#Zero

by Neil McCormick

  ‘¿Papa?’ said the child.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Tengo ahora.’ I’ve got you now.

  So we crawled out, the little girl and I, back up through the passage I had made. Sometimes I pulled her and sometimes I pushed her ahead, and being smaller, and more limber, she began to scamper as we got close to the light, and I could see her daddy reach down and she was scooped up into the blue, her little legs disappearing from view, and I could hear such a cry of anguished joy, of such terrified relief, it was like bells ringing.

  There were no cheering crowds. The old man with the dusty moustache helped pull me out of the hole, patted my back and smiled, and that was about it. I clambered gingerly down from the roof, slowly becoming aware of my body, as if I was returning to myself, only to discover I had been done over in my absence, covered with cuts and bruises. I stood on the pavement swaying, aching, dizzy with dehydration. The madre with her broken arm and padre with torn fingernails expressed eternal and undying gratitude, and called upon the Virgin and the saints to bless and honour me forever and ever, amen, but they had to get to the hospital, if it was still standing.

  All over the city such reunions were taking place, I supposed, some families being brought back together with ecstatic gratitude at their survival, some with sorrow and outrage at their losses. This little family were among the lucky ones, if you can call anything about having your house fall on your head good luck. And so, after hugs and blessings, they set off, the little girl looking at me shyly but clinging tightly to her father, and he to her, like they were never going to let each other go. She was such a small, brown-skinned thing, caked in dirt, hair matted with plaster, bright eyes shining, brimming over with love and fear. I could see her looking back at me as they set off down the hill. ‘What’s your name?’ I called after her. ‘¿Como te llamas?’

  ‘Maria!’ she called back.

  ‘That’s my mother’s name!’ I shouted but she was already too far away to hear.

  The old man brought me a glass of thick fruit juice from somewhere. Perhaps he was one of the lucky neighbours whose houses were still standing. I sat there, as the afternoon grew cooler, drinking the pungent, delicious liquid, wondering if this was the purpose of my whole journey, to come to this place, at this moment, to save this life? Would little Maria have died in there, buried under a fallen ceiling, if I hadn’t run out of an awards ceremony in New York a week or more ago? But I don’t believe in fate. Not fate, not God, not anything or anyone. Although, on consideration, I might be prepared to make an exception for the Virgin Mary.

  At last, I peeled myself up and began to walk, so tired and hungry and beaten down I had to keep moving or I would have just passed out and slept where I lay. Still no one said anything to me, no one pointed me out as I passed. Frantic activity went on all around, oblivious to the glorious power of my celebrity, turning a blind eye to a face that launched a thousand magazine covers. MedellÍn was tending its gaping wounds and I was a ghost, walking through a life that could have been my own if my mother had never left Colombia behind, for reasons I had never been able to understand, to raise two children in dreary, rainy Ireland with my old man, a bitter old Paddy who could probably organise a piss-up in a brewery but wasn’t much good for anything else. No earthquakes in Ireland though. No hurricanes, no mud slides, no baby assassins. At least, not round our way. We did have a dead dog once.

  I found myself walking alongside a main road where traffic was starting to move again as abandoned wrecks were cleared. I had no idea where I was going, I was just shuffling in the same direction as other waifs and strays. Then a truck pulled up alongside and I thought, this is it, I’ve been recognised, which was kind of a relief, because I was too exhausted to run any more. The driver jerked his thumb, indicating I should get in back. I looked up to see that it was a cattle truck crammed with people, all as battered and shattered as me. Hands caked in dust reached down and I took my place among my fellow victims. Gazing down, I saw myself white and grey and brown with the detritus of the building I had crawled through. And I started to laugh. A man patted me on the knee, saying, ‘Esta bien, nino. Lo peor ya pasó.’ I grinned at him stupidly, and felt my face and hair. No wonder no one had recognised me. I was plastered from head to toe. I really did look like a ghost.

