House of Ashes

by Monique Roffey

  ‘I’m serious. What will happen to these young boys?’

  ‘They will get justice.’

  I kept massaging Mervyn’s ankle; his foot was hard and stiff, like a piece of wood. Just walking, for him, was an act of defiance. I looked over to the other side of the chamber. Breeze sat by the window, rubbing the long neck of his rifle. He rubbed and rubbed, all the while staring out into the real world, where the army were encamped. He looked like he was trying to make his gun disappear. He looked skinnier, a scrap, a stick boy there with his stick gun. He had charged in, blazing, a crusader, a young knight storming and enveloping a castle. Now he looked emaciated. He kept pressing and patting his groin, as if it was tender there. He had hurt himself, maybe, or strained a muscle. He had been limping too. Only days ago he had been an innocent, a fool. Would he spend the rest of his life in fights, duels, trying to cool his wound?

  *

  Night was closing in and I felt the urge to get up and stretch my legs. I struggled shakily to my feet, and then I straightened my skirt. Mrs Gonzales got up too, her head naked, and the two of us supported each other towards the hall and down the corridor. Mrs Gonzales opened the washroom door and disappeared and I kept on down the corridor, one hand running along the wall for support, the other hand holding my scarf to my nose. I glanced into the room with the dead woman and grimaced; I walked past it and turned left into another room, equally ruined. I noticed a telephone on the floor, the receiver strewn next to it, and I stumbled past it, dragging a chair to the window. I wanted to sit and see if any of the lights would come on in the City of Silk. I managed to position the chair near to the window and yet at an angle to avoid the army snipers. I sat down on it and a cool breeze came in through the window onto my face. I breathed in and could smell a dim sea scent, the scent of mud flats, of the gulf beyond. Tears ran down my face in tiny streams and the urge to retch came. My body hiccupped and spasmed but I brought up nothing. It was the stench. And it was my body quaking in the early stages of starvation. I sat on the chair and watched as clusters of fireflies of lights began to appear, the lights of our city, a metropolis by the sea in the middle of an archipelago of islands.

  I wondered about the other island nearby. They must be aware of this chaos in the neighbourhood. I thought of Cuba. Havana was nothing like the City of Silk. It had an empty feeling. So much had been cleansed, taken away from the common citizen; so much had been eradicated. Thousands of poor people living in abandoned grandeur. Trees sprouting from rooftops, a black market economy. Salsa and sex were all that was left to the man in the street, and yes, our old African religion, santeria. Havana had been cleared of crime by revolution. I had some notion that my own City, the City of Silk, corrupt as it may be – dirty, drug-ridden, half-civilised, Victorian in design, elderly, decaying, violent – would never succumb easily.

  Something moved. I broke from my thoughts and turned my head towards the door. Hal was standing there in his soiled camouflage fatigues. He looked ravaged and tired, not the man who’d run in five days ago, a tidy beret on his head, the man who’d kicked and shot the PM. He was staring down at the telephone.

  I gazed at him and willed him to look at me and he glanced upwards. This man with so many big ideas had been to the same school my son was now at. I nodded at him and said, ‘I look forward to tomorrow.’

  Hal didn’t reply. He was looking at me and past me, out the window.

  ‘Lady, don’t be so sure.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you don’t know what we know.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘You see this thing, what happen here?’

  ‘Your revolution?’

  ‘This nothing compare to what going to happen soon, this week, tomorrow, or the next day.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, something big going and happen soon, in the world. Big.’

  ‘And this is part of it?’

  Hal nodded. His eyelids were heavy and his eyes were hard. All he had now was a photocopied piece of paper with some ministers’ names in his back pocket. And he had ‘news’ up his sleeve. Something big. I found that this didn’t feel interesting at all. I was a politician, sure, but right then I was annoyed by the very thought of bigger news than this.

  ‘We all have good intentions,’ I said.

  Hal was gazing down at the telephone again. I turned back to the view of the City, some of the lights now on, but there were holes here and there; the City now looked different. The police station across the road was wizened, its colonial arches tarred and ugly. I could see the army and their covered trucks everywhere, their nightlights, the cordon they had made around the House of Power. I was thankful for them, a force of loyal, well-trained men.

