Burridge Unbound (30 page)

Yours
.

Not
Love
. She already said that.
Yours
.

But she’s probably still sitting in a plane over the Pacific Ocean.
The cancer is metastasizing
. She knew we both shouldn’t have come.

I have all these calls to make, but it suddenly seems overwhelming, I can’t bring myself to return to my room. I have money, my passport. A hundred thousand e-mails are waiting on my computer. A hundred thousand reasons not to check in.

I sign the bill, walk through the lobby – cavernous, deserted except for a half-dozen staff standing in the same trance as the breakfast crew. I step into the heat of the day, not really knowing what I mean to do. Return to the
Justico kampi
, I suppose. I’ll have to tell Sin Vello and Mrs. Grakala, probably even Suli herself. Tjodja will have to set up the airline ticket. No, forget that, it’ll take months. Derrick can arrange it. We must have some credit left.

Nito reappears by my side. Normally he gets the taxi but this time a black car is waiting for me. Luki steps out, carefully, like a young woman who’s carrying a baby inside her.

“I’m supposed to pick you up,” she says. Then her eyes
really see me, but the worry that registers there doesn’t form into words. She looks to Nito then back to me and asks if Joanne is coming.

“Joanne has gone back to Canada,” I say, my voice sounding strange, as if I’m lying. “Her mother is ill. She left suddenly yesterday.”

Evidently Luki hasn’t read today’s
Islander
. She takes my words at face value. Why shouldn’t she? They’re true, although somehow they don’t feel as true as the
Islander
report.
A published report
. It must be true. Surely I was trying to flee the country.

We get in the back of the black car, a Mercedes, which pulls away powerfully, the way you’d expect a German car to pull away. The traffic is unusually thin, which suits this black German car, not meant to go slowly, to be interrupted. The driver is wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. In Santa Irene? Nito sits silently beside him.

I’m thinking of the details. It’s just a matter of explaining that I can’t carry on, my health is at risk without my personal assistant. But I suppose I can last a few days without her.

“Luki, what does
sutu i kondapa
mean?”

She looks at me strangely, seems at a loss for a moment. Then she says, “Walking on his eyeballs.”

“On his eyeballs?”

“Yes.” She turns her gaze out the window, the mouldy, sloppy buildings of Santa Irene whizzing by at uncommon speed.

“What does it mean?”

“It’s used for drug addicts.”

Wonderful. Burridge on drugs.

Much later, it occurs to me that we aren’t on our way to the
Justico kampi
at all, and I ask Luki where we’re going.

“Justice Sin has received a tip about a secret
IS
detention centre. He is already on his way there and we will meet him to demand an inspection. It’s in the mandate, we have every right to be given entrance. The neighbourhood is called Aaden.”

If Joanne were here I’d tell her to stay behind at the Merioka. Long minutes riding behind tinted glass, the Truth Commissioner,
sutu i kondapa
, walking on his eyeballs. It’s true in a sense – I’ve been here for weeks but am isolated, don’t really know what’s going on. We ride past dozens of makeshift dwellings, people apparently camping out on the sidewalks. What’s that about? Children playing in rubbish, groups of men sitting on old tires, women hanging clothing out to dry on twine stretched between parking meters. I ask Luki and again she looks at me for an odd pause before replying.

“They are
manglop
, blind vagrants,” she says.

“Are there more of them than usual?”

“They’re flooding in from the countryside because of
kontra qitaos.”

“Kontra qitaos?”

“The economic disaster. They cannot afford basic food and supplies, so have come to the capital to look for work.”

“And these are different from the
sorialos?”

“Sometimes the same, sometimes different. You know the
loros
lost 200 per cent this week?”

“Yes. Of course,” I say.

Small, tidy houses with whitewashed security walls topped by broken glass, the gates lined with bars, dogs and children in the street, an old man sitting on a tiny stool, a boy in tattered pants leaning on a telephone pole. Bright pink flowers sprouting out of the side of one wall, a cactus pushing through the pavement near the sidewalk. We stop at the house labelled 24. Justice Sin is already there with three aides, a similar black
sedan parked nearby. At the gate Sin leans on his silver cane and talks to someone on the other side. When I get closer I see it’s a tall, unhappy man in a brown suit. The holster of his pistol is visible behind his jacket. Luki hurries to Sin but doesn’t talk to him, she simply listens, then turns back to me to explain.

