House of Ashes (15 page)

Hal came back from his phone call and there was a mild triumph in his manner, in his step.

‘We have an agreement,’ he announced. ‘The army will be sending a convoy of trucks to take you away this afternoon.’

Ashes woke with a start. In his dream the Phantom had been digging under the House of Power. He’d tethered his horse Hero to a silk cotton tree and he held a spade in one
hand like a staff. With the other hand he was pointing, saying, ‘Look, there is the beautiful.’ And there, in the red soil under the House, he had uncovered the bones of many bodies,
the remains of Amerindians from centuries back. The bodies were all laid out in trenches, dozens of them. There was a small burial ground underneath the House. Men, women and children had been laid
there to rest. Ashes woke up sweating, a heavy feeling of dread in his chest. Somehow he’d forgotten about them, the first people of Sans Amen, and how he was related to them. The Phantom
then did something unthinkable. He removed his mask. Behind the mask Ashes recognised a familiar face: that of his dead brother, River. River was smiling and there was a circle of light blazing
around his head. His spade then turned to a long rifle, silver-grey and threatening. ‘I’m always here,’ he said. ‘We all are.’

Ashes rose from the small nest he’d made on the floor of the library and prepared himself for prayer. His watch said 6.00 a.m. and a dawn light was filtering in through the stained glass.
He could feel the City of Silk all around him, jarred, frightened by what had happened. It was a city on edge. Their doing. He had followed in the footsteps of his brother and the Phantom, but they
were somehow good and he was somehow wrong and stupid. He knelt on his haunches in front of the coloured glass and he looked up at the martyr nailed to a wooden cross. He closed his eyes and opened
his chest and very soon he became aware of the feeling of lightness and peace. The beautiful; it came down into him, spreading a tender and glorious love and he bent forward, open and receptive,
and he pressed his arms and face flat to the floor, beneath the holy prophet, the revolutionary on the cross. Somehow it was all connected. Somehow he hadn’t understood this. He uttered the
words of holy remembrance, and when he said the words his spirits lifted and he felt drunk with love and connected to his heart.

*

Upstairs, the chamber was an open cavity. Brothers were tired and starving; the hostages were starving too and beyond their wits. Ashes remembered the first hours after they
had rushed up from the street, how he’d been shocked at the smashed crockery, the cussing and the dead bodies. That felt like weeks ago. Now everything was pulverised, walls blown away. The
younger brothers shifted from room to room. They were looking for things to do and he had a feeling that their sense of reality had been altered for good.

The last three days of revolution had shaken him. Ashes felt he’d become a crude, simple man again; he had succumbed to all the lowest emotions. He’d been scared almost every minute
of the last few days. He’d been anxious, riddled with doubt. He had been angry with the others, with most of the brothers, in fact, including Hal and Breeze Arnold and Greg Mason. Anger was
never a wise reaction to events; anger shut out the light. He’d felt ashamed, too. At first he was disappointed and then disillusioned with what had happened in the chamber of the House. The
dead woman on the floor, the dead men lying all over the place, in other rooms, on the balconies, on the ground outside, on the steps, their bodies now defiled. Arnold all tied up in one of the
back rooms; Arnold who’d gone mad, overwhelmed by the
nafs
. The lady appearing from the broom cupboard; she had made him feel guilty and bad. And then there were the terrifying guns
and rockets, the army outside. Ashes had suffered actual pains in his chest. Panic attacks. Even though he had been praying several times a day, but it was hard to open his heart in these
conditions.

Greg Mason was one of the few that remained intact. His eyes were still mean and full of intent; his righteous fervour hadn’t died. He had survived 1970; he had shot at least one man dead;
he had served years in gaol for his crimes. He was the Real Deal: a guerilla fighter. Ashes looked out the window and saw the army and the ruined streets and he felt un-free. He doubted he would
ever be free again. He knew his personal freedom had ended. But Greg still seemed crazy with zeal, committed and self-assured. They had kept each other at a measured and respectful distance
throughout the last few days. Now it felt impossible to avoid meeting him.

‘Ayyy,’ Mason said, by way of stopping him in his tracks.

Ashes froze. He was holding his gun. For some reason he’d kept it with him all along. It had given him something to hold on to. He hadn’t fired a shot. He carried it with a kind of
tired resignation and yet he didn’t want to put it down in case it was loaded and went off. He didn’t know if it was loaded or not. He’d held onto it just in case.