  ‘I had good intentions,’ I said to Hal and looked over to the door. But Hal had disappeared.

  MONDAY MORNING,

  THE HOUSE OF POWER,

  THE CITY OF SILK

  It happened very quietly. At dawn, on the sixth day, the army convoy was standing there. Two white buses. One for the hostages, one for the gunmen. The hostages would be released and I was chosen to be the first one to walk out. Thank God. I was ready. I could have run down those steps, even in my weak state. The final negotiations with the army had happened overnight. Surrender. It was happening, finally. Soon I would be outside, free. I would see my children, my husband; it would be like a miracle. To be out of that chamber, to be back in the world. The last few days had taken me out of myself to another realm. There had been numerous deadlines, several moments when I thought I might be safe and clear, only to be disappointed. I still had to be patient. I wouldn’t feel free until I was away from the House, well away.

  I found I wanted to say something to almost everyone in the chamber. Most of the ministers I wanted to thank, many I would. But it was the gunmen . . . it was the teenagers . . . I found them the hardest to leave behind. Their motives for being here were confused and complicated. The PM, he’d been on the outside for some time now; hopefully he was safe and alive. What had he decided? Everything would be done by the book; they would be dealt with honourably and well within the law.

  I didn’t want to look anyone in the eye. The ordeal had in some way been intimate . . . and humiliating. Hal wanted to send the two female MPs out first, me and then Lucretia Salvatore, and then Mrs Gonzales. They wanted to demonstrate they still had no war with women. They wanted this show of respect. The army buses were waiting, the press were too. Guns and cameras were trained on the House. The young boy Breeze was still sullen and skulking in the corner of the chamber, gazing out into the street full of army men with balaclavas on and press with long camera lenses. The man called Ashes had vanished.

  Hal gave me a look which said, Okay, it’s time. I pressed Lucretia’s arm, gave Mrs Gonzales a look which said, We’ll meet again. I bent and kissed Mervyn’s cheek and said, ‘Thank you.’ He had watery eyes and looked, finally, at the end of his good cheer. He smiled, thinly.

  Hal led me out. ‘There,’ he said, pointing to the public gallery. ‘You walk down those stairs and then the army will guide you at the bottom.’

  I nodded. I wanted to say something to Hal. Something. What? I was sorry for him too. He had made the mistake of his life. He might be executed for all of this, hung like a rat. I didn’t want this to happen. I couldn’t hate him. I said nothing, there were no words fitting. Instead, I covered my nose with my scarf and began my descent, one step by one step down the staircase of the public gallery, out and down. My legs were shaking, but I had to get out. Visions of it all being a trick came to me, or some kind of trap. I’d become meeker, conditioned somehow to captivity. It was strange not quite knowing what to do.

  Quickly I came upon the lifeless body of a man in uniform, his body black with congealed blood and buzzing with flies. The stench was overwhelming. I tried not to look but found myself staring and gagging; it was one of the security guards. He’d been shot several times in the chest, perhaps in the first m
inutes, when the men had stormed the building. There was a swipe of blood on the wall behind him from where he’d fallen, the blood now dried and caked. I crossed myself and said a prayer for him and his family.

  I forced myself down another flight of steps, holding on to the railings. My eyes were blurred, sheets of tears fell down my face. I thought I might slip and tumble down the steps head first. I stank and was covered in blood, my own urine, a fine dust of plaster from the ceiling. I knew Hal’s gun was at my back. He wouldn’t shoot but he was watching me. I was soon free, and yet I might faint. My kids! My son and daughter, I was stepping towards them. My time on earth had been halted. It would start again. Only then, as I was escaping, the trauma began to emerge, in shakes, in overwhelming dizziness.

  At the bottom of these steps was the ground. I walked slowly towards this idea of ground, holding my hand to my nose. I would be okay. Keep walking. Then the sun was pounding down on me. I was outside. And there – more horror. Strewn like toys, other bodies. Men and women lay dead on the ground. It looked like they had either jumped from the balcony of the chamber or from the windows, or had been shot while trying to do so. Three bodies, stiff and lifeless and swollen. New ideas gripped me. What had happened? How big was this?

