The Perfect Soldier (23 page)

Llewelyn began to argue about contracts. Molly interrupted.

‘I haven’t got a contract,’ she pointed out.

‘You have. You signed one. That first afternoon, that first session in the hotel. In Colchester.’

Molly frowned remembering a sheet of paper on a clipboard, thrust under her nose minutes before the interview had begun.

‘You said that was a formality. I remember. You called it a blood-chit. Not a contract.’

Llewelyn shrugged.

‘Same thing,’ he said. ‘It binds you into the project. We’ve brought you out here. We’ve paid the expenses. If it wasn’t for us, you’d still be in Essex.’

Molly hesitated, all too aware that she needed advice. Robbie Cunningham had disappeared first thing with Tom Peterson. She glanced at McFaul. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d bother much about contracts. He bent towards her.

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want to go and see this lady. The little girl’s mother.’

‘Alone?’

‘With you and Domingos.’

‘And our friend here?’

‘No,’ she shook her head, ‘thank you.’

McFaul nodded. Llewelyn was examining the camera now, holding it up to his eye and making adjustments to the focus ring. McFaul limped round to the other side of the Land Rover. He opened the rear door and pulled Llewelyn out into the sunshine. Under the creased linen jacket, he was surprised how thin the journalist felt. Close to, he looked pale and drawn, his face more grey than white. McFaul escorted him towards the schoolhouse. When Llewelyn had stopped protesting about his lost footage, he released his grip.

‘You know the call sign you lot use for Terra Sancta?’

Llewelyn nodded, rubbing his arm.

‘Tango Sierra.’

‘Exactly. And you know what that means? In the real world?’

Llewelyn shook his head, watching the smile spread across McFaul’s face. For a moment, the two men looked at each other. Then McFaul patted Llewelyn roughly on the shoulder.

‘It means tough shit,’ he said, turning away.

They drove into the centre of the city. The streets were coming alive again, hunger and thirst forcing the people out of the shelter of their homes. In the square beside the cathedral there was even the beginnings of a market, women squatting behind squares of grubby matting, trading what little they still possessed for a handful of maize or a corked half-bottle of cloudy paraffin.

The cinema lay beyond the cathedral. Once, it had been the hub of Muengo’s social life, a long barn-like building, whitewashed cinder-block walls with a decorative façade at
one end. Two wide steps led up from the street and there was still the remains of a poster beside the yawning hole where once the doors had been. The poster was rain-splashed and torn but Molly recognised the bleached outline of two faces, nose to nose in a passionate embrace. Ali McGraw. Ryan O’Neal.
Love Story
.

Molly smiled, feeling the touch of Domingos’s hand on her elbow. They stepped into the gloom of the vestibule. Only the steel frame of the booking office remained, the timber stripped away. Molly stopped a moment, catching her breath. She could smell smoke. The place was on fire. She was sure of it. Domingos had disappeared through another opening, a jagged hole in an inner wall. Molly followed him, McFaul behind her. Molly could see daylight now, a curious ash-greyness that washed in through the hole punched in the masonry. Beyond lay the body of the cinema, the auditorium, and she was about to step through when she stopped again, her breath gone completely, on the edge of a world no film she’d seen had ever pictured.

The cinema was a sea of bodies, women and children and old men huddled in groups, the walls towering above them, blackened and sooted, the roof gone, the whole scene veiled by the drifting smoke of a hundred cooking fires. Domingos began to pick his way between the squatting families and Molly ventured after him. Two Angolan nuns stepped aside, acknowledging Domingos’s whispered greeting. One of them was nursing a tiny infant, naked except for a scrap of thin sacking, and Molly paused a moment, looking down at it, wondering whether it was still alive. Outside, through a ragged shell hole in the wall, she could see piles of rubbish – rusty tins, rain-soaked cardboard, torn shreds of the thick blue polythene favoured by the aid charities – and there were kids in amongst it, turning the stuff over, sifting through it,
desperate to retrieve anything edible. There were women out there too, and some of them had covered the lower half of their faces against the smell. Molly did the same, one hand to her nose, trying to mask the stench of sweat and smoke.

