The Illegal

by Lawrence Hill

  “It would help,” Sondra said. “Finally, if you have a friend or relative move in, that would show you are taking steps to ensure good self-care.”

  Ivernia thanked Sondra for her advice and escorted her to the front of the house, where she discovered her son removing silverware from her dining cabinet. She recovered two serving spoons and a pie fork and locked the door behind both of them.

  EIGHT YEARS EARLIER, AFTER BUYING THEIR HOME IN Clarkson, Ivernia and Ernie had donated $300,000 to the Clarkson Library. The library made quite a fuss over them, and the CEO—a kind gentleman named Ken O’Neill—had repeatedly stated that if the library could ever do anything for them, all they had to do was pick up the phone. Now, after meeting with Sondra, Ivernia did just that, and days later she began working as a volunteer.

  Ivernia had two responsibilities at the library: to make sure that a first-aid room was properly supplied with a bed, sheets, pillow, apple juice and tea; and to sit at a desk in a far back corner issuing new library cards. To qualify for a library card, a person had to show two pieces of identification and pay ten dollars. A new law also required any prospective library card holder to establish that he or she was a citizen of Freedom State or at least in the country legally. Indeed, this was to be required of any person receiving any publicly funded service, from health care to welfare.

  Ivernia was given two shifts a week. She settled into a routine. Sweeping the first-aid room and ensuring it was properly stocked was easy because it was rarely used. The rest of the time, she sat alone at the card-issuing desk under a sign that said New Cards. On a typical shift, she had only a few cards to issue, so she spent her time scouring the stacks and bringing back books to read. The latest, Dying for Dimwits, said that any idiot who did his or her research could pull off a successful suicide. The author was a middle-aged Aussie with a full head of hair and decent teeth. He wrote: “We want you to have a long life. However, if you are reading this book, it is likely that you would like to take the timing of your demise into your own hands. If you really must off yourself, do us all a favour by researching the matter properly. Any idiot can die. But it takes a well-informed person to plan to die without causing others unnecessary perturbation.” The book went on to review some of the most sensational ways in which celebrities had either killed themselves or made a poor showing of it. Ivernia skipped that part. It didn’t interest her to laugh at the misfortune of others. She did read the list of suicide techniques that were neither advisable nor efficient. Do not crash your car, the book said, because you could hurt someone and increase insurance costs for all those left behind. Do not jump off a bridge because you could land on another person. Over the last decade, the book said, at least a dozen pedestrians or hikers had died after being struck by suicide jumpers. A successful suicide required the unequivocal avoidance of personal agony, third-party misfortune and lawsuits.

  Ivernia didn’t, especially, want to die. But she didn’t want to live without autonomy or dignity.

  Ivernia found that working at the library improved her mood. Many people who came to the library needed more than books. They needed email connections and jobs. They needed to use the toilet or to get out of the rain or the sun without being accused of loitering. They needed a safe place to relax or to fall asleep in a chair by a window. Ivernia wondered how many of these library patrons had come from another country.

  The newspapers were full of stories about the hardships faced by refugees. Just last week Ivernia had read about the fate of passengers on another two ships—leaky bathtubs, really, crammed to the gunwales with refugees—in international waters just off the coast. The Coast Guard had blocked them from entering the waters of Freedom State and forced them to turn around and head back to Zantoroland. There were three hundred people in the two boats, which had been at sea for a month. Thirteen had died of dehydration or cholera. When the refugees arrived back in Zantoroland, a riot broke out and police moved in. Six more men died.

  When she wasn’t reading, Ivernia developed new ways to show compassion for the people who came to her desk without documentation. The library required Ivernia to photocopy and file ID showing a new customer’s name, citizenship and address.

  On her first day of work, Ivernia had to reject five people who did not qualify for a library card. The next time she came in, Ivernia was approached by a black woman who carried her possessions in a frayed pillow case. She looked to be about sixty, but she walked with less confidence than Ivernia. She asked for a library card.

  “Do you have ID?” Ivernia asked.

