House of Ashes (12 page)

‘What do you do every day, then?’ said Breeze. ‘What is your job?’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah, when you not on TV, what do you do?’

‘Well . . . I make decisions. I have a small team and we . . . make decisions for the country.’

‘Tell me one decision you make.’

I tried to think straight. ‘Well . . . I am Minister for the Environment. It is a new post, progressive thinking. We decide what is the best way to preserve our natural assets and that is
both the hills and forests and the wildlife and also the sea life. We try to monitor the pollution in the sea, like mercury in the fish, like keeping the oilrigs from leaking. We work closely with
the Ministry of Energy too.’

His eyes looked glazed and contemptuous. I hadn’t answered his question. One decision.

‘I made the decision to protect the leatherback turtles.’

The young boy’s face creased.

‘Turtles?’

‘Yes. The northeast coast of Sans Amen is one of the largest migration grounds for leatherback turtles in the world. Our people haven’t respected this. Often they kill them, or eat
them, sell the meat. I have imposed a fine for selling turtle meat.’

The young boy laughed out loud.

‘Didn’t you know about the turtles?’

‘I know nothing about no turtles. Turtles have nothing to do with politics.’

‘Of course they do. Politicians are given the responsibility of caring for the whole country, that includes land and sea, not just people.’

The young boy looked incredulous.

I was vaguely embarrassed.

‘Nah, boy. Allyuh
chupid
. You saving turtles? When people starving?’

I wondered about the size of this young boy’s world. Had he ever swum in the sea along the north coast of his own island? Had an adult ever taken him over the mountains to get to the sea?
If he was from the slums in the east of the City of Silk, there was no reason why he should know about, let alone care about sea creatures.

‘Where did you live,’ I pressed, ‘before you went to live in the commune with the Leader?’

‘I live in mih mother house.’

‘And where is that?’

‘Up so,’ and he pointed eastwards to the hills, to the slopes of shacks and old wooden houses; and then he looked at the slim metal barrel of his gun and he rubbed a spot clean.

‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’ I pushed.

Again, he gave me a look to say this was stupid. ‘Mih mother have ten children.’

‘Oh.’

‘I number seven. She have three others younger than me.’

‘Ten?’

He nodded. And then he looked distant . . . and then he looked alert, like a question had come to him. ‘You ever speak to your children?’

I nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘Well . . . my mother. She busy, busy, busy. She have no time to talk to me. She busy, busy minding children. When she comes from work she only have time to clean the kitchen, go to sleep
and then back to work. She ent tell me nothing about no turtles . . . I never have her to tell me about these things.’

I felt a shadow of guilt crawl across my back. I knew it would be very unwise to ask him about his real father. No wonder it was so easy for the Leader to make such an impression. People were
like plants; they craved the sun and, just like plants, they grew anyhow they could. Unlike plants, people also craved love and knowledge; both gave them nourishment. Love, to humans, was like a
food group. Babies denied love failed to thrive; children who’d grown up without love were forever damaged. The Leader had been giving Breeze knowledge and respect, he had been growing this
young man. But I doubted the Leader had been giving him the love of a real parent. That true parental unconditional love, I could see, had been denied to Breeze.

The man they called Ashes appeared behind him.

‘Come,’ said Ashes, pulling the young boy away.

But the young Breeze didn’t move and for a few moments both boy and man looked down on me and I felt their mistrust and condescension. They were from another life and set of ideas and they
looked at me like I was a foreign type of human, and maybe I was very separate and hadn’t been aware of just how apart it is to work in the House.

These two looked like brothers, Ashes and Breeze, two generations. I watched them back away and I saw that there was a familiarity between them, a gracious body language which I knew was unique
for men in this town, a kind of modesty or self-respect.

Their Leader had given them this, too. They walked down the corridor together, past the tearoom, and I saw them kneel together and some of the other gunmen joined them. Six or eight of the men
who were holding us hostage laid down their guns in the dawn light and prayed to their God.

