On the riverside of promise (18 page)

“Ms. Heurgot and I have met in the past.
Isn't it to meet again under so similar circumstances?”

“I wasn’t searching for a corpse back then,
Yenkele,” said Nicole, shaking her head.

“No, but you looked just as wonderful and
sleepless,” Yenkele replied with the tiniest hint of a bow.

“You can tell?” said Nicole, with a smile and
a nod. Ethan asked Yenkele in all seriousness, “Can I at least have
my watch back then, if your friend would be so kind?” to which he
received the frank answer, “Oh, I’m keeping the watch. War
contribution.”

“Ah, I see. Any more surprises?” Ethan said
with an almost shrill, irate voice.

“I’m all out of vodka,” said the Swede and
everyone let out a small laugh, except for Ethan, who couldn’t help
looking at Nicole like she had stabbed him in the eye.

“Come, let’s walk over to the truck.”

“Opel?” asked Nicole with hands in her
pockets, Ethan walking a few steps behind her.

“Unimog from Angola,” replied Yenkele and
nodded enthusiastically. Nicole then said, “Going up in the world,
I see.”

Soon they were sitting inside the cabin of
the truck and the last of the cargo had been loaded. The Swede was
waving goodbye as he and the boy turned the boat around and headed
upstream, when Yenkele started the engine with a powerful rev that
blanked out everything for a few seconds. When the noise died down,
he asked Nicole:

“Where do I drop you off?”

“The morgue,” said Ethan uninvited and Nicole
nodded. There was a strange look of bewilderment on Yenkele’s eyes
that quickly gave its place to a mild indifference, when he
said:

“I thought you were joking about the
corpse.”

* * *

The morgue’s pale blue-white neon lights made
even the living stand out as if they had been just as cold dead as
the corpses filling it. The whole cooling chamber was actually
reserved for important people, like officials, dignitaries and
mostly foreigners. Somehow to the Biafrans it was really important
that a dead foreigner - perhaps a journalist, a UN official or a
priest with inordinate amounts of belief in mankind - received all
due care when the time came: a morgue, a funeral, a tombstone. The
rest of the normal people could just lay dead wherever they liked,
but not the foreigners.

“We keep them here until their relatives and
governments are notified. Most are claimed and we arrange the
transportation of the body through the Red Cross, sometimes the UN.
Some though, stay here forever,” said the doctor in charge. Nicole
asked then, “You can keep a corpse indefinitely?”

“No, I mean they get buried here, in Biafra.
We can’t keep anyone more than two weeks. Not a lot of room,
anyway. But this is a remarkably equipped facility. The bodies are
kept in cold storage,” he said with a slightly awkward smile. Ethan
asked bluntly, showing his impatience:

“Will you just show us the corpse?”, to which
the doctor nodded and led the way towards a specific slot, while
Ethan added “Un-fucking-believable. It’s like a bloody farmer’s
market, isn’t it?”. He wiped his mouth without a need, suddenly
feeling nervous despite the fact that he really believed this
corpse was simply a useful mistake from which they could move on.
Still, something inside ate at him. A quick gaze at Nicole told him
that odd feeling came from her. The question of why she had lied to
him gnawed his mind.

“Ready?” asked the doctor, to which Ethan
retorted:

“You’re not very good at this, you know that,
don’t you?”

“A doctor is supposed to tend to the living,
sir,” the doctor said apologetically, and continued, “I’m only
saying that because the sight is particularly…”

“Just get on with it, yes, please,” said
Ethan while the doctor pulled the handle on the small door, opening
it carefully, almost reverently. He slid out the stainless bed with
care, revealing the badly charred body of a man laying almost
comfortably on his back, with a bullet-ridden chest almost torn to
pieces. Nicole gasped at the sight instantly and her face furrowed,
while Ethan couldn’t help wondering at how anyone could identify
this man with any amount of certainty. The doctor spoke then in a
professional, easy voice:

“White Caucasian male, judging from the shape
of the hips and the cranium. Large entry and exit wounds on the
chest probably from a high-powered rifle. Body stance indicates the
fire was irrelevant to the man’s death. Two gold fillings melted
away, both on the right frontal wisdom teeth. A broken clavicula,
an older wound, possibly as a child.”

