Stone Kingdoms (28 page)

My hand flicked mechanically at the insects which shivered about my face, and a dull pain throbbed in my head. Sometimes it seemed the moon was dropping steeply towards me, its owl face hunting out some new orbit and swallowing all conception of time. He tries to stride away from me with his face clasped to the black ridge of rocks but I won't let go and I flow about him and ask him about his God and if when he sat in his study each night his God came to him and brought him comfort, but when he opens his mouth to speak the only sound is the rush of the sea, and then he walks through me and into the ocean. I call out to him but I too have no voice and I hear only the clack and suck of the waves shuffling back over a bed of pebbles. He strides away, straight-backed, bare-headed, and I try to follow him but am bound to the shore and he is swimming out deeper with his head buried between each trough and then he is gone, gone from view, drifting into depths where even I can't follow.

Something flurried across the moon – a bird, a cloud, I didn't know. Nadra had stopped walking, I almost stumbled into her back. She held up a hand to silence any speech and we stared into the pearly light which flowed down the river and saw where a beam of yellow light stretched from bank to bank. And then it was gone but its image petrified in the imagination. We moved slowly to the nearest bank, conscious of every tiny noise our feet made, the rustle of our clothes, and I had to fight the
impulse
to run. As we walked it seemed our movements left our shapes behind in the light and I wanted to brush them into nothingness with the swirl of my hand. But I followed Nadra closely as she made her way up the gently sloping banks and into the frayed tatters of bush. Her head was turned towards where we had seen the light, but there were no engine noises or voices and that intensified our uncertainty.

She tugged my sleeve and I kept close to her. We walked back along the path which beaded the river bed and then she pointed to a thick clump of tall bushes and trees squatting in a bed of ragged grass. As we walked towards them dampness feathered our ankles and sometimes our feet caught in roots. We pushed our way between the bushes, scratched by the springing whips of branch and torn, but tunnelled into the deepest part and climbed into the branches which hung close to the river's edge. The cold wash of moonlight seeped through the veil of foliage and below us the road of river vanished into the smoulder of shadows. We hugged the rough-barked branches, and peered out through the flecked screen.

We heard him before we saw him – a faint scratch of stones pushed together underfoot, the rustle of clothes, and then he came. Ghostly, moon-bleached, he walked slowly down the middle of the bed, the gun across his chest. Picking his steps carefully over the uneven ground, his gaze divided between the ground and the terrain above him, and when his eyes flickered up to where we stood watching, even though his face was washed clean of features, I knew he was the one who had tried to take my bracelet. He stared through us then turned a slow circle, scanning the banks and scrub before kneeling down and touching the ground with his hand. I felt again that something of our presence lingered there on the bed, tangible, shaped by the scent of our bodies and the intensity of our fear. He looked up again then cupped a hand to his mouth and called like a bird, the sound looping through the night. Even though I knew he couldn't see me I pressed my face to the coldness of the bark
and
felt its raddled blotches on my skin. When I looked up again a second soldier had emerged, walking through the wall of shadow where the river curved into the night. I knew from the way he walked and the way he held his head that it was the leader. When they met, their voices joined in whisper and then they split up, each broad-stepping up a bank then walking in parallel along the smooth ribbon of riverbed.

