Stone Kingdoms (36 page)

‘The UN have made two food drops. There's no reason why anyone should starve. The Agency's given up responsibility for Bakalla – it's too big for the resources we have available now. It's being taken over by a Swedish relief agency which is mostly government-funded. They do a good job. Everyone from Bakalla is safe in the capital. As soon as the airport is clear, Wanneker and Rollins are flying to Europe and on to the States, and we've fixed up Martine and Veronica with a UN flight out. Some delegation or other is due to leave and we've managed to bag a couple of seats.'

‘You'll be happy when you've got me on a plane and off your hands, Charles.'

‘Yes, you're my responsibility now and I'd like to see you safely home. I can't deny it.'

‘You still want to send me back to Ireland.'

‘I don't want to send you back to Ireland. I really don't care where you decide to go.'

‘So long as it's out of this place. Out of Africa.'

‘Yes, that's right, Naomi. I hope you're going to be sensible about this and not make my job here any harder than it already is.' His tone is that of a friendly headmaster, someone who prides himself on being firm but fair. After what Wanneker has told him, I make him nervous. I hear it in the tightness of his breathing, the deliberate control he exerts over his words, the tight, clipped rhythm of his speech.

‘I sometimes wonder about your job, Charles, about what it is you do here. You organize things, fix things, make arrangements, isn't that right?'

‘I suppose so. Yes. Things like that. I suppose I make certain things possible.'

‘
When we first arrived you paid off the faction controlling the airport, didn't you?'

‘Yes, that's right, we paid them landing rights and safe passage.'

‘How much did it cost?'

‘I don't remember exactly. I pay off a lot of people. At the airport? Probably about five thousand American dollars.'

‘Do you always pay the price?'

‘If it's necessary. I don't always give them exactly what they ask, of course. There's a bit of haggling involved.'

‘But you always pay?'

There is a sound like a hand brushing wrinkles out of clothes, and a slight cough. ‘When it's necessary, Naomi. We don't throw money away, but there are times in this work when to get things done you have to pay the right people. All the agencies do it. It's hardly an earth-shattering revelation. Do you have some moral scruples about it? Is that what you're saying?'

‘No I don't have moral scruples. Despite what you think, I'm not a complete fool. But sometimes you must give money to people who are part of the problem, who use it to inflict suffering on the people you're supposed to be helping.'

‘I can't deny that. I suppose it's a case of weighing up the real benefits that will result against the possible disadvantages. It's just the world we work in, it's always been like that, always will be. I can't say I even think about it very much.'

‘And you, the Agency, never stand up to anything, just go on paying the price, making accommodations, giving in.'

‘It's not a question of giving in.' His voice is rigidly patient, deliberate, trying to avoid irritation. ‘It's a question of what has to be done, a matter of better bend than break.'

We sit in silence for a few moments, then make small talk. There is the sound of a helicopter taking off and veering into the distance.

‘When will you go home, Charles?'

‘
At the end of this year. I'm retiring. Probably be home for Christmas. I'm getting too old for this work.' He suddenly sounds old, his weariness evident in the effort his speech costs him. ‘I have a sister who lives on the South Coast. I'm going to live with her.'

I have a sudden picture of him in his linen jacket and white hat walking on a shingle beach, poking in the seaweed with his stick, giving occasional slide-shows to groups of women in church halls. ‘That'll be nice for you, Charles.' I hear the faint laughter of children, the high squeals that they make when they're playing a game. Then there is a long silence, and at intervals it feels as if he's going to broach the matter of my departure but it slips away.

‘I suppose nothing can happen now until we get the verdict from the Swiss specialist, so there's no point in talking about arrangements. Is there anything you need, anything I can get you?'

‘No, I don't think so. Thanks anyway.'

‘Well, I suppose I should let you get on with your rest.'

‘Yes, I'm feeling a bit tired, perhaps I should sleep.' I listen to him stand, politely decline his offer to help me back to my room.

‘I'm glad you're feeling better. I'm glad we understand each other. I'm sure everything will work out all right.'

I nod my head but say nothing. There is no point. His footsteps clatter in the corridor as he hurries away. In the speed of his steps I hear his relief at having negotiated another difficulty. When he has finally gone I make my way carefully towards the corridor and my room, touching the guiding landmarks I have memorized until I have slow-stepped my way back to the room, where I lie on the bed and listen to the whirr of the fan and the distant hum of the generator. I sleep for a while, and when I wake I have lost consciousness of time. Outside is quiet and still and the air feels cooler, the hum of the generator louder, and I realize the day has slipped into night. I
say
Nadra's name but there is no one there, and with a little pulse of panic I wonder where she is. I hope she will come soon. The only light in the darkness. There is no shame or guilt in it, and for what is taken, something is always given and the only world I make her part of is the one she chooses for herself. Her touch is more beautiful to me than anything I have ever known, and it reaches into the past, to a young girl who presses her lips to the mottled coldness of glass, who steps in the footprints of someone else's love until the sea swirls it all away.

