The Garbage King

by Elizabeth Laird

  The effect was gratifying. Dani listened open-mouthed, his eyes full of respect.

  ‘You ought to write all that down,’ he said. ‘It’s like a real story.’

  The gloss on Mamo’s confidence dimmed a little.

  ‘Can’t write much,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t even finish grade two.’

  ‘What are you going to do, then?’

  Mamo wrinkled his nose as he thought, and Dani felt suddenly anxious. He’d only just met this extraordinary boy but already Mamo felt like someone he could cling to.

  ‘I’d like to get a job, I suppose,’ Mamo said at last, ‘but I don’t suppose there are any. I won’t be lucky like Tiggist.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll have to manage for a bit. Beg, guard cars, get tips, save up for a shoe-shine kit.’

  As he spoke he felt more confident again. Compared to this poor creature he’d do just fine.

  ‘Right,’ Dani was saying. He was trying to visualize himself begging and guarding cars and shining shoes, and the thought was so scary and horrible that he shut his eyes.

  The blare from the loudspeakers cut out suddenly and in the silence Dani heard a loud rumble from Mamo’s stomach. He realized that he too was desperately hungry. Unbidden, the thought of breakfast at home swam up before his eyes: fresh papaya, and bread and eggs and milk. Butter and honey. Coffee and tea. He hadn’t always bothered with it. He’d often told Zeni grumpily that he didn’t want anything, and munched sweets in the taxi on the way to school.

  He opened his eyes and saw that Mamo was looking at him.

  ‘I’ll get going now, then,’ Mamo said. ‘Got to find something to eat.’

  He stood up.

  ‘No,’ Dani said, scared at being left alone. ‘Please don’t go.’

  ‘Come with me, then,’ said Mamo.

  ‘I can’t. Father will have got the police and everyone out looking for me. I’ve got to hide.’

  ‘All right. Stay here.’

  Mamo was looking away towards the gap in the wall, already beyond it in his thoughts.

  ‘Wait,’ Dani said desperately, digging his hand into his pocket and coming up with a ten-birr note. ‘Why don’t you get something to eat with this and bring some back to me.’

  ‘Oh. All right.’

  Mamo twitched the note out of Dani’s fingers and was off at once, dodging between the graves towards the wall.

  As soon as he’d disappeared, doubts began to creep into Dani’s mind. He must have been crazy to give an unknown beggar boy half his remaining money! He’d never see it again.

  He got to his feet and began to walk up and down, cursing himself. How could he have been so stupid and naïve? And that story the boy had told him, it couldn’t possibly be true. False uncles luring him away and selling him off like a slave! Living on nothing but corncobs and prickly pears! Deliberately eating poisoned leaves and jumping in front of trucks – it was totally insane.

  And I shouldn’t have told him about the police looking for me, Dani thought, a new worry jabbing at him. What’s to stop him going to them and telling them where I am? Father might even have offered a reward. All that rubbish Mamo told me, I bet it’s just a blind. He’s probably a police spy. He’ll be with the police right now, and they’ll be coming here any minute. They’ll put a cordon round the cemetery, and close in, and then they’ll pounce.

  For a moment, the thought was almost appealing. He’d be like a fugitive in a film. And then, when he’d surrendered at last, after a heroic struggle, he’d be driven home, and Father would be haggard with worry.

  ‘I never knew how much I cared for you, son,’ he’d say, hugging him like he hugged Meseret.

  But the picture faded at once. Father would be humiliated, not relieved, and humiliation was the thing he hated most in the world. His anger would be terrifying.

  Dani swallowed. He’d let his imagination run away with him again. How could the police encircle the whole cemetery? They wouldn’t bother, not even with Father pushing them on. But one or two of them might come back with Mamo, if Mamo really was a spy. He’d better be careful and take cover.

  He picked his bag up and walked through the tombs up the hill towards the far side of the cemetery. There were more big trees here. It would be easy to hide and keep watch from their shade.

