The Garbage King

by Elizabeth Laird

  Tomorrow, he thought again. I’ll start with maths, then I’ll do half an hour of geography, then I’ll learn all that chemistry stuff off by heart.

  He pushed the thought of the exams to the back of his mind. Now that his father wasn’t there, the idea of Feisal, waiting like an ogre down in Jigjiga, seemed too fantastic and unreal to be true.

  Father can’t have meant it, he told himself. Mamma would stop him sending me there, anyway.

  There was only one kind of homework that he tackled with enthusiasm. His Amharic teacher, Ato Mesfin, sometimes set essays and stories to write. Dani would spend hours on these. He’d write reams and reams, covering pages with large untidy Amharic letters. He’d read them to his mother before he took them into school, and she’d listen with admiring attention. Ato Mesfin was the only teacher who ever gave him a word of praise.

  ‘Go on like this,’ he’d say sometimes, ‘and we’ll make a writer of you.’ Then he’d try to look stern. ‘You won’t get much further, though, if you don’t improve your handwriting.’

  The exams suddenly roared up out of the future as fast as an approaching train. One day, Dani was happily constructing another story for Ato Mesfin, and the next he had suddenly realized, with a jolt to his heart and a lurch to his stomach, that there were only ten days of revision time left. The thought settled down, after the first shock, into a block of painful anxiety, weighing on his mind and paralysing it. He sat for hours at his desk, but the books seemed more scarily remote than ever.

  The first exam made him feel a little better. There were parts of it he could answer quite well. He did his best, bending his head over the paper, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. But the second exam was so awful, the questions so completely strange and incomprehensible, that he could do nothing but stare at them with horror. They seemed to jig about on the page, mocking him. He tried his best, writing down a few things that he thought he remembered, but he knew when the hours were up that he had failed miserably.

  He was scared after that. The thought of Feisal began to loom large in his mind, no longer an ogre of fantasy, but a figure that was all too real.

  Ato Paulos announced that he was coming home as suddenly as he had gone away. Dani heard his mother’s voice, excited and happy, as she talked down the wires to London.

  It’s all right for her, Dani thought, feeling suddenly painfully distant from his mother. He loves her. She’s not scared of him. Not really. She wants him to come home.

  He hardly slept at all the night before his father’s flight was due. He tossed and turned in bed, rehearsing over and over again what he would say when the results came out, the reasons he could give for the terrible marks he knew he’d have. He’d been desperately ill, at death’s door. (No, not even his mother would back that one up.) His exam papers had got mixed up with another boy’s. (Ato Paulos would wave that one aside with an infuriated frown.) The teachers had a down on him because they were jealous of his father’s success. (That would be no good. Flattery disgusted Ato Paulos.)

  It was a Sunday when his father arrived. Ruth had planned to meet him at the airport, but the doctor, who had come round the night before, had taken her blood pressure and told her firmly that she was to stay in bed.

  Dani had calculated the time it would take for his father to get home from the airport. He planned to be surrounded by piles of books, mountains of books and sheets and sheets of handwritten pages when Ato Paulos came in through the door. But the car was hooting outside the gates a full hour before he’d expected it, and Ato Paulos was striding up the steps and was in the house before Dani had time to hide the little soldiers he was playing with on his bed, and scramble over to his desk.

  In fact, it didn’t matter, anyway. Ato Paulos didn’t even glance into Dani’s room. He was hurrying along the corridor to his own bedroom in answer to Ruth’s sharp cry of joy and welcome. And walking briskly behind him, a bag in her hand and a navy blue coat folded over her arm, was a white woman.

  Astonished, Dani followed them down to his parent’s room. His father was bending over his mother with a look of such unaccustomed tenderness on his face that it almost made Dani gasp.

  ‘Ruth,’ he was saying in English. ‘This is Miss Watson. She’s a nurse. She’s going to take you to London on the morning flight tomorrow and look after you on the journey.’ He lapsed back into Amharic. ‘I’ve managed to fix up for you to see a heart surgeon, and he’s taking you into the clinic straight away. He’ll do the operation as soon as you’re strong enough.’ He coughed awkwardly. ‘You’re going to be all right. Everything’s going to be all right. Where’s Zeni? She’s got to start getting your things together right away.’