“This man says number 24 is government property, but he will not let us in until he has authorization from the minister. Justice Sin has sent two staff to the back of the house to make sure no one is being taken out secretly. He insists they must let us in immediately, but the man says his superior is right now phoning the minister.”

How long can it take to phone the minister?

Forever. Sin’s aides bring a folding chair from the back of his black car. Luki and I go to the back and wait with Sin’s men. Nito stays near me nervously eyeing the surroundings. Who does he work for, I wonder? IS? The wall is too high to see over, the glass too jagged and sharp to try any climbing. There doesn’t seem to be a back entrance anyway. Unless a tunnel connects to other houses, the only way out seems to be through the front. We return to find that the minister still can’t be reached.

“Perhaps if you got written permission from the minister and returned another day,” the man at the gate says.

Sin pulls out a cellular phone, punches some numbers and waits, mops his face with a cloth, each bead of sweat instantly replaced with another. It’s not a sunny day but steambath hot, the air itself perspiring. A short conversation, then Sin makes two more calls and we wait. Kids gather from up and down the street: two boys who were playing with sticks, a girl with scabbed knees, some young teens selling cigarettes, bottled water, and magazines. The unhappy man in brown gets even
less happy with this crowd and yells at the kids to leave, but the chief justice tells them they can stay, so they do. Then a number of other cars and vans arrive – the press in some,
IS
members, I suppose, in others. The press are generally in more relaxed dress,
IS
members look both sterner and more confused. None of this is supposed to be happening. The
IS
guys mingle and take notes. Dorut Kul pushes to the front and immediately hurls questions at Sin.

Several
IS
men from the house gather inside the gate now, grimacing and conferring, turning their backs to make phone calls, gesturing to the kids and reporters to clear out. Sin answers Kul’s questions patiently, turns to other reporters now thronging around him.

Kul catches me and asks for a statement about my attempt to flee the country. I give him as thorough a denial as I can, explain that I was trying to get to the airport to see off my assistant, who has returned to Canada for personal reasons. He probes further, asks if I plan to stay without her, but I tell him that’s all I can say for now.

“So you might return to your home prematurely?” he presses, and I squirm. Just what I need, to have the press go off half-cocked.

“I have no current plans to return to Canada,” I say carefully, and am grateful when he lets it go.

“What are you expecting to find in this house?” he asks.

“We have received a tip that this is a secret
IS
detention centre – where
IS
members take people they’ve abducted. From testimony in front of the commission it appears these detention centres are used for torture and murder, and are kept secret so that the
IS
can deny having custody of particular people and avoid being called to account. We simply want to inspect the premises, but we’re being denied access.”

A stand-off in the heat. The
IS
has the advantage: a roof over their heads. As the humidity builds we all know what’s coming, a torrential rain that will drive us away. The minister isn’t going to phone. That’s just a ruse to win time. Sin confers quietly with me and Luki, several reporters’ microphones leaning in to catch the conversation. Then he nods to one of his men, who walks back to the car and reappears with a huge crowbar. Sin takes it and steps up to the gate, jams it into the small lock before anyone in brown can stop him. Several pistols appear at once and Sin pauses, his large hands on the crowbar, a dozen cameras poking around him, all of us looking on.

A tense exchange. Sin doesn’t lower his eyes but neither do the
IS
men. The moment hangs and hangs, then the first drops of rain fall, fat and warm. We only have a couple of minutes before the deluge.

I don’t know how we all know, but somehow the advantage falls to Sin. Without a word he leans his bulk on the crowbar and the lock snaps like plastic. Instead of rushing the gate, however, he pushes it open gently and the
IS
men don’t resist. Their guns stay pointed, but these men aren’t going to shoot the chief justice in front of all these reporters. We walk in uninvited, but unimpeded as well.

