He stopped, his shoulders sagging as if he no longer believed in what he was saying.
‘I’m not sure if it’s as simple as that,’ Ato Mesfin said quietly. ‘I don’t know if you’ll be able to start where you left off. I’m beginning to think that Daniel is a rather remarkable boy, and that there’s more to him than either of us ever guessed.’
17
Tiggist was getting worried. She’d been back in Addis Ababa for weeks now and there had been no word from Yacob. She hadn’t expected a letter or anything (he probably realized that she couldn’t really read) but she’d thought there might have been a message of some kind, through a friend maybe, someone coming up from Awassa, who could have called on her and said – well, just said hello from him.
I didn’t imagine it all, she told herself anxiously. He loves me, I know he does. We’ll get married one day, like he said.
But she kept wondering if he was forgetting her, meeting other girls perhaps, who were prettier or cleverer.
They’ll all be after him, she thought, a man like that. I suppose I shouldn’t count on him. I’ll probably just have to manage on my own.
Managing was getting harder. Mrs Faridah was leaving the shop more and more to her brother-in-law and taking more interest in Yasmin.
‘She’s all I’ve got left of my dear, dear husband,’ she’d say, showing Yasmin off in her a new dress to her friends. ‘He absolutely doted on her.’
No, he didn’t, Tiggist thought, biting her lip. She’d never seen Mr Hamid show the slightest interest in his daughter. A couple of times he’d even called out to Tiggist, in his weak voice, to take Yasmin and her noise off to the other side of the courtyard so that he wouldn’t be disturbed.
She’d learned ages ago that she couldn’t rely on Mrs Faridah. When she was being nice she was lovely, but when she’d got an idea into her head she was really tricky.
In the last week or two, ever since Mamo had shown up that day, Mrs Faridah had started to be unfriendly again. She’d heard all about Mamo’s visit from her brother-in-law, who’d seen Tiggist slip off round the corner to talk to him, and watched Mamo walk off again afterwards.
‘We don’t want people like that hanging round the shop,’ she’d said to Tiggist. ‘It puts the customers off.’
‘But he’s my brother!’ Tiggist had burst out, feeling suddenly furious. ‘It’s not his fault if he . . .’
‘Are you answering me back?’ Mrs Faridah said coldly. ‘Let me tell you, my girl, that there are plenty of others who’d like your job if you’ve decided to get above yourself.’
‘Yes, Madam. Sorry, Madam,’ Tiggist said humbly.
She’d noticed that when Mrs Faridah was in one of her moods it helped if you called her madam.
The real problem, she knew quite well, wasn’t Mrs Faridah at all. It was her horrible brother-in-law. He was making Mrs Faridah feel nervous, taking control of the shop all the time and pushing her aside.
Tiggist hated him. She tried to stay out of his way as much as she could but he kept coming after her. Sometimes he’d find fault with her over silly little things and be bullying and unreasonable, but then he’d come sidling round her when she was alone and try to kiss her.
Mrs Faridah had caught him at it once or twice but by the look on her face Tiggist could see that Mrs Faridah thought she was to blame. She’d tried to explain that she hadn’t been leading the man on, and she just wanted to be left alone, but Mrs Faridah had looked at a point on the wall behind her and said, ‘It’s up to you, Tiggist, the way you want to live your life, but I’m telling you now that your mother’s example is not one I’d advise you to follow.’
‘It’s so unfair,’ Tiggist muttered to herself that night as she tossed and turned on her hard little mat. ‘Oh Yacob, why don’t you come like you said you would? When am I going to see you again?’
In the darkness, somewhere nearby, a scuffling noise made the hairs on her arms and legs stand up with fright. He wasn’t coming now, was he, that horrible brother-in-law, creeping up on her in the darkness when no one was around?
The scuffling stopped, then started again. Tiggist breathed a sigh of relief. It was only a mouse, after all.
But he will come, one of these nights, she thought. I won’t be able to escape. And after that Yacob mightn’t want me any more.
The idea was so terrifying that it gave her courage.
