“We can always use good people.” The priest watched Hanley intently. “Have you ever thought of traveling to Africa?”
“No, I’ve barely been out of Indiana until now.”
“Maybe you should consider it.” He smiled at the American.
Father Bertrand and Madame Paulinier prepared to leave at half past ten o’clock. They said their goodbyes and were at the door when Father Bertrand turned to Hanley and said, “I think you will do something else with your life, something you may not have expected. When the tapestry that is a life unravels, it never looks the same once it’s mended.” He smiled and offered Madame Paulinier his arm as they walked to his car.
***
Hanley finished telling Sister Mary Claire the story of the dinner party. He smiled at her and said, “My decision to come here was not as impetuous as you may think. A series of events pushed me in a direction I had not anticipated. It seemed meant to be. I looked for answers, found some, still need some. I thought perhaps you had them. If all these events brought me here, why not believe it?” he asked.
She looked at the garden, took Hanley’s hand, squeezed it and said, “I will think about my role in all of this. Maybe I am meant to do more than I thought. I will pray for guidance.”
Placing his other hand over hers, Hanley said, “Thank you.”
Near the edge of the clinic, some distance from the garden, Father Robineau watched the nun and the American, saw them standing close to each other, holding hands. Hanley looked up, saw the priest watching them, saw him frown.
18
A smoky filament, caught by the dry wind off the Savannah, twined around the American’s head, sliding across his eyes, pulling moisture from the surface. Hanley rubbed his eyes, spreading new tears to sooth the dryness. The fire he built near the box porch next to his room was not for heat. It was July, the nights in southern Sudan were very warm. He just liked sitting by a fire.
His guilt lasted a second, as the small branch made the arced journey from his hand to the fire. Taking firewood away from others so he could relax was not a good idea. The fire, while small, still produced silky yellow flames. Occasionally ghosts of a blue hue appeared in their centers, backed by the red and orange coals beneath. His eyes now clearer, Hanley watched the flames shudder in the night wind, bending like dandelions, sometimes disappearing, only to pop back again, like ‘flowers in hell’, he said to himself. Sitting on the edge of the porch, he waited for Sister Marie Claire to arrive. Their plan was to continue a discussion that progressed from the original questions of his having been picked by fate for good fortune to one of a more general nature, of the events, in whatever sequence they may take, that influence a life. They talked of the subtle, often unnoticed influence of everyday living, the accumulated occurrences that make one man rich and another destitute. The butterfly effect, he thought was how statisticians referred to it; a person sneezes six times in a row before leaving his house in the morning and misses being struck by a person in an old black pick-up truck running a red light along his route to work. All very interesting, but he had plans to discuss another topic.
Hanley no longer felt trapped in Africa, seeing the people with a deepening understanding of their problems, saw the immensity of their need, understood the barbarity of their tormentors. Six months at the mission brought on a feeling of familiarity with the area and the people working and being treated at the mission. The shock of being in a new world, one so completely different from Indiana and America, had worn off, replaced with a feeling he was now part of the mechanism, knew the systems, the people and how things worked. That is, within the mission itself. There were activities outside the operation of the mission he still questioned. The questions were about the network he now believed existed, an organization with a noble mission, albeit, perhaps, a dangerous one. This network, he believed, was working to rescue children, children taken from their families and sold into slavery. Sister Marie Claire was in the middle of this network, near the center, perhaps the primary organizer herself. She’d certainly been here long enough, had amply demonstrated her impatience with government and church bureaucracies. In a community of officials and volunteers seemingly at a loss on how to protect a besieged people, on dealing with the task of bringing aid to thousands of displaced families, hurt, sick and hungry, a strong personality, someone with the courage and intelligence to confront the problem, would, by some disorganized, informal, natural selection, emerge as a leader. The nun was the one, was at least a part of the original effort, Hanley believed. Yes, he could see her in dark rooms and in the back booths of restaurants, scheming with others, talking to family members of children known to have been kidnapped or missing, identifying known or probable routes used by thugs trading in humans, recruiting people to watch for victims, arranging for rescues.
As he heard her approach, she asked, “A fire in the summer is wasteful, no?” Coming from the direction of the larger buildings in the compound, Sister Marie Claire came around the corner of the barracks building to his left. He had not seen her that day until now. Walking around to the other side of the box, she sat, scooping her skirt beneath her, this night wearing a dark blue kerchief, a white blouse and a skirt the color of the sky he saw that day. “Was your day productive?” she asked.
In his hand was a glass, the typical dirty glass from the mission dining hall, in it whiskey, the remains of the third bottle he tucked into the tail of the Beech, the world’s most expensive rum runner, he thought. Noticing the whiskey did a good job cleaning the inside of the glass, he thought about the cost of washing dinner dishes with expensive Irish whiskey. He was not yet drunk, not close enough, had enough in the glass to get him part-way there, but he would not open the fourth bottle, unless the rest of the glass convinced him otherwise.
“My day was good, and yours?” he asked.
