Trash (10 page)

I was going over Gardo’s story in my mind, and the confusion was getting worse and making me panic. Was it the wrong prisoner? There had been confusion over the number. Were we sitting with the wrong man?

‘Olivia, you don’t know who I am, do you? You don’t know anything about me.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I have no idea.’

He said something to Gardo in his own language, and Gardo answered softly.

The man drew breath sharply, and closed his eyes. ‘He says you paid ten thousand pesos to get to me. He is very generous with your money, I think. The going rate, Miss Olivia, is fifteen hundred. They got five thousand from a journalist once, but they kept him waiting three days and it was coming up to the Zapanta election.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Do you know Gardo or not?’

‘No.’

‘Then …’

‘He has used you to bribe his way to me. The money you paid bribes the administration here. The guards will bring people to me, and – like I said – there are often people wanting to see me, and I thought you must be one of them. The prison authorities make a good living from me, I think.’

‘But I don’t … I still don’t understand. Why do people come to see you?’

‘Gardo, you’re not going to explain this?’

Gardo said something in his own language, and there was a short, abrupt exchange. Gardo seemed to be pleading, but the old man interrupted. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. We speak in English with Miss Olivia. Miss Olivia has paid for this interview. We will say everything in English.’ He looked at me. ‘Your boy is playing a game and he wants to ask me questions on his own. He wants to speak to me privately, and I have said no. I can see you are bewildered, and – I am also very surprised … please.’

He bent forward in his chair, and I thought for a terrible moment he was going to be sick. He leaned on his stick, and seemed to be waiting for the pain to pass. He said something to Gardo in his own language again. Gardo took a cup from the table and filled it from my water bottle. He handed it to the old man, but the old man was shaking. He got a hand to the cup, but Gardo had to keep hold of it and feed it gently up to his mouth. The man clutched the boy’s arm.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He drank again. ‘I was saying … If I tell you who I am, Miss Olivia, and how I come to be here, things may become clearer. I am very near death now, as you can see. Do you know they still will not let me out? As if I could harm a fly.’ He smiled at me. ‘You know my name, but it means nothing to you. There’s no reason why it should.’

The pain had passed, and he was relaxing.

‘The reason I am in this jail is that I brought corruption charges against Senator Regis Zapanta thirty-five years ago. Do you know Senator Zapanta?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘He’s a big man in this country – our trusted vice-president. He is always in the papers for one thing or another. You are a tourist and you’re passing through – you would not know these names. Gardo here will know the name and even the face – is that true, Gardo?’

Gardo was nodding. ‘Everyone knows him.’

‘In this city he is a very big man. You don’t read the papers?’

I shook my head.

‘Nor do I any more. Once a month if I am lucky – they starve me of the news, and perhaps it’s for the best. Waiting for change has exhausted me: it’s probably best I hear so little! I was never important, Olivia – I served as a small officer only, in the east quarter of the city – humble ranks. You won’t know the system, so I won’t … Oh, it doesn’t even matter. What matters is that forty years ago I came upon information that Senator Zapanta had spirited away thirty million dollars of international aid money. It was a package of grants, with the United Nations leading, and it was to build hospitals and schools. They called it “seed-corn” money. Now, “seed-corn” money is very important in the way these things work. When a country receives such money, it is a condition that a proportion of the
money is matched by the government, and by other donor countries too. In this case, that thirty million was going to be added to, by our government here and by, oh … private investment – the big banks were involved. So that thirty would, we hoped, turn to sixty or seventy. Seventy million would have changed the city, Miss Olivia – at that time. But no schools or hospitals were ever built, and the city stayed poor. Senator Zapanta stole it, and I tried to prove he stole it. It never went to court, because the senator quickly counter-sued. It seemed he had many more friends than I, and infinitely more power. I ended up charged and prosecuted. I was convicted – my appeals were laughed at. Life imprisonment, I got, and …’

He paused again, and winced with pain.

‘I think the sentence is nearly over.’