One or two prostrated themselves fully, their stomachs flat to the floor; another knelt and bent his head to the ground. Ashes knelt and gazed upwards and held his hands to his heart. The young
Breeze knelt and spread his hands flat on the carpet. It made me feel confused. It made this mad act of theirs look like it had meaning and substance behind it. And I could hear them chanting and
it sounded beautiful, like a kind of music.

I curled up on my side and watched my captors pray and I felt desolate and lonely and this loneliness was nothing to do with missing my husband or children. I had a loneliness which was all of
its own, a longing in my heart which I’d been born with; it accompanied my life. It was a thirst, and a sadness, to be loved . . . and when I watched these men I understood them and they made
me feel less alone. I wondered if they were the only souls praying like this for miles around. Maybe the Leader had led them back to something good, to an ancient faith of some sort, to an original
tradition of wisdom.

*

When Father Jeremiah Sapno returned to the chamber he caused a stir. He’d disappeared in the early hours of Thursday morning with a list of demands in his hand,
scribbled on a piece of notebook paper. Now it was Friday, late morning, twenty-four hours later. There’d been big energy in those demands. But by the time the priest returned, the demands
seemed lost, even forgotten. Howl was winning this siege already, hands down. The army had bombed the place, shown their massive potential, frightened everyone inside, including Hal. They had
purposely kept Father Sapno back; they were forcing the gunmen to wait. The priest returned to the House on
their
terms. They were showing that they would decide when and if and how
negotiations took place. They weren’t hungry, weak, living cooped up in appalling conditions.

When Father Sapno appeared again in the chamber, it was clear he was very frightened by what he saw. I registered this with a mixture of understanding and alarm. I was no longer so frightened of
the gunmen, or the situation. Me and my fellow captors had somehow, incredibly, acclimatised. We’d learned how to survive. The feeling of immediate danger had worn off, even though the actual
danger hadn’t. The guns, the bullets in them, no longer seemed so murderous. Again, my mind played tricks. They were like magic bullets that couldn’t hurt or kill. Bullets made of silk.
That, or perhaps I’d been so scared for my life, for minutes, hours, early on, that there was no emotion left in me I could associate with terror. All my terror had been used up. The only
loose cannon of a gunman, the one with the Santa hat, had been apprehended and tied up. There was a well-known madhouse in Sans Amen; I wondered if he’d once been an inmate. At that point the
House was a madhouse too. I was an inmate.

*

My main concern was the split. In fact
the split
was at the heart of this whole outrage. A year earlier, our party had split into two. There was the PM, a good man,
if a little stiff, and his faithful ministers, and then a small group who’d split away. It had caused the PM a lot of pain and made the party look chaotic. Those who’d divided from the
PM were more extreme socialists. They didn’t like the way the PM ran things, his personal style. But the PM had seen them as dangerous and unstable with mad ideas; he’d viewed them as
communists. These ministers had got involved with the labour movement and I was sure they’d even mixed with the Leader at times. Some of them had progressive ideas, like a new type of money,
a bartering system, and buying land for social housing and setting up a type of co-operative system.

I suspected these ministers with progressive ideas knew the Leader and Father Sapno. I suspected they all had a lot in common. Those who’d split from our government were more like the
gunmen in terms of their ideas. There were four or five ministers involved in this split and these were the ministers who were being detained separately during all this madness. They were kept
apart and were being treated better in general, as if the gunmen hadn’t meant to capture or hurt
them
. It was those ministers, who were out and out socialists, who Hal was prepared
to negotiate with. The PM was entirely left out. He was still tied up on the ground, by then seriously ill; I was worried he might lose consciousness.

Father Sapno and Hal and three of the more socialist ministers disappeared down the corridor to talk. I turned to Mervyn Mahibir and said, ‘Thank God the army are still loyal to the PM.
Things could be very different now in Sans Amen.’

Mervyn nodded. ‘Don’t worry. This will all be over by the weekend, Aspasia.’

‘How can you say
don’t worry
?’

‘Because I have faith.’

‘You feeling faith right now?’

‘Yes. Don’t you? That’s all there is. It has come on me the last day or so. Faith, the desire to live. I will be okay. You will be okay too.’

