Sixteen Years - Chapter 8

After Rami was arrested by Socketry Security for not having the correct papers (i.e. a Blue Sector Nocturnal Commercial Vehicle Permit, Pedi-Cab Class ), he was questioned briefly by blank faced, green suited operatives. They didn’t seem pleased with his responses, so they locked him in a small cell, lit only by a faint yellow light bulb positioned behind a thick grill. It was so quiet Rami thought he must be far below the city streets.

“Tell me again—“

“Sir, I don’t know—“

“I dare you to interrupt me again, knucklehead, I dare you.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Tell me again who you work for.”

“No one.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I lease pedi-cab from Sunshine Pedi-Cab and give them money, but I work for me, sir.”

“Don’t be foolish, you know very well that’s not what we mean.”

“No, sir.”

“How about he Ladies? The Sisters?”

“Sir, I don’t know—“

“Tell us.”

“I don’t understand.”

And it went around and around and on like that for hours. They would ask him the same questions over and over again, and then they would take him and lock him back up in his cell. It was cold and the one blanket they allowed him was thin and ragged and unwashed. He would sleep for a few fitful and unhappy hours, and then it would begin again.

“How long have you known the woman in your cab?”

“She just a passenger, sir.”

“What did she say to you?”

“Just—she was tired, sir.”

“How long have you known her?”

“She just a passenger, sir.”

“Who introduced her to you?”

“She just a passenger, sir.”

“Was she alone?”

Rami paused, briefly. He wasn’t sure whether it was something in the tone of the voice that asked the question, or something about the woman herself, but he had no intention of telling these men from Socketry that the woman about whom they were questioning him so earnestly had a child with her. Even as he lied he thought himself a sentimental idiot.

“Yes. The lady was alone.”

The fist hit him hard on the side of his face, spinning him around, off the chair and onto the floor.  He shut his eyes hard, and hoped the gods he worshipped when he was young, who controlled the fish in the local lagoon, would rise up and destroy his enemies.  He thought he must be mad to think such a thing was possible.  He was so far away, and the old gods had no power in this room so far away. They took him back to his cell and left him there for a long time.

Sometimes, he would chant softly to himself the stories his grandfather had sung to him when he was a child. Sometimes he pretended he was singing these tales to his own child. Sometimes the thought of the island he missed so desperately was too much for him to bear.  

One day—or it could have been night, as there was no possible way to distinguish day from night in his subterranean prison—as Rami lay on the thin, hard mattress they had provided, he heard an unwelcome scrabbling sound coming from within the wall. He half sat up and peered into the gloom. His first impulse was to be horrified by the rat he saw sitting a few feet in front of him, but seeing a living creature who neither yelled at him, threatened violence or asked him impossible to answer questions, was actually somewhat welcome.

The rat looked at Rami pointedly. At least he thought the rat did. He also thought he might be so desperate for a companion that he might be imagining an intelligence in its face that was not actually there. He looked a little more closely. He may have been mistaken, but Rami could swear the rat had what looked like blue human eyes. It was extremely unsettling.  

The rat would appear whenever Rami was in his cell. Sometimes the rat would bring friends, but they never tried to bite him or steal his food and water (what little there was of it). He almost had the preposterous idea that the rats were watching over him, and when they were in his cell with him, nothing truly bad could happen to him, although he told himself that that was preposterous.

“Look, Rami. We know you’re a nice guy and don’t like too betray anyone, but take it from us. This lady? She’s bad news. Tell us about her and no harm will come to you.”

“She just a passenger, sir.”

“Tell us what we want too know, knucklehead, or you’ll be in here forever.”

“That’s right, Rami. Who’s going to miss you?”

“No one even knows you’re gone.”

“Tell us, Rami.”

“Please sir, she just a passenger.”

“That’s not good enough, Rami.”

“You can do better than that.”

There was a pause. The men shined the bright light closer to his face.

“What do you want me to say?”

Rami couldn’t be certain with the light shining in his eyes, but it seemed as if the men in the green suits finally smiled.

Rami lay on his thin mattress, a circle of rats standing sentry around him. He thought they looked disappointed in him, although how they could know, or understand the nature of what he had done, he had no idea. He had always thought they were on his side, but as his despair and guilt grew into crushingly tangible proportions, he was not so sure. Maybe the rats are theirs. Maybe they are spies for the people who are keeping him here. He soon fell into a black, dreamless sleep.

