mouth open and waited. ‘Know who you look like? Your witless sister,’ he said. He stepped forward and popped the crumpled note into my open mouth. ‘That’s his mouth,’ said the captain. ‘What did I say? I said, take it back and ram it down his throat. That was an order. That wasn’t pleasantries.’ Beyat turned again to me. ‘Swallow,’ he said. I didn’t swallow. I spat it out.

The captain picked up the paper. ‘Hold him down,’ he said. Beyat pulled my arms behind my back and pushed me to my knees. The captain reached forward and gripped my throat. ‘No one knows you’re here,’ he said. ‘No one knows you’re here but us.’ My mouth was open and my head tipped back. He dropped the paper in. It rested on my teeth and tongue. He took a pencil from his uniform and poked the paper down until it was wedged at the back of my throat, bunching my tongue against my bottom teeth. Again he poked with the pencil, reaching deep with his fingers, sour with nicotine, into my mouth. They brought water from the latrine and tipped it down my throat until my note to ’Freti was beyond reach and the breath from my lungs was blocked and buffeted by the damp paper. ‘The prisoner committed suicide,’ the captain said. I waved my arms for more water, for more air,
but they had gone and closed the cell door behind them. That was to be the last we saw of Beyat. Where did he end up? In a cell, like us, as the shower-block radicals were to claim? Or was he proved right? Was he sent, perhaps, to some dry and joyless outpost, as he had feared, his pay docked, his stripes removed? Was he that lucky?

I will not pretend that I gave any thought to ’Freti or to Beyat as I beat my hands upon the cell door and drowned on paper. My mind was empty. Panic is deaf and blind. I began to cough and did not stop. The paper lifted with every spasm of my throat but fell again as I sucked in air. I tried to push a finger into my pharynx and pull the paper free but the coughing and my tongue prevented me. What could be done, against gravity, against nature, to expel the blockage through my mouth? My breathing took on a pumping rhythm as if I were blowing stomachfuls of air into an air cushion or a child’s balloon. First there was spittle on the cell door and then spots of pink and bubbly blood. I turned and stared, red-faced, pop-eyed, into the centre of the cell. There was nothing but the bunk and the window and the rasping in my throat. I was surprised how light the bunk was when I pulled it from the wall and how easily I could lift it to my shoulders and throw it at the door. The effort seemed to ease my breathing. I lifted it again to arm’s length above my head and – the one, the first, dramatic
gesture of my life – let it fall against the glass of the window.

I must presume that, when the glass fell outwards from my cell and dropped like broken ice into the barracks yard, someone at the wire gate was staring down the channel between the pinkstone building and the back of the regimental offices seeking out the window in my block where, perhaps, a husband or a brother or a son was missing home. When I stood on the upturned bed and looked out on the sky, the trees, the town in the distance, I could see a woman pointing through the gate in my direction. A soldier going out into the town had stopped, too, and was turning. I pushed my head and shoulders out and screamed at all the people. The air, the voice, the paper, the pressure of the window frame upon my chest, the consternation of my lungs, conspired to produce a sound of such velocity and volume that the letter to my sister shot out into the air high above the yard, heavy with saliva, pink with blood, and bounced far beyond the puddles of shattered glass. Now all the placards and the banners of the women were in the air and I could hear them calling to me and see them pressing hard against the wire gate. ‘’Freti,’ I screamed. ‘ ’Freti, ‘Freti.’ But, in the melee of women and the columns of militia running and the first blows struck, I could not detect my sister’s vivid clothes.