Burridge Unbound (37 page)

This silly wrinkled man stares at me then falls to his knees.

Suli Nylioko has been killed. I don’t know how long it takes before the thought penetrates my addled head. They meant to kill us both, but instead they’ve just killed her and somehow I’ve walked away from a helicopter crash. Fire now, burning oil, the black smoke wiping out every trace of that infinite blue, water arcing from pumps and men in silvery spacesuits
with heavy masks, this little man on his knees, he won’t get up. Soldiers scrambling, but slowly somehow, guns at the ready. Someone’s going to shoot me. I stand here waiting. I saw it all. The plane that shot us out of the sky. Suli murdered. I was supposed to be too. So it really is my time. It really is.

Yet except for this one man everyone ignores me. This is the strange part. It’s as if I’m invisible, have become a
huloika
, only he can see me. I stand for the longest time waiting to be shot, to be run over by the emergency vehicles. But nothing happens. The man gets off his knees and pulls me off the tarmac, towards the airport buildings. The ground jolts beneath my feet, my limbs tremble now worse than ever.

There’s burnt skin hanging off my arm. Like I’d held it in a fire. Cooking meat. That’s me I smell.

It’s happening right now – the chaos, the sudden speed, my God, it’s as if the panic button has been hit and what was dead slow before is now a rip of wind and noise. Too much to take in. A blur of racing trucks and soldiers, sirens screeching – too loud and fast, the ground shaking with commotion. The smoky air scratching at my throat and lungs as if I’m trying to breathe in too much.

This whole country is about to tear itself apart. The ring has been pulled and this is the detonation.

Suli Nylioko is dead. And I’m lurching through the airport where Jono was killed and Suli looked up to see that sign. What was it? The moment I think the thought I glance up to see the sign:
Teriala kojinda Minizhi lundafilo
. “The Minitzh airport wishes safe journeys.” Did Suli know it was still here?

Word is just getting around. Passengers are becoming alarmed, soldiers run this way and that. Alarms are sounding. It happened just minutes ago. Not everyone knows. Someone asks, in English, very clearly, “What’s going on?” The beautiful
girls behind the ticket counter have deathly white faces, their make-up seems to harden and crack at the news. The men in their customs uniforms don’t know what to do. I pass straight by them. They don’t see me. It’s as if I’m a
huloika
, but I’m not. I feel the pain in my arm, the trembling in my limbs, this odd sense of distance. If I had my meds, I think, I’d be all here and terrified like any normal person.

I walk around the metal detector and no one notices. Wailing sirens, shots now, people diving for cover. The chaos has started. This whole country is heading for a meltdown. Suli Nylioko is dead. The angel of Santa Irene. The murdering bloody angel.

If I run the spell will be broken, someone will notice me, I won’t be invisible any more. I feel this clearly and yet must hurry too, so I walk faster. No time to think, to try to read signs, to reason it out. I just have to know where to go. This way not that. Down here. No ticket-taker at the post. The velvet rope just dangling. Which way? Down here. Everything a blur around me, but if I just walk then the time will stay slow. Like face to face with that blue. That kind of slow. Infinite, calm. Step after step. Down the little corridor. This way to the plane. Some people ahead of me. But if I run I won’t make it.

The door closes. If I say a word the spell will be broken. I’ll never make it. If I run …

The door opens again. I reach my hand in, squeeze through. Someone pulls and the floor immediately begins to move. Everything jumbled. Passengers cowering on the floor, others glued to windows, overhead compartments open, staff in a panic. I lurch down the aisle, the plane already lumbering along the runway. Soldiers, smoke, military vehicles. Burning wreckage. I collapse into a seat, any seat, and the plane gathers speed … too slowly. It won’t make it. Not like this. Slow
motion. I wait for the explosion. We’re going to be shot down. I was just in a helicopter that was shot down. It’s going to happen again. They can’t let me leave. I know too much. I’m a Truth Commissioner and I know too much.

Lifting, people loose in the aisles, bodies slam into seat backs, into each other, suitcases fly open, pants and shorts and someone’s panties whip past.…

Climbing, climbing, into that blue, there it is again just outside the window. The infinite blue. Who knows where we’re going? Anywhere away. The last commercial plane out of Santa Irene before it descends into hell.

