Just off the platform we were met by more station boys and these ones were bigger. We got kind of herded over to the side and I could feel Gardo getting ready, feeling for his hook, which he always carries somewhere. Rat did the talking, though, since he used to live there and knew some of them, and I saw him pass over the twenty – then another fifty, then a twenty. Everyone shook hands, and they let us go. I guess Rat had paid for them not to follow us, because we went on alone to the main station square.
‘They give us five minutes,’ he said.
It’s a giant station, and that time in the morning it’s just getting crazy – a good time for us, but scary as hell. You got porters, you got travelling families, you got trucks delivering stuff, horns blasting, train whistles, loud speakers. Everyone’s cutting in and out of everyone else, and the noise is so loud you have to shout. Rat kept moving fast, and I was beginning to get frightened again. I hadn’t liked the look of the station boys, but now – everywhere I looked I could see mean-looking railway guards – and we were getting stared at. I had to keep saying to myself, ‘We’re not breaking the law’ – but it felt like we were, and everyone knows stories about what happens to kids if they get caught breaking the law. I don’t mean what I said about just riding in a train and being thrashed. We’ve got prisons in this city, and the prisons take kids quicker than they take men. You also hear stories of boys not even making it to prison, but I don’t know how much truth there is in any of it – everyone’s out to scare you with a story. I was told once about runaways, and it made me sick. How if a new kid shows up with nowhere to go, and the police get him – they wait till night, break his legs and put him on the tracks. They’re stories, and they may not be true, but I couldn’t stop thinking of them as I walked across that station, feeling small – nearly losing Rat, but Gardo by my side, up close. Both of us just waiting to be caught.
Rat kept going. Somehow he’d shaken off that twitch he gets, and was walking fast, looking happy as a kid. He stayed a little bit ahead of us. He had something in his hand, and I saw it was the key, so I guessed we must be near. We went under a bridge into some kind of hall with a low ceiling and lines of tube-lights. We kept walking, like we knew where we were going, and there they were: two long aisles of grey metal lockers – lines and lines of doors.
We kept on walking.
Some doors were big enough to take suitcases, and some, up above, were small enough for just a handbag. There were no police, no guards – no station boys – and Rat knew exactly where he was going, and he hung back for a moment so we drew level, and he said, ‘You keep moving, OK? Walk.’
There were two women opening one locker, and we went straight past them. They were far too busy with whatever it was they were putting in to notice us. A tall man at the far end was locking a door, and his back was to us. I could see the numbers: 110, 109, 108 – none of them were smashed, everything was neat and quite new, and there were still no police. Then, suddenly, Rat had turned and he had the key in the lock. We walked straight past him, and we heard the sound of metal. Nobody shouted, nobody even noticed. I was ten paces on when I heard the sound of a door closing, and then Rat was next to us again, and I could see he had something under his arm.
‘Don’t run,’ he said. ‘Slow down, OK?’
We did as he said but my heart was pounding. Gardo was smart enough to stop and play with a drinks machine, checking the slot for money. I was thinking, Look like nothing’s wrong! – three station kids making their way. Rat had the package under his shirt now. We went out onto platform four, and right along to the end, weaving through the people. We did start to run then, out of relief. We got down on the tracks, and we started to run fast. Five minutes later, we got among bushes and bramble, and there was a small pile of concrete sleepers to sit on, and we were out of breath.
Rat was grinning and laughing, and I was as well. He held the package in both hands, and offered it up like a present. It was a brown envelope, sealed up with tape, and it took me some time to get it open.
Inside was a letter, with a stamp in the corner, waiting to be posted.
There was writing in a thick pen: If found, please deliver. Then the address: Gabriel Olondriz was the name. Underneath that: Prisoner 746229, Cell Block 34K, South Wing, Colva Prison.
I felt myself go cold again, but I grinned up at Gardo and he looked hard, right at me.
I opened the letter and read it out loud. One page, and a little slip stuck to it, with just a line of numbers, making no sense. Then again, the letter made no sense: we understood none of it. All we were sure of was that we were in something deep, getting deeper.
PART TWO
1
My name is Father Juilliard, and I am the one pulling these accounts together – all names changed, for obvious reasons. You will understand the importance of this at the end: but it’s a story that had to be told. The next set of events is best left to me, and to one of my former staff.
I will just tell you that I have been running the Pascal Aguila Mission School on the Behala dumpsite for seven years. It was going to be a one-year job: my task was to set it back on its feet after some financial mismanagement. It was to be my final posting – I’m sixty-three. But I fell in love with the place, and have been here ever since. Unfortunately I am being retired this year – partly because of this story. The school has already appointed its new head, and my final official task is the handover.
I hope to stay in the country, but I’m not sure I can.
I should say, by the way, that our school does need new energy, as we’ve been getting smaller rather than larger. It’s hard to keep the children attending class: we have to bribe them with food. Our income’s going down, and the food resources are never regular. It’s also so hot, and around the dry season it gets stifling. The school is made of large metal boxes – the iron containers you see on ships and trucks. Ten were donated to start the Mission. They were bolted together, and windows and doors were hacked out – there it was, an instant metal school. Six more crates were bought, and they made the upstairs. Two form a chapel. Three have been knocked together for a babies’ room, with a little play area in one corner. Half of one is a rest area, and the other half is my office.