I felt very differently compared to two days ago. The world I knew was gone. I could remember being sworn into the new government, my sense of pride in the job, my feelings of being able to make
a difference, to be of service to my country. Yet all along . . . this . . . this danger was the hard reality of affairs on the street. There was a chasm between my intentions and this small band
of men with guns.

‘I feel empty,’ I said. ‘Sinful and empty. And I feel like I’ve died somehow in here already. I can’t think straight. I’ve been having dreams.’

‘Yes. Me too.’

‘I dreamt of that young woman Bathsheba who was shot years ago in the hills. A freedom fighter. Remember her? She was pregnant.’

‘Yes, I do. I was a young doctor then. I was . . . well . . . involved in the case.’

‘Really? Her child died in her stomach too. But now I see these young boys, I see that here is Bathsheba’s dead baby son. So many riots in this city, Mervyn, so much violence
already. Slaves have rioted, the canboulay riots, the water riots, trade union marches, black power in 1970. And now this crazy crazy . . . what is this? An insurrection? Why does this keep
happening, Mervyn?’

‘It has something to do with renewal, Aspasia. Some kind of recreation of events so that people will learn. Eventually. They just don’t learn fast.’

‘Why did you ever want to be in politics?’

Mervyn laughed. ‘I didn’t. I told you. I’m no politician.’

‘Then why? What are you doing here?’

‘I’m a doctor, Aspasia. The Minister for Health. They need experts like me – and you. I am an expert on health. But that’s not the same as being a politician. I’m a
layman, a doctor. I have always worked in the civil service. I got offered a job in the cabinet. I go about making tea in the House. I’m not interested in politics most of the time.
Haven’t you noticed?’

‘But you got elected, just like me.’

‘Sure. But I see myself as a
public servant
. That’s not the same thing as these men with guns down the hall; they from a different set of concerns. Those people with guns
who care about “social justice” all end up causing trouble and violence. They want to rule. That is the politics of ego. Serving the public and ruling the public two different
things.’

‘Mervyn, I
wanted
to be in politics. I had ideas. I thought I was making changes. I even thought things were going quite well for us until two days ago.’

‘Look. Nothing stays the same, Aspasia,’ said Mervyn. ‘Everything is changing all the time.’

‘That’s not the impression I get.’

‘That is a law of natural science. Once, there was no city here, for instance. Just swamp and silk cotton trees and red-skinned men and women from the mainland who arrived by canoe and
they lived peacefully. Everything was different. I believe there is peace in the soil of this city, Aspasia. You are an environmentalist. Mother Earth. Gaia. The earth’s soul is
peaceful.’

I felt grateful to be reminded of this.

‘Yes. True. But also I believe there is blood in the soil here too now, Mervyn.’

‘Maybe there’s both.’

‘Maybe we laugh it all off once a year. At carnival time.’

‘Or maybe we in Sans Amen have the enlightened gift of humour.’

‘Or maybe we are a nation of gifted satirists who like peace and yet often cause bloodshed and once a year we wipe clean our memories.’

‘Ha, ha. Maybe you and I haven’t eaten for days, Aspasia. We are becoming philosophers.’ Mervyn winked. I could see he wasn’t scared. Mervyn was a gifted man. In this
madhouse everyone was showing himself or herself. Everyone seemed bigger and more raw and more real.

I didn’t know if I was hungry or not. I tried to look ahead, to allow myself to think that even this hellish situation could change. I would see my children; I clung to this belief. I
would go home and start my life again. It was still happening, this attempted coup, or whatever it was; it was in progress. I must keep still and not act. I should only watch. I should keep out of
things and be glad I wasn’t involved in the negotiations. My children and husband needed me to be alive. I thought of bullets made of silk. Magic bullets that couldn’t kill me. This was
a very dangerous way to think. I would be okay if I stayed out of things and kept my eye on that young boy Breeze. I also wondered, secretly, if this was the most exciting thing that had ever
happened to me and ever was going to happen in my political life. I wondered if this peace and blood was what politics actually involved. Turtles were indeed irrelevant.