House of Ashes (18 page)

Hal came to stand next to him and said to him, ‘You go with Breeze and take the Prime Minister away, go down with him together.’

Ashes felt like it was the first time in days that he had been asked something he was happy to do.

‘He cannot stand by himself,’ said Hal. ‘You will need to support him down the steps.’ Then his walkie-talkie crackled.

They both stared at it. ‘Like it still have battery left,’ Hal said.

It was the army; they’d seen the flag.

‘Yeah,’ said Hal. ‘We sending the Prime Minister out. We go need a wheelchair. We sending him now.’

*

Ashes and Breeze each took one side of the PM, hooking his arms over their shoulders. Ashes had hold of his briefcase too; it had been found amidst the rubble in the chamber.
He was a big man and he was heavy and one of his legs was badly wounded. He shuffled and yet he was upright, still, in his manner and his posture. He had on a pair of dark black sunglasses to
shield his bad eyes. An ambulance had already arrived in the street on the east side of the House of Power to take him away. Ashes and Breeze took care not to walk too fast or too slowly. Ashes
felt out of himself, like he was watching this happening from the sky. He was setting the PM free and yet he had come to take him hostage. They had damaged the PM, maybe forever, and he’d
turned out to be brave.

Breeze kept saying, ‘Yes, Mr Prime Minister’ to anything he said, keeping very penitent and formal. They had to walk down the mahogany steps, down into the cool terrazzo central
court, and then they were at one of the side doors, a grille-type gate. The rain had stopped and in its place there was a razor-sharp glare. There was a wide sweep of gravel and a sculpted hedge
and again Ashes had that feeling of normality and civil order being just inches away, on the outside. For days the House of Power had been a gaol and he now felt like how a newly released prisoner
might feel. He blinked into the sun. The army paramedics had left a wheelchair out on the gravel for the PM. Ashes couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to let go of the PM.
Take me
with you
, is what he felt.
Don’
t leave us
,
don’t leave us to this mess
, was what his insides were crying out. He glanced at Breeze; Breeze had a look of
held-in regret. The young man seemed a lot harder than him. The young boy had toughened up early on. And now he’d shot someone inside. In some ways he was a much more experienced person than
Ashes.

They managed to get the Prime Minister to his wheelchair and sit him down. Ashes carefully placed his briefcase on his knees. He wanted to say something but he could see that the PM
didn’t. There was nothing to be said. No words to exchange between a captor and his prime victim in the end. Breeze looked like he’d quite a lot of things to say, but he wasn’t
going to blurt anything out. Ashes wanted to say at the very least, ‘Goodbye, Mr Prime Minister,’ but it became apparent that their relationship was over. He would never see the PM
again. They weren’t friends. They had no links to each other. Ashes backed away. Breeze looked like he might faint. He stepped backwards too, then back again, so they were standing behind the
grille of the House of Power, the gaol they had made for themselves. They watched the army paramedics move forward and fetch the PM, tending him, wheeling him around and back towards the ambulance.
None of the three men so much as glanced backwards at Ashes and Breeze. Again, Ashes had that feeling of being utterly invisible. He was a man with no meaning and no importance in the world outside
himself, the world of men and power. The PM was wheeled away, and soon he was out of sight. Ashes glanced at Breeze and he saw that Breeze needed to be alone.

He left Breeze to be quiet and then he headed for the only safe place in the House, the small library. He opened the wooden door and let himself in and then knelt on the floor and he looked up
at Jesus on the cross gazing upwards at the sky. He bet Jesus knew a thing or two about sky. Silently, Ashes allowed himself to weep, for he’d completely lost track of why he was here.

‘Who is this all for?’ he said aloud. ‘The Leader, the PM . . . whose power do I serve? Who?’ He looked up towards the sky and felt desolate and unsure of everything in
his life. He knew nothing. Everything was gone.

Then . . . an answer came. And it was beautiful and clear:
a man must serve his higher self.

Ashes bowed his head. He gave thanks. He was grateful and he was miserable too; he knew the first part of his life was over. He had ruined it. Soon he would have to face a new life . . . maybe
even death. He wept for something about life or growth, something about himself he’d missed, and he said aloud, ‘I surrender.’

