The Cinnamon Tree (22 page)

‘You were asking him about the missing mine, weren’t you? Does he know?’ he asked. ‘The boys know where the other three are, that leaves one,
just one
! We’ve got to find it.’

Yola buried her face deeper. She needed to think; they should be trying to get out of here, not talking mines. But he was
pressing
her. ‘Where is it, Yola?’ She had seen this obstinate streak in
his father. She started to cry, but then knew it was no use.

‘It’s in the weapon store, over there, look, where Uncle
Banda’s
going. But Fintan, it is reinforced concrete and he says the door is steel.’

If Yola had had any control over Fintan before, she had none now. He was possessed. It was as if the guilt and shame that had built up over his father’s involvement in the mines were erupting uncontrollably inside him. Yola straightened up. Her sharpened perception returned and she felt she was watching the whole scene from a great height but with absolute clarity.

At Fintan’s orders, Gabbin cleared the child soldiers away from the area of the ammunition store. Her mind centred on a point, in the centre of which was the steel door, on this her whole being was focussed. Fintan and Uncle Banda were
labouring
in turn. They had found a sledge-hammer and were hammering, first at the lock, then at the hinges, anywhere to find a point of weakness. The hammer blows fell silently, a
fraction
of a second later the clang arrived, and Yola was back in class in Ireland listening to the teacher explaining what a
laggard
sound was compared to light. She saw Fintan peel off his shirt; his white torso gleamed in the pale light. She looked
anxiously
at the moon, it was dipping towards the trees again. How long had they? Where were the rebel soldiers?

Fintan stood in front of her. The sweat ran off him in rivers. Uncle Banda glistened, his chest was heaving.

‘There’s no way. We can’t do it,’ Fintan said. ‘They’ve welded chunks of metal around the lock and hinges. We can’t get a swipe at anything. Damn and blast them!’ He threw his sodden shirt on the ground. ‘Where are those soldiers? We’d better go.’

‘A boy has gone down to the jetty. He will give us warning,’
said Uncle Banda, squatting down, head between his knees. Juvimba’s voice cut in abrasively.

‘Stay here. Ask them for the key. Even better, why don’t you take a mine detector to it and blow the bloody lot of you up in the process.’

Both Fintan and Yola froze for a moment … of course. The mine was programmed to explode on hearing a mine detector – but they didn’t have one, there wasn’t one within miles.
Anyway
, the sound would be too weak to penetrate the concrete of the bunker.

‘Come on,’ Yola said, ‘we must get the boys out of here
before
the soldiers come … Fintan?’

But Fintan wasn’t listening. ‘My shirt?’ he muttered. Yola was holding out her hand for a lift out of the chair. ‘
Where is my shirt
!’ Yola was shocked, he’d never ever raised his voice before, least of all at her. Gabbin picked up the shirt and handed it to him; it hung like something dead. ‘Gabbin, quick, quick, ghetto blaster, radio, you know … in the hut … quick!’ Uncle Banda translated, but Gabbin had already gone. Fintan was searching frantically through the pockets in his shirt. ‘Got it,’ he muttered and pulled a tape cassette from his pocket. ‘
Clear the area
!’ he yelled. ‘Where’s Gabbin?’ But Gabbin was there, holding a huge two-speaker recorder. Fintan was fumbling to get the cassette out of its box. At last, Yola realised what he was at. This was the special programme tape containing the
recorded
sounds of all the different mine detectors – he’d put it in his pocket after talking to Hans!

‘
No
!’ yelled Yola. You can’t! You won’t have time to get away.’

She lunged for the tape but he snatched it out of reach. Holding the tape in his mouth, he flicked out the music tape that was in the drive, thrust the special tape into the machine
and pressed the button.

‘One … two … thr–’ he counted and the recorded shriek of a mine detector rang out. ‘Jeez, that’s short. I can run fast, but not that fast.’

‘You can’t, you can’t, oh don’t,’ pleaded Yola, but Fintan was tilting the ghetto blaster to get the light on the buttons.

‘Got it! I think we can. It depends on what’s on the other side of this tape. When Fintan pressed the play button the camp area was filled with wild Irish music. Yola wondered where she was; she thought of the dancing lab technician. Then Fintan was beside her, explaining, reassuring her.

