The Garbage King

by Elizabeth Laird

  It was an hour before the policemen moved on. The boys had stopped watching them and had begun idly following the progress of an argument between a taxi driver and a man who looked like a farmer up from the country. When they turned back, the policeman had gone.

  They jumped down from the wall and slipped back towards their pitch. Their blankets and Dani’s bag were still where they had left them that morning, neatly piled in a corner of the wall. Mamo looked round nervously as they bent to pick them up but no one was around to notice them.

  It was obvious, when at last they got back to the group on the open ground below the lanes, that although Getachew had been forgiven Million and Buffalo were still angry with him.

  ‘What’s been happening?’ Mamo asked Dani in a low voice.

  ‘They all tried to beg by the traffic lights over there,’ Dani told him, ‘but there’s another gang around and they chased us away.’

  ‘Were you there? Did you have to beg?’ Mamo said, trying and failing to imagine Dani with the shuffling gait and cajoling voice of a beggar.

  A rare smile lit up Dani’s whole face.

  ‘No. Million said I was too fat. I’ve never been grateful for all this stuff before,’ he said, and he pinched the roll of flab round his waist.

  ‘I don’t want to beg, either,’ Mamo said, ‘but I’ll have to, I know.’

  It was good talking to Dani. They had things in common. They were both in the gang, but they were still a pair, too.

  ‘I didn’t thank you,’ Dani said, ‘for waiting when we were running away. I’d have got totally lost if you hadn’t stayed back and beckoned me.’

  Mamo smiled back at him. It was nice to be thanked. It hadn’t happened to him very often. Then a thought occurred to him.

  ‘What are we all going to do if we can’t beg? I mean what are we going to eat today? Are we going back to the restaurant?’

  Dani shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think so. Million said we’ve got to stay away from the usual places. Lie low for a bit. Stick it out till they’ve forgotten.’

  He spoke with more respect than before. Mamo nodded. Since Million had disciplined Getachew he’d felt in awe of the joviro too.

  The rest of the day passed slowly. Million and Buffalo went back to the nearby road to try to strike a deal with the local gang. They came back late, when the sun was already beginning to set.

  ‘What happened, Million?’ Shoes called out when he saw them coming. ‘Have you got any food for us?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Million said, squatting down with a sigh. ‘Those guys on the road over there were OK in the end, when we explained we’d only be around for a few days. They said they’d show us a restaurant near here in the morning. The people there don’t put the leftover stuff out till late. You have to get up and get it early.’

  ‘So nothing more today then,’ Mamo said, already mentally adjusting his mind to a hungry night ahead, and feeling superior to Dani who had had let out a sharp ‘Oh’ of disappointment.

  13

  It was five days before the group returned to their usual place on the street corner. They sniffed around it cautiously several times then drifted back bit by bit, more alert than usual to any sightings of policemen.

  It was a relief to all of them to be back. The streets here were their familiar territory, where nothing escaped their notice. They could predict the moment when the shop on the corner was about to dispose of tomatoes and guavas that were too far gone to sell, and when the baker was reducing the price on his stale bread. They had established rights on the guarding of cars that parked on a forecourt nearby, and were the resident beggars at the traffic lights further along.

  Mamo had felt unsettled during the five days on the rough ground down the hill. There’d been too little do, and not nearly enough to eat. It had been colder at nights as well. His feelings had veered up and down, almost frightening him sometimes with their intensity.

  He tried to push them away. Whenever he thought about being a godana, a street person, he started falling into an abyss of anxiety and depression. And if he allowed himself to look into the faces of passers-by, especially those he begged from, seeing the mixture of pity and contempt in their eyes, he started to despise himself and feel worthless.

  He could see Dani almost visibly changing as the days passed. His spare weight was dropping off him and the need to be constantly on the watch was making him sharper and quicker on his feet. He was acquiring too the worn, dusty, grey look that they all had. His old flashes of arrogance came more rarely now, and he was learning not to push himself forward when food came, but to take his turn and be more respectful to the others.