When Rami woke up, the rats were gone. He prayed a silent prayer for penance and for his lack of faith. He prayed that they would come back, so that he wouldn’t be so alone. Just then, the door to his cell opened.  

“That’s it. We’re done with you, Rami.”

Rami froze, not knowing what was expected of him.

“What are you, stupid? Don’t you want too get out of here?”

Rami was still uncertain of what they were planning and was in no sense sure that he would be walking towards freedom rather than his own death. He also realized that he couldn’t stand around uncertainly in this cell for the remainder of his life, so he followed the guard out into the hallway, and then up a flight of unfamiliar stairs. They let him take a shower, then had him sign his name on the bottom of a form he could not read. They then gave him back his watch, shoelaces and the few guilders he had on his person at the time of his arrest.

A different guard unlocked a series of doors, each leading to the next, all different, each with it’s own key and it’s own numerical code to be punched out on a keypad. As the final door was opened, sunlight streamed in, nearly blinding Rami. He stepped outside as he knew that was what was expected of him. The final door shut silently behind him. It looked like any other door leading to a storeroom, or a business, and when he walked away from it, Rami was certain he would be unable to find it again (not that he wanted to).

He looked around him and realized he wasn’t too far from home. He was in a run down part of the city, on the outskirts of the district where the information venders plied their trade. He made his way back to the rooming house where he had lodgings, and spoke with his landlady, Mrs.Wilberforce.

“Oh, Rami, sweetie. I was nearly prostrated with worrying you had fallen down dead in the street, or hit over the head and lost your memory, or run off with some girl who would wind up leaving you flat or—What? Oh, my goodness, in trouble with Socketry? That’s nothing you should be fooling with, make no mistake, my dear. Your room? Well I am that sorry, but I’ve gone and rented it to another gentleman. I am more sorry than I can say, but I do have my bills to pay and can’t afford to keep a room standing empty with not a guilder coming in for rent, no matter how nice the gentleman is who had been renting it previously. You could have been dead all that time and then there would have been not a thing for me, and I do have my bills to pay, just like anyone. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say, and nothings truer than that. You do understand, I’m sure. I have all your things packed up ever so nice in my office. And it was a mite inconvenient, having to pay Jenny to pack it all up and having it take up so much space. I’m sure you understand there’s a very tiny fee.”

He next went to see the proprietor of Sunshine Pedi-Cab.

“You! You’re lucky I don’t kick you on your head! Leaving one of my beautiful pedi-cabs that I keep so nice, just leaving it? In the street? You’re lucky I don’t kick you on your head.”

That night Rami found a room in a very inexpensive boarding house, where the rats had rat eyes and were much less friendly then the ones he encountered in his cell under the city.

He eventually found a job as a dishwasher in one of the big fancy Blue Sector hotels. It didn’t pay as well or afford him as much freedom as his pedi-cab job, but he managed. One benefit of being a hotel employee was that he was immediately issued papers that said he was authorized to enter the Blue Sector whenever he wished. He enjoyed walking in the well-maintained parks, with their long paths that wound through woods and flowerbeds and feeding the birds and fish that lived there. Security agents would often ask him his business, but he would show them his papers and they would leave him alone. Eventually he became a familiar sight and they stopped bothering him.  

He still wondered about the woman who had been the catalyst of his many difficulties. He didn’t blame her for any of his miseries, and he hoped that nothing he had done or said harmed her. He did often think to himself that no good deed goes unpunished. But before he learned that bit of wisdom, he was taught when he was a child that the gods had very unpredictable fancies and senses of humor and that nothing was as certain as we sometimes thought it was.  

Sixteen years passed. He saved money, much of which he sent back home. He wanted to save enough so that his son could come and live with him in the city, but it never happened. He wasn’t bitter, though.

Sometimes Rami would go and sit on a park bench across the street from the building where Our Lady of Untrammeled, Perpetual and Unavailing Mercy was housed. He liked looking at the carvings of harpoons and sea creatures, and he wondered what went on inside those ornate walls. No matter how many times he sat watching, he never saw anyone enter or leave. The door remained shut