by Неизвестный
I had settled into life in Brave New World after a fashion. Things were much easier now I didn’t have to live side by side with Hoa. Back when I was at the House of Smiles, all I could think of during lessons was the fat jugular running down the neck of the Hoa bastard sitting next to me and ramming my pencil right into it. It was far too febrile an atmosphere for their lectures about how we should all get along in peace to have any effect at all back then. In fact, they often had the opposite effect, stirring things up even more.
I was a part of the community now, though. Ezgwai’s serene demeanor was a calming influence on me. Ezgwai was so gentle, so thoughtful, so considerate, that I often thought it a miracle that he ever survived in the army.
Ezgwai always spoke steadily. Deliberately. Whereas most of us soldiers had become used to barking at each other, fighting to get a word in edgewise over the din of gunfire. The result was that even when the battlefield was a distant memory, we were still used to shouting over each other all the time.
“I am,” was Ezgwai’s simple reply when I asked him if he was deliberately trying to go in the other direction by speaking quietly and slowly. “When I’m shouting and spitting words out like there’s no tomorrow, I can’t help but feel I’m back on the battlefield. So I decided to make a conscious effort to speak calmly at all times. I guess I kind of hope that it might catch on, in time.”
And catch on it did before too long. Whether or not it was all down to Ezgwai’s deliberate efforts, it wasn’t long before everyone at the institute had stopped shouting all the time and started speaking much more calmly. Including me. Once this happened, it became possible for us to start thinking of the institute as a place where you could actually relax, chill out.
Not only that, it was much easier for me to relax because I hadn’t seen a single Hoa from the moment I arrived at Brave New World. At least, it was easier to relax right up until the moment I discovered we had been living a lie.
“Bro.”
I’d been standing in line in the mess hall one day when Ezgwai spoke to me. Standing there with my enamel bowl, waiting patiently for my state-mandated ration of synthetic meat. The real stuff was way out of our league pricewise, I’d heard—real meat something only the white man’s countries could afford. After all, they could even afford to use stuff like maize and wheat as fuel for their cars and airplanes, apparently. Hard to believe you could really power a car on food.
“Whassup, bro?” I replied. Then I noticed Ezgwai’s face was something real strange. Warped, twisted, like he wanted to cry and was suppressing something incredible.
“I heard that you took part in the raid on Minga Village,” he said.
“Hey, why are you asking me about the war all of a sudden?” I asked. “And who told you that anyway?”
Ezgwai dropped his container and brought his face right up close to mine. I could feel the breath from his nostrils on my cheek.
“Thankwa told me. Thankwa from the same company as you,” he said.
I’d fought alongside Thankwa in the same company for a long while. I suppose you’d call him a comrade. He’d been one of the first to join in the melee when I sprung that Hoa bastard with my sharpened pencil, and naturally he’d been sent here with me.
“Bro. Please. Just tell me. Were you or were you not part of the raid on Minga?” Ezgwai asked.
I’d no idea why he was being like this. “Calm down, man. We’re talking about an op from three years ago, you know?” I said. “Yeah, I remember, that village was a key point in the Hoa supply lines. Quite a battle. Yup, it’s coming back to me now.”
Then Ezgwai fell dead silent, his gaze fixed on mine. It was as if he’d forgotten he needed to breathe. His eyes were unnaturally wide, and his teeth were gritted behind his tightened lips.
“Minga Village was my home,” he said.
I didn’t understand. I looked into his eyes, which were now filmed over. How would Ezgwai have been living in Minga? Minga didn’t have any of our captives …
Then it hit me. The true meaning behind Ezgwai’s awful, twisted face.
And what his face didn’t mean.
“Ezgwai … what tribe are you from?” I asked.
But I already knew. I knew then why I hadn’t seen any Hoa since arriving here. While we were at it, what tribe was Fatty from? Hoa and Xema were different species. Hoa were subhuman. The Hoa had completely different faces from us Xema. Didn’t they?
