Purgatory

by Guido Eekhaut

  Next to her, on the other chair, she had deposited a Bijenkorf shopping bag. Maybe her car was in the department store’s garage, which meant she had money or was spending someone else’s money. She preferred a coffee in the Red Lion instead of the store’s tearoom. That also was significant. She was probably alone, not waiting for anyone. She wanted to smoke a cigarette but could no longer do that in bars and restaurants. She wanted company, but he knew she would return home alone.

  Like he would. Go home alone. He would return to an empty apartment, thinking of Linda.

  The look she had given him had been full of implied meaning.

  He wiped his mouth with the napkin (cloth, not paper here) and drank his beer. Then he looked at her again. He would simply walk over and speak to her. See if she wanted to join him for an extra coffee. Something stronger perhaps. Leave the car in the parking garage. You don’t need it. He was making assumptions. Everything was an assumption. He wouldn’t need complicated strategies. Not under these circumstances.

  He got up, approached her, and said, “I assume you won’t refuse another coffee, will you?”

  She looked at him, really looked, showing only mild amusement. “A coffee would be a great idea,” she said. Her voice was unexpectedly low. A warm voice. He knew he had not been mistaken about her.

  TUESDAY

  10

  IT FELT TO LINDA as if she hadn’t slept all night. It wasn’t comfort that was lacking, at least not considering the circumstances. She had part of one of the larger tents at her disposal, her part separated from the rest by canvas flaps, allowing for a certain measure of privacy. The rest of the tent was taken up by two nurses and a doctor. But still, it was no more than a tent, as no permanent buildings would be built, not even for the operating quarters. The French army had provided the tents. They were solid enough, but they were hot during the day, and chilly at night. They didn’t keep the sand out, which simply went everywhere. The only tent that could be sealed hermetically was the one used for surgery, but even that didn’t really provide a sterile environment.

  Twice during the night she’d heard shots in the distance. Probably automatic weapons. She had no idea from which direction the sound came or who was responsible. Had it been the men Lieutenant Odinga had left to guard the corpses? Had they shot at hyenas or other animals, or at ghosts?

  She hadn’t bothered to get up. Nocturnal walks through the camp had been discouraged by the lieutenant. There were always armed guards around, but it was inconceivable they would shoot at anything near so many people.

  That morning she sat at the breakfast table with the other members of the medical team. Organizing breakfast (and lunch and dinner) was Linda’s responsibility, in which she was assisted by two men she had recruited from among the refugees. Tea was strong and sweet, and breakfast invariably consisted of homemade (which meant made by the two helpers) chapattis, jam, and a serving of hot beans in tomato sauce. There were no eggs, no meat of any kind, no fresh vegetables, and hardly any fruit. She handed out vitamin supplements. The refugees had to make do with a sort of porridge of oatmeal provided by the Red Cross. Once a week they were given a ration of cake flour, milk powder, and strips of dried meat. It was a very dull diet, but not much worse than that of the soldiers and the medics. You could die of boredom here eating that food, or you died of starvation. So much for choice.

  “Lord Jim would do well to keep his troops under control,” one of the doctors said in French. Linda understood what he and his French and Belgian colleagues were saying, although she was far from fluent in the language. Fortunately, the Belgian members of the medical team also spoke Dutch.

  “Lord Jim” was the nickname the team had bestowed on the lieutenant long before her arrival. She never asked why. She had few questions, realizing that nobody could spare much time for the newcomer. Doctors and nurses usually worked twelve hours straight. There were always more patients than they could handle. And more than enough dead. Medical supplies were insufficient. The trucks didn’t arrive often enough and never on time. The Kenyan soldiers and the UN men had their own supplies, with strict orders not to share, not even with the workers from the international aid organizations. And certainly not with the natives. The medical team had the same orders.

  Linda quickly realized the aid workers needed to eat well and hydrate sufficiently, or they would soon be unable to work anymore. The desert was unforgiving. They had to make choices, setting priorities as to who would be helped and who would not. But they needed their strength, because without them the whole camp became useless.

  “I wonder what’s going on in those hills over there,” one of the nurses said. There had been questions asked about soldiers driving to and from the hills. Nobody, however, had noticed Linda being taken there by Odinga. Which suited her fine. How could she explain the trip if she wasn’t able to divulge the hills’ terrible secret? How would she be able to explain the human sacrifice?

  Odinga had asked her for complete discretion, as long as he had no answers. He had wondered aloud if the victims had been refugees kidnapped and killed by rebels. That would not make much sense. But nothing about the findings seemed to make much sense. And what about the man they had found over there? He had been discreetly transferred to the camp and locked in a military tent, some distance from the camp itself.

  She noticed the lieutenant standing next to one of the military vehicles, looking out over the savanna that seemed empty as far as she could see. She saw an empty savanna, but maybe he, through his long experience, saw something more. She saw emptiness; he saw a potential threat.

  “Will there be a transport today?” one of the doctors inquired. When he noticed Linda wasn’t paying attention, he said, “Linda? Will a transport come? Or a plane? Can we expect anything today?”

