CLEAN SHEETS
Part 2
By Mrs. Eyre
“I don’t know – I could use a manicure and a facial. I thought maybe I could catch a movie, get some sushi. Why?”
“Vaccine. Angelique’s sending me up country.”
“Yes? Where?” I’m pretty sure I didn’t sound as casual as I hoped.
“Matenda.”
“Matenda?” A shrug. “Sure, why not.”
When I looked at him John was grinning, but I waited until he was gone before I grinned back.
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The journey wasn’t pleasant. I could feel Patrique’s sadness, and his anger, as we drove through what he said had been beautiful country and was now a slaughterhouse. John was still shocked; when will he stop being shocked? I don’t remember how long it took me to get used to this; maybe I was just better at covering up. To myself I mean.
He was surprised to see me. My eyes had been starved of him for too long and he looked so good I wanted to laugh but I didn’t. Instead we exchanged a look that made no pretence about what we’d be doing later and I headed off to the front of the queue snaking its way round the clinic smiling to myself but some of the women looked at me as though they recognised that smile and they smiled back.
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Discomfort, it’s a relative thing. Too hot, too cold, bad food, tepid showers, musty sheets. Clean sheets – really there’s nothing relative about those, they’re an absolute and every year when I get back to Montreal that’s my treat; my first night I spend alone between clean sheets. I can smile just thinking about that.
Matenda was relative too – relatively horrible. Kisangani was crowded and fly blown but Matenda, it was tent city aside from the clinic itself. We slept and cooked and ate and worked under canvas, the sound of the generator enough to drive you crazy, the smell of the latrines enough to make you heave. But, with lights strung up, Willie Nelson to dance to and Luka to dance with it was relatively . . . beautiful.
And then the shelling and shooting started and it all went to hell. Still – I learned a lot in Matenda. I learned that Charles went to college in Texas and I learned that Luka can . . . could . . . dance; I learned that the screams of an eight year old girl with her foot blown to pieces can burn themselves into your brain; I learned that, even as I fought to control my bowels and bladder, I could hold a little girl’s leg steady; and I learned that a demand for a kitchen knife, a saw and a suture kit sprang to Luka’s lips like it was something he asked for every day and I think I learned that maybe once it had been.
He didn’t know what else I learned, what I heard him saying to John in the forest the next morning when he thought I was sleeping. “My children were dead.” And I learned, not for the first time, that when a man doesn’t want you to know you had better not know, had better stifle the little cry you feel in your throat, had better not tighten your hold on him, had better stay asleep.
I didn’t know that the last time we made love would be the last time, that the next time I looked at his body it would be . . . well, you don’t, do you? I saw him go outside with Charles, saw John follow, heard his voice raised, saw him walk away, knew it wasn’t good. And my God, where did he get off telling me I had to go! John seemed to think it was funny, watching us argue. It wasn’t. I could feel the panic rising. I knew that if he wanted to he could pick me up and throw me bodily into the truck and I’d have no choice. I didn’t want to go, to leave him and I hated that, hated it and I was so angry with myself, but all I could do was argue about the patients, scoff at the idea that Patrique could be of any use to him, told him he couldn’t manage without me but the truth was I didn’t want to manage without him. It’s such a tiny step from opening your arms to opening your legs but I hadn’t bargained on the next step, the biggest step, opening my heart, and I felt ridiculous, bickering about the boy with pertussis and the amputee when all the time it was really about me.
He tried to be reasonable. “Hey, it’s just for a couple of days and then you can come back and get us.” Yeah, a couple of days, a couple of nights. But what happened next made it all meaningless anyway.
If I thought I’d been terrified before I was wrong. This was terror so pure that it had a kind of fascination; this was terror that froze the blood – you know that’s a cliché because it’s true – and set my heart racing. Luka, kicked to his knees, gun to his head, the rest of us ordered down too. The government soldier whimpering and begging and all I could think was that if the Mai Mai fired then Luka’s skull and brains would be all over me. I couldn’t see his face but there was no submission in the line of his back, the set of his head, and I felt sick then because I didn’t think defiance was flavour of the month with the Mai Mai. John though, he was like me. I could see my terror in his face when I dared look, saw the tears not far from his eyes. I understood the words the rebel leader spat at him, dimly recognised the young boy from somewhere but couldn’t make any sense of the words or of him. I nearly threw up when the head thug came back in our direction, shoved Luka and slapped me forward onto the ground. The terror was still there on John’s face, blurred because I was crying. He could see what we couldn’t. The soldier they finally shot, right behind us, I felt those shots in my chest, my ears ringing. You’d think the tears I cried then were tears of relief, wouldn’t you? They weren’t. I don’t know what they were, even now. Misery, pity, despair, tears for all of us, I don’t know. But not relief.
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He got his way though, there was no arguing after that. A last kiss while John and Charles waited. I didn’t know it was the last kiss or I don’t think I could have let go. He was very tender. I hated that.
I pulled my hand away from his although he hung on as long as he could. John said something to him but I didn’t hear what. Did I cry? I think I did; I know I cried as we drove away when I finally couldn’t see him through the rear window anymore; I know John stroked my hair like I was a child. I know I made for the radio as soon as we got back to Kisangani and then did nothing because I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell him that I missed him already, that I wanted him like I had some sort of sickness, that I felt like a cat on hot coals, needed to feel his hands on me. And then I thought of Chance and her mother, of the boy and his father, of Patrique. How could I say that? I don’t think I was even surprised when we heard that his name was on the list. I got drunk, so drunk I threw up; and I called John and spoke to some woman I didn’t know and I did it again, and I had nightmares, dreamed of his body, the body I’d felt over me, under me, inside me, bloodied, hacked to pieces, corrupt. And I tried to wish I hadn’t seen his face lit by the glow of a match and sealing the deal for me. I tried; but I couldn’t quite wish that.
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Charles doesn’t try to talk to me. John’s flight will be here soon and then we’ll have to talk. I don’t want to talk ever again. The tears come so readily that I feel like I’m melting, or maybe I wish I was. I think perhaps I’m a little crazy now.
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I had a dream about clean sheets, clean, white, cotton sheets and him. Maybe if we find him alive . . . .
There won’t be any clean sheets for us. I know what we’ll find if we find anything at all, I’ve seen it before. I don’t know if I can do that, look at him bloated, blackened, stinking. We’ll shovel whatever is left of him into a box and seal it up and maybe we can send it back home, let his father put him in a grave I’ll never visit. No clean sheets for us.
When I get back I’ll do what I always do; drop off my stuff, shower, change and head out toward the hill, look at the sculptures, watch the sun on Beaver Lake. Maybe this time I’ll give the cemeteries a miss, and at the top of Mont Royal I’ll look down at the river and sit in the sun and try not to cry. And then I’ll go home and unfurl the clean sheets onto my bed, pour myself a beer; I wonder if I’ll be able to sleep in those sheets this time? I think maybe not.
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