  5

  In spite of the desperate lack of food, and his constant gnawing hunger, Mamo was growing. He was hardly aware of it. He only knew that his voice was playing tricks on him, and that his hands and feet had become more clumsy.

  He had lost count of the weeks and months that had passed since the man in the city clothes had brought him here. He had given up all thoughts of escaping.

  The farmer, whose sudden rages were never far away, was becoming more tense as harvest time approached. A freak storm had wrecked the crops in a neighbouring district, and as his own fields began to ripen he lived in dread that the same thing would happen to him. The black cow, too, the awkward one who always got herself into trouble, was in calf, and the farmer inspected her suspiciously every evening, shooting angry glances at Mamo if he found so much as a burr sticking to her hide.

  On Sundays, the stifling everyday routine changed a little. Tesfaye didn’t go to school, and the family set off early in the morning, before it was light, to walk several miles to the nearest church, where the service started soon after dawn. For Mamo, this meant that he missed his breakfast, though the woman sometimes put a piece of sugar cane into his hand before hurrying after her family with the baby on her back.

  The worst thing was that Tesfaye would run home ahead of the others, along the path by the stream. The sight of Mamo sitting together with Hailu and Yohannes always seemed to inflame him to a jealous rage.

  ‘Where’s your pride?’ he’d say jeeringly to them. ‘What do you want to talk to that dirty beggar for? Don’t you know that you can catch diseases off people like that?’

  Mamo usually looked out for Tesfaye on a Sunday, and moved away from the other two when he saw the boy’s lithe figure appear on the hillside above the stream.

  One bright Sunday morning, everyone had been in a better mood than usual. The farmer had actually smiled as Mamo had led the cows out of the hut.

  ‘She’ll calve any day now,’ he’d grunted, feeling the black cow’s swollen flanks. ‘It’ll be a big one by the look of it.’ Then he’d gone to the gate and looked out over his few small fields. ‘They’ll be ready to harvest by the end of next week. Then you’ll know what hard work really means.’

  His tone had been almost friendly. It had lulled Mamo into a faint feeling of optimism.

  Maybe Yohannes’s father was right, he thought. Maybe things will be better when the harvest’s in.

  As he followed the cows down the worn path, he suddenly remembered one of the tunes he’d often heard blaring out from the music shop in Addis Ababa. He’d spent hours sitting on the wall near it, listening. He could even just remember the sounds of some of the words, or near enough, though he didn’t have any idea of their meaning.

  ‘We’re the survivors. Yes! The black survivors . . .’

  He was still crooning softly to himself when he joined the other boys.

  ‘What’s that song? What are you singing?’ Yohannes said at once. ‘Is it from Addis? Did you hear it on TV?’

  Even Hailu looked interested, and asked him to sing it again.

  The morning passed much more quickly than usual. Mamo discovered, once he tried to think about it, that he’d learned the tunes of six or seven songs, and could repeat a good many words. The three boys perched on the roots of
a huge ancient tree, from which they could look down on the cattle, who were moving slowly upstream, seeking out the last few patches of greenery.

  For the first time in months, Mamo felt almost happy. The music made him feel different, powerful somehow, and hopeful. In Addis, he’d only ever sung quietly, under his breath, afraid of drawing attention to himself, but here he could let his voice swoop and soar. It belled out into the vast silence of the countryside clear and true. He hadn’t known he could sing like that. It felt good. He couldn’t help responding to the whole-hearted admiration in Yohannes’s eyes, and the respect in Hailu’s.

  He was so absorbed that he forgot to keep an eye on the shadows, which always shortened rapidly as the morning wore on. Normally, they gave him an idea of the time, so that he could be ready to slip away from the others the moment Tesfaye appeared. Today, he didn’t give Tesfaye a single thought until a stone whizzed past his ear.

  He jumped and looked round, instinctively putting an arm up to shield his head. Tesfaye was pelting down the slope towards him, another stone in his hand. Yohannes and Hailu stood up, looked nervously at each other, and backed away.

