House of Ashes (25 page)

He finds his jeans and a jersey and his baseball hat. He decides he will drive half of the way, then park in a private car park he knows and then he will catch two maxis the rest of the way, one
across country, the second into town. He will be travelling south and then east, back to the City of Silk. It will take him hours, maybe half the day to get there. He will call his wife on the way,
a small lie. ‘Something came up last night . . . a family thing. Ah goin into town.’ She will be very surprised. He’s never been back to the City of Silk in all this time. He goes
all shut down when she mentions taking a trip into town. She will be curious as hell. But he’ll make an excuse; he will not say the truth, which is
I haven’t told you everything. I
shot a woman dead. I shot a pregnant woman dead. That is what I have been hiding from you for twenty-three years.

*

The trip across the centre of the island is long and bumpy. Villages flash past. The road, in places, feels soft, as if the asphalt is warm from the core of the earth. There
are jhandi flags outside colourful houses and there are old men sitting on chairs outside these houses and young pot hounds asleep on their sides. There is KFC and Subway almost everywhere and
overcrowded Christian cemeteries, their tombs all lopsided from the earth which is slowly and mysteriously mobile. Sans Amen is not such a small island; it feels spacious and unknown. Fields
appear, and hulking black water buffalo with cattle egrets standing on top of them like angels astride their chariots. And the spicey smell of
chadon beni
is everywhere, blessed thistle, a
cilantro which grows like a weed.
Chadon beni
and the stink of car fumes as other maxi taxis weave in and out of the traffic, some letting out black puffs from the exhaust.

The countryside of Sans Amen is full of secrets – perhaps some just like his. How many others are hiding out here? How many failed, intimate, desperate stories are being hushed up and
extinguished here? Just like his. Joseph remembers his city childhood, his mother, his first life, the life which ended in a bullet-hail.
Thank God
for all this countryside. It gave him
cover. He thinks of the other escaped gunman, Ashes, and he wonders what happened to him. Is he still in the country, hiding? Did his wife forgive him? He watches, mesmerised, as the island flashes
past: rastamen with towering wrapped dreads selling bags of pommeracs in the road, massive factories selling paint, sweet drinks, hardware. Villages where the maxi tracks into thin maze-like
private roads, Julie mango trees standing laden and sturdy behind walls; he sees a young woman poking the branches with a long stick. And all along the way the mauve-green mountains hover in the
background, like the curves of a colossal woman lying on her side, the slopes of a generous lover. Joseph feels tense and screwed up and nervous the closer he gets to town.
It will be
okay
, he whispers.

*

When they reach the City of Silk it is mid-afternoon. The savannah is parched to a crisp brown fuzz from all the hot weather and the Pouis are like delicate pink clouds
erupting in slow motion from the tops of the trees. The ground beneath is all mottled pink and it looks like someone has dropped lots of tissues around them. The maxi flies much too fast down the
middle lane and then it’s round the corner and he sees the gargantuan silver domes which look like shells inside each other, or like a part of a space rocket has fallen off and plummeted to
earth. Already he feels uncomfortable. The City of Silk used to feel village-like; he knew the place, he knew the streets, the people. It was for everyone. Now he wonders if it has changed too
much, if it has become a City of the Rich. These silver domes look like they landed here from an alien universe. He thinks he has made a big mistake coming back. To do what? See what?

Joseph asks the driver to let him off close by, at the top of Francis Street, and it is then that he is glad of the baseball cap. His heart starts to beat much faster and he feels a tightness in
his entire body as if it is trying to make itself smaller. The sky is high and open and blue and he walks down the pavement in the full glare of the sun, past many shops, most of which are
opticians; it’s like everybody has gone blind or short-sighted in the City of Silk. And then he passes some offices and government buildings like the Ministry of Finance and then, he forgot
it was there, the big gaol, yes, squat and low and sweltering in the sun. In the middle of the city. The Leader saved him from a spell inside there, years ago now. It has a gatehouse and a low
rusted galvanised roof and a tower and a spotlight and a small door in the big green metal door. A woman goes to the small door in the big door and rings the buzzer and waits. There is a man in
uniform talking to another woman; a green army van is parked outside.

