Rose turned to the window and watched the bus approach, bumping slowly along the road. The vehicle was rusty under the splattered mud, and it juddered under the weight of the enormous pile of suitcases, food sacks, and jerry cans tied to the roof in an intricate zigzag of rope and twine, a heavy tarp concealing most of the items beneath. Rose followed the others as they exited the Gladstone car, Christoph and Sabine slinging on their backpacks, and joined the rest of the waiting passengers under the overhang. Rose’s hair was dripping from the short dash, and cold lines of wetness traced their way down the back of her neck under her collar. Faces were crammed up against the fogged windows of the bus, heads turning as they caught sight of the three white faces and the woman with one arm.
“La vie est un combat,” Sabine read aloud from the side of the bus, the hand-painted letters blocky and bold.
“Life is a war,” Christoph said.
“Weird name for a bus company, right?” Patrick said. The heaving vehicle shuddered to a stop and released its doors. An energetic bustle of off- and on-loading began, its chaos amplified by the battering storm.
“Hey,” Patrick said, gripping Rose’s good shoulder. “Be safe, okay? Say hi to Ocen for me when you see him.” He pulled her into a hug before she realized his intention. His body was big and warm, his embrace tight, and she allowed herself to relax into him. When he pulled away, she saw his eyes were moist.
“Thank you for your help,” she said.
“I wish I could do more.” He shook Sabine’s hand and then Christoph’s. “Lily, too,” he said. “Tell her she still owes me a round of rummy.”
“You haven’t seen the last of us,” Christoph said. “We’ll come through on our way out. We’ll be counting on you for a ride back to the border.”
“You bet,” Patrick called behind him as he climbed into the truck. In another minute, the Gladstone vehicle was out of sight.
One by one, they boarded the bus.
Space inside was limited; the aisle was cramped with bags and small children and a pair of chickens, their knobby feet tied together with rope. The floor was slippery with rain and mud. An upbeat pop song throbbed powerfully through the speakers. Rose squeezed in at the front, seated on three thick sacks of grain next to the window; Sabine sat beside her with her feet out in the aisle and her backpack on the ground beside her. There was no seat back, only the legs and luggage of the people in the row behind them. Christoph edged onto the corner of the bench seat across the aisle, next to a man in a Congolese police uniform who had the butt of his AK-47 resting between his boots and the barrel coming up between his knees, the muzzle angled slightly toward Christoph, who kept shifting on the bench as if he might claim more than the six square inches available. As the bus jolted forward, Christoph lost balance and fell to the side, catching himself at the last second.
“Do you want to switch?” Sabine asked.
He grimaced. “I’m okay.”
“I’m smaller than you are. I really don’t mind.”
“It’s fine.”
“Seriously, just let me…”
She started to rise and Christoph put a hand out to stop her. Quietly, he said, “I don’t want this gun pointed at you.”
“A true gentleman.” Sabine laughed, but Rose sensed the softness beneath her words. She sensed, too, the sweet concern behind Christoph’s gesture, and this intrigued her. She knew Christoph didn’t have a wife or girlfriend at home in Switzerland, and in the many months that they’d worked together, Christoph hadn’t been attached to anyone in Kitgum, as far as Rose knew; certainly she’d never seen his general friendliness venture into more flirtatious terrain. The thought of Christoph and Sabine together in this way made surprising sense.
But even as the warmth of this possible connection spread through her, Rose felt a deep, cold pang of loneliness. Christoph and Sabine were perhaps at the very tip of a vast beginning; Rose was nearly at the edge of the distant horizon, alone, unsure whether Ocen would be there when she arrived. There were so many things she’d never told him—so many things he was too good to ask. Had he died believing Opiyo would be waiting for him on the other side? Had he closed his eyes in his final moments, willing his twin to appear and guide him into the afterlife?
If Ocen was alive, if she found him, she would tell him everything, everything. He would know Opiyo’s deeds, and the truth of the son she’d lost; he would know the agony of those eternal seconds before the blast, when her bundle had already begun to slip from her grasp. And then the blackness, and the whoosh of something slicing through the air, separating her from the arm that held him: and when she woke, she was in a gray room, miles from where the attack had come—miles from the place where her child’s body would have lain, exposed to the birds, the hyenas, the rain. Ocen would know how she wailed, how she emptied herself into that dirty square space, emptied herself of sound, of sorrow, of soul. He would know how she had screamed for three days before falling silent and succumbing to her fate—to be a husk of herself, a thing that was supposed to have died but which was condemned to remain in the world of the living.