  Sometimes Mamo was aware that he was changing himself. Something was hardening and sharpening inside him as if he was developing an inner core of metal. The longer he stayed out here on the street the more he was learning about how to survive, and the more certain he became that he could do it.

  I’ll never be trapped again. I’ll never let anyone treat me like that farmer did, he told himself again and again.

  They’d visited Karate once while they’d been away from their pitch, creeping into the hospital at Siddist Kilo to stand round his bed in awed silence. They’d felt nervous under the frowning eyes of the nuns in their stiff uniforms, and the hard walls and floors, the smell of disinfectant and the sound of doors clanging shut behind them made them all uneasy.

  Mamo noticed that only Dani had seemed at home. He’d tied a piece of cloth round his head as a sort of disguise and had walked confidently up to Karate’s bed, putting a hand down on the pillow as if he didn’t even register how soft it was.

  ‘We’ll go up to the hospital again tomorrow,’ Million announced when they’d repossessed their pitch. ‘He might be ready to come out.’

  It was a long walk up the hill to Siddist Kilo. Dani was more nervous this time. He’d wrapped up most of his face as well as his head, and skulked along by walls and fences, looking down at his feet. Mamo watched out for him, ready to warn him if anyone looked at him twice, but he didn’t feel really worried. Dani already looked quite different from the plump, smartly dressed boy he’d first noticed gazing in at the window of the cake shop. People would be less likely to recognize him now.

  Suri was getting too lively to be carried all the time. On their first visit to the hospital, Mamo had hidden her inside his shirt and taken her in with him, but today, when they reached the forbidding double doors, and he tried to tuck her away, she was so frisky she nipped his fingers.

  ‘You’ll have to leave her outside,’ Dani said to him. ‘They never let dogs into hospitals.’

  ‘I can’t. She might panic and run away. I might never find her again,’ said Mamo, feeling cold at the thought.

  ‘Tie her up to something,’ Million said, pushing open the doors.

  Mamo stood irresolutely as the others slipped past the doorman and went in. He didn’t have any string and besides, he didn’t like the idea of leaving Suri on her own.

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ he called after them. ‘Say hi to Karate for me.’

  He squatted down against the wall to wait. It was interesting being in a new part of town. The university was just up the road and students were strolling up and down the wide boulevard with books tucked under their arms. Jacaranda trees were in bloom in the strip of garden by the hospital wall and every now and then a blue blossom floated down and landed beside him, to be pounced on and wrestled with by Suri as if it was a dangerous enemy. It was nice here, peaceful and beautiful. For some reason, Mamo thought of Yohannes and Hailu. They must be out there in the countryside right now, herding their cows, throwing stones into the stream and playing one of their endless games.

  He began to sing quietly, and was so absorbed in easing a stick out of Suri’s mouth that he didn’t hear the footsteps as the others came up behind him.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Shoes said. ‘You sing really nice.’

  Mamo jumped and turned round, embarrassed to find
that the whole group had been listening to him. ‘No I don’t,’ he mumbled. He’d been too shy to let any of them, except Dani, hear him sing before.

  ‘How’s Karate? When’s he coming out?’

  ‘He looks better,’ Getachew said, ‘whatever the nuns think.’

  Mamo picked up Suri and stood up. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘The young nurse said he’s really sick still. Very bad,’ Dani said. He was looking worried. ‘He’s got to stay in hospital.’

  ‘That’s all rubbish,’ said Getachew. ‘He’s miserable in there, you can tell. That’s what’s stopping him getting better. He’d be OK if they let him out. He was worse than this last time and he was fine after he’d come back to us.’

  ‘That old one, she told me he wasn’t going to make it,’ Million said quietly, as if he was afraid that telling bad news out loud would make it worse. ‘The medicine wasn’t working on him any more, she said.’

  Dani looked at him, shocked.

  ‘What? But he was sitting up and talking and everything. You saw him.’