  He sat down on the ground and waited. Whether Mamo came back or not, this wouldn’t be a bad place to spend the day. He couldn’t go back out into the streets, not after yesterday’s narrow escape with Mrs Sarah. He’d have to stay hidden till after dark. It would be a long day, just waiting, with nothing to eat and drink and no one to talk to, but if he had to, that’s what he’d do. In the meantime he’d think, and see if he could work out a plan.

  He thought hard for a while, going through all the possibilities and trying to make some sense of it all, but it was like doing a bit of difficult homework. His mind just skidded over on the surface and jumped about in unexpected directions, and the minute he stopped concentrating he started daydreaming, living out in his imagination impossible and heroic stories.

  He gave up in the end, picked up a couple of little stones and sat vacantly, tossing them from one had to the other, his whole body slumped in depression.

  A scrabbling noise made him look up. He couldn’t see the cause and the hairs began to rise on the back of his neck. The sound came again, from a pile of earth that had recently been dug over a little way away.

  Nervously, Dani stood up and went over to investigate. Anything in a place like this was better than uncertainty.

  What he found was the last thing he was expecting. A tiny golden-haired puppy was struggling to climb out of a pit in the ground. It was too weak to do more than pat the loose earth with its paws, but it managed a feeble whine when it saw Dani.

  Dani bent down to look at it more closely. Blood was clotting on one of its ears and it was pathetically thin. He hesitated. Mamma and Zeni had bred in him a fear and distrust of dogs. Older ones usually attacked you, and even puppies could give you worms and infect you with rabies.

  The puppy whined again. It looked much too small and helpless to be dangerous. Dani reached down his arm, caught it by its shoulder and hauled it up out of the pit. It snarled pathetically and tried to nip his hand. Hastily, Dani put it down on the ground. The puppy stood up, but it was too shaky to walk. It lay down again and looked up at Dani, its nose twitching as it tried to learn his smell.

  ‘Can’t do anything much for you,’ Dani said, rolling a pebble past the puppy’s nose and watching its feeble efforts to reach out and pat it. ‘I haven’t even got anything to eat myself.’

  He was glad, though, that he’d found it. Now that Mamo had been gone so long he’d given up hope that he’d ever come back. Even a starving little puppy was company of a sort.

  Mamo, walking down the road away from the cemetery, felt a sort of optimism. It was great to have a ten-birr note in his hand again. He could buy plenty to eat with it. He and that boy (Girma, he’d called himself, though Mamo had known at once that it wasn’t his real name) could have a feast with ten birr.

  His mouth watered as he planned what he would buy. Injera would be the best thing, with some spicy sauce if he could find a place that sold it really cheaply. With the rest of the money he might be able to get some of yesterday’s stale bread for a few cents, the way Tiggist used to.

  He had worked his way round the outside of the cemetery wall now and found himself at the entrance to the church. A broad flight of stone steps led up to the wide, open area that surrounded the circular building. People in snowy white shammas were coming down them, pausing at the top to kiss the hand-cross which a black-caped priest was holding out to them.

  Clustered round the bottom of the steps was a crowd of beggars. They were mostly old women, some wearing nuns’ caps, but a few children were there as well – and one boy.

  Mamo was about to walk past them when the boy, whose head had been bent forward in an attitude of pious submission, looked up.

  ‘
Getachew! Is that you?’ cried Mamo.

  The boy squinted up at him against the light, and grinned.

  ‘Hey, Mamo. I haven’t seen you for ages.’

  Another group of people was coming down the steps, and Getachew let his head fall again.

  ‘For the sake of St Michael,’ he whined. ‘For the sake of Gabriel.’

  A woman with tear-stained cheeks was handing out plastic bags of food to the beggars. She put one into Getachew’s hand.

  ‘For the sake of Christ, another for my poor mother,’ he murmured, looking up at her pleadingly. Nodding, she gave him a second bag.

  Getachew murmured his thanks, stood up and bowed respectfully, then he slipped away from the crowd, following Mamo. When they were out of sight he danced a little jig and flung one arm round Mamo’s neck.

  ‘Where’ve you been all this time?’ he said. ‘I thought you’d gone for good.’

  ‘And I thought you were in prison.’

  Getachew’s face darkened.

