Dead Tomorrow

17

Simona was hungry and she was wet. She had been walking for hours through the dark city streets in the pelting rain. This was always a bad time of year, the cold weather keeping people indoors, the lack of tourists. Hopefully there would be richer pickings in the weeks to come, as Christmas got nearer and the shopping crowds started.

She trudged past a bank that was closed, its windows dark, and wondered what people did inside banks. Important people. Rich people. Then a hotel: a doorman eyed her warily, as if signalling he was guarding the important people inside from her. Next she passed a closed mini-mart, glancing ravenously through its windows at the cans of food and jars of pickles.

She didn’t even have any metallic paint to inhale to take away the hunger pangs. Earlier in the evening she’d had an argument with Romeo and they’d fought over the last bottle and dropped it, and the paint had poured down a gutter. He’d stomped off with the dog and the remnants of the bottle, saying he was going home to get out of the rain. But she was hungry and hadn’t wanted to go back to the underground hole until she had found some food. Besides, the crying of the baby had been worse than ever.

The only thing she had eaten since yesterday was a couple of French fries, thin as matchsticks, which she had scavenged from a discarded carton on the pavement near a McDonald’s. For a while she stood, begging, outside an expensive-looking restaurant, tantalized by the smells of sizzling garlic and roasting meats, but all the dry, satisfied-looking people who had come out and climbed into their cars had ignored her, as if she was invisible.

Cars and taxis and vans sluiced past her now. She walked on, her trainers sodden, splashing through one puddle after another and not caring. Ahead of her was the Gara de Nord railway station – it would be dry inside. Some of her friends would probably be there, until the police threw them out at midnight, and they might have some food. Or she might be able to steal a chocolate bar from the station shop, which would still be open.

She climbed up the steps and went inside Bucharest’s vast, dimly lit main railway terminus. Puddles lay on the floor, glinting eerie reflections of the white, overhead sodium bulbs that stretched away, in pairs, to the far end of the building. Directly ahead, above her, was a large electronic noticeboard that read: PLECARI DEPARTURES. The round clock set into the board said 23.36.

There destinations were listed, with departure times for later that night and the next morning. Some were cities and towns she knew by name, but there were plenty she had never heard of. People talked about other places sometimes. Jobs you could get in other countries where you could earn good money and live in a nice house, and where it was always warm. She heard the clanking, rolling sound of railway carriage wheels. Maybe she could just get on a train and go to wherever it went, and maybe it would be warm there, with lots of food and no babies crying.

She passed a closed café on her right, with the sign, white on a blue background, metropol. Sitting on the ground in front of it was an old, bearded man in a woollen hat, ragged clothes and gumboots, swigging from a bottle of spirits of some kind. There was a filthy sleeping bag beside him, and everything else he owned seemed to be crammed into a tartan carrier. He nodded in recognition at Simona and she nodded back. Like most of the street people, they knew people by their faces, not by their names.

She walked on. Two cops in bright yellow jackets stood over to her left, young, mean-looking guys smoking cigarettes and looking bored. They were waiting for closer to midnight, when they would pull out their truncheons and clear out all the homeless people.

To her right was the brightly lit confectionery stall. A coffee-vending machine stood outside it with the name NESCAFE along the top. The blue-coloured counter was flanked by cabinets containing soft drinks and bottles of beer. A smart-looking man of about fifty appeared to be buying up the shop. He was dressed in a brown sports jacket, blue trousers and polished black shoes, and was filling bag after bag with packets of biscuits, sweets, chocolates, nuts and cans of soft drinks.

She stood for a moment, wondering if there was an opportunity to grab something, but the man who ran the place had already clocked her and was watching her like a hawk from the other side of the counter. If he did not catch her, the two policemen would, and she did not want a beating. Although, she considered, at least in prison she would be dry and get some food. But then they would take her back to the home, the institution.

In the institution they had sent her to school and she had liked that. She liked learning, knew she had to learn if she was ever to change her life. But she hated the institution, the other bitchy girls, the vile head who made her touch him, who beat her when she refused to take his thing in her mouth and locked her in a room, in darkness, with rats scratching, for days on end.

No, she did not want to go back there.

She passed a platform and stood still, watching the tail lights of a train pulling away, picking up speed. A solitary cleaner, in a fluorescent yellow jacket like the ones the cops were wearing, pushed a broom along the glistening wet surface of the platform.

Then she saw them, huddled in a corner, half hidden from view by a concrete pillar, and she felt a sudden surge of joy. Six familiar faces – seven if you counted the baby. She walked towards them.

Tavian, who was tall and thin, with a touch of Romany in his skin colouring, saw her first and smiled at her. He was always smiling. Not many people smiled all the time in her world, and Simona liked that he did. She liked his lean, handsome face, his warm, brown eyes, his thick, manly eyebrows. He was wearing a blue woollen hat with ear flaps, a military camouflage jacket over a grey, nylon windcheater and several layers beneath, and holding the sleeping baby, dressed in a corduroy jumpsuit and wrapped in a blanket. He was nineteen and this was his third child. The first two had been taken into care.

Beside him stood Cici, the baby’s mother. Cici, who she thought was about seventeen, was always smiling too, as if this whole life was a big joke that made you laugh all the time. Tiny, and still plump from her pregnancy, she wore baggy green jogging trousers and white trainers that looked so new they must have been freshly stolen today. Her face was round and pudgy, with a couple of front teeth missing, and was encased in her blue and white striped hoodie. She reminded Simona of pictures of Eskimos she had once seen, in a geography lesson at school.