  “No, I don’t have any of that.” The woman began to turn away.

  “Wait a minute.”

  The woman turned to face her. Ivernia typed a memo and sent it to the printer. It said:

  Date: __________

  To Whom It May Concern:

  I hereby attest that I, __________, am a citizen of Freedom State and reside at the following address __________.

  Sincerely,

  __________

  Ivernia helped the woman fill in the blanks.

  “Where should I say I live?” the woman asked.

  “Put down 33 Old Clarkson Road,” Ivernia said.

  “Where’s that?”

  Ivernia spoke quietly. “Bus station, but who cares?”

  The woman signed the form. She didn’t have ten dollars, so Ivernia paid for her.

  The woman held the new card against her bosom. “God bless you!”

  Ivernia wrote to Rocco Calder, minister of immigration, complaining about the punitive treatment of people without legal status. To make it a crime for public institutions to serve the undocumented simply isolated people and drove them into poverty, she wrote. From then on, people who came looking for a library card received one, regardless of whether their papers were in order.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AFTER TAKING THE OVERNIGHT TRIP FROM BUTTERSBY and disembarking in Clarkson, Keita entered the bus station that he had been using since he had gone into hiding in Freedom State.

  The Clarkson bus station allowed him access to a locker, with in-and-out privileges, for thirty dollars a month. It also offered a hot shower with towel service for five dollars. Keita stood for ten long minutes under the stream of hot water. He had to present himself well at all times. It horrified him to think that poor hygiene or odour might draw attention to his paperless status. People who smelled and looked clean always got more respect. Keita hadn’t showered since the day before the marathon. Nobody would see him or arrest him or deport him in the shower, so he lingered and allowed himself to think.

  He would not live to an old age. He might not make it to thirty. It didn’t matter. He just needed to stay alive long enough to run again, to run as many times as necessary to help his sister. He prayed for strength. And in the noise of the pounding water, he cried.

  Keita turned off the shower, wrapped the towel around his waist and over the hernia and approached his locker. The facilities were run by a short black man. He stood at four foot ten and called himself My Hero, and he had muscles from head to toe. My Hero was offering Keita a second towel.

  “Here, man. An extra. No charge. Just take it, from brother to brother.” Keita took the towel and began to dry himself off. He waited for a moment of privacy, but My Hero planted himself with crossed arms and stared.

  “You’re in shape, dude,” he said. “Fine shape.”

  My Hero was as dark as Keita. He kept his hair cropped short like a soldier’s and had an arrow tattooed on each forearm.

  Keita dried his feet.

  “You got calf muscles like grenades,” My Hero was saying. “Little bombs you got there. I’d say you’re a runner.”

  “You got me there,” Keita said. He ditched the towel and dressed quickly.

  “If I was you, I’d run to AfricTown,” My Hero said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Most folks who come by here ain’t what you’d call regularized. You in a hunting ground, smack-dab in th
e middle of Clarkson. You need to run to the caves, boy. But seeing as they ain’t no caves in Freedom State, all you got is AfricTown. You can blend in there and hope they don’t catch you.”

  Keita put his running clothes in his small knapsack and shouldered it. He put the big knapsack with the remainder of his clothes into his locker and shut it. “Got to go.” He smiled at My Hero, said goodbye and left.

  Keita’s first priority was to set up a bank account with the four-thousand-dollar cheque from the Buttersby Marathon in his pocket. If he could deposit the money, he could wire it to Charity’s captors.

  He was wearing dress pants, a dress shirt, white socks and dress shoes. Charity would have scolded him for undermining his overall look with the socks. You look like a clown. But Keita had forgotten dress socks, and now he had other priorities. At all times, he had to be prepared to run.

  Keita found an intersection with a bank on every corner. First he saw the Bank of Montreal, the J.P. Morgan Chase Bank and the Bank of Freedom State. But he selected Family Credit Union, because the building featured a sign that advertised it as a “People’s Bank” and showed a photo of an employee greeting customers representing every conceivable racial group.

