Stone Kingdoms (19 page)

Wanneker called a meeting after the compound gate had been closed, and Aduma and Haneen were posted to stop anyone entering who wasn't authorized. There were blue circles of fatigue under his eyes. He sat on a table in T-shirt and jeans, the laces of his trainers trailing the ground as he spoke, swinging his legs slowly back and forward in time to his words.

‘
I've been on to Stanfield in the capital and told him what's happened here, and I just want to reassure you that all steps are being taken to keep the situation monitored and under control.'

In the far corner of the room Rollins sat with one leg stretched across a packing case, the other knee pulled up to act as easel for a small sketchpad. Only the very top of his pencil was visible in his hand and he didn't look up from the page or even glance at Wanneker. Martine stood in the doorway with some of the local staff.

‘Stanfield has made contact with this group's spokespeople and got assurances from them that there is no danger to our work here. Supposedly Baran was the work of some rogue element and they're sending people to sort things out. But he's got a categorical assurance from the leaders of these people that they won't interfere in any way with the work of the relief agencies.'

‘And has he paid them, Charlie?' Rollins asked, still focusing his attention on his drawing.

‘I believe certain arrangements have been made.'

‘Hope he's paid them enough, Charlie. Baran isn't very far from here.'

‘I know that. And believe me, I'm as concerned as you are but I can tell you all this, if things change for the worse or the Agency has any doubts at all, then we're out of here right away. Even in the capital it's hard to get a clear picture of what's going on because there's a lot of in-fighting right now, a lot of clans trying to pay off old scores. But I can tell you something else that Stanfield told me – he believes that all the signs point to international intervention. It could be only a matter of weeks, maybe even days, away and if that happens then we'll operate under UN protection.'

‘International intervention sounds good,' said Rollins, ‘but it might only stir these people up. Could be upsetting a real
hornets'
nest. We're a long way south of the capital, could be a whole while before we see the cavalry.'

‘Stanfield is already pushing the interests of the Agency in the right circles, and you can rest easy that Bakalla's name and needs will be kept to the forefront.'

‘Are they going to replace the Olsons?' asked Martine.

‘Unfortunately there seems no immediate prospect of replacement. I guess they're waiting to see which way the ball breaks before they decide to give us new people. So for the moment at least, it's very much a holding operation, keeping the lid on things here and waiting to see what happens. I'm sorry I can't be more specific than that. But I promise you, you're all too valuable for them to let your welfare be put at risk.'

Rollins closed his sketchbook with a snap and took his leg off the chair, and as I walked by him on the way to the door he nodded to me and said under his breath, ‘Believe that, Naomi, and you still believe in Santa Claus,' then he stood up and smoothed some of the wrinkles which cracked across his clothes.

Later that night, I passed his tent, the lamp silhouetting his figure hunched over a table. I couldn't sleep, didn't want to sleep, and I walked quietly around the compound, the sand a milky colour under the thick frieze of stars. There was a drifting haze of smoke from the camp and behind the clinic the luminous, tremulous light splashed over the baobab tree, its V-shaped branches like veins against the skin of sky. From somewhere deep inside the camp came the cry of a baby, the bark of a dog, and then close by there was a voice in the darkness.

‘Can't sleep, Naomi?'

He stood in the shadows outside his tent, only his glasses reflecting the light, then stepped forward a little so that I could see him. He raised a glass to me. ‘Sometimes sleep don't come easy,' he said. ‘Would you join me in a nightcap?' I had never
been
in his tent before, never known anyone who had. He always seemed private about it, as if it were a place outside the parameters of the camp, to which he retreated as soon as his work was over. It was lit by an oil lamp which hung perilously close to his head as he moved to pull another chair up to the table at which he had been working. In a glass on the table was a scented spray of bougainvillea and from the open sketchbook I could see that his painting was light and delicate, fragile as the flower itself. Pencil sketches hung around the tent, with paintings of other flowers and plants. Unlike the tent I shared, everything was neat and organized. On the upturned packing case which served as a bedside table stood a bottle of whisky, some books, a personal stereo and a box of tapes. When he handed me a glass the weight of it surprised me.

