You know it’s a funny thing but the first time you smell death you know what it is, like it’s a memory we all share. I don’t know how it works but it’s true, ask anyone. I knew it the first time I smelled it; I’ve smelled it a lot since that first time but that place, that school, whatever it was, I’ve never smelled anything like that, like all the death in the Congo – and that’s a lot of death – had been gathered up into that one place. It stayed in my nose afterwards for a long time along with something worse that stayed in my heart – hope. When we found Patrique I thought I knew how it was going to end, thought I’d have to look at him, maybe like Patrique, his face all but gone, everything that made him who he was stripped away.
But no, the white guy wasn’t him, I registered that while I gagged and retched and held my hair across my face to keep that stink out. Ridiculous. The guy we found, he was someone’s son, brother, lover, but he wasn’t Luka, he wasn’t Luka and part of me hated him for not being Luka. John was yelling at the guy with the gun who looked at him like he was asking directions to the nearest gas station.
A priest? What? He said Luka was a priest and he didn’t say he was dead. Jesus, I’d thought it would all be over by now, but we got back in the truck and it all started again. Jesus.
It seemed very quiet in the back of that truck with Chance, her mother, John, some others, and Patrique who will never speak again. It wasn’t actually quiet, it was a noisy truck, but it was silent for me because Luka never made a sound from the moment we found him and John pulled him over onto his back and felt for a pulse, to when we lifted him into the truck, his head in my lap, to when we got him to Kisangani and I don’t remember how long that took. Not a sound but I could see the little flutter of a pulse in his throat, under the dirt and the blood. Not a sound. He had no colour at all except for the wound on his jaw and the smear of blood from his nose and the indigo shadows under his eyes. You could have looked at him and thought he was dead and my eyes went to that flutter in his throat time and again so that I knew he wasn’t.
I tried to stay with him but Angelique shooed me away while they set him up with fluids and antibiotics and then they said that we should just wait. In the end I got John to let me wash his face and his hands, trying not to look at the welts on his wrists, trying not to speculate about the damage to his face, but it was like washing a corpse. It was then that it came to me that if we’d been a day – maybe even just a few hours – later it would have been too late and all the strength went out of me, out of my legs, and I sat down on the floor, pulling the basin of water over with me. Charles and Basinake came running, picked me up, made me sit with my head down low between my knees. I didn’t know what had happened and I took in the wetness from the basin down my trousers and thought I’d peed and started to cry.
And still Luka never made a sound.
After that I slept for hours but he was still out cold when I went back to him and watched as John stood over him, hand on his wrist, told me his pulse was better, fever dropping and he’d mend. He reached and pushed Luka’s hair out of his face surely not aware of how tender the gesture was, and then, out of nowhere, he looked at me, stricken, and said that Luka wasn’t who he’d thought he was and if that was true then maybe . . . but he didn’t finish because Luka had opened his eyes. His voice was barely there.
“Where?”
“Kisangani. Centre of the known universe. Jesus, Luka, avoiding Weaver I can understand, but faking your own death?” Luka didn’t look for me and I felt invisible.
“Thirsty.”
I poured water into a glass and held it to his mouth for him to drink while John propped him up, still with that tenderness he didn’t know he had, and I started to wonder what I didn’t know. He looked at me then.
“Still here.”
“Where else? You have to stop doing this, going missing. Next time you’re grounded.”
“Chance?”
“She’s here, with her mother. They’re fine. You did a good job on her leg,” John said, and then told him the little guy with pertussis was in one piece too. Luka managed a nod and a half smile which died when he said “Patrique . . . “
“We brought him home.” He nodded and the effort we all made not to think about how Patrique had died was almost tangible.
“Shower.”
“No kidding. Why do you think you’re in here on your own?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hey, go back to sleep. We’ll get you cleaned up later. Your private nurse here can practice her sponge bathing.” He turned to me and said “You OK here? I have a call I have to place to Kinshasa.” I nodded and wished him good luck with that. Then again, luck seemed to have been on our side lately.
When John was gone it was back to silence. I didn’t know what to say. I hesitated before sitting on the edge of the bed and then leaned in to kiss him; he turned his face away.
“I’m not clean.”
“Who is?” I said, and he started to cry quietly, and I held him and he let me and he slept again.