She did not know the names of the others in the group. One was a sour-looking boy of about thirteen, dressed in a knitted ski hat, a bulky black jacket, jeans and trainers, who always had his hands in his pockets, like he did tonight, and who said nothing. Next to him stood another boy, who could have been his elder brother, with a weaselly face, a thin moustache, and spikes of fair hair matted to his forehead by the rain, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.

There were two other girls. One, the eldest of this group, was in her mid-twenties and looked Romany too. She had long, lank dark hair and her skin was wizened by years of outdoors life. The other, who was twenty, but looked twice her age, was parcelled up in a fleece-lined jacket over bulky thermal trousers, holding a lit cigarette in one hand. In the other hand was a plastic bag containing a bottle of paint, the neck of which she held to her nose, inhaling and exhaling with her eyes closed.

‘Simona! Hey!’ Tavian raised his hand in greeting.

Simona slapped him a high five.

‘How are you? Where’s Romeo?’ Tavian greeted her.

She shrugged. ‘I saw him earlier. How are you all? How’s the baby?’

Cici beamed at her, but said nothing. She rarely spoke. It was Tavian who responded.

‘They tried to take the baby, two nights ago, but we ran!’

Simona nodded. The authorities did that: they would take the baby from you, but leave you. They would put the baby into some kind of state home. Like the ones she had run away from, repeatedly, from the time she was about eight years old until, four or five years ago now, she had managed to stay away permanently.

There was a silence. They were all looking at her. Tavian and Cici smiling, the others vacantly, as if they expected her to have brought something – food, or perhaps news – but she had brought nothing out of the dark, wet night.

‘Have you found anywhere new to sleep?’ she asked.

Tavian’s smile momentarily faded and he shook his head forlornly. ‘No, and the police are worse recently. They are hitting us all the time, moving us on. Sometimes, if they have nothing else to do, they follow us through the night.’

‘The ones who tried to take the baby?’

He shook his head, extracted a bent cigarette stub from a box and lit it, rocking the baby gently with his free arm. ‘Not them, no. They called someone, some special unit.’

‘I heard of a good place, where there is space – along by the heating pipe,’ Simona said.

He shrugged indifferently. ‘We’re OK. We are managing.’

She never really understood this group. They were no different from herself and they had no more than she had. In some ways she was better off, because she at least had a place to go to that was her home. These people were completely nomadic. They slept wherever they could – in alleys, in the shelter of shop-front porches, or out in the open, huddled together for warmth. They knew about the heating pipes, but they never went to them. She did not understand that, but there was a lot about the people she met that she did not understand.

Like the man approaching them now, laden with carrier bags. The man she had seen at the confectionery stall. He was middle-aged, with a slightly smug smile that made Simona instantly wary of him.

‘You look hungry, so I bought you some food,’ he said, and beamed enthusiastically, holding the bags out.

Suddenly they were all pushing past her, jostling, grabbing at the bags. The man stood there releasing them contentedly. He was of stocky build, with a pleasant, cultured-looking face and well-groomed hair. His open-neck white shirt, his brown jacket, his dark blue trousers and his shiny shoes all looked expensive, but she wondered why, on a night like this, he was not wearing a coat – he could clearly afford one.

Just one bag he held back, waiting until the rush had subsided and people had retreated, each inspecting their sudden windfall, and then he handed it to Simona. She peered inside at a treasure trove of sweets and biscuits.

‘Please,’ he said, ‘help yourself. Take everything. It’s yours!’ He was looking at her intently.

She dug her hand in, took out a Mars bar, unwrapped and bit into it greedily. It tasted so good. Incredible! She bit some more, then more still, as if afraid someone would snatch it from her, cramming the last of it into her mouth until it was packed so full she could barely chew. Then she dug her hand into the bag again and took out a chocolate-coated biscuit, which she began to unwrap.

Suddenly there was a commotion. She felt a painful thud on her shoulder and cried out in shock, turning round, her bag falling to the floor. A cop was standing behind her, black truncheon raised, a leer of hatred on his face, about to strike her again. She put her hands up and felt a blow on her wrist so hard and painful she was sure he had broken it. He was raising his arm to strike again.

There were police all around them. Seven or eight of them, maybe more.

She heard a loud crack and saw Tavian fall over.

Cici screamed, ‘My baby, my baby!’

Simona saw a truncheon strike Cici full in the mouth, busting her gums open and splintering her teeth.

Truncheon blows were hailing down on them all.

Suddenly she felt her hand being gripped and was jerked backwards, clear of the police. As she turned, she saw it was the man who had bought the sweets. A tall, bony cop with a small, rat-like mouth, brandishing his truncheon as if it was going to hit them both, shouted out something. The man dug his hand into his jacket pocket and produced a cluster of banknotes.

The cop took the money and waved them away, then turned his attention back to the mob, raising his truncheon and bringing it down with a sickening thud on someone’s back – Simona could not see whose.

Bewildered, she stared at the man, who was pulling her hand once more.

‘Quick! Come, I’ll get you away.’

She looked at him, unsure whether she could trust him, then back at the mêlée. She saw Cici on her knees, screaming hysterically, blood pouring from her mouth, no longer holding the baby. All of the street people were on the ground now, a shapeless, increasingly bloody mound, sinking further and further beneath the hail of batons. The police were laughing. They were having fun.

This was sport to them.

Moments later, still being pulled by her rescuer’s iron grip, she tripped down the stairs of the station’s front entrance, out into the pelting rain and towards the open rear door of a large black Mercedes.