Night of Knives

by Jon Evans

  * * *

  After breakfast Veronica sits by the waterfall and does what she can for people's injuries. Her one tool is the plank of cheap purple soap Gabriel brought. She uses it to wash assorted cuts, bruises, blisters and whip wounds. Jacob and Diane shudder and groan as Veronica soaps their flayed skin. Diane once again doesn't seem like she's all there, her eyes stare into the distance. There's no clean fabric for bandages; all she can tell them is to try to keep the wounds clean and dry until they scab over. Tom has somehow sprained a wrist, and Veronica ties his T-shirt around it tightly for support. Michael is still walking gingerly, but he doesn't approach her, and Veronica knows his swollen testes should be fine in a day or two without help.

  When finally done she rinses blood from the soap. On impulse she sticks her head through the waterfall. Outside, the water plunges into a small pool that becomes a burbling creek, wending its way through little patches of beans and millet until it reaches a stand of banana trees. The ashen remains of a fire lie on a rock beside the pool. Two guards sit nearby, carrying pangas but not rifles. Veronica thinks they were part of yesterday's kidnapping crew. They leap to their feet when they see her head emerge from the water, and one begins to shout in French. She recoils, frightened. The two guards storm in after her, yelling sternly but not angrily.

  "In case their body language was somehow unclear," Jacob says drily after they depart, "they said we weren't supposed to go outside."

  Veronica swallows. Her knees are weak from the confrontation.

  For a long time nobody says anything. Veronica wishes somebody else would talk. She can't do it herself. All the words in the world seem to have fled from her mind. Instead all she can think about is everything that might go wrong at any moment. If Patrice comes storming in drunk, murder and rape on his mind. If they are discovered, their location reported by some curious local child, and Gabriel decides to cut his losses before the UN arrives. If he is unable to make contact with their governments before interahamwe enemies come and take his prisoners for themselves. If the ransom exchange goes terribly wrong and ends in gunfire. If there is cholera in the water. These all feel like very real possibilities, far easier to imagine than returning to safety.

  Jacob speaks deadpan into the silence: "Well now. I suppose you've all been wondering why I've asked you here."

  The laughter that follows is giddy to the point of hysteria.

  "What you don't realize," he continues, his voice rigid, "is that this is the casting call for the world's newest and ultimate reality show. It's called Survivor Congo, and the big twist this season is we've replaced 'getting voted off the island' with 'getting your fucking head chopped off.'" More laughter, not as loud. "Of course some of you will have to make ultimate sacrifices, but Jesus, people, just imagine the ratings."

  "Do I get a million dollars if I win?" Derek asks.

  "No. You win not getting your fucking head chopped off."

  The laughter that follows is now thin and nervous.

  "Sounds fair," Derek agrees. "See, this is why I invited Jacob to Africa in the first place. Black comic relief."

  "It's not really the right continent for racist jokes," Jacob shoots back.

  "You thought they were funny in high school."

  "That was a character. And a highly satiric one. Who I did only once."

  Derek smiles. "Because DeShawn nearly beat the living shit out of you."

  "Discretion is often the better part of comedy."

  Veronica interrupts their repartee. "You two went to high school together?"

  Jacob nods. "Twenty years I've known this guy. High school, university, now here. His fault I'm here in the first place. Talked me into an eighty percent pay cut to work for some friend of a friend of his. I still can't believe I actually signed up."

  "Sure, it's all my fault," Derek says darkly. "Salesman of the century, that's me. Sand to the Bedouin, Africa to Canadians."

  "I want my money back. You'll hear from my lawyers."

  "What? Why? I promised you exotic adventure. If this doesn't qualify I don't know what does."

  Jacob snorts. "Teach me a lesson. Jungle accommodation with a waterfall and a sunset view, you said. The company of beautiful women. A long walk through lovely rainforest with expert guides, culminating with quaint local rituals involving big fucking whips and machetes. Yep, definitely should have read the fine print."

  Their humour is forced, but everyone manages a smile.

