House of Ashes (13 page)

*

The negotiations went on all morning. Twice Greg Mason came out cussing. Once Hal flew out from one of the backrooms on his walkie-talkie, swearing and speaking in terse tones
down the line to the Leader. The white minister left the negotiations altogether, muttering.

I looked at Mervyn and he shrugged.

‘These men seriously think they getting new elections?’ I whispered. ‘A chance to govern? Haven’t any of them heard of democracy? A voting system?’

‘They stuck now, Aspasia, they need to get out of here alive. Now they only bartering for their lives.’

‘You think the Leader ever had any
real
plans to rule? He shoot up the place. But then what did he expect to do next? Did he have a further political agenda? Did he expect us all
to become religious in the same way? They a bunch of mad hybrid mystics, or so they feel. A rainbow religion of some kind. What on God’s earth did he want to do?’

‘My gut feeling is that he wants Howl’s job. To be top dog in the army or something like that. There were no other big plans.’

‘Head of the army?’ I laughed. ‘Yes, I figure the same thing. He want a job. To be high up in politics. But that’s like putting the Joker rather than Batman on
guard.’

‘Correct!’ Mervyn laughed. ‘But I figure he had a few plans to take control, but them plans not anywhere near good enough. After that he wanted the country to re-elect a
government – and for him to be part of the new system.’

‘Well, he get nowhere fast.’

Eventually Hal appeared looking distracted and jaded, a new piece of paper in his hands. He instructed Breeze to pass it round. ‘Everyone here must sign it, words are no good alone,’
he said, and he took a pen from his top pocket. ‘Every minister must put his name to this document, in writing. We get told it have to be written down, that go make it legal.’

*

Around midday, Father Sapno left the House again. This time with only one demand written down on a piece of paper and signed by all the ministers, including myself; we were
now three days with no food, still in shock, some of us injured. The PM had signed it too, half-blind and only half-conscious. This time when they put a gun to his head he easily capitulated. The
army had made it clear via Father Sapno that the game was entirely over: there would be no political demands. There was no popular revolution, no bargaining with a bunch of armed boys and men.

I worried about the looting. This would put town planning and national spending back fifteen years. It would be a huge task for us, or any subsequent government, to rebuild. Not one man in the
street had joined their cause. People in rural areas were probably living their lives as usual. They would have heard about this crisis, but no revolution had reached them. The army had acted
impeccably; this was now a hostage crisis, a double hostage crisis. The Leader and his men had taken hostages and now the Leader and his men were surrounded and in turn hostages themselves. The
army would not bend to threats. Colonel Howl still refused to negotiate directly with the Leader or Hal; negotiations were being conducted through the priest. Colonel Howl let it be known that if
one dead body fell from the balcony of the House of Power, the whole game was over. The army would storm the building. The gunmen needed to relinquish their unworkable political ideals.

I’d read the piece of paper. It had only two lines:

We, the undersigned, do pardon and grant full amnesty to the Leader and his men in return for our lives.

We would surely be set free; the Leader and the gunmen would be rounded up and taken straight to prison and then to court. Of course this amnesty would be scrutinised by international experts
and judges, and deemed invalid. It had been signed by the PM under extreme duress. It was a meaningless piece of paper. But I thought it would help us to get out, and so I had signed it too; so had
all the others. I shivered and felt sick in my heart. I knew that if these men walked out of the House alive, the courts would sentence them all to death for treason at the very least – also
murder, arson and several other counts related to civil unrest. The courts of Sans Amen would be busy after this little catastrophe.

*

The conditions in the House were dire. Three days in, the latrine in the corner had become an open sewer and had attracted hoards of flies. No one had eaten, sleep was fitful.
July, and it was humid in the chamber; the rainy season was upon us but it hadn’t rained yet in those few days of terror. The lack of rain made everything seem more tense. The air was so
thick in the chamber I could put my fist through it.

The young boy called Breeze was still eyeing me up and hanging around; it was like he wanted to guard me and also intimidate me at the same time. Sometimes he looked his age and rather unsure of
himself; other times he was gruff, just like the men, a small boy soldier. He’d pointed a gun at me twice. He was one of ten children. I fought my instincts to mother him.

