Trash - Andy Mulligan [54]
Like I said, it’s the biggest graveyard in the city. Once through the gates, there were walkways spreading off to left and right, stretching for miles. We were soon lost in graves, trees and monuments. There were bushes and shrubs, and as we walked, great big angels would suddenly appear at you out of the leaves. Peaceful-looking Madonnas looking into the distance, and weepy little Jesuses on tiny little crosses, and then big-brother Jesuses stretched out, with eyes up to heaven. I had never been watched over by so many saints and I nearly got split up from the boys looking at them.
The tables were going up and picnics were opening. The parties were starting, and soon Raph and Gardo knew they’d never find one name in all these millions.
‘We can ask,’ said Raphael. ‘There’s an office with lists of names … is that a big risk?’
‘Everything is,’ said Gardo, looking around, still looking mean. ‘Everything has been.’
That was when I said I would do it. I said, ‘I can pretend Mrs Angelico did me a good turn and that I’ve come to say hi.’
So Gardo counted me back a bit of my money – he’d become the money-man after the deal with Marco. ‘Get her some flowers,’ he said. ‘That’ll make it real.’
That’s what I did, and it took three hours or more. There was a big queue of people, and I kept getting shoved back. When I got a guard to see me, he said he needed twenty to check the record – which was a lie, but I gave it to him. Then he went off and took ages, answering all sorts of other questions from people, so I just sat with my flowers, hoping he wouldn’t forget me altogether. It was late afternoon when I got my slip of paper, and Gardo thought I’d been off drinking.
‘B twenty-four/eight,’ I said to Raph. ‘He says, “Top of the slope and look for a pink angel.” ’
‘It’s getting dark,’ said Gardo. ‘Can you see pink in the dark?’
Raphael led the way, strong again, and ready.
Raphael now.
It was getting busier and busier because the evening is the busiest part of the day. There were barbecues starting up now, and people selling snacks. We were amongst wealthy people in very fancy clothes, and we felt even greyer and dirtier, but there was nothing for it, and still nobody was worrying about us – no one seemed to see us, like we were the ghosts.
After twenty minutes we got to the top of the slope.
I saw so many angels, and the light was way too bad to see a pink one, and I was ready to curse the guard who wasted our time – but then Gardo saw one made of marble, on a grave the size of a truck. In the candles it was pink as a salmon, and it was staring back over the city, arms up like it had just scored one hell of a goal. A great big family were sitting all around it, playing cards, and there were brandy bottles everywhere, and more people arriving, hugging each other.
We left them to it, and went in and out of the neighbouring graves, wondering what B24/8 might mean, and looking for the name ‘Angelico’, and finding nothing.
Soon it was completely dark, and we couldn’t read the names any more. So we went back to the pink angel, and climbed up on a wall nearby, and wondered what to do.
And that is when we saw the brightest light.
2
Raphael, Gardo and Jun-Jun (Rat):
We’d been looking in the wrong place, and the fool of a guard who took our money must have thought we knew the cemetery and didn’t bother to explain, or was just too lazy. The cemetery, you see, is divided by a wall – and that was the wall we were sitting on. The wall divides the rich quarter, where the dead get buried in earth, from the poor quarter, where the dead get stacked up in boxes.
We’d wasted the day walking among the rich when we should have been on the other side of the wall. The brightest light was the poor part of the cemetery, where thousands of candles were coming together as everyone streamed in after work. It was bright as day, bright as a furnace, and the