  She looked at him, roused from her thoughts. “Yes . . . yes, we’re expecting a truck. The plane is scheduled for the day after tomorrow, depending on the weather.”

  The doctor stretched and yawned. Sleep deprivation was a widespread problem among team members. “I think I’ll start with my appointments,” he said, not even bothering to sound sarcastic.

  Linda got up and started clearing the table. The local helpers would do the washing up—with sand instead of water—and would clean up the kitchen. She paid them in water and food rations. There had been more than enough candidates for the jobs. Linda made sure to rotate the helpers so that more people in the camp got a chance to earn something, even if it was only a little food and water.

  Moments later the tent was cleared of people. Linda walked out and approached Odinga. He glanced at her, his gaze still full of the desert. Or savanna. She wasn’t entirely clear about the distinction. It probably was a desert. “Something the matter, Lieutenant?” she asked. “You look worried.”

  “We might expect a storm later,” he said. “I have a feeling it will be a bad one.”

  She wasn’t going to discuss his feelings. “Did your soldiers use their guns last night? Was there a problem over there in the hills?”

  He frowned at her. “What do you want, ma’am? My soldiers are there, keeping guard over those bodies. It’s dark, even with the stars. Maybe there was a wild animal around. Maybe it was just their imagination. They might have fired some shots, as soldiers occasionally do. Maybe they were shooting at shadows. What do I care? I am not going to reprimand them.”

  She left it at that. In the end, the waste of ammunition was not her problem. “What will happen with the bodies?”

  “What do you want me to do with them, Miss Weisman? Am I responsible for them? I do not think so.”

  Yes, she thought, we have a bad temper this morning. “You can’t just leave them there, I guess. They should be buried.”

  “Buried? The local population does not bury its dead. Underground, the spirits of the dead drift for eternity, without a way out into the eternal light. You want that to happen? For your spirit to stumble around in the dark, aimlessly, forever?”

 
; She ignored that. “So, the bodies remain where they are, on those stakes.”

  “For now,” he said.

  “Will there be a proper investigation?”

  He grimaced and looked surprised at her naiveté. “And who would investigate? The local police? There aren’t any. The government of this wrecked country? Certainly not. I have no authority to conduct a criminal investigation. I can question the prisoner, but he does not want to talk to me. What shall I do with him? Torture him, so that he either dies or confesses anything, any possible nonsense, to make the pain stop? And why should there be a trial? People are killed here all the time. We are in a war zone.”

  “They aren’t killed like that.”

  “No, I hope this does not happen much. But they die and in large numbers. Despite whatever help the West thinks it can spare.” The lieutenant observed the horizon again, on the lookout for his hypothetical storm. “Whatever your efforts, ma’am, they are merely an illusion. It does not mean anything in the larger scheme of things. This country, this continent. There always will be hunger and diseases and killings. The tribes that passed this way earlier did not stay, and for good reasons. People cannot live here, not in these parts. No food, no water. You dig wells, they provide water, for now. Soon they will be dry again. Then you must move. And without the water we must move those three or four thousand people over there.”

  “They can’t be moved,” Linda said. “They’re too weak, most of them. Even you know that much. And wherever we go, there will already be more people, more soldiers, and too many mouths to feed.”

  “I see you understand the problem.” He looked away for a moment, across the savanna again. “I am familiar with large parts of Africa, as I have traveled rather widely as a soldier. There are no alternatives for these people. There are still a few good places, civilized places, but they are far off, and anyway, they don’t want these refugees. Not any more than you Europeans want them on your continent.”

  “We’re here to help. And to prevent—”

  “No,” he said. “You are here because your government does not want these people to emigrate north, to Europe. You encourage them to stay here, where they will all die. So they will not come in droves to your green pastures and your old, comfortable cities.”

  “You’re being cynical, Lieutenant. Things are not that simple.”

  He sighed, but patiently. “Things never are, except here in the desert. Look around you, ma’am. Do you see solutions or a savior? Is there a god, or perhaps a secular leader who will help these people and their children to survive? They want to live, like you and me. They don’t need much to live, but even that they are deprived of. But they cannot go anywhere else. That would disrupt the prevailing economic order. So instead, we have a natural order, which says that these people should die.”

  “But we want to keep them alive. The doctors and the—”

  “Yes, you do. And so do I. But we are not important players. We do not get to decide who lives and who dies.”

  “Well, if I have anything to say about it, and even if I don’t, I’ll try to keep them alive, if that’s all the same to you. And maybe they can, one day, return home.”

  His face, dark and smooth, bore an expression she did not recognize. Had he expected her to react differently? “Return?” he said. “What does that mean? You don’t even know where they came from. From a hellhole, most probably. They are going nowhere, Miss Weisman. If they had a place to go, they would have moved long ago. There’s no future for them here, and they know that.”

  She said nothing.

  “We’ve got something like three, maybe four thousand people in the camp. It’s a large camp, but within the wider scale of things, here in Africa, it means nothing. History had fled from this place, never to return. This is a void. Those bodies in the hills? Even they are meaningless. The fugitives, the bodies, they do not exist.”