  The truck drove on towards the outskirts of the city, and pulled into what appeared to be some kind of refugee camp, bustling with soldiers and aid workers, a mass of tents spreading out up the twilight mountainside as far as the eye could see. We disembarked and were herded towards a vast, open-fronted marquee, where we queued to be doled out rations, shuffling wordlessly along, defeated by the day and lost in our own private thoughts. A smiling but weary young woman in a sleeveless UNHCR jacket filled a plastic bowl for me with a slop of some kind of beans. ‘Por favor, mantenga en movimiento,’ she said kindly, her stilted accent suggesting she was no more local than I. A fresh-faced man about my own age handed me a hunk of bread and a small bottle of water. I stared at the familiar label. It looked like one of Consuela’s bottles. ‘Do you need to see a doctor?’ asked the woman. ‘¿Un médico?’ But I shook my head, no, and hurried off to consume my precious meal. I don’t know what it was but I didn’t really care. It was food, and that was good enough.

  Night was falling fast, a galaxy of twinkling lights appearing on the dark mountainside. I watched with childish rapture, transfixed by the power of electricity, as if the switching on of street lights was the most entertaining thing in the world. There were people all around, taking up whatever space they could find, and a boy squeezed in and hunkered down next to me, hungrily devouring his own meal. He looked about seven years old but with the self-possession of a streetwise hoodlum. ‘What are those lights?’ I said to him. He regarded me curiously. Remembering where I was, I translated, ‘¿Que son esas, uh, uh, luces?’

  ‘You fucking stupid, hombre? Is comunas, everybody knows the comunas,’ he retorted, shaking his head as if it was just his luck to be stuck next to an imbecile.

  ‘You speak good English,’ I complimented him.

  ‘You speak very bad Spanish,’ he replied. ‘Over there is El Popular, over there La Salle, and this one, La Franca, I think.’

  ‘It looks pretty from here,’ I said.

  ‘Is very pretty, señor. Most pretty place on earth.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ I asked.

  ‘Is gone,’ he shrugged. ‘I live here.’

  ‘Where’s your madre y padre?’

  ‘Gone.’ His bottom lip started to jut out and tremble. Suddenly he didn’t look so tough.

  ‘Family? You got family here? Brothers, sisters?’

  ‘Gone,’ he repeated. Tears welled in his eyes.

  ‘Who’s looking after you?’ I asked, thinking please don’t start crying now – if you start, I’ll start, and then who knows where it will stop? The whole mountainside will be bawling for its losses.

  ‘I don’t need no one look after me,’ he snapped defiantly. ‘I look after me, OK? Who look after you, stupid gringo? You look like you in trouble more than me.’

  ‘What about aunts or uncles? There must be somebody,’ I insisted. I didn’t want to have to take responsibility for this kid just cause he sat down next to me.

  ‘Mi abuela, what do you say? My mother’s mother.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I sighed with relief. ‘Where is your grandmother?’

  ‘Too far,’ he shook his head sadly.

  ‘Where?’

  But I knew the answer before it even came out of his mouth. The fucking Virgin wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easy.

  ‘La Esperanza,’ he said. My mother’s home town.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. Hey, Zeus!

  It figured. ‘I’ve got a brother with the same name as you.’

  He shrugged. ‘Is common.’

  ‘Not where I’m from, it’s not. Come with me, Jesus.’

  ‘Where we go?�
��

  ‘I need to clean up,’ I said. ‘Where are the showers? There must be somewhere I can wash?’

  ‘I show you,’ said Jesus. ‘But try any funny business, I cut you pipi off.’ And he pulled a blade out from his shorts and flashed it at me, baring his teeth.

  I queued for my turn in the communal showers. The water was cold but it was good to feel the layers of dust and grime coming off. My body was livid with bruises, blood swirling in the drain from open cuts on my hands and chest and legs. My T-shirt was little more than a filthy rag but I squeezed back in to dirty jeans and Grover’s torn and frayed leather jacket. Jesus had been looking at me slyly ever since I emerged from the shower, a little smile on his face. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I know who you are,’ he said, grinning. Then he took hold of my hand.