‘Always drink whisky out of crystal. And always drink it neat.'

I sat at his table and sipped the drink slowly, remembering the night I sat with my mother and we tried to drink the communion wine, the red stain in the sink, but there could be no throwing this drink away – I knew how precious it was to him, and so I kept on sipping and tried not to let my face change its expression.

‘You having problems sleeping?' he asked as he stirred the paint of his brush with a shake of his hand, pushing out the purple colour against the side of the glass. ‘I can give you something if you like, give you a whole lot of things if you want.'

‘I don't know if I want to sleep.'

‘So you dream, you dream about Baran?'

‘Yes, mostly about Baran. Sometimes other things get mixed through it.'

‘I can't control dreams, Naomi. Wish to Hell I could, would take some of that stuff myself. Mostly this helps a little,' he said, holding the glass to the light and swirling its content, ‘but there ain't no predicting it at the end of the day.'

‘
Sometimes you can't sleep?'

‘Sure, sure, you see, I've got a whole lifetime of dreams to keep me awake – biggest collection in the world. I can take out a new one every night and dust it down, try it on for size.'

He drained his glass with a backward jerk of his head which tightened the muscles in his throat and pulled his fatigues tight across his chest. Under the light I could see the grey stubble on his face, and he suddenly looked much older.

‘What did you think of what Charlie told us at the meeting?' I asked.

He poured another glass for himself, tried to give me some more then teased me about how slowly I was drinking. ‘Well one thing's for sure, if Charlie thinks there's any danger to his own ass then he's out of here, and we'll be hanging on his coattails, so you don't need to worry about that.'

‘You don't like Charlie, do you?'

‘Charlie's just a rich white boy from the right side of town who's putting in some time before he picks up a nice fat cheque every month from some bigshot job. Charlie don't give a damn and he'll live off Bakalla for the rest of his life. Big-hearted Charlie, what a guy!' And he laughed until it seemed the whisky would splash out of the glass. ‘Don't get me wrong, Naomi –I don't give a damn either, only difference is all my life I've been from the wrong side of the tracks and there was never any bigshot job waiting for me. And you remember what I told you – when the shit hits the fan I'm out of here just as fast as you can say Jack Daniels.'

‘You wouldn't be here if you didn't give a damn. And I've seen you working – I saw you with that young girl that first morning, saw the way you talked to her, the way you treated her.'

‘Just doing my job, paying my dues.'

A tiny green lizard shivered across the roof of the tent and hid itself in the rucks of a side wall. There was a moment of silence broken only by the hiss of the lamp.

‘
Maybe I should go now and let you get on with your painting.'

‘Stay until you finish your drink. At the rate you're going it should take you half the night. And the painting's finished – it wasn't any good.'

‘Looks good to me.'

‘You an expert?' he asked, and the sudden edge of aggression in his voice made me blink and hold the glass to my lips. Then, standing up, he took the spray of bougainvillea and the painting and held them out to me. ‘You can have one or the other, the flower or the painting. Which one would you like?' And when I took the painting he said, ‘Wrong choice, Naomi, the painting don't even come close,' and he smiled and sniffed the spray. ‘Maybe you made the wrong choice, too, when you came here.'

‘Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes things aren't always choices.'

He nodded and placed the spray back in the glass.

‘You like plants a lot, don't you?'

‘Nothing as beautiful in this world.'

‘Did you like them as a boy?'

‘That's a long time ago. I don't remember seeing many plants, unless you count the weeds which grew along the railway line or on the waste lots behind the tenements.'

‘So when did it start?'

‘Longer ago than I care to remember. Those the first dead bodies you ever see?'

‘The baby, a couple in the camp, nothing like that.'

‘Not easy to forget – that's something else I understand. Don't suppose I was that much older when I saw my first. Saw my first before I'd had a chance to unpack my kitbag, and then they didn't stop until I caught a plane back to the world. He was a skinny eighteen-year-old, blond hair, blue eyes, looked like he should have been shooting baskets in some high school gym. He'd stood on a mine, lost most of both legs and had a
hole
in his chest you could put your fist in. Sonofabitch arrested three times and then I lost him. Lost him on my first day, before I'd unpacked my kitbag. Afterwards they joshed me about it. “Way to go James, way to go!” they'd say and slap my back and say I was lucky because things could only get better. Didn't get any better though, until the day I caught that plane back to the world.'