  A voice came at me through a megaphone, ‘Mrs Garland, keep walking. Turn right.’

  I was trembling. I did as I was told, turning right, and only then did I see the bus. My heart surged. Freedom! It would carry me away. My legs felt spongy, like I was walking on pillars of foam.

  ‘Keep walking towards the bus,’ said the voice. The bus was parked just beyond the perimeter of the grounds of the house. I saw the bright magenta walls, how dwarfed I was next to them, how astounding they were now. A wild colour, the colour of sex and carnival, it gave me a sudden surge of confidence. Slender green palms stood next to the House, their red berries showing under their skirts. I could have kissed the ground. Sans Amen was still standing.

  The skies were the brilliant clear blue that screams down and says good morning much too loudly. Everything was too much. I feared I might topple over before I reached the bus. Men were everywhere, wielding rifles, in army combat uniform, their faces hidden by balaclavas.

  ‘Keep walking,’ I heard the voice, now at my back, through the megaphone. There were two men in army fatigues standing near the bus. One of them greeted me with a glass of water which I took and drank from immediately. These men with guns weren’t my captors, they were my protectors; I smiled at them uncertainly. I still didn’t know quite what to do. One of them saw I was disorientated and took my arm and helped me up into the vehicle. He escorted me to one of the rear seats. There were open windows but the heat was intense and dazzling. I felt amazed, blinded by the sun and by my freedom.

  *

  Parts of the City of Silk were still smouldering in the morning heat. Some of the looted buildings were clouded in a grey smoke and this made everything in the blackened and barren streets appear smudged. These buildings were in the act of being rubbed out. They’d been dismantled, raided, burnt down and now – six days later – what was left of them looked indistinct and blurred. The looters had invaded most of the lower end of town. Shops, offices, arcades, everything was now charred; broken glass was everywhere in the streets, the innards of these properties dragged out into the street: timber, sheets of metal, chunks of plaster, a power cable, like a giant skipping rope, hung limp across the road. Tears ran down my cheeks. No one spoke in the white hostage bus. The City of Silk had been burnt like razor grass. It had been seared off. Now it was a wasteland.

  As the bus moved slowly down Veronica Street I felt like I was on a fairground ride; this was a Tour of the Macabre. Everyone on the bus could now see what had been happening in the City of Silk over the last six days. If the city could weep, it was weeping. It stood disrobed and humiliated and I felt its shame. I had been craving freedom, but now I witnessed another hell on the outside of the House. I found it hard to look at the damage; it was like looking too closely at a woman who’d only recently been raped. The City was standing in its own violation and it hung its head, raw and pitiful. What had the people done to themselves? What had the PM, myself, other ministers not seen? How could we have missed this? Here it was. Here was the people’s anger and delinquency. An old anger. It was right here on the streets and now the streets were smouldering with contempt. The City of Riots. This city kept doing this to itself; its citizens had old wounds to discuss. Stupid woman, I castigated myself. Everyone in the bus was equally silent. The City of Silk was in mourning and, as we glided past, every single one of the ministers gazed out, unnerved, humbled.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Jesus, dear God.’

  Low whistles.

  Tears in my eyes. Shock in my nerves. Some of the ministers would survive; others would never come back. Mervyn could only click his throat and shake his head.

  Where would Sans Amen begin again after this? There were helicopters in the sky, I could hear a not-so-distant chop chop chop. Like a big carrion bird hung overhead.

  The bus stopped at the Square of Independence and I gasped. Soldiers everywhere now, more chaos. Only last week we were discussing plans to erect a statue here to a brave woman, a citizen who’d fought corruption in the past. Now the square was corrupted. The people of Sans Amen had beaten us to it; they’d made their own sculptures, from mangled metal and broken breeze blocks. Jab jabs had been here. They’d urinated, stolen, jeered and mashed up the place well and good. The bus turned the corner and sailed past an old woman standing in the street. She wore a simple housedress and held a human head in her hands. She proffered it up to us hostages in the bus as it passed. I gasped. The bus moved on and, moments later, when I looked back, I saw no woman. The streets were deserted.