‘What you looking at?’ he said.

‘Nothing.’ I replied. ‘I have nowhere to look.’

‘Well, look somewhere else.’

I glanced towards the PM who was lying on the floor and very ill. He followed my line of vision and steupsed.

‘You see that, that is your fault. You bring this thing on yourself, all of you.’

I felt so low and weak, I knew that somewhere this was true. We had somehow done wrong. I had little to come back at him with. He must feel very betrayed in his heart.

I looked up.

‘Tell me about the kind of life you would like to live,’ I said. ‘Imagine you could have everything you want. What would it be?’

Breeze looked annoyed.

‘Go on,’ I urged. ‘What do you want for yourself in life?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I have my freedom. I have my health and my God. I have so much. Is like you can’t see it.’

I nodded.

He spat on the metal nose of his gun and rubbed it with his shirt.

‘We going to get out of here, all of us. I will go back to my life. I will be part of society. You will go back to what? To dominating it?’

‘Right now you are dominating me.’

‘I am a freedom fighter.’

‘You have a gun. That is a means of terror not freedom.’

‘State have guns too,’ he steupsed. ‘Is called an army. Your guns outside surrounding us. You too much of a coward to hold your own gun. You pay others to shoot. We do our own
business.’

Again I felt penitent. It was all too hard. These men brought action and their half-baked theories crashing in through the windows. And the half-baked theories resembled the actual
well-conceived theories. These men mixed it all up. Here he was, this young boy called Breeze, threatening to shoot me. Somehow he’d broken through all the red tape.

Breeze looked like he could read my thoughts. He looked satisfied with himself.

‘Mih mother busy, busy,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Busy life. Busy making business. I now here, making history.’

I wondered if his mother knew, let alone cared where he was. I was witnessing a young man currently being made, and currently ruining his already half-destroyed life. I had seen so much of this
young boy. I’d witnessed him in the full surrender of prayer; I’d seen him pick up a human tongue off the carpet; I’d heard him spout forth his socialist politics, some of it
textbook socialism he might have studied at the University of the West Indies. Then I saw the possibility that he would hang for his crime of being born poor and fatherless and easy prey for the
likes of a politically half-baked egomaniac Father-Leader. I was sad about this. It
was
our fault.

The Leader.
Ha
. He had nothing new up his sleeve, nothing to say to a small New World nation which needed ideas as it emerged from under the claustrophobia of colonialism. Sans Amen
needed forward-thinking men and women, young men just like Breeze and these young boys, just like the son or daughter of Bathsheba the freedom fighter, the child who was shot dead in her stomach.
1990. The end of a century was looming, a century which had been bloody and devastating to the planet and its people everywhere. The age of ‘computer science’ was coming. Something
called ‘the internet’ was happening, which meant that small islands in the New World would be joined up, connected to everything and everywhere. There were even women now in the House
of Power in Sans Amen. There was no room any more for these antiquated Caribbean macho-men, these Father-Leaders. The Leader and this band of men would surely hang for their ludicrous act. Even the
crazy one with the Santa hat; they would hang for being so out of touch with a world which was already changing around them.

*

At four in the afternoon on Friday we had a big surprise. Another hostage was found. She said her name was Mrs Cynthia Gonzales, that she was the mother of four children. The
gunmen found her hiding in the cleaning cupboard. She had been there, undetected, for two days. She’d showed up at five o’ clock on Wednesday evening, as usual, to start her evening job
as a cleaner at the House of Power. She turned up every day at five – we all knew her by sight – and she left at ten and went home to her family in St Jared’s. On the Wednesday of
the attempted revolution she had been using the washroom when the gunmen stampeded the House of Power, shooting. She had run straight from the washroom to the broom cupboard and locked it tight
from the inside, but the lock had seized shut. Two days later, one of the gunmen heard her hammering to get out. She’d had enough in there. Two nights and two days. They brought her a glass
of water and then they carried her, weak and disorientated, from the cupboard into the chamber. When she saw the chaos and the mess and the vile stinking latrine and the PM of the country all tied
up and with his eyes sealed shut, his blue-purple face, the plaster and the glass and the debris on the red velvet carpet, the carpet she vacuumed clean every day, when the House was closed, over
for business, her face set hard. She seemed to grow, to experience a surge of strength. Mrs Cynthia Gonzales examined the filth on the carpet and then she glared at all the men standing around with
guns.

