A shot rang out.
Father Sapno ducked.
One of the young brothers had taken a shot at him.
‘Hold your fire!’ Hal shouted. ‘Jesus Christ. Don’t any of you know what is going on? There’s a frikkin ceasefire. Don’t shoot the man.’
Father Sapno had stopped walking.
‘Come,’ shouted Hal. He was up on the balcony above the wrought-iron gates which barricaded the main foyer on the ground level of the House, the side which looked down to the big square in the centre of town where old men gathered to play chess. But Father Sapno looked uncertain.
‘Come, come,’ gestured Hal upwards. Hal quickly moved back inside, out of sight of the army snipers.
When Father Sapno appeared in the chamber he looked very scared. His hands were still in the air and they were shaking. He gasped and crossed himself and said, ‘Oh, Jesus Lord,’ when he saw all the ministers trussed up face down on the floor and all the blood on the carpet. Everything was shot up. He gasped at Arnold in his Santa hat and at all the young boys with guns bigger than them, and at Greg Mason who looked like his very mother had taught him how to kill. Ashes felt ashamed. He didn’t want a holy man to see him in this kind of situation. He couldn’t look at the priest.
The House had already started to stink of death. Those who had been shot dead had been dragged to other rooms. The gunman who’d been killed had been taken away too, but his tongue was still on the carpet.
Father Sapno gagged and pointed at it. ‘Have some common decency,’ he said, and Ashes was glad because he had been thinking the same thing. It was an awful sight and yet he hadn’t been strong enough in his stomach to pick it up. Hal ordered Breeze to take it away. Everyone looked at Father Sapno and Father Sapno looked at everyone else, all the brothers with their guns and the hostages. He was a man with a wide-open face, a shadow of a beard surrounding it; he was naturally jovial, it seemed, because gracious lines were etched on his face, even at a time like this. Hal looked disconcerted. The situation was a mess.
‘Where do you want me to go now?’ Father Sapno said. ‘I only have an hour. The army wants to know your demands and I must then go back and report to them. An hour.’
Hal nodded and said, ‘Come this way.’ He had been on to the Leader and there was now a list of demands. They had untied the Minister for Health, Dr Mervyn Mahibir, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Elias de Gannes, and there had been talks. Hal and Greg Mason led Father Sapno and these ministers and some of the ministers who’d split from the PM down the corridor; they went to the room with the Liquid Paper graffiti about God. Ashes felt glad. Also he felt disappointed. How had everything gone so badly wrong so quickly? Although he didn’t know the exact plans, it was common knowledge in the commune that some of the Leader’s men had been in training in camps in the countryside; some were even sent to the deserts far away. There had been ideas, plans, for a New Society. This had been no pot shot, no quick grab. He couldn’t believe that the plans had misfired, that the revolution was already over. That couldn’t be the case, so soon. They had boxes and boxes of explosives down the hall.
The Prime Minister groaned. Another minister, Minister Sheldon, the one who’d frozen and remained standing rather than ducking when they stormed the chamber, was also bleeding a lot. There was a puddle of blood now by his ankle. Ashes worked as a porter at a health centre in his neighbourhood, but he wasn’t trained to deal with medical matters; he was no nurse. Even so, he could see this minister was barely breathing and it worried him. It was possible he might die too if he wasn’t seen to. The female ministers were very subdued. They were both hiding under chairs. One had urinated into a glass and it stood next to her. It looked very . . . intimate . . . and it made him feel unsure of going anywhere near them.
Many of the brothers were standing around. Some had forsaken their everyday names; they had spiritual names and they had shaved their heads and grown their beards and they were men with wives and families. The men who were trained for this looked more serious and mature. He could see a cold confidence in their eyes and in their posture, a seriousness of intent. None of these brothers had any questions or regrets so far, not like him. They were still following orders. If he didn’t know who they were, he too would be scared of these men. They weren’t fooling around. The Leader had attracted thousands of brothers and sisters over the years, but these men were a hand-picked bunch.
