The Cinnamon Tree (19 page)

S
tanding in the doorway, Yola surveyed the scene in
Father’s
room. Father was sitting formally in his great chair; his fly-switch lay on a small table to his right. Senior Mother hovered darkly behind his left shoulder. Uncle Banda sat skewed, half collapsed on a three-legged stool with his back to her. Father looked up.

‘Get out! This is a matter for Senior Mother only.’

Yola was taken aback. ‘Father, it is me, Yola. I thought I was called?’

Senior Mother bent forward and whispered in his ear. Father took his time, she could feel his mind reaching out for hers.

‘You may come in. Stand beside your Uncle Banda.’ He touched his fly-switch; it was a command. As she advanced, Uncle Banda seemed to shrink still deeper into himself.

‘Banda, in another time my daughter, Yola, had a special friend in your godson, Gabbin.’ Yola noticed the deep irony in her father’s voice as he said the word ‘godson’. ‘Now I am
going
to ask you the question you have avoided answering for me so far. Is the boy dead?’

Yola bit her lip. Uncle Banda stiffened for a moment, began to say yes, then dropped his voice and in a despairing whisper said, ‘I don’t know!’

Yola listened while Father took Uncle Banda back over a story he had clearly told once before. Father was in pursuit of details, while she was trying to piece the story together from
fragments
. There was a lull in the questions and suddenly Uncle Banda became aware of her standing beside him. He took her hand and began to caress it absently. His hands were cold.

‘As a boy I always wanted to be a soldier, Yola,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I watched the government troops, but they always seemed to be doing nothing or something boring. Then one day the rebels passed through our village. They came silently in combat gear, got food and water and were gone. Some of them were no older than me, and I was only ten. They told us about their cause and handed us leaflets with pictures, freedom from communism it was in those days, but to me it could have been anything with a long name. It was the excitement that got me. From then on, whenever fighting broke out I was part of it. I was with the KLA during the civil war, we lost, but we felt we were honourable. When it was over, your Father here was kind and took me back into our family. But I still felt an outcast here in the compound – I longed to have a cause again and to be off in the night, just to kill boredom. While you were away, Gabbin and me got on fine. He’s my godson, so I had a right. We were alive together. I wanted him to know what it is like to have companions and to share in a great idea. He is bright and clever and I knew he’d enjoy the danger and having friends, also I thought the training would be good for him, so …’

‘Tell her what sort of training you mean! It wasn’t
school-work
? It wasn’t training in wisdom, was it? It wasn’t how to herd cattle or plant crops?’ interjected Father harshly.

‘Yola, believe me, I didn’t think it would turn out as it did. There are … there were those of us who still felt we had an
honourable cause. We wanted our young men to know what it is like to believe in something beyond themselves. We made a camp in the Noose, where the rebels are training again. We taught them how to carry messages, how to use a radio, how to scout and how to hide.’

‘Who?’ Father demanded. ‘Tell Yola about your “young men”. Do not lie, Banda, with half-truths. These are children,
our
children. They are not young men, they are child soldiers, just as you still are.’

Something in her father’s voice made Yola look up. He had taken up his fly-switch and was lashing it back and forth like the tail of a lion before its charge. Something frightening was
happening
. Uncle Banda seemed locked in silence, his breath was coming heavily. Then, with terrible certainty, Yola realised that Father was, even now, deep in her Uncle Banda’s mind, just as he had got into hers at the time of her trial.

Uncle Banda was pulling down on her hand like a heavy weight. She struggled to pull away. Her mind shrieked out for help. Did Father know? She was being pulled down and down through the turmoil of their battling minds. Then, there was
silence
; she had sunk below the waves, she was in another place and in another time.

Tall trees towered above her. Under one of these sat a small boy, happily oiling and caressing his rifle. The dappled light on his camouflage fatigues made him difficult to see.

‘Gabbin!’ she called, but he didn’t hear her. She shifted
position
slightly. No, it wasn’t Gabbin, it was – of course – it was the little Banda. He looked so innocent in his quiet enjoyment. There was a crash among the bushes a little way ahead. In a trice the boy had rolled off the path, cocked his rifle and was aiming down the path.

‘Don’t
!’ she called, but of course he didn’t hear her. Then she
experienced his terror. The boots of the man pounded the
forest
floor, he grew larger and larger; the little boy raised his rifle. Yola screamed as Father wrenched her mind back from the abyss, but he was too late to save her entirely – the sensations that the child Banda had experienced lingered like the smell of death in her mind.

Father held her mind firmly, and she sobbed and shook while the visions of what she had seen dulled. She could see it all: it was a trap, a gruesome cycle of violence supported by an empty dream. The child soldier grew into an adult, but with a child’s mind. Father had let her see the unspeakable.

As Yola came back into the present she felt Uncle Banda’s grip on her hand loosen. Rage welled up inside her until it
consumed
her completely. This was what Banda had been doing to Gabbin – her Gabbin! She lurched around so that she was
facing
him; her back was to Father. His eyes squirmed away from her. She raised her hand deliberately and slapped him as hard as she could across the face. His head jolted to one side; she hit him again. Then she turned to Senior Mother and Father to take her punishment; her head drooped and her anger was spent. Senior Mother nodded; Father touched his fly-switch – he approved of what she had done.

