Box Page 12

  A freezing wind blew across the playground, direct from the sea. Black clouds nudged low over the city, dragging after them grey sheets of rain. There was no way to make the bike shed cosy, facing as it did into the wind. I found my tarpaulin where I’d rolled it in the shrubs, and wore it as a cape while I trudged around the school looking for a dry, sheltered place. Only the classroom verandahs were out of the wind and still dry, but I’d be obvious to anybody walking through the school or looking out the windows of the houses tucked into the nearby trees.

  I sat on a step and thought about what I couldn’t have: family, home, food … Now my friends too, by the look of it. They were probably warm and cosy, protected by everything Becka had already sussed and set up. I wouldn’t blame Marti and Disco if they decided to sleep at the flat again tonight. Well, I would blame them, bitterly, but I’d understand.

  Hailstones clattered on the roof and bounced over the asphalt, followed by driving slush. I sniffed, and tried to swallow the new soreness in my throat. I’d go back to the Nemeyevas’. If Marti and Disco had left me, then I had the right to take refuge and food where I could. I tucked the tarpaulin away again and found a pen in my pack to write on the side of the box:

  5.15: heading north to play the piano, D.

  I wondered if I’d find the Nemeyevas’ doors open, swinging in the wind, with signs of violent detention and someone posted to guard their house. But it wasn’t illegal, yet, for immigrants to abstain — only to feed or harbour abstainers.

  I was devious on that trip through the green belt. I didn’t want to meet any boy gangs, anyone aching with cold and needing something from me — nor students dressed in navy. I skirted high and low, following the steepest tracks, sidling clay faces, sliding from tree to tree, running across the connecting roads. I tried not to think of kids sheltering under wet leaves, digging in dirt banks to escape the driving sleet that bit my ears and hands whenever I got out in the open.

  Back at the big house I slipped down through the garden, watching for movement in the windows, listening for anything besides the howl of wind in the trees. When I heard piano notes again, spilling from upstairs, I felt like singing along — until the wind grabbed them away and I wondered if I’d been imagining music. But the light was still on in the kitchen window, and there was Mirri coming into the room. She saw me at once and opened the door.

  ‘Oh, you’re wet!’ She shook her head. Her mouth was tight — the shape of a smile but definitely not the real thing. She helped peel off my parka, and pulled me into the kitchen with its yellow light and warmth and the strew of papers across the red table. ‘You must have some soup.’ Mirri lifted the lid of a huge pot and threw in a handful of chopped herbs. The smell wrapped around my head and filled my mouth with saliva.

  I heard doors open and close and Mr Nemeyeva came into the kitchen. He gave me a look that held a question I couldn’t decipher. ‘Derik,’ he said and his eyes pulled me back to my feet. Without a word I went after him along the hall and up the stairs, across the bare boards of the music room where his piano sat like a polished sculpture in the starkness. On the landing out the other side he unlocked a narrow green-painted door. Pushing it open, he climbed up into the gloom and I followed, four steps behind. At the top Mr Nemeyeva took my elbow as we waited for our eyes to adjust.

  Beds. Over the entire floor of this attic. Grey light from a couple of high windows pooled on the spread of mattresses, ancient army stretchers, tramping mats, even wads of newspapers overlaid with blankets. Pillows, old duvets and sleeping bags: everything was ready, inviting, waiting for maybe fifty, sixty, eighty … teenagers.

  A hot pain struck my belly, and the heat spread up over my face, and burned my ears as I climbed back down. I stumbled through the kitchen, past Mirri, ready to take up my parka and go.

  ‘Wait, Derik,’ she said, ‘you must eat first.’ She ladled from the pot: soup, thick with carrots and barley and melting chunks of meat.

  I gulped it in embarrassment, burning my mouth. I could see only Mr Nemeyeva’s wistful look, could feel only shame. How many of those kids out in the cold would have decided already to give in and go home? How many would be endorsed by this time tomorrow?

  Mirri made me wear a dry parka and carry a couple of extras in my backpack.

  ‘Where will you start?’ Mr Nemeyeva asked me.

