Ursa

by Tina Shaw

  “But the gherkins never move,” I point out, feeling a bit cheeky that day.

  Boss taps the side of his nose. “Green crops,” he murmurs mysteriously.

  There’s a rainy day. We potter inside the shed, doing all the little jobs that tend to get left while it is fine. Boss puts a pot of water on the stove to boil for chicory, and we eat our lunch sitting in our usual places – Boss in the old brown armchair that’s moulded to his shape, and I’m perched on the wooden crate. It’s the same lunch every day, though it always tastes good. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of sausage and bread.

  When Boss gets up to make the chicory, I slip a piece of the bread into my jacket pocket for Marina. She’s looking peaky these days, and spends a lot of time lying on her mattress brooding. It’s a shame we don’t have an aunt and uncle in the country so she can have a change of scenery and some fresh air.

  Rain patters on the iron roof, and drops race across the window. The mugs of chicory steam up the glass and make the shed feel cosy. It’s hard to think when I last felt so good. Maybe on the river. But this is a different kind of happiness. The word contentment comes to mind.

  Boss might be thinking something similar, for his voice is mellow and relaxed.

  “You might be wondering,” he begins, as if about to tell a story, “how I came to be holed up here in the Director’s garden …”

  I had been wondering exactly that: the Cerel man has a very fortunate position.

  Boss gives a low chuckle. The glossy raindrops skid across the glass. “It was an accident, to tell the truth. I was in a crowd outside the House of Law one day – you know, that last big national holiday we had many years back, when everybody still went to the Via Parada to celebrate and give thanks to the Director.”

  I was a little boy then, yet I still remember it. The street had been closed off, there were tents selling beer, and a man walked up and down with a cooker hanging over his shoulders, roasting sausages. Music was playing, and people danced in the middle of the street.

  “Well, when the Director came through in his carriage, you know, with the black horse, I was in a crush of people and trying to get a good look at him. Everybody was waving little flags and cheering.”

  That bit, I remember clearly. It was the first time I’d ever seen one of the Travester horses. It was after that day that the Director started to travel around the city not in an open carriage but in the black automobile.

  “You know, tall as I am …” Boss isn’t all that much taller than myself, “I couldn’t see above all the heads, so I was casting round to see if there was a handy step or some way I could get a head above the crowd. That’s when I saw the bloke with the gun. He was up on a step, and his eyes were fixed on the Director. The gun was down by his side. A pistol. Everybody was busy cheering the Director, so nobody else had noticed.”

  Boss blows on the inky surface of the chicory and takes a sip.

  “It didn’t sink in straight off. I mean, the Director was popular back then. Most people thought he was a hero for saving Ursa from the drought.”

  He takes another sip, smacking his lips, and I wish he’d get on with the story.

  “Then I saw the bloke lift up his gun and steady it on his other arm. It was obvious, even to me, what he was going to do.

  “Anyway, I didn’t think twice. I threw myself at the bloke. He went down and the gun went off – straight up into the air, thank the gods. I had a good grip on his wrist, so he couldn’t do much damage on that score. Damn near broke his wrist, getting him to drop that gun. By then, people had realised what was going on. Women and kids were screaming. About a dozen men landed on top of us. People shouting and yelling. Black Marks turned up, and dragged us both to our feet.”

  “That’s some story.”

  Boss turns the mug of chicory between his hands.

  “Me, I’m no hero. It’s just the way it happened.” He sounds ambivalent on this point, as if he ponders it late at night, viewing the event from different angles. He glances at me wryly. “A bunch of us were taken in front of the Director. I just stood there, scared as hell how it was going to go. That bloke could’ve said it was me who had the gun. But the others all vouched for me. So did the Black Marks who’d stepped into the fray.

  “And that’s how I got this job. It was my reward for fast thinking. Or maybe ’cause the Director decided I was lucky for him, so he’d keep me close.”

  “What happened to the bloke with the gun?”