Her profile was still noticeable in the dusk, not a typical French profile, he thought, recalling every political cartoon he ever saw showing Charles de Gaulle’s famous facial protuberance, the nose that France followed from war to peace, forever recognized by millions of Americans as what all Frenchmen looked like, until Bridget Bardot came along. The nun looked more Scandinavian, something her mother might find hard to explain. Hanley, beginning to feel more relaxed, could not recall which part of France she came from. “Which part of France do you come from?” he asked.
“What?”
“Where in France were you born; where are you from?”
Sister Marie Claire looked at him, straightening up, as if good posture were required to speak of France. Rubbing her cheek, she paused, cleared her throat with a mild cough-like sound, looked at him and said, “I’m from an area, Pays de Loire, southwest of Paris. It was once a part of Brittany, but that changed some years ago. My family has been there for many generations. We, my ancestors, were either farmers or public servants, with priests and nuns occasionally breaking the mold. Breaking the mold is what Americans say, oui? Bien.” Hanley had nodded while staring at the flameless embers of his fire.
“You don’t look French to me,” he said. “You look Scandinavian.” Sitting up more, he squinted into the smoke, which flowed over him, curling back as it hit the building, the air around him thick, burned his nose and throat. Standing to find clear air to breathe, he felt light-headed, a bit of worry coming to him, carried in with the smoke. Maybe a bit too much to drink, he thought.
Seeing her watching him, Hanley waved away the smoky air and said, “Tell me something, Sister. When you take Jumma and drive to Rumbek or Juba, you don’t just go for supplies, do you? There’s other business to conduct while you’re there, isn’t there? I watch Jumma after you return from these trips. He walks out to the camps and talks to the people. He takes notes, or reads to them from his notebook. Then he’ll sit under a tree or against a truck and write. I doubt he’s keeping a diary of his trips to Rumbek to buy supplies. What is he writing about? What is he telling the people in the camps?”
“Have you
asked him?”
“Of course I’ve asked him. He says it’s about the food they eat, you know, how much, what kind. He never looks at me when he answers. He’s such a good kid. He doesn’t want to look at me when he’s lying,” Hanley said. The glass in his hand was now empty. He tried taking a drink, found nothing there, thought about bottle number four, felt mildly guilty, but more annoyed. Setting the glass on the box porch, he looked at her and said, “I find what you’re doing admirable, really, I do.” He was guessing, pressing her to see if she would tell him what he suspected. She was looking away, as if he wasn’t there as if she didn’t see him, he thought. Her shoulders were hunched up, giving the impression she was cold. It was a warm night. The fire had burned down to dull embers pulsed by the warm night breeze, the thin sticks, wood chips and bark having made a weak fire to begin with.
“Tell me what you’re up to,” he said
“Up to? I do not understand. What is ‘up to’?” Arms crossed, Sister Marie Claire used her hands to warm her upper arms, rubbing them.
“You can’t be cold,” he said. “It’s a warm night.”
“It is a habit, that is all.” Standing up, she turned to him. “Let’s walk,” she said.
His steps felt uncertain, off-kilter, the drinking altering his balance, the ground now a tilting, moving surface, the tilts and moves subtle, shifting, not giving him a pattern he could work with, as if he could work with one. Summoning his concentration, trying to accumulate it somewhere between or behind his eyes, a pool of steadiness, like mercury in a sealed glass tube, countering the alcohol sloshing around in his head. He started feeling nauseous, a headache there for the taking, but he did not want it. Don’t throw up, he told himself.
Concentrating on the nun walking before him only made matters worse. Seasick in Sudan, he thought. For a second, he noticed how trim she was, felt guilty, then remembered he was close to drunk. “You look like a dancer, you know? And, you sing well. Really well. Ever think of going into show business? I mean, did you ever think of going into show business before you married God?” he asked. He was gushing about a nun. He would not open another bottle.
Turning quickly, she said, “You have had too much to drink. It is shameful.”
“Oh, come on. You’re from France, for God’s sake. You drink wine with your morning cereal. You let your kids drink wine at dinner. I think the word croissant means wine sponge or something like that, doesn’t it?” he said. The American stopped, closed his eyes, almost toppled over, reached out and felt her hand take his, steadying him as he opened his eyes.
“Be quiet. I’m going to tell you something, I don’t think you’ll remember it tomorrow, which may be why I am telling you. I pray this will not be a mistake,” she said, still holding his hand. Studying his face for a moment, Sister Marie Claire presented Hanley with a look of what he took for doubt, shook her head slightly and released his hand. Turning, she walked away, stopped, came back to him, looked in his eyes and frowned. Lips moving slightly, she past her hand over her face, as if wiping away moisture, as if someone had thrown water in her face, then looked away toward the bush, seeing something out there, something she worried about.
“I knew you would have questions. I watched as you watched Jumma and me, although I did not think you noticed me watching you. I heard you were asking questions of the doctors, questions about the children and the women, about the killings, the rapes, the abductions. After the girl was shot at the clinic, you began to wonder, I think. How could you not? It is understandable,” she said.
