WALLS
Lal Chakraborty

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21Ân ®gh˦u¡l£, 2003

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Part I: Chapter 7

Walls, giant walls, zigzagged across the entire territory, threw in huge shadows and made me sick. I was sick, sick of the mind to fall for this stupid game. Sick of the body with lack of proper sleep and food. The only cure, my life's cure, who could bring dead to life, was gone. And I was silent. I didn’t talk. What was there to talk about? Who was there to talk with? I only watched and heard others. I watched Banya’s illegitimate son grow into a scoundrel. I watched the princess happy in her new role as Banya’s mistress. I watched the children sick of building walls start playing a new game. I heard many weep. I heard many sigh for their loved ones on the other side of the red gate. I heard rumors that said beyond the red gate were also people who were unhappy.

I heard Semia had become a vain man and had started torturing people to work on walls. I heard Semia had rationed food and only those who worked hard would get the food. I heard that some people were trying to revolt. I was almost a ghost now walking with soft foot so as not to disturb anyone. I did no work. Some people were kind to give me their leftovers and I ate those in the smelly dark hollow that was my new home.

There were many like me, who lost all and were on the streets. Before, people like me would try to cross the gate and reach the other side. Some even succeeded. But now that we knew the other side was just another side of the same coin, we huddled together and spent our days. We would sit and waste the day and at night seek a cozy place to dump ourselves. Finding a place was not very easy. There were very few unclaimed land there and every corner, every wall had an owner. We would be pushed away from one place to another by either a prosperous owner or a lucky loser who just happened to be stronger than me.

That night I was being shoved away from all the places and there was nothing for me to do after my third round of search. I made up my mind of spending the night wandering through the walls. I could always sleep in the morning when people were not so obsessed. So, I wandered and so I saw Carlos. He was digging as before but this time it was through a wall.

"What are you doing?"

"Shhh. Just give me a hand."

"What’s the use of breaking the walls? They will mend it tomorrow anyway. And if they find you out, breaking their walls, then they will kill you."

"I am not breaking any wall. I am just making a hole big enough for me."

"Why? What are you going to do with the hole?"

He didn’t answer. It was hard work and I stood there watching the road for Carlos. He had to be very quiet. Fortunately, no one came there and Carlos had made quite a big hole in a few hours time. He stood there panting and contemplating it with satisfaction and turned to me, "I will go away." 

"Go away!" I was stunned. "Where?" 

"Far away. Where there are no walls, no Banya. Where the sun is always visible and the sky is huge, where you can see the north pole and all the constellations, stars and planets."

"But what about all these walls that you own. You are quite wealthy, aren’t you? You have sixty feet of prime wall and on top of that another two hundred feet of wall whose value is inflating. You can’t take them away with you if you leave."

He just smiled there and waved his hand and thrust his body through the hole and vanished. I stood there for a long time. Carlos who started it all was gone now. I took the broken bricks and put them back loosely into the hole without cementing them. Then I got a pail of water and some mud and repaired the crack precisely so that no one would notice those bricks were loose. I don’t know why I didn’t fix the wall permanently. Maybe at the back of my mind, I felt the need for an opening into another world. Just the knowledge that the walls have a weak point was comforting. By the time I was finished, dawn was claiming the sky. 

On those days, I would often think what went wrong on that side of the Red Gate. And secondly, what was wrong on my side? I never came up with any answer to these questions. Then there was only one question left. 

The Red Gate broke down and there was no other side anymore.

Since night, several people had gathered on the other side of the gate and we heard their voices. Soon we heard a thud on the gate and then another. People were attacking the gate and the dividing walls with hammers and rams. Banya stood on our side smiling. So, Semia’s rule was over. Banya at last achieved his dream. A hole appeared on the wall and in no time, it grew larger. And then there was no Red Gate. People swept in large numbers and everywhere people were kissing and embracing their long lost friends.

I saw Miro clutching a rod and pounding frantically at broken walls. Then she looked up at me. Her face was thin, body frail and tears flowing down her cheeks.

"Zen. Oh Zen" she shook in my arms.  

We came back to my house that was almost in ruins. But she cleared up and I repaired the leaks and the roof. The vegetable garden had gone wild but there were a few potatoes, beans and lettuce. I picked up what I could and she cooked and I fixed the table and we sat down to a dinner.

Later, she sat on a rock, near the doorstep of what was once my house, looked at the dark sky and darker walls and said, "I still don’t believe that competition is better than co-operation. That those who believed in an ideal world and sacrificed their lives were worse than those who stayed back like cowards. That men are better as unequals. That those who dare to dream are the losers."

I didn’t reply. We sat there for the night and the next and so on. I had become accustomed to not speaking with anyone and Miro didn’t talk like before. We ate together, slept together but I missed her chatter and she missed it too, I guess. For I would often find her trying hard to prattle, like the old days. But she would soon give up. There really was nothing that she could talk about. The Red Gate was broken but Semia was not finished. His men had possession of walls, had houses and were like us. The clear rivalry between the reds and the blues became complex and far more political in nature. After the initial euphoria, Semia still had believers and the fight continued in a different manner.

One night we grew tired of sitting and stood up. We walked past our house, through the alleys, through all that we had built, all that we had struggled for. I told her about Carlos, what he said and how I saw him leaving. How I covered up the hole so that no one would find out.

"Take me to the hole. I want to see it. See what is there beyond it." 

"There is nothing beyond it. Just trees and fields and the sky." 

"Trees, fields and sky." Her wide eyes were gleaming with moonlight.

I walked with her towards the hole and when we reached, she stood mesmerized looking at the wall. My repair was not perfect and if you looked hard, you could see a big round place on the wall that was different. Her gaze did not stop there but seemed to penetrate through those loose bricks into what was beyond. Her hands touched the broken wall slowly. Her head leaned on one side and she took a deep breath of the air. "Help me to break through this."

 "Why?" 

"Shhh. Just give me a hand."

I joined in her efforts and soon the hole was dug up a second time. She thrust her head out through the wall and said, "We too must go." 

"Go? Are you mad?" 

"We must. That’s our only hope of happiness." 

"Not I. What would we go out for? There is nothing there. Only fields and trees. Nothing else." 

"There are villages and towns full of people further away. There are places where there is no wall and no fight for its possession. There are places where Semia and Bania don’t ruin people’s lives. Carlos knew it and he left." 

"Carlos is just a maniac. He can go anywhere. I can’t. What will I do? All I can do is patch cracks on the freshly dried mud. I will be nothing outside these walls." 

Miro looked at me and told me in a quiet voice, "We can learn. You could grow vegetables and I could cook and wash clothes and in the night I could talk again." 

I took hold of her hand and tried to make her come back to her senses but she wouldn’t listen. She pulled her hand away from me and went out through the wall. I climbed out too and took her hand. "Let’s go back. This is not going to work." 

She just drew me closer and said, "Trust me." 

We started walking towards the distant horizon but after a few steps, I stopped.  

"What happened?" she asked. 

"I just stepped on a thorn. It hurts. I don’t have a shoe on."

"Neither do I."

"Wait, let me get our shoes from my house. Or else, we will be stepping on these thorns every time. You just wait here." 

I climbed back into the walled city to get our shoes. I couldn't find them in our house and when I returned to tell her, she wasn’t there anymore.

                                   To be continued....