  Three tellers glanced in his direction and returned to their business. He asked a woman at the reception desk if he could speak to someone about opening an account.

  “Certainly,” she said, motioning for him to sit.

  He waited ten minutes until a man in a blue suit came to meet him. The man had a ruddy face and walked with a deliberate, heavy stride, legs wide apart, suggesting he had an irritation in his groin.

  “James Bell. May I help you?” the man said, offering his hand.

  Keita shook it and gave his name. “I would like to open an account.”

  Bell led Keita to a coffee counter. “Coffee?”

  “I will have it with six milks and two sugars, please.”

  The man suppressed a grin, poured a few ounces from a coffee thermos, passed over a bowl of milk and sugar packets, and said, “Here, you can mix and match.”

  They moved to a tiny office, which had a desk, a computer, a filing cabinet and one extra chair. Bell invited Keita to sit across from him.

  “What kind of account would you like to open?”

  Keita looked Bell in the eye. “May I speak frankly?”

  “Of course,” Bell said, sitting back, straightening his tie.

  He was built as thick as a football player. How did people in this country get so solid? Keita wondered. Bell had a square ring on his middle finger. Back home, Keita had heard that in the Pink Palace, if an interrogator intended to do you harm, he would slide a ring off one finger and onto another. A bad omen. Bell’s big square ring tapped the countertop.

  Keita looked up and began. “I have a cheque for four thousand dollars from the Buttersby Marathon, and I wish to use it to open an account.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Keita lowered his voice a notch and held the man with his gaze. “But I have no ID.”

  “Have your valuables been stolen?” Bell said.

  “They were taken from me, but not in the sense of an ordinary theft.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “No.”

  “Are you a citizen of Freedom State?” Bell asked.

  Keita’s eyes drifted to the office door. Nobody barred it, and no police officers waited outside. Keita strove to keep his voice even and calm.

  “If you examine the cheque, you will see that it is valid.”

  Bell tapped his ring against the table again. It made Keita jump in his seat.

  “Sir,” he said firmly. “I can’t help you if you don’t have full identification. For starters, I would need your passport, driver’s licence, birth certificate and national citizenship card.”

  Surely there was a way to work with this gentleman. In Zantoroland, slipping a fifty-dollar bill under the table would solve the problem.

  “Mr. Bell,” Keita said, “let me assure you that I am trustworthy and that this cheque is valid. I see that you are a bank for the people. I am not asking for a loan. I just want to deposit my money.”

  “It’s against the law for me to open a bank account without your full identification,” Bell said. “Technically, I am supposed to report anyone who attempts to open an account without papers.” He cleared his throat and tightened his tie.

  The man’s smile, handshake and coffee had meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. Keita could be deported tomorrow or receive news that his sister had died, and it would make no difference to James Bell. Keita’s knees ached from the bus ride. His thighs still burned from the marathon. It was best to walk before he had to run. Best to leave before he overstayed his welcome.

  Keita rose from his chair. “Thank you for your time and for the coffee.”

  Now that Keita was leaving, the banker brightened considerably. “Thank you for considering us, sir, and have yourself a wonderful day.” He extended a thick hand. It was a hand that had been strengthened by a gym membership and fed by hot cereal in the morning, lunch at midday and meat every night.

  Keita reached out for the obligatory shake, but to him, the banker’s cold palm felt like a wall. The wall had a door, and the door had a lock, and the lock needed a key. Some people had keys to this world, but Keita was not one of them.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE PRIME MINISTER HAD DECREED THAT OFFERING cabinet ministers chauffeur-driven limos did not conform with the Family Party’s tax-cutting values, so Rocco drove himself to work. Rocco didn’t mind. It gave him time to think. This morning, he had his mind on the “fireside consultations” that the PM and his sidekick, Geoffrey Moore, had made him set up so that it would appear he was doing something about Illegals in Freedom State.

  It was Geoffrey’s brilliant idea that Rocco should invite concerned citizens from all walks of life to small, informal discussions. In the intimacy of his corner office with the gas fireplace, Rocco would solicit their opinions about what to do, and he would put it all in a stupid report that would go absolutely nowhere and fail to impress a single government critic but allow the government to claim that it was soliciting public input.