The fan slows, stops, then starts again, and as it does so I hear the lightness of her steps and her voice.

‘You're awake, Naomi. You slept a long time.'

‘Stanfield must have worn me out. He came to visit me this afternoon.'

‘What did he want?'

‘To see if I needed anything, to see if I was feeling better, if I would be co-operative.'

‘He wants to send you home?'

‘Yes but he's not going to talk about arrangements until after I see the Swiss doctor.'

‘Will that be soon?'

‘Stanfield thinks the airport will be open in a few days.' She is silent, standing at the foot of the bed. I call her close, smell the sweetness of her scent. ‘One of the few things I'm good at is not going where people want me to go.'

When I tell her I think my eyes are getting better she's excited, and when she hears that Basif said it would be my chance to see how handsome he is, she giggles and makes the bed shake so much that the chart at the foot of it vibrates against the metal bed ends. Then she tells me that she's found a copy of
National Geographic,
and if I am a good patient she will read it to me. She likes to read aloud, showing off her pronunciation and making me correct any mistakes, asking
questions
to check that I'm concentrating on what she's reading.

She asks if I've eaten, and when I tell her I haven't she goes off to prepare something for us both. As I listen to her walk away I wonder if the final stains of bruising have faded from her cheek. Sometimes as she sleeps beside me at night she whimpers in her dreams and in the slow hours when I lie awake, trapped by the sear of my skin, her whimper joins with the other voices, the voices which won't let me go and which I can't shut out, which threaten to curse me all my life if I turn my face away. They make me feel the way I did when we found the women in the church; I try to say that there is nothing I can give but they won't let me go. I try to appease them, tell them that I will let no man fire his emptiness into me again, that I will let my voice be their voice, but whatever is offered is never enough. They tell me too that forgiveness is the worst sin, the greatest weakness of all.

The fan stutters into stillness and from somewhere in the hospital comes the cry of a baby. I wonder if the shutters have been closed yet and if the rain will return, even briefly. The nurse who came last night and closed them said there would soon be peace, but I said nothing. There will be no peace, just another place, another flag. The young men who assume the will of God move their jihad on, for to die a martyr is to go to Heaven. They are driven by something I do not understand but which I know is always the same. In their wake the images flicker across screens then drift freeze-framed into some frozen darkness of space, recalled to the light only by the falter of memory, by the strength of a curse. A body on waste ground, Salah with her open eyes, a mother holding up the shrivelled bundle that is her child. I think of my father preaching on that Sunday all those years ago, the Sunday of the long way. And then I see my mother standing on a pavement with her foot on a ring and beside her are others – Nadra, women of Bakalla, Basif, many more. She holds her hand out to me but I look at
the
other faces which hate us and I am afraid. She still holds out her hand and, somewhere in the distance, Rollins is laughing, but then I take my mother's hand and stand beside her.

Suddenly the fan kicks into motion and I feel the layered coolness of the air slink against my face, hear the steady hum of the generator. Footsteps pass in the corridor. I lie back on the bed. My skin suddenly tightens with a flurry of pain, and as always I think of the sea, let it wash over me, a sea brushed by a glaze of moonlight, stirred by a rhythm we shall never understand. Perhaps this is the time, perhaps this is the very moment, and in the darkness the polyps contract, puff their beads of eggs into the water like pearls suddenly springing free from their thread. I try to stem the pain, imagine a pink slick of sperm trembling in the water, then some time in the darkness a glint of coral starting silently through the currents. Swimming through the dangers, swimming until it finds the safety of the reef where it grows and renews what has been destroyed. I think too, for a moment, of a city which petrifies on its own calcereous skeleton, but the memory fades and there is only this other world, fragile and strangely strong, full face to the ocean, a rampart against the ceaseless beat of the waves.

A
NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

DAVID PARK
has written eight books including
The Big Snow, Swallowing the Sun, The Truth Commissioner, The Light of Amsterdam
and, most recently,
The Poets' Wives.
He has won the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the Bass Ireland Arts Award for Literature, the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award and the University of Ulster's McCrea Literary Award, three times. He has received a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and been shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year Award three times. He lives in County Down, Northern Ireland.

BY
THE SAME AUTHOR

Oranges from Spain

The Healing

The Rye Man

The Big Snow

Swallowing the Sun

The Truth Commissioner

The Light of Amsterdam

The Poets' Wives

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