Mason gave him a look which meant that he wanted to talk. He was one of those men in the compound Ashes had kept clear of. He’d kept clear of men like Mason in life, too. They were men of
action who other men respected and women found attractive. Mason had that energy. Men like Mason made him feel weak. They didn’t read books; they read magazines, if that.

‘You use that thing yet?’ Mason said, and his eyes were like they didn’t see him.

Ashes shook his head.

‘Give it to me.’

Ashes complied.

Mason weighed it in his hands and steupsed. He opened the chamber of the gun and peered inside.

He looked back at Ashes with a knowing and disappointed expression. ‘It empty. W’appen, you doh figure to load the damn thing?’

Ashes cringed.

‘You were given ammunition. Why didn’t you load your gun like you were ordered to?’

Ashes had forgotten this command in the heat of it all. He had been wearing his bandolier of bullets, but had taken it off to sleep. The bandolier was now downstairs in the library. Besides, no
one had shown him how to load his gun.

Mason steupsed. ‘Come.’

In a back room there were boxes of ammunition, more guns, bullets, hand grenades. All unused; it was like they had brought too much; like they had decided they were going to save the rest for
another try. Mason reached into a box and said, ‘See?’ And he opened the chamber of the gun again and loaded six bullets into the holes inside. He gave Ashes a look which said something
to him about his brother River. Ashes’ spectacles began to fog.

Mason glared at him. ‘Your brother, he showed
me
how to load a gun,’ he steupsed. ‘You two like chalk and cheese. How your mother born two sons who get in to so much
trouble, eh?’

It was a good question.

‘River was a soul man, a man who saw the light.’ And with this his eyes fired up and Ashes could see that Mason had loved River too. ‘You two are so different. Is like you are
him in reverse.’

At this Ashes bowed his head, feeling ashamed. He was no fighter. He had a few reasons for being here, but they had evaporated almost immediately. He wanted to be at home with his wife. He
wondered if Mason was married or had children he loved. He wanted to say to him that heroism could also be quiet. He had made a family and that was enough good work for a man.

Mason passed him back the rifle and he weighed it like he was trying to measure the difference but it felt the same, with or without bullets. Now his gun was loaded. Now he was dangerous, just
like Fat Clay of Cuba. It felt very late in the day to be so dangerous. He nodded at Mason and said, ‘Our mother is very proud of us.’

*

Apparently, it was all over now. The army was sending a convoy of trucks to take all the hostages away. But by now he had overheard the ministers whisper amongst each other,
using words like ‘treason’ and ‘murder’ and ‘hanging’ and ‘prison’. And these words had been the reason for his attacks of panic. What would his wife
think? He’d sunk to the lowest, crudest possible human form. He had deceived his wife – and his country. He was a common betrayer.
Treason
. It was a word he must look up in the
dictionary. He hadn’t even considered this. It was a crime he didn’t know much about. He hadn’t left the compound three days ago in a W.A.T.E.R. truck to commit an act of treason;
that wasn’t his motive at all. He wasn’t a ‘treasonous’ man. One act, depending on how you looked at it, could be both positive and negative. Now he didn’t know which
way to look at what they had done. It was clear he had let himself down. And his spiritual aspirations were failed too; they hadn’t just ended, they had reversed.

Jade must now know where he was. All the wives must have known since the first night. After the two-hour bombardment that morning, and the news of the hostages being taken away in army trucks,
Ashes decided he would use the telephone. Everything had been smashed up and blown to pieces; everything was over. He would call his wife. He would apologise and beg her for forgiveness. And so,
when Hal was issuing orders to the men in the chamber, Ashes went into the ruined back room where everything was smashed up and there was more graffiti about God on the wall. The phone was on the
floor and he sat down next to it and he picked up the receiver and felt relief at the sound of the dial tone and dialled the telephone number to his home.

The phone rang and he felt a slow rolling oceanic wave threaten to engulf him, a wave of dread and fear and sorrow.

‘Hello?’

She sounded unhappy. Even with this one word he could tell. He had expected it to be a relief to hear her voice. But he didn’t feel anything like relief. He felt dead.