I comforted Mrs Gonzales in her loss. Even though it was what she’d wanted all along, even though she’d threatened suicide over his ill health, she now looked a
little deflated that the PM was gone.

‘A piece of me gone with him, praise the Lord,’ she said. She looked tired and yet almost happy. Vindicated. ‘I glad he safe. He not like these bandits. He a working man. He do
things fair, by the book. He is a man of compassion. I does see how he care about people who work here with him, all the long hours he work.’

I nodded. I also knew the PM to be a hard-working man. The PM had good backup at home. He was old fashioned and maybe out of touch, or maybe he’d just been slow with things; maybe we could
have been more transparent, yes. But all this mayhem? I looked at Mrs Gonzales sitting there in her wig, which was perfectly coiffed, stiff, from all the hairspray. The stiffness and precision and
neatness of it reminded me of the PM. I could see why they understood each other. Things in Sans Amen had been run so formally once.

‘I very happy I stayed to protect him,’ she said, her mouth turned down in defiance. ‘No regrets, man. I glad I stay here with allyuh. Is me who get the PM free. Me.’

I smiled at this. ‘Sometimes,’ I was thinking aloud, ‘I can see the bigger picture of all of this . . . you know? It’s all clear, what has happened here. All the
connections and reasons for this kind of occurrence. And sometimes I feel like, no, Aspasia, you’re dreaming all this up; you are imagining things. It’s not really happening. And then,
no, I’m back again: Sans Amen is such a small place. This
is
all connected. Something like this couldn’t happen of it own accord.’

‘Of course not.’ Mrs Gonzales’ face set in a smile of utter certainty. ‘These badjohns know some of them politicians in here. How you think they come in so
easily?’

‘Everything is mixed up,’ I said. ‘That dead woman back there. She is linked too, you know. You remember that young girl long time ago they call Bathsheba?’

Mrs Gonzales nodded. ‘Yes. They shoot she when she was carrying a chile in she belly.’

‘They shot her dead in the street for being a revolutionary – and yet not long later her sister went into politics.’

‘Really? Oh, my.’

‘Yes. She was a popular politician. She even became Sans Amen’s ambassador to Cuba at one point. You see how things work here? One sister exterminated for her extreme leftist
politics, the other sister celebrated. That is how things work here in Sans Amen. You go in one door, you leave by another. Everyone coming and going from this House of Power. They just using
different doors.’

Mrs Gonzales clicked her throat and nodded. ‘That is called corruption.’

I was grateful for her attention, an audience for my thoughts.

‘You see that hard-looking man over there? The one swaggering and looking so tough?’

Mrs Gonzales nodded.

‘He is Greg Mason. He is the last remaining member of the Brotherhood of Freedom Fighters. You remember them? After black power over, the marches crushed, they locked all of them up on
that island off the coast? In its heyday there were three hundred members, twenty-four were active and about fourteen were shot dead.’

‘You know all that?’

‘Yes.’

‘The government . . . shot them?’

‘Well . . . you could say they were “eliminated”, quietly, and not so quietly, one by one, here and there. By the police force, on the orders of the PM at the time. That man
Mason standing there is the last link to the Brotherhood and to 1970. That was an actual revolution. Not like this mess.’

‘
Serious
? He survive all that?’

‘Yes.’

‘No wonder he look so tough.’

‘The Brotherhood began as a bunch of outlaws, really. Bandits, crooks. They robbed banks. They caused a nuisance. They had no ideology at first; it was only later they began to call
themselves “guerilla fighters”, and took to the hills to train. They had a middle-class leadership and some middle-class supporters. Doctors were sympathetic to them, lawyers used to
provide free legal representation. You see the white minister over there?’

Mrs Gonzales nodded.

‘It was said he even provided bail for members of the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood were popular with the intelligentsia. But then most guerilla fighters had this appeal.’

‘Yeah, man,’ said Mrs Gonzales. ‘Fat Clay of Cuba – is his entire fault. He was too damn handsome.’