And then, when she had finished telling him everything, perhaps this curse, too, would be lifted, and she would be at peace at last.
* * *
For hours the bus drove north and the rain never stopped. Despite a lack of functioning windshield wipers and the presence of a perpetually lit cigarette in one hand, the driver maneuvered around potholes that had left other, less-skilled navigators stuck in the mud with their wheels spinning. While driving he turned up the music to a near-unbearable level, making conversation impractical. He only turned it down again when they paused at checkpoints, where—unlike when they were with the Gladstone convoy—a soldier or police officer would climb onto the bus and run his gaze unhurriedly up and down the aisles. Inevitably his eyes would linger on Christoph and Sabine, but thus far—after four such encounters—no one had asked about their destination or demanded a bribe or even spoken to them directly. On two occasions the officer had pulled a passenger off the bus, though it wasn’t clear to Rose what the person had done to arouse suspicions. The policeman sitting next to Christoph never said a word nor moved to intervene. When the bus continued, those passengers were left behind. Rose did not like to think of what happened then.
After the fourth checkpoint, the rain stopped and the sky cleared. The greenery glistened, and people began to appear in the clearings outside huts or carrying hoes and baskets on narrow paths leading away from the road. The sun glimmered brilliantly off puddles and passing motorbikes, which multiplied on the road like insects emerging after a storm. As a motorcycle with one driver and one passenger caught up alongside them, Rose caught a glimpse of red and blue tassels on the seat, and she felt for a second that somehow the bus had traveled backward in time, and they had drawn parallel with a moment four weeks previous—Ocen and Lily riding north together, swerving around this pothole and that, passing the bus from Bunia. Stop! she wanted to cry out. Please! Then the motorbike pulled ahead and vanished over the crest of a hill, and Rose was in the present once again.
Shortly thereafter, the wide-scattered huts started appearing closer together, until they were dense enough to give the impression of a town. A handful of low brick buildings and a series of evenly spaced palm trees lining the road confirmed it. Pedestrian traffic increased, and signs of trade became apparent in small wooden kiosks and vegetable stands. The bus driver made a sharp left onto a wide road, and suddenly, as if the wind had changed and brought a new, distant sound, the hairs on the back of her neck rose. Her skin became clammy; her insides plummeted.
“This must be Faradje,” Sabine said, her voice raised just enough to be heard.
Faradje. Rose remembered the name from the map. A tiny red flag had marked this place as a site of violence. Her body was so profoundly in tune with the passage of her past that she could feel the rebels’ presence even after a week had gone by. She examined the expressions of passersby, their eyes, their
hollow cheeks, and wondered: were you there? Did you see the faces of the men who descended upon you? Who is gone from you now? Did the earth split open to take in your dead? How many have you buried? How many remain?
She felt Sabine exhale as they left the densest living quarters behind them, and Rose noticed that she, too, had been holding her breath. In another few minutes, the huts became rarer, the twisting trees and brush filling in all the space between.
“Garamba’s not far,” Christoph said across the aisle. Rose could hear the buoyancy in his voice, the treble of anticipation.
The bus began to slow down.
“What is it?” Sabine said, craning her neck. But she could see as well as Rose: ahead was a bridge, wide enough for a single truck, and the bus driver was stopping to allow an oncoming minibus to finish crossing. She remembered seeing the river on the map at Lakwali; it meandered northward for a while, then turned west, eventually passing directly next to Nagero. They were close now—twenty kilometers, she guessed. With the engine idling and the wheels still, Rose felt distinctly like prey.
“Come on, come on,” Sabine said under her breath.
They began to move, and Rose breathed more easily. The driver kept a slow pace as they crossed, and from her place at the window, Rose could see down to the swollen, brown river churning below. The sight reminded her of the Kitgum river where she’d last seen Grace and Isaac and Wilborn. She forced herself to look away.