But the reason I hadn’t seen any Hoa since arriving here was simple: I could no longer tell who was Hoa and who was Xema.
That’s why I had automatically assumed that everyone here was Xema like me. It hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder what tribe people were from. I’d been lulled into a false sense of security, and that’s why I’d just presumed that Ezgwai must have been Xema too.
Don’t answer my question, I prayed in my heart, even as the words were escaping my lips. But there was no going back.
Ezgwai gave an unearthly yell and jumped me.
I had no time to react or hit back. The back of my head smashed into the floor, almost knocking me out. But fortunately (could you call it fortunately?) my eyes remained open, and I was conscious that Ezgwai was on sitting on top of me, fist raised up high.
His fist came down, burying itself in my face.
I tasted blood in my mouth. Before I had the chance to recover from the surprise attack another blow rained down on me, and this time smashed into my left temple. I was reminded of the time the captain fired that bullet into Ndunga’s head.
“I was born in Minga!” Ezgwai yelled through his tears. A fist came down for the third time, shattering my nose. I heard the crunch from inside my skull, and the next second blood was pouring out my nostrils. “You killed my family!”
Another blow was flying toward the right side of my face. At this rate I was going to be smashed to a pulp. I’d better play my cards right, I thought to myself. Better try and avoid the next blow.
“I’m a Hoa! A Hoa man!”
And then, somehow, I managed to raise my right arm to deflect the incoming fist, and at the same time shoved Ezgwai off me with my left arm, and used all my pent-up energy to spring up onto my feet.
Ezgwai landed on his ass, and I used the opportunity to get the hell out of there. I had no intention of fighting after taking the hits I’d taken, and anyway I needed a moment to figure out what had happened to my head. And when I say “what had happened to my head” I wasn’t talking about what Ezgwai had just done to me with his fists. I figured it had to do with when I was back at that ruin of a hotel, when the white doctors injected me with something as I wore that bucket on my head.
“Why? Why are you a Xema?” came an anguished cry from Ezgwai, already in the distance. I hardened my heart. I wasn’t going to listen; I needed to block his voice completely.
Driven by something primal, I ran straight out of the mess, and before I knew it I found myself outside the institute too. I was terrified of returning. I couldn’t tell the difference between Xema and Hoa there. Between friend and foe.
In other words I was out of my mind. After all, it didn’t even occur to me at that moment that there was no reason things should be any different in the outside world.
I had nowhere to go.
I’d been effectively confined to different institutions ever since the war had ended and I was released from the SDA, so I had no real idea of the geography of the city. Or rather, I had no real idea of the important things: safe places to go to make myself scarce, or places I could go to scrounge a bite to eat.
There were plenty of children who didn’t make it into an institution. Not just children, of course, but adults too. But the children, well, they had formed themselves into gangs and roamed the city’s slums. They kept their AK-47s well out of sight from the occasional American patrols, and sold Khatsticks just as they did during the war.
At this moment it seemed to me the most unlucky thing in the world that I’d been “rescued” by an instit
ution, because it meant I hadn’t had the opportunity to join one of these gangs. That’s how it seemed to me right now anyway. I didn’t know the layout of the town, how it had changed since the war ended, who lived in which sector, who ruled the streets where. I had no idea about any of the things that actually mattered.
In other words, I was fucked.
When I tried to root through a pile of trash to see if I could find anything useful, I heard someone shout, “You piece of Xema shit!” Before I knew it I was surrounded by kids. Orphaned Hoa children, I guess they must have been. I couldn’t help but think how full of energy and life they seemed.
Now, because I’d spent so much time in institutes, my garbage-foraging skills were distinctly lagging behind those who’d had more experience in it. But that was the least of my worries. There was a pecking order to the various dumps and skips that littered the town. There were turfs, patches, cribs, and the best spots, those with the juiciest hauls, were all taken. I didn’t know this at first, and almost died when I tried to approach a spot that was already spoken for—by Hoa.