‘You were in Vietnam?'

‘That's right, Naomi, young, leaner, full of crazy ideas about the world and what I was going to do for it.' Above his head two small moths fluttered round the light, pinging the vaporous, hissing glass. ‘By the end of the first week I knew that everything was about what the world was going to do to me, and all that mattered was looking after my own ass.' He filled his glass again, the bottle balanced perfectly in one hand. ‘I guess seeing those bullet wounds brought it all back home.'

‘Does it come back a lot?'

‘Never really went away. Guess I just seen too much.'

I sipped more of the whisky, felt its slow burn at the back of my throat.

‘I was in an evacuation hospital in the Central Highlands, but there wasn't much about it that had anything to do with a hospital. Those boys just flowed in there like a river in flood and you worked until you were done or you'd lose them, and sometimes you fell asleep in the emergency room or on your feet and then the scrub nurse had to shake you awake. All them young boys, all them boys. The ones who were conscious, I always asked them where they came from, just to get them to talk. White country boys from prairie towns I'd never heard of whose heads couldn't cope with being shut up in some hole in the ground, Hispanics from the barrios acting tough with frightened eyes, black boys who thought I might take special care of them because I knew where they were coming from, and all of them screaming for their mothers, Jesus, or cursing God, and sometimes I'd join in right along with them, curse
everything
and everyone who had anything to do with the war. Once I had this crazy little Italian guy from the Bronx, stir-crazy with the pain, says he doesn't want any nigger doctor touching him. I leave him with a stump for an arm and two days later he apologizes, tells me I did a good job, and shakes my hand with the one he's left.

‘They'd wheel them in on the gurneys, kids with sucking chest wounds, bloody stumps of limbs, multiple frag wounds, and you were supposed to work some magic and piece them together. Sometimes there wasn't anything left to piece together and we'd shoot them full of morphine, tell them everything was going to be all right. Told a lifetime of lies in Nam, enough lies to send me to Hell.'

‘You won't go to Hell.'

‘You think not?'

‘I'm a minister's daughter. I know who goes to Hell and who doesn't. They wouldn't let you in.'

He laughed and his head fell backward where the light yellowed his glasses, then he looked at me more closely. ‘You should go home, before it's too late and you've seen too many things you shouldn't.'

‘It's already too late, and there is no place I think of as home.'

‘Hell, Naomi, if you've got no home that makes you a refugee, so keep drinking that whisky.'

I nodded and took another sip. The hiss of the lamp seemed to have grown louder, the wings of the moths more frantic.

‘When they brought in the wounded, the first thing we'd do was split them into groups, separating the no-hopers from the ones who had a chance. You'd only have a matter of seconds to decide. The men who were going to die were called expectants and you'd say something like, “You're in an American hospital and we're going to take good care of you,” and then we'd ship them out to where they waited to die. Sometimes it felt that everything in that war was a lie and they'd given me a uniform and made me a part of it.'

‘
But you helped people too, took away a lot of pain, saved a lot of lives.'

‘Sure, we did that. Some days we'd work so long we didn't know whether it was morning or evening, and when the rockets and mortars started landing we'd work on our knees in helmets and flak jackets. But the worst sound wasn't the rockets coming in over the wire but the sound of the chopper's blades and the voice shouting, “Incoming wounded!” And the worst nightmare of all was when you knew it was a Chinook, because those bastards could carry maybe fifty casualties in their belly. And there were times when twenty minutes more sleep seemed more precious than saving someone's life and if you'd been offered the choice you would've turned over and taken the sleep. Hell of a joke, spending all that time fantasizing about sleep, sleeping in some big feather duster of a bed, your woman at your side, and when it's over and it's all there right in front of you, you just can't do it. Always felt like someone, somewhere, enjoyed the joke.'