  Boss shrugs. “I don’t rightly know. Better not to ask about that kind of thing.” He looks at the window, probably checking the weather. The rain has eased off. He stands up, his spine cracking as he stretches his back. “You finish your chicory, then we’ll set to again. I’m going for a slash.”

  Sipping the bitter chicory, I imagine the Director being killed that day – assassinated. Would the city now be a better place for Cerels to live? Perhaps the old Director would have come back from his house on Karis, where it’s rumoured he’s practically a prisoner, and we could all have carried on like normal. Perhaps it isn’t too late. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking. The Director had already seeded the idea that Cerels were inferior … perhaps his death wouldn’t have changed anything.

  I take my tin mug outside and rinse it under the tap. Boss is coming back from the midden, buttoning up his trousers (piss can also be gold, apparently). Side by side, our backs to the big house, we hoe the crumbly damp earth between the potato plants.

  * * *

  A few days later, I’m sitting on the floor, my head resting on my mother’s lap while she strokes my hair. I’m too old to be babied like this, but Ma seems to like it. I can’t help going over the story in my mind: the Director passing by in his open carriage, the man with the gun. The heroic act – on the part of the gunman. He sacrificed himself. Though if he’d been successful, he might well have been a hero instead of a martyr. And it was also a heroic act on the part of Boss to stop the man. He himself, instead of the Director, could have got shot.

  It makes me wonder about the sacrifice my mother has made.

  “I remember seeing the Director in a carriage,” I say quietly, “pulled by a big black horse.”

  Ma’s hand pauses for a moment, then she resumes her stroking. It’s very pleasant, just like when I was a little boy and ran to her with something hurt and she’d comfort me. Every now and then she stops to untangle a knot in my hair.

  “It’s true,” she murmurs, “in the early days of his dictatorship the Director did ride around in an open carriage … waving at the happy people.” A sarcastic tone.

  “Was it not so bad back then, in the city?”

  She is silent for a few moments, thinking. “To your average person, even Cerels, things were fine. We had food again and life was getting back to normal. Eventually rain came too, and we forgot about the drought.”

  Staring straight ahead, I’m looking at the open door and the dim corridor beyond, except I’m seeing that long-ago time. “What went wrong?”

  I feel my mother shrug. “There were various opinions.”

  “But you,” I have to ask, “you knew something different, didn’t you?”

  Her voice, when she answers, holds a mournful note, like the start of autumn. “Yes. Your father and I saw the signs early on. We tried to show people what was happening. We had a small printing press, and put out leaflets. However not many people wanted to believe us.”

  In the distance a dog barks. “We could have organised a rebellion, a coup, back then – there was still a chance. There were others who believed the same things as we did. Our friend Hern, for example. But to make a difference, it needed a lot of people to rise up, and we didn’t get the support we needed in time.”

  “And then the men started getting taken away.”

  “Yes.”

  Papa was picked up on the street, on his way home from work. A neighbour told us about it. Then my mother, along with me, was taken to be interrogated.

  �
�And Hern,” I say, “why don’t we see him, if he’s such a good friend?”

  Ma’s hand stills on my head. “I can’t risk having him come here – in case the Black Marks are watching, and take him in for questioning. He was one of those who got away.” She sighs. “At any rate, your grandmother keeps in touch with him.”

  It’s a lot to take in. “Didn’t anybody try to stop him, the Director?”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathes. “There were attempts. Though not successful, unfortunately.”

  “Why not?”

  Her hand on my head is still now and heavy. “He is clever, the Director. He is always on guard. He always has people around him. And he knows how much the Cerels must hate him … because he hates us, you see.” She sighs. “But maybe, also, he has been lucky.”

  Well, maybe the Director’s luck is about to run out.

  14

  One day a week I don’t have to go to the garden, and me and Bit have got plans to go fishing. First, there’s something else I want to do. Outside Bit’s building, we turn right and head east. We pass two streets on the left, then Market Street across the way on the right.

  “D’you think we’ll be able to get close enough?” asks Bit.