The doctor paused, as if waiting for
something from either Ethan or Nicole, but they both remained
silent for more than just a moment. The doctor felt compelled to
ask:

“Does this man seem to be the one you’re
looking for?”

Nicole broke down in sudden tears, sobbing
like a little girl and nodded furiously even as the doctor tried to
show her the burnt off personal effects that were found on the
body: Andy’s switchblade, his steel-cased watch with their father’s
signature on them, and a badly burnt but still somewhat readable
passport. It was all there, this looked exactly like Andy’s
body.

Ethan stood silent, while Nicole took a step
back. He took a good, hard look at the charred body lying in front
of him. Nicole placed her hand on her mouth, and sobbed quietly,
respectfully, before whispering, “Oh, God… Andy…”. Ethan looked at
the doctor, and then at the body once more, from head to toe, as if
vainly trying to find a sign of life in that piece of charcoal
lying in front of him.

He looked at Nicole then with a curious look,
like he had never seen that woman before in his life. My brother’s
wife, he reminded himself. Something very human inside pushed him
to hold her in his arms gently and offer a crying shoulder, while a
part of his mind raced in the completely opposite direction. And
that part of his mind was the part that was usually right about
basic things, like keeping out of trouble, dodging bullets and
gunfire. Instinct made the hair on his back suddenly rise, a chill
went down his spine when the doctor’s words rang once more in his
mind.

The medical report; the wisdom teeth. He
could see the doctor idly fiddling with some sort of paper on his
writing pad. He caught a glance of him looking back. The doctor
tried his best at smiling uncomfortably before fixing his attention
once more in the writing pad. Ethan’s eyes looked around the morgue
and flipped a few pages in recent memory.

That same bone, but no incisions, no X-ray
machine. That very same bone, ever since they were thirteen years
old. He shot Nicole another weird, expectant look. He asked himself
then how she could not see it for herself. Unless, he thought, she
could, and she did. Because she must have known as well, and that
only meant she was taking him for a fool. A damn near-sighted,
forgetful fool.

His heart must’ve skipped a beat when he
heard the doctor ask him rather hesitantly:

“Is this your brother then?”

He cleared his throat and closed his eyes for
a moment. He drew a deep breath and said with a reluctant, shy
voice, even as Nicole threw herself into another fit of sobs:

“Who do we talk to about the funeral?”

* * *

The Metropolitaine was filled with newly
sworn-in Nigerian recruits. Clean-cut and shaven, their new
uniforms pressed, they seemed to be having the time of their lives;
the next day and wherever in the war that might take them was a
thought for another time. Loud roaring laughter mingled with the
sound of clashing glassware; some danced to the rhythm of
half-drunken, clapping hands while others sang at the top of their
lungs. One would think that the war had ended, but that wasn’t
so.

James sat on a bar stool on the corner of one
bar, sipping quietly at a glass of red wine, his eyes peering
through the throng of young soldiers as if waiting for something to
happen. Louis was too busy to engage in any of his usually idle
chat; he kept filling glasses and mugs with no end in sight.

A white, tall man in his fifties approached
James. He had a thick grey mustache and piercing blue eyes, set in
a congenial, friendly-looking face. He asked James with an
horrible, unmistakably French accent:

“Red wine, in this kind of an establishment?”
to which James retorted with a tooth-filled grin:

“Better than a Frenchman in Lagos.”

The two men shook hands fervently and the
Frenchman sat down. He waved a hand to Louis, but he did not notice
him. The man turned to James, shrugged and said:

“The service is terrible, non?”