‘See what I’ll do, there’s no panic. I’ll rewind a couple of minutes of the music, then, while the music is playing out, I’ll walk quietly back – I won’t even run. When the music finishes, the tape will reverse, only then will it play the mine detector noises. If we’re lucky we’ll hear a pop as the mine goes off. Get everyone ready to go and we’ll be out of here in ten minutes.’

Yola tried to get out of the low chair, but couldn’t. She heard the falsetto twitter as Fintan rewound a generous few minutes’ worth of tape. Then he was gone.

Uncle Banda called the boys and got them to untie the feet of the two drunken instructors so that they could walk, but told them to leave Juvimba to him. Fintan reached the door of the ammunition dump; they all turned to watch. He waved – a warning, perhaps – and bent to the ghetto blaster. Even from a distance the volume of the music was impressive. Then, calmly, Fintan began walking towards them.

Only Juvimba saw the boy soldier who had suddenly appeared in the clearing, noticed that he had a gun and knew that this was Ukebu, one of his own – a little killer. Juvimba’s mind worked fast: Ukebu had obviously dealt with the scout Uncle
Banda had sent down to bring him back. All this meant just one thing – fortune had turned in Juvimba’s favour and the KLA troops had landed without the alarm being raised. He filled his lungs and yelled.

‘Shoot him, Ukebu! Shoot the white man. I am Captain Juvimba.
Shoot him
!’

The boy’s rifle jerked up as if pulled by a string; Fintan saw him. Perhaps the boy was confused by the music, perhaps he didn’t recognise Juvimba’s voice, but the split-second delay was vital. There was a log beside the path. Fintan hurled
himself
over it. The boy’s rifle rattled out, bullets kicking up dust along the length of the log. Like startled rabbits, everyone who could dived for cover. Only Yola and Juvimba remained in the open. Yola sat frozen in her chair. She heard a scuffle behind her, but dared not move. Perhaps the boy wouldn’t see her. He was looking about him, trying to locate Juvimba. But he kept his gun pointed at the log. The music was rising. Surely this was the climax? In a minute the tape would reverse and Fintan was pinned down only metres from the steel doors. She heard Juvimba’s voice low beside her.

‘I don’t need a messenger now, do I?’ Then he raised his voice. ‘Shoot the girl here beside me.’ Then he changed his mind. ‘No! Turn the music off first. They have no guns.’ For one fateful second the boy hesitated.

It was a burst of three shots and it came from behind Yola. The muzzle flashes lit up the ground around her. She flinched and then looked at the boy in amazement. He lurched – surely he’d been hit! He was staring at his hands; his menacing profile had changed. His gun was gone, blown out of his hands by that single burst of fire. The music stopped. Everything stopped. Everybody seemed to have lost the power to move. Seconds ticked by. The tape would be reversing.

Fintan burst from behind the log and hurtled towards her, foreshortened in her view, like a sprinter from the blocks. But he had waited too long. The familiar screech of a mine
detector
, magnified a hundred times by the ghetto blaster, screamed out.

It was the steel door that blew first, arching lazily above Fintan’s head like a piece of bent cardboard. Then the concrete top lifted skywards, broken into great gobbets of concrete held together by steel rods; still no sound had reached her. All
colour
was gone save for one intense centre of red and orange. She saw the blast hit Fintan, throw him up and forward like
someone
caught by a wave. The boy soldier, Ukebu, was spinning like a top. Uncle Banda wrenched her to the ground as
something
hard crashed into the side of the hut.

I
t was an hour before Fintan was recovered enough to be moved. The boys found a stretcher and put him on to it, ready for a rapid exit. Uncle Banda went down to the jetty to investigate.

‘The KLA have gone,’ he said. ‘They probably thought the government army was here with that explosion. Anyway, there is nothing now for them to attack with.’

Fintan was holding Yola’s hand. She wanted to stay with him, but there was something she felt she had to do first. Juvimba was dead: the piece of concrete that had struck the hut had killed him outright. She couldn’t look at him, but she asked the boys to take the ropes off his feet and hands – she felt she owed this to Sindu. Perhaps his role in all this need never be known. The boys joked as they worked and Yola shuddered.

Suddenly, Yola was conscious of a presence beside her. It was the girl-boy, her friend of the clear eyes.

Uncle Banda nodded and said in English, ‘We call him Jimmy.’ Yola wondered if she saw a wink. Then he switched to Kasembi. ‘It was Jimmy who fired the shot that saved us. He knew where Juvimba’s rifle was in the hut and dived for it. That was a very fine shot – to hit the rifle and not hurt your friend.’ The child’s face lit up; she looked changed when she smiled.