I was shot out of the air and walked away
, I think, as the plane levels, the bodies stop slamming, the luggage comes to rest wherever it comes to rest.
I’ve been shot out of the air but by some miracle allowed to walk away
.

“You’re bleeding,” a woman says beside me. An Australian accent. Her face large and red, breath coming in great gasps. We’ve all just escaped the jaws of the beast. “Let me wrap it,” she says.

“No.” God knows what I look like. Her eyes so large, lips quivering.

“But you’re bleeding!”

Of course I want it wrapped. I give her my arm. She tears some fabric from a runaway shirt and starts to wind it around my arm, which hurts now tremendously, I can’t believe how much.

“No,” I say again, because of the pain. But what I mean is this: I’m even now, back to zero. I’ve known the claws of hell and the kiss of grace, and they both hurt more than I could imagine.

We put down in Darwin, Australia, in the middle of a violent storm – harsh winds, lightning, slashing rain. On the approach I watch the ocean roiling purple and grey, pounding the white beaches of the town, with the dark green tropical trees leaning precariously, branches blown back. I clutch the armrests, ready for another cataclysm, but the touchdown is surprisingly light and sure. The flight’s original destination was Sydney, but we left Santa Irene with only a partial load of fuel and now this storm has forced us to land.

Emergency vehicles flash their lights in the darkness of this strange afternoon: an ironic cavalry of ambulances and fire trucks now that we’re out of the worst danger. The injured are taken off first: a woman in a torn blue dress has broken her leg; a young boy is strapped in a neck brace; an old man, his glasses twisted but still on his head, holds his chest and can’t seem to stop crying.

A little girl in a seat behind me says to her father for the seventh time, “I saw a body in the grass. There was blood on his face. I saw it.”

I’m in pretty good shape, considering. I have to sit straight to calm the pain in my chest, and my shaking is worse than usual. A paramedic looks at my bloodied clothes and bandaged arm. “We’ll take you to the hospital, sir,” he says, but I tell him no, there are others worse than me. “It’s all right, there’s plenty of room.” His Australian accent –
aw ride, plinty a’ rume
.

“No. No, I’m fine,” I tell him.

“You look like you’ve been through a hurricane!” he says, insisting, so I go with him. They want me to sit in a wheelchair but I refuse.

A forlorn, drenched stewardess stands on the tarmac in a meagre plastic rain suit handing out black umbrellas for the short walk to the main building. I take hold of one but as I
open it the wind wrenches it from my grasp and sends it pitching and rolling. The stewardess laughs suddenly and starts to hand me another but I wave her off.

“I’m soaked anyway.”

It’s only mid-afternoon but the dark sky makes it feel like nighttime. Inside the main building the paramedic says we’ll head for the hospital as soon as I’ve picked up my bags and passed through customs. I tell him I have nothing – no luggage, no papers, no money, no identity or credit cards.

“How did you get on the plane?” he asks –
git on the pline –
and I tell him, “Just lucky.” I didn’t think about it. I was half
huloika
. My feet knew where to go.

He shakes his head and grins, this strong young man with the bushy eyebrows turned blond from the sun. Groups of travellers talk excitedly of the mad scene, the escape. A television suspended from the ceiling features a cricket match until someone changes channels and scenes of military Jeeps, of fires and looters appear. A female announcer’s voice is saying something about renewed rioting in Welanto, but it’s the headline in white print at the bottom of the screen that alarms me.
SANTA IRENIAN PRESIDENT SULI NYLIOKO DIES IN CRASH … CAUSE UNCONFIRMED … ALSO AMONG THE DEAD CANADIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST BILL BURRIDGE
.

“I have to get to the phone,” I tell the paramedic. He tells me I can call from the hospital, but I say no, now, I need to get to a phone. “My family thinks I’m dead.” So he points me to a pay phone on the wall beside the washrooms.

“I don’t have any money,” I repeat and he grins again, like I’ve just told him a joke.

“That’s all right,” he says. Then he puts his hand in his pocket, fishes out some money, and asks me where I’m calling.

“Canada,” I say.

I walk over to the phone, deposit a kangaroo dollar, then dial the operator, give her my parents’ number, and ask her to reverse the charges. The wind is driving the rain against the windows just a few feet away. It’s the middle of the night in Ottawa, I think; at least they’ll be in. The phone rings a dozen times and then a man’s voice comes on, gruff, drunk with sleep.

