The Cinnamon Tree (16 page)
Authors: Aubrey Flegg
Yola emerged from her isolation when she realised that Fintan had turned and, like her, was sitting on the floor.
‘Is it over?’ she whispered.
‘Yes.’ His voice sounded hollow.
‘Is she alive?’
‘I don’t know. You see, her own bones have pierced … her own bones … Oh God, Yola … I saw it all.’
Yola thought he was crying. She put her arms around him and pressed her forehead against his chest. When his breathing was even again they went out.
The car had gone back to the river. If the deminer had been bitten by a snake, it was a harmless one they were told. They set out together for the barracks in silence.
I have no appetite for lunch, I ate a banana because she said to, and I’ve drunk a whole bottle of tepid water from the filter. I can’t get the operation out of my mind. It is all real now, too real even to think about, but at the time it was different. I was in some other state of consciousness. It was as if Dad’s camera were suspended from the ceiling. My knees wanted to give way, but the camera was
holding
me up. I wanted to turn it from the scene below, but whenever I tried, it swung me back as if it were the needle of a compass –
pulling
. I could feel my hands working – focus – zoom – lock the trigger – but these were the camera’s commands, not mine. I wasn’t there at all; I was having visions of Ireland. There was red – so much red, but I wasn’t looking at blood but at a sunset, one of our beautiful
lingering
sunsets on holiday somewhere in Connemara. Black clouds trailed veils of red over small lakes glistening scarlet, newly wet. Her little white bones became the straight lines of vapour trails in the sky – New York – Boston. I was looking down at my own toes paddling in a peat brown stream, watching them wriggle in the refracting
water
. But – here was the difference – my toes and my feet were still a part of me. Before they put a mask on her I saw her face, only for a
second
, looking up at me from the operating table, conscious and alert. And I was back in the canteen at the clinic in Dublin just after I had first met Yola and everyone was staring at us because she had just laughed out loud; then the child’s face was obscured by tubes and masks. I think I knew even then that she was going to die.
This is evidence of … God knows what … man’s inhumanity to man perhaps. I’ve broken out the tabs on the cassettes. No one is ever going to record over these, but equally I know that I will never be able to look at them again. They did not take her to a ward, but to a shed away from the main buildings. That’s how Yola knew that she had died. It looked a lonely place to go, but from what I saw, I think I’m glad.
A
fter a lunch during which neither of them had a will to talk, Fintan went to his bed in the sickbay. When he
realised
that sleep would not come, he decided to write in his diary. He put his notebook away when Yola came in.
‘You should have left the door open. You’re supposed to sleep after lunch, not write!’ she said as she sat down beside him on the bed.
‘I had to, Yola, else that poor child will haunt me forever.’ He stared up at the ghostly shroud of the mosquito net
hanging
above the adjacent bed. ‘We have no idea in Ireland, even though we have been blowing each other up for seventy years. We hear of deaths but never think of the process of … of dying. The injured are hardly even statistics; we forget about them.’
He picked up her hand and held it, looking at it as if he’d never seen a hand before.
‘You remember Sam, in the clinic? “Beautiful,” he said, “like polished mahogany.” And we just blast people to pieces.’ He gave her hand back with a small caress and stood up. ‘Sorry, I keep forgetting.’ Yola was puzzled but Fintan had got up. ‘Judit said your Mr Hans would see me now, should we go? Take me to your leader!’
Yola reached up for a hand. He helped her up.
The cool of the air-conditioning hit them almost as a chill when they opened the door of the adjutant’s house. Yola knocked and Hans jumped up when they came in; he came around to shake Fintan’s hand. Yola watched them: the tall, fair Norwegian and the shorter, darker Irish boy.
‘Well, Yola, are you going to explain these things to Fintan?’ Then, to Fintan, ‘She can, you know. One of our budding mines awareness instructors.’
‘No way, Hans! You forget I am on holiday. You can’t order me around today.’
She smiled at him, and went over to the window. It was peaceful outside. The dogs were sleeping out the heat of the day. The men at the bridge would be working through though – hour on, hour off. In the compound back at home it would be rest time too. She thought Gabbin might be in her secret place. Then she remembered that Gabbin had gone away. Why couldn’t these worries leave her alone? They said at home that he was with Uncle Banda, visiting relatives, but he had been away for a whole month! Sindu knew something, but she wasn’t saying. She forgot about Gabbin easily enough when he was around, but as soon as he was away there was a small Gabbin-shaped hole in her life.
