These Are the Names (10 page)

Moneychangers, ex-convicts who were recognisable by the way they squatted with their backs to a wall — years of their lives had been spent like that in prison yards — moved between the stacked shipping containers. You smelled soap and bread, caustic cleansers, and broiled meat, you walked a few hundred yards down a street full of brightly coloured plastic toys, and then suddenly found yourself in the audio lane, between towers of cassette tapes, bootlegged
CD
s, and sound systems. Men used corn brooms to sweep the streets, bawled at by merchants who tossed blankets over their wares to keep off the dust.

Everyone longed for wealth, the natural end of all cares. The people hungered after money, earned with a few swift transactions. They built homes with the mortar of their fantasies, houses that said, ‘Look, a rich man lives here', wondrous constructions in every style of the world — the domes of Samarkand perched atop Ionian pillars, the fountains of Damascus burbling in the courtyards. Every day all those thousands of little hustlers came to the bazaar, waiting for the miracle.

Whenever he walked around the grounds, Pontus Beg would think about his father, about the man's impotent disdain for commerce. Commerce, that wasn't labour, he'd felt; that was making money off labour. The froth of trade was richer than the fat of labour — that was the bitter lesson his father had taught him. Commerce had been a forbidden city to old Beg, one he knew only from its periphery — whenever he sold milk and meat to the cooperative, whenever a truck came to pick up the grain. He never found out precisely how the price of milk, meat, and grain was established; all he knew for sure was that others earned more from it than he did.

For Beg, too, who visited the bazaar almost every week, the trading life remained a web of mysteries. How could someone who had bought a shipment of Chinese cuckoo clocks yesterday know that he could sell them for twice the price twenty miles down the road? Why wasn't the price of cuckoo clocks the same there as it was here? How did they know over there that here, today, there would be a demand for cuckoo clocks?

Those who made a killing on the bazaar disappeared from sight. They lived in big houses behind tall fences, their interests seen to by go-betweens.

In the early days of the bazaar, one such man had become breathtakingly rich, but remained true to the market nonetheless: ataman Chiop. He was the richest of them all. Pontus Beg was going to see him now. Ataman Chiop: 350 pounds dripping wet, and strong as an ox. People said he'd once mounted a sturdy horse and broken its back.

The law had a mobile police station on the grounds, but no arm reached as far as ataman Chiop's. No shylock changed zlotys for euros and grivnas for rubles without his knowledge; no article changed hands without him earning a few cents on it. In each of the thousands of transactions a day, one cent would disappear into the merchant's pocket, and one into ataman Chiop's. Taken together, all those cents added up to a mountain, and atop that mountain sat the ataman. From the summit, he kept an eagle eye on the bazaar with its myriad corridors, where everyone longed to be as rich as him.

‘Well, if it isn't Pontus!' the ataman said when Beg entered his office, a café at the edge of the bazaar. ‘Come, Pontus, sit down, take a seat. Vladimir, bring a glass for my guest.'

Beg slid onto the seat across from him.

Rumor had it that a secret tunnel ran from the café to a shed somewhere far from the market, and that a getaway car kept its motor running there, but Beg didn't believe it. The ataman was too big for tunnels — he would become wedged like a cork in a bottle.

‘Cheers, Pontus!'

They raised their glasses and knocked them back. The ataman, Beg had noticed before, liked to call him by his first name. He had done that right from the outset, as though they were old friends. Beg could no longer ask him to stop; it was too late for that now. He addressed the other man as ‘ataman', which immediately established the pecking order. The one was his first name; the other, his position in the hierarchy.

They ate pickles and salted meat along with the vodka. If you didn't know better, you would have seen two friends running through the day's news.

Beg looked at the ataman's forehead, and the bristly grey hair above it. No one could have told you the colour of his eyes, tucked away as they were between folds of fat.

‘I stopped a truck yesterday,' Beg said.

The ataman's phone rang. He glanced at the screen and said: ‘Just a moment, Pontus.'

Beg laid his hands on the table and waited.

‘Round it off to thirty,' the ataman said. ‘I'll accept that.'

Silence.

‘Thirty, tops,' the ataman said. ‘But start at twenty.'

He snapped the phone shut and put it back in the holster on his belt.

‘What was it you wanted to say to me, Pontus?'

‘Last night I stopped a truck,' Beg said.

‘Good,' said the ataman. ‘Why?'

‘And this morning the truck was empty.'

The ataman raised his face to the ceiling, and then lowered it again. He sighed deeply. ‘It's terrible, the way people steal these days. Thieves everywhere, absolutely everywhere. People have grown too lazy to work for it.'

The best thing to do now was to say nothing, Beg knew. He simply looked at the man across from him and marvelled at how a head could grow like that — a giant pumpkin forgotten at the edge of a field. Pity the poor mother who'd had to give birth to him, though it was hard to imagine this man being born of a woman.

‘What do you want me to do about it, Pontus? I'll keep an eye out for the thieves, I'll do that. That goes without saying.'

His phone rang again. He answered, listened for a bit, and then said only: ‘I can't talk right now. Call me later this afternoon.' He hung up.

Beg helped himself to a pickle, looked at it for a moment, then stuck it in his mouth.

‘Where were we, Pontus?' the ataman asked.

While chewing, Beg said: ‘Life's expensive these days. Everyone wants to be able to give his sweetheart a present every now and then, or go to the seashore for a vacation. When you do that, you want to feel money in your pocket — real money, not plastic. Plastic isn't money. Tell me, do you think the ataman has a credit card? Don't make me laugh. The ataman trusts only real money; he's a wise man. He doesn't trust the banks — the banks work with people, they have power failures, people looking over your shoulder. One day they might say: “Dear ataman, we don't like the look of this: the fiscal authorities want us to freeze your account until the investigation is over.” Then you're stuck.'