  ‘I was. I was stitched up by that lousy Feleke.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He started hanging around with us after you’d gone. He was a right little coward. He nicked some stuff off a street stall and got caught, and pinned it on me. I’d been living with my uncle up till then, but he didn’t want to know once the police arrested me. I can’t go back to him now.’

  He thrust one of the bags of food into Mamo’s hands.

  ‘I got this for you.’

  Mamo smiled delightedly, and took the bag.

  ‘Do they do that every Sunday?’ he said. ‘Give out food, I mean? I didn’t know.’

  ‘No. It’s the forty days ceremony. Some big guy must have died forty days ago, and his wife’s doing the whole thing. Donating food to beggars. You have to keep your ear to the ground to know when a forty days is coming up and which church to go to. Come on. Let’s go somewhere quiet where you can eat.’

  Mamo hesitated. He wanted more than anything to go with Getachew. He hadn’t known him very well before, but he could tell that he was just the sort of friend he needed now. Getachew knew his way around. He knew the streets, and was a born survivor. He’d managed before on his own, for weeks at a time sometimes, when his uncle had got angry with him and thrown him out. Getachew would be a great person to go around with, not like that rich kid back at the cemetery. But Dani’s ten-birr note was in his pocket. He had promised to get him some food.

  ‘There’s this boy,’ he said awkwardly. ‘A real weirdo. We spent the night in the cemetery up there. I promised to buy him some food. He gave me the money for it and everything.’

  Getachew stared at him.

  ‘You spent the night in a cemetery? Are you crazy? I don’t dare go past the walls even in the daytime.’

  Mamo smiled. He’d have felt the same before he’d eaten the poisoned leaves and nearly died. Everyone he knew would have felt like Getachew. It struck him for the first time that Dani, too, hadn’t minded being in the cemetery all night. That was one thing at least that they had in common.

  It was Getachew’s turn to hesitate now. He held up the second bag of food.

  ‘I’d give them both to you but I’ve got to take one back to my joviro.’

  ‘Your joviro? What’s that?’

  ‘My gangmaster. I’m in a gang now.’ He looked proud. ‘Our joviro’s great, but he’s really strict. If you don’t take back what he sends you out to get, and share it out with everyone, he’ll throw you out, or set all the others on to you. I’ll tell him about you if you like. Maybe he’ll let you join us.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mamo, taken by surprise, not knowing how to respond.

  ‘See you later, then,’ said Getachew, turning to go.

  ‘Yes.’ Mamo was reluctant to let him go. ‘I’ll take this to Girma and come back here straight away. I’ll wait for you.’

  ‘All right.’ Getachew was already running off towards the busy main road.

  Mamo talked to himself impatiently as he retraced his steps to the cemetery.

  ‘I’m a fool,’ he muttered. ‘I should have gone with Getachew. Maybe they’d have let me into their gang. I just wish Girma hadn’t given me his ten birr.’

  He was nearly back at the gap when something bright caught his eye. He grunted with satisfaction when he saw that it was an old plastic bottle. The cap was missing, but it would still be useful. Now all he needed was to find a water supply.

  He reached the tomb where he and Dani had spent the night and went round behind it. Dani wasn’t there. Instead of being relieved, as he might have expected, Mamo was disappointed. He’d wanted to show off to Dani that he could get food without paying for it and make a bit of a thing about giving him back his money. There was something else too. Now that Dani seemed to have gone, Mamo realized that he’d liked him.

  Gone back to his precious father, I suppose, he thought resentfully. I don’t blame him, and he slapped his hand against the marble tomb to relieve his feelings.

  Dani had been preoccupied with the puppy but he raised his head when he heard the smack of Mamo’s hand.

  ‘Mamo!’ he called out, shouting more loudly than he’d meant to in his relief and pleasure. ‘I’m up here. Did you get anything to eat? I was afraid you wouldn’t . . .’

  He was going to say ‘come back’, but he stopped, not wanting to offend Mamo, who was running up between the tombs towards him.