‘Oh I don’t mind if I kill him, we all hates Ukebu. I aim for his rifle. He has even stronger medicine than Gabbin, see.
Captain
Juvimba make him kill his own brother. I couldn’t kill him. Bullets would bounce off him with no harm.’

Later, Yola was proud of the fact that she hadn’t said anything to ‘Jimmy’ that night, apart from thanking her. But if Juvimba had been alive she would have broken him into bits. Could a girl like this, or indeed any of the others, ever be normal again?

With first light the people of the Noose began to pour in along the cleared corridor through the minefield. The first one or two came walking lightly, nervously, expecting to step on a mine at any moment, but soon the trickle became a flow. Women came, struggling up the gully side with huge bundles on their heads. Jostling cattle came through, their drovers
anxiously
beating them away from the tapes that the deminers had raised on stakes beside the gap.

Fintan was able to walk again, limping, but otherwise sound as they walked out against the throng of people. Yola felt that it should be a triumphant march with cheering and clapping and grateful handshakes, but it wasn’t. The people streaming in spared hardly a glance for them; their eyes were set on homes they hadn’t seen for years. At one point there was rough
shouting
ahead and everyone pulled in to the sides as a column of government soldiers came through at a run. The army captain barked at them to get out of the way. Yola shouted at him that there was no one left to fight, but he didn’t hear or turn.

They walked out three by three. Uncle Banda, Yola and the girl-boy with the bright eyes and murderous ways were
behind
. The other trio walked in front: Sailor, on his lead, then Fintan and Gabbin, holding hands, as Africans like to do.

Yola looked at them with a sigh and said to herself, ‘My boys.’

A
flush of green now blankets the hill where Managu, the bull, wandered while Gabbin played in the Russian tank. The deminers have stripped the hill bare of bush in their search for landmines. The larger trees remain, as do the paths, persisting as paths do, even when everything around them changes. Hans looked at his watch.

‘You have half an hour if Fintan is to get his flight to
Simbada
,’ he said, and climbed into the driver’s seat.

It was Shimima who had sent them. ‘Yola, my little friend, there are ghosts still on the hill where you went that day. They will come back to haunt you if you do not go. Go with your friend and take Gabbin with you, too; it is important that he goes.’

But Gabbin would not come. He sat in the back of the
Landcruiser
beside Uncle Banda and looked away from the hill.
Often
since they had returned from the Noose, he had dark moods and would be silent or say bitter things that reminded Yola of the time he had fooled poor Sister Martha. Yola had lost Gabbin; he was Uncle Banda’s now and she missed him with an empty pain. She sighed and took Fintan’s hand. They could walk side by side now because people no longer feared to walk at the edges of the path. It was all so changed. The bushes
she had had to jump to see over were gone. They could see right over the town.

Fintan was going home. She had been overjoyed when Father had told her that the people of the Noose had
contributed
to her fare so that she could go back to school in Ireland. But what would Fintan feel about her then, a lame little
school-girl
in an Irish convent?

They turned a bend, and there it was: the cinnamon tree. The branch curved down, inviting her to jump again. Managu’s bell was surely tolling on the hillside below. In a second she’d be whole again. It had never happened! Then the ghosts were around her, plucking at her, mocking her. The ugly scar seared into the bark of the tree glared at her. Suddenly the smell of cinnamon was welling up, swirling inside her head. Gabbin was calling ‘Yola … Yola … I’m coming!’ But she had been
unconscious
when he had come to save her life that time beneath the tree. Why must the spirits mock her? Then she realised that someone was shaking her. She looked up; Fintan’s face swam in her rising tears.

‘Yola, listen to me, listen … he’s coming!’

‘Who … who?’

‘Why Gabbin, of course!’

At once Yola was alert, listening with her whole body. She took a deep breath and the air was clean and fresh, blowing the cinnamon scent from her mind. Fintan stepped back.

‘I won’t be far,’ he whispered. He bent and kissed her, a light, rich kiss that seemed to be an echo of everything she felt for him. Her mind filled with music, as if all the discord and dissonance of the past years were resolving itself now into one mighty chord. She could hear the pat of running feet on the path, and Gabbin called.

‘Yola, I’m here!’