Children of Paradise: A Novel (11 page)

Trina, Ryan, Rose, and the rest of the children in the dormitory sit up in their beds in the dark and talk about hunger. About the small last meal of the day, said to be shredded beef and rice but in actuality masses of rice and ladles of gravy with nothing in it but colored water. A paltry meal digested hours ago. What they wish for ranges from entire roasted pigs to chocolates with three layers to the box. The smell of the bakery begins to drift into the dormitory. Ryan shifts the talk to cutting a fresh loaf and spreading it with creamy butter. What would it be like to watch that butter run off a slice and catch the runoff in a wide mouth and bite into the not too hot but more than just warm baked dough. Ryan moves to the door. Trina volunteers to go with him. Rose says they should draw straws to be fair to everyone, since all of them stand to benefit.

At this point the talk swings to what will happen to the bread scout if he or she gets caught. Pictures of the bread evaporate from heads at the mention of discovery. The children know what that means. Rose says how terrible it would be if one of them got caught and all of them were punished. To be lowered one at a time into the well, moist and dark with a spiders’ enclave of webs in sufficient quantity to wrap a child in its shroud. Or be made to run the community gauntlet of fists and slaps and kicks. Or face a public beating by the guards. This makes everyone swear to protect the rest of the dormitory by saying he or she acted alone. All agree that whoever gets caught must take the punishment on behalf of everyone, no matter how terrible. They interlace fingers and cross hearts and hope to die. Trina adds that whosoever succeeds in bringing back bread gets the biggest slice first and the rest will be shared among the other children. Ryan thinks of another thing. He says that if anyone betrays the group, the punishment will be an endless dousing in a well, a perpetual running of a gauntlet formed by the group, and a beating with sticks from the group at every opportunity rather than one measly sentence at the bottom of the well, or one short sprint along the line formed by the commune, or one instance of a beating by a few men armed with sticks.

Ryan pulls straw from a mattress and breaks it into pieces of varying length and puts the pieces in a hat and holds out the hat for everyone to pick a piece. The children each draw a straw from the hat. Trina and Rose examine theirs. Everyone knows how hard it is to make it along the gangway all the way to the bakery and back without bumping into one of the guards patrolling the walkways and standing in lookout towers with binoculars and rifles, towers dotted around the perimeter of the compound. The bravery required might be too much for a child’s body to contain. But what a loaf to win if that journey in the blackness could be made and the cooling loaf slipped from its tray and returned to the dormitory, hot enough that the booty has to be shifted from arm to arm to stave off the burn. Trina announces that Ryan picked the shortest straw. He does not hesitate. He hugs Trina and Rose. They wish him luck and urge him to be extra careful. Others say much the same thing and pat him on the back. He tiptoes to the door, opens it a few inches with the greatest care, and slips sideways into the dark.

Trina stands by the door and listens for footsteps. Rose and the rest of the children fall silent, almost listless in concentration. Each walks with Ryan in the darkness. Each squashes the belief that evil jungle spirits roam on such a night on the hunt for young hearts to tear from chests, and the most venomous snakes crawl up to the dormitories under the camouflage of darkness to catch the foot of a sleepwalking child and drag that child off into the jungle, and worst of all the dark scrambles the head of a child who becomes disoriented and walks toward the trees whose thick trunks and massive canopies and tangled undergrowth grab legs and wrap vines around the neck and pull a child’s body up into the trees, never to be seen again. Trina imagines she accompanies Ryan in that dark. She holds his hand, and they tiptoe in matching steps and press into the dark, which, despite its thickness, parts for them in the face of such conviction.

As Ryan draws close to the bakery, his eyes grow accustomed to the night. He sees a post that resembles a sentry. The night air is like a veil draped over a shy face. The shy face retreats as Ryan approaches it, and the bakery smell thickens and he has to swallow the saliva that pools around his tongue. He feels brave, thinking of Trina and Rose and the others salivating and swallowing, just thinking of him getting nearer and nearer the hot loaves. The baking crew plucks the loaves from the giant oven with long paddles shoved under the baking trays, which they turn over with a swift tilt of the hands. The loaves are lined up in neat rows on shelves to cool beside open windows. Ryan reaches an open window and ducks under it. He hears adults talking inside the bakery not five yards from him. A dog barks a little distance away. A guard smokes, contrary to commune rules, at the same distance as that dog. A red light shines like a bright night insect and dulls and shines and dulls. Ryan reaches up and grabs the first hot solid thing he feels and does not bother to look at it in the dark. He wants to grab another but can barely breathe and control a gross tremor from head to toe. He tries to reach up again but cannot. His arms refuse to obey him. He tries to turn away, but his legs feel pegged to the ground.