The ataman shook his head. ‘Pontus, what kind of person do you think I am? I'm in the import-export business. Times are tough. The business is flat on its arse.'

‘You mind if I take the last pickle?'

‘Go ahead.'

It crunched nicely between his teeth. ‘We all have to make a living,' Beg said pensively. ‘The ataman is right about that. That's easier for some of us than it is for others. Some people see a penny from a mile away; others wouldn't see it if they tripped over it. The ataman sees pennies everywhere. The pennies come to him almost by themselves. He's a penny-magnet; you can hear him jingle when he walks.'

The ataman slammed the tabletop with the palms of his hands. The shot glasses bounced from the shock. ‘Pontus! Pontus! Stop! Where do you get this from? I tell you, I've hit a rough patch. I can't help you!'

Beg tipped the contents of the second glass into his mouth, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘That truck …' he said.

‘Was almost empty,' the ataman said, raising his voice. ‘Packaging material. A couple of pallets of laundry detergent. It wasn't worth the effort. You want detergent? For the white stuff? For coloureds? It's all yours.'

‘White goods and electronics,' Beg said. ‘According to the waybills.'

‘A little bit, almost nothing. Not worth the trouble.'

But Beg knew that in the next few days the bazaar would be flooded with washing machines, blow-dryers, and
CD
players. Miele, Braun, Sony; brand stuff, no junk. The ataman didn't want people asking about where it came from, any more than about the firearms and hard drugs you could get here without much trouble.

Beg shook his head slowly. ‘There was a present left along the road; someone came and unpacked it. It would be unpleasant if we had to take it back.'

The ataman snorted and sputtered, then turned his head towards the bar and shouted: ‘Vladimir!'

Vladimir came to the table. At a nod from his boss, he produced an envelope from his inside pocket.

‘Pontus,' the ataman said, ‘you're taking me to the cleaners again. Here, buy something pretty for your girl.'

Beg put the envelope away and stood up. He said: ‘You know, I just might take her to the seashore.'

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In search of fortune

There were thirteen of them. Whispered assignations had brought them to the warehouse. The afternoon was hot and muggy. What they wanted most was to be invisible; even their shadows were a nuisance to them.

They were brought together in a little office high up at the back of the warehouse. Men came in now and then, handing out bottles of water and rolls of biscuits. They would have to make do with that, but for no longer than twenty-four hours. Each of them was allowed to take along one bag of possessions. A woman wept; she had had to leave behind a suitcase with songbooks and a tablecloth her grandmother had embroidered.

The men were brusque, unrelenting.

There was a black man in the group; the others couldn't keep their eyes off him. He sat apart from the rest and seemed not to notice their obtuse stares. He was carrying a little bundle on a strap — all his possessions were rolled into that.

His presence raised fundamental questions. Where did he come from? How did he get here? What was his name? Where was he going?

Questions no one asked him.

They were led to the truck. At the front of the trailer was the space where they would hide, a crevice left between plastic-wrapped pallets. There was a bucket in which they could relieve themselves. There was to be no smoking, and complete silence under all circumstances. Those who owned a mobile phone had to hand it over.

The boss of the operation wore a white tracksuit; gold glistened at his wrists and collar. His
BMW
was parked beside the truck, the door open, music blasting. Behind them the rest of the cargo was loaded as they covered their ears against the roar of the forklift in the trailer.

Slowly they disappeared in shadow. They would not only be silent; they would hold their breath and cease to exist until they were across the border.

The voices outside became muffled, and the tailgate closed. Someone pounded on it with a hard object. They tried to fathom the darkness, but their eyes found no hold.

When the engine started, a shiver ran through the trailer. The truck idled for a while, then began moving. A sharp turn — it was leaving the lot. A little later they were rolling smoothly down the road. Their thoughts grew a little calmer. They were all going to be fine; they would slip through the eye of the needle and act as though good fortune were a personal friend. Why should they be caught? Why not others? There were countless like them — let good luck turn its back on those others for once! No one needed it more than they did!

But every time the truck braked, their hearts leapt into their throats.

The trip would take about twelve hours, the man had said. Sometimes the luminous dial of a wristwatch would light up faintly. They had no idea how long twelve hours lasted in the dark. It was an endless, sleepless night. The clock that ticked in here was not the same as the one outside. The hour and minutes hands became bogged down; they dragged across the dial like flies caught in molasses.

A few times already, the boy has thought he is going to wet his pants, but each time the urge goes away. He shakes some life into his sleeping leg and looks down the row of others, leaning with their backs against the pallets. Shadows. Insubstantial, thin as air. He doesn't know them, these others. As far as he can tell, there is one couple; the rest are on their own.

He knows that they are blazing trails for their families, their villages, their communities. Travelling in their footsteps is an invisible company of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews. All hope is focused on them. They are the pioneer vegetation. You can submit them to anything — hunger, thirst, heat, and cold — and they will survive it all.

The boy thinks about his father and mother, and about his brother, who isn't strong enough to make the journey. Endlessly far away, they are now. He knows he can't go back. His road travels in only one direction.

He wept when they told him. Dry your tears, his mother said. You want to be a man, don't you? A man carries what rests on his shoulders, and doesn't complain.

The boy clenched his teeth and stopped crying.

It had still been dark, the morning he left. A stranger gave him a ride; they drove down into the valley in a rattling pickup and saw it slowly grow light behind the mountains. The man dropped him at the bus station and hoped that God would be with him on his way.