Ashes was now worried, scared for his life, and he promised himself that if he got out of there alive he would get off the island and take himself on a trip. He would take his wife and his sons, they would go to Trinidad. They would go for carnival, and he would go to Lord Wellington’s tent and sit and listen to him and the other calypsonians sing. In particular he liked the song called ‘Jericho’, an old tune now, by Lord Wellington, but it was about a time just like when River was shot. It was a song about the guerrilla fighters of Trinidad, not so long ago fellers, all shot too. He liked the name of the hero in the song, Jericho, because it was the name also of a famous city in the Bible. Jericho was a town where palm trees spread their roots to an underground well in the desert and so the city was lush and green, an oasis in those arid holy lands. Jericho was known as the City of Palms. And yet the subterranean roots of the palms may have had something to do with why the walls of the city fell flat when the Israelites ransacked it, claiming it back and slaughtering everyone inside. Jericho, in his mind, was also a City of Blood.
THURSDAY MORNING,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
Dr Mahibir had arranged the cheese puffs on a chipped parliamentary plate. He had lined some of the less broken teacups up along the counter in the tearoom and he was making tea. Ashes noticed that the doctor limped around, but could see no wound. He hadn’t been injured, yet something was wrong with one of his legs. It wasn’t a new limp; his awkward manner of walking looked like an old habit. He seemed in quite good spirits considering everything. He had been the first hostage to be untied; he was useful. Hal had let him free in order to assess the wounded, hostages and gunmen alike. They had found a First Aid kit in another cupboard in the tearoom; it had bandages and ointments and so Dr Mahibir had gone about attending to people as best he could. One of the young boys had accidentally shot himself through the foot and he had bandaged the wound. Several of the brothers had been nicked by bullets. But Minister Bartholomew Sheldon needed to be taken away to hospital immediately, he advised. He had been badly shot in the back of the thigh and he would bleed to death by lunchtime. The Prime Minister had stopped bleeding, but he was also diabetic and could lose his sight without his medication. They should take him to hospital too, but the PM insisted he would be the last parliamentarian to leave the House. Hal refused to let him leave anyway. The doctor had been up all night tending to the injured. Now he was making a tray of tea and cheese puffs.
Some of the brothers had eaten the chicken in the fridge. The woman under the table in the back room had died. Father Sapno had left hours ago along with the Deputy Prime Minister, Elias de Gannes, and they had a list of demands written down on a scrap of paper: 1) that the Prime Minister would immediately resign; 2) a free and fair election to be held in 90 days; 3) a reversal of plans for the IMF loan; 4) reinstigation of the Cost of Living Allowance; 5) a full amnesty for the gunmen. Under the list of demands were the signatures of every minister in the chamber, including the Prime Minister’s, signed while Hal pointed a pistol to his head.
If these demands were not met, Hal and the Leader had decided they would blow up the television station and the House of Power with all the explosives they had with them. They would not be taken. They would kill everyone, including themselves, in the name of their righteous cause. They would go down fighting.
‘Would you care for a puff?’ Dr Mahibir asked Ashes.
Ashes stared at the tea tray. ‘No thanks, I’ve already had one.’ And then he remembered he hadn’t yet eaten the puff in his army pants pocket and that now i
t must be very squashed. He couldn’t eat anything. His feelings were very off centre and his heart was like a stone in his chest. Things were very badly wrong here in the House and he remembered the dragon he’d seen on top of it as they stormed in, hissing and looking threatening, and he’d thought this was a very bad sign. The House was protected. Ol time dragons – here, in the Caribbean. King beast. He’d seen plenty at carnival time, an ol mas figure. But this dragon was different; Queen Victoria had brought it with her. The Queen and the dragon were some kind of team.
And yet Dr Mahibir casually went about offering tea, like he wasn’t worried at all. He had made a big metal teapot full of Lipton’s and several chipped cups were stacked on his tray. He was offering tea and puffs to the hostages and brothers alike and this was very confusing, as though everyone in the chamber was the same when they clearly were not. Ashes wondered if any of this was correct hostage-taking behaviour; surely the tea and puffs were much too informal. And already Hal had agreed to cut free the plastic handcuffs of the hostages; he wondered if this was wise. Overnight many had tried to loosen the bands and they had only drawn tighter and begun to lacerate their wrists. The hostages were simply being guarded now, on rotation. The two female MPs should be let go, Ashes felt. They were having an effect on all the men.