‘We’ll start over here,’ Hans was saying. ‘These are the UXOs, the unexploded ordnance, things like mortars and rockets that never went off.’
Yola knew the routine, first these, then the big anti-tank mines looking like covered dinners on a plate, then the bounding mines that hopped up out of the ground to explode at waist-level, the
little
anti-personnel mines, like the one she had stood on, were on the last shelf. She listened for a moment, then turned her gaze to the window again. She could see the watchman sitting in the
shade, leaning against the wall below. She opened the window and the sound of his radio came up to her.
‘What’s new, Abdul?’ she called.
He looked up with a start. ‘Eeeh, Miss Yola, I thought you were the voice of Allah. There is more trouble with
Murabende
,’ he went on. ‘Our government’s soldiers are going to clear the mines from the Noose, but the Murabendans say that this is their land and it must stay empty until the dispute is
settled
. There will be trouble.’
Yola remembered how she had looked down from the air on that loop of river and the tract of land it enclosed. There had been people there then: were they local Kasemban people who had crept in, or invading Murabendans?
‘You’re too gloomy Abdul, and since when did Allah speak with the voice of a girl?’ She heard the old man chuckle as she closed the window.
‘Look, I’ll open it,’ she heard Hans say. ‘So, here goes the trigger in this little tube. The detonator clips in here.’
Yola smiled, remembering the first day Hans had shown her a landmine. Suddenly she realised that Hans had stopped
talking
. The room was full of an unnatural silence. She turned. Hans was staring at Fintan, who was holding the open halves of one of the little anti-personnel mines. His face had gone white, his mouth was moving, but no words were coming out. He swayed. Hans moved quickly, held him and lowered him into a chair.
‘Put your head between your knees, Fintan! Yola, water – quick!’
They sat around the table in the conference room: Hans, Yola, Judit, who had walked in from her siesta in the middle of the crisis, and Fintan. Hans and Fintan were wet.
‘You said “Throw it”, so I did,’ said Yola ruefully.
In the end, Fintan didn’t actually faint. But Hans sent Yola with him when he insisted on getting something from his
baggage
. He rummaged in a holdall, pulling out a spaghetti of
coloured
wires and bits of electrical equipment.
‘I can’t believe it … I can’t believe it. Dad – of all people. It’s here somewhere. Our first prototype.’ Then he reached deep into a corner. ‘Got it!’ He straightened up, holding a
bubble-wrapped
ball in his hand. ‘Come on Yola, this is when you
decide
that you never knew me.’
Hans slit the tape. The four of them leaned forward as the wrapping fell apart. It looked perfectly innocent: a small plastic box with a domed top. There was an embossed picture of a stylised car on the lid.
‘Oh, so this is the air bag stabiliser you’ve been telling me about,’ said Hans.
‘Yes, sir. This is O’Farrell Engineering’s new air bag
stabiliser
.’ Fintan’s voice was harsh with irony. ‘If I may borrow your penknife, I’ll show you.’
He inserted the tip of his kife, gave a twist and the box opened. Yola heard Hans draw his breath in sharply, but she still couldn’t understand what was going on. The box was empty, just a plastic box with little compartments and
something
that looked like a black beetle.
‘But–’ she said.
‘Look Yola, look now!’ Fintan was holding the little
anti-personnel
mine beside the air bag stabiliser. ‘I’m seeing this for the first time too, remember.’
Suddenly she realised what the fuss was about. The insides were the same – the place for the trigger, the detonator … all there. It was a landmine. It was her turn to want to sit down.
Fintan turned to Hans. ‘But what is the microchip for? It is
programmed to tell the difference between a pothole and a crash.’
‘You say it is programmed for a crash, but is it? These chips can be programmed for anything. What’s this?’ Hans picked up a tape cassette that was also in the bubble wrap. ‘The answer is probably here.’
He fished in his desk, pulled out a walkman and dropped the tape into it. A few seconds’ silence, then the clicks, buzzes and screeches began.
‘Recognise that, Yola? That’s the sound our present
detectors
make.’ Then the sound changed. ‘That’s the one the army uses! Hear? Much more click to it. My God, they are all here!’ He clicked off the tape recorder and shook his head slowly. ‘We’ve been dreading this, Fintan. This chip has been
programmed
to listen for the sound of just about every mine
detector
except, perhaps, the one they use themselves. This is designed specifically to get us. Don’t you see, if there is just one of these in an area, or even if we think there might be one, we can no longer work. Mine detectors are out! I don’t know what your part in this is, Fintan, but I need coffee, then we will talk.’