  ‘Cockroach! Rat!’ yelled Tesfaye, hurling the other stone, which grazed Mamo’s shoulder. ‘Why aren’t you looking after my cows? Who says you can sit here all day singing dirty foreign songs from your mother’s slag shop bar?’

  The blood rushed to Mamo’s head. His fist tightened round his stick. He was gearing himself to rush at Tesfaye when Hailu let out a yell.

  ‘The cows! Look!’

  The second stone that Tesfaye had thrown had rolled down the hill and hit the black cow’s forelock. She had started back nervously, frightening the others, who were trampling about at the edge of the stream.

  Hailu and Yohannes raced down towards them, holding out their sticks, trying to reach each of their cows in turn to soothe them and guide them away, and Mamo, fear of the farmer overcoming his fury, followed them automatically.

  His head still in turmoil, he missed his footing and fell headlong, grazing the skin off both his knees. His stick flew out of his hand. It hit the normally quiet brown cow, who was standing behind the black one, and who now lurched forwards, butting the black cow’s rump with her horns. The black cow, nervous as usual, rolled her eyes and arched her back, then side-stepped, and Mamo could only watch in silent horror as she lost her footing and fell sideways down the bank, landing with a drenching splash in the stream. Frozen, he waited for her to scramble to her feet again, but she didn’t move. She lay in the water, her huge belly bulging grotesquely, opened her mouth and began to bellow with agonized, uncowlike intensity.

  ‘Look what you’ve done! Look!’ screamed Tesfaye, as much fear as anger in his voice as he jumped over Mamo with a flying leap and plunged into the stream. ‘Come and help me! We’ve got to get her up!’

  Mamo staggered to his feet, hardly feeling the pain in his knees, not noticing the blood dripping down his shins. Tesfaye was trying to lever the cow up, pushing at her with all his strength. Mamo joined him, and they heaved and strained against her, ignoring her anguished bellows.

  She didn’t help them. She lay like a dead weight, her legs kicking feebly.

  ‘Come on, you, push!’ Tesfaye was shouting. ‘Get her up!’

  It was no good. The cow had stopped bellowing and her head had fallen back into the water. As Mamo watched, her tongue flopped out of her mouth, her eyes stopped rolling, and death began to glaze them over.

  There was a shout from above and the farmer came running down the path.

  ‘What’s happened? What are you doing? Get her out!’ he yelled.

  Then he took in the animal’s unmistakeable stillness. With a howl, he lifted his stick and advanced on Mamo.

  ‘It was all his fault, Father,’ Mamo heard Tesfaye say in a rapid, high-pitched voice. ‘He – he threw a stone at me, and scared her, then he threw his stick at her.’

  ‘Liar! Liar!’ screamed Mamo.

  ‘Mamo’s right. Tesfaye threw a stone first,’ Mamo heard Yohannes say indignantly, but no one took any notice.

  The rage in Mamo’s head was so hot that he hardly felt the farmer’s first blows. He was struggling to get past him, to reach Tesfaye, to stuff his lies down his throat and make him grovel to his father. But the stick was falling on him so fast and so cruelly that he could think only of protecting himself, of covering his head with his arms and trying to run away.

  He didn’t manage to take a step. The man knocked him to the ground.

  ‘You dog! You filthy animal! I’ll kill you!’ the man was shouting wildly, as the stick struck brutally again and again, raining blows on his arms and legs, thwacking against his back, his head and his face.

  Then, with a crack as loud as a gunshot, the stick snapped in half. It seemed to enrage the farmer even more. He flung the two ends aside, grabbed Mamo by the shoulders, and dragging him to the stream, plunged his head under the water.

  He’s going to drown me. Oh God, help me! Oh God, don’t let me die! was Mamo’s last thought, then everything was wiped from his mind as he fought to hold his breath.

  He was about to burst, about to give up and allow the water to enter his lungs and drown him, when his head was suddenly released. He came up spluttering, and was flung backwards on to the bank. As he struggled for breath, every part of his body throbbed with pain, and he felt as if he would faint. He sat woozily on the ground, his head down on his knees, only dimly aware of the confused noises all around: the receding footfalls of the cattle as they were driven away, and the subdued retreating voices of Hailu and Yohannes.