Sometimes they glanced over at each other and paused to search the straddle of scrub. Suddenly there was the turn and kick of an engine, and its headlights shot beams of light and a few seconds later we saw the jeep slowly bumping along the bed. On the far bank the leader waved it on with his hand, then motioned it to stop, and the engine died and the lights vanished into themselves again. Two more men got out and walked on either side of the jeep, their slow movements bringing them into gradual focus like prints developing through a filmy fluid. I clung more tightly to the tree as my urine stained through my clothes. Every part of me seemed drawn into the beat of my heart. The soldier we had seen first was now no more than thirty metres away from where we hid, and his stealthy movements made me a prey to each of his steps. He held his head up towards the sky and for a second I thought the night currents would carry the scent of our presence, but I forced myself to look at him and saw his etiolated face, the blurred nebulous void of his eyes, and then I stared at the Kalashnikov he held across his chest and saw for the first time that it was beautiful, and I longed to have it in my arms, to turn its power on those below in a sudden burst of anger and payment for what they had done, for what they still would do. And not from that miserable hiding-hole, but striding into the open in the clear light of day so they could see their justice coming and would know too the churn and shudder of fear. There was no other way – no words could carry such strength, such finality of judgement. I wanted to stretch out my arm, take its righteous incorruptibility and turn its force on them. Short and sweet,
good
enough for them. But down below he held the gun tightly in his grasp and so I clung more tightly to my hiding place, stilling and tightening my body, feeling only the shame of my fear.

He came closer, his movements a silvery blur in the moonlight, his face glazed by the wash of light, and as he passed along the path below us I heard the faint draw of his breathing and his light slow steps on the dust of the path. Then as he moved on and out of sight the jeep's engine started up again and the yellow light shot past us, moths and insects dancing in the beams. It moved slowly past us, the beams lifting and falling over uneven ground, until gradually the sound faded and into its wake flooded all the other sounds of the night that fear had shut out. But we stayed motionless, not even turning our faces to each other, and tried to construct what we couldn't see from the sounds. The call of a bird sent us scurrying deep into ourselves and once something rustled through the scrag of grass behind our den. Then there was nothing, nothing that could be distinguished or separated from the pattern of the night, and we allowed ourselves the luxury of movement, the silent shift of weight, but we both knew that many more hours would have to pass before we could risk leaving the protection of our hiding-place.

Places to hide. Always places to hide. Secret chambers of the heart. For some reason I thought of the school where I had started to teach, the place where I had once believed my future lay. I saw it in my mind, imagined it squatting in the silence of the same scrub of moonlight, the spokes of narrow streets around it held fast by the closed embrace of sleep. I walk through its narrow corridors, brush my hand along the green walls and hear the echo of voices tumbling from the distant corners of empty rooms. The ring of a phone, the slamming of a door somewhere, the hollow bump of a ball against an outside wall. I open my classroom door and stand in the tremble and
shock
of moonlight and their faces lift momentarily and stare right through me. I speak to them but the words drift aimlessly like motes of dust. I try again but no head lifts and in desperation I walk to the back of the room, to the boards covered in their work – the poster of a desert island with palm trees and yellow sands – and the faces stare down at my approach. Shadowy faces, the African tribe performing a dance, the statues of Easter Island, a dark figure wearing a combat jacket and a balaclava. They stare at me with their indifferent eyes but I reach out and take the shell in both hands and then, as one, the children's heads turn to me and their eyes look at my red-blotched skin, the dried-up gauze of my hair, my strange dust-smattered clothes, and I try to tell them about being afraid, about the baby we buried in the dirt, about everything, but my words start out only to vanish into the smear of moonlight. Then they turn their heads away again and as the shell cracks and crumbles into dust only one face is open to me. It is Sinead's. I see her tears swimming from her eyes like tiny silver fish. I reach out my hand to her but it passes through her and the silver fish of her tears are nothing more than the quiver of dust in the shiver of light.

But Daniel, where is Daniel? I sit at my desk in an empty classroom during a lunchtime when the rain fills the corridors with children and streams and sprays against the windows. In the playground younger children splash and dance in a puddle. I sit and wait at my desk, listening for his running feet and the sound of his laughter, but he doesn't come and there are only excited squeals and the smack of feet on the black sheen of the playground. I drop my head and try to concentrate on my work but the rain raps more loudly on the glass and when I look up his mother's face is at the window, her hair plastered flat to her head, her tears mirrored in the frame of glass.