‘Jade.’

‘Hello . . . Ashes?’

‘Jade, yes. This is me.’

He could hear her heart beating, and he could imagine her love for him now ruined. He had ruined it. He had ruined his life, their life together. His sons’ lives. He had made an
irretrievable error.

‘Ashes, where are you?’

‘I’m inside the House of Power.’

She didn’t respond and for a few seconds he thought of telling her again, to make it clear.

‘What you expect me to say, eh?’ There was a thick sob in her voice.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘
Sorry
?’

‘Yes. Please forgive me.’

‘Ashes . . . at this stage forgiveness is high talk. They going and kill allayou. They going and kill you all. Blow you away. That . . . or send you to prison for the rest of your life or
hang your arses.’

A hard lump formed in Ashes’ throat and tears fell. He could feel his breathing begin to change, his heart speed up; he patted for his inhaler and pumped spray into his mouth. But the
spray had run out. He had none left, his secret air.

‘Ashes, why you never tell me about this?’

‘Jade. This wasn’t supposed to end this way. This was all supposed to go well. It was a good plan which the Leader thought would work. He is not a bad man. He is not a treasoner. The
Leader had been planning this event for months, even years. He send people to train in camps in the desert.’

‘Plan? Desert? Are you all mad in the head? None of the wives knew about this. The Leader, he a madman. Allyuh crazy or what? I should never let you get involved with him. He mad. You mad
too. Ashes,
oh God
. . . why didn’t you tell me . . . the whole country in state of emergency.’

‘You seeing it on TV?’

‘No. They block it all out. Nothing on the TV but one show.
The Little Mermaid.
Running over and over again. Nothing else. We get the radio, though. One man still in the radio
station across the road from the television station. He lock himself in and he broadcasting the news every day. We get the picture. This is a terrible thing. All of town in chaos I hear. Looting
everywhere. Looters carrying TV and furniture all up the street by us. One man walk past just now with a bath tub on his head. The City of Silk is on fire, people dead. Utter lawlessness. I keep
the children in and all they do is ask for their father and all I tell them is that I don’t know where he is. They ask if you is with the Leader. I tell them no. I say you gone down south for
a trip to visit your uncle. I tell Arich and Arkab you gone to stay with him. What else I go tell them, eh?’

Ashes groaned.

‘You think I proud to tell them where they father is?’

Ashes took off his spectacles and rested them on his lap. His breathing was becoming uneven; he mustn’t panic or get any more upset. He must say goodbye to his wife.

‘You did this for your brother, River. You did this for some crazy idea. Family redemption. Sompthing so. I know is for River you do this. Well River dead. An you go dead too just now. The
Leader use you. You think he care about you or about us?’

‘The whole thing is over now,’ Ashes said. ‘The army coming for the ministers. Soon it all over.’

‘Oh,’ Jade said and her voice plummeted.

Ashes realised that this ending had no meaning for her. She wouldn’t be seeing him soon. He wouldn’t be coming home. He missed his life. He hadn’t reckoned on losing it. He
looked up out of the window and he could see a magnificent sky, and he wondered about the impossibility of reaching the seventh level, or ever ascending to any higher level of selfhood than level
one. He was a man. He had tried to grow but he had missed something.

‘Goodbye,’ Ashes whispered, his breath now very thin.

‘Ashes, what? Goodbye? Are you mad? Come
home
. I want you to get out of there in
one piece
, yuh hear? We need you. I ent going an be a single woman, no husband. We need
you and you must come back. Immediately. Get out of there, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Get out of there and come home.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ashes whispered.

‘I’m sorry too.’

‘Can I come home?’

‘Yes. Come
now
.’

Ashes put down the receiver and he sat very still with his back against the wall and tried very hard to breathe, but his lungs had constricted tight and it was very possible he might die right
there sitting on the floor after three days of revolution. Fat Clay of Cuba, he had similar health problems; he had coughed and wheezed his way through weeks of active revolution. But unlike him,
Fat Clay was a hero. He wasn’t a treasoner. He had been a liberator, stamping out oppression; he had got things right. They had cut off his hands in the end. Ashes closed his eyes and tried
to breathe through the rising panic in his soul, but he couldn’t and then he saw Breeze staring in at him from the door and he gasped, ‘Get the doctor.’