He conjures Trina and Rose waiting for him. He sees the bottom of the well with him in it and the cluster of sticks descending on his head. The fear proves sufficient to unlock his muscles. He crouches and tiptoes away. The barking gets closer. Ryan cannot look back. He speeds up his escape. The loaf burns his side where he clutches it. He hears more dogs barking and the clicking of crickets and a hoot he credits to an owl and a chattering of some sort that could be any wild animal. A strand touches his face. He swipes at it and thinks of a web and hopes it is the web of an absent spider. Heat from the hugged hot bread travels from his side up to his forehead and down to his toes. The air grows hot. The soil and the wood walkway burn his bare feet. He feels as if he is walking inside a giant oven heated by a close darkness. He cannot look back. He can barely see his hand in front of him. He counts, almost by touch, the rows of buildings full of sleeping children separated from their parents. The solid wood buildings, though spaced several feet apart, appear to be bridged by the dark. Ryan feels the dark gliding with him, its density creating the sensation that he was moving with the night rather than through it. At last he stops at his dormitory door. He turns the handle and slips inside and starts to breathe heavily. Everyone inside almost cheers at the sight of him with a loaf under his arm. He holds the block of gold high into the air.

They surround him and clap him on the back. Trina and Rose hug him. Everyone looks at the loaf, not sure how to begin to address its baked perfection. The hot smell spins their heads. The tanned rectangle shines like a gold bar, a work of art with a heavenly scent. They look on and cannot believe what they must do next, and quite fast if they are not to arouse suspicion. Ryan reads their minds and breaks off a chunk of bread and offers it to Trina. She passes it to Rose.

—Youngest first.

Rose looks around and decides to keep the gift. She holds the portion up to her face and takes a long deep breath and holds it in and waits as if inhaling is the point and actually eating her share an afterthought. Ryan works his way along the group, going by age. He breaks the bread and hands a piece to each child in turn. At last he takes the remaining chunk for himself, and on Trina’s count to three, they begin to nibble and chew long and slow, turning the bread to liquid in their mouths before swallowing it and keeping this silent chewing circle of smiles and nods and amazement in their eyes. How can bread taste so sweet? It’s only yeast, flour, water, and a pinch of salt. Bread must be the number one food in heaven. They mop up crumbs and lick wet fingers. They speculate about the vital importance of bread. That’s why Catholics offer a wafer for the body of Christ. That’s why each morning it is bread that breaks the night’s fast. Bread should be a world currency like gold. The Bread Standard! To bread or not to breathe! They sniff the bread smell, still in the air. Bread for air. Air bread. Trina calls Ryan the bread liberator. Rose says he is her hero. And mine, another child adds. Mine, too, says a fourth and fifth. Trina teases Ryan, and he teases her back.

—The Bread Liberator!

—The Resurrected One!

—Will you put the bread into verse?

—Yes, something about myrrh and frankincense.

The whispers die down and the children settle in their bunk beds with smiles. Trina asks Ryan in a whisper how he felt out there alone in the night. Ryan tells her and Rose about it.

—The night’s so thick, you can chop it like it’s a tree. You can climb up into it as if you’re dreaming, like the dark is a ladder. You lie down in it and it feels heavy on you, like you’re at the bottom of a lake. You hold up your hand and you rest it against the giant body of the night and you can’t tell your hand from the dark flesh. It gets to you so much that if you move in the night, you begin to see you’re not the one moving but the night’s carrying you forward and you leave no trace behind and there’s no path in front for you to take, there’s just the night moving forward and pulling you with it.