  As we made our way through the camp, a ripple of recognition started to spread, more and more kids gathered around, running to follow, jostling for position close to me. I felt like the Pied Piper. A child came up, solemnly holding a battered acoustic guitar, and shoved it in my hands. ‘Cantar para nosotros, Zero,’ she said, and the call was taken up by other children, cantar para nosotros, cantar para nosotros, sing for us, sing for us. So I put the strap over my shoulders, tuned it as best I could, and started to play ‘Never Young’. And as I sang the kids joined in, a whole choir of orphans, as if it was their song all along:

  We were never young,

  We were born into a world

  You had already destroyed,

  Life has just begun,

  It’s the beginning of the end

  For all the girls and boys.

  More and more people gathered around, drawn into the noise and spectacle, jostling to see if it was really true, was the loco gringo pop star Zero really here in the camp? Some big lights came on, lighting up me and my makeshift choir. A camera crew pushed through, shoving unceremoniously to the front. When the song ended, there was a huge cheer. Hands grabbed at me from all sides, while Jesus clung tightly to my waist. A woman pushed a microphone in my face and I looked straight into a lens. ‘Zero,’ she said. ‘People have been searching for you all over the United States of America. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m singing for the children,’ I said. Another cheer went up.

  ‘But how did you get here?’ she persisted.

  ‘Colombia drew me to her.’

  The jostling was getting dangerous now. There were too many people pushing in, too much excitement. The guitar got snatched out of my hands and was fought over by a crowd of older children, till the neck splintered and the whole guitar came apart. I hoisted Jesus onto my shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go,’ I said to the reporter.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she pressed. ‘Come on, talk to me, Zero, tell me what your plans are?’

  By her accent, she was a US Latino, probably working for one of the American networks, too dark and pretty for frontline news, out here gathering human interest stories while the big hitters were down in MedellÍn digging in the rubble. Well, she had lucked out, and she knew it. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Gabriela da Silva, FNY News.’

  ‘Do you have a car here, Gabriela? Some kind of transport? Get me to Herrera airport and I’ll give you an exclusive interview, all right?’

  As we bumped down the road in the TV crew’s jeep, Gabriela peppered me with questions, which I answered as straightforwardly as I could. No, I didn’t know why I ran away, I just had to get some space. No, I hadn’t gone mad, at least, I didn’t think so. I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t suicidal, and actually, now that I thought about it, I felt pretty good, better than I had in years. Maybe I was just confused for a while. Yes, I wanted to see Penelope, and I’d get there in the end, even if I had to walk the whole way. No, it wasn’t all a gimmick to sell more tracks, I wish I was that smart. Yes, I was sorry for my fans who had bought tickets for my concerts but that’s showbusiness and this is life, and sometimes you have to put life first. Yes, I was shocked by the devastation I had witnessed in this beautiful country – other people’s troubles have a way of putting your own in perspective. No, I wasn’t ready to go back and face the music. Anyway I’ve always got the music with me.

  ‘Have you learned anything on your journey?’ asked Gabriela, the human interest newshound, batting her lashes. She was very pretty. If I had met her two weeks ago, I’d have had her knickers around her ankles by now.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, after some thought. ‘You can’t run away from yourself.’

  I signalled to the cameraman that the interview was over. ‘You know what the real story is here, Gabriela?’ I said, pointing out to the city. ‘The incredible heroism of these people faced with unimaginable catastrophe.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself, Zero,’ she said. ‘People get tired of disasters, unless it happens to someone they know. We’ll see what they lead with on the bulletins tonight.’

  ‘It’s a sick world,’ I said.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Gabriela.

  She really was a girl after my own heart. ‘You’re wasted down here, Gabriela. You should be doing Breakfast With Gordy.’

  ‘Who knows,’ smiled Gabriela. ‘After this interview, I might be.’

