Holy City: Chapter Ten

V decided to leave the camp that night. He had not fallen asleep when the lights went out. He waited for the others to slip away into their safe harbors. It didn’t take long. The other men were tired from the day’s work, most of them exhausted from the months and years of work.

After less than an hour, V had the cover he needed and rose from his bed climbing down from the top bunk. No one saw him as he walked out of the locked barracks. And no one saw him as he walked through the sleeping work site. And no one saw him as he found discarded clothes near the far dumpster that allowed him to change out of his green work suit.

There were guards stationed at the front entrance. V watched them from a distance as they sat in their lighted guard box. They looked like toy soldiers under a child’s spotlight. There was a police car parked just outside the entrance. V couldn’t tell whether there was anybody in the car as his eyes strained in the darkness. It didn’t matter. V decided it was better to walk through the fence than to try to make it past the guards at the front entrance. He chose the north fence on the opposite side of the camp.

The fence tickled as V walked through it, out into the open road. The terrain was still desert, but barely so, the first vestiges of more fertile ground could be felt under V’s boots as he moved away from the camp. He walked all night, out of the desert and into the highlands and through the green fields of Vitesia. The night was black at first. As V walked, the black began to glow not from a rising sun but from the buzzing lights of a very distant city. V was walking towards the capitol of Vitesia.

As V continued to walk, getting closer to the capital city, the bright lights burned the darkness, scalding the stars in the sky. V kept walking. After many miles and many hours the sun began to rise and the lights of the city faded. V was no longer surrounded by empty countryside but instead expanses of concrete.

Another hour and the rays of the sun completely bleached the lights of the city and cars began to race on the concrete. The first cars were like cockroaches scurrying across a kitchen floor hoping not to be discovered. Then there were many cars and more than many cars. V was tired and sat down on the fading grass in the middle of the concrete. He had wandered into areas that weren’t meant for pedestrians, a patch of grass that was stranded amidst lakes of concrete.

V sat on the scenery for the entire morning, until the number of cars decreased again and the sun was high in the sky. He got up and continued his walk. He thought he was only a few minutes away from the center of the city, but the concrete was as deceptive as the mirages in the desert. His journey was only half-complete. It took him as long to walk through the expanses of concrete as it took him to walk from the worksite to the edge of the capital.

It was disorienting, this part of the walk. Unlike his walk through the fields of the countryside where the scenery changed from desert to plains to grass to concrete, nothing changed now. The concrete remained the same, the cars and the buildings that lined the concrete remained the same. V walked and kept walking. He felt like he was in a stage play that could afford only one backdrop.

The sun fell. V was out of the concrete that surrounded the city and was now walking on the concrete in the city. It was different. The concrete outside of the capital was cracked and pot-holed and faded. The concrete inside the capital was smoother and darker and sleeker. It was a runway for tourists and businessmen and businesswomen. Those tourists and businessmen and businesswomen were on the streets with V, as he kept walking, surrounding him, crushing him like in the refugee camp. V kept walking.

As the hour moved closer to midnight, the crush of the city lessened and V noticed he was becoming tired. His body was worn down. It had broken down more easily on this journey than it had during his walk through the desert. He spotted a shelter. It was a homeless shelter in the middle of the city. It was late and the shelter had already processed everyone for the night. V went in through a side door and clung to the wall as he walked into a darkened room that was a large gymnasium with a thousand cots laid on the floor. V found an empty cot near the front of the hall and laid down. He rested on his back, his face aimed at the ceiling, his eyes closed, and listened for the night.

In the morning, everyone woke with the sunrise. V turned over in his cot to see the man next to him rummaging in a knapsack on the floor. The man gave up rummaging and with an irritated force pulled a canvas bag from underneath the cot and set it on top. The rummaging started again. A black bag emerged from the canvas bag. The black bag had a silver zipper down its side. The man unzipped the bag and removed gray clothes. The black bag was put back into the canvas bag, the knapsack, which was then returned to its place underneath the cot.