I only knew Raphael and Gardo by sight, as they rarely came to classes. Few children do after the age of ten. Their families want them picking trash, and it’s hard to argue that education’s ever going to be helpful – so we lose them. Little Jun – the boy they call ‘Rat’ – I knew better. He would visit me in my office, sneaking up when the other children had gone, climbing the outside like a monkey. I’d let him in through a window, I’d give him the ointments and plasters he needed, and – if he wanted one – I’d let him take a bath. I would have to give him food too, because he was evidently starving. We had a rule that food was only provided at lunch time and for half an hour after classes. I broke that rule for Jun, and a handful of others like him, because I have always said that you have to break the rules. I set rules up; then I break them. Sister Olivia broke the rules as well, as you shall hear.
Don’t put your feet on the chairs, don’t take more food than food for you – don’t take food out to your family. Stay in line, say the prayer quietly, wear a shirt when you’re indoors, wash your feet before chapel – I have to laugh myself, but rules are what we live by even though we all know they’re sometimes foolish. One rule that I like a lot, though, is an unusual one: on the stairs up to chapel, nobody must speak.
Why can’t you speak on the chapel stairs? Let me tell you – somewhere it is relevant.
The steps and the chapel are dedicated to the man whose name we bear – Pascal Aguila – one of the country’s lesser-known freedom fighters. The Aguila family donates a large sum of money every year, and they bought those last six containers for our upstairs. They ask that we honour Pascal’s memory – which is a pleasure as well as a duty. He was a man who fought corruption and was shot to death for his pains, so we honour him several times a day, j
ust by being quiet on the stairs. I find that the children never need reminding. Just now and then, if there’s a boy or girl who’s new, they might be chattering; then you hear a great gust of ‘Shhhhhh’, like a breeze, and everyone is silent. We tell them about Pascal, of course, and his picture hangs over the altar. He was a man determined to build things and make life better. He spoke a dozen languages, yet he was from a poor family. He became a lawyer, but he continued to live in a poor quarter of the city. He took on impossible cases, and won them. When squatters had their houses bulldozed, Pascal Aguila forced the government to find them land. When a building project hired a thousand men and failed to supply them with boots, gloves or hats, Pascal Aguila sued, and forced a change in the law that made the construction industry a whole lot safer. When cholera hit the swamps, just up from the docks, Pascal Aguila forced the local hospital – a private concern, for the paying rich – to set up a special unit for the poor. His final act – the one that killed him – was to expose three senators who’d been siphoning off public taxes and stowing them off-shore. They all resigned, and the prosecution rumbles on. Pascal Aguila was shot to pieces in a taxi, on his way to testify. Twenty-six bullets – the same calibre as a policeman’s gun, and his murderers were never found.
I sometimes sit on the stairs, under the plaque we had made, and I think about this brave man. It is by such small things – small as a silent staircase – that the dead live on and help us. In this country, the dead are very important.
You want to know how I was part of Raphael’s tale, of course, and what I did. I was on the edge, only. Sister Olivia, our temporary house-mother, was more crucial, and perhaps more foolish – but I got involved because of the school computer, which was donated by the RCBC bank. We score these little successes! We get our foot in the door. You won’t think me uncharitable, I hope, when I confess that the computer was old and out of date, and if they hadn’t given it to us, it would have ended on one of the trash heaps. Who cares? They gave with a good heart, I think, and we have had much use out of it. It connects to the Internet, and the children play games on it when I let them.
It was a Thursday afternoon when Jun came by, with the two boys I hardly knew.
‘Sir po,’ he said. ‘Sir po?’
He’s got a high-pitched, musical little voice, and I recognized it instantly.
I turned and smiled, and he was leaning on my office door. He’s thin as a match, and the colour of ash. He has a smile that makes me smile too, and I’m always pleased to see him. ‘We are looking for something, po.’ ‘Po’, by the way, is the word of respect people use here for their elders. ‘Can we use the computer, sir po?’
I told him it was late. Then I looked beyond him, and saw he had two friends with him – slight, skinny boys. One looked shy and the other looked watchful – you could see at once who the leader was. His head was shaved and his eyes didn’t blink. He had long arms and, even with the poor diet he had, the poise – the grace – of an athlete. The other one had long hair over his face, and another enchanting smile.
‘Po, sir po. This is Gardo.’ He pointed at the boy with the shaved head. ‘This is Raphael – d’you know them?’
I told him I didn’t but was pleased to – and we all shook hands.
‘They’re taking part in a quiz,’ said Jun. ‘It’s a newspaper thing, sir. They have to research, sir. They said they don’t come to school here so why would you help them, so I said I’d come. They can give money for the computer time, OK? I said maybe you would, po.’