  We’ve already talked it over, and I still don’t know the answer. “Probably.”

  “Why don’t you wait until Last Day?”

  “’Cause we don’t get to see him then anyway.”

  On the last day of each month, families are allowed to leave parcels at the wild camps for their fathers, husbands and sons. There is no great expectation of seeing your loved one, but letters can be left and picked up, foodstuffs too, which hopefully will reach the right person, and clothing. If anybody dares to ask what the men are doing, they’re given the same old story: the men are helping to build the underground tunnel system that will make the city safe from another drought. Not that anybody has seen any evidence of it.

  I know the route to the wild camps well – from taking my brother to the camp, and all the other times I’ve gone by myself. It’s best to stick to the alleyways rather than risk bumping into any of the Black Marks on the busier streets. You never know when you might get hassled just for being a Cerel kid. Maybe we’d get our rods confiscated, on a whim, and I’m very attached to my fishing rod. It took me many patient hours to make.

  “Hey, shit-for-brains.” A kid is standing in the doorway of a dark, poky shop. “Where’s your river?”

  “We could take him,” mutters Bit.

  “Just keep walking.”

  We walk for another hour, into a barren, less populated district that I don’t know all that well, except for when I’ve visited the wild camp. Eric found Papa for us a year ago, and I bought a hand-drawn map from him. When we come to the road that leads to the entrance of the camp, I lead us through an abandoned warehouse area on the left, and approach the camp that way.

  A finger to my lips, I prop my rod against the building and Bit does the same. Then we creep to the corner of the building.

  There’s a wide area of tall grass and then the high wire fence. A Black Mark, gun over his shoulder, patrols the inside of this fence. Within the compound there are long, low, wooden buildings. That’s where the men are housed. With a glance at Bit, I head off at a crouch, following a faint path through the long grass. Bit follows. The grass rustles on either side of us.

  “What if there’s snakes?” hisses Bit.

  “Shut up about snakes,” I whisper back. Every time I use this path I think about the snakes that could be running around in the grass.

  Soon I risk putting my head above the grass to check our progress. There’s the corner of the camp: we’re nearly around the far side, crawling towards the perimeter fence. Some men are moving about in a large open yard.

  Still I keep going, to my special spot. There’s a patch of flattened grass where I lie on my front and peer through the grass at the camp.

  Bit squeezes in beside me. “What are they doing?” he whispers.

  “Exercise.” Squinting, I’m not entirely sure myself. “Maybe.”

  The men are walking in a large circle around the yard, watched over by a guard with a gun. They walk without speaking, eyes looking at the ground. So thin, these men, in their identical grey uniforms.

  Then I spot Papa and I get a funny feeling: relief that he’s still alive, but sadness, too, because my father’s in this place. “That’s him,” I whisper to Bit. Papa’s a tall man and dark-haired like the rest, so it’s hard to tell much difference between these men from a distance except for their different shapes.

  “He looks like Jorzy,” Bit whispers.

  As Papa approaches the fence in the large circuit, I give a low whistle, copying the three sweet notes of a quail. His glance flicks over to the fence, and he smiles fleetingly. Once more, I risk another call. Trudging around the arc of the circle, Papa wipes a hand across his brow. It could be a wave.

  We watch the men for another three circuits, though I don’t risk another call. Papa knows I’m here. The guard blows on a whistle and the men break the dreary circle and start to trudge towards the low buildings. Tears sting my eyes. It’s our cue to leave.

  Back out on the streets, Bit clears his throat. “They don’t look as if they’re building underground tunnels.”

  “No.” I snort. “That’s because they’re not.”

  * * *

  That friend of Jorzy’s, the man with the moustache, comes with me one morning along the river to scope out the Director’s property. They don’t tell me anything, but I sense their plans are firming up. As we walk briskly along the towpath in the dark I wonder why Moustache isn’t in one of the wild camps like my father. Maybe he’s disabled in some way, or has a special skill that the Travesters find useful. Cerels are good at working metal, so it could be that. Unless he’s in one of the Cerel gangs who are sent up the House of Law by rope and pulley to polish the glass dome; a risky job that no Travester would do.