Sharp kicks. Feet digging into my gut. I hold my breath, and now it’s fists, flailing, coming at me. Now it’s my jaw that’s smashed. My face is slammed, I fly back, and now a leg is pinning my chest down. I’m forced down into the pile of trash.
“Easy, guys, easy. We’re ruining good food here. Throw this punk off the heap.”
Someone gives orders, I’m hauled off the trash pile and bundled down onto the road beside it. And that’s where they properly put the boot into me.
Who said that wartime hatred was dead?
Every kick digging into me felt like payback for each bullet I fired during the war. But how was I supposed to avoid this? I had no way of telling whether I was on Xema turf or Hoa. And I had no way of telling in the future. I could always have gone up to the gang first to ask them which they were, but doing so would have put me at a fifty-fifty risk of being half killed. Killed, maybe even.
The orphans of this town weren’t done with their war yet. They were fighting over the castoffs and the scraps of “generosity” shown by the white men and the rich people of the city. They weren’t quite shooting each other up to protect their neighborhoods and their sources of sustenance, but otherwise it was just like before.
Are you Xema or are you Hoa? This question was now more important than ever. If you wanted to eat, that was.
For a while I was so desperate that I thought about raiding a store, but I had no gun and no comrades to help me. In any case, I wouldn’t have been able to tell whether I was attacking a Hoa- or Xema-run shop. It wouldn’t have been right to raid Xema.
The upshot of all this was that because I was now the proud owner of a brain that had no way of telling the difference between one tribe and another, I also had no way of finding a way to eat. I grew thinner and thinner.
After a while, I grew accustomed to my new, emaciated state, and could even contemplate it objectively. I was able to compartmentalize my raging hunger, push it to the back of my mind where it no longer bothered me, even as it gnawed away inside me. Yes, it was like I’d been shot through the heart, all right. I’d had my birthright taken away from me: the ability of anyone born in this country to instantly distinguish between Hoa and Xema.
Anyway, I was lying by the side of the road, about to waste away, when a voice called out to me.
“Long time no see.”
I heard this voice call to me indistinctly, far far away from a place that could have been called consciousness. Who is it? Even the thought was too much for me. I was fading away, after all, getting smaller and smaller until soon I’d be dwarfed by a single grain of sand and then, finally, disappear into nothing. I’d been collapsed here for the last few days with this single thought spinning round in my mind. Even opening my eyelids was a herculean task. Everything was too much for me—I was almost past caring.
“Hey, can you hear me?”
Maybe I can’t, I thought. What can I hear, what could I hear? I didn’t rightly know anymore.
“Carry him, will you?”
I was lifted up. Up, up, like a fluffy cloud floating away in the sky.
At some point in time I was laid down on something. Somewhere softer and much nicer than where I was before.
“Feeling any better yet?” It was my old captain. He handed me a bowl of soup.
I had only ever seen the captain in combat fatigues, but even though he was now wearing the sort of leather jacket white men wore, he was instantly recognizable by the gold chains and other wartime bling he used to wear. Also unchanged was the holster strapped to his waist, gun-strap open, so that he was always ready to draw and fire at a moment’s notice.
The big difference was in his eyes, in his manner. He’d gone so soft it was almost uncomfortable. Almost like he’d become one of those Christian priests.
I nodded and took the bowl of soup.
“This ain’t your government-approved synthetic rations, you know. This here’s real beans and real meat,” the captain said.
I wolfed the soup down. A few short days ago I’d been on the brink of starvation, and now I was in an empty warehouse in the middle of the slums, being pampered back to health. Nothing we had to eat at the institute ever tasted as good as this.
The captain attended me himself. When some of the food I was cramming down spilled down me, he gently wiped it off.
“Looks like you’ve had a rough time, huh, kid?” The captain smiled his new saintly smile and then sighed sorrowfully. “What’s the point of this newfound peace if my boys are suffering so badly under it, that’s what I say. This city, this whole country, is still proper messed up. But I’m real glad I could take care of you at least, kid.”
