The Zoo (21 page)

I catch my foot as I haul myself through the hole. Part fall, part roll through it and land on my back, wind knocked from me and eyes closed. When I open them I can only see white light and feel a burning heat on my face. My eyes adjust themselves and I can make out the shape of a chain mail fence stretching off in both directions. Slowly my vision returns and I am looking at an uninterrupted blue sky. I sit up.

Dusty ground, a rectangular space bigger than a football field, surrounded with 20 foot high metal chain mail fencing. Baking hot. My skin is burning, literally burning. I scan the area for shade. There is none. A bleached rectangle with the sun burning down on it. I am a bug under a magnifying glass.

Pull myself to my feet. Already my throat is dry. I am coated with a sheen of sweat. I make my way over to the fence, test my weight against it. It bends then pushes back against me so I jump up and grasp it with my fingers. The metal is red hot. It takes all my willpower to hold onto it as I heave myself up. About six feet from the ground, I can't bear it anymore and let go, drop down to the ground again. The palms of my hands are branded with the hexagons of the fence.

On the other side of the metal enclosure is thick brush, a plant I don't recognise, too high to see over.

I begin to work my way around the perimeter, inching along it, all the time one hand brushing the scalding metal. My feet kick clouds in the dust. The sun is a constant above me, draining me. Regularly I have to stop and sit, back to the fence, gasping for my breath, sweat in my eyes. I crave water, just a drop on my tongue, on my lips. I work my way all around the three sides. My tongue is thick, my throat swollen.

About half way round my legs are too weak to continue. I allow myself to slide down the fence and rest there again, the metal hot on my back even through my clothes. My eyes drift shut and I can feel the heat on the back of my eyelids welding them shut.

My body sinks down to a horizontal and I put my hands behind my head, lie back in the dust.

I'm in the garden at home on a summer's day, the sound of the hose filling the paddling pool, somewhere in the background Harry is chuntering away. Sally is laughing, beautiful, like a waterfall. A bee buzzes over my face disturbing the hairs. I'm in the hammock. The air is disturbed by the slightest of winds, which lifts the heat from everything and I am light in the hammock, the air beneath me weighs nothing and I'm floating. I could be hundreds of feet in the air. I have the impression that if I put my feet down I would find the earth had dropped away from me. This should fill me with fear and I am touched by the ghost of vertigo, but it is only momentary and I am at peace again. The hose has been turned off and Harry is stomping with monster feet in the water. I sense Sally next to me. Her lips touch my forehead like a butterfly.

‘Keep your eyes closed,' she says. So I do, then she says, ‘put your hand out,' so I do. She places a bottle of beer in it and the glass is so cold I nearly drop it. When I raise the beer to my lips it tastes golden and some spills from my mouth, runs down my chin onto my neck and I leave it there, the sun drying it in seconds.

I roll my eyes under my still closed eyelids and the shadows of the trees above me are purple blotches on the inside of them. I peel my eyes open and the light is dappled though the leaves, a chessboard on my t-shirt. Harry laughs and I smile with him. Close my eyes and the summer afternoon strokes my forehead until I am half asleep.

I jerk awake to the sensation of falling. Suddenly unsure of where I am and grasped by panic. Then I see the fence and the bone white dust and know I am far from home.

Already my arms are burning red. Knowing I need to find shade I continue to follow the fence, convinced there must be a door, a gateway, another way out. Then I come back to the wall through which I climbed. The hole I came through is circled with blue spray paint, a rusty sign hanging next to it. I think the language is French. Spray paint stencils underneath, a rough approximation of a Cowboy, a Knight, a Pirate, a Soldier, a Lion and a Rhino. Then three large dots, making up a . . .

To the right of the hole is a pile of breeze blocks, sheets of corrugated iron on the top. I lift the edge of one and roll under it. The shade is such a relief. A slight wind picks the dust up and tosses it around the space. Above me the iron crinkles and moans.

The temperature begins to drop. I push my head out from under the shade and watch day descend the sky above me. The heat leaves as quickly as the light and soon I am shivering beneath stars.