  After a long time, he lifted his head, wincing at the pain across his shoulders. He looked round cautiously. Everyone had gone. He was alone.

  A dreadful desolation entered his heart.

  I can’t go on, he thought.

  He had a strange feeling that his soul was coming loose from his body.

  If it comes right off, he thought, and floats away, where will it go?

  He saw in his mind’s eye a picture of God, like one of the frescoes he had seen in a church in Addis Ababa. God looked like an old father, with his arms open and a loving smile on his face.

  Maybe it would be like going home, he thought, to a family.

  He looked up at the sky. The blue immensity seemed to swirl around his head, but the light sent jagged darts into his eyes, making his head ache even more painfully. He looked down again and noticed that the strength was beginning to seep back into his arms and legs.

  ‘No,’ he said out loud. ‘Please, God, don’t do this. Take my soul.’

  But it was too late. His body was taking charge again, drawing his soul back in like a child pulling on the string of a balloon.

  Mamo suddenly felt violently angry. For a moment, escape seemed to have been within his grasp, and now it had been snatched away. And then, in his head, he heard Tesfaye’s voice again, from that very first day, when they had taken the cattle out together.

  ‘That sort of plant’s poisonous,’ Tesfaye had said. ‘You’d better watch it, city boy.’

  Mamo had kept an eye out after that, for the occasional clump of poisonous plants, and he knew where the nearest one was, right now. It was growing luxuriantly down by the stream, near the place where the dead cow still lay. He had helped Hailu and Yohannes to hack it down several times, but it kept on putting up fresh shoots.

  He didn’t wait for second thoughts. He stood up shakily and hobbled down to the water’s edge. He picked a clutch of the new leaves, which were sprouting obstinately from the plant’s deep roots, and stuffed them into his mouth.

  Take me. Be my father. Take me away.

  The words ran round inside his head like a drum beat.

  The leaves tasted so bitter that, against his will, he almost spat them out again. Instead, he scooped up water from the stream in his cupped hands and drank, swilling them down.

  ‘Now, now,’ he whispered, waiting to feel once again the delicious lightness as
his soul drifted away from him, hoping to see the father with the open arms.

  Instead, he felt a horrible trembling sensation begin to shake him, and a cloudy mushiness invaded his mind. Before he fainted, his last thought was, ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’ And then, like the flicker of a flame in a dying fire, ‘No! No! I want to live!’

  The morning his mother flew away to England, it felt to Dani as if the bottom had dropped out of his world. Numb with misery, he had hung around her room while Zeni turned out drawers and cupboards, packing clothes and shoes and medicines into a huge suitcase, and Miss Watson hovered by Ruth’s bed, checking her pulse from time to time and looking over the injections and pills in her small black bag.

  ‘You’re going to come back soon, aren’t you, Mamma?’ he whispered to her, sidling up to her bed. ‘You’re not going to die over there?’

  She turned her head wearily towards him, and he was shocked at how ill she looked. Why hadn’t he noticed the dark shadows round her eyes and the grey tinge to her lips?

  ‘No, I’ll be all right. Work hard, darling. Try to please Baba. Be nice to Meseret.’

  Then Miss Watson had shooed him out of the room.

  The very worst moment of his life, so far, was when Negussie had limped out to open the compound gates, and the car, with his mother, his father and the nurse inside it, had swept out into the street and disappeared. He’d had to fight hard to hold back tears. He tried to follow in his mind the car’s route to the airport. Now it would be turning out into the main road. It would have stopped at the traffic lights. It would be going round Meskal Square. It would be going under the arch now, turning on to the airport road.

  How long would it be before Father came back alone? Two hours? Three? And what would happen then?

  He went back into his room and sat down on his bed, not knowing what to do. The everyday sounds of the house were all around him. He could hear the splashing of the hose which Negussie had brought out to water the flowers. In the street outside, a vegetable seller was passing by, calling out his wares. Meseret’s voice came from the room next door. She was singing softly in a monotonous drone as she played a babyish game. He could hear Zeni too. She was talking to the cook. They were walking round the side of the house, approaching his window.