The captain’s eyes were gentle, full of fatherly love. Bizarrely, I was reminded of the fat lady back at Brave New World. The generosity of spirit. The unquestioning, unconditional love. All the warmth and human kindness that I’d forgotten how to feel and couldn’t imagine myself ever feeling again.
In spite of this kindness, though, there was no doubt I was in a dark place. A suspicious place.
There had been a number of guys taking care of me these past few days, and I’d peered into their faces to try and glimpse a hint as to whether they were Hoa or Xema. Nothing doing.
When the captain asked me how he came to find me half starved by the side of the road, I answered him truthfully. That I had run away from the institute. That I’d had their shot to the heart.
“Boy oh boy, you’ve had it rough,” the captain said, placing his hand softly on my shoulder. “But that’s all behind you now. As long as you’re here you’ll never have to worry about where your next meal is coming from, or about stupid squabbles between Hoa and Xema.”
My dark suspicions came rushing forward again. I needed to ask a question but could barely get the words out. “Are you telling me that there are Hoa here, Captain?”
“Well, well. It seems this shot to the heart really works, huh?” The captain laughed as if we were enjoying a joke together. My heart sank. “You remember the man who brought you food and looked after you while you were collapsed these past few days? Hoa, ex-soldier. His face is about as Hoa as it comes, in fact.”
My hackles rose. A Hoa nursing me! For days! The anger and hatred in my mind flooded through my body.
“Come with me. I’ll show you what it is we do here.” The captain beckoned me to the door. I managed to calm down enough to take a gulp of air, and steadied my breathing, willing myself to calm down. I got out of bed and followed the man who had once been my captain.
Khatsticks.
We used to chew them on the battlefield all the time. They numbed your senses and stopped you from having to dwell on things.
I’d been convalescing in an officelike room these past few days, but when I’d left the room the rest of the warehouse turned out to be a giant Khatstick factory. The floor was lined with rows of tables, each one a workstation for women and children
standing and working in silence. Hoa or Xema, I couldn’t tell. They were taking the green powder made from the dried and pulverized leaves, turning it into sheets, rolling them up, and cutting them into small sticks that at first glance could have been cigarettes but in actuality were made of far stronger stuff.
“It’s all about business,” the captain said with a satisfied smile on his face. “We want to expand our field of operations, but there are people who want to get in our way. Bad people who are holding us back. I think it’s fate that we came across you when we did. You were a first-class soldier during the war. You fought well for the Xema. So how about doing the same for us here?”
“You mean you want me to become a soldier again?” I asked.
“Hey, it’s a cushier gig than fighting in any war!” The captain put his strong arm around my shoulder. “We’re minting it at the moment, so you’ll never have to worry about food, and you get all the Khatsticks you want, on the house. Perk of the job, you might say.”
In other words, my former captain had made it big as a drug dealer. Khatsticks were stupidly addictive—after you’d chewed one once you were sure to want more, and the withdrawal symptoms were something else. When you ran out you became irritated and nauseated. And even if you knew what it did to you, you ended up chewing it anyway, as it was the only way to get through the war. It had become a necessity, not a luxury. The reason I was constantly in a foul mood back at the institute was because I was craving the stuff with all my heart and soul—and body.
During the war we were all doped to the eyeballs on the stuff. We chewed away before a battle, we chewed away after a battle, we chewed away twenty-four-seven. When we ran out of the leaf we used gunpowder as a poor substitute. Vile stuff. No way you’d snort that normally, unless you needed your ersatz kick.
Then the war finished and we soldiers were let go. What this meant was that all the soldiers who’d gotten themselves addicted or who had had addiction forced upon them were suddenly cut off from the source of their addiction. In an instant, Khatsticks had changed from being a ration vital to everyday function to a luxurious vice. Funny how something can go from frivolous to essential at a moment’s notice, depending on which way the wind is blowing.