There was another checkpoint just on the other side of the bridge. The driver stopped and dialed down the radio. By this time, the protocol was routine, and even as a steely eyed FARDC officer climbed into the bus, his black gumboots resounding in heavy thuds, Rose’s thoughts drifted to Nagero, where Lily’s journal lay on a table somewhere, or propped up on a shelf. What would this book reveal? What secrets of Lily and Ocen’s mission? Secrets of their … togetherness?
She didn’t realize she was being addressed until she felt Sabine’s hand on her thigh.
“Rose? He’s asking to see our papers.”
Rose blinked. Sabine was already holding out her maroon German passport, and Christoph was unzipping his money belt while conversing with the officer in French.
“Is there a problem?” Rose whispered.
“It’s okay,” Christoph said after a moment. “He just wants to see the entry stamps.”
Rose felt the gaze of other passengers as she slipped her Ugandan passport from her purse and handed it tentatively to the impressively outfitted young officer. He took all three passports with a grunt and began to flip through them. Rose remained silent, as did Sabine and Christoph, though Rose saw Sabine’s impatience in the tapping of her heel against the floor.
Finally the officer tightened his lips and closed his hand around their passports. Rose watched with mounting fear as he slid them into the back pocket of his camouflage pants.
Under her breath, Sabine said, “What’s he doing?”
Christoph tried to say something in French, but the officer cut him off briskly and turned around as if to exit the bus.
Rose knew what came next. They’d be taken away to be interrogated or tossed in the back of a truck or worse. The policeman next to Christoph looked away.
“I’ll talk to him,” Christoph said, standing up.
“What does he want?” Sabine asked. “Is it money? We have money.”
Christoph stepped forward. “Pardonez moi, monsieur…”
The officer turned with both hands resting lightly on his rifle. The warning was clear, yet Christoph took another step. Rose’s heart leapt into her throat.
“Monsieur,” Christoph said, “s’il vous plait…”
A shot rang out.
The window behind Rose exploded in a rain of glass; she heard a single piercing scream amid a rising commotion of voices. She bent at the waist and gripped Sabine’s hand. Everything after that happened quickly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the driver put the bus into gear, and Rose felt the acceleration with a hard jolt. The FARDC soldier toppled onto Christoph, knocking them both to the floor, and Rose slammed into the knees of the person in the seat behind her.
Christoph, Rose thought wildly, and in the same instant she heard Sabine cry out his name. There was no reply, but it was hard to hear anything except the straining of the engine and the rumbling of luggage on the metal floor. Rose felt the ridges of the road in her very bones; all around her, suitcases and sacks and legs rattled and bumped into one another while she kept a tight hold on Sabine’s hand.
As the rat-a-tat-tat of shooting faded, Rose understood that it was coming from outside, not inside. They were under attack.
Then a swerve, and screaming, and weightlessness, and tumbling …
… and the world came to a vicious-loud-hard-crashing halt.
The softest skin. The smallest hands. His eyelashes are so tiny and dark; she brushes his puffy cheek with her fingertip and his mouth responds with a puckered yawn. The sky is blue and wide as a prayer, the world new and green.
She whispers his name—not the one given him by his father, but the one she calls him secretly when they’re alone, the one she’s never spoken aloud to anyone else. He giggles, opens his eyes. Her son.
All was still. Rose raised her head, disoriented. Everything rushed in—the wrong position of her body, the tilt of the bus onto its side; Sabine was beneath her somehow, as well as the policeman who had been sitting next to Christoph. The policeman wasn’t moving. A trickle of blood traveled slowly along the curve of his forehead. Rose heard Sabine groan.
“Come,” Rose said hoarsely. Their hands were still entwined.
Nearby, passengers began to stir.
“Sabine? Rose?” Christoph’s voice came from behind them.
She turned to see Christoph’s flushed face behind Sabine’s panicked one; he appeared to be unharmed, and Rose felt a tiny rush of relief. More noises came from the jumble of people and things. Shouting; a man rose, staggering, cradling a bloodied elbow; the heaps began to shift and waken. Rose caught a glimpse of the FARDC soldier’s uniform somewhere in the middle of the bus, where he must have been thrown back during the crash. She was overwhelmed by a powerful urge to flee. Don’t look back. Just go.
“Out,” Rose said. “Now!”
“What happened?” Sabine mumbled.
“Ambush,” Christoph called out. “We need to get away.”
