The Wall (14 page)

‘But they’d already noticed me. They were chasing me.’

‘That’s your problem. Now go. I don’t want to see you here again. And we don’t need your food. We’re not hungry.’

‘But –’

‘We don’t want your charity.’

‘It’s not charity. Your daughter helped me.’

‘Take it away.’

‘I can’t. It’s too heavy.’

‘You shouldn’t have brought it.’

‘I wanted to help.’

‘Did you ask him for food?’ he says, looming over the girl.

‘No! I just . . . I thought he might have something in his pockets. Some sweets.’

He turns back to me.

‘Why did you do this?’

‘She helped me. I wanted to help her.’

‘If you get caught here, it’s no help. No help at all. It’s very dangerous for all of us.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘If you are hurt, by those boys or anyone else, it’s a big problem for the whole town.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Just go. And be careful.’

A few moments ago I would have settled for this. All I wanted was to get out of this house unharmed. But now I can’t move. I can’t walk back out there. Not yet. I need to gather my strength, have a think, plan my route to the tunnel. The thread that was supposed to lead me to the high street has snapped. I don’t know my way home.

I look across at the girl for support, but her eyes are cast down to the floor, her cheeks flushed with what looks like either anger or shame.

‘No one knows you’re here?’ says the man.

I shake my head.

‘What if something happens to you?’

I shrug.

‘What would your father say if he knew what you’ve done?’ he barks.

‘He’d be proud. And I don’t have a father.’

The man’s eyebrows pucker together, pinched by a flicker of confusion.

‘You don’t have a father but he’d be proud?’

I look up and hold his gaze. ‘Yes. He’s dead. He was killed.’

I don’t let my stare waver, and for a while we seem to be caught in some kind of contest, then he blinks and looks across at his daughter. Walking in perfect silence on her bare feet, the girl hurries out of the hallway, returning a few moments later with a glass of water, which she hands to me without speaking. I down it in one gulp.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I’ll go.’

I turn to leave, but a hand on my shoulder stops me. It’s the father. The skin on his fingers is tough and ridged, like bark. ‘How will you get back?’ he says. ‘Through the checkpoint?’

‘No. I can’t.’

‘You people can get through. It’s us that can’t.’

‘Not on foot. Not from this side, just me, on my own. They’d ask me a thousand questions and they’d contact my home, and they’d want to know how I got here, and if my stepfather finds out that I crossed The Wall, he’ll . . . he just can’t know.’

‘Why?’

‘He’d go crazy.’

‘So how are you going to get home?’ he says.

‘Through the tunnel.’

‘Go, then. Go. And watch out. If those boys are near the tunnel, don’t let them see you.’

‘OK.’

‘And thank you. For the food. You are brave.’ He reaches out to shake my hand. As we shake, he says, ‘But brave is the best friend of stupid, and you are also stupid.’

I nod, my lips curling into a reluctant smile as I step towards the door. Before I can leave, the girl lunges forwards and blocks my path. She begins to speak in her own language, furiously gesturing at me, at her mother, at the food, at the scarf, addressing the whole fountain of words to her father, who listens with his head bowed, at first not catching her eye.

Eventually he looks up, reeled in by her fervour, and quietens her with a raised hand, like a man trying to stop an oncoming car. ‘OK, OK, OK,’ he says, turning towards me. ‘I’ll take you back to the tunnel. She doesn’t want you to get hurt.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. I know I ought to tell him it isn’t necessary, but the idea of going back out there on my own fills me with dread. Without help, I might not find my way home.

‘But I want something in return,’ he says, turning and scrawling on a scrap of paper.

His son watches him closely. I can feel the girl’s eyes on me. I turn my head and sneak her a nervous smile. She casts her eyes down to the floor, but I can see she’s smiling, too.

‘You shouldn’t have come back,’ she says, her voice so quiet I can barely hear it.

‘I had to,’ I say. ‘You saved me.’

She shrugs. The desire to reach out and touch her soft, serious face is so strong, it seems for a moment as if I won’t be able to resist, but I still haven’t moved when the father turns round and hands me a piece of paper.

He’s drawn a basic map of the area, with The Wall a thick black line down the centre, and just two streets sketchily drawn on my side. It’s only the three hills which encircle the town, all clearly marked and correctly oriented, that make it obvious what the map is supposed to represent. There’s a single dark cross outside Amarias, on my side of The Wall, etched so hard in ink it has dented the paper and made a tiny tear.

He points at the X. ‘You know where that is?’

‘I don’t know the place, but I can understand where it is.’

‘I want you to go there, once a week.’

‘Once a week?’

‘It’s my olive grove. It was my father’s and his father’s, and I’m looking after it for my sons, but since The Wall was built I can’t get there. I have a pass for the first Friday of each month, but no more. Just one visit a month, and sometimes even with a pass they still don’t let me through. The olives are OK, but there are three terraces of lemons, and half the trees have died. At this time of year, they need water. I want you to go every week. There’s a pool in the corner, which fills from a spring. There’s a bucket. I want you to do every tree with one bucket. I want you to check the spring is filling the pool. Can you do that?’

‘I think so.’

‘You will?’

‘Yes.’

‘You promise? Promise and I will take you to the tunnel, safe.’

‘I promise.’

‘What is your address?’

‘Why do you want my address? I’ve promised.’

‘This is a separate thing. You make this promise, you are my friend, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you are my friend, I should have your address and your name.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we are friends.’

‘But why?’

‘You don’t trust me? If you don’t trust me, why should I trust you? Why should I believe your promise?’

‘But why do you need my address?’

‘Because you never know what will happen. On this side of The Wall, anything can happen. The worst thing you can think of, something you can hardly imagine, suddenly it can happen.’