Aspasia laughed. ‘You’re right – he made it attractive to be a guerilla fighter. Fat Clay of Cuba was fat and yet handsome. Communism was sexy thanks to him. A man of the
Caribbean.’

‘You think Fat Clay was such a good man?’

‘Who knows. He has become a saint, a man of virtue and an icon of revolution. But they say he was very violent too, that he shot many people, even some of his own comrades. He had wives
and many lovers, official children and outside children.’

‘A man of the Caribbean, yes.’

‘He was a sexy communist.’

‘You find communism sexy?’

‘Not at all.’

‘It take away my right to do as I please. Everybody different. In Cuba taxi driver or cleaner get the same wage as a politician. That is not fair, not to me, and I is a cleaner. And
besides, they have no food to eat in Cuba.’

‘Cuba is an extreme example.’

‘Then what about Grenada? They try the same thing there too. Revolution. A revolutionary party, a time of change. Then the army shot their own revolutionary heroes. Crazy thing,
man.’

I felt a surge of misery; it came up from my chest. Grenada, Cuba, Sans Amen – revolution in the Caribbean had mostly failed or backfired. I wanted to cry but there were no tears, nothing
inside. Why were we killing all these people in the name of change?

‘Is like we Caribbean people mess up real good every time we try this thing called revolution,’ I said. ‘Is like it too simple. Or like it too good to be true. Every time the
liberators become oppressors.’

‘True. Fat Clay and all them fellers needed to overthrow injustice back in the day. But now, they jus keeping people miserable, same, same. You ever been to Cuba?’

‘Yes. It’s a strange place. Havana feels like everything stopped working twenty-five years ago. The whole of the city feels like it’s melting, like a big cake. Revolution
happen and then everything got locked down. Embargoes, stalemate. Now the people suffer a different set of problems. Freedom to think, mostly. The state control everything. News, radio.’

‘Things not like that here. Why these damn fellers come inside here and try to take control?’

‘They figure they is liberators.’

‘Well . . . something fishy about it all,’ said Mrs Gonzales.

‘In what way?’

Mrs Gonzales lowered her voice.

‘Quite a few big-shot ministers are
absent
,’ she whispered. ‘Y’understand? Big names. You know. They
not here
.’

I nodded. I understood. I’d been thinking the same thing. I bet Mervyn had too. Neither of us had been able to bring it up; it meant the worst. Betrayal, treachery within our own ranks.
Mervyn and I had left this subject alone.

‘You don’t think it is
obvious
?’ said Mrs Gonzales. ‘Why you think I stay? The PM get stitched up real good. He get his arse cut. He on his own with
this.’

I’d been slowly, slowly threading together these same ideas. Something wasn’t right at all, from within.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I saw some of them here last Wednesday afternoon and is like they all
left
. The House was in the middle of an important debate about corruption in the
last government. But is like some of the big names disappeared after the tea break.’

‘The whole thing is
fishy
.’

I nodded. ‘Fishy as
hell,
’ I blurted, surprising myself. These had been my private, secret thoughts. But if they’d been the same thoughts as the cleaner in the House,
a woman who’d been around a long time, long enough to see who came and went, to overhear what others never could, maybe I wasn’t so off in my thinking. The PM had been double crossed;
some of his own ministers, even allies, may have had wind of this. And they hadn’t intervened. They wanted to see him deposed. I dreaded to think of the who and what; it was a rat’s
nest inside the House.

‘How could something like this happen in Sans Amen and not one person in the government know? Eh?’ said Mrs Gonzales. She grimaced and nodded to herself and clicked her throat.
‘You know what?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I here alone in this House all these nights. I sometimes come in on weekends too. I see many things and no one take any notice of me. Is like I is a ghost coming and going about here,
minding my own damn business. No one notice me. Them big shots have more to think about than if this place is clean, but I hear many things said because no one care if I overhear. Except the PM;
only he notices me. I hear one thing one time.’

‘What?’

‘I hear about the guns. I hear about them coming in.’

‘You hear that
inside
this House?’

Mrs Gonzales nodded but her lips were sealed tight.

‘Yeaaaah. Long time ago I hear about this. But it like I choose to forget it. I ent know what they talking about. Now it make sense.’