  "No, really, my own fault I'm here," Jacob says bitterly. He takes a deep and shuddering breath. "I keep thinking maybe this is a dream, and when I wake up tomorrow we'll be back in the park, or maybe in Kampala, and I'll say, hey, guess what, you'll never believe this dream I just had."

  "Yeah." Veronica knows the feeling.

  "These last few weeks already, most mornings I wake up and can't believe I'm in Africa in the first place. That was already surreal. This is even crazier. It's like I'm playing a video game inside a dream or something."

  "You've just been here a few weeks?" Susan asks.

  Jacob nods.

  "Me too," Veronica says softly. "Just a month."

  Judy asks her, "You came as a tourist?"

  Veronica shakes her head. "I was working with this HIV research group."

  "We were supposed to fly home tomorrow," Diane says. "They took our tickets. It isn't fair. We're philanthropists. We would have been home tomorrow."

  Veronica sympathizes. She too probably would have been going home soon. Her month in Kampala has taught her that Africa isn't for her: too foreign, too chaotic, too poor, too intense. She was probably just weeks away from leaving. It doesn't seem fair that now she is trapped in this awful place instead.

  Michael says angrily, "I grew up poor, you know. I paid my own way through college. Now we give money to churches, orphanages, ministries all over the world. There are dozens of African children who rely on us to survive. Hundreds. We travel all over the world to inspect our good works and make sure our money isn't wasted. That's why we were here. We don't deserve this. We just don't deserve it."

  Susan looks like she wants to say something, but doesn't.

  Jacob shrugs. "It's like Clint Eastwood says. Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."

  "We would have been home tomorrow," Diane repeats, as if she can make it come true by saying it often enough.

  Judy says, "You never think it will happen to you, do you? You always think this is the kind of thing that happens to other people. We're just tourists. Uganda was so lovely. We travel every year, never had a moment's trouble before."

  "We should have gotten married," Tom says, very seriously.

  Judy half-laughs, half-sobs. "You've been saying that for fourteen years."

  He takes her hand gently. "We get out of this, darling, first thing, I'm going to make an honest women of you at last."

  "Fourteen years?" Veronica asks.

  Tom explains: "It's been a very long engagement. Like that French film with whatshername from Amelie. I used to be a coal miner, up near Leeds, Jude here was a hairdresser. A month after we started going out, we were both sacked, on the same day. Fourteen years ago next month. The very next day we put our heads and bank balances together, started a delivery service. Nowadays we've got eleven vans, forty employees, it's a real going concern. But starting up shop was such a bloody bother we never found time to officially get married."

  As Veronica listens, she begins to feel a slippery looseness deep in her guts, a faint cramp. She swallows nervously. Just a little dyspepsia, she tells herself. You ate too much too fast. That water you drank was clean. You can't be sick. Not now.

  "Every year we talk about it," Judy says, "and every year we decide we'd rather spend the time and money travelling."

  Tom rolls his eyes. "She decides."

  "Come on, love. You've said yourself every trip's been better than a wedding. You hate weddings."

  "I'd rather get married than eat pocho again."

  "Fair poin
t," Judy concedes, and everyone chuckles.

  "It's really not that bad if it's prepared correctly," Susan protests, but she too is smiling.

  Silence falls, and with it, the almost-cheerful mood darkens again.

  Eventually Tom says to Susan, "What's your story then, pocho-eater? What are you doing in Africa?"

  "Me?" Susan looks around awkwardly, discomfited by their collective attention. "Not half so romantic as yours. I used to be an actress. Not a very good one, I don't think. I went to all the right courses, did a few little roles in provincial tours, a few film walk-ons, but it never really happened for me. Fame. Success." She shrugs. "Then five years ago I came to Kenya for what was supposed to be two weeks, to help teach local theatre groups how to put on AIDS awareness plays. The slums there, the way people live, I'd never seen anything like it. I'd never even imagined. And it's so unnecessary. The waste. The fucking waste of it all. Their government stealing their money, and the money that's supposed to go to them, just outright stealing it plain as day, thieves and murderers, killing their people in a dozen different ways, and all of them propped up by our governments, our aid organizations, we're helping to kill them too." Susan glares at Michael and Diane as if they are personally responsible for Africa's poverty. Then she seems to come to herself, and her face softens again, her voice becomes shy and hesitant. "I've been here ever since. Working at places I can believe in. Refugee camps, mostly. The aid industry mostly makes Africa worse. But in the camps I can make a difference."