  ‘I know, but she said there was something inside.

  Something really wrong.’

  Mamo suddenly made up his mind.

  ‘I’m going in to see him myself,’ he said. ‘Here, Dani, you take Suri. I’ll catch you all up.’

  It was quiet but echoing inside the hospital corridor and Mamo had to pluck up his courage to go on alone. He remembered from last time where Karate’s bed was, and he found it easily. There was no one else around, except for a few sick children, hunched in their beds asleep, and an old woman rocking herself backwards and forwards in a corner, taking no notice of anything.

  Karate was curled up in a tight ball under a blanket and tears were oozing out of his closed eyes on to the pillow. He was holding a cloth in his hand and stroking his cheek with it. Mamo recognized the elephant shirt that Dani had given him.

  He leaned over the bed.

  ‘What’s the matter, Karate? Why are you crying?’ Karate’s eyes flew open and he struggled to sit up. ‘I thought Million was going to take me,’ he said, ‘then the nurse came and said I had to stay.’

  ‘But they’re nice to you in here, aren’t they?’ said Mamo. ‘I mean they give you food and everything?’ ‘No one talks to you. You have to sleep all alone in your own bed. They get cross if you pee anywhere except in the special place. I’m so scared, Mamo.

  It’s horrible. Take me with you. Please, please.’

  Mamo looked round. He could see what Karate meant. You would be lonely in this place. The bare white walls and high windows were hard and stern. It made him shudder to think of spending even one night alone in this room, and Karate had been here for days and days.

  ‘But they’ll make you better if you stay,’ he said, trying not to think about what Million had said.

  ‘They won’t. They never will. I get nasty dreams at night when I’m alone, bad things, I can’t tell you, like animals and ghosts coming to eat me, and trucks running me over.’

  He was beginning to sob, his small chest heaving. Mamo put his arm round Karate’s shoulders and squeezed gently. He didn’t know what to do. What if he took Karate out of here, and then he died? But hadn’t the old nun said he was going to die anyway? One thing was sure, being unhappy killed you quicker than anything else. Being with people you loved was the best kind of medicine. Yohannes’s family had taught him that.

  He bent down and whispered in Karate’s ear, ‘Where are your clothes?’

  Karate stared at him for a moment, then his face lit up.

  ‘They threw them away, except for this.’ He held up his elephant shirt. ‘I wouldn’t let them touch that. They made me wear these stripy things.’

  ‘Come on then, quick,’ said Mamo.

  He tore the blanket off the bed and wrapped it round Karate then scooped him up into his arms. The little boy clung to him like a monkey, his arms round Mamo’s neck and his legs round his waist. His heart thudding, Mamo ran with him to the door, raced down the long corridor and was out in the street a few seconds later.

  The group was standing in a knot by the gate. Million saw him first and ran up, peeling Karate away from Mamo and holding him against his own thin chest.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I was just about to go back in there and fetch him out myself.’

  For the last few days Dani had simply existed. He had shut his mind to the situation he was in and to all thoughts of the future and had lived only in the present, staying back when the others went off to beg, keeping himself in a quiet corner.

  He’d lost count of how many days had passed since he’d left home. His father and mother, Meseret, Zeni, Negussie, the house, the compound, the big car, his school – they all belonged to another world, far away and long ago.

  At the back of his mind he was aware that he was living off the others and that he couldn’t do so for ever, but like everything else to do with the future he pushed the thought aside.

  The visit to the hospital shook him abruptly back into the present. He’d been in hospitals before, seeing Mamma when she’d gone in for tests and treatment. The wards she’d stayed in had been much newer and nicer than this charity place, but the atmosphere was still familiar. The clean corridors, enclosing painted walls and neat beds held no terrors for him. It was as if he’d stepped back for a moment into the real world.

