In World City (4 page)

Finally the car drew to a halt in front of a derelict warehouse. The camera followed the two men and the boy towards a dark opening with a door hanging off. The boy showed some hesitation, but the two men on each side of him gripped his upper arms and pushed him on into the darkness. Inside, three men were waiting. Their faces were masked by stockings pulled over their heads. Cut-out eye and mouth holes rendered them identical and expressionless. The boy began to struggle but was held fast. The biggest of the masked men stepped forward, taking hold of the boy. One of the boy's captors was thus allowed the freedom to receive a wad of currency notes, which he counted carefully. Another masked man took the boy's other arm and the camera followed the two who had been in the car as their silhouettes were swallowed back into the brightness that shone through the door they had entered by.

The camera pulled back to encompass the three masked men and the boy. Then it moved in closer to fill the frame with the boy's face. His eyes were wide and he was shouting in high, querulous, staccato outbursts. The camera pulled back again to show the group heading for a steel-plated door. The one who had earlier handed over the money now keyed open the door, standing aside to allow the boy to be forced in. The camera cut to the inside to take in the door being slammed shut. Then it panned round the chamber they had entered. The only light was daylight filtering in through a grill in the roof, casting a harsh net of shadow over the space below. The camera moved down and circled the chamber. A heap of old tyres was tumbled into one corner. Otherwise there was nothing but filthy plaster walls and an uneven dirt floor. The three men left the boy to beat against the steel door while they took their clothes off. After that, the camera mostly focused on the boy's terror and pain. The other shots were anatomical with occasional pull-backs to take in the hysterically energised bodies of the three men as they repeatedly battered and penetrated the boy. His screams of terror were gradually drowned out by the screams of excitement coming from the men.

The last shot was of the boy's broken, blood-smeared body and sightless, staring eyes. Then the screen cut to some crude text that read, ‘Welcome to the wonderful world of knowledge. Spin the Wheel of Fortune again and you might get to see some political prisoners being electrocuted, or some child labourers being crushed to death, or some offcast women being gang raped. But if you're really lucky you might just find out what dinosaurs were doing a hundred million years ago.'

That was all – no signature, no provenance. The text vanished to leave a blank screen which Miranda continued to stare fixedly at until the one maid they kept full-time, came up to find out why her charge was late for her breakfast.

*

Shortly after, concerned by her sudden withdrawal from all activity or conversation, her father had someone that Miranda dubbed ‘Sweetie' flown in. Sweetie stayed a week, during the first part of which she kept trying to make Miranda play games with some dolls. Miranda rapidly realised the only way to clear the space she so desperately needed was to tell Sweetie precisely what she had seen. She was impressed by the look of sudden revelation that came over the woman's face. After that, Sweetie only appeared a few more times and then only to make sure Miranda had not been having any bad dreams, which she hadn't.

Miranda's father told her the children's educational net had been hit on the morning of her experience by a concerted attack from an anarchist organisation, which had yet to be traced. He said it was an extremely sophisticated attack designed to undermine the security children like her drew from what he called their materially privileged circumstances. He said there had been some children severely and perhaps permanently traumatised by the images they had been exposed to and showed Miranda a recording of a news programme in which the attack was discussed in detail. He told Miranda he was proud of her for having coped so well.

*

But Miranda wasn't sure she had coped, at least not yet. She would cope, she told herself. She was determined to, and it was this determination that was keeping her from the tears, the screams, the nightmares and the bedwetting that had been the fate of so many others. Miranda was acutely aware it could still go that way for her, acutely aware that in her withdrawal and fixity of thought she was holding herself back from an edge. Over that edge was the void of nothingness that had been revealed in the boy's sightless, staring eyes. From the moment she had been exposed to the image, she had been determined not to go over the edge those eyes had brought her to.

Accordingly, it had been an extreme of concentration not horror in which the maid had found Miranda locked that morning. Having taken in to the full the void in the boy's eyes, Miranda had fixed her entire attention on the one thing she knew would keep her from going over the edge. She had conjured up the counter-image of her father reaching out to his screen to change the world. That boy in the filthy concrete chamber had been linked to no screen. There had been nothing to prevent his life concluding in the nothingness of his staring eyes. Miranda would never submit to such nothingness. She would reach out into the screens that surrounded her and make some fine but powerful and far-reaching adjustment so no such thing would ever happen to her.