Joseph walks past the entrance to the gaol in the centre of town. Not one single person turns to look at him. Not the female soldier driving the van, not the armed guard in the tower, not the
woman waiting for the small door to open. He strides past all this, floating inches from the hot pavement, past the water hydrant, past the big church on the right surrounded by fir trees and royal
palms which resemble fancy umbrellas, past a set of balconies which he remembers well, the famous boys’ school, a school he used to walk past all puffed up and furious when he was younger.
This school only takes the very best scholars, men like Hal.

Joseph walks on, unseen. He is a visitor, or a tourist even, feeling uncertain, feeling like he has made a stupid decision to come all this way. He walks past more shops, the street getting busy
with life, with people. He is deeper into town now, and the vibe he remembers begins to show itself. A man walks towards him who is bleary-eyed from drugs. There is a sleazy nightclub with laughing
Buddhas out the front and a sign saying that patrons must dress
elegantly casual
.

The City of Silk is small, he realises, tight and packed and busy. But when he left
he
was small, a boy. Now he is grown it is as if he has put on the right pair of spectacles, or he
has adjusted the lenses on his eyes to the right strength. The City of Silk is not so big at all. In his memory the streets were very long and wide, but this isn’t true, they are narrow. A
man with a straw hat on walks towards him and Joseph notices his short-sleeved shirt is empty on one side. Joseph dares to look into the man’s face and the man looks back, a practised
defiance in his eyes. The one-armed man is the only person to notice him at all, and that is because Joseph is staring at the space left by his arm.

Soon, he reaches City Hall and his innards freeze and there it is: the famous square, the main square in town, where old men go to socialise. It is surrounded by high wrought-iron railings. He
can see old men still sitting there, playing chess, like they never left. The square has a bandstand and a fountain and it feels quiet and peaceful, like it is safe. And yet he feels bad, awkward
and unsure of himself. He crosses the road and enters through the open gate and then he is walking calm so, through the square in front of the House of Power which is still painted magenta after
all these years. He forces his legs to carry him, to keep walking towards the end of the long narrow pathway. He feels sick and unsteady, like his nerves are all up by his head and his stomach is
like soup. He remembers jumping out of the back of the truck marked W.A.T.E.R. with his new gun, running up the steps to the public balcony shouting,
God is our saviour
.

Joseph stops directly in front of the House. It is like standing in front of a monument to his childhood. He tries to remember who he was then. He has limped a little ever since those six days
in the House, especially when it rains; he gets a stitch in his groin, a small stabbing feeling. Like he was stabbed then, not by Greg Mason, not by anyone. It’s a phantom wound, he’s
been told: ‘psychosomatic’. He has seen the doctor many times about it, and no one can find the reason for this pain. But sometimes he feels so bad and ill with it, this quiet hurt,
that he has to lie down for days.
Bones
, he thinks. Four humans buried under the House, at least, from centuries back. An innocent woman, a clerk, shot dead, others gunned down too in the
corridors. He remembers the bodies on the steps, rotting in the heat. Waving the white flag for peace. The House of Power is really some kind of ongoing and active grave. It is the House of Many
Dead. Archaeologists have found bones now. And, finally, it looks like they are repairing the panes of glass where bullets flew.

It’s all he can do to stand still. The House of Power reminds him of a dignified old woman. Its outer walls are cracked and flaking and it looks like it hasn’t cared for itself, like
it hasn’t washed its face for a dozen years at least. It is peeling. It is cordoned off by a high fence and clad with scaffolding. Ideas come to him: he could make a mad dash into the street,
across the two lanes of traffic and announce himself, proclaim who he is and what he has done.

‘Here I am! It is me, I am one of the gunmen. I’m one of those that was never punished. I survived. I’m here. I escaped.’