‘What does that have to do with my address?’

‘Because one friend on the other side of The Wall can help.’

‘How?’

‘Because you are free. You can get things when you need them. You can go where you want to go. No one blocks your streets or closes your shops or comes to get you in the night.’

He hands me his pen and a fresh piece of paper. I press it against a corner of the food-laden table. My hand trembles over the white sheet. I’m not sure what to do. I have no idea why he wants my address, and what he intends to do with it. I know I could make one up, but I sense that he might know, and that it’s unwise to risk angering him again. I still need his help to find the tunnel.

The girl’s voice rises up through the thick silence. ‘We won’t hurt you,’ she says. ‘I promise. Just one day we might need help from the other side. If we are attacked.’

‘Attacked?’

‘Yes.’

‘By who?’

The four of them exchange a look, as if I’ve said something stupid. No one speaks or looks at me, and in their silence, I understand. None of them wants to say it, but two words are hovering unspoken in the air:
by you
.

‘There’s something coming,’ says the man. ‘It’s like a thunderstorm. Before it arrives, you can feel it in the air.’

I press the pen on to the paper and write my name and address in capital letters. The father takes it out of my hands, holds it long-sightedly at arm’s length while he reads it, then folds the paper twice and places it in a drawer.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘Now we’ll go.’

I want to say something more to the girl, I want at least to touch her hand, but no words come, and I find myself walking towards the door, away from her, looking backwards as I go.

‘What’s your name?’ I stutter.

‘Leila.’

‘Leila,’ I reply, testing out the two syllables in my mouth, my tongue nudging twice against the crest of my palate. ‘I’m Joshua.’

‘Choshua,’ she says, with the smallest of smiles. ‘Choshua.’

‘Yes, Choshua.’

On the street
, Leila’s father moves quickly, faster than I can walk.

‘Don’t run,’ he snaps, when I speed up to avoid falling behind.

‘You’re too fast.’

He slows a little. ‘And don’t speak. Not this language.’

I nod, and the man leads me onwards, a complicated, winding route through back roads that I don’t recognise, until we emerge on the main street, opposite the flying cake bakery.

‘This is –’

He cuts me off with a hand shoved against my chest and a sharp ‘shh’.

I want to tell him he doesn’t need to take me any further, but he’s already accelerating into the alley, so fast I can no longer stay next to him without running.

We’re halfway to the bins when I hear a raucous, scooping whistle above us. I look up and see a face in a window overlooking the alleyway. It’s the boy who gave me that regretful shake of the head as he blocked the tunnel entrance, the first time I crossed over. He’s waving his arms at someone behind me.

I turn and see a boy standing in a diagonal shaft of dusty sunlight between the alley and the bakery. It’s one of the gang who chased me. He waves up at the face in the window and lets out a shout, whether at me, or the person in the apartment, or someone else, I have no idea. I break into a run, sprinting for the tunnel, overtaking Leila’s father. He, too, is running now, but from here, if he doesn’t go down the tunnel, he has no escape. His only other option would be to climb over the chain-link fence, but judging by the stiff, slow way he runs, and the speed of the boys, he doesn’t stand a chance.

Almost immediately, I hear several sets of footsteps following us down the alleyway, and more angry shouts. I turn back as I squeeze between the bins and see that Leila’s father has been pushed to the ground. The first boy down the alley, who now has three others following behind, kicks him in the stomach with vicious force. The sound of it, like a heavy sack dropping on to concrete, echoes down the alley towards me.

He pulls his leg back for another kick, then lifts his head and looks at me. For an instant he freezes, his eyes locked on mine. ‘
Run! Run!,
’ I think, but I’m not running. I’m just standing there, staring at this felled man, Leila’s father, this person who only minutes ago announced himself as my friend, but is now spluttering and choking, writhing on the dusty ground.

The boy abandons his half-finished kick and sets off at speed towards me. Now the message gets through to my legs. I sprint towards the tunnel and shove the hatch aside. If I jump in, rather than using the rope, I’ll gain an extra few seconds. I crouch and look back down the alley one last time.

I can only see feet now, under the bins: two sets running towards me, several more landing kick after kick on the body and head of Leila’s father. He’s curled into a ball to protect himself. It seems unforgivable to leave him there, when he’s in the alleyway to help me escape, when the whole situation is my fault, but I know I’m powerless to help, and that to turn back would be suicide.

I twist and jump into the darkness. The ground arrives sooner than I’m expecting and whacks against my feet. Something in my ankle wrenches out of place with a hot little internal twang, like a tiny bubble of boiling liquid bursting deep inside the joint.

Pain shoots up my leg in darts that feel intense, but also strangely abstract and far away, as if the wiring of my body somehow knows it has to prioritise my escape. There’s no time to worry about a mere ankle. I begin to crawl, not using my knees, but squatting like a dog, touching the ground only with my hands and feet. It’s the closest I can get to running. I’m some way down the tunnel, and already in pitch darkness, when I remember that the torch is still in my bag, stashed behind me near the entrance.

I stop crawling. I know it would be insane to go back, but for an instant I feel I simply can’t go through the tunnel again without a light. Then I hear a voice, close and echoey. Someone is down in the tunnel with me. No – two voices: a conversation, accompanied by the sound of shuffling against the soil. They’ve followed me into the tunnel. I haven’t got away.

I lurch into motion, resuming my dog-like sprint. I can see nothing, not even my hands pushing and scrabbling at the soil, sending me hurtling onwards into the pitch blackness. My lungs heave the thick, mushroomy air in heavy rasps, driving me onwards with all my might; but despite those two voices echoing through the space, one second seeming far behind, the next right on my heel, despite delving into myself for every last drop of energy, I soon begin to sense that my pace is slowing.