Now everything fades in and out of dream. Sometimes as we walk along the river bed I am enveloped by the closing light, and as I follow Nadra I struggle to keep pace with her until I
look
up and she has vanished round a distant curve. When I cry out my voice is dry and brittle and breaks into fragments of dust and so I stumble on alone, my feet bruised and blistered by the long trek through the night. Then her face looms up ahead of me and she helps me when I want to stop. I walk somnambulant, oblivious to the landscape melting silently on either side of the bed. Hour after hour we trudge on, until the light begins to thin and fret itself into a new pattern. I slip on a scree of shale and suddenly the sky forks and cracks with blue shots of lightning and my head fills with the roar of thunder. And the rain comes, gentle at first, and I hold up my face and feel it kiss my skin, then heavier and unrelenting as it beats angrily against my body. And I imagine the vault of sky splitting open and the roar of some great flash flood bursting into the dried-up course of river bed and a roll of water swirling through its empty veins and though we try to run there is no place to hide and it breaks over us, carrying us with it, helpless and inseparable from the vagaries of its will.

21

Just
before dawn we climbed up from the river bed and headed further into the bush in search of some hiding-place for the daylight hours. We stayed roughly parallel with the river, ensuring that we held to our easterly course which we hoped would lead us to the coast. Once an antelope kicked up its heels at us and skimmed the silvery light before vanishing into taller grass. Groves of giant cacti with smouldering rosettes of pink flowers and around us the plain was badged with sandy patches, like the coat of a mangy dog. Sometimes small birds shot up from the grass and the clap of their wings echoed the startled beat of our hearts. It had grown misty and cold but I knew it wouldn't be long before the sun scattered these last vestiges of the night and the prospect of a full day spent trying to shelter from its heat, without food and water, seemed to slow and weight our walk until eventually we ground to a halt and hunkered in a blotch of sandy soil.

‘We won't be able to walk much further unless we find food and water.'

‘You're hungry already?'

‘And thirsty.'

‘Talking about it will only make it worse. Think of other things.'

I inspected the bites and cuts on my legs then tried to soothe away some of the pain from my feet, but there were blisters on my heels and under my toes.

‘How far do you think we've gone?' I asked.

‘Not far enough. A jeep might come,' she said, coming close
and
looking at my feet. ‘But you are right, we need to find water.'

I looked around us. ‘Are there things here in the bush we can eat?'

‘What things, Naomi?'

‘I don't know – things like berries and leaves.'

She smiled. ‘You think I know lots of secrets about the bush, that I will be able to do magic, find food and water from leaves and plants?'

I smiled too and shrugged my shoulders, feeling foolish. ‘Well, do you?'

She laughed and widened her eyes. ‘No, Naomi, I have no magic, but maybe we can dig a big trap and catch some wild animals and have them for our tea. Maybe find an elephant and ride on its back to the coast or shoot it like George Orwell did.' I kicked up a little dust at her. She pulled the trailing tails of her head-covering tightly round her neck like a scarf. The side of her face was bruised and the corner of her mouth was seamed with a thin black line.

‘What do you dream of, Nadra, when you dream?'

She slithered her foot over the sand, pushing it into a little ridge then flattening it again. ‘I dream the same dreams as you.'

‘But what do you dream?'

‘Of happiness, of something better in the future.'

‘And what will be better in your dreams, Nadra?'

‘Different things. Greenness, greenness spreading out over the desert like water; a school in every village; books. A home under trees. Things like that.'

‘And do you ever dream of love?'

She laughed and chased away an insect with a quiver of her hand. ‘No, I do not dream of love.'

‘Why not?'

‘To dream of love would be a disappointment. I must wait for what is given.'

‘Who will give it to you?'

‘
A man who God will give. Is it different in your country?'

‘In my country a woman can look for her own love.'

‘And do they find it?'

‘Sometimes, sometimes not.'

‘And have you found yours?'

‘No, I haven't found it.'

‘Then you must be patient.'

I felt the first slow stirrings of warmth as the light quickened on the landscape, painting in the details that before had been insubstantial and unformed.