I’ll do it. I’ll phone Yacob in the morning. He said to, if I needed him. And now I really, really do.
She began chanting the magic telephone number in her head, until the rhythm of it rocked her to sleep.
She woke with a sense of purpose. She got up, tidied away her sleeping mat, combed out her hair and washed her face. Then she pulled out from its hiding place the box where she kept her savings, took out some coins and, looking over her shoulder to make sure she hadn’t been seen or followed, she slipped out of the shop and hurried down the road to the public telephone round the corner.
She’d only ever used a telephone once or twice before and it took a while for her to remember how to make it work. At last, though, her trembling fingers had pressed the numbers down and she was holding the receiver to her ear, listening to the long beeps as it rang, miles away, in Awassa.
‘Abet?’
A strange voice answered. She couldn’t even tell if it belonged to a man or a woman.
‘Yacob,’ she said quietly. ‘Is Yacob there?’
‘Abet?’ the voice said again.
‘Yacob!’ Tiggist said loudly. ‘I want to speak to Yacob.’
‘Yacob is not here,’ the voice said.
‘No, next door. He lives next door to you,’ Tiggist said, speaking slowly and clearly, sure that the person hadn’t understood.
‘I told you.’ The voice was getting impatient. ‘Yacob’s not here any more. He’s not in Awassa. He’s gone away.’
A stone seemed to have lodged itself in Tiggist’s stomach, and it was becoming heavier and heavier.
‘Where is he?’ she shouted.
‘In Addis. He went to Addis last week. Hello?’
Tiggist couldn’t think. She stood clutching the receiver, no longer hearing the voice at the other end. Yacob wasn’t there! He’d come to Addis a week ago and he hadn’t even bothered to come and see her!
He’s forgotten me, she thought. It was all rubbish, what he said. He didn’t mean it at all.
She replaced the receiver and began walking slowly back towards the shop, stumbling over the uneven paving stones, not seeing where she was going. The world seemed suddenly to have come to an end.
What am I going to do? she thought. If I stay in the shop I’ll have to do what that awful man wants, in the end. But if I walk out I won’t have anywhere else to go. I’ll end up on the street, like Mamo, or – or do the things Ma did.
Without realizing it she’d stopped walking and was standing still in the middle of the pavement, with the people hurrying on their way to work streaming past her.
‘Tiggist! I’ve found you! At last!’
She looked up. He was there! Yacob was there! He was standing right in front of her, looking down at her, his hands held out awkwardly as if he wasn’t sure whether she was pleased to see him or not.
For a moment she thought she must be dreaming, but no, he was solid. Real. She could smell the faint tang of soap on his hands and feel the warmth radiating from him.
‘Oh, oh,’ was all she could say, before she burst into tears.
She felt him take her by the elbow and lead her along the pavement, and a moment later they were sitting in a corner of a bar and he was calling for tea.
‘I’ll be late for work,’ she said, though she didn’t care, at that moment, if she never went to work again.
‘Did you miss me?’ was all he said. ‘Did you think about me?’
‘All the time. Every day.’
‘Me too. I waited but you didn’t call me.’
‘I did! Just now. I was coming back from the tel
ephone. Your neighbour said you’d been in Addis since last week.’
She couldn’t help sounding a little accusing.
He laughed.
‘I wanted to make sure if it would be all right,’ he said, ‘the new plan I’m going to tell you about, and then I couldn’t find your shop. I’ve been going from one place to the other looking for you. No one seemed to know where Mrs Faridah’s was. Oh my little Tiggist, it’s so good to see you again!’
She was so charmed at being called ‘my little Tiggist’ that she could barely take in what he was saying.
‘I’ve been with my cousin,’ he went on. ‘He’s got a shop here in Addis. Down the Debre Zeit road. Builders’ suppliers. Taps, plumbing materials, everything you want to build modern kinds of houses. He wants to take me on to build up the electrical side. He’s a really nice man. You’ll like him. He called me up last week in Awassa and said he was looking to expand and that he’d thought of me because I know about electrics and anyway he’d rather have a member of the family. So I came up to Addis to see how it would be and talk things over with him, and it’s brilliant. The whole set-up. I’m starting at once! Do you see what this means? In a year or two, if all goes well and I save enough, and you put by what you get from Mrs Faridah, we’ll be able to get married! Have a place of our own! Why, sweetheart, don’t start crying again. What is it? You haven’t changed your mind, have you? Don’t you still want to marry me?’