‘No,’ she said, as if to herself. She stamped her foot and then turned around and glared at Hal. ‘Allyuh damn chupid fools. Why you do this, eh,
why
?’

For a split-second, Hal looked cowed. Mrs Cynthia Gonzales had been hiding in the broom cupboard for days and yet she’d somehow emerged in pristine condition. She must have been in her
late fifties; she had on a cleaner’s gown over her everyday clothes. She was wearing comfortable flat-heeled ankle boots. I realised she was also wearing a copper-coloured wig, cut in a
stylish short bob, and this was what gave her such a well-groomed appearance. Mrs Gonzales looked around the chamber and it was as if she’d stepped out from a parallel universe, one of order
and normality; that or she refused point blank to accept the situation in the House. She spoke in a clear voice, not quite cussing, more like an impatient nurse.

‘You are a damn chupid lazy man and you should feel shame for what you have done here. Big man, eh? Big so. Big boots. Army suit. Look at you. You feel you is playing soldier an thing.
Shoot up de damn place. What de
ass
wrong with you, eh? You mash up mih carpet. Who you think clean this place every day, eh? You think is fine to come in here and mash it up? Eh? Well I
clean this place every day, five days a week. For
fifteen
years. I consider it an honour to clean this chamber. This is
my
carpet. And you feel so free to come in here and ruin
it. Eh, eh. Jesus Christ Lord in heaven. Where are your manners and where is your respect for civilisation?’

Hal put one hand up to ward off Greg Mason. The other gunmen looked to him to see what to do. Hal stood and took the dressing down like a man.

‘Lady . . .’ he began.

‘You shut up,’ said Mrs Gonzales.

Hal kept his calm.

The young boys stared. I almost laughed. One of them said, ‘Oh,
gooood
.’

But Hal went closer to Mrs Gonzales with his pistol.

‘Lady, you watch your language, okay?’ He had raised his voice.

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. We have no war with women. We come in here to save the country. Change things round. But our plans go wrong.’

‘Plans? What plans? What you trying to change?’

‘Lady, look, this is not your business . . . we come to liberate the people of the City of Silk who are oppressed.’

‘Who is oppressed?’

‘You are oppressed.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

Mrs Gonzales looked Hal up and down. She steupsed at the ridiculousness of this idea. She looked around at the men and all of us ministers who were now watching her. Then, with a slow and
mannered dignity, Mrs Gonzales took off her wig.

For a moment it looked like she’d taken off her own head. Her scalp was shaved down to a grey fuzz. Underneath the wig she was like another woman, sleek, older. Hal looked down at his
feet, shamed by her nakedness. Breeze stared at this other skull. One or two of the gunmen backed away. Someone uttered the words ‘obeah woman’.

My heart felt warm for the first time in days. Thank God for her, thank God for Mrs Gonzales. I was scared for her and also held mesmerised. They hadn’t frightened her yet, or at all. She
was a woman from Sans Amen. Taking no crap from no man.

‘Listen, here. I am a grandmother,’ said Mrs Gonzales. ‘An old black woman.’

Hal looked like he was going to melt.

‘You show me some respect. You see this?’ she said, turning her head and pointing to a bump at the back. ‘Mih skull split open once. Now mih head have a shape like an egg. A
man cuff me down once and I end up in hospital. An you talk about me being oppressed today? I oppressed only once in my life, by a man I make the mistake to marry. That man now long dead. No man go
oppress me again. None of you speak for me, yuh hear. I doh need no crazy bunch of boys with guns to come inside here on my behalf. I not oppressed. I have job, home, good health, family. You mad
or what?’

I was worried. Despite their claims to have no war with women, these men could shoot women by accident. She was pushing her luck.