The Paradise Ghetto

by Fergus O'Connell

  She had had a lot of time to think on the voyage. Elbows on the wooden rail, looking out over the achingly beautiful blue of the Mediterranean, she had come to understand that everybody made the journey alone. Yes, maybe at times in our lives, we were thrown together with other people – our families through birth, friends and acquaintances that we met along the way – but ultimately we were alone. The gods just told this to some people more forcibly than others. In this she and the captain had a lot in common. Maybe – in this – they had everything in common.

  In Baeterrae, Birkita had used some of the money to buy a horse, a saddle, clothes, shoes, a sword and a dagger. Thus equipped she’d set off for the north, arriving after a moon’s travelling at a port called Caletum. Here she sold the horse and saddle and caught another ship to take her to Britannia. She had looked forward to another voyage but this one was very different. The sky was constantly overcast with low, grey pillows of cloud. There was a lot of rain. The iron-coloured sea was lashed by a vicious wind which drove waves over the sides of the ship. The captain said it was too dangerous for passengers to be above decks and so she stayed in a cabin with the other travellers. Like them, she spent most of the journey vomiting. When the sea eventually calmed, and she came out on deck, the sky had cleared to a washed-out blue and the ship was sailing sedately up a wide river. It docked just after noon.

  The Romans were rebuilding Londinium. Last year – could it really have been such a short a time ago? – it had been sacked and razed to the ground by Boudica. Much of it looked like a drawing in charcoal. There were charred timbers, roofless shells of houses, piles of rubble, lone walls, fire-ravaged, blackened patches of ground overlaid with green weeds and bushes, boarded-up buildings. And then, almost as if by a miracle, a lone house or the odd tree that had escaped damage. There were also signs of rebuilding. Scaffolding around houses, masons or plasterers or carpenters whistling cheerily or calling to one another. No wonder they were happy – there would be work here for the rest of their lives.

  Birkita had decided she would walk the rest of the way. A horse would only draw attention to her. Anyway, the four days or so that it would take would give her time to think – because there was much to think about.

  She had thought that being back in Britannia would fill her full of a vengeful energy. She had hoped that this would be the case. But instead, as she headed out into the countryside, she found she felt as desolate as the destroyed city she had just left behind. She would find the bull Roman and kill him or she would confirm that he was already dead. It was possible that he was no longer here – that he had been sent back to Rome or to some other part of their empire. If that was the case, he was probably lost to her – though she could have made it her life’s quest to find him, to hunt him down wherever he was.

  The thing though, was that it didn’t seem to matter to her. She imagined herself actually finding him and killing him. The thought didn’t give her a great deal of satisfaction. And even if all that happened what would she do then? Where would she go?

  She tried not to dwell on this. When her mind pulled her into the swamp of these thoughts, she tried to haul herself back out again. She tried to focus on the sights and sounds around her. It had been around this time last year when she had travelled this road in the opposite direction. She had been in shock then and hardly remembered the days passing or the countryside she’d journeyed through.

  Today, mercifully that was different. In at least one way it was good to be back in the land of her birth. She had forgotten how beautiful it was. The hypnotic effect of hour after hour walking on the grey stone of the Roman road freed her mind to travel wherever it would. She savoured the woods she passed through and the cool water of the rivers on her feet as she forded them. There was birdsong and bees and butterflies and the smells of the grasses and flowers and ferns. She saw hares and rabbits and foxes and badgers and deer. Once when she stopped for a break, to drink water and eat some bread and cheese, a ladybird landed on her knee and she remembered the ladybird she had watched all that time ago, before all this had happened. She felt her heart would break at the memory.

  She shunned companionship. If she encountered people on the road, she quickly walked by them in silence. A few times she was harassed by men but a menacing look, some harsh words and showing them the handle of her sword peeping out of her pack was enough to keep them at bay.

  At night, she didn’t seek out an inn or any kind of resting place. Rather, she left the road and found a grassy place in a forest by a stream. There was no need for a fire – the summer nights were warm – and she was happy to eat bread, cold meat, cheese and fruit that she had bought along the way. She had also bought a skin of ale and it was good to drink that again after the Romans’ wine-piss.

  After that she would wrap herself in her cloak, use her pack as a pillow and gaze up at the stars – familiar from her childhood – until she fell asleep. In some ways, those few days brought her back to the sea voyage from Pompeii. Once again, it was like she was alone in the world with no past dragging at her and no future with which she would have to contend.

  On the fifth day she found what remained of her village. It wasn’t much. Where the houses had burned to the ground were scorched patches of earth. The stockade which had encircled the village was little more than a few sections of short blackened poles, no more than knee high, like rotten teeth. Nature had begun to reclaim the site. Weeds and grasses and some saplings were already starting to sprout across the patch of land. In another summer or two it would be like the place had never existed.

  Birkita remembered how it had looked – people going about their business, carrying water, tending animals, cooking, talking, laughing. She pictured the animals that had been part of their lives – cattle, sheep, chickens. She thought of her two dogs and all the time they had spent together.

