Mark Lee - The Canal House

Sister Xavier translated the words into Tetum. Cristiano made a joke and the men laughed again.

“Cristiano says that you can’t trade this woman because she already belongs to him.”

“But I can give him the thing he really wants.” Daniel’s voice was urgent, pushing hard. “I can protect him. I can save his life.”

Again the translation and this time Cristiano looked uneasy. He said something in Tetum and his men pulled Daniel and Sister Xavier across the tennis court. Cristiano followed and they began to talk.

Julia stood up, covering her breasts with her arms. The knife blade had scratched a line down her neck and upper chest. Blood trickled across her skin. She ignored the wound, ignored everything but Daniel standing in the shadows with Cristiano.

Five minutes went by. The burning Land Rover had lit up the area, but now the flames were dying down. Militiamen pulled doors and cracked window frames from the destroyed restaurant and used the wood to build a bonfire. A man with a flashlight searched through the crowd. He avoided the children and focused on the elderly villagers. I assumed that he was looking for a particular person to kill.

Cristiano shook his head and began to walk away, but Daniel followed him, speaking with a soft, coaxing voice while Sister Xavier translated. Finally, there was some sort of agreement and Daniel returned to us. He unbuttoned his cotton work shirt and gave it to Julia. Daniel’s blue undershirt was dark with sweat. When he embraced Julia, she closed her eyes and shivered as if a spasm of pain was passing through her body.

“It’s going to be all right. I think we’ve got a deal.”

“What do they want?” I asked. “More guns?”

“They need a way out of here. Cristiano knows the guerrillas will ambush them if they take the road to West Timor. So I offered them a boat ride.”

“What kind of boat? Indonesian?”

“Anything that floats. We can use the Seria . The big argument was about weapons. But Cristiano agreed to disarm before they go on board.”

“What about the villagers?” Julia asked.

“You have to get them out of here tonight. You and Nicky put the weakest people in the truck and lead everyone back to Dili.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to be a hostage. They’ll kill me if a boat doesn’t show up by sunset tomorrow.”

“You can’t do that.” Julia looked frightened. “It’s too dangerous.”

“This is our only option. We don’t have anything else to offer them.”

“What if we can’t get back to Dili?”

“It’ll be difficult, but you can make it. When you reach the port, go immediately to the Seria . Don’t waste your time with General Bates or anyone else at Interfet.”

“He might want to send in troops,” I said.

Daniel nodded. “That’s the one thing that could get me killed. Just tell everyone to follow the plan. Captain Vanderhouten can get the Seria down here in a few hours. We’ll keep the boat in deep water and ferry the men out. There’s a rubber raft on the stern. It’s big enough for five or six passengers.”

Julia tried to argue with Daniel, but one of the villagers started screaming. We turned around and saw the man with the flashlight holding an old woman while his two friends knelt beside her. One of the militiamen pulled a machete out of his belt, gripped the woman’s jaw with one hand and forced her mouth open. He swung downward with a quick motion and smashed the machete handle into her mouth. She spat blood out, lay on her side and moaned. The man with the machete stood up with his prize—a gold tooth.

Sister Xavier turned to Julia. “Come and help me, Dr. Cadell. We’ll get them ready to travel.” The two women moved to the middle of the crowd and the nun spoke to her parishioners. Julia kept glancing over Daniel. I knew that she was worried. Over the years, she had dealt with looted food shipments and dust storms that grounded all the supply planes. Trucks broke down. Nurses caught malaria and returned home. The only reliable expectation was that nothing ever followed the plan.

Daniel started the church truck. The wheels spun around, digging up sand as he drove onto the cobblestone walkway. When the truck was pointing up the hill, I reached into the back and grabbed a cardboard box. We tore it into strips, covering the three dead soldiers, then went over to the wounded men. Corporal Mainla had been hit in the back with shrapnel and his shirt was wet with blood. He was unconscious and breathed with a wheezing sound. Private Rai had a dislocated shoulder and a gash in his forehead. Looking dazed, he knelt by Mainla and spoke softly. Julia returned with her medical bag. She cut off Mainla’s shirt and covered the wound with a wad of gauze and a bandage. “That’s all I can do,” she told Rai. “There’s not enough time. Not enough light.”

Daniel and I picked up the corporal and laid him in the back of the pickup. Private Rai climbed into the truck and crouched beside Mainla. “Keep his head to one side so he won’t choke on the blood,” Julia said. “Good. That’s good. Now put your hand on his chest and try to feel his breathing.”

Private Rai touched Mainla’s chest. “He has a wife and six children. A man with so many children should not die.”

Daniel and I loaded the weakest villagers onto the truck bed, pushing them up against Mainla’s body. Small children went on the tailgate or were squeezed into the truck cab. Julia found an old man who could drive and he got into the truck with the frightened children. “Espere, por favor,” she said in Portuguese. Wait. Please. Don’t start the engine. A little girl began crying and Julia hugged her, whispering softly.

Daniel wrote something on a sheet of notepaper. “Take this, Nicky.”

“What is it?”

“My will. Julia gets the farmhouse. You get my car.”

“No.”

He stuffed the paper into my shirt pocket. “Take it anyway.”

“We’ll get the Seria down here as fast as we can. Vanderhouten will do anything for money.”

Daniel smiled as if we were back in Rome together. “That’s the lovely thing about greedy people. They’re predictable.”

Some of the villagers were arguing with Sister Xavier. She turned away from them and returned to the truck. “They won’t go, Dr. Cadell. They think we’ll be killed at the bridge near the mercado . Four years ago, the Indonesians murdered nineteen people there and threw their bodies into the river.”

“It’s their choice to stay here, “said Julia. “We can’t force them to come along with us. If we just start walking—”

Cristiano screamed and waved his rifle. The bonfire was getting bigger and the shadows of his men glided across the bodies of the dead soldiers. “He says we have to go now,” said Sister Xavier. “He says we are traitors and he wants us out of his sight.”

Daniel kissed Julia on the forehead and the lips, then they held each other for a few seconds. I turned away from them, toward the fire, but the image stayed with me. We were caught in a flood with Daniel in the water and Julia on land. She was holding him, holding tightly, so that he wouldn’t be swept away.

“Let me stay with you,” she said.

“That’s not part of the agreement.”

“We shouldn’t have come here at all.”

He shook his head. “You had to do this and I had to be with you.”

Cristiano shouted again and the old man started the truck. “I’m sorry,” I told Julia. “But we need to leave.”

Daniel let go of Julia. “Don’t worry. I can handle this. Just talk to Vanderhouten and get the ship down here.”

The old man shifted into first gear. The engine made a metallic screeching sound as it began to move up the cobblestone walkway. The crowd of villagers held back for a moment, then began to follow Sister Xavier. It was like watching a jellyfish, pushed back and forth by the currents, until it flowed off in a new direction.