Trash - Andy Mulligan [42]
Because of my father, somebody from the British Embassy arrived, and argued very strongly that I was naïve and innocent. I had also broken no law. No charges could be brought – the official kept repeating that, gently, persuasively.
After some time I was released and my passport was returned. I took advice and I was on a plane out of the country the same day.
* * *
And that is my story, and thank you for letting me tell it. I left part of my heart in your country, boys, and now I can never go back. I say to myself, so what did you learn? What did you learn from the Behala dumpsite, and how has it changed you?
I learned perhaps more than any university could ever teach me. I learned that the world revolves around money. There are values and virtues and morals; there are relationships and trust and love – and all of that is important. Money, however, is more important, and it is dripping all the time, like precious water. Some drink deep; others thirst. Without money, you shrivel and die. The absence of money is drought in which nothing can grow. Nobody knows the value of water until they’ve lived in a dry, dry place – like Behala. So many people, waiting for the rain.
I said goodbye to so few and I can never go back. That is a pity, and it feels so wrong, because in Gardo, Raphael – and maybe most of all Rat – I left part of my heart, and writing this only makes me long to see you again, and this page is wet with my tears, boys.
Goodbye, and thank you so much for using me.
PART FOUR
1
This is Rat once again, aka Jun-Jun, and I tell the part where I was the leader. Where it gets bad, bloody and oh so dangerous!
It was soon after Gardo got back, with me and Raphael waiting for him by the canal, the sun going down. He got back, and the police came in. Almost before we had time to talk, we heard the siren, and oh my God, it was a river of blue! If they’d come slow and quiet, OK – maybe they’d have got us, but oh God, thank you again that they love to make a noise and have to show up like some carnival, sirens blasting out over the town. We just did the obvious thing: soon as we saw them, we made off, no time to say goodbye, just a half-minute to grab my money, and out we went. Behala’s a mile wide, and there are so many ways, so I led them down to the docks, we got a garbage barge across the bay, and then walked.
Gardo has a friend of an uncle or someone who has a store selling dry goods, and we slunk in there and slept over, wondering what on earth we should do, now we were really on the run.
That’s what it was for us: on the run, wanted men with no place to go! We had the letter still, and the map – and Gardo told us all about the Bible-code, or what he understood of it. We told him about the fridge of money and Zapanta’s house, and we sat there thinking and thinking, wondering how we’d do what we needed to do – everyone sure we needed that Bible, and nobody knowing what the next step could be.
I had the idea right then, because it was clear to me we had to stay safe. I said we should lie low in one of the big tourist areas where so many street kids work and beg. There’s a great gang of them there, and I’d spent some time in it after my station days. So that’s what we did: we went up to the strip joints around Buendía and found a spot by a cheap hotel. We put ourselves on the edge of the crowd and tried not to draw attention. I cut off Raphael’s hair, just in case anyone came looking – made him look like a little madman, though he’s cute enough still – cute enough to beg from foreigners, though he wouldn’t do it.
I said you got to, he said no. I said my money wouldn’t last, and Gardo told me to shut up. So I sewed the cash into my shorts, and looked after us all with it, eating on the street and smoking to look rough as we could. We stuck together and stayed in the dark – stayed with the street boys for a night in the ruin of a place they used, but none of us felt safe.