Chris Abani - Song for Night

“Shush,” I said.

“Leaving …” she began, and then she died. I like to think she was going to say, “Leaving you is hard.”

I’ve often replayed that scene, wishing that I could change some detail. That I had held her back for a quick kiss, thus keeping her from that mine, but being the leader meant having to act a little indifferent toward her in front of the others. If she resented the change, she said nothing. I squeeze my eyes tightly closed, but her mocking smile can’t be shut out.

Voices, and not imaginary ones, are coming down the road from a hidden bend. I don’t hesitate, loping across the short grass between me and the forest, gaining cover quickly. There is no point in waiting around to find out if they are friend or foe. I need to get to a town and get some food and drink, so I plunge deeper into the forest, moving fast if not silently through the undergrowth. At this point, silence doesn’t matter anymore. Even if they hear me, they will imagine it is some animal. I press on until I break through the cover into a circular natural clearing in the forest. It has been widened and I can tell from the cut shrubbery where nature stopped and machetes moved forward. There are a couple of open and empty metal shipping containers, a few bombed-out vehicles, including an ambulance and a ruined armored car. Something about the ambulance fills me with a nostalgia that makes my eyes water from the sweetness of it. I stop and scan the clearing. Apart from a few crows, the place is abandoned. Something about it is very familiar though and I realize I have been here before. The entire platoon has been here. Just before Ijeoma got blown up, after the church incident, after I shot John Wayne. There is no mistaking the statues the guys liberated from the church — the wooden Jesus in a peeling red tunic with one leg missing where Nebu had chopped it off the day we killed a monkey and needed firewood to cook; Jesus’ leg was the only dry wood anywhere on that rainy day, the rain had made it possible to catch the monkey as it slipped on a wet branch. I couldn’t eat it because it reminded me too much of the dead child in my dreams, and of that night we stumbled on that gory feast, those gorgons, and I left the campsite as the others cooked and ate it. Later, Ijeoma brought me an open tin of Spam from a box we’d liberated from some rich man’s house.

I look around, eyes meeting those of the sad-looking Virgin whose white-painted concrete body has turned green from rain. She is mottled from the bullet holes we inflicted with target practice. I approach slowly. I am on the right track, this much is sure. It seems I am retracing my steps through places we passed. Something is off about it though, and yet as much as it is nagging at me, I cannot pinpoint what it is exactly, but I know it has something to do with the chronology of my memories. The time between them is shrinking, I think. If I didn’t still have this damn concussion I might be able to figure it out.

I approach the containers. Buried under them in a metal box is a cache of food we left here. It is probably bad, but it’s worth trying. Like a chicken, I scratch in the dirt under it until I pull out the metal box that used to house the rounds for the M60 machine gun we had mounted on the roof of the bombed-out truck. There are several tins of food and I quickly drive my knife through the top of one lid into the soft meat inside. Even as I do it I think it is stupid that I didn’t check to see if the contents were booby-trapped. If the cache had been disturbed it would be impossible to tell because the ground was old.

There is no booby-trap, no explosion, just the sweet taste of stale sardines in olive oil filling my mouth, my knife still embedded in the smile of the woman on the tin. Queen of the Coast , it says.

I have happy memories about this place. We spent a long time here, hiding out from the war, being teenagers, and in that forest idyll, the change the war had wrought on us seemed very subtle. When we first stumbled on this oasis, the rain had collected in a seasonal pond and we lived in the burned-out trucks and armored vehicles, feeding on the forest’s grace and swimming in the pond. Ijeoma and I lived as a couple in the back of the old ambulance, making love with desperation tinged with the foreknowledge of loss. If we could have, we would have waited out the war here We didn’t want to move on, didn’t want to press on to the front. We weren’t stupid and we were certainly no longer idealistic. We only moved forward when we were forced to. It was the systematic strafing campaign aimed at flushing out rebel soldiers hiding in the forest, a campaign that rained bombs on us, turning the forest into an inferno that made us leave. When we headed off, it was in the direction I have just come from.

I look around a little confused that there is no evidence of the bombing. The forest is lush and green. Is it possible that it grew back so fully so quickly? Things are off and I can’t quite place why. It’s like having something stuck in my teeth just out of reach of my tongue: irritating. What’s the use of hurrying things; it will come when it comes. I have other things to worry about, things more concrete.

I fall asleep under the truck I’ve been digging by, while all around a gentle rain falls, and I don’t dream of the child’s head; in the distance heavy artillery fire approaches. But for now I sleep.

Full of fish.

It is a curious experience — to be inside your dream and outside it, lucid and yet sleeping deeply. But in this war so much has happened to make even this seem normal. I dream of Ijeoma and the night I lost my virginity to her. It is true that I had already had sex by then: John Wayne had forced me to rape someone, but that didn’t count. That was sex, rape, this was love; this was choice.

I cannot even tell if this is how it happened or whether my dream is some kind of wish fulfillment. It is the same day John Wayne forced me to rape that woman, and afterwards, while the others gather around a fire to roast a goat, Ijeoma takes me to the river. It is dark down here and I can barely make out her face. She makes me sit by the water and she washes my feet and my face, then she strips off and dives into the water. I watch her move through the dark fluid like it is a second skin. My breath catches in my throat, way back, so it is hard to breathe.

“Come in,” she calls.

I am scared of the dark water and cannot. I know I will die if I get in, but my fear is so irrational I don’t even speak it. I just shake my head.

“Coward,” she says, splashing me.

I laugh and get up. I strip as though I am about to get in the water but I don’t. I sit back down on the dew-damp grass and feel it tickle my skin. This is sensual yet childlike, free and unconcerned. While I don’t feel innocent, and even though I no longer know what that can mean, it seems attainable. Suddenly Ijeoma is standing over me and I look up. In the faint light I see her body — the womanly swell of her hips belying the small buds on her chest. Her skin is wrinkled from the cold water and she is dripping water onto me, each drop falling slowly and with a touch that burns, but I cannot wait for the next drop. She kneels and kisses me. I close my eyes and lose myself in the damp moment. Later, we are dressing and she turns smiling and says: “You should stop fighting now.”

I don’t know what it means. I want to ask her but I can feel myself waking up.

Daylight comes like rust corroding night. It is cool from last night’s rain and I stretch slowly, rested for the first time in months. I roll out from under the truck and walk the perimeter of the old camp, peeing as I go, stopping only to scratch my balls. Returning to the truck I slept under, I fish out a can of beans, bayonet it open, and spoon it cold with the tip of my knife. I have to move on. If the voices I just heard are enemy soldiers, they will soon be here.