*

Her determination held Miranda intact just long enough for her to recognise that not only were the screens beyond her power to influence, but it was also from the screens the attack had come. The screens were a power that was still beyond her and they were dangerous. She had to find some other way of sustaining herself. So, instead of turning away from the moonlit jungle night to seek the compromised assurances of her screens, Miranda began to make a point of turning, at every opportunity, to confront the darkness outside. By concentrating on the scene as abstract, moonlit shapes, she could will them to dematerialise, to become no more than symbols like the lines on her father's screen; tractable, pretty, ready to move at her bidding. And though she did not succeed in actually reaching out with her mind to rearrange the jigsaw-puzzle pieces before her, the intensity of her effort and her fixity of purpose did ensure Miranda remained isolated from the full impact of what she had seen. Her father commented again, several times, on how well she had coped and Miranda began to believe him. She had stayed in control and that was what mattered.

Her memories scabbed over.

Dion's father said, “Part of the deal is that I get work in Europe and full moving expenses for the family.”

Dion's grandmother said, “For the family, eh? That include me?”

Dion stopped outside the window he had been passing by and continued to listen.

“You don't want to come with us,” his father said.

“Like fockin' hell I don't. I go with you, son, and I dead the day I leave. You know that. That what you want?”

“I can set you up here with a house and enough to keep you going, if that's what you want.”

“What's what I want got to do with anything? You want to make yourself some money, and you don't want me costing you nothin'.”

“Listen, I don't mind you costing me something. God knows, you've never cost me much.”

“Cost you much? Ha – cost you your fockin' dignity is what you tell those money boys you keep company with down in Roseau. I know what they say. They say why don't you turn her out, that nasty old witch of a mother of yours? And you say it because your daddy's will got you tied up looking after me. You say you got to do what it tell you if you goin' to keep control of the land around here. And I say the old white shit should have left it all to me. So why can't I stay here? Your father bought this place for you and me to stay in. You want to go? Okay, and I want to stay, and I want to stay here in my house.”

“You can't stay in this house. What you say about the will doesn't hold anymore. There were irregularities and Whitlam's lawyers got the land tenure invalidated. So there's nothing now to hold me to you. It's his company owns the land now. There's going to be a golf course here.”

“Hah – might have known that arse of a father of yours messed up. Always talking big he was. Same as you. So maybe you buy me a fockin' golf hole to live in.”

*

Into the house where Dion was born, light and air poured each morning, filling the day with a rich, warm core like cream or caramel. Then, at evening, there was a softer light, diffusing through the rooms, lighting the faded paint of the walls with a warm glow, picking out dust motes drifting in the old, familiar spaces. Their home – a small, stone-built plantation house, around which, over the decades and centuries, had grown a minor settlement of weatherboard chalets and bungalows. An occasional pig would wander up the unsurfaced track that ran between the brightly painted houses, casually defecating, rooting around an overturned rubbish bin. The scents of the place – bougainvillea in the midday heat, pigshit, the wooden veranda freshly painted and the hot, salt Caribbean wind blowing in through the open windows. In the morning, he would wake to a view across lanes and fields to the sea and the clear horizon. From the front porch he could look up to the tall, swaying trees with their bare trunks and topknot of broad leaves, and beyond to Morne Diablotin and the clouds piled high by the North-east Trades. School was only up the road – if he chose to put in an appearance. And there was a beach within walking distance where in the late afternoon he could watch some older boys practice careless, fluid gymnastics. He would try some of the moves himself when they felt like showing him.

Dion's parents talked incessantly about going to Europe. They seemed to think he would be as excited as they were. Dion's grandmother went on taking him for walks as if nothing was happening. He waited for her to talk about the imminent change in their lives, but she held her silence. When he could stand the gap in her opinions no longer, he asked her outright what she thought about it all.

Her old eyes were so expressionless he might have been talking to someone else. She looked around as if she had lost or forgotten something. Then she pulled out her clay pipe and prepared a smoke, lighting up and puffing on the peculiar smelling mixture with unusual force. Eventually she said, “What you know about World City, Dion?”