Breeze was taking his role in the revolution very seriously; Ashes thought he looked like a miniature version of the Leader. His eyes were pensive and his lips were full; he was a serious-looking person already. His skin was very black and he was thin and stringy from a short lifetime of poor eating. Ashes knew he had come to the commune straight from court. Breeze had been bailed by the Leader rather than face six months in the overcrowded, rat-infested, lice-ridden gaol in town for petty theft and fraud – and for that he was loyal. Breeze was a street boy, wily as hell, an apprentice criminal already at fourteen years old; almost as hard as Greg Mason. If the Leader hadn’t saved his arse from prison he would have become a common crook. Breeze had been given a dormitory to sleep in, albeit not much more than a scooped out abandoned bus, but he had been given shelter at least, three meals a day, free medical care, a peer group of other boys, also bailed from prison. And, most of all, Breeze had been shown the spiritual path, a way to purify his soul.
The City of Silk had many poor homeless boys like Breeze and no one but the Leader had shown any interest or care for them. They were nobody’s concern. They had either run away or were put out of their homes early on, abandoned by their own families, and ignored by those in power. And so it was an act of divine will that Breeze now had power inside the House of Power. Ministers were afraid of him and his tall gun. He had recovered himself from the army’s attack. He had removed a tongue off the carpet when no one else would touch it. He had refused puffs and tea. Hal and Greg had started using him as their chief assistant.
But now, despite Breeze’s newfound respect amongst the ministers and top gunmen, Ashes noticed something else was happening to him, something Ashes found troubling: Breeze was drawn to the female ministers.
The female ministers were called Mrs Lucretia Salvatore, Minister for Cultural Affairs, and Mrs Aspasia Garland, Minister for the Environment, both African women in their early forties. Breeze had more or less appointed himself their personal bodyguard. Something else was strange too. The female ministers weren’t scared of him; in fact they didn’t show that they were afraid of any of the men. There was a softness in the way they spoke to Breeze and the other younger brothers; it was as if they were trying to befriend the young boys, as if they were trying to engage in a personal way. They were both sitting on the floor.
Breeze was standing tall above the female ministers, but if they stood up, the women would be taller than him. He was staring in a way which looked purposeful, as if he’d been given a rare and senior authority. He looked like he wanted to talk, and yet Ashes sensed that Breeze didn’t know what to say.
The women regarded him in a half-bemused kind of way.
‘So,’ began the one called Mrs Garland, ‘how on earth did you get into all this?’ Her dark hair was straightened to curl in a swish. She had a thoughtful look in her eyes. She was conservative-looking in a way which said she meant business in the House, and yet her voice was husky-soft. She didn’t look like a politician at all; she seemed too real and woman-like. Ashes moved a little closer so he could hear this conversation.
‘We come for justice,’ said Breeze. ‘Alluyou is stealing money from the poor. I am a poor young man. You is stealing we money.’
‘Who told you that?’ said Mrs Garland.
Breeze steupsed. ‘Is in the papers, nuh. And the Leader tell us is true.’
‘What does the Leader tell you?’
‘You is spending all the money in the treasury. Now you want to go to the IMF, because the money done. Is the people money and you spend it. Now Sans Amen go be colonised by the IMF. Is the same thing. Colonisation. First we get rid of the white man colonial in politics. Now you people go ask for the white man back in the country in the form of the big robber banks. We done with that. Economic colonisation. That cannot be. You spend all the people money; you cut the Cost of Living Allowance for poor people. You cut wages by ten percent; everyone know that. We must stop you. You ask why I get involved with all this. I is a fighter for freedom of the poor. You are the badjohns. You people in here with your fancy ideas. You is thief, you should be ashamed.’