  In the last twenty-four hours, Rocco had decided whom to invite to his next fireside consultation. He put the fix in to secure that good-looking woman who had beaten him at Buttersby: Candace Freixa. He had looked her up on the results board after the race. She was a cop. Who better to contribute than a black law enforcement officer? And he had invited Ivernia Beech. He remembered her as the funder of the national student essay prize, and he knew that she was a lefty. Lately, she had written him a letter complaining of the “draconian measures” used to deport people without proper papers, asking, Did the government not realize that some of these deportees might face death in their own countries? She would not in a million years vote for the Family Party. But Rocco needed at least one social misfit to attend each session, so he’d had an aide call her up. He could have his meeting and get the PM’s aide off his back.

  Rocco parked in the outdoor lot behind the government office known as the Freedom Building. He checked his watch: 7:05 a.m. Plenty of time. The PM liked all of his ministers to be in their offices by 7:30. First thing in the morning was the PM’s favourite time to come calling. Some mornings, Rocco heard laughter coming from other offices down the hall. Four cabinet ministers had played with the PM on the rugby squad that won the World Cup thirty years earlier. But Rocco was not one of them. He didn’t regret it. Thirty years ago, Rocco was dropping out of university and setting up his first used car dealership. He had been careful with his money. He did not need this job. If his career in politics went belly-up, well, worse things had happened.

  Rocco closed the door to his Volvo station wagon, turned and found himself face to face with a young boy. White. Or maybe not. His hair was loosely curled, but you couldn’t exactly call him black. About twelve? Lost? He wore a school uniform. Rocco caught t
he letters on the boy’s blazer: Clarkson Academy FTG.

  “Sir,” the boy said, reaching out his hand.

  Rocco shook it, because that’s what you did when you met a future voter.

  “John Falconer, sir,” the boy said. “We met before. Congratulations on your performance in Buttersby.”

  “Now I remember you,” Rocco said. “You won that essay competition, and you live in AfricTown.”

  “That’s right, sir. You promised me an interview.”

  Come to think of it, Rocco had said that he would meet the boy. John was an energetic one. Like a puppy. Best to get this over with. “What do you wish to talk about, and can we wrap it up in ten minutes?”

  “Sir, I am writing and directing a film documentary for a special Grade 9 project.”

  “How about if we walk and talk?”

  They took the stairs up one flight to Rocco’s corner office. John explained that he wished to shadow him over the next month.

  “Shadow me?” Now they were in his office. While Rocco opened the fridge and poured a glass of apple juice, the boy stepped back to videotape him. Rocco frowned.

  “It’s just for school,” John said. He swung the camera around to film the far side of the office. He walked toward another door.

  “Your own bathroom? Multiple stalls and sinks, all to yourself? How cool is that? Man! A rowing machine. Who gets to have a bathroom big enough for a rowing machine? I bet that keeps you in good shape, sir. I bet you could run that marathon in three hours, if you set your mind to it.”

  The kid was getting annoying. And Rocco had things to do. “About the shadowing. You’ll have to submit a request in writing.”

  “Sir, why is the Family Party deporting people without documentation?”

  “Every country has a right to self-determination. That includes enforcing the rules of citizenship.”

  The kid lowered his video camera. “Bathroom break,” he said, and he disappeared into Rocco’s private bathroom.

  Rocco heard the kid piss. He heard a tap running. After the toilet flushed, he heard the window opening. The building was a century old. You could lift up the window and jump right out, if, say, the PM’s executive assistant was undermining your sanity. If you felt depressed about the stream of illegal refugees arriving by boat on the nation’s thousands of kilometres of unprotected coastline. Why was that kid opening the window? Rocco hoped the boy was just checking out the sights, and that he wouldn’t do anything stupid. Rocco had just begun to move toward the bathroom door when Graeme Wellington and Geoffrey Moore walked into his office.