“Blame the war, Giles,” replied James and
sipped some more wine. He then pointed to the crowd of recruits in
the Metropolitaine and continued:

“That’s 2nd Company, 298th Battalion, 1st
Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division.”

“Are they any good?”

“No. The ones they’re replacing are mostly
dead. It’s just how it works, you know? Work with what you’ve got
and so on,” he said and shook his head.

“I see,” replied Giles, eying the soldiers
with an inquisitive though hasty look. He nodded to Louis who
motioned a hand and almost ran to take his order. Sweating, and
nearly out of breath, Louis asked him:

“Monsieur Rafoccat, gin?”

The Frenchman simply nodded before asking
James with some hesitation:

“Anything new?”

James shook his head and shrugged, his
reaction floating somewhere between genuine ignorance and feigned
indifference. The Frenchman went on:

“There’s a lot at stake here. I don’t need to
remind you that, do I?” he said and turned to the bar to get his
drink. Louis smiled at first, but then saw the look on James face
and decided to leave the two men entirely alone, walking away
without having spoken a word. James asked Giles then, curtly and to
the point:

“Are you ready then?”

The Frenchman seemed a little taken aback,
even offended. He frowned and a somewhat uneasy moment passed
before he answered:

“Not yet, no.”

He took a sip from his drink and ran it
around his mouth before swallowing. James nodded to himself before
asking Giles, his voice carrying a hint of urgency:

“What about the others? Is that the only cell
in operation?”

The Frenchman shook his head and waved a hand
dismissively.

“Would you have put all your… What is it that
the English say? Eggs in one basket?” he said to James in a
disaffected manner.

“I’m not running this war, Giles,” replied
James with suppressed ire.

“But you certainly know your way around one,”
retorted the Frenchman, pointing a finger at James, who silently
sipped at his wine for a few moments, looking pensive. He then said
hesitantly, looking Giles straight in the eye.

“It’s happening soon. A matter of weeks.”

The Frenchman pursed his lips and nodded
appreciatively, tapping a hand on the bar with a sense of
accomplishment.

“I’ll pick up the details in the usual way,”
he said smiling and sipped some of his drink almost triumphantly,
before adding: “James?”

“Yes?”

“I hope you’ll stay on until the end or else
we will all lose,” said Giles in a suddenly serious, almost solemn
way.

“Of course,” replied James without
hesitation. Giles smiled thinly before saying:

“There is something else I have wanted to ask
you ever since you approached us. Is it just the money? Or do you
really feel their cause is just?”

The Frenchman’s tone had a curious ring to
it, as if the answer would be exhilarating. James shrugged and
sipped at his wine before answering:

“I have my reasons, as you have yours. Is it
your sense of duty? Pride in your work? Love for your country?”

Giles seemed to be taken aback once more,
James answer in the form of a question not fitting in with what he
had expected. “It’s just orders, James,” he said, and smiled
unevenly.

“That’s never enough,” replied James through
a thin grin, “Not when your life is on the line, Giles. Is it the
dreams, or is it the nightmares that keep you going?”

“I don’t have nightmares, James,” said the
Frenchman shaking his head lightly.

“Everyone has nightmares, Giles, everyone,”
said James and finished his wine in one big gulp. He then got up
and left without paying. Outside the Metropolitaine, he grinned
widely to himself and looked at the night sky. Heavy clouds hang
above; a hard rain was about to fall.

Opening night

“I’m deeply sorry for your loss,” said Father
Likembe and nodded solemnly. He struck Ethan as a man of integrity
and good will. His words sounded true enough, so Ethan obliged a
sincere reply:

“Thank you, father,” he said and nodded
pensively, suddenly lost in thought, his eyes fixed beyond the mass
of people waiting for a meal. There was a peaceful murmur in the
air, rarely broken by the sound of crying children. The people that
had gathered weren’t restless at all. He had been expecting
something of a riot, and this orderly manner fascinated him. Nicole
must’ve thought he was still trying to come to grips when she took
him gently by the arm and said to the priest with a tiny shake of
her head: