As the light streamed in, everyone froze and looked up, like murderers caught in some terrible act. Then the paused video returned to ‘play’. A middle-aged doctor was shouting instructions to two morgue attendants, one of whom shouted back. His voice had slipped into a higher register, near hysterical with – what? Anger? Fear? The veins stood out in his neck. His colleague, hovering over that jumbled pile of human meat as though uncertain where to start, turned from time to time to join in, his gesticulations of frustration unmistakable. A stocky matron pulled on the arms of a shoeless corpse, aiming a flood of high-pitched recrimination at a young nurse, whose uniform was smeared with some livid paste too thick to be blood. Sobbing quietly, the girl obediently bent, picked up the feet, and the two transferred the jack-knifed body to a trestle table.
‘Yes? What is it?’ A woman in a beige suit, her face made up with incongruous care, was at our elbows: our missing receptionist.
I stared at her, my mind blank.
‘We were called here.’ said Abraham. His voice was impressively steady. He had given nothing away, while careful not to tell an actual lie.
He turned to me. ‘Paula. Have a look and see if you can find him.’ I can keep her occupied, said his eyes. But not for long.
I turned back to the pile. How to tell him, this battle-hardened colleague, that I had managed to reach my mid-thirties without ever seeing a dead body, that in my pampered culture this was not a moment to be quietly risen to, as he clearly expected, but would be regarded as providing meaty – ah, meaty, very witty – fodder for the therapist’s couch? I took two steps towards the weeping nurse, who was now bending over a second trousered body, wrapping her arms around its knees to get a better grip.
And then I recoiled, so suddenly that the nurse looked up in shock, the black kohl smudged around her wet eyes. Behind her, I had spotted George. Stacked on a shelf on his back, sandwiched by two other bodies in a grotesque version of Sardines. A purplish bruise disfigured the side of his face, one eye was half open – I could see the iris, clouded like that of a fish on a slab – and he had lost a tooth. But the neat, clipped beard was unmistakable and so was his aquiline profile. He was wearing the same blue-and-white-checked shirt he’d had on when we’d first met at the IDP camp.
I took a deep breath. ‘He’s over there,’ I said, jerking my head to where George lay. My voice was shaking.
Abraham continued murmuring to the receptionist, nodding sympathetically. She was talking in a low, urgent voice, interspersing her comments with sharp little intakes of breath. She lifted one nail-varnished hand to wipe away a tear. ‘If you want to find out what his wounds are, Paula, this is the only chance you will have,’ he commented quietly.
‘I’m not … I’m not sure …’ I looked at the white daylight framing the exit. ‘I have to get out of here, Abraham.’
‘OK. Wait outside.’
I stumbled to the exit, sending the doors swinging like a drunk cowboy. Outside, I sat on the ground and put my head between my knees, shutting my eyes. I opened them as a white Toyota pickup drew up, braking hard. Two middle-aged men in anonymous beige windcheaters got out. They did not waste any time with the main doors or Reception, heading straight towards the morgue, men on a mission. The clean-up squad? They stopped when they saw me, momentarily nonplussed.
‘Who are you?’ said the older one, who sported a thin moustache. Both his eyebrows were notched.
No point lying. There were so few foreigners in Lira that anonymity was never an option: you left a trail of sightings like fox scent wherever you went. ‘A British lawyer. I work for the government.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Following up an enquiry,’ I said, mimicking Abraham. Vague but accurate.
Now his colleague spoke. He had a coarse, broad face and two gold teeth. His English was nothing like as good as the first man’s, so he dispensed with politeness. ‘You leave.’
‘I am waiting for a colleague.’
‘Leave.’ He jerked his head back to the gate.
I couldn’t leave. Not without Abraham. My voice shook as I attempted a show of courage. ‘And who are you, may I ask?’
The smoother colleague interrupted: ‘Ministry of the Interior. We have come to help the people at the hospital. There has been an accident. Some of our boys have died.’
I know. I saw them. And then, finally, Abraham emerged. The three men stared at each other for a moment, some form of exchange taking place, a silent assessment. It occurred to me that they had probably seen action together.
‘Let’s go,’ I said, and the next moment we were in the Land Cruiser, heading back to the office.
Abraham took a right off the main road, turned into a quiet suburban street, took a left and parked under a fig tree, so sharply my head nearly hit the windscreen. He switched off the engine. ‘The office can wait a bit,’ he said quietly, avoiding eye contact. It was easier, that way, for both of us to pretend not to notice that I was weeping, not like a grown adult but a thwarted toddler, a hand clamped over my mouth, tears streaming down my nose and dribbling over my fingers.
As I gulped and gasped, he took two paper tissues from a pocket and handed me one, then used the other to dab fastidiously at a bloodstain on the sleeve of his soft suede jacket.
‘What … what did you see?’ I managed at last.
‘He was shot. Twice in the chest. Here and here,’ he said, picking out the wounds on his own body with precision.
‘From behind or in front?’
‘I don’t know. I am not a pathologist, Paula.’
‘No, I’m sorry. Stupid question. But what the fuck happened? All those bodies … all those young men. How many were there?’ I had failed in every respect. Failed to establish the circumstances of George’s death, failed to check genders, failed even to count the bodies, the most basic piece of information. Shame swept over me like a rash.
‘The receptionist said seventeen.’
‘Only seventeen? It looked more, many more.’
‘Dead bodies always look more,’ he said quietly. ‘Because one is already too many.’
‘So what happened? Was this an execution? Oh, God, poor George.’
He stared at me with reproof. ‘We are not in Congo. The receptionist said those youngsters all came from the central prison, the old Italian one near the shoe factory.’
Prison? George? But of course. We had failed to spring him, after all.
‘I think I recognised a few of them, boys from decent families, jailed for refusing to do military service. They were all placed in the same cell, along with some thieves and murderers. The receptionist says it is not clear what happened. Maybe there was a protest, maybe just too many people in a small space. I’ve seen those cells. Sometimes they squeeze so many people in that everyone must sleep upright. She said some of the dead were crushed, others shot by the guards.’
‘But why?’
‘Who knows what happened?’ he said. ‘She was not there. And neither were we. We can guess, that is all.’
We sat in silence for a while.
‘Do you think Sammy – if it was Sammy – already knew that George was dead when he sent us to the hospital?’
‘Oh, yes, I think so. He just wanted us to see it.’ The need to bear witness, I thought. The instinct of the investigative journalist and human-rights activist. George’s passing had, at least, been acknowledged.
Abraham ran a hand down his face, as if wiping away the vision of the morgue. He opened the door a crack and spat onto the cement verge. Then he yanked the door closed, leaned over the steering-wheel and reached for the ignition. His voice was stubbornly matter-of-fact. ‘It is a big shame. A big shame. This country needs qualified doctors. Now we have one less.’
The following day, Winston summoned me into his office and gestured at me to sit. ‘I saw Him today, to discuss the AU inquiry. The incident at the prison came up.’
‘Aha,’ I said, noncommittally.
‘It’s
going to be on the television news tomorrow. They’re waiting to contact each of the seventeen families first, just as we would in the US. It’s the considerate course of action.’
A memory jolt: of baying Laurel and Hardy and that awkward police duo, doing their reluctant duty. ‘The considerate course of action might have involved not shooting them, I’d have thought. Did the president go into what happened?’
‘At greater length than I’d expected. It appears to have been a tragic combination of inexperience, incompetence and panic. Apparently there’d been growing unhappiness among a group of the conscientious objectors, if we can call them that. Your friend George, I was told, was part of that more vocal group … In fact, I gather he was its ringleader.’
‘Good for him,’ I said defiantly.
‘Over the weekend, the more experienced prison guards went home, handing over the keys to a bunch of conscripts. Usually guards empty the cells in shifts so that everyone takes a turn in the yard. Because these guards were new to the job they emptied everyone out at the same time, which seems to have created a volatile situation. The conscientious objectors got chatting to the guards, asking to be set free. Some of the young men were sympathetic to their arguments and showed signs of weakening. Others held firm. At this stage George and his friends began kicking at the main wall. The building dates back to the Italian era and it’s been crumbling for years. When the other prisoners saw that the wall was collapsing, they piled in. Then the conscripts, realising they had a prison break on their hands, lost their nerve and opened fire. He said that if the older, permanent, members of staff had been on duty that weekend probably nothing would have happened.’
‘Whatever happened to shooting in the air? Or at people’s legs? George was hit in the chest. Twice.’
‘That’s what happens when young men with guns, who are afraid of looking stupid in the eyes of their superiors, panic.’
‘And the crushed bodies?’
‘Flattened by the falling wall. Or trodden on by inmates scrambling for the exit.’
‘So let me get this right. George is actually responsible for his own shooting. If he hadn’t behaved like a firebrand and whipped up the mob, he’d be alive today. Is that what we’re supposed to think?’
‘It was a horrible, avoidable tragedy, Paula, and everyone regrets it bitterly. I’ve rarely heard Him sound more sombre. He made no excuses, just recounted the sorry chain of events.’
‘But none of this addresses the central question, does it, Winston? Which is that George shouldn’t have been in an overcrowded cell in the first place. He hadn’t committed any crime, unless being a bit of a loudmouth counts. He hadn’t been charged, as far as we know, and he certainly hadn’t been allowed to see a lawyer – I’d have been the first one there. There’s no way of getting round that. And while others may not get too excited about the total disregard for due process and denial of basic human rights, I can’t help feeling that, as lawyers, we should.’
Winston bowed his head and shut his eyes for a moment, his hands resting flat on the desk’s surface, like a yoga practitioner’s. Then he gave me a long look.
‘Paula, I’m only going to say this once. George’s death was repugnant and clearly unnecessary. But the administration of justice in developing countries that have just come through a war is often an imperfect, rough-and-ready affair. I’m taken aback when I see the old man at the school gates near my villa caning pupils who arrive a few minutes late. Back home, he’d be arrested for child abuse. The husband in the villa next to mine, a sophisticated man with whom I’ve discussed local birdlife, beats his wife regularly: I hear her screams. This is a society that has soaked up violence for centuries, and violence will take a long time to drain away and be replaced by something as dull and colourless as the process you and I believe in. That is, actually, why we do what we do here. I consider our efforts part of a long-term campaign to implant the rule of law. But none of that will happen overnight. And in the meantime, we must practise a little selective blindness, if you wish, in a greater cause. Don’t fall into the classic American trap, Paula, of reducing everything to the individual – you’re too intelligent for that. George was one man, just one man, and what we’re doing here is going to affect the lives of millions. Whatever your young man felt about the government, I bet he loved his country enough to want us to secure its borders, and that’s what I’m focusing on right now. One step at a time, sweet Jesus, one step at a time.’
I never got to see Jake’s body. I wasn’t invited to the funeral or the reception, attended, according to the local newspaper, by more than four hundred relatives, friends and dignitaries. That day I was walking Laurel and Hardy. I pressed my back into the wet bushes as the chauffeur-driven limousines swept by on the way to the wake at Griffin House, laden with well-dressed, subdued families in black, navy and grey. Cream silk scarves, a glint of pearls around withered necks, a hat. I suspect they mistook me, in my muddy wellingtons and faded jeans, with my frizz of uncombed hair, for a gardener.
The day after, Sophie called. Her voice was tight, higher-pitched than usual. ‘Look, this really isn’t a conversation I want to have but I’m calling on behalf of all of us because there are some things we have to figure out and everyone is hoping we can be adult about it because that’s what my dad would have wanted,’ she gabbled. ‘Charlotte, Eric … Aunt Julia, well, everyone agrees the time has come,’ she spoke as though Jake had been dead several years, ‘for you to move out.’
‘How long do I have?’
She ignored the question. ‘We’re thinking of renting out Lake Cottage. We’re going to sell the Jetta. And the paintings. Charlotte asked me specifically to mention the Klimt lithographs. She wants them valued.’
‘They’re not worth much, actually.’
‘Well, that’s not for you to judge, is it?’ She ran through the other items Jake’s children ‘expected to find’ in the cottage once I had cleared out: a long list of my anticipated larceny. I kept hoping her tone would change. This was plump, bosomy Sophie, with whom I had sat at the kitchen table to discuss boyfriends; Sophie, to whom I had recommended Clearasil, who used to run up and hug me ostentatiously to her bulky breasts at family reunions, hoping to shame Charlotte and Eric out of their stiff handshakes. In her grief, she had returned to the fold. She had seen the error of her ways and would not serve as my Trojan horse again, the hard little voice was telling me.
I tried softening my own, because there was a piece of information I craved that only someone in the family could provide. Who but Sophie would relent long enough to let me have it? And this, I knew, was going to be my last opportunity. Once this conversation was over I would never hear from her again.
‘Sophie, there’s something I don’t understand. How come your mother was in the car that day?’
She made a strangled noise and half sobbed, half shrieked her answer. ‘I would have thought that was obvious!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They were going to give it another try!’
I felt myself flushing, my hand on the receiver juddering with adrenalin. ‘Do you know that for a fact, or is it just speculation?’
‘Why else would they have both been in the car? If you had only agreed to bow out, Paula, if you hadn’t always been so selfish, they’d probably have got back together ages ago. Charlotte and I have always been convinced of that.’
I clenched the receiver. As crumpled tissues were honked into, hot-water bottles clutched, vodka bottles gradually emptied, an Orwellian rewriting of history had clearly taken place in the Wentworth household. And, as always happens when I am confronted with a claim so wild it seems to come from a parallel universe, my brilliant legal brain couldn’t conjure up a single argument in my own defence. Only a limp ‘That’s just not true, Sophie. The problems between your parents predated me by years.’
She had recovered her poise. ‘Look, I just said, I don’t want to talk about this stuff. Could you just drop the keys off at the la
wyers’ office? Or leave them in the cottage when you go. Charlotte and Eric don’t want to see you. They blame you for the separation.’
A morsel of charity there because what she actually meant, I knew, was ‘We blame you for their deaths.’ Grief is a cluster bomb. It scythes down anything in its path.
‘Oh, and, Paula, one last thing. You can keep Laurel and Hardy. I know Dad really loved them and all that, but Charlotte’s allergic to dog hair and Eric doesn’t have room in his apartment.’
‘Couldn’t Aunt Julia take them? I don’t know my plans.’
‘She’s got cruises booked and says Miguel won’t have time to exercise them while she’s away.’ And taking custody of the dogs might conceivably mean meeting me face to face, of course, a scenario she was determined to avoid.
So I was homeless, car-less, Klimt-less, but I had two pedigree dogs worth around three thousand dollars a head to my name. Maybe, I thought, I could eat them.
29
‘Why are you so upset? Unless I missed something, you hardly knew the guy.’ Dawit was looking at me with curiosity.
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