He'd never heard of the place.

She grinned wickedly and said, “Okay, I know you don't know nothin'. Nobody around here know World City except maybe as some fancy words that smart peoples on the cable use when they want to be clever. But nobody really
know
the place. They don't know the place no more than a fish know where the sea is. I know the place because I live outside of it. Maybe you get to know it too, young Dion. You got some sight so maybe you get to see round its corners like your grandma can.”

She took a deep draw on her pipe. “So, you ask me, what's World City?”

Another puff, then, “I'll tell you what's World City, Dion. What I'm talkin' about is the made world. The made world. Seen in thought and made in stone. You know the made world? Made like everything joined together, like on a map. That different from what I show you, Dion. There no map for what I show you. What I show you changes with the light, changes with what side of the bed you get out of in the morning. But not World City. No change like that there. World City – seen in thought and made in stone it is. Seen in thought and made in stone, so the thought be there forever and ever. And that stone, Dion, shiny as hell – pretty as hell. Just like those thoughts that make it. You see them every day, those thoughts. You see pictures of them. Big pictures. Rich-livin' pictures. Pictures of World City. And the good World Citizens, they want to be in those pictures. They want to look like one day they go driving along that beach in that fine car looking like they goin' to live forever, and looking like they come in through the front door and find this happy family smilin' to meet them, and like those peoples who walk on red carpets and have others open doors for them. I tell you, Dion, that real sorcery. And powerful as hell. In a trance they are. A trance, I tell you. Because they only get to see the picture. They don't get to
feel
what it like – you know? They don't get to feel what it like to have been and done all the things you got to be and do to ride that car down the beach, looking like that driver, like you goin' to live forever. All the little shit you got to drop. All the big shit you got to take on. All the power you got to get. All the parents you got to have. That the trick I tell you. That the sorcery. Put ‘em in a trance so they work for what things look like, so they work for appearances is all, an' appearances is all they make. They work to make the made world, they do.”

She took another deep draw on her pipe, “You know all this, yes? Sure you think you know all this. Every smart-ass college kid who don't have to fockin' work for his living think he know all this. I tell you he don't know nothin'. Where he get his food from, eh? Where he get the freedom to think he know all this? And every smart-ass street kid who look at the peoples who's the cogs and wheels of World City and thinks, not me man – he just the same. He think, not me man, and then he go and score some shit which he sell on, and what he do? – Eh? – What he do? All he do is go buy himself some World City trash like he seen in that shopping mall he broke into one time. Bewitched is what they is and you know something, young Dion? – You know something? – Your gran'ma who thought she knew the name of every fockin' devil there is, she don't know the name of the fockin' devil that doing all this. She ask of the devils she know, and when she ask, she expect an answer. And most time she get an answer. Like why the bananas don't grow so well this year, or why Philippe's goat sick, or why Patrice don't love his old lady. All that stuff, I get answers for. But when I ask why young Anthony down at Massacre take one look at some shiny thing he see on the cable and go to Miami to get his balls shot off because he trying to do some too tight deal that he think'll get him that shiny thing, that I get no answer for. What devil got a hold on people's heart so they want World City? Eh? What devil is it that got peoples so tangled up in the made world? I don't even know what he want, this devil. All I see is what him doing. And what him doing? Joining peoples up so they all talk the same. Making up made things so they all want the same. Making up pictures so they all look the same. And all I see is things. Made things. What this devil that he want everyone in the world all tangled up in things?” A pause and a chuckle then, “Maybe this devil a thing. Maybe he big an' shiny. Big ‘n big. And maybe this devil he just like to be making things. He like making things like he got the whole world making things, every soul in World City a little devil, makin' ‘n makin', just like the big devil, just like in his image. Heh, maybe this devil, he what them priests call God.”

She took a deep pull on her pipe then muttered with all the sourness she could muster, which was considerable, “Anyway, he won't rest till every fockin' banana's got a label on it. Your daddy crazy wantin' to take you to World City.”

