The Garbage King

by Elizabeth Laird

  A woman came out, wiping her hands on the long gathered skirt of her dress.

  ‘Is this the boy, then?’ she said to the farmer. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Mamo,’ said Merga, stepping forward. He and the farmer seemed to have buried their mutual resentment. They had been talking in a friendly enough manner for the last half hour of the journey.

  The woman exchanged the usual greetings with Merga, but with little enthusiasm. She didn’t seem surprised to see him, but threw her husband a look that seemed to say, ‘I told you so’.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, leading the way into the hut.

  Casually, as if he was unbridling a horse, the farmer untied the rope from around Mamo’s neck, and Mamo, whose spirits had lifted just a little at the thought that at least he might now get a drink and something to eat, followed the others inside.

  Darkness had already fallen with African suddenness when Tiggist came hurrying home down the little lane. On the one hand she was bursting with her news. On the other, she wasn’t sure how Mamo was going to take it.

  She undid the padlock and went inside. The shack was empty, but she wasn’t surprised. Mamo would be somewhere around, with a neighbour, maybe, or hanging about outside the little shop by the main road, which sold CDs and cassettes. He liked sitting on the wall up there, listening to the music which blared out all day long from the makeshift loudspeakers.

  She lit the lamp and set it on the rickety table, then took the bread Mrs Faridah had given her out of the plastic bag she’d been carrying. The bread would be stale and unsaleable by tomorrow, so it meant nothing to Mrs Faridah to let her take it, but it had been kind of her to add a few eggs as well. There’d be supper enough for both of them tonight.

  She set about lighting the fire so she could cook the eggs, listening out for Mamo. Then she heard steps outside the shack.

  ‘Mamo!’ she called out. ‘Come in. I’ve got so much to tell you.’

  It was Mrs Hannah, though, who answered her.

  ‘There you are, dear,’ she said, stepping into the shack, her baby balanced on her hip. ‘I came to see if you and Mamo wanted some supper. There’s plenty for you both.’

  Tiggist had been squatting by the fire, feeding it with sticks, but she stood up to hug Mrs Hannah.

  ‘You’ve been so nice to us,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what we’d have done.’

  Mrs Hannah patted her shoulder.

  ‘I know what it’s like to lose your mother,’ she said. ‘Even when . . . You’re a brave girl. I’d help you more if I could.’

  Tiggist stepped back and beamed at her.

  ‘I won’t need anyone to help me now,’ she said. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. I went to see Mrs Faridah today. She’s given me a job! I’m going to work in her shop, run errands, help round the back, even serve customers when she’s shown me how. She’s going to get me a new dress tomorrow, and some shoes, and she says I can sleep in the storeroom.’

  The baby had started to grizzle. Mrs Hannah gave him her knuckle to suck and beamed back at Tiggist.

  ‘That’s wonderful! Quite frankly, my dear, I was worried about you. I didn’t see how you were going to manage. Let’s hope your uncle finds something as good for Mamo.’

  ‘My uncle?’ Tiggist looked puzzled. ‘What uncle?’

  ‘He came round this morning. Said he’d got a job for Mamo. Mamo went off with him to see about it.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Tiggist said slowly. ‘We haven’t got any uncles. Not that I know about. We never knew anyone from my father’s family. He came from up north. And Ma said both her brothers were killed in the war.’

  ‘Perhaps it was a cousin then, or a friend even,’ Mrs Hannah said comfortably. ‘Mamo will tell us all about it when he comes back, if he ever does. You know what boys are like. They take off suddenly and never bother to let their families know they’re all right.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tiggist, her face clearing. ‘It’s a bit of a relief, to be honest. Mrs Faridah said she’d let him sleep in the shop with me till he got fixed up, but I could see she wasn’t very keen. I can’t believe it! Both of us getting a job in one day! I hope his is as nice as mine. I’m moving into the shop tomorrow. If Mamo doesn’t get back till I’ve gone, will you tell him where I am?’