The man took off his shorts and picked up a gray pair of pants from the pile of gray clothes on top of the cot. They were pinstriped. V admired the pinstripes on the pants as the man began to put on a slightly wrinkled button up shirt. V looked past the man to the man in the cot behind, he had somehow managed to sleep in that cot with a young woman by his side. She was still lying in bed, watching her husband as he also put on a suit. It was a nice suit, if dated. The type of suit that had been fashionable several generations ago. V noticed the buttons. They were polished and shiny. V sat up in his bed and looked over the shelter, all of the men were getting dressed, all of them putting on variations of the same slightly dated gray suit.

The women and children and the few senior citizens in the hall hardly paid attention, used to the morning routine. Ties were the last thing to be put on. Some were helped by their wives or lovers since there were no mirrors in the hall, others on their own, tying and retying until they got the correct length. If the suits were similar, the ties were unique, different colors and different patterns, newer than the worn suits, brighter and bolder, like the shiny buttons on the suit of the man next to V.

After the men left, the women of the shelter rose. They began the same routine, reaching under their cots and pulling clothes from knapsacks. They also wore suits, also mostly gray, also with the feeling of something from a previous generation or a hand me down from an older sibling. The women showed no modesty as they undressed in front of each other and then dressed in front of each other. There was no room for modesty in the open shelter. V was one of the few men left after the first wave departed, the other males were senior citizens or very young boys.

V felt uncomfortable as the women undressed in front of him, ignoring everyone else as they concentrated on getting ready in the morning, all preparing to leave the shelter for the day. When there were only a few old men and old women and a few young mothers with young children left in the hall, V turned to the young nursing mother in the cot next to his. The one who had kissed a man goodbye only a few minutes earlier.

“Where did everybody go?” V asked.

“To work of course.”

“On the streets?” V was confused, he still thought it was a homeless shelter for the unemployed.

The young mother looked offended. “In the high rises. Everybody works in the high rises. If you don’t have a job in the high rises you can’t stay here.” It was a homeless shelter for the employed.

“How did you get in?” The young mother asked.

“I walked in. It was late. No one saw me.”

“You’re not from Vitesia, are you?”

“No. I’m from…” V ran through a list of nations and cities in his head, but he didn’t say any of the names on the list. “No, I’m not from here.”

“If you want to stay here, you need to get a job. Otherwise, you’ll be on the streets. And it’s hard to survive on the streets.”

“Yes. It is.”

“No. You don’t realize. You can’t beg here. Panhandling is illegal. So it’s very hard on the streets. Jay and I were on the streets for a month before he got a job in the high rises, that was right before Kiran was born.”

Another woman, an old woman, on the cot on the other side of V, had been listening to the conversation. She shouted to V.

“We don’t like your kind.”

“My kind?” V turned to her.

“You come here to take jobs, go back to where you’re from, we don’t want you here. Go back to your home.”

“I have no home.”

“That’s not my problem. It’s illegal for you to be here. If I see you in here again I’ll call the police.”

V looked hard at the old woman.

“Have you called the police on others before?”

The old woman looked away, she wasn’t going to answer. She talked to the open air. “You have one minute before I start screaming.”

V rose from his cot. He didn’t like being told what to do and purposely stayed standing for over one minute, staring down at the old woman.

After two minutes, V moved to the door. The young mother took his hand as he walked by. “Take this,” she said. “We have managed to save. This is enough for you to start over here.” V looked down at his hand, which now held several notes of the currency of Vitesia.

“I cannot accept this,” he said. “I do not need this.”

“Yes, you do.” The young mother said. “It’s hard on the streets here. This will be a start for you. Until you find a job like we did.” She looked hopeful.

“I hope you don’t expect handouts.” The old woman shouted from two cots away. V and the young mother ignored her. V put his hands over the young mother’s hands and smiled. “Thank you.”

V left the hall with the money the young mother had given him. It was enough for a night or two in a motel or for several meals or perhaps a used suit. V had not intended to take the money from the young mother. He had intended to reject the gift, but something in the old women’s demeanor made him want to defy her and something in the young mother’s hopeful young eyes made him want to agree with her. Just as he was in no place to reject mercy when he was in Damasia, he was in no place to reject charity when he was in Vitesia. Both were on short supply in their respective nations, it would be bad form to turn down such a scarce resource when it was offered.

Next Chapter: Chapter Eleven
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