Gardo again – just something short from me. Just to say to Sister Olivia that I am so sorry for what I did. We talked about it, the three of us, and we decided it was the only way – Rat said maybe we could tell you part of it, but I said no. I was the one who said we should trust nobody but ourselves.

I am sorry for that.

You must remember, please, that it was I who read the letter from José Angelico, over and over and over. We all knew – all of us – that we were so close, and what Raphael went through in the police station … Sister, I do not know how he went through that. I thought he was soft before that, just a little boy who would break, but I was wrong. Please understand, we could not tell you. It was just the three of us: Raphael, Rat and me, and already we
knew that soon we would be leaving – that it was not possible to stay much longer in Behala. So we did not want anyone to know anything.

Please forgive me for that, and I hope I see you again sometime. I am sorry how it ended for you.

Gabriel Olondriz smiled at me.

This is Olivia again.

‘I will tell you a little more,’ he said. ‘It will make sense, in time, and then this boy will tell us what he wants.’

I said, ‘How can a man steal thirty million dollars?’

‘How?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is done so often. It is done so easily – not in a suitcase: it is not like robbing a bank. In the government’s case it is usually done through bogus contracts: everybody siphons a little bit here, a little bit there. It is done through clever accounting and paying off the people who should be watching. In the case of Mr Zapanta, I know many men were involved, and some probably thought they were doing our country a service. It took me the best part of two years, but I assembled the paperwork. Like you,
Miss Olivia, for some time I worked unsalaried, because this was volunteer work I deemed to be of very great importance. We got copies of false contracts, and the bank transfers to invented accounts. We got copies of trans actions, always cash withdrawals, because this man always loved to handle cash. Huge sums in dollars! Dollars were the currency, never our own – and where were they going? Olivia, forgive me. I have told this tale so often it no longer has any … freshness.’

‘What happened?’ I said.

‘He was stock-piling dollars in a vault in his home.’

‘But you … you couldn’t prove it?’

‘I had so much evidence. Unfortunately for me, I was naïve. My office was raided. The same night there was a terrible fire at my house. I was away, but both my maid and my driver were killed in it. And every scrap of evidence went up in smoke. Then, Olivia – this was the clever part. He had been planning my downfall, and charges were ready to be laid against me – for financial malpractice. It was suggested that I had defrauded the government of half a million dollars, and it was proved that I had organized the murder of a well-known banker. Miss Olivia … to learn about the crimes I had committed while … sleeping! At first I thought it was all so crazy, and all so obvious, that I need not be afraid. I had lawyers who were relaxed also, and sure of success. But the lawyers – I realized this way too late – had been bought, and they fed all my defence straight back to Mr Zapanta. It is enough to make you laugh, almost. The
senator was smart. I was stupid. In this country you pay for being stupid, just as you pay for being poor. After a few months, just as the case was going well and I was certain to win it … I was arrested. Like I said, I was convicted.’ He paused. ‘I have been in jail ever since.’

Gardo stood up and pressed a cloth to the old man’s forehead. I saw the old man hold Gardo’s hand again.

‘Please, sir,’ said Gardo suddenly. ‘Who is Dante Jerome?’

The old man looked at Gardo, and then at me.

‘I think this boy has many questions,’ he said. ‘He has come to ask me questions, and I will answer them. Dante Jerome was my son.’

‘What is the harvest?’ said Gardo. ‘Also – sir – there are some words:
It is accomplished
. What does this mean?’

The old man said: ‘What is accomplished? What do you mean?’ He was speaking quietly.

‘
It is accomplished
,’ said Gardo. ‘
Go to the house now, and your soul would sing
.’

The old man worked his lips, and stared. ‘I need you to tell me what is accomplished,’ he said. ‘You have to explain yourself, I think.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Gardo. ‘I don’t know what it means. But I am told that if you could visit Senator Zapanta’s house right now, your soul would sing because it is accomplished.’

The old man opened his mouth, but he said nothing. He looked at me, and then at Gardo. His eyes had become
luminous again, and he was leaning forward in his chair. He took hold of Gardo’s wrist and said – very softly: ‘Who are you, boy? Please stop playing games now. You know things that are very important.’