At some point I make the decision to clamber back through the hole and work my way back down the blind tunnel. Now I have a destination I'm not as scared by the fact I can't see my own hands. I simply follow my shuffling feet as they drag me back to the ward, to the plastic sheet that is mercifully cool to the touch, that parts when I push it and gives birth to me into a world of fluorescent strip lights and tiles and dust and white coats, to a ward that hasn't changed, to a group of people going through the same motions at the same time and repeating the same day.

In my room I am mute. There are things I need to say now my voice is gone.

I close my door. Sit on the floor in front of The Zoo.

The skin on my arms is red and blistered. The hexagons on my hands charred black.

When I find my words they are small, cracked and pulled from the darkness inside me.

‘Why did you show me that?'

The Zoo says nothing.

‘What does it mean?'

The Zoo says nothing.

‘Where have I been?'

The Zoo says nothing.

Frustrated, I climb onto the bed, not bothering to remove my clothing, and curl myself into a ball, hands tucked under my chin and knees against my chest. Shaking and gibbering and repeating the names of The Figurines as a mantra, while they ignore me and stare forward with their fixed gazes.

The house smells of cooking and air freshener and home. Even through my cocaine-frosted nostrils it is enough to spark a cavalcade of pleasant memories. The hall lights are off, the dining room ones on, just a key line of yellow dissecting the corridor. I drop my briefcase onto the floor and hang my coat up. It immediately drops to the floor and as I stoop to pick it up I lose my balance and topple forward into the wall. Giggling to myself I hoist myself back up.

The brightness in the dining room makes me aware of how fucked I am and how much I need to hide it from my family. I need to straighten my head up. Sally and Harry are sat at the table. Harry grins a gap toothed grin at me, Sally a barely perceptible smile, just a straightening of her lips. Something at least. Even more important now that she doesn't realise I've been on the gear.

‘There's a plate on the side for you, it'll probably need heating,' she says.

‘Thanks,' I reply and stalk into the kitchen. The muscles in my legs are close to cramping. I am on my tiptoes. Grab a beer from the fridge and bolt it. Better if she thinks I'm drunk than high. Get another one out. I watch the blue digital seconds tick down as my lasagne heats. Taking a fork out of the drawer I join my family at the table.

‘Hello mate,' I say to Harry.

‘Hi D-d-d-ad, look at this,' he's holding up a teddy monkey. An ape of some sort.

‘Who's that then?'

‘H-H-H-ector. He's the same as the monkey we saw.'

He passes it to me. I rub the fur on my face. Again a wash of memory.

‘Which one?'

‘The one that s-s-s-s-spoke to me.'

‘It didn't speak to you.'

Sally grimaces at me.

‘You spoke to it, didn't you?' I say, conscious of softening my voice.

‘Y-y-yes, but it understood me, Dad. It knew what I was saying, didn't it, Mum?'

‘Yes Harry. It certainly looked like it.'

We eat in silence. Too quiet. I am aware of the sharpness of my jaw. I'm not in the least bit hungry. Every mouthful is an effort, huge in my mouth.

‘I'm going to put some music on,' I say and leave the table. In the lounge I rummage about in the CDs and settle on Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left. His mournful voice follows me as I walk to the downstairs toilet. I take out the bag of coke and empty the remains of it onto the shelf above the sink. Snort it and rip the bag open, lick the residue. Wash my hands in the sink and try not to see my wild eyes in the mirror.

Harry notices I'm not eating and stops eating his food too, pushing it about the plate with his fork.

‘Eat your dinner, Harry.' Sally takes his hand, tries to cajole him into eating. He squeezes his mouth shut refusing to eat. She takes the fork from him.

‘Do you want me to have to feed you like when you were a baby?'

He shakes his head, puts his hand over his mouth.

‘Come on, Harry, do as your mother says.'

Shakes his head again.

Sally asks for help with her eyes. I look down at my plate.

‘Take your hand away from your mouth,' she says.

He shakes his head again. Mutters, ‘I don't want to', from behind his finger shield.

