Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

The evening became artificial, dreamlike, and I behaved automatically, passing containers first one way then another. But something tore at me. The beams of the market hall were slowly being weakened but everywhere people worked in a frenzy, without heed to each other’s efforts, and I thought dimly that when the roof came down, who could tell which way it might fall? Who could be certain which beam would give first? And my father stood almost at the very centre of the hall.

When it happened, the night, already shattered by noise, was rent again by the sound of iron sheets tearing from their anchorage. I turned to watch, mesmerised, as the iron roof collapsed in a shower of sparks and a surge of sudden heat. I watched the men scurry out from under it like lice, heads down and backs bent, their shapes as indistinct as spectres in the rush of smoke and dust, and then, as it settled, I saw Jonah. He turned to look behind him and when I saw him start back towards the pile of twisted wood and metal that had been the market hall, I knew in an instant that my father was under it still.

Much of the rest of the night was lost to me, fragmented and hazy. Later, I remembered running, and Dub and then Earl pulling me to the ground. I remembered Dub holding me to his chest, forcing my eyes away from the scene. I remembered also that, after all, the fire did not reach far into Greenhills, for soon after the market roof fell in it started to rain, hesitantly at first and then boldly, the drops heavy, unrepentant.

I remembered the sight of Subong tearing at Jonah’s shirt as he cried, ‘I saw it, I saw who did it,’ his face raw with fear, with disbelief. And I remembered, days later, when the confusion of images and sensations had settled to a dull, steady ache, the absence of the fire-department trucks and the smell in the air as we’d ridden up the coast road and seen the first flames licking the jetty: kerosene. And finally, I remembered how the last time I’d seen my father I’d left without shaking his hand.

My father’s vigil was held in his apartment and, like my mother, he rested on the dining table for want of room. More people came to pay their respects than could be accommodated and the visitors spilled out into the hallway and, after a while, down the stairwell into the courtyard. Elisa, on her mother’s orders, left the door to their apartment open and pulled her mother’s chairs out into the hallway one by one to line up by our front door. People milled back and forth, the children left to sleep in Bina and Elisa’s room, while the adults filed through to touch the coffin. The coffin was closed and without the proof of my own eyes, it was hard to believe he really lay in it. When the chanting began, the sound echoed through the passages, drawing out the building’s remaining inhabitants. I felt penetrated by it, unable to escape it.

My sister and brother came, of course, though I hadn’t called them; I wouldn’t have known how to reach them, not having foreseen a time when I’d need to keep such information. Instead, Aunt Bina called Luisa from the telephone in the general store downstairs and asked her to track down Miguel. Perhaps it was Bina that Luisa had expected to see first, for when Lorna opened the door to her my sister greeted her angrily.

Luisa came with two children again, another two I hadn’t met before: her third and fourth. The two who’d come to our mother’s vigil had been left at home. She looked sourly at me as I struggled to name them. I repeated the names after her aloud, as if committing them to memory, my manner exaggerated slightly for her benefit, but minutes later I’d forgotten again. At that moment I didn’t really care; I knew I wouldn’t see them again for a long time and, when I did, would barely recognise them and they would not recognise me at all. Luisa had changed, become quite stout, her features coarse. She was in her twenties still, yet little girlishness remained in her face or her gestures. She looked tired from the journey but wore another kind of tiredness too; the kind that is not merely physical, and that often masks disappointment. I’d seen her only once or twice since our mother’s funeral, though she’d written to my father in between with news of the children.

My brother, Miguel, had returned twice after my mother died, staying fewer days than he’d intended both times. My father had been quiet and angry for days after each visit. Miguel had talked both times about going to work overseas and now finally he’d come with the news that he was leaving for the Middle East at the end of the month. He was thinner, the skin of his face and arms dry and dark. His forearms were marked with fine scars and his palms were rough and red. His hair, still thick, was shot with grey in places, though the effect was still of youth. When I saw him, I thought of the jetty boys; he wouldn’t have been out of place among them.

When he greeted me, my brother smiled and embraced me, swaying gently. On his breath was the faint, sweet smell of liquor consumed the night before. He wasn’t drunk, but he too looked tired. He’d come a long way, arriving that morning having travelled all night. He spoke briefly to Jonah and Bina and some of the others that he recognised, but then slept for an hour beside the children — our sister’s and the baby Marisol — in Bina’s apartment.

Aunt Bina greeted visitors at the door for most of the morning and into the afternoon until Missy arrived and took over the same duties. Elisa said very little to me but watched me from time to time. She sat staunchly next to Lorna. Lorna rocked back and forth where she sat, clutching Marisol so tightly to her that I wondered the baby didn’t suffocate. She wore her grief and her fear openly. By comparison I must have seemed cold, but the truth was I was still numb. My father’s death made no sense. I pictured him at the rally, at the jetty with Jonah. I still expected him to arrive home, as I had my mother seven years before.

So many people came. Some I didn’t recognise at all. The mode of my father’s death had elevated him to the status of a hero and it seemed as if everyone in Greenhills wanted to demonstrate some connection with him. I was pointed out over and over again. ‘That is his son.’

Jonah and the jetty boys came. Without my father, without Subong in his orbit, for he too was absent, they seemed somehow incoherent. I wondered if they felt it too. Dil was among them but I didn’t look at him even when he offered a greeting, pretending to be lost in my own thoughts. ‘Subong?’ I asked Jonah, but without reproach in my voice; Subong had looked up to my father and today would have been hard for him to bear.

‘Never showed up the day after,’ Jonah said. ‘I sent Dil to his mother’s, but he’s not been home.’ I stabbed a look at Dil. He was watching me and lifted his chin, raised his eyebrows, his eyes without challenge, as if inviting a friendly remark.

‘I heard him say he saw who started the fire,’ I said loudly.

‘I heard it too,’ Jonah said.

‘No doubt it was deliberate,’ Uncle Bee said from the door. He’d brought Missy, Suelita and Fidel with him. Suelita clung to her mother’s arm.

‘Maybe he’s been taken as a sacrifice for Eddie Casama’s building project,’ someone said, and there was a murmur of alarm.

‘Don’t talk such rubbish at a man’s funeral,’ Jonah snapped.

‘It happens though,’ a woman said.

‘In komik books,’ someone else said.

‘People like us are disposable. They think of us in the same way as pigs or chickens and you wouldn’t have a problem with sacrificing a pig or a chicken,’ the woman continued.

I didn’t want to listen to this, though at another time, about another person, I might have indulged like everyone else in the same kind of macabre speculation.