Or he could clamber over the corrugated wall and get himself arrested. Or he could wait till dark and sneak over the wall and explore the place, graffiti his cell number in the chamber. Or he
could urinate against the cordon in an act of provocation. He feels sad and sick. The spaceship at the other end of town has no feeling to it and no presence, not like this. This building spreads
itself out, it owns the City; it has a dome and a spike at the top. Then he notices that there is no dragon there on top. He stares hard. Instead, there’s a bird. A dove. Made of bronze with
an olive branch in its mouth. They must have swapped it for the dragon the man Ashes had told him about.

He remembers Aspasia Garland talking about saving leatherback turtles, about politics being about everything, about taking care of the earth, not just people. ‘Breeze’, that was his
nickname. His big gun. He shot a lady dead inside that House; he was so excited and overwhelmed by all the action. He had wanted to kill her too, his mother, kill her dead for all the time she
never gave him.

His groin begins to throb. He feels a jab in his side and also a dull ache in his heart which he will never erase and neither can Sans Amen. So, after all these years, they will
‘reconstruct’ the place, rebuild and renovate the House to its former so-called glory. They will reinstate its grandeur, its righteousness. This place of ruling in this City is built on
the bones of others. Who were these others? Does anybody care? They will polish up the peace dove. He has a sense that this reconstruction is the opposite of progress; that the House of Power was
not built for them; it was built for Victoria. Politicians inside the House are nothing like conservationists; they are not putting hatchlings back into the sea. They are not concerned with future
generations.

Joseph walks towards what used to be the old fire station. It is painted gentle pastel colours now. It was all crooked and dusty and abandoned the last time he saw it; now it looks like an
attractive spot. Behind it is a dazzling building, an apparition of white, like a holy place. Tentatively, he draws closer and sees that in fact it is a library. It is the National Library of Sans
Amen. It is magnificent, like a big white butterfly or a collection of sails. There is a small amphitheatre to one side which makes it look as though it could be in Rome. It is a place for books,
for studying. When he was fourteen he couldn’t read properly.

In the time of the attempted coup there was no library here; it was an old building on the other side of the square. He remembers Ashes telling him that books liberated people, the common
citizen, from poverty of spirit. A man who read books was a man who was freer than most.

Joseph walks left, behind the library, towards the sea. He should never have hidden at all, not for all these years. Hiding is cowardice. Hiding is not going to help him or the country heal. And
yet he saw little alternative than to keep his head down. Has his real father been hiding too, from him, from all his other sons and daughters? Who is he the son of? His mother told him so little.
His father was one of ten men who never stayed long. Maybe he could start to ask around; there must be public records, a register of some sort. Who, who, was his father? There must be relatives or
half-siblings around he could track down and ask. What does his father look like, fat or thin, short or tall? Does he have good teeth?

It is then that he sees the new promenade, a long stretch of sculpted public space – trees and a walkway – and he realises that now he’s in another place, a city he
doesn’t recognise. This part of town was rough. Now it looks like a vibrant bustling square. It has been recreated, renewed. It used to be full of vagrants and beggars and men drinking rum in
parlours. It was a violent place, edgy and unsafe. It was where the men used to send him to drop money and drugs. He came here for the men in the pizzeria on the east side of town. He came to do
their deals before he got bailed from prison by the Leader. This is where he got caught, picked up by police and locked up. On a night run. Right here, where there are now trees and umbrellas and a
wide open feel. He was entrapped here – and now it feels spacious. The sea is still there, though. It is like gun grey satin on the other side of the square. The small white lighthouse on the
foreshore stands like a man he once knew. He is still standing there, alone, and he says now, ‘So there you are again. What took you so long? Hello, Breeze.’

Joseph puts his hands over his ears. He walks through this busy square he doesn’t know anymore and he starts to walk faster. It is now coming to him, who he was. Breeze. He was worthless
once, lost, abandoned, hard, a criminal, a fighter, rude and sour and difficult and proud and ugly and bad – and he starts to run, run up Chanders Street, run and run, fast fast fast.

‘Breeze,’ he hears the name everywhere now, everyone noticing him as he runs.