  I was beyond tired. I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers to my forehead and took several deep breaths and counted. The urge to retch came as it had so many times in the last few days. Nothing. There was nothing inside me.

  The bus was now being trailed by two army jeeps, each with armed outriders. We were heading north, towards the savannah, away from the House, and yet everywhere there was this sense of dismay. No life on the streets; the City of Silk was being kept stable by the military. Something war-like had happened.

  Then I saw the green rich field, the vast savannah playground gifted to the City by the white French Creole planters of another era. Nothing felt good or right or sane or safe or stable. Freedom tasted like ashes in my throat. The bus swept around the park and everything was grotesque and familiar; the Poui trees were laughing, the world was enjoying a sinister joke. I felt older and I felt ugly. I needed to urinate. I needed a hundred hours of solitude. I was in shock. And I needed a bath. I wanted to say something but my voice was lost. I craved my family. I was so grateful to be alive; I’d lived for them. But this was another landscape, another island now. The bus was heading out of town, away from the savannah, and then it swept up the hill towards the old upside down Hilton Hotel which clung to the hills above the City of Silk.

  *

  In my hotel room I threw open the curtains and went straight to the balcony and gazed out. From high up, the view was different. I could see the deep glittering purple sea; ships and tankers in the gulf. I could see a horizon. The City of Silk was left and right of me, panoramic, low and jumbled, old and young, and all of a sudden there was perspective. This attempted revolution, this disaster, had happened in a squared-off mile of town. I looked at my watch; it was just past noon. I had been missing for six days. The sun was mired behind thick clouds. The day was overcast and the colours of the city were hazy and muted. The rains were coming again; they would wash the city, bath the tired old city built on soil so loved by silk cotton trees. The phone rang and I jumped. The gunfire had done that to my nerves. Would I always jump like that? I found the phone by the bed and picked it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Darling, it’s me.’

  Tears fell.
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  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  I shook my head and choked. The sound of Marc’s voice brought on thick emotions. I sat down.

  ‘I’m not so great.’

  ‘We’re coming to see you as soon as we can.’

  I nodded. Everything felt hot and light and fluid. Like I might dissolve. I might even expire, there, from relief.

  ‘You’re safe now.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘Good. I love you too.’

  It felt like months since we’d seen each other. I felt like a teenager, my heart beating at his voice. Love struck. Needy. Dazzled. Weak. And safe. The army wanted to keep us at the Hilton for one night. We all needed to be debriefed, seen by doctors. I needed the privacy; I was grateful for this time before I met my family.

  ‘Can I speak to the children?’

  He handed the phone to my son, James.

  ‘Mum?’

  The flood came: the blessing of relief. ‘Yes, it’s me, my love. It’s me.’

  ‘We’re coming to see you . . . tomorrow.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ and I rocked on the bed, holding his voice in my hands, the voice of a son of the city, my son, my boy. The terror of the boys with guns engulfed me too; they were all related, these sons. Where were the mothers of those boys inside there? I was grief stricken and yet I was free.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you tomorrow,’ was all I could manage. ‘I love you.’

  I put the phone down. My face was wet. I sat on the bed, not knowing what to do. I was still filthy and I stank. I’d been told food would soon be sent to my room.

  I ran the taps in the sink in the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. In the mirror I saw a version of myself, a person I recognised and used to know. The face in the mirror had a sullenness which reminded me of someone else . . . the young boy, Breeze. I looked like him now. Sullen and vexed. Six days, but the lines looked like they’d invaded for good; I was different. There was a storm in my face. I was angry. How long had I been angry? Before this had happened, or during the whole thing? My cheeks hung. My eyes were reddened where they were supposed to be white. I touched the skin on my forehead, just to make sure I could still feel. There I was again, Aspasia Garland, free, alive, back in the world. I could now do as I pleased, but I felt very ill at ease. As I stood looking into the mirror words came.