  ‘I’ll go along the roads to the school and work through the trees back to here.’

  I took the quartered apple Mirri held out, and started to set off up the garden.

  ‘Wait, I’ll come with you on the road, but I’ll have to leave the scrambling to you.’ Mr Nemeyeva buttoned his coat and Mirri pulled a sheepskin hat over his ears.

  We walked fast into the rain and sleet and my amazing piano teacher told me about some of the people he’d been in touch with who were working hard to keep things going for abstainers, to make it a feasible way of life, not just a difficult, criminal subsistence.

  ‘And we hear your mother will be home soon.’

  ‘I’m not sure when but I hope so.’

  ‘Well, I heard it from one of my Latvian friends. It sounds as if the conference they attended was very interesting. They say the case against our great New Zealand experiment is a strong one.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ I wasn’t sure why it took a court case to find out what seemed obvious to us teenagers. But I didn’t have anything else to say. Yes, I was glad my mother was coming home, but I could barely face myself just now, let alone her.

  Mr Nemeyeva turned back as we approached the school. ‘Tell them to wait for me at the top garden gate — I’ll go out and check every few minutes — in case we have other visitors. They’re suspicious of me, but not more so than of every foreigner, I think.’

  I ran across the playground to the bike shed. I checked my message on the box, but nothing had been added. I wondered if the others were cosied up in their bathrobes at Becka’s hangout. I could hardly stand the thought.

  Our sleeping bags were still tucked away but I didn’t want to be hampered with mine just now. I headed up into the trees and began to comb, up and down, searching in every hollow I could find, under trees, in gullies, wherever it looked as if a person might be able to squeeze in out of the rain.

  First I found a couple of girls. They had a tent but not enough flat space to pitch it properly. They’d stretched and tied it over two trees fallen on a hillside, and they were lying on either bank of the new stream flowing through their shelter.

  When I called out, they flattened themselves and lay still. I had to go right up and pull on one of their feet. ‘It’s okay. I haven’t been endorsed. I know a place you can go.’ I suppose I sounded too young to be dangerous. They sat up, bedraggled, dirty, groaning with the cold, and crawled out beside me.

  They said they were about to give up and go home when I handed them a parka each and gave them instructions for getting to the Nemeyevas’.

  ‘Is this whole thing working, d’you think?’ the older one asked as she fumbled with the jacket domes. ‘Or will we have to give up anyway? It’s too dangerous to go and get food now. We saw the police take about six kids from the sushi bar this afternoon.’ The younger one was sucking on her cold fingers, while tears streamed down her face. I zipped her jacket up. Their distress was contagious — I wanted to push them on their way.

  ‘We’ll talk about everything later, all of us,’ I said. ‘See how many turn up tonight.’ I watched the girls stumble and slide down to the main track until they looked like trees, then shadows of trees and then I couldn’t see them any more.

  But what difference would it make if ten came or a hundred? Out here in the cold, it seemed like this thing was way out of hand. The Nemeyevas couldn’t feed dozens of us, not more than once or twice, and we couldn’t go pouring in and out of their place every day. We were still kids. There was only so much we could do. In the end it was adults who made the decisions about us, who kept us safe or who imposed their version of safety on
us. Perhaps this was it, the end of the abstaining experiment. A guilty corner of me felt relieved at the possibility of abandoning this difficult option. How much simpler to let the grown-ups take over and do what they wanted to. Then the door clicked shut on those thoughts, and I got moving again.

  The rain had been heavy before but now it came in a deluge that battered the trees, streamed across the forest floor, lifted leaves in rafts and sailed them off down the hill. And the cloudburst flushed out the kids; nothing could stay dry in this. The green belt began to move; there were kids clambering out of fallen trees and mud guts. Everyone was so wet, so dirty, you couldn’t tell who was crying, who was still trying to be staunch, but the thing everyone had in common, at last, was fear. The tough truth of what it meant to be on the run had broken over us with the storm. The choices were clear now: discomfort, hunger and perpetual edginess; or life as an endorsed, compliant citizen. I shouted at people to follow me. It took too long to keep describing the route.