Domingos had stopped now. He was squatting beside a woman who’d made a home for herself beside the wall. Above her head, in the space between two cinder-blocks, a pair of bare wires dangled from a broken socket. A child lay on her lap. To Molly it looked no more than a couple of months old, a tiny thing, swaddled in a threadbare cloth. Its eyes were closed, one cheek pressed to the woman’s bare breast, its wrists no thicker than an adult’s thumb. An older child stood beside it, naked except for a pair of ragged shorts. It had a chronic eye infection, yellow pus oozing down one cheek.

Domingos was talking to the woman. He gestured up towards Molly and the woman followed his pointing finger. She nodded. Domingos stood up.

‘Her name is Chipenda,’ he said. ‘Maria was her eldest child. The child your son tried to save.’

‘Maria,’ the woman nodded, recognising the name, ‘Maria.’

Molly knelt quickly beside Chipenda. The child on her breast stirred, opening one eye as Molly extended a hand. The woman looked at Molly’s hand, the rings, the perfect nails, openly curious.

‘I’ve come to say I’m sorry …’ Molly glanced up at Domingos pausing to let him translate, ‘about your daughter … the shelling …’ she hesitated, ‘all this …’

The woman, Chipenda, nodded at once, muttering something in Ovimbundu.

‘It’s terrible.’ Domingos was playing with the older child. ‘She says it’s terrible.’

‘I’m sure it is. She’s right. It’s dreadful …’ Molly hesitated
again, not knowing quite what to say next. McFaul had joined them now, pale, grim-faced, gazing down at the wreckage of three lives.

‘Ask about her husband,’ he suggested. ‘Ask her where he’s got to.’

Molly nodded. Domingos obliged with a translation. The woman began to talk very fast, leaning towards Domingos as if she was sharing some family secret. Domingos listened without comment. Finally he nodded, getting to his feet. He looked tired and dispirited, as if he’d heard the same story a thousand times before.

‘She says she hasn’t seen her husband for nearly a year. They used to live in a village about three days away. The soldiers came and set fire to the village. Many people died in their huts, burned to death. She and her husband tried to go back afterwards and start again but the soldiers had put mines in the fields so everyone was frightened of going there. Then one night the soldiers returned and took her husband for the war.’

Molly was looking at the woman.

‘Which soldiers?’

Domingos translated. The woman shrugged. She was drawing patterns in the dirt to keep the child amused.

‘Just soldiers,’ Domingos said. ‘She doesn’t know which side.’

‘So …’ Molly frowned, ‘when will she see her husband again?’

Domingos glanced at the woman but didn’t bother to translate this time.

‘She wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘He may be dead already. He may come back one day. She can’t tell.’

‘And there’s nothing …’ Molly shrugged, ‘she can do? No one she can see? Ask? She just accepts it?’

‘Of course.’ Domingos gestured around. ‘What choice does she have?’

Molly nodded, trying to fathom the kind of life this woman must lead. Never knowing. Never being sure. An eternity of loss.

‘Tell her I’m sorry,’ she said helplessly.

‘I just did.’

‘Tell her again.’ She paused. ‘Did she know my son? James? Did she ever meet him?’

Domingos bent to Chipenda, putting the question, and she looked up at Molly, smiling for the first time. She had the mouth of an old woman, several teeth broken, others missing completely. She was nodding now, talking to Domingos. Domingos smiled.

‘What is it?’ Molly asked. ‘What’s she saying?’

‘She says that your son was crazy.’

‘Why?’

‘Coming out here at all. She says he should have stayed at home. And had lots of sons.’

‘I agree.’ Molly was looking at Chipenda now. ‘Tell her I agree.’

The woman laughed at Molly’s vigorous nod and finally extended a hand. Molly gave it a squeeze and leaned quickly forward. The baby at her breast shivered under the kiss, then both eyes closed again and the huge head lolled forward.

Molly got up. Domingos was talking to McFaul, pointing towards the far end of the cinema. McFaul nodded and then bent to Molly’s ear.

‘Domingos wants you to meet someone else. Guy called Guringo. He’s the chief, the elder, the head man. They call him the
Soba
. Domingos thinks he may be able to help you.’

‘How?’

McFaul hesitated a moment. Domingos was already making his way through the watching families.

‘Domingos thinks he knows the man who laid the mines. Where James got killed.’

Molly stared at him.

‘Here? Someone here?’