‘Yes, yes I do!’ She clutched her glass of tea, hardly noticing her burning fingers. ‘I’ve needed you so much. Oh, you’ve no idea.’
She started trying to tell him about her life at the shop, and Mrs Faridah’s brother-in-law.
‘And my brother,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen him again, but he’s a – he’s . . .’
She couldn’t bring herself to go on. If Yacob knew that her brother was a street boy, in a gang, he might be so disgusted he’d turn against her.
Yacob wasn’t interested in Mamo.
‘That man, in the shop, he’s touched you?’ he said. The muscles were standing out along his jaw as he angrily clenched his teeth.
‘No. Not like that.’ Tiggist didn’t dare tell Yacob about the way the man had tried to kiss her. ‘But he keeps, you know, bumping into me, and trying to get me alone, and the way he looks at me . . .’
‘If he tries any of that again I’ll ram his teeth down his throat.’
Tiggist had no idea that her gentle Yacob could look so fierce. He was squaring his shoulders now.
‘Thought you were all alone, did he, without anyone to protect you? He’ll soon find out.’
Tiggist took her hand away from the tea glass, tucked it under her armpit and wriggled with pleasure.
Yacob was frowning down at the flowery plastic tablecloth.
‘We’ll have to see how it goes with my cousin,’ he said. ‘If I thought you were OK at Mrs Faridah’s I wouldn’t mind you staying there, for the time being at any rate. But if it’s like that . . .’
‘It’ll be all right now you’re here,’ Tiggist said, who couldn’t believe that anything horrible would ever happen again. Daringly she put out her hand and laid it on his arm. He put his own large hand over hers and she felt a warm feeling course all the way up to her shoulder.
‘We’ll have to see,’ Yacob said again. ‘If the business expands the way my cousin thinks it will, we’re going to need more help in the shop. There are meals to think of too. A couple of bachelors like us – we need a bit of looking after. Maybe you and I shouldn’t wait too long after all.’
He smiled at her. Here in Addis Ababa he seemed more confident than he’d been in Awassa. His shyness and awkwardness had gone.
‘I’d marry you tomorrow if I could,’ he said, pinching her chin.
‘And I’d marry you right now, today,’ she cried, her heart bursting with happiness.
18
Mamo had noticed, without quite putting it into a thought, that Dani’s position in the gang had changed. From being the outsider, increasingly despised, he’d become a kind of treasure, his skills and knowledge fully respected at last.
It had become a habit now for the gang to gather round him in the evening for a story or two. Million would drag a crate forward for Dani to perch on, and the group would sit hunched in their shammas round his feet.
Mamo liked the way Dani changed when he was telling his wonderful tales. His voice would rise and fall as he acted out the characters, while his hands flew about in descriptive gestures. There wasn’t a spare ounce on him now. He was as lean and hard as the rest of them.
Almost the best moment was when the story was finished, and everyone talked about it, going over the bits they hadn’t understood the first time, and telling Dani which stories they thought would be good to write down and sell. Million and Getachew argued about it sometimes, and even Buffalo threw in his opinion. Shoes was unpredictable. Sometimes he followed the stories with breathless excitement, laughing riotously at the funny parts, and sometimes he hardly seemed to listen, sitting morose and withdrawn on the edge of the group.
Every evening, as Dani talked and the others listened, Mamo thought with a pang of Karate.
One morning, after a marathon story session the night before, Million led the group towards a new restaurant that had opened nearby. It was a Saturday and as usual at the weekend the pickings around town were likely to be scanty. The lunch-goers, enjoying their day off work, offered the best chance of the day.