  A boy climbed down from a pine tree right onto my path just as I heard my name being called, ‘Derik!’

  I couldn’t see anyone. I told the pine tree boy, who looked dazed, and had lost a shoe, to run on the spot to warm himself up.

  ‘Hey.’ Someone caught my arm and squeezed it. And there was Marti. A surge of warmth ran through me.

  ‘What’s up?’ she said, turning to look at the group of teenagers coming along the track behind her.

  ‘I should ask you that,’ I tried to smile back at her but I wasn’t sure what my numb face was actually doing. ‘I’m herding people towards my piano teacher’s house. They’re expecting us — expecting dozens of us.’

  ‘Really? That’s fantastic, ’cause me and Disco came looking for you but when we kept finding other kids we figured we’d have to take them back to Becka’s except I don’t think that would be okay.’ The words were hard to make out. Her teeth were chattering, her cheeks splotched white with cold.

  ‘Where is Disco?’ I asked as I took off my parka and pulled it over Marti’s drenched hoody.

  ‘Here somewhere. Looking for kids but he won’t have to look far now, will he?’

  ‘You’re too cold, Marti, you need to get to the house.’

  ‘I w-want to help though.’

  ‘You won’t be any help if you get hypothermia. Hoi!’ I waved to a kid scrambling away through the trees. He looked around anxiously, started to run again, then chopped back and stood a few feet off, misery streaming with the rain over his face.

  ‘Need somewhere to go? Warm and safe.’

  He nodded and swiped at his cheeks.

  ‘Come with us. We’re on our way there.’ I needed to stick with Marti; she stumbled along and seemed unable to judge the angle of the track. Her group went on ahead of us, others we met fell in behind us. We asked all of them if they knew of anyone else, sent them to get the kids hiding in garden sheds or empty buildings. Most were reluctant to go further than they had to in the cold and wet but our numbers grew; some girls joined us from the pile of tree debris in the slip. We were like a herd of cattle, rain-slick, silent, sliding and bumping through the darkening bush.

  But at last we reached the gate at the top of the Nemeyeva’s place. He was looking out for us; no-one was kept waiting. I watched the others troop down the path. I’d decided to do another run before night fell. I let Mr Nemeyeva give me his own coat and I took off, jogging on numb legs, back towards the school. Only the details of this trip were different. The rain, the cold, and the slippery tracks were the same, except this time I had the tiny warm glow of knowing that when I returned later, Marti would be there. And that I would be, if not proud, then no longer so ashamed of myself.

  I yelled, as I walked — ‘Anyone need help?’ — glad for a change that my voice could still do high, piercing tones. No-one could mistake me for an Endorsement officer. I chased down a couple of boys who thought I was out to get them, and brought home nine more kids. I was done in.

  There was a fire lit up in the piano room, piled high and blazing heat. Newcomers dropped their wettest clothes in the kitchen then went up and steamed by the fire until Mirri called them in twos and threes, to dry themselves off in a warm bedroom and choose from the clothes she’d somehow raked together. She must have had some deal with the op shop — to take off their hands all the impossible gear. Kids came back wearing lime green and neon-pink; the guys got strange chunky coats, Starsky and Hutch-type jerseys, old-man trousers, too short or way too long. Eventually it was my turn to pull on purple long johns under big orange shorts, a warm checked shirt topped off by a sickly mustard vest.

  It was like a party: kids came in looking bewildered but soon they were happily milling around with damp hair, sipping hot blackcurrant drinks, munching toast and apples or taking turns at the kitchen table for bowls of soup. I couldn’t see Marti anywhere.

  I carried a couple of hot water bottles upstairs to a brother and sister who looked about ten but swore they were thirteen and fourteen, who just wanted to sleep.

  ‘Do your parents know you’re okay?’ I said.

  ‘We asked someone to take a letter but I don’t know if it ever got there.’ The boy spoke for his sister whose eyes, I could see even in this dim light, were red from crying. ‘She’ll be okay,’ he told me. ‘We didn’t get any sleep last night in the bush. There was something sniffing around all night. Sounded like a pig.’