  "Did the people at the camp know you were coming to see the gorillas?" Derek asks.

  Susan considers. "I told a few. The authorities must already know we're all missing, they took our passport details when we entered the park."

  Derek nods as if that wasn't quite what he was asking.

  "How long have you been in Africa?" Tom asks Derek.

  Derek too looks a little uncomfortable answering questions. "Almost a year now."

  "You were in the service, you said? You've seen action?"

  "Yeah. In Bosnia. I was a so-called peacekeeper. Ten years ago now. Private security, since. Iraq a couple years ago, working for Blackwater. Then Thailand before I came here. Beaches and girls. Probably should have stayed."

  "What you should have stayed in was university." Jacob turns to the others. "This guy was supposed to do a triple major in politics, philosophy and economics, while I did computer engineering. We were going to found a startup once we graduated. The dot-com boom was just starting. We would have been millionaires. But loser-boy here had to go and change his major to drugs and girls."

  Derek smiles and quotes, "Never let your schooling get in the way of your education. So I dropped out."

  Jacob clears his throat skeptically.

  "No, I did. How many times have I told you this? You can check U of T's records. I officially withdrew a whole day before they would have expelled me."

  "And then you joined the army and went to Bosnia? Why?" Veronica asks, trying to ignore her increasing intestinal discomfort.

  Derek says, as if it is all the answer the question requires, "I was twenty-one."

  A hush falls over the cave. Nobody seems to have anything else to say. Veronica tries not to think about the slithering uneasiness in her belly, or about how many things could go wrong with their ransoming. She tries to think back to happier times. But those were too long ago to come into focus. She can't tear her mind away from being afraid; every time she tries to distract herself there is a sudden reminder: the tightness of her ankle chain, a groan from Diane, and Veronica gasps weakly as she remembers where she is, and her stomach writhes and twists anew. She feels like she is slowly sliding into a dark whirlpool that will swallow her whole.

  "I'm sick," she mutters. There is no longer any denying it. Her guts are lurching and roiling with illness, she can't hold out much longer. She rises weakly to her feet. "Shit. Fuck. I'm sick."

  "What is it?" Derek asks, concerned.

  "Just a stomach bug," she insists. "I've got to … I'm sorry."

  She grabs the empty pocho bucket and stumbles as far away as possible; only twenty feet, thanks to the chain. The others look studiously away as she squats over the bucket. Knowing that this could be cholera or dysentery, could actually kill her in a matter of days, somehow doesn't dull the humiliation. At least there doesn't seem to be any bleeding, at least not yet.

  "I don't feel well either," Jacob groans.

  "Oh, Jesus," Michael says, panicky. "This is all we need. Tell them we need a doctor. Go tell them!"

  Derek stands. He looks grim. "I'll try. But Jacob's right, they're not going to care. Even if they did there's probably nothing they could do."

  Chapter 6

  Veronica spends the next three days in a haze of sickness, sometimes groaning weakly, sometimes staggering back to the toilet bucket. Between bouts of illness she lies on the ground and waits to die or get better. They seem like equally desirable options. At least she is not alone in her misery, Jacob is afflicted too. The others are unaffected: they are more travelled, or have been in Africa longer, and are thus less vulnerable to exotic stomach bugs.

  Veronica soon begins to feel that she has been sick and chained to a rock in this cave for months. It doesn't take long for a routine to develop. They are woken by the shimmering dawn, rise, and try to shake off their stiffness. Derek actually does calisthenics every morning. The two guards outside are changed. An expressionless teenager comes in laden with pineapples and pocho, and takes out the toilet bucket; and then nothing else of note happens until dusk, when the guards are changed again.

  Veronica is vaguely aware that the tension and tedium would be excruciating if she were well. She watches blearily on both occasions that Derek ventures outside the waterfall to ask about Gabriel, and is chased back in with more shouts. She listens as the others speculate anxiously and endlessly about what's going to happen. But mostly she just lies there, weak and wretched.

  After the first night they don't actually need each other's body heat, but they still sleep huddled up against another. They need each other's closeness. Veronica understands now why solitary confinement can be such an awful punishment. Being alone isn't so bad by itself; but being alone in a prison, facing a dozen grim futures - she would lose her mind. Things are bad enough as is. Veronica is almost grateful for the illness that keeps her mind mercifully fogged. Lucidity is the last thing she wants right now. What she wants is to close her eyes and go into a coma until one way or another this is all finally over.

  She is aware, even in her fugue state, that Derek and Susan are now spending almost all their time within touching distance of one another. Veronica wishes he was spending his time with her instead. It isn't jealousy, not really. It's simply that being near Derek lightens her feeling of doom.

  On the third day Veronica manages to rouse herself enough to inspect the others' wounds. They don't look good. The whip wounds on both Jacob and Diane are growing inflamed and filling with pus, clear signs of infection. Veronica doubts their systems will be able to fight off the infections unaided; Jacob is young but sick, Diane is old and weak, their environment is filthy, and neither is getting enough food. It won't be long before blood poisoning and gangrene become real concerns.

  On the afternoon of the fourth day, Veronica lies half-conscious, barely aware of a background conversation. It is a sudden transition to silence that rouses her. She looks up. One of their abductors has entered the cave. Veronica recognizes him as the first one she saw, emerging like a shadow from the jungle. Now instead of a rifle he carries a small steaming kettle and something wrapped in a piece of cloth.

  The captives watch him tensely, as they might a wild animal, a leopard or a cobra. He makes his way straight for Veronica. Michael and Diane back slowly away. Derek takes a step forward. Veronica watches wide-eyed as the man kneels beside her. She can see the vertical tribal scars on his face. He puts down the kettle and a small cracked cup, then uses his free hand to make wriggling moti
ons in front of his belly, and mimes drinking from the cup. She stares at him, slowly comprehending. He repeats his motions.

  "OK," she says slowly. "Yes. Oui. I understand."

  His smile reveals that he is missing several teeth. He puts down the rag and unwraps it, revealing a pineapple-sized clump of steaming plant matter, various grasses and barks mixed together and recently steeped in boiling water. He mimes cutting himself, then putting the plants on the cut. Veronica nods and repeats her understanding. Their abductor smiles goodbye, stands, turns, and departs.

  "Medicine," she says. "They brought us medicine."

  She and Jacob drink as much of the bitter tea as they can stand; then she applies the poultices to his and Diane's infected welts. She wonders if the herbs actually work or if they're just a totem for the placebo effect. Either way it's better than nothing.

  She sits with her back against the wall of the cave. Jacob lies on his stomach beside her. They watch the shimmering curtain of the waterfall in companionable silence. After a while Veronica realizes that, placebo or no, she does feel more alert and less sickly. She feels almost like she has woken from three days of sleep.

  Jacob echoes her thoughts: "I think I feel a little better."

  Veronica looks down at herself. Her skin is caked with dust and mud. She wonders how much weight she has lost in the last few days. Her belly seems to have retreated into her body, leaving taut skin behind. She hasn't been this thin since her modelling days. Jacob's long body, folded into a crosslegged position beside her, has gone from skinny to outright gaunt. His hair and goatee are half mud.

  At length she says to him, "You know, one thing you've never explained, why are you here?"

  "I got kidnapped."

  She gives him a look. "I mean Africa. Derek asked you to come, but why did you say yes?"

  "I came for the waters."

  She smiles and quotes back: "What waters? We're in the desert!"

  "I was misinformed." He considers a moment. "He happened to call me at a weak moment."