We sat and studied like two little schoolboys. The Bible covers were worn, the pages were dirty. Just inside the front was a column of numbers: 937, 940, 922 … All high numbers like that, ten of them, down in a long column. Now, we’d never been educated in numbers, but to survive you have to add up and take away – none of us were stupid, so we had some ideas.
The pages they marked were all towards the end, and Gardo remembered the old man had been talking about the Gospel.
‘St John,’ he said. ‘It is finished.’
That was where we started looking, and that’s where a lot of fingers had been. All those pages were coloured in and used so well they were even thinner than the rest – we had to be careful they didn’t come off in our hands. The bit about the crucifixion was on page 940 – the first number in the strip. So we concentrated on that page. All along the bottom, in someone’s handwriting, was written:
And at that time the sky grew dark and Jesus cried out, ‘It is accomplished’ – and the curtain of the temple was rent in two, top to bottom – the earth quaked and the graves were opened and the saints were raised …
Gardo saw that each line of print had a tiny number to mark out the Bible verse, so now we tried out a hundred combinations, muddling backwards and forwards. We put the numbers in the strip against the numbers in the column. We tried counting down, and then across, but it wasn’t easy because nobody knew what it was we were expecting – so he’d do one thing, I’d do another and contradict. We got to a point where we were going over the same ground again and again. All we knew was that the numbers we had – 940.4.18.13.14 – had to be set against the lines somehow, so as to turn them into letters – that was what the old man had said. But whatever we tried we ended up with gibberish.
Rat came back smelling of rum, with a nip for each of us. We ate, and he went to sleep for a while.
Gardo and me settled to trying more variations. We put out new candles, and we weren’t fighting any more. He’d have a go, and hand over to me. While he tried again, I just sat and thought and thought, then he did the same.
Midnight came round, I think, and maybe that was the magic. It was the end of the month, and we were slipping into All Souls’ Day – that’s the Day of the Dead here. Maybe José Angelico and Gabriel Olondriz came and sat beside us – I swear it was crowded in the room. Maybe they put the answer right in his head – because Gardo hit the jackpot. Instead of going left to right, he went right to left. 4 lines down, 18 words to the left, he got a capital ‘G’. 13 down, and 14 to the left, he got an ‘o’. It was the first time we had a word.
He moved on 5 letters and got nowhere, so we decided that the slash might mean change the page, so we turned over. That didn’t help us, so we turned the page back. 5 lines down, 3 letters in, we got ‘t’; then 6 down, 4 across, we got our next little ‘o’. The slash meant ‘turn back a page’, and now we had two very meaningful words, and we just looked at them, hardly breathing:
Go to
We turned back a page whenever there was a slash, so we were going backwards through the book of John. It was falling out all over us, just counting carefully, straining our eyes because the words were so small. We made mistakes, but we were laughing, because the whole thing was opening up.
Go to the map ref where we lay look for the brightest light my child.
Rat woke up and we read it to him.
He shook our hands, then we hugged him, and he said: ‘I know what a map ref is.’ My, were his eyes big and shiny. ‘I was in some class,’ he said, ‘and they’re all doing maps. That’s a map “reference”, that’s what it’s talking about. Where we lay is where we were – where we met, maybe? And he’s thinking his little girl is reading this.’
‘Open the map,’ I said. I thought even then he was being a smart-arse, but we were learning to try everything anyone said, every way. ‘Let’s look at it again,’ I said.
We’d stared at the map a hundred times, hunting it for arrows or crosses, wondering if they’d been marked and removed, straining our eyes over it. We stared and stared, and Rat said, ‘A map ref is a reference to the numbers, OK? It’s a line of numbers.’
‘Numbers again?’ I said. My head was aching, but we went back to the letter. There were no numbers apart from the code we’d just cracked, so we turned back to the map. Numbers all round the edges, but still no way in. Until I looked at the envelope and saw: Prisoner 746229.
I read it aloud.
‘That wasn’t his number,’ said Gardo quietly.
‘What wasn’t? What are you saying?’
‘When we arrived. We were in the waiting room, and the prison boss came in and asked Sister Olivia about the name. He said we had the number wrong, because at first I thought maybe we had the wrong guy completely.’
‘You go up and down, that’s all I remember,’ said Rat – and that’s what cracked it. We split the six numbers into two: 746 and 229. Sure enough, the map had a 74 and a 22, they were right there along the sides, and took us straight to a square in the middle. In it was a graveyard. In fact, the graveyard covered the square, and we never did find out what the 6 and 9 were.
‘He put the fridge by a graveyard,’ said Rat quietly. ‘That’s what the gardener said.’
‘Where we lay,’ I whispered. ‘That means where we are … buried.’
There was a little silence, and then we all started to laugh again, quiet as we could. There was a little light coming through – we’d worked through the night, and had our answers. We held hands, we slapped our palms and Gardo kissed me right on the head. It had all just fallen all over us, and we were getting close. A graveyard in the centre of the city – the Naravo. We’d go and look for the brightest light – a special grave, maybe? Or a part of the church? Once again, the trash boys were ahead of the trash police.