‘Possibly. Domingos isn’t sure. But since we’ve got this far …’ McFaul shrugged, ‘why not find out?’

The chief was camped beneath the expanse of end wall that had once served as the cinema’s screen. The white paint was barely visible beneath a grey film of rain-streaked soot and at the foot of the wall there was a tidy pile of firewood, newly scavenged from the wreckage of shelled houses. The chief himself was a man of uncertain age, bald, very thin, with a straggly grey beard and yellowing eyes. He sat cross-legged, surrounded by a circle of carefully husbanded possessions: a tin cup, an empty sack, a hoe blade, a handful of twisted iron nails, six melon seeds, two blackened billycans and a tiny bunch of wilting greens. Molly studied the tableau from a respectful distance, determined to take this mental snapshot back home with her. However bad things got, however desperate she might feel, no life could be as bare as this.

Domingos was crouched beside the chief, explaining why they’d come. At length the old man got to his feet, standing erect, inclining his head gravely towards Molly. When he’d finished speaking, Domingos translated.

‘He says he’s sorry to hear about your son.’

‘Didn’t he know before?’

‘Apparently not. Many have died in the minefields. He says he’s lost count.’

Molly nodded, looking at the old man again, feeling unaccountably guilty. Why should her loss be anything special? Why should James’s death be of any conceivable interest to these people?

McFaul was asking about the man who might have laid
the mines. While Domingos put the question to the
Soba
, Molly watched a nearby woman coaxing a colourless mush into a child’s mouth. She used two fingers to feed the child, licking them after each mouthful. McFaul was watching too. Molly touched him on the arm.

‘What’s that?’

‘Pulped maize. It grows everywhere. It’s called
funje
.’

‘And what will she eat?’ Molly was still looking at the mother. ‘Afterwards?’

McFaul shrugged, indicating the inch of
funje
in the bottom of the earthenware pot.

‘Whatever’s left,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing else.’

‘So what’s it like?’

‘Completely tasteless.’

Molly nodded, her eyes returning to the chief. For the first time, she realised exactly what his T-shirt said. ‘The Grateful Dead’ went the faded logo across the chest, ‘Ventura Stadium, ’85’. James, she thought. One of his favourite groups. She glanced at McFaul again.

‘Where did he get the T-shirt?’

‘It’s charity stuff. Cast-offs. Flown in.’

The chief was reaching for the bundle of greens. He extracted one and offered it to Molly. Molly was about to refuse but McFaul told her to take it. The
Soba
would be offended, he said. She must eat with him. Molly did what she was told, tearing off the leafy part of the plant. She put it in her mouth and began to chew. At first it tasted bitter, then it made her mouth burn, a strange, prickly sensation. For a moment, she thought she was going to throw up. She heard McFaul beside her, oddly comforting.

‘Just a couple of little chews,’ he was saying, ‘no big deal.’

Domingos was on his feet again.

‘The chief’s talking about a fella called Zezito. The rebels
took him several months ago but he’s back in the city now.’

‘Where?’

‘In the hospital. He was dumped at one of the road-blocks a couple of nights ago. It often happens.’

Molly frowned, not understanding, and McFaul explained the discipline in UNITA ranks was harsh. Anyone who stepped out of line was instantly punished and some of the punishments were barbaric. Afterwards, as a warning to anyone else who might one day be pressed into service with UNITA, the half-dead soldier would be returned to his home city.

‘So what happened? To this one?’

‘They cut his ears off. And one or two other bits.’

‘And he’s still alive?’

‘Yes. Apparently he’s been talking about the minefields. Because he knew the area so well, they made him lay them. He was supposed to stick to certain areas, places where the people plant crops and draw water. It drives them off the land. Destroys communities. Our friend in the hospital evidently had other ideas. Silly man.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning he wasted all their precious mines on useless bits of scrub.’

‘Including the bit James …?’

‘Quite possibly. If we’re talking the same minefield.’

McFaul looked at Domingos. The Angolan nodded, confirming McFaul’s account, and Molly turned away. An hour ago, sitting in the schoolroom listening to Bennie outside the window, she’d been engulfed in a kind of primitive rage. She’d wanted revenge. She’d wanted a name. Now she had one. Except that nothing was quite as simple as it seemed.

‘So Zezito …’

McFaul shrugged.

‘… thought he was doing the right thing.’