An Island by Jennings Karen

Author:Jennings, Karen [Jennings, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holland House Books
Published: 2020-06-12T23:00:00+00:00

Samuel rose from the couch, moved across the room towards the kitchen. He was still a little unsteady, and clasped the back of the couch, the doorway, and the kitchen’s ladderback chair. The man followed, held his arms out behind Samuel, waiting for him to fall.

“I’m not dead yet,” he said, and then, when the man looked at him in query, shouted, “I’m not dead! Not yet, damn you!”

The man stepped away, his hands raised.

Samuel leaned against the sink, opened the tap and washed his hands, soaping the grit out of his wounds. Then he splashed water on his face, watching it turn to pink as it dripped back into the basin. He could not shake his dreaming. He was still in the prison, within its walls. Yet, despite the time he had spent there, he was left with no more than a scattering of memories. As though it had not been years at all, but only a day. One day that he had lived over and over, and was still living now.

He dried his face, wiped his hands, and crossed the room again. He ought to go outside, to clear his mind. But he felt that he was trapped inside the cottage, that he could not leave. At the kitchen doorway, he looked back. He had heard a whisper. At the table, beside the man, they were sitting, the two interrogators. Bila was saying, “Wait a moment before you go. I forgot to tell you. Your father is dead.”

Samuel said nothing. He put his hand down, found a door, a doorknob. In the corridor a guard was standing, waiting to escort him back to the yard. This was in the ninth year, or perhaps the tenth, when the uniforms had changed from khaki to black. The guard’s boots were dull, and on his trousers, below each knee, were patches of dust that hadn’t been rubbed off well enough after kneeling. Had the man been praying?

“He was part of the Independence Movement, wasn’t he?” said Bila.

“Yes.”

Bila was finishing a cigarette. Essien had a mug in his hand, but was not drinking.

“He was shot, if I’m right, during a protest,” said Bila.

“It crippled him.”

“It must have been very hard for him, a man like that, to have a son like you. A rebel, against independence, against the country.”

“I was never against the country, never against independence. It was the shit that came after that I was against.”

Bila threw his cigarette butt on the floor. There were others there already, twenty of them at least, a few still smouldering, marking the floor in rounds of black.

“Say what you want, the truth is you’ve cost your father the decency of a burial.”

“What do you mean?”

Essien put down his mug, licked his lips. “It’s a law now. You have to get a certificate of permission to bury your dead.”

“A certificate?” said Samuel. “I don’t understand. What’s the problem?”

“Certificates of permission are denied those affiliated with or related to rebels.”

Samuel put his hand to his forehead, pinched an eyebrow.

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