‘Your uncle has a wound, Yola. Tend to it.’

They were dismissed.

‘Where is he, Uncle Banda?’ she asked as she washed his wounds. Two holes: the bullet had gone cleanly through.

‘The Noose, the Hangman’s Noose.’

‘How did you get in there? There are hundreds of people who want to return to their land there but can’t because of the landmines. How did you get in?’

‘There is a way through the minefield, but it is guarded.
There is a training camp for adults there. Food and guns come across the river from Murabende.’

‘And the children?’

‘They are orphans, abused kids, street kids, we gave them food, shelter, something to live for. Gabbin was a star!’

‘Of course Gabbin was a star!’ snapped Yola. Poor Gabbin, he would have loved it until … ‘What went wrong? Why are you here?’ She reached for a bandage.

‘It all changed.’ A chill seemed to seep into the room; Uncle Banda shivered.

‘How?’

‘A team of instructors came in from the advanced training camps in Murabende – white mercenaries for the adults and a so-called child soldier expert for the kids, the bastard!’ Uncle Banda shook his head. ‘It wasn’t necessary, they were good kids but this … this … expert, he said they needed to be blooded.’

Yola felt sick. ‘Blooded?’

Uncle Banda nodded and swallowed painfully. ‘Taught to fight hand to hand, even to kill.’ His voice wobbled. He cleared his throat to get it under control. ‘One of the instructors would pick on one of the weaker boys for punishment by the others. Gradually the punishments got worse and worse. I argued, but I was afraid it could make things bad for Gabbin. He was still the star pupil and had managed to avoid having anything to do with the beatings. The expert noticed this in the end. It was time for Gabbin’s pride to be pricked. They knew I was his godfather and they knew I hated their methods, so they
denounced
me, tried me and condemned me to be shot. The boy chosen to shoot me was Gabbin.

‘The boys who tied me up did so loosely; they risked their lives in doing that. Gabbin had no choice; the instructor had a
gun to his head as he aimed. They stood me beside the river – no graves for traitors. I decided that, hit or not, I would
pretend
that I had been. The whole class had to shout, “Three, two, one”, it was that that gave me warning. The instructor could see if Gabbin aimed more than inches wide. I put on a good act. Poor Gabbin, he aimed to miss but he probably thinks he killed me. I was face down in the river when the
instructor
decided to finish me off; he missed, but put this bullet through my leg.’

‘How’s the camp organised?’ demanded Yola.

‘It is the boys who guard the minefield. Two shifts,
changing
at midnight. They say that they are training them not to be afraid of the dark, in fact it’s just so the grown soldiers can sleep and drink in peace. There is little danger. There is no way through the minefield because the mines are re-laid after each crossing. And now they have a special mine that blows up when a mine detector crosses over it.’

Yola looked up sharply; they’d only just got the mines, why so quickly? she wondered. But then Uncle Banda provided the answer.

‘The rebels are afraid the Kasemban army may try to force a way through the minefield today. You see, the adult soldiers are away on exercise at the moment.’

‘How did you get out?’ asked Yola.

‘Swam down river.’

‘But crocodiles!?’ she shivered.

‘They must have been asleep. I had no choice. The men will be back tomorrow, I couldn’t hang about, not with a bullet in the leg.’

Yola, who had a safety pin in her mouth, nodded. Then something he had said struck her. Her bandaging slowed, what was that he had said about the soldiers being away?

‘Where are they – the rebel soldiers? Who’s in the Noose now?’ The safety pin slipped from her mouth.

‘The boys and their instructors, of course. The men are in Murabende on a big exercise with the army there, that’s why they put in the new mines, it was an added protection.’

‘How many instructors?’

‘Three – now that I’ve gone that is. Time for them to get drunk. With the senior officers away it will be party time. Gabbin and his lads will be in sole charge of the first shift
tonight
.’ Uncle Banda put a hand on Yola’s arm. ‘If we could get mine detectors … No, I’d forgotten, there’s this new mine …’

Yola stood looking down at her uncle slumped in the chair. He’d been rough with her, but always fair. When she spoke, she spoke quietly so that she could gauge his trustworthiness.

‘Uncle Banda, whose side are you on?’

To her surprise he took her hand, as he had earlier. ‘Yola, you have never had Chief Abonda dig through your mind, tear you apart, turn you inside out to show you the inner, yellow part of you! I brought Gabbin into all this. I would walk through the middle of that minefield alone to rescue him now, but all the good that that would do would be to find the first mine.’

She groped for the safety pin she had dropped and slipped it in at a low angle into the bandage. ‘Uncle Banda, there is a door to that minefield and I think I’m the only one who can open it.’

Slowly, thinking it out step by step, she explained,
questioning
him for details on how the boy soldiers operated, and who would be where and when. Uncle Banda said little, but as her plan developed she could feel his enthusiasm mounting. It was like a vibration between them. No wonder Gabbin had followed him. When she finished, his eyes were focussed somewhere far beyond where they were sitting.
Suddenly she had a last misgiving.

‘Uncle Banda,’ she said, ‘tell me, we are not playing child
soldiers
, are we?’

He did her the justice of pausing while he thought. He put his hand up to his cheek. ‘You know Yola, you hit me very hard!’ He wasn’t teasing her; he was thanking her. ‘The child soldier in me died with that slap, and you will never be one.’