By now a group of young brothers had gathered around the female ministers and they all murmured a yesss to what Breeze had said. Breeze looked pleased with his rhetoric; he had remembered it all and now glowed with pride. He looked defiant. Hal had heard this outburst too and looked on with approval. In fact everyone had heard what Breeze said; all the ministers were now interested. Along with three meals a day, Breeze had been fed doctrine.
‘But listen here, young boy,’ said Mrs Garland. ‘You think is our government who spend all the treasury money? Eh? Think again, my young friend. The treasury was empty when we arrived two years ago. What we doing with cuts is for the general good of everyone. If we didn’t cut back, then the country would bankrupt. That would be a big thing. Catastrophe. We had to make short-term cuts. Austerity measures.’
Breeze stared. He had nothing more than his speech. He looked like he needed more time to think.
‘The Leader has come in and shot up the wrong government in my opinion,’ said Mrs Garland.
One of the ministers laughed out loud.
Hal looked annoyed.
‘Only yesterday afternoon we were debating this very point,’ said Mrs Garland. ‘It was an important debate in the House, about corruption under the last government, just how much money was stolen by them, when you boys came in and shot up everything.’
Breeze looked lost.
Hal began to look uncomfortable.
‘Young boy,’ said another minister. ‘My name is Mister Cordell Jayson. I am the Minister of Finance. I am the man who your Leader hates so much. I am the IMF man you were all calling for yesterday afternoon. Does your Leader have a substitute financial plan for how Sans Amen will recover its debt, how it will regenerate after the decades of corruption we have had?’
Breeze looked angry now. ‘Your stupid government was going to spend fourteen million dollars on a statue of some dead woman. It was the last straw. We had to take action.’
‘Actually,’ said Mr Jayson, ‘we had planned to spend one million on a statue of a woman who was a whistleblower and had uncovered corruption in the past. She was a national hero. She fought for justice and was then ostracised by the men in power at the time. This new government stands for justice. We were elected to fight corruption. We have been in power only two years. Things take time.’
Breeze steupsed, not listening and not really understanding. ‘So. Why you ent tell the people what you doing? All we get is bad news. Secrecy. Cut this and that. No explanation. The IMF is a bad thing. Meanwhile poor people cannot eat.’
‘Well, maybe we could
have explained things better . . . yes . . . and yes the IMF is a last resort. It is not something we take lightly . . .’
Hal had had enough.
‘Everybody SHUT UP,’ he barked. ‘Look, this is not Prime Minister’s question time, okay. You boys, go stand guard by the windows. Breeze, get away from those women. We don’t want the Special Forces coming up those steps while we discussing the price of bread. You,’ he said to the female ministers, ‘hush up. Stop speaking to my soldiers.’
Mrs Garland nodded.
Dr Mahibir had given out all the puffs by now; he was collecting the empty teacups. He was limping a little.
‘What wrong with your foot?’ said Hal. ‘You got shot too?’
‘No,’ said Dr Mahibir. He lifted his pants up by the knees to expose his leather shoes which were attached to calipers and braces. ‘I had polio as a child. I need help walking.’
Ashes felt like he needed to pray again. He needed a quiet private space. No noise, no others, no chaos. He started to collect up the teacups from those who were finished and he went back to the tearoom with Dr Mahibir and together they began to wash up the cups. He felt humbled being around Dr Mahibir; he sensed the goodness of this man who had been calm and helping everyone; he felt sick in his stomach at the injured and the dead. He felt hungry too and yet he could not eat. He was dizzy and hungry and now another feeling was creeping in, a type of feeling he associated with being in the wrong. He had that feeling with his wife sometimes, when she had to explain to him why he’d offended her or another person. The Buddha was big on teaching people how to refine their judgement; his wife and the Buddha had this fine judging quality. It was an important human quality to cultivate. Many a time he had praised God for the gift of his good wife. She was teaching him how to behave better than he generally could.
*
By midday the army were still encamped, and there was no news of the response to the demands they had put forward. Hal and the Leader had been communicating every hour. Colonel Benedict Howl was still outside in the streets around the House of Power, pointing a lot and issuing commands. He had a loud voice and didn’t need a megaphone. Soldiers were scurrying around.
House of Ashes Page 5