  Million seemed to have waived his iron rule on stealing and had accepted the theft of the hospital blanket. He walked fast at the head of his gang, moving defiantly on the balls of his feet along the crowded pavements with the other boys close to his heels.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said, when at last they reached their pitch. ‘Home sweet home.’ And he laughed at his own joke as he set Karate down, still wrapped like a cocoon in his blanket, next to his own sitting stone against the wall. Karate’s eyes, large and burning in his pinched face, glowed gratefully up at him. His hand, protruding like a small claw from the blanket, was still clutching the elephant shirt.

  ‘It’s brilliant, Million,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It’s much nicer here. Oh, they’ve taken down that sign by the barber’s window. Yes and look, there goes the old man with the bicycle, the one who comes past here every day.’

  Dani pulled Mamo aside.

  ‘He can’t stay out here all night,’ he said. ‘He’s too sick. We’ve got to take him back to the hospital.’

  Mamo stared at him.

  ‘What do you mean? You saw how miserable he was in there. He’s much better here with us.’

  ‘But we haven’t got any medicines or injections or anything. He’ll be too cold. We won’t know what to do if . . .’

  Mamo shook his head as if he didn’t understand what Dani was saying.

  ‘We couldn’t have left him there,’ he said at last. ‘It was all right,’ said Dani. ‘Hospitals are always like that. At least they look after you.’

  ‘They weren’t looking after him. He was all alone. He’d never slept on his own before. I’d be scared too, in a big soft bed like that.’

  A gulf of incomprehension was opening up between them. Mamo seemed to sense it.

  ‘It’s not – I mean, when you’re really sick, when you think you’re going to die, even if you don’t in the end, you need friends.’ He was struggling to find the right words. ‘People you belong to. That’s more important than the stuff they give you.’ He hesitated. ‘If his soul goes out, it’s not so bad for him. It’s like he’ll be going into the light. And we’d be there with him so he wouldn’t be lonely.’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘But he won’t die. He’ll be all right now. Didn’t you hear what Getachew said? He was worse than this before and he got better. He just needed to be with us again.’

  Dani wasn’t listening any more. He’d been jolted by a sudden image of Mamma, alone in a hospital in London. What if she was feeling like Karate had felt, lost and frightened in a strange place? What if she died there, without anyone from home being near her? Why hadn’t he thought befor
e about what it might be like for her?

  He remembered with a blush of shame how he’d barely said goodbye the morning she’d left. He’d actually been angry with her for deserting him and leaving him to face his father on his own.

  Did she know he’d run away? Had Father told her? Suppose she’d found out that he’d gone and was fretting about him? Would that stop her getting better?

  He gripped Mamo’s arm.

  ‘Will you do something for me? Please?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got to know what’s happened to my mother. It’s been ages now.’

  ‘I thought you said she was away somewhere, in another country.’

  ‘In England, yes, but my father will have news of her by this time.’

  ‘You want me to find out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Go to my house. Ask Negussie. He’s the old guy who opens and shuts the gates.’

  ‘What? I just go up to your house, knock on the gate, and say ‘‘Dani wants to know about his mum,’’ then wait while they jump all over me and make me tell them where you’ve gone? No thank you very much.’

  Dani shook his head. ‘Not like that, no.’

  ‘How then?’

  ‘Let me think.’

  He tried to picture the house and the street. ‘There’s a little shop just near my house,’ he said at last, ‘and this really nice woman who knows my family. Negussie and Zeni talk to her all the time. Catch her on her own and ask her. She’ll know. Please, Mamo, please go and ask her. I’ll do something for you, I promise.’

  ‘All right. I’ll go tomorrow.’ Mamo was secretly pleased. He liked the idea of seeing Dani’s house. He’d often tried to imagine Dani in it.

  That evening, fortune seemed to reward the group for rescuing Karate and returning to their old haunts. A particularly successful begging session at the traffic lights yielded enough for a good supper, and to cap it all, Buffalo, who had slipped off for a solitary scavenge at the dump, returned with a couple of old tyres and half a packing case. Million lit a fire with these, when darkness fell, and the boys crouched around it, licking the last of their supper off their fingers.