A baby started to cry. Rose let go of Sabine’s hand so that she could pull herself forward. With the bus on its side, the door faced upward, but Rose knew that if they lifted themselves through, they’d be exposed. The front windshield—cracked open during the crash—was the better option. She climbed over the driver’s seat and saw the man’s motionless body below, flecked by shards of glass. Beneath him the dark earth pressed against his window. The end of his cigarette glowed red. Stepping carefully around him, Rose used the gearshift to stay steady.
Sabine gripped her elbow. “Rose! Our passports.”
“Leave them,” Rose said. She found a piece of cloth and cleared enough broken glass to make space for an exit. The front hood had popped during the crash and was concealing what lay ahead; all Rose could see was earth and green. She squeezed past the dashboard and stepped out onto mud and grass. For a second the solidness of the earth made her dizzy. The air was fresh and still. Then her senses became focused and acute: she heard the faint sounds of men shouting in the distance. They would be here in moments.
In another second Sabine and Christoph were standing behind her, Sabine with a hand to her forehead, though there was no bleeding. Other passengers were beginning to clamber across the dashboard and out the windshield. The luggage on the roof had come loose from the ropes and now lay spilt among the brush.
“Are either of you hurt?” Christoph asked.
“My backpack,” Sabine said. “The passports.”
A quick succession of pops caused them all to duck reflexively.
“There’s no time,” Christoph said. “I have m
y pack. Follow me.” He took a step toward the road.
Rose grabbed his elbow urgently. “That way is death.”
“Where, then?”
This was what she knew: to flee. To hide. To disappear.
Her son’s face appeared again before her: tiny, perfect eyelashes; a sky as wide as prayer. She faltered in the presence of this vision. He was so close! If she stayed here, if she allowed herself to be caught—if she became like the driver, like the officer, a light gone out—but another, elsewhere, in the land of the eternal dreaming, turned on—
“Rose?” Christoph’s voice broke through.
She looked between him and Sabine, and the mirage vanished.
“Come,” she said.
The brush parted before her, and she led them inside.
CHAPTER 19
SABINE
December 31
Sabine’s heart pounded in her ears, her skin was hot, her mouth dry. No one spoke as they pressed on, stealthy and swift. Rose led with surprising skill, intense and purposeful as she took Sabine and Christoph around thick tangles of bosky undergrowth and between shoulder-high stalks of dun grass, whose sharp edges nicked at Sabine’s bare arms, drawing blood. Her thoughts kept returning to the bus, the shots, the escape—then that baffling blankness, the lost moments before she woke with Rose atop her—and how, as they’d climbed out of the crumpled bus, she’d looked at the lifeless body of the driver and understood that the thinnest of lines separated him from her: a whim of fate; a lucky, or unlucky, draw. Sabine felt the softness of her own body with a startling terror: how fragile, how easily bruised. How easily extinguished. Now, she tried to brush those thoughts aside and concentrate on Rose’s asymmetrical figure from behind, stepping where Rose stepped, ducking where Rose ducked. Christoph’s rhythmic breathing behind her, and his occasional steadying touch when she lost her footing, brought some comfort. Still, there was no calming the fear that raged through her veins, humming with urgency.
At points early on she’d caught the faint sounds of gunfire from the direction of the crash site, but as they pushed deeper the noises faded and were finally replaced by birdsong and invisible insects and the swish and crackle of their passage. Her clothes absorbed the lingering wetness of the rain-drenched plants, and mud sucked at her shoes with every step. Above, the sky was eerily clear and bright, and every so often Rose would lift her face to check the position of the sun. The air tingled with alertness and danger. Several times they came across family homesteads, each a collection of three or four huts surrounded by circles of smooth earth. Most seemed deserted or abandoned, the mud walls crumbling in places, but twice Sabine caught glimpses of children, and once a group of adults, the women with their breasts bare, who watched Rose lead the group around the edge. One woman had a sculpted, narrow visage with exceptionally fine features; when she turned her head slightly, Sabine saw a long slash running the length of the opposite cheek. The skin around it was swollen and red—fresh, Sabine thought. Her eyes, and the eyes of the others, were hard and unfriendly as they followed the fugitive trio until Rose veered off into the brush; Sabine was relieved to put the homestead a ways behind.
The Atlas of Forgotten Places Page 22