  I asked if the crew had a map of Colombia and folded it out on the back seat, my index finger trailing through the southern region while Jesus clambered over my shoulder to get a look. We drove into the airport, weaving around an obstacle course of tipped-up planes and fallen-down buildings. My heart gave a leap when I saw the sleek red form of the Baron, still parked in front of the collapsed hangar. We pulled up and there, sitting on a fold-up chair, sipping from a metal flask and puffing on a cigarette, was Grover. ‘I thought I told you to wait in the damn plane,’ he drawled, as I jumped out of the jeep. I noticed his jacket and hair was full of dust, like he’d been doing some digging of his own.

  ‘Where’s Consuela?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s with her people,’ he said. ‘Where she needs to be.’

  ‘Is she coming back?’

  ‘You never know with women, now, do you?’

  ‘That why you’ve taken up smoking again?’

  ‘It seemed like the right time. Who’s the kid, kid?’

  Jesus was holding tightly on to my hand. ‘He’s our new passenger,’ I said. ‘You fuelled up, Captain?’

  Grover laughed, wearily. ‘Yeah, I’m ready to get the hell out of here, whenever you are.’

  ‘Well, there’s been a change of plan,’ I said, pulling out the map and running my finger down to an insignificant dot, its name printed in letters so tiny they were almost illegible. La Esperanza.

  ‘I want to go there.’

  20

  We slept in the Baron and took off at dawn. Grover had effected what repairs he could but the polythene flapped noisily and Jesus looked panic-stricken as we got airborne. It didn’t take him long to adjust to his new circumstances, however. At first he sat on my lap in the back, silent and wide-eyed, gazing in wonder at the mountains below. Soon he was clambering all over the aircraft, peering out each window in turn, before claiming the seat next to the pilot as his own. Grinning at Grover, he took hold of the co-pilot’s control column, studying the dials so intently you could have sworn he was flying the Baron. Grover found him a frayed old cap, which Jesus wore with pride, pushing it back every time it fell over his eyes. The Virgin had been straightened up to resume her observational role on the dash. There was a slight chip on the end of her nose but otherwise she looked as serene as ever.

  The landscape below was magnificently inhospitable, alternating between vast grey rock as jagged and alien as the mountains of the moon, white wastelands of snow-covered peaks and slopes of dense vegetation in bands of lustrous green. Was this really my country? I felt like a visitor from another planet.

  We had been in the air an hour or more, Grover poring over flight map and compass, when he started to circle around a patch of sloping jungle. ‘This godforsaken pue
blo of yours oughta be here somewhere, kid. If it still exists.’

  ‘Of course it exists,’ I shouted over the noise of the engine. ‘It’s on the map.’

  ‘Things change in Colombia, kid. They’ve had fifty years of civil war. That’s a lot of displaced people. Who do you think lives in the comunas?’

  Then Jesus let up a shout, pointing excitedly, and we banked around and buzzed low over rooftops and yards. There wasn’t a road that I could see, just a dirt drag dotted with what looked like goats and pigs scattering from the roar of the Baron.

  Grover assured me there would be a strip where we could put down. ‘Trust me, kid. This is coca country.’ Eagle-eyed, on our third circle, he picked out a short, thin clearing in thick foliage high above the village, and swooped in, speeding low over treetops. The landing didn’t look possible. We were coming down fast towards a narrow, bumpy dirt track, pitched at close to sixty degrees up the mountainside, with thick foliage pressing on all sides. But Grover grinned all the way, barely jarring the Baron as he touched down, braked and came to a heavy halt in front of a wall of trees. ‘That’s what they pay the big bucks for,’ he drawled, proudly.

  We clambered down to the improvised runway. There was no one around. No sound but the shrill chatter of birds and other creatures stirring among the trees. According to Grover, we were about 3,000 feet up on the west side of the southern Andes, in one of the poorest and most neglected regions of Colombia, still prone to sporadic fighting between government troops, guerrillas and narco gangs. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing here, kid,’ he said, lighting a cigarette and pulling in a big lungful of smoke.