A drab house, on first glance surprisingly domestic-looking, with a mat by the door to receive people’s shoes, a living room off the entrance, a batik hanging of a small boy, sitting on a water buffalo, playing a flute. The ceilings are high, in the local style, and in the living room four plain wooden chairs are gathered around a table covered in cards, ashtrays and tall beer bottles. It smells of sweat and old cigarettes, and the further in we get the dirtier it seems, almost in the way that an animal’s den will be – I sense the occupants will put up with the filth for ages, then decide to move on rather than attempt to clean.

We sweep past the kitchen: blackened, grease-stained walls, a dirt floor, a brown rat scavenging on the cluttered counter, pausing to look at us but not alarmed enough to move away. It feels like a dream, like stepping into layers of darkness. Sin pushes open one bedroom door: nothing. No furniture, decorations, or people, just heavy drapes on the one window, a dark stain in one corner, the stench of old urine. The same in the next bedroom, except the stench is stronger and there’s a rough bench of sorts, under which is something I recognize – a black box, about the size and weight of a car battery.

“Take it,” I say, pointing, barely able to get the words out.
“Take it for evidence!”
Luki relays the message to Sin’s men, who are behind me.

“You should wait outside,” I say to Luki.

“It’s all right,” she says.

“No, it isn’t. There are some things you don’t want to see if you don’t have to. Believe me.”

She wavers, but I put enough force into my voice and gaze that she obeys. Most of me wants to follow her retreat. But I don’t. Down the corridor. The third bedroom. The smell much worse. The door is locked and Sin Vello steps aside while his aides kick at it. The
IS
men are behind us and watching but not stopping us; they’ve fallen aside like the Berlin Wall. Two, three, four kicks and the door gives way.

Nothing.

Grey light; the pounding of the rain on the window, no curtains this time, no dark shades. A small bed, a mirror and dresser, a huge mouldy poster of the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger looking like a revivified corpse.

A handprint on the wall, some Santa Irenian magazines in the corner – porno, bad colour, the reds bleeding into the greens.

Nothing we need.

But the stench is gut-wrenching. The stench of failure. They’ve cleaned the place out. Someone’s tipped them off. We’ve come too late.

The
IS
generally gets its own way
. I remember Sin Vello’s face when he said that: urbane, cynical, knowing. Not his face now – it’s purple with indignation and anger. He flings the bed across the room, a surprising flash of speed from such bulk. His aide checks the closet, but clearly there won’t be anything left. A few hangers, a mouldy set of clothes.

All of the air rushing out of our balloon.

I step into the corridor, crowded now with
IS
men, short, bulky, silent, most with moustaches, one with a red rash on his neck. Where’s the smell coming from? It doesn’t make sense. The house looks bigger from the outside …

“They’re here!” I say to Sin Vello, as if he can understand me. “They’re still here. There’s another room!” I call it out excitedly, looking for the secret door. There must be one, right? This is a secret detention centre – there must be a secret door. A basement room? Back dungeon? Where’s the stench coming from? I run around tapping the walls until Sin’s men get the idea. Some of the reporters join in, push the
IS
men out of the way, although it occurs to me that most of them stand back, and some haven’t even entered the house. We have to find it. We have to!

Tapping, searching, calling. This damn smell. It’s not from using the wrong disinfectant. Something evil’s been happening in this house. I go back to the living room, upset the card table, tear down the water buffalo picture. Then to the kitchen, rip open the cupboards. The smell is revolting. The rat has moved on but the decaying food he was feasting on is still mouldering on the counter.

Pull open the fridge door. There’s no light. The fridge is full of darkened, blackened, bloodied …

Heads.

Decapitated heads, some wrapped in plastic bags, some in brown paper, some simply …

I stand transfixed.

There are some things you don’t want to see
.

An
IS
man stands in the doorway, his hand on his pistol, pointing. What am I supposed to do? Close the door, walk away? Dorut Kul pushes past him as if he weren’t holding a weapon at all, as if he has shrunk to three feet and is fast disappearing. As soon as he looks inside the fridge he calls out – ecstatic, a cry of triumph, and his photographer pushes past the
IS
man as well. There it is, tomorrow’s front page, a fridge full of heads. More and more cries of triumph, bodies pushing into the kitchen. Kitchen? I stumble out, crash against the wall twice while reeling down the corridor. Slashing rain outside, even heavier than that day Joanne and I abandoned our taxi. Years ago. Decades.