Sally picks up his fork, the metal scraping on the plate. A banshee cry of metal on ceramic that cuts right through me. She scoops up a fork full of lasagne and aims it at his mouth. He screams
no
behind his hand and lashes out with his other hand, catching the fork and sending it bouncing off the table, leaving a jet trail of food on the tablecloth. Sally gasps and recoils. She shouts his name, grabs the fork again, gets another portion, holds his other hand and says, ‘you will eat your dinner.' He shakes his head again. Before I know what I'm doing I'm around the table grabbing his head, pulling his hand away and growling in his face,

‘Stop being a baby and eat your fucking dinner.'

The look on his face, the look on Sally's, makes me realise what I've done and I step back, already apologising and they're both staring at me and I'm backing away, into the lounge, slamming the door that separates the two rooms and through the wood I can hear him wailing and Sally trying to calm him down. I fall into the armchair, cover my head with my hands, but that's not enough, so I push a pillow over my face and scream into the fabric, into this thick, thick air and wonder what it would be like to suffocate. There are footsteps on the stairs, him running, Sally running after him, the bedroom door kicked shut, her muffled voice, muffled through the pillow, through the wall, through the floor, through everything that divides us.

I am remorse. I am guilt. I am too caned to know what to do. So I press the pillow tighter into my face, until it squashes my nose, fills my eye sockets and my mouth and I can taste the material, taste the dust, taste my aftershave, the air freshener, the smell of our house, our home and hold it there, hold it there, hold it there.

I can't bring myself to join them, to see the aftermath, so I turn on the TV but leave the sound off, feeling sorry for myself along with Nick Drake. I hop through the channels, bouncing over a reality TV show about fat people, Gene Hackman in The Conversation, Stoke City versus Manchester City, crap, crap and more crap.

I settle on Sky News.

Visions of children with guns. A jeep on a track through jungle. Men in the back, bandanas over their faces. Another group of men firing AK47s into the sky. A journalist in front of a group of grinning and waving children. I jump up, turn off the CD player and turn the volume up on the TV. The journalist is addressing the camera.

‘It is shocking how quickly the country has fallen into civil war. Always a volatile country, Nhgosa is rapidly becoming a no-go zone. The British government today warned all British citizens who don't have pressing reasons to stay to leave the country.'

I shuffle off the seat and move on my bottom towards the television, my face now inches from the screen. I reach for the connection Lou made and find enough to disturb me.

The journalist holds his hand out to the camera. Each palm holds a pile of black minerals.

I have to squeeze one eye shut so I can focus on the image on the screen. If I have both of them open the picture jumps and spins and tries to elude me.

‘And it is all about this. Coltan and Cassiterite.'

He raises his left hand.

‘Coltan is used in the west to manufacture electrical items. 65% of the world's supply of the mineral can be found here and is mined in small artisan mines, often dug out by hand by children and then shipped across the border and sold through intermediaries. Most of the electronic giants will deny that they buy Coltan from Nghosa, but the statistics don't support this. No matter which way we look at it, and no matter how much they deny that it came from here, there just isn't enough of it produced elsewhere to fuel the hunger that we in the West have for our electronic devices.'

He raises his right hand.

‘And this is Cassiterite, again used in electronic devices, this time for soldering. This innocuous looking material is used to make the phones you speak on and the TVs you watch this report on and these two minerals are tearing this country apart.

‘There are reports that the rebel army are pushing to the north of the country, to the part of Nghosa where the majority of the mines are. There is no doubt this is a civil war that is about exploiting the natural resources of this country. If you spend any time here you realise the vast fortune raised by the mining of these minerals doesn't reach the common people. It is that fortune the rebels are after. Even now they are pushing the government forces back.

‘We have received unconfirmed reports of villages being burned on the way. It is impossible for foreign journalists to get near enough to the fighting to corroborate these reports and the government minders are intent on only showing us their side of the conflict, but everyone I speak to has a tale about horrific acts perpetrated by both armies. We may not have officially reached a humanitarian crisis yet, but whichever side wins it will be at a huge cost to the people of Nghosa. This is Guy Allen reporting for Sky News in Nghosa.'