H
ans drummed his fingers on the table. Fintan was
helping
himself to water from the filter. He had been talking for some time, telling them about the whole air bag project and answering their questions.
‘They said that the tape was just for test purposes. That’s why it had all those strange sounds on it.’
‘Ya, so. First,’ Hans said, ‘this is a landmine, there is
absolutely
no doubt about that. All the architecture is here: a place for the trigger, slots for the detonator and the explosive.
Fintan
, you must understand this. What you have here is an
inhumane
weapon that is banned by international agreement. There are nearly one hundred million landmines in the world, buried in the ground, waiting for people like Yola to step on them – these must be cleared using mine detectors. This mine is designed to kill deminers by exploding when their mine
detectors
pass over it. Because it is designed to prevent mine clearance, it is doubly inhumane. I must ask you this one
question
: does your father know what he is producing?’
There wasn’t a sound in the room. Fintan picked up his glass of water, but his hands were shaking. He put the water down and pressed them onto the polished surface. When he replied, he did so carefully and precisely, measuring his words.
‘No, I don’t think he does. As I told Yola last night, I have
always
thought of Dad as scrupulously honest. He got the
design
from the car company or whatever they are – picture of the car on top and all. Look, it even shows where the stabiliser is to
be fitted! Then he got permission from the Irish government and from then on didn’t want to know anything more. His one objective is to get his men back to work.’
‘If he is not behind this, who is?’
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about before … before I realised …’
‘Tell him about your dream,’ said Yola.
This time, Fintan told the story as straight as he could.
Hans got up and walked to the window.
‘When are Birthistle and your father due back?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Do they know you have been with us, with a demining
organisation
?’
‘No, I just said I was with a friend.’
‘Go Fintan, explain it all to your father and get the first flight home. Mr Birthistle will go free, but there is nothing we can do about that.’
‘But can’t you have him arrested … stopped?’ Fintan was genuinely shocked.
‘How? On what evidence? On the basis of a
dream
you had in a plane, 50,000 feet above Africa? Sorry Fintan, but there will not be a jot of evidence against him. The only evidence we have is this actual mine here. You and your father would be
arrested
, not Birthistle. You would end up in prison here and we would have an international incident on our hands, perhaps even the civil war that Birthistle plans with Murabende.’
‘But can’t I get evidence, rifle his luggage or something?’
‘You weren’t listening. He will have nothing, not so much as an address book!’
‘Please Mr Eriksen, I’ll get evidence! I’ll get him drunk. He gets very talkative with me when we’re alone and he’s
drunk, and you can listen.’
Yola sensed the desperation in his voice. To her surprise, Hans hesitated.
‘I’m his blue-eyed boy,’ Fintan urged. ‘He wants me to marry his daughter!’
Yola’s lips tightened, but Hans said, ‘I cannot get involved. We are a neutral organisation. But I’d like to hear what he has to say. My name is not on this walkman, could you carry this?’
‘No, he’s a patter, you know, little pats and pushes, all very matey, he’d notice a recorder at once.’
Yola could hear bangs and shouts outside as the deminers
returned
from their work on the bridge. It was four o’clock. There wasn’t much time left.
‘I could go!’ said Yola suddenly. ‘I’m Kasemban, he wouldn’t notice me.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Hans.
‘No, Hans,’ she said, ‘I mean it. I’ve only been in the hotel once, but there are rooms and alcoves off the bar. If Fintan can get him into one of those, I think I know how I can get close enough to hear and record what they say. But I will need the walkman, and I will need Judit’s help.’
Hans looked at her suspiciously. Fintan opened the
walkman
, popped the tape into his shirt pocket and handed the
recorder
to Yola.
‘Well, first things first, let’s get Fintan down to the hotel.
Fintan
, we’ll talk on the way. Judit, can you bring Yola down later? And take care of that walkman, it’s special.’ Hans turned, but the two girls already had their heads together. He shrugged.
‘Look for me in the foyer, Fintan,’ Yola called. ‘Tell me where you are, but don’t expect a reply – remember, I don’t speak English.’
‘I’ll be ready,’ Fintan nodded.