They pause and listen for the next person to say something. They slow and quiet. Trina interrupts the silence by wondering in a low whisper if the community, even the gorilla in its cage placed at the center of the compound for all to see, belongs here in the middle of nowhere, isolated like this. They can easily disappear without a sound, absorbed by the trees, with little or no trace. Trina tells them that her mother says everything at the commune is a test. Ryan waits for a moment in case Rose might wish to speak, but hearing nothing from her, he says that Father preaches much the same thing, that everything about their lives in this place is a preparation for life in the next. They say nothing for several seconds. Trina asks if they are still awake. Rose and Ryan whisper back that they are but only barely.

Trina whispers that Ryan’s magic trick with the bread matches the kind of thing Anansi would do. Several voices chime in, not knowing what Trina means.

—Anan-who?

—Anansi!

She explains that, in one of the captain’s many spider stories that he told her on his boat to pass the time, clever Anansi goes out and defies all the odds and defeats many foes and returns with plenty of food for his hungry children. Just like Ryan. Everyone agrees.

Trina thinks about her mother but says nothing. She remembers Joyce telling her about being tested and about the next place waiting for them.

—That place is paradise, free of worldly cares. Focus on passing the test rather than on the reasons for having to take it; understanding will come with time.

Trina can barely keep her eyes open as her thoughts about her mother’s advice blur and fade: Work with a smile on your face no matter what’s on your mind and no matter how bad you feel.

The alarm sounds at the bakery. Searchlights comb the compound. Guards begin their search of each dormitory. Before anything can be done, the door bursts open and torchlights illuminate faces. The guards sniff. The smell of fresh bread lingers in the air. The children rub their eyes and feign a slow posture of interrupted dreams. The guards check inside a few mouths. Nothing, not a shred of evidence, not even a crumb to be seen anywhere. Just the persistent smell. More guards arrive and sniff the air. They see Trina. They ask if she knows anything about this. Trina shakes her head. The guards tell the children that the whole dormitory is in big trouble. That it is obvious from the evidence in the air that stolen bread was in here not so long ago. That they will all be punished and shamed. That not even the twice-born Little Miss Trina can save them from this one. The children squirm and twist in their beds and look around at the ceiling or directly down in front of them. The guards continue to lambaste them: They should think about the shame they will bring down on the heads of their parents in front of the whole community. Such shame never goes away. If anything, it grows with each passing day. Trina inhales and seems about to speak up. Ryan sees her and jumps up on his bed and says he took the bread and he just finished it, just that second, and all the others were sound asleep. He opens his mouth wide. The guards surround him, shine a torch in his mouth, and sniff. They are convinced by the smell but cannot see any actual pieces of bread. Nothing in the teeth or the crevices of his mouth. No stray crumbs. This puzzles them. Bread crumbles in children’s hands. The guards confer. With Trina in the room, she cannot be involved in this transgression. They agree Ryan is the sole greedy culprit. They grab him and, ordering everyone to stay in bed, march him out of the dormitory.

M
orning arrives in patches of red light trembling on the trunks of trees. The night rolls back its giant black linoleum to reveal buildings, fences, meandering night watchmen, and the prone quest of wild boar, the odd jaguar, pigs in their pens, cows, sheep, chickens, and goats. Light sidles between leaves to end in broken-glass formations on the forest floor. Doors open and people stagger into the open, looking more asleep than awake. The tintinnabulation of aluminum buckets and iron pots and pans. Stoves cough up flames and coax pots to the boil. The children wash, big boys supervise the washing and dressing of younger boys, older girls instruct younger girls.

They head to the breakfast hall, long tables and aluminum plates and cups and steel spoons and the orchestra of children handling these implements without a conductor, warming up and then launching into their meager breakfast score, some tea and a piece of bread (sometimes buttered) for the children, occasionally a shallow bowl of cereal with watered-down milk. Before morning school there are chores like washing up, making beds, picking up rubbish, emptying bins and emergency night pots, sweeping floors, big girls combing the hair of younger girls, women and men overseeing the whole enterprise with a harsh word or two for any child who moves too slowly or with too much talk or too sloppily, or whose knees and elbows need to be oiled or whose face should be washed again to remove the sleep crusted in the corners of the eyes or whose mouth is white with toothpaste not washed away properly, and hurry, hurry for school, for canteen, for time is not to be wasted among the godly, since time is precious and in this blessed life there is never enough of it to waste even one second, so move.