Dani, tired of writing, had given himself a day off and had gone with the others. He still couldn’t bring himself to beg, and he hung back, out of the line of sight of anyone who might still recognize him, but he enjoyed watching the others as they worked, noticing with amusement how the rich people responded to them.
Mamo was the last to leave the pitch. He was trying to train Suri to stay with the group’s bundle of blankets and plastic sheets, which they stowed every morning in a discreet pile in an angle of the wall. The puppy had grown enormously in the last few weeks and her teeth, always sharp, were becoming a formidable weapon. She needed a good deal of persuasion, every time, to stay behind on guard, and whined piteously until Mamo was out of sight, but she was beginning to settle down to her role and Mamo was very proud of her.
Suri flopped down at last on top of the blankets, put her nose down on her paws and accepted Mamo’s command with a reluctant thump or two of her feathery tail. Satisfied, he left her to it, and hurried after the others.
A car was pulling up to park on the rough patch of ground outside the restaurant. The others were already moving in on it, ready to accost the driver as he got out. The man was quite tall. He wore a jacket slung casually over his shoulders and as he bent down to lock the car door, a watch on a loose strap flopped down over his wrist.
A memory stirred in Mamo. He stared at the back of the stranger’s head, then, as the man turned and he saw the faint scar running down his cheek and recognized the thin face, a shudder of loathing and fear shook him from head to foot.
The man bent to brush a speck of dust off his trousers and walked into the restaurant.
‘It’s him! That was him!’ croaked Mamo, grabbing the arm nearest to him in a painful grip. He was almost too choked to speak.
‘Hey, Garbage King, stop that,’ said Million irritably, pulling his arm away.
‘But it was Merga. The man who stole me and sold me.’ Mamo shook his head, as if trying to clear it. ‘It was him,’ he said again.
Half of him wanted to run away. The other half wanted to burst into the restaurant and kill Merga with his bare hands.
‘That man who went in just now?’ Million said. ‘Are you sure? He catches boys and sells them? He really is the one who did it to you?’
‘Yes, yes!’ Mamo was dancing up and down. ‘I know him, I told you. And look, he’s even got his own car. He’s got rich! From selling people! I’m going to kill him. When he comes out of there, I’m going to murder him.’
Million was looking thou
ghtfully towards the car. Dani, watching him, saw an impish flame light up his eyes, before they narrowed to purposeful slits.
‘You, you and you,’ he rapped out, pointing to Getachew, Buffalo and Shoes. ‘Go and beg for a birr, anywhere, anyhow. Be quick.’
‘It’s Saturday, Million,’ objected Buffalo. ‘Where are we going to—’
‘Get it,’ Million said, cutting him off.
The three dashed off obediently.
‘Come on,’ Million barked out to Mamo and Shoes, as another car pulled up in front of the restaurant. ‘We need two birr at least. We’ve got to get some money from here.’
He put on his most soulful expression and sidled up to the woman stepping out of the car.
‘Sister, very hungry,’ he murmured, his hand out.
Half an hour later, the other three came back and Buffalo dropped a few coins into Million’s hand.
‘Ninety cents,’ he said, ‘and that’s a miracle.’
Million counted up the coins in his own hand.
‘It’s enough. Getachew, go as fast as you can to the hardware store. Buy a bag of nails.’
‘Nails?’ Getachew frowned at him, puzzled.
‘You heard me. Run!’
Five minutes later, Getachew was back. He handed the bag to Million and bent over, panting, trying to get his breath back.
‘Mamo, keep out of sight in case he comes out,’ Million ordered. ‘He mustn’t see you. Dani, come and help me. The rest of you, keep watch. If anyone comes near or seems interested in what we’re doing, start singing to warn us.’
‘Yes, but Million, what are we doing?’ Mamo said. He felt dissatisfied. He wanted Million to make a battle plan, or prepare an ambush, he didn’t quite know how.
Million didn’t answer. He was already behind Merga’s car, looking down at the ground. He glanced round quickly, saw that no one was looking, then bent down and began to arrange nails around the back offside wheel, digging the heads into the ground so that the points stood up in wicked spikes exactly where the tyres would roll over them.
The Garbage King Page 23