I told them to come in, and they came over to my desk. Shorts and T-shirts, bare feet black right up to their knees – their smell filled the room. The one called Raphael looked at me, pushing his hair back, too shy to make eye contact. He held a twenty-peso note in both his hands, for computer time. Gardo stayed behind him, and I could feel him staring right at me, as if he might have to fight.
‘I’m afraid the connection’s slow today,’ I said.
I put a second chair by the computer, and waved away the boy’s money. They slid onto the chairs, and Raphael got straight down to work. Children always know how to use computers – it never fails to amaze me. Children who’d never stepped inside a classroom could work a keyboard faster than me. It was the games shops where they learned, of course. For ten pesos you could get fifteen minutes of shooting and chasing.
I saw him go straight to a search engine, and the bald boy opened a piece of paper. Raphael tapped in a name, and we all watched as the computer thought long and hard.
I said: ‘What have you eaten today, Jun?’
He smiled up at me and held my arm. ‘Nothing!’ he said proudly.
I went down to the kitchen and made some sandwiches. I got three glasses too, and filled them with lemonade. By the time I got back, the boys were chattering in low, excited voices, scrolling down the screen and pointing. They’d called up a local news site, and were reading carefully.
‘What’s the question?’ I said. They looked blank, so I said, ‘For your quiz? What question are you answering?’
Raphael said, ‘It’s about history, sir.’ Then he was talking in his own language, which I am ashamed to say I hardly speak, despite the length of time I’ve been out here. The second boy, Gardo, was shaking his head. Whatever they were looking at seemed to be a serious business.
Jun, meanwhile, took a sandwich in a hand that was so dirty it made me wince. The boy bites his nails right down to the quick, and his fingers remind me of skeletons. He promises and promises to come to class, but he so rarely does – he must have the strangest mix of ideas from the ones he’s attended! It’s become a joke between us. I always say, ‘So – you’ll be in school tomorrow?’ He assures me that he will, and I know he won’t. I will never forget the sight of him the first time he took a shower here. He had a towel wrapped round himself, and was dancing with the cold and the excitement of the spurting water – and maybe the amazement of seeing his own flesh looking clean. I gave him one of our school uniforms, but I never saw him wear it.
Sister Olivia fell in love with him too, and asked me about adoption. A twenty-two-year-old girl from England, wanting to adopt! I told her not to think of it. The machinery for adoption out here is slow, for one thing. In six years I’ve known one successful case for a foreigner. No government is going to give away its children, I understand that – and yet you look around at the thousands who cannot be taken care of and it breaks your heart. You look at the mountains of garbage, and the children on them, like so much more garbage, and it’s easy to think what you do in a school like this is of absolutely no consequence or good to anyone. More and more children. When I walk around the shanties, I see the babies, and I am always asked to hold them. And while we’re smiling and laughing, I am thinking, in the back of my mind: This tiny child – as soon as it can crawl, it will be crawling through trash.
The boys finished on the computer soon after I came back with the tray, and they turned and had a sandwich, and drank their lemonade. They were polite, as the children here always are, but they wanted to go.
I said, ‘So. School tomorrow? All three of you?’
Jun laughed. ‘Definitely!’
Raphael said, ‘I want to come, po. But I’m working.’ He pushed his hair back and smiled his dazzling smile.
I reminded him that he could work and also do a morning class. I reminded him that the school was set up for exactly that purpose: to let the children work while providing education. If they attend five days, they get two kilos of rice and a few bits and pieces extra, depending on what’s been donated – that is the incentive. Raphael looked at me, and I wondered if he was thinking that obvious thought: And what use is an education to me?
He said, ‘I will come, po.’
Then Jun took the plate and glasses into my kitchen. He insisted on washing them, and setting them in the drying rack. Then he gave me a hug and I slipped him fifty pesos.
The other boys were waiting for him outside, and they ran away together
– I never saw them again. It was a few weeks later that I discovered they’d been lying. There had been no quiz, of course. They were finding out everything they could about Mr José Angelico, the man whose ID they’d found. They’d also been researching Gabriel Olondriz, who at that time was serving his twenty-third year in the city’s biggest prison.
Rat had been up to something too, which he will reveal in due course. They had all got what they wanted, and had deceived me beautifully.
2
This is Raphael again, and now it gets serious.
The police came that night, just like Gardo said they would, and searched our house. I was arrested.
Four van-loads came, and everyone in the block was ordered out. They had flashlights and batons, and they moved through fast while more and more people gathered, up from the other neighbourhoods. The police said nothing to anyone. They showed some bit of paper to Thomas – our senior man – and they didn’t wait for him to say anything. Then it took them less than an hour, and we all stood listening as they shouted to each other and threw things. Some of the little kids were crying, but most people were calm, just watching.
What could anyone do?
Then they got back in the vans, having found nothing.
I had not thought they would take me, because nobody had said anything to me. I saw the young policeman again, and I saw him nod in my direction, and I realized they were talking about me. It still came as a surprise – I don’t know why – when two police came over and took hold of my arms.
This is going to be very difficult to write about, the next part, but it’s only me that can.