*

After that, she went back to taking him on walks as if nothing was happening. Dion followed, still learning. His father was away a lot, ‘On important business,' his mother said. Then, one evening, Dion's father came in and announced, “Whitlam's sure he can pull it off. He's got the top people coming here to ask him to back off. Coming here – can you believe it? Whitlam'll get everything he wants. He must do, else they wouldn't be coming. He's paid me up front for the move to Europe. He says we need to start packing now.”

Over the next few days, Dion watched as his family's possessions disappeared into boxes and were taken away in vans. And he watched as his grandmother continued about her daily round as if nothing was happening at all. And he listened as his father, finally losing his temper with her, shouted out, “Stay here if you like, but don't expect me to find you another place to stay. Don't think that when work starts here, one old woman hanging on to the door handle is going to get in the way. I've got agents in place who'll throw you out without so much as a by-your-leave when I'm gone. You know that once I'm gone, you'll be just a squatter.”

Dion began to feel anxious for her. “What are you going to do, Grandma?” he asked. “You're not just going to sit here and get thrown out like he said, are you?”

They were walking a familiar track around the base of Morne Diablotin, his grandmother completely silent. At his question, she stopped walking, paused, then faced him, first confirming she had his attention, then speaking clearly and firmly. She said, “Listen, Dion, and you listen hard. Because you not going to hear me say this again.” She paused to give weight to her command, then, “You go from one day to the next and you think this world goin' to carry you along just the way it always done. Might be some good days, might be some bad days, but most days is going to be much like the day before. But after you start listening to an old witch like me, young Dion, you can't be so sure no more. After you start listening to me, something might happen. You just might find yourself stepping into a different world.

“Now you don't know when you goin' to step into a different world. No way you got of knowing that. Could be you find yourself in a different world when you stepping out the lavatory first thing. Could be when you pick up the phone. Could be anytime. Now listen. What ordinary peoples do when they step into a different world is get excited. They go running around shouting about how they just stepped into a different world. They shout about how great it is, or they shout about how bad it is. Stuff like that. But that way they miss everything and they don't function proper. Suppose you stepped out the front door one morning and started mouthing on about the dirt and the paving and the street and the dog shit, all that, when what you need is to be seeing where the street's going to be taking you that day. That's what you need to do when you step into a different world – deal with it, like you deal with every new moment that livin' puts you through. You got that? Good. Now, shut your eyes and count to ten.”

Dion had learned not to ask her for reasons. He shut his eyes and after ten he opened them again. He looked around for his grandmother. There was no sign of her.

Dion stood very still. He knew without the slightest doubt he would never see her again. He had a momentary image of himself running up and down, shouting wildly for her. But he stayed very still and thought about what she had said.

There was no doubt about it; he was in a different world. It was a world without his grandmother. He thought some more about what she had said. She'd said he needed to see where the track he was on was taking him that day. He was on a track, the same one he had gone stumbling along looking for the place where he would live forever. ‘Maybe I help you find that place,' his grandmother had once said. She was gone now, so he would have to find it himself. He set off along the track.

*

When he had first headed out into the wilderness of jungle that clothed the mountain, Dion had been looking for the place he had seen when his grandmother had killed the cock up on the Cabrits: Dion's Place, where he was absolutely himself and would live forever. There had been a picture of the place in his mind and he'd been looking for places that looked like that picture. And obviously the more places he could get to see the more chance he would have of finding his place. So he had rushed around, exhausted himself and found nothing.

But now Dion simply continued along the track, thinking about where he wanted to be, but lightly, so lightly he hardly noticed the picture fade to just one more memory shadowing the back of his mind. What mattered were the impressions: the leaves and rocks around him, the changing scents of the different trees and plants that he moved past, the shifts in the air in the close, hot undergrowth. He continued like this, purposeless, for some miles. Then into the purposelessness he let build an awareness of having decided he was simply going to find his place. Not day nor night, nor sleep, nor hunger, nor any thought of returning home, was going to distract him. He was going to find his place. That was all.

Abruptly, he turned off the track into dense jungle, heading down the slope of the mountainside. He moved quickly but carefully through the thick undergrowth. A voice in his head was telling him there was no way he would find his place by taking this route. He should be going up the mountain. His place had been high up; there had been open rocks and running water. There was nothing like that where he was headed now.