Or so we thought.
5
This time they came quietly.
This is Jun-Jun, because I remember exactly how it was. I am the best hearer, the best jumper, the best runner – they think I brag, but they know it’s true!
Early morning they came, hoping to catch us asleep – plainclothes and uniforms, I believe, all pressing in around us. The boys had blown out the candles – we were just folding up the papers, and we heard a heavy step on the ladder below.
Why I stopped and noticed, I don’t know. José and Gabriel again, like Raphael says – on the Day of the Dead, the dead look after you. Anyway, I said how quiet it was – we usually heard the old lady at the bottom of the house shouting and banging about because she had about ten children, who were up before dawn making mischief. So we all stopped still, and wondered where the morning sounds had gone.
Maybe she was the one who sold us? I don’t know.
I could hear someone talking below, sounding worried. Then the feet coming up the ladder sounded too heavy, that’s all I can say – they sounded heavier than any man who lived up in our part of the building, where you had to be light.
I went straight to the roof-hatch, opened it up.
Raphael was almost too scared to move – I had to smack him one. Gardo and he picked up what they could carry and we went so slow, so silent – because we didn’t want to make a sound. If it was police, we wanted them to come right in and find an empty room. They might stick around, thinking we were close, and then bust up the next little room – the last thing we wanted was panic and for them to see us run. So even though my guts were aching and the voice inside was screaming, Get yourself out of here! we made ourselves go slow.
I went first and guided Raph, who guided Gardo. I was waiting for a shout, or a gunshot even – I thought they had to have the place surrounded, they wouldn’t be that dumb again – but there was nobody on the roof.
Then, just below, I heard someone call Gardo’s name.
‘Hey, Gardo! It’s your cousin!’
Lies.
‘Gardo? Hey! He’s sick.’
Crazy lies, telling us only that we had to get moving.
/> We stayed low, poised there for a while, like three scared little cats. I beckoned, and we all crossed to the next roof, a TV aerial helping us swing down silently. There were wires stretching across, but we all knew not to touch them in case they were bad electrics – once you’ve had a zap off a power line you go careful. So we just went on our toes down into a dip in the roof-space where we definitely couldn’t be seen.
Luck holding.
A man was sitting in his window, smoking a cigarette, just watching us. I saw some other people too – a woman flapping out some washing, and two children playing with a dog. Everyone stopped and stared at us, but no one said a word and the dog didn’t bark.
Then down below we heard battering and hammering on doors, and we knew the police were moving. Right at once we heard feet running, we heard shouting – we could hear big dogs, and engines were revving. All of a sudden, over a ledge and level with us, there was a policeman coming up a ladder – and he was looking right at me.
He shouted something, and got a whistle in his mouth. Then I saw him go for his gun, but he was clinging to the ladder still, and we were gone before he could aim. Under us and all around us, though, the world was full of noise.
6
Raphael.
Running for your life two times in one day? We were so scared, both times, we thought our hearts would just blow apart. But the thing is, when we thought about it later, Rat had been chased so often, and grabbed at so often, that he must have had extra senses. When he was on the station, it was bad, but it could be bad at Behala too – someone thinks it’s fun to grab the skinny kid with the crazy teeth and see what he’s got. When Rat sees someone move, his feet get ready to jump.
The policeman with the gun was slow, but what was so dangerous was how many more there might be and how quick we had to be. Rat led, and got to the edge of our roof, and over a low wall. From that we hopped down onto a long warehouse roof, and we ran right along its guttering. We were clear for a moment, but then we saw a policeman in the grass below, bursting through a gate – and it’s the same thing again: his gun’s out and he’s got a whistle to his lips. He had no chance to fire because we got straight round some chimneys and then up the slope – but he’d have a radio, and soon they’d be all around us, we all knew that. We had to think so quick – and let’s just thank Rat again for being the one who’d got to know the area. He was the one who spent the time checking in with the street kids, so he was the one who saw the chance and went for it.
The next-door building was the very one where those children lived, where we’d all spent the one night. Rat saw at once we had to dive back in among them. How were the police going to take in a hundred kids? It was the smartest thing he ever did.
Now, the place they lived – the place we were opposite now – was a big old block of flats that had caught fire years ago – just a big, black, ugly cement thing, nobody knowing what to do with it. The gang lived there – a hundred or more, scavenging, begging, sweeping and doing things you don’t want to know about. They’d get cleared out, and come back again, then a big clearout, and back they come – that’s how it always was in these old places.
The roof we were on ran right up to it, and one jump would get us in the window. As we got to the edge, we could see some of the kids sorting out their breakfasts. A little one looked right up and waved.
It was a long jump to get to it, and I know Gardo and I just looked for a moment, too scared to try. But we did it, Rat first, and Gardo next, and me … I just threw myself, and they caught me somehow, dragged me up so I was bloody again. We ran then, through the kids that had come to see us, to help us, and they clustered around – they knew we were running because there’s not many kids that haven’t had to do the same thing – and they were wild for us. We all ran together. We found stairs down, and everyone was screaming and laughing, shouting to their friends, so suddenly we were a mighty crowd, pouring into the hallway.