“Dr, Dyzak said there is a network, a network of people helping the children. Your network. He said it was your network. Is it?” Hanley asked.
“No.”
“Then whose is it?”
The lines around her mouth deepened with the frown that formed, the question bringing the response the American expected. He knew she was the driving force behind this network, how could she not be? The care and the commitment were there, he’d seen it, the tireless dedication, the years she’d given to this land and the people. Her faith was tempered by a pragmatism, a knowledge of what must be done, of how to get it done, who to trust, where to turn for favors, how to pay them back. The nun opened her mouth, then shut it. The air around them was chilling, not enough to be uncomfortable, but enough to notice. Standing together near the edge of the compound, there was still enough light to see each other’s expression. Hers was uncertain, maybe wary; in the darkening evening, it was becoming hard to tell. “Tell me,” he said.
“I am not certain there is any wisdom to telling you something that may cause you problems, information you may not want to have in your possession. Does that make sense to you?” she asked. Hanley shook his head, the determination set hard in his face. Lowering her gaze to his chest, she sighed, saying, “No, I suppose that would make little sense to you now.”
“Just tell me this, at least. Are you simply monitoring these children, determining they’re alive so their families have hope, or are you actually trying to rescue them?” he asked.
“There have been a few rescues. Individual children taken from homes and from shops. Not many, as it is dangerous for the children rescued and unpleasant for those children left behind. Especially the girls left behind. We also are trying not to bring attention to ourselves, to protect the effort. If we are uncovered, the children will lose the only hope they have. Also, there are two of us from the church involved. Exposure would put the church and the bishop in a difficult position,” she said. He thought she looked forlorn in the dim light, her face carrying the worry for the children as they talked. This is where her heart is, her center, this is why she has stayed in Sudan, probably fought to stay. The danger, the hardship, the heat and dust, her heart is steeled to it, armored for the children. Hers is a special kind of bravery, he thought; and I don’t have it.
“Who else from the church is working in this network?”
“A teacher in a school in Wad Madani. She is not a nun. The risk she suffers is great, but she is dedicated, most fervently, almost fanatically. And she is kind, the kindest heart I have ever known. A woman of great and good spirit. I fear for her safety every day,” she said.
Folding her arms over her chest, for comfort against the subject, he guessed, she frowned, her head down, her hips moving back and forth as she pushed a stone around on the ground, using one foot, then another. Speaking without looking up, she said, “I don’t feel comfortable talking about this. Perhaps it is better you do not know, better for everyone. You have become a valuable member of our mission. Moving doctors and medicine as and when needed has made our clinic better, we can help the people more than we have in the past. I certainly do not want to jeopardize that. And the government probably watches the plane. The diocese tells me they are asking for copies of your schedule. The bishop believes they may want them in advance to monitor where you fly within Sudan at least. We are afraid they will try to stop you altogether if they suspect something, anything. If they send in soldiers to stop you, it will be dangerous.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
“In Sudan, anything’s possible. Can we walk back? I’m tired and starting to chill.” Arms still folded, she started back, stopped before him, looked up, searching for something in his face, it seemed, then smiled. “What good there is in Sudan is found in the hope still alive in many of its people, mostly in the children. We can till the soil and grow crops, dig wells for water or oil, build new roads, build new buildings. All that is meaningless unless we are successful at raising the children to be good, to be kind and generous and loving adults. To be leaders. I see these things in the adults here still, loving and caring. I see it in you, in your eyes. What you are doing here makes a difference. To us, it makes a difference. If it makes any difference to you, well, that is up to you. The paying of a debt of any sort is a personal obligation. It means different things to the people involved. I believe you will recognize when you have met your obligations, the ones you f
eel in your heart, the ones that seem to haunt you. You are a good man, Monsieur, and good men always find their way,” she said and then walked on.
The sounds of the night, the sounds he had not noticed as she talked, grew loud around him, the leaves of the trees, their paper noise as they brushed together, the crickets and frogs, the silence of the birds, the movement of the unknown. The clamor of the country, more subtle than a city but as insistent, pushed on him. Watching her walk away, he was struck with the feeling that she was, as he had suspected, the person he needed to find, the person that would tell him what he needed to know. But that was wrong too, for now he was beginning to think she wouldn’t tell him what he needed to know; she would show him.
19
The fine dirt of the floor pressed into her nose, so she tried breathing through her mouth and choked. The man on top of her, smelling like a goat, was the third and she knew he would not be the last. Rifle bullets from the bandolier around his chest pressed against her spine, the pain as bad as the pain below. The helplessness was the worst. Nothing, no one would stop this.
Taught by older women not to scream or resist, Aisha felt the calloused hand pressing down on her neck as she was penetrated from behind. After the second man had finished, she was rolled onto her stomach as the third man hissed instructions and mounted her immediately. There were at least five men in what had been her family’s gottia, keeping her after driving her mother and two aunts from the village.
Sometimes the Darkness Page 17