  She thought about her parents. She had last seen them heading off to join Boudica’s army. Her father – the headman of the village. A natural leader but never taking life too seriously. Funny, always laughing, cynical about anything that wasn’t to do with what he called ‘real life’ – food, animals, crops, the seasons. She suspected he had known, at some level, that Boudica’s rebellion was going to end in disaster but he had gone anyway. Really, he hadn’t had any choice – there were times when things other than ‘real life’ took over – and what could you do then?

  And then her mother. She adored her husband – her face seemed to light up every time she saw him or heard him speak. And yet she was so different from him. Serious a lot of the time – though maybe somebody had to be. Somebody had to suffer the pain to bring the children into the world and care for them and worry about them.

  And what difference had any of her mother’s fretting made in the end?

  Birkita’s mother had gone too, to be with her husband, to fight beside him as was the way. What had become of them? What had that last battle been like? How had they died? Had their deaths been clean or had they died slowly, agonizingly? Had they been together in each other’s arms at the end? Or had the Romans taken them and tortured them? Birkita had once thought that they might have been made slaves just as she had been but something inside her told her that they were gone.

  They were with the gods – all of them, all those she had known and loved. There were countless other people in the world, of course but these had been the ones she had loved and worked and played and laughed with. Now that she was here, she saw their smiling faces clearly, could picture them as they had been. All gone. They had created in this lovely land a place of tranquillity and beauty and it had all been destroyed. Why? What had anybody gained by that?

  She remembered her dogs – Sun and Moon. Fleetingly, she wondered if what remained of their bodies was still around, but when she looked there was nothing. The bodies of all the dead dogs had been taken by other creatures. She hoped she would meet them too in the afterlife.

  Birkita sat for a long time. The place still smelt faintly of
fire and burning. She ran her fingertips through some new shoots of grass that had begun to emerge, moving them back and forth. She felt the sun on her back. Tears rolled down her cheeks until she wondered how there could be any tears left inside her.

  She didn’t have the courage to go to the Haven. Her stomach churned. She was too upset to eat anything. When it grew dark and it became time to sleep, she just lay down on the warm earth and prayed to the gods to give her strength for the next day.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Return to the Haven (Julia)

  The crosses hadn’t been touched.

  The Romans would have left them there anyway and Birkita assumed that none of her own people had been left alive to return and take them down.

  One cross had fallen down, one stood at a crazy angle and the other two – those of the two children – were still standing as upright as the day they had been put there. It was Banning’s that had fallen. Birkita assumed it was his heavier weight that had brought the cross down in some winter storm. The wind that had felled him had come from the front, so that what remained of Banning’s body lay face up.

  Not that much remained of any of the bodies – just ghastly, grinning skulls and bones and some shreds of clothing. The birds and rats had done their work well and picked the bones clean.

  Painstakingly, one by one, Birkita lowered the crosses, extracted the nails as gently as she could and freed the bodies. She laid them on the ground, beside one another. As she worked she prayed to the gods to take these four people that she had loved into their care. She felt a great weight on her, like the gods were pressing their feet on her back. At times she still found herself not believing that this had actually happened.

  When the bodies were all down, Birkita used her sword to hack away the thorns and brambles and foliage that obscured the entrance to the Haven. Then using her cloak as a sort of litter, she dragged the skeletons one by one and carried them inside the Haven. They would be together in the next world.

  She sealed up the entire entrance passageway with boulders and logs. The work took her two days. She stopped only to eat or drink or sleep. When the passageway was blocked she covered the entrance, pushing back everything she had cut down. She dug up saplings that the wind had sown and replanted them around the Haven. When she had finished her work, the place looked like nothing more than a great boulder resting on the ground in the middle of a forest. Very few people came here anyway and she assumed that any people that had known about its existence were dead now. In a few years the thorns and the trees would cover it and her brother and his wife and their two children could rest in peace, together, for ever.

  When all of this was done, she made a fire from dead wood and burnt the four crosses, scattering the ashes once they had cooled. She slept one more night here lying face down on top of the boulder of the Haven, feeling her heart beat against the stone and remembering the people who lay beneath her.

  Birdsong woke her the next morning. She had slept deeply. She rose, went to a pool she knew close by, stripped and washed her body all over. Then she ate some food, strapped on her weapons and went to seek her vengeance.

  33

  It has been five days since Julia and Suzanne argued; five nights that Julia has slept by herself. She assumes that Suzanne is safe – or rather, that she is with Adolf.

  Julia has kept writing over these few days. Every day she has written at least two pages of tiny writing. This is about as much as she can manage given that she is writing by hand and also that there is a limited amount of time between when she gets back from work and has something to eat, and before lights out.

  Adolf has taken to giving her harder work to do. If there is lifting of rocks or stones to be done, that is given to her. This means that she is even more bone-weary when she comes in from work. But despite this, no matter how physically tired she feels, she finds that her mind is fresh and ready to go. And she knows why.

  The writing has saved her.