  It’s a bit unnerving having this bloke with me. I’ve got a reason to be on the towpath – Boss has given me a piece of paper, stating where I’m working and that I’ve got permission to be in this area every day – yet Jorzy’s friend hasn’t got anything like that. Moustache has brought along a chimney brush, which he carries over his shoulder, and whistles quietly between his teeth as if he too has a right to be here. As Cerels are the only ones who clean chimneys, it’s pretty safe to walk through the city carrying such brooms. The sun hasn’t come up yet, but even so, there are other workers who use this path. I’m just relieved that we’re unlikely to bump into Boss. It would be difficult to explain Moustache.

  “So is anything happening about the restaurant?” I ask, wanting to see if I can tease some information out of him. Jorzy sure as hell doesn’t confide in me.

  “Maybe,” says Moustache.

  “’Cause, y’know, it’d be a great place to take him out.”

  He snorts. “What would you know about taking people out?”

  “I know enough.”

  “It’s not something to talk about like this, in public,” he says gruffly, making me feel ignorant.

  At the Bridge of Angels, I give him a nod and cross to the other side of the river, while Moustache continues on without a backwards glance. Up until I turn in at the Director’s gate, I’m aware of him keeping pace with me on the other side of the river. I had hoped it would be me – and not Jorzy – to attempt the assassination. But we’ll see. If my plan works out, I might be the hero after all.

  * * *

  Something’s happening in the kitchen – Nanna’s territory – shouting and banging.

  I was on my way back from the bathroom down the hall when I heard a crash, something shattering. My first thought is Black Marks. So I press myself against the wall, ready to run, and peer around the open doorway. Just in time to see Nanna hurling a pot across the room. It bounces off the wall and rolls under the table. What the–? Then I see Marina standing with arms folded, white lips presse
d tightly together – it’s our mother’s look of determination.

  What’s going on? It can’t be about the baby – Nanna already knows about that.

  “–on a whim!”

  Another crash.

  “How dare you … risk all our lives …”

  Still my sister stands like a tree in a raging storm.

  “You – you fool!” The words are spat out with low venom.

  Then a slap. I risk a peek. Marina’s face is turned to one side, mottled pink from where Nanna has just hit her. I press back up against the flaking wall, breathing shallowly. This is more shocking than anything else. I’ve never seen Nanna so angry, and Marina is her favourite.

  And then my mother’s voice rings out clear and soft as a bell. “Stop it this instant!”

  With a single sob, Marina flashes past, hands clasped over her face.

  I don’t know what to do, whether to follow my sister and comfort her, or to stay and listen.

  From the kitchen comes the peacemaking sound of a scraping chair. That will be my mother. Then the sound of the blackened kettle being clattered about and thumped onto the wood stove to heat – the last of Nanna’s fury hopefully being taken out on the kettle. The women will sit down together and work it out over a cup of tea.

  “What’s up, kid?” It’s Jorzy, appearing through the hole in the wall, having come back from the pub.

  My brother takes one look at the women in the kitchen, then turns back to the doorway, anger in his face. Now for sure he’ll find out what’s going on.

  “Get lost,” he mutters.

  I don’t need to be told twice.

  * * *

  When was the decree issued that Cerel women weren’t allowed to have any more babies? I can’t remember. When I was a kid, it seemed like those grim notices were regularly pasted onto walls and the sides of lampposts. They were printed in block letters (hastily printed, I realise now), and slapped up so quickly that some of them would come loose and flap in the breeze, or skeeter off along a windy street. Omens like crows. You read them and saw your future in black and white. Or at least, I avoided reading them, but small groups of Cerels gathered around those posters, reading and murmuring among themselves, not lingering for too long. They read the new decree, then hurried on with bowed heads as if into a gale.