  ‘You’re giving this place up then?’ said Mrs Hannah, looking round at the dingy walls and uneven mud floor.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Tiggist happily. ‘It’s a horrible house anyway. I won’t miss it at all. Except for you, of course. But I’ll come and see you sometimes, when I can. It’s going to be so lovely, working for Mrs Faridah! She’s got the sweetest little baby (not as nice as yours, of course), and I’m going to look after her sometimes when Mrs Faridah’s busy. Can I really come to supper with you? I want to tell you everything – all about the shop, and my dress, and the place where I’m going to sleep.’

  There was no light in the farmer’s house except for the fire, which burned brightly in the middle of the floor. A boy was squatting in one corner, and sitting on the mud platform that ran right round the inside wall of the house was a girl, a little younger than Mamo. The boy was wearing a school uniform. They both turned and stared at him curiously, but did not smile.

  The farmer’s wife brought out a small stool for Merga and set it by the fire. No one spoke to Mamo. He stood awkwardly by the door, not knowing what to do.

  The farmer nodded at him.

  ‘Get the cows inside,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know how,’ muttered Mamo, embarrassed.

  ‘Show him,’ the farmer said to the boy.

  The boy picked up his father’s stick and pushed past Mamo. Mamo followed him outside. The boy unlatched the door of the second, smaller hut. He went round behind the cows and waved the stick towards their rumps.

  ‘Hedj! Get in!’ he said, in a bored voice.

  Mamo jumped back as the cows passed him, scared of their long horns. The boy stared at him disdainfully.

  ‘Not scared of them, are you?’ Mamo didn’t bother to answer.

  The sheep and goats followed the cows automatically into the hut, in which a donkey was already standing, its head lowered as if it was asleep. Without another word, the boy latched the door and returned to the house. Mamo followed him.

  Merga, the farmer and the old man were sitting around a large tray, sharing a flat injera pancake and some spicy stews set out on it. Almost faint with hunger, Mamo moved over to join them.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ the farmer’s wife said, frowning at him. ‘You’ll eat later, after me and the little ones.’

  ‘Please,’ said Mamo, ‘can I have some water? I’m very thirsty.’

  ‘The jar’s in the corner,’ the woman said, pointing to it with her chin.

  Mamo drank from the horn cup by the water jar, then sat down in the shadows against the wall, put his arms round his knees and dropped his head down on them. Misery engulfed him. Loneliness washed over him. Tears trickled down his face, making two dark channels through the grey dust that coated it. He didn’t sniff in case the sharp-eyed children saw him cry, but moved his head from side to side to wipe his nose and eyes on his knees.

  Underneath the misery, anger was beginning to burn. He felt it warm his heart and stiffen his thoughts. He’d been cheated. Tricked. Stolen. But he wasn’t going to give in to his fate. Somehow, one day, he’d get away from here. Then he’d find Merga and take his revenge.

  The three men finished eating at last. His heart sinking, Mamo saw that there was almost nothing left on the tray. The woman took it across to the children, and shared the last morsels with them, then she went behind the screen that stretched across the far end of the round room and came out with four roasted corn cobs.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said, giving one to each of them, one to Mamo and keeping one for herself.

  Mamo hadn’t eaten anything since the bread he’d found at breakfast time. He fell on the corn ravenously. It barely touched his hunger. He waited, h
oping for more, but nothing else appeared. The children seemed disappointed too, but they looked nervously towards their father and didn’t dare complain.

  Everyone was getting ready to sleep. They moved to the mud platforms at the edge of the hut and lay down on the cowskins that covered them. Mamo lay down too.

  ‘All right,’ the farmer said, looking down at him. ‘Tonight you can stay in here, but from tomorrow you sleep with the cattle and guard them.’ For a moment, the firelight caught a fleeting smile on his lean dark face that was almost understanding. ‘Don’t look so tragic. It’s a hard life out here after the city, but you’ll get used to it. If you’re a good boy and work hard you’ll find I’m a fair master. I’ll only beat you for a proper reason.’

  Mamo lay down, and silently turned his face to the wall.

  3

  The worst thing about school, thought Dani, was the way people were impatient with you all the time. For some reason, he didn’t know why, everyone always seemed to get exasperated.

  ‘Daniel, you haven’t forgotten your dictionary again?’ Ato Markos would say, his thick eyebrows meeting in a frown above his long nose. ‘How are you ever going to learn English when you keep leaving your books at home?’

  He heard the same irritated note in the voice of the other boys.

  ‘Are you crazy? Don’t pick him,’ they’d whisper, when a game of football was being planned. ‘If he ever managed to kick a ball his foot would drop off with surprise.’

  Even old Ibrahim, the taxi driver who picked him up from home to take him to school every morning, and collected him at the school gate every afternoon, had started to get at him. He spoke a funny sort of Amharic, with a thick accent from the south, but his meaning was perfectly clear.

  ‘You should make the best of yourself,’ he kept saying. ‘Don’t waste your opportunities. If I had the money to send my kids to school, I’d make them work till they came top of the class every time.’

  Why is it, thought Dani, as he stared blindly out of the window of the taxi, that everyone wants something different from you? And when you try to do what you think they want, to keep them happy, it sort of slips out of reach and goes wrong?

  It had been like that today. He had really, really tried in his science class. The teacher was white, a young American, who usually smiled all the time, but his smile always seemed to slip when it rested on Dani.

  ‘Are you following me here, big guy?’ he’d said. ‘This electron carries a negative charge – minus one. Have you got that?’

  Dani had nodded, but he hadn’t really got it at all. The trouble with English was that the words seemed to muddle themselves up when people, especially foreigners, spoke quickly. He thought he knew what they meant, then doubts crept in, and his mind sort of froze, and he ended up not being sure of anything. Not even the simplest sentence.

  ‘OK,’ the teacher had gone on. ‘So if the electrons flow, forming the electric current, what happens then? Come on, Daniel. It’s easy.’

  The others had shuffled round in their seats impatiently, their hands shooting up into the air, desperate to give the answer. Dani’s brain had seized into numbness. The answer ought to be there, bouncing confidently into his mind. He knew it really. He knew he knew it, but it had drifted away into uncertainty.

  ‘Think about it, Daniel. Think,’ the teacher kept saying.

  Dani was thinking. It was no good. His head was filling up with a panicky fog, as insubstantial as cotton wool.

  The teacher gave up and picked one of the others – clever Makonnen, the guy who’d jumped over Dani’s head at the swimming pool – to give the answer. No one had looked at Dani again during the whole long lesson. It was as if he hadn’t been there. As if, for all his bulk, he’d disappeared.

  The only thing to do, Dani had discovered, when people started looking right through you, was to go away. You couldn’t get up and walk out of the classroom, but you could go somewhere else in your head. You could just give yourself over to a story, one of the rich, exciting dramas that were always waiting there on the edge of your mind, ready to move in and take over.

  It was like starting off a secret video and watching it with your inside eyes. You could take any part you liked, be anyone you wanted. You could be handsome, strong, brave, clever and popular. Not irritating.

  He’d got going on a good one this afternoon. It started off with a bank heist, like in a movie. He was in the National Bank with his father, when these gunmen burst in. Everyone froze. They were shouting, ‘Get down on the floor! Don’t move!’ Only Dani had kept his head. He’d noticed the alarm bell, and had wriggled towards it, even though his father had pleaded with him, in frantic whispers, not to put his life at risk. He was just about to reach it, when . . .

  ‘See those kids over there on the corner?’ Ibrahim said. ‘Those shoe-shine boys? Bet they wish they had your chances.’

  A sigh gathered deep down in Dani’s chest and gusted out through his mouth. That was the trouble with stuff in your head. It never lasted long enough. If someone broke in on your thoughts, they just blew away, like puffs of smoke, and you couldn’t get them back again.

  The taxi pulled up outside Dani’s house and Ibrahim tooted his horn. The one-eyed guard, Negussie, opened the gates a crack, and put out his gnarled old face. He recognized the taxi, and swung the gates wide open. Ibrahim drove into the compound and pulled up. Dani opened the door and climbed out.

  ‘Here,’ Ibrahim called after him, as he went up the marble steps towards the ornate wrought-iron grill that covered the glass front door. ‘You’ve forgotten half your books!’

  And as he backed the taxi out through the gates again, Dani could hear his mocking laughter, and Negussie’s heavy wheezing as he joined in.

  Mamo woke to the sound of a grindstone turning. He lay in the pitch-dark listening.

  Ma, he thought confusedly. Why is she up so early?

  Then he woke properly and remembered everything. It wasn’t his mother, grinding grain to make injera. She was dead, and he was miles and miles away from home, with people whose names he didn’t even know. He was totally in their power.

  His stomach turned over and he felt the blood drumming in his ears as sat up.

  The grinding stopped. A flicker of red light ran round the inside of the hut. The woman was blowing through a hollow stick on to the embers of last night’s fire, and feeding them with a few dry leaves to make the flames sprout up.

  Merga and the farmer, who had been sleeping on the mud platform against the far wall of the hut, stirred, stretched and stood up. They had been wrapped in old grey shammas, and they shook them off. The children slept on.

  The farmer opened the door of the hut which creaked back on its leather hinges, and a draught of cold air hit Mamo, making him shiver all over. Through the open door, he could see the dark outline of the far horizon as the sky above turned grey. Dawn was coming.

  I’m all alone, he told himself, his mind feeling weak with fright. There’s no one to help me here.

  ‘Come on, you,’ the farmer said, looking across at him and jerking his head towards the door. ‘Get the cows out.’

  Mamo got up and stumbled outside. The farmer pointed to a ragged stack of hay in the corner of the compound.

  ‘Give them some of that. Don’t pull the pile about, mind.’

  Mamo was walking across to the haystack when he was almost knocked flat by a thumping blow across his shoulders.

  ‘When I say go, you run,’ growled the farmer, lowering his stick.

  He turned and went back inside. Mamo fumbled with the catch on the door of the stable hut. There was light enough to see by now, for the sky was growing paler minute by minute as dawn broke, but his eyes were half blinded with tears.

  He got the door open at last, and the cows came out into the open, shaking their lowered heads. They followed Mamo across to the hay pile and he pulled a little of it off and spread it out for them on the ground. They began to lip it over, snuffling down their
noses, ignoring Mamo who started away whenever one came too close to him.

  Merga came out of the hut, yawned, stretched and walked outside into the lane. In the empty stillness, Mamo could hear him cough and grunt as he urinated against the thorn hedge.

  When he came back, he looked over and caught Mamo’s eye. An uneasy smile, almost apologetic, edged on to his face.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘They’re strict, but they’re not bad people. You’ll learn to work. It’s better than loafing around in Addis. You’ll thank me in the end. You’ll see.’

  Hatred simmered inside Mamo.

  ‘Ma wasn’t your sister,’ he said. ‘You’re not my uncle.’

  Merga’s smile broadened and turned into a leer.

  ‘I was a lot more than a brother to her. Me and half the other men in Addis.’

  The hatred roared up through Mamo’s head like water gushing into a fountain. He wanted to launch himself at Merga, to hit and kick, to hurt him any way he could, but Merga had seen the look in his eyes and had retreated into the hut, leaving Mamo to stand helplessly by the cows, crushing handfuls of hay in his tightly clenched fists.

  The sun was over the horizon when the boy and girl came outside, with the toddler staggering after them. The girl came up to Mamo, and without raising her eyes to his face put some injera and a beaker of water into his hands. He drank down the water and bolted the food at once.

  The boy was watching him disgustedly.

  ‘You don’t even eat like a Christian. You don’t pray first. Anyway, that was for your lunch too.’

  The girl was calling to the sheep and goats. She led them, bleating, out of the compound, and he could hear their feet tapping against the stones as they trotted after her to graze.

  The farmer and Merga came out and walked across the compound together to the entrance. Merga didn’t look at Mamo again. He hurried through the formal farewells, to which the farmer responded with the barest politeness, then disappeared down the lane, out of sight.