  ‘There,’ panted Mamo, as soon as he was close. ‘I got breakfast and I didn’t spend a cent. Here’s your ten birr back.’ He held out the note and the plastic bag with a triumphant flourish.

  ‘Brilliant. What is it?’ Dani said, greedily eyeing the bag. ‘How did you get it?’

  But Mamo had seen the puppy. He squatted down beside it.

  ‘What’s this? Whose is she?’

  ‘Mine now, I suppose.’ Dani was opening the bag. ‘I found it over there in that pit they’ve been digging.’

  ‘In a grave?’ said Mamo. He was fondling the puppy’s uninjured ear.

  Dani wasn’t listening. He had opened the bag and was stuffing a piece of injera into his mouth.

  ‘Mm,’ he said. ‘This is good.’

  ‘It’s to share,’ Mamo said awkwardly. ‘It’s for us both.’

  Dani’s face went hot.

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’

  He gave the bag back to Mamo, who smoothed a place on the ground, pulled the food out of the bag and laid it out neatly on the plastic. Dani could see now that there wouldn’t be much between the two of them. He would have eaten three times that amount in any normal meal at home.

  The food looked almost lavish to Mamo. He wasn’t sure why, but the moment seemed somehow important. The sad face of the woman who’d given it to Getachew, or Getachew’s kindness in begging an extra bag for him, or just the fact that he was sharing it with Mamo, had made it seem special. Almost sacred. He sat back and crossed himself, as he had seen Yohannes’s parents do, back in the country, before they began their meal.

  Dani, watching curiously, was impressed by his air of ceremony. He’d wanted to grab at the food and wolf his share at once, but he made himself hold back and eat slowly from the common pile.

  He had forgotten the puppy until Mamo took a piece of injera, nudged the puppy’s mouth open and dropped it in. The puppy gulped it down, moved its feathery yellow tail and gaped for more. Mamo hesitated, but took the last piece of injera and tore it in half. He gave one piece to Dani, and the other to the puppy.

  The puppy swallowed, yapped once and licked Mamo’s hand. Mamo laughed delightedly.

  ‘I bet she’s thirsty,’ he said. ‘She needs water.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Dani. ‘I’m parched.’

  Mamo was on his feet already.

  ‘I’ll go and look,’ he said, picking up his plastic bottle.

  He was halfway back to the gap in the wall when he paused. The only water source he knew was by the bus station, where he’d been able to drink yesterday, but t
hat was miles away. He’d scout round here first, on the off chance of finding something closer.

  He set off round the inside of the cemetery wall. The corner where he and Dani had slept, and the place at the top of the hill where they’d been sitting, were at the farthest points from the main entrance. He could see the gates now. They were shut and looked as if they were padlocked. Just inside them was a little hut where the caretaker must stay.

  Moving as quietly as he could, Mamo edged round towards the hut. The caretaker must have a water supply nearby. And even if he didn’t have a tap of his own, he’d have a jerrycan somewhere around. Water wasn’t like anything else. It wouldn’t be stealing to take a bit.

  Mamo reached the corner of the hut and peeped round to the other side. He froze. A man was lying on a string bed outside the hut, seemingly asleep.

  Mamo waited for his heart to stop hammering. The man was completely still. The breeze was fluttering his clothes without him even noticing.

  Perhaps he’s dead, Mamo thought, shuddering. He’s a body and they’ve brought him here to bury him.

  But the man turned a little and sighed in his sleep.

  Mamo dragged his eyes away from him and looked round. Against the far wall was a metal barrel with a tap at the bottom. Water was slowly dripping on to the earth below, turning it a rich dark brown.

  Licking his cracked lips, Mamo tiptoed past the man on the bed, and holding his breath held the bottle at an angle below the tap, then eased it open. The water trickled almost soundlessly into it. Mamo heard a sound behind him and looked round. The man had turned again and was lying on his back. He was still asleep.

  The bottle was full now. Carefully, Mamo closed the tap and moving as cautiously as he could, stole away. He looked back when he was well clear and thought he saw a flicker in the man’s quiet face as if he had been watching and had quickly closed his eyes again, but he lay so still that Mamo thought he must have been mistaken.