“Collict call from Bill in Darwin, ‘stralia. Will you accipt the charges?”

“Huh?” the voice says. It’s Dad, he won’t understand.

“Hi, it’s Bill,” I say.

“Do you accipt the charges?”
the operator asks again.

“Bill! Yeah, sure!”

“Dad,” I say, surprised at how much better he sounds. He was so disoriented that last time I spoke to him. “How are you? You won’t believe what’s happened.”

“Bill, it’s Graham,” my brother says.

“What? Did I call Calgary instead?”

“No, I’m here,” he says, meaning Ottawa. “Listen, we’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”

They haven’t heard, thank God. No one has called them with the false news.

“I’m sorry, Graham, I’m going to need you to send me some money and to help me out. There’s a toll-free line for Canadian consular services, maybe you could look it up for me. It’s a long story, but I’ve left Santa Irene, and I’ve got nothing here, not even my own clothes. I need you to call Maryse and Derrick at my office, tell them I’m okay.” I’ll call Joanne myself, I think.

“Bill,” Graham says, “I’m trying to tell you something.”

“I just got out. I don’t know how, it was blind luck, but it’s chaos back in Santa Irene. The president has been assassinated. You might get a call from somebody saying–”

“Bill, Dad’s dead. He fell down the stairs last night, that’s why I’m here. Mom’s pretty bad. How soon do you think you can get here?”

Just raging against the window. I lose my breath for a moment, have to lean against the wall. I look up and see the paramedic walking towards me, this young strong man, his grin unshakeable, like he can take on the world no matter what’s thrown at him.

W
e leave the house at ten-thirty in a driving, biting wind, the ground covered with a full foot of snow, the steel-grey sky promising more. December in Ottawa. It’s a shocking contrast to the heat and humidity of Darwin and Santa Irene, makes the body shudder and revolt from going outside. Graham has put on weight, doesn’t fit very well in his flannel pants. His daughter, Leah, is out of diapers now, has changed so much I didn’t recognize her. She nestles at her mother Alice’s shoulder, the two twinned in dark outfits with their long straight black hair tied back with red ribbons. My mother is in shock. I watch her leave the house and lean into the bitter Ottawa wind, step nervously down the walkway as if holding a too-full cup of just-boiled coffee.

The doctor in Darwin put me back on medication, and Karen Wong, an old friend from Foreign Affairs now stationed in Canberra, moved heaven and earth to get me here in two days. But I’m still dizzy from the rush of travel, from this saddening news, from the frustration of not being able to talk to
Joanne. I don’t know when I’ll see her. I left a message on her parents’ machine in Toronto.

And here are the reporters. They’ve been camped out here since six this morning, stand in frozen clots praying to large Styrofoam cups of coffee. The weather has taken all their sting – they lob their questions listlessly,
pro forma
, betray no interest at all in what I might reply.

“Mr. Burridge, do you buy the engine-failure story, or do you think Suli Nylioko was murdered by the military?”

“Was the Truth Commission anywhere near issuing a report or reaching any conclusions?”

“Do you feel that Mrs. Grakala is simply a figurehead appointed by the military or did she engineer a coup against Suli?”

This is the stunning latest development: the military has appointed Mrs. Grakala as interim leader. I hardly know what to say – it’s all shadows and blood games. I know now that I’ve never had a good sense of the reasons or the rules.

“No comment,” I say. “On this day, especially, please leave us in peace.”

Graham asks my mother if she wants to sit in the front or the back. She hesitates, looks at me in confusion. I open the back door for her and she gets in creakily, fusses with her dress and jacket, then announces that she’s forgotten her purse.

“I don’t think you’ll need it,” Graham says. Wrong answer. I say that I’ll go get it, but this too is wrong.

“I’ll get it! For God’s sake, what’s wrong with you people?” Mom says. Fussing, clambering, fighting her way out of the car. “Look! You were going to let me leave without locking the house!”

She goes back in alone. We wait, shuffle our feet in the hard wind while the reporters watch us uncertainly, wishing we’d leave so they can too. My gloves and coat are too thin for this cold and my arm still aches from the crash. There’s nothing to do but wait until she finds her purse and walks back out, determined to do it alone, to face what has to be faced.