‘I am from Behala dumpsite.’

‘Yes. A street boy, I knew it.’

He held Gardo tight. ‘And that is one of the … darkest streets, I think. I worked for many years with street children, my son also. You will think I am being cruel, Olivia, but under these new clothes I can smell the street. It never, ever goes away. Why are you here, boy? Please tell me.’

Gardo said: ‘Because I have found a letter from Mr José Angelico, sir. We found it in a station locker. It is a letter that the police are looking for, and it is addressed to you, and it says that you must rejoice because it is accomplished.’

‘Give me the letter.’

‘I did not dare to bring it, sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘For fear it would be taken, sir.’

‘José writes to me each year. Why would you have a letter he wrote to me?’

‘We think he wrote it just before the police took him. We found it, and—’

‘Why did the police take him? Where is he?’

‘The police killed him, sir. He was killed when they were questioning him.’

Gardo spoke softly, but the last words still fell like a blow. I saw the old man wince again and buckle, and Gardo stood back from him. He talked softly to the old man in his own language, and the man seemed to take yet more blows – I watched his old hands clench into fists. When the gentleman looked up, his face was wet and all I could see was pain.

We watched the old man shake. Something deep inside was shaking him, and there was nothing we could do but watch.

This is me, Raphael.

Sister Olivia was a good friend to us that day, and – for reasons that will be clear soon enough – we did not see her again to say thank-you. Writing this is a way to say thank-you, and one day maybe we will meet again and say it the way we need to say it.

I am so sorry for deceiving you, Sister.

I must talk about what we did while Gardo was in the jail – which was important. Then I will hand over to Rat, and write for him. You see, he and I decided to do something too, because it was hard sitting waiting and waiting all day, and I have not felt right since the police station – I cannot stay still, and everyone is looking at me always. We took the letter again, and stole off by the canal to a place nobody goes – a place I felt safe in, where you could see people coming. We squatted down and went over the
newspaper cuttings again, me reading them out, all the way through. I read the letter too, which was coming apart in my hands by now. We both knew it almost by heart, since we’d been helping Gardo remember it – even the jumble of numbers stuck on at the end. Those names again, coming at us: José Angelico, the man killed in a police station. He felt like a brother to me now and I was dreaming about him. Gabriel Olondriz, his friend in Colva Prison. And now the fat senator, Zapanta … When I read the line about Senator Zapanta, Rat stopped me and made me re-read it: ‘
If only you could go to Zapanta’s house now: it would make your soul sing
.’

‘What’s that mean?’ said Rat.

I didn’t know. We’d all been saying that every time we read it:
I don’t know, don’t know, don’t know
.

‘Where’s his house, though? Maybe we should visit.’

‘Green Hills,’ I said. ‘Everyone knows that. Same place as José Angelico.’

The senator was a famous man, and everyone knew he had a place out there, just beyond the city, big as a town. Everyone knew he was rich and old, and I’d seen his fat face in the papers I hooked up, oh, so often – papers that more often than not wrapped up the stupp. Everyone knew he owned big pieces of the city – there are only five or six families who do out here, and his name was on streets, on a shopping mall in the fancy part of town, and in rising skyscrapers … He was a big man in every way. Vice-president for two years and his smiling face everywhere.

It was Rat’s idea to pay him a visit, and I liked the idea, if only to get me out of Behala.

‘Why would seeing the place make your soul sing?’ said Rat. We wondered and wondered, and agreed that taking a trip might tell us.

It seemed to me the problem would be the usual one. Money – for the bus. I’d given everything to my auntie, so I was broke again.

Rat said to me, ‘It’s OK. I got enough.’

I have to say I didn’t believe him. I said, ‘How have you got anything?’ I didn’t say it to be mean – it’s just that he’s about the poorest-looking boy on the dumpsite, so the idea he had more than a peso made me smile.

He smiled right back at me and shook his head. ‘I’ve got more than you think,’ he said slowly. ‘Come with me, and let’s see who’s poor.’