  “I wonder exactly why you’re here, Lieutenant.”

  Odinga sighed, and the expression on his face was neutral again. “It is my job to maintain the illusion of continuance, ma’am. It is my job to act as if this camp is a permanent refuge. Because otherwise, these people would be completely lost. Still, it is only an illusion I’m maintaining.”

  She turned away from him. “That’s cruel, Lieutenant. To give them hope when there is none.”

  “You should do as these people have been doing for so long. You should accept that things happen, as they are unavoidable. This may be called fatalism, and it probably is the most widespread religion on this continent.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “It’s a matter of accepting reality for what it is. Your civilization is an illusion as well. Your civilization insists that in the end, everybody will be saved. That everybody has the right to salvation. You encapsulate people so as to prevent people from running risks. But that’s not what happens in the rest of the world. Elsewhere people live their short lives, and then they die. Why bother so much about the inevitable? The only real difference between you and these people is that you will live a bit longer than they, and under better conditions. But in the end, we’re all dead.”

  She remained silent. There was nothing more to be said.

  “What happens here is an attempt to maintain the privileges of rich, Western society. Doctors, nurses, food, clean water, a hospital. Protection and eternal life. But nothing structural is going on here. No roads are being built, no real hospitals, no universities, no ports, no factories.”

  Linda said, “I have a different view of things like culture and life than you, Lieutenant. It all boils down to simple decisions. These people need help now. They need a chance to survive the next weeks, months. We offer that help. It is short-term planning, and we are building no roads. But we get them the stuff to survive, if only barely, for a while. That is enough for me. That is all I can do. I have no ulterior motives. Why is that not enough for you?”

  He held out his left hand and squeezed it with his right. “That’s why, ma’am. Because of the color of my skin. Because I’m black, as they are. These are not my brothers. These are not my relatives. They belong to a distant tribe with whom I am not related. We do not have the same ancestor, not even the same gods. However, we share that same color. It is not much to share, but still it is something that unites us.”

  “Then I’d assume you would be even more motivated to help them.”

  “That’s why I understand your motives for coming here, Miss Weisman. I’m here because once other people came to Africa and stole the many riches this continent had to offer: humans, gold, metal ores, diamonds, animals. Local people didn’t see them as riches to be plundered because they were part of the land. So many people, however, wanted to steal these riches, and they did, and afterward, after the plunder, nobody was inclined to solve Africa’s problems.”

  “That’s postcolonial bullshit, Lieutenant. That kind of rhetoric no longer makes any sense.”

  “Then I will not talk about the colonial age, however bad that was. I will talk about today. About the riches being stolen from Africa today. Today it is the Chinese. They are building roads and ports and railroads to drag away the raw materials they say they so desperately need for their economy. Meanwhile, local people must deal with all those alien ideas: capitalism, Islam, economy, radicalism, socialism, fascism. People flock to the cities, to the new centers of economic power, where they are hurled into the twenty-first century after having stepped out of the eighteenth. The new local elite is getting rich quickly, embracing capitalism. But the gap between rich and poor is as evident here, in many parts of Africa, as it is elsewhere. Perhaps even more so.”

  “We don’t have the power to stop the IMF and others or the nations that—”

  “And that’s why there’s so much despair here, elsewhere, in war zones, places where people live almost in the stone age, or in slums or as slaves of other Africans. And so many things will have to change before they become better, ma’am.”

 
Some time later, after performing her duties, Linda strolled along the edge of the camp. When she did that the first time, she took some food and water for the children, but when she noticed their empty, indifferent stares and how resigned they were to their fate, accepting the gifts without so much as a smile, she refrained from taking anything the next time. It was the soldiers’ duty to dispense food and water to the refugees at fixed times and in an orderly way. Her extra effort, however well meant, would only disturb order. Hundreds of children would flock after her. She would never bring enough for all.

  She approached the military camp. The few soldiers present glanced up at her. Some acknowledged her presence, others ignored her. This was what she deserved, being the stranger here. Passing one of the tents, she noticed a face looking at her through a lattice of sticks. An inquisitive Kenyan, she assumed, but then she recognized the prisoner. The man found by the soldiers at the site of the execution. The man who refused to talk. He had, she noticed, cuts and bruises all over his face. The interrogation hadn’t been as civilized as Odinga had wanted her to believe.

  She paused, although she wasn’t supposed to linger around the military camp. Nothing that was going on in there was her business. Just primitive rituals to favor cruel gods. Members of a hostile tribe to be sacrificed, a fate to deter others. Death in retaliation for cruel acts. None of her business.

  But she couldn’t just walk away. The prisoner was held in a sort of cage, primitive but efficient. She could see only his head and shoulders. He just watched her, without apparent emotion. Nevertheless, she felt threatened. She was convinced he was involved, one way or another, with the ritual in the hills. With the deaths of those people. He’d had them sacrificed to some god, and he’d had help.