It saved us, I swear.
When we reached the street, we just streamed out, wild as birds, screaming over the street in all directions. There were two police cars, another one roaring in. There were men with radios, guns out and arms wide to catch us, staring around wildly as this mass of little boys and girls rolled out over them. One grabbed a kid, and everyone flew away from him, howling out and laughing like it was a game, straight into the street, where a truck had to slam on its brakes and a bus swerved round up over the kerb, straight into the police car.
Then, just like birds, we were all gone, spreading out and ducking through the alleys and store-fronts, policemen running but hopeless. It was all three of us and about five or six other boys, but then they flew off on their own, and the three of us were safe, still running till we reached a road.
Then, an amazing thing.
Gardo did something so smart I think Rat kissed him, but he says he didn’t! Cool as anything, he held up the money we had left to a slow-moving taxi cab. I think the driver was so stunned he just pulled over, and we piled in before he could smell us. A few minutes later we were off again, on the South Superhighway, and he had twice the fare in his hand and he was smiling too.
‘Where you going?’ he kept saying. ‘Where you going?’
‘Naravo Cemetery,’ we said.
Where else would we go? The square on the map.
And on this particular day, you know – another funny thing – probably half the city was heading that way too – we were just running with the flow. The Day of the Dead, and the Naravo’s the biggest graveyard in our city: everyone goes there, rich and poor alike. So we got down low in our seats, and soon our happy driver was up the ramp and driving fast, overtaking buses and trucks. He put his radio on, and we sang.
We wound down the windows and we sang louder as the sun came up higher, right in our eyes. OK, it wasn’t over, not at all. But we were alive another day, and that was worth singing for!
7
My name is Frederico Gonz, and I make grave memorials.
One small detail from me, for Father Juilliard. You ask, sir, so I will tell you.
I met José Angelico the way I meet many of my customers. I have a workshop on the cemetery road, just past the coffin makers. I specialize in the small, simple stone. I am very aware that my clients have next to nothing, and renting the grave has often taken most of their money. So I modify and modify and get down to the very lowest cost. The dead, however, must have that stone: the reminder, the eternal reminder, that this man, this woman, this child – existed.
On some of the graves the name is marked in paint, or even pen, and everyone knows how sad that is. Make something out of stone, I say, and no one touches the grave. The poor are not buried, you see. There is not enough ground here any more, so in the Naravo they build upwards. The graves of the poor are concrete boxes, each just big enough for the coffin. They go up and up – in some parts twenty boxes high. A funeral here is to slide the coffin in and watch the sealing of the compartment. Part of my service is that I cement the stone that I’ve made into place, and thus seal the chamber.
José Angelico used me when his son died. I was sad to see him again with news that his daughter had died also. It meant he had no one in the world now.
He was a thin, lean, gentle man who always spoke quietly. I knew that he was a houseboy for a rich man, but that was all I knew. He found me early in the morning, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept for a long, long time. He gave me just a morning to make the stone, which is unusual, but he said he had run out of money for the funeral home, and the coffin had to be moved that day. It would be a simple ceremony, he said, because there were no relatives.
I offered him all my sympathies, and he paid me two hundred as a deposit, and I set to work.
Pia Dante Angelico: seeds to harvest, my child were the words he chose. It is accomplished.
I did not chisel it myself. My son is ten years old, and is a fine cutter now. He used to rough out and I would finish. Now, he finishes, and he’s developi
ng his own style of turning letters – small flourishes that add elegance to elegant words. He completed the stone in four hours, and we set it by for pick-up.
How was I to know it was lies? He looked to me so meek and so mild – there wasn’t a lie in his face. He took the stone and paid me from a small leather bag. He had the coffin behind him, carried by two young men – street sweepers, they looked like. No priest. I went along and saw the coffin placed inside, and we said prayers for the child. I sealed it and fixed our little stone. All I could see was the worry and grief, like he was a man worn down to nothing. There wasn’t a lie in his face.
When I read about him dying in a police station, I just thought, Poor man. I read the story to my son, and we said a prayer for him also.
STAR EXTRA:
Police Closing in
A spokesman for the city police said last night that important leads are being followed up ‘professionally, vigorously and relentlessly’, and that the undisclosed sum stolen from the vice-president’s house would undoubtedly be recovered. ‘You cannot keep this kind of money hidden. Experience tells us that somebody, somewhere, will blow the whistle soon. That is when we swoop.’
Requests for further details were firmly declined. ‘We are at a sensitive stage. We are talking to people who have to stay anonymous. All we can say is that we are confident that a breakthrough is imminent.’
Vice-President Zapanta is no stranger to controversy and has been constantly dogged by accusations and scandal. Trained as a lawyer, he has been notoriously quick to challenge and in many cases prosecute critics of his policies and personal conduct – to date, successfully. A spokesman for the senator reported that he was in ‘considerable distress but remains hopeful’.