  She can write from the heart about Birkita’s desolation because that is exactly what Julia is feeling. The ghetto is hopelessly overcrowded yet Julia has never felt more alone. And she sees the writing as her only hope, the only light in her darkness.

  She doesn’t yet know how the book will end. She and Suzanne have never talked about this. Or rather, they have but it has always been to say, ‘we’ll see.’ They want to see where the characters will take it. But by continuing to write, Julia is pushing Birkita’s life forwards. Julia knows that Birkita will eventually get out of the terrible place she is in. She has to. If she didn’t, if the book ended now, the reader would feel cheated. And it would be a drab ending. Actually, it would hardly be an ending at all – it would be like the book had been just abandoned, left there.

  Julia thinks how wonderful it would be if her life moved forward as well. How great it would be for the war to end, the book to be finished, Suzanne to come back into her life and for them to do all the things they had talked about.

  Of course, she has little confidence that this is what will happen. She hopes she will survive to the end of the war. No matter how desolate the future might be, she loves life. But after that – what she had with Suzanne, she feels is lost and can never return. Yet she does feel a faint glimmer of hope. She assumes that if she didn’t she would be dead. Or at least have given up. She pictures this hope as a tiny, tiny candle flame burning, barely visible, glimpsed way off in the distance through the tall trees of a vast, dark forest – the way Birkita might have seen it.

  Somehow, this hope is tied up with the book. Every day that Julia writes, every piece of the story that she adds, pushes Birkita forward, out of the darkness that she is in. And Julia hopes that just as Birkita is making slow but steady progress towards the light, then maybe Julia is too.

  At least this is the thought that she comforts herself with as, writing finished for the day, mentally and physically exhausted, she closes her eyes and almost instantly falls asleep.

  ‘Julia!’

  Somebody shakes her. She moans, thrashes under the blanket as if that will push them away.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Julia! Wake up! Julia, I have to talk to you.’

  Julia opens her eyes. Or maybe she doesn’t.

  But he is there. His face. The smell of him. The smell that she once loved because it comforted her. Protected her. Made her feel safe.

  But now it’s not like that.

  How did he get here? She thought he was dead. But he’s back. Here. In the Paradise Ghetto.

  Was he here all along? Had he seen her? Was he watching her? Just waiting for the moment. Like he used to. When her mother was out. Is she here too? But that’s no good because she will just do what she always did. Nothing. Even animals watch over their young.

  ‘Julia!’

  I can scream. I am in a room full of people. Surely one of them will come and save me.

  ‘Go away! Please ... somebody save me!’

  But of course she realises that nobody will come to her. People scream in their sleep all the time in the ghetto. Mostly, any screaming is just met with cries of ‘Shut up!’ and ‘Go back to sleep!’

  ‘Julia! Stop Julia! Stop. It’s me – Suzanne.’

  Julia opens her eyes. This time she is sure that she does. She screams again but then sees that Suzanne’s face is above hers, looking down, her features just about visible in the faint light.

  She has come back.

  ‘Julia – it’s me, Suzanne.’

  ‘Suzanne – you’ve come back.’

  Suzanne shakes her head. Or maybe she doesn’t. Julia is still a bit groggy and can’t be sure. She was sleeping so deeply. It was like death.

  ‘I’ve brought you some food,’ says Suzanne. ‘Just like I said I would.’

  ‘Thank you ... that’s ... that’s very good of you.’

  ‘These last few days,’ Suzanne says. ‘I kept thinking about how we had left things. I said some horrible things. I just wanted to say I’m
sorry. I want things to be good between us again.’

  Julia is awake now. She lies on her back while Suzanne sits on the blanket.

  ‘They are ... it’s all right,’ Julia says. ‘As you said, people do what they can ... what are you doing here anyway?’

  Adolf had to go to a meeting tonight. He won’t be back until late. So I came here to see you.’

  ‘After curfew?’

  ‘He has friends. He was able to give me a pass in case anybody stopped me. Not that they did.’

  ‘So everything’s good with him?’ asks Julia.

  ‘I know what you think, Julia, but he’s a good man. And now he’s my man.’

  Julia says nothing to this. Suzanne continues.

  ‘After the war – when this is all over – we’re going to get married.’

  ‘That’ll be nice,’ Julia forces herself to say.

  If Suzanne notices the grudging nature of the words, she doesn’t remark on it. Instead she says, ‘I’m in love, Julia. Be happy for me. Say that you are.’

  ‘I am. I am happy for you.’

  ‘I want you to be my bridesmaid,’ says Suzanne. ‘And then some day you’ll find somebody and I’ll be your bridesmaid. What do you think?’

  ‘That’ll be nice,’ Julia says a second time.

  Then she asks, ‘What about the book?’

  ‘You know – I’d forgotten all about it,’ says Suzanne. ‘Have you still been writing it?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘So tell me everything that’s been happening.’

  Julia does so. Then she tells Suzanne that she has some questions about various ‘research-type things’. Does Suzanne mind if she asks them before she goes? Suzanne says she doesn’t, Julia asks and gets the answers she needs.