  I nodded. Hedgehog more likely, but I knew I might have been scared silly, too, if I’d had to sleep out with my little sister instead of with Marti and Disco.

  Down in the kitchen, Mirri was chopping pumpkin and talking to a girl in a red jersey who leaned over the stove and stirred at a pot. Her hair was tied up on her head, above a pale, lovely neck. I looked away, guiltily.

  But the girl turned round. I hadn’t seen Marti till now without the big ugly clothes. Red was perfect on her, along with the swishy skirt, the shiny boots that looked like they’d trotted right out of a Mongolian dance.

  She clapped her mouth, squashing a laugh. ‘Do I look that funny, Derik?’

  ‘Not funny.’ I shook my head, felt the blush hit my ears.

  Marti coloured too as Mirri nodded at her, at me. ‘This is how my daughter would look. My grandmother made this skirt — all with her hands but not one stitch showing.’

  ‘Oh, you shouldn’t let me wear it then. I didn’t realise.’

  ‘You think I could fit it still?’ Mirri laughed at last and patted her stomach. ‘I was wanting to see a nice girl in my dress. When I was a new teenager, when I began to bleed, that was my gift from my grandmother.’

  Marti shot me a look. ‘I’ll be careful. ‘No mudslides till my clothes are dry.’

  ‘Come and help me hang this pile? We have some ropes upstairs.’

  Just then Disco turned up: there was a tentative knock, Mirri nodded and I opened the door a crack. His smile was huge. ‘Dek, man!’ Everything he wore was flattened to him by the wet. ‘Hey, I’ve got about fifteen kids with me. Can we come in?’

  ‘How’d you know we were here?’

  ‘Went to Becka’s and she sent us.’

  He whistled up into the garden and a draggle of bodies appeared from the bushes. I recognised a couple from school, others from around the place. They came in blinking and wiping their faces, incredulous at the warm buzzy atmosphere. They could see guys laughing, eating, clowning. The charge in the air was pure relief. Here we escaped momentarily from all our discomfort.

  A couple of people went back out into the night when they realised they knew others who might be nearby. When everyone was dry and fed, we gathered in the piano room on cushions and rugs in front of the fire. Mr Nemeyeva sat on his piano stool at the back. He told us how glad he and Mirri were to have us all, in spite of the danger, and that we could stay until safe, dry hideouts were sorted out. He said that tonight we must be ready at any moment to run silently up the stairs to the attic.

  ‘But I think perhaps this part of our attempt is almo
st over,’ he said, plaiting his hands in front of him. ‘It seems that the authorities have discovered tidal feeding. Many of your peers are in detention, or have been sent home. All restaurants, cafés and food outlets will be closed unless they have proof of non-involvement. We didn’t expect that to happen so soon. It means that the whole thing has to be made private — even further underground — if it’s to survive. There are plans yet to be set in motion. And we have to get very smart.’

  Other plans? I didn’t know about them. So my parents hadn’t told me everything.

  For a while there was no sound but shuffling, sniffing, coughs.

  ‘Will we have to go home?’ Marti asked.

  ‘That puts you and your parents in a very difficult position. But each of you knows her or his own situation. As I said, anyone can stay here and we will share whatever we can obtain. But I’m not sure how much safety we can offer. We are being checked on regularly. You yourselves must decide. Your clever bodies have rebelled against the obscenity of Endorsement. Perhaps they will help you be clever in the next thing you do.’ He sat back down and Mirri nudged up beside him on the stool.

  There was another long silence. Nobody wanted to say anything rash or stupid, but in the silence it seemed we were linking up, realising we’d had experiences in common, that this something-bigger than ourselves might have another thing to say.

  ‘I think it’s time to stop hiding.’ Marti’s voice was quiet and clear.

  ‘There are so many of us,’ Disco added. I don’t know how many we met up with over at Andersons Bay. Hiding out in an old bus, boat sheds, up in the hills.’

  ‘We have to get everyone together, don’t we?’ I looked around at the faces. ‘All of us in one place, publicly.’