The Rebel and the Thief Read online

  The news on Facebook was depressing. The president had declared war on the virus and the government had announced a state of emergency, but still the disease continued to spread. There was a ban on public gatherings. Schools and universities were forced to close; most stores were shut down too. Train and bus services were limited and irregular. People were advised to stay at home. But what about those of us who didn’t have a home?

  On a plot of wasteland surrounded by a construction fence, we found a settlement of shacks, huts, and shanties put up by other illegals. Billboards on the fence told us that one day a building development called Beautiful Tuscany would stand on this site. After long, tough negotiations, my father managed to swap his moped and our television for a small shack, complete with dishes, three pots, and a pan.

  Our new residence consisted of a single room with a dirt floor, just big enough for our four sleeping mats and a firepit. Thida could poke her fingers through the holes in the plank walls, and the roof leaked even in a light shower. The only toilet in the settlement—a makeshift pit surrounded by plastic sheeting—was only a few feet away, and the stench of shit and garbage filled the air night and day. When we wanted water, we had to lug it in cans and buckets from a canal two blocks down the road.

  Still, we were relieved to have a home again.

  All day long, Thida and I wandered around between the shanties with nothing to do. We were used to spending time together. Sometimes, at the Benzes, she’d helped me with the gardening; I’d taught her how to cut the grass with shears, weed the beds, climb a palm tree—and how to clean the spirit house and change the flowers and water without disturbing the resident spirit. Now we sat for hours in the shade of the “Beautiful Tuscany” billboard, playing with marbles someone had swapped her for her barrettes.

  At first we’d amused ourselves by watching videos, but then I was forced to sell my phone. I had trouble letting go of that phone. I’d saved up for it for six months. Not being able to make calls wasn’t so bad; there was no one I wanted to speak to anyway. But it was more than just a phone. It was my window to the world, my refuge. With those little white buds in my ears, I could withdraw, and for the first time in my life I was free to choose what I listened to.

  Thida and I soon discovered that life in a settlement of poor people and illegals (I prefer to avoid the words slum and shantytown) was not only boring, but full of unpleasant surprises. We’d been there only two days when someone came in the night and stole one of our cooking pots. Three nights later, my mother’s phone disappeared. The general atmosphere was one of suspicion and distrust. There was a fat man called Bagura who was something like the boss of the settlement. Bagura had a white beard, long hair, and red teeth; he sat outside his shanty all day, sweating and chewing betel nuts, and occasionally scratching himself between his legs and belching loudly. He always had a big handkerchief in his hand, and with this he alternately mopped his brow and blew his permanently blocked nose. People came to him when they were hard up, bringing their last possessions to sell to raise money for food—cellphones, gold earrings, nose rings.

  Bagura had a wife who was even fatter than he was. He also had two sons, Yuri and Taro, who did his haggling for him. They were universally feared because of their reputation for forcing down even the lowest prices.

  Bagura settled any disputes that arose; for some reason I couldn’t fathom, no one dared question his decisions. I didn’t like him or his sons and gave them a wide berth. People said they had spies everywhere and that nothing in the settlement was hidden from them for long. Many believed that Bagura had connections to the police—this, apparently, was why the authorities left us in peace, and I had heard that, to thank Bagura for protecting them, every family in the settlement made him a weekly gift of a few coins, half a cup of rice, or a couple of cigarettes. I never asked my father if this was true—or, indeed, if he himself made such payments.

  The settlement grew fuller by the week. There were soon two, or even three families living in some shacks, and new shanties went up at the edges of the site—flimsy constructions of wood, corrugated iron, and plastic sheeting. The government announced that the war on the virus had entered the next phase. They ordered people to stay at home except to go shopping or in an emergency, and to keep at least six feet apart when they did.

  It wasn’t easy for us to follow the new rules. Our shanties stood cheek by jowl, with rarely more than a yard between them and only just room inside to sleep. How were we supposed to get through a day without going out, let alone weeks? Luckily, the fence around Beautiful Tuscany was high, so we didn’t worry too much about the authorities to begin with. We thought that as long as we kept to ourselves, no one would care whether we followed the rules.

  By this time, all building sites, restaurants, hotels, guesthouses, factories, and stores had been shut down—only grocery stores and drugstores were kept open. There were no more dirty dishes for the illegals to wash, no more cheap T-shirts to be sewn, no hotel rooms to clean, no laundry to iron. Rich people laid off their nannies, cooks, chauffeurs, and gardeners. Anyone without relatives to go to fled to one of the settlements that were springing up in parks, under bridges, on river-banks, and on the outskirts of the airport.

  * * *

  —

  My father was convinced that our impoverished circumstances were the result of our karma. He thought we must have grossly violated the Buddha’s rules in our former lives to be punished with such a fate. The monks at the monastery school had taught us the same, but I found it hard to understand what my little sister’s karma had to do with her hunger. For me, Thida was just Thida—a sweet, generous, gentle girl, who always shared everything and wouldn’t harm a spider (even if they did creep her out). She didn’t deserve such misery.

  That night, then, I lay beside her, listening to her whimpering and trying to work out where I could find her something to eat. Sometimes in the past few weeks, trucks had stopped near the settlement—from churches, the Red Cross, the UN, or some international aid organization whose name meant nothing to me. Men and women had stood on the truck beds, throwing bottles of water and packets of rice, noodles, flour, and instant soup into the crowd. Word spread through the shanties like wildfire, and anyone fit enough ran there as fast as they could.

  People thronged around the trucks, stretching out their hands in supplication or anger, pushing, jostling, cursing. I arrived too late every time. Either the food had already been distributed, or the volunteers didn’t throw far enough, or people snatched the packets from in front of my face. I would return home empty-handed, wondering what I was doing wrong. Was I too polite? Or just not hungry enough? But if I wasn’t, my sister certainly was, and I felt shame at my inability to help her. The food trucks clearly weren’t a solution, and in any case, I wasn’t sure when the next truck would come—or if there’d ever be another. It had been days since the last.

  Where else could I lay hands on food for Thida? I thought of the cellar in the Benzes’ house, where the storeroom was bigger than our shack. I’d been down there a few times to fetch things up to the kitchen for my mother—rice, noodles, oil, cans.

  I was going to have to steal. To become a thief. Did I have it in me? Once, when I was a little boy, I’d pocketed a piece of sugarcane candy from the nice old Indian at the market, who often slipped us kids treats. He didn’t notice and even gave a friendly wave when we went on our way. I felt so guilty that I returned to his stall the next day and left the money for the candy on the counter when he wasn’t looking. Not the most auspicious start to a career as a thief.

  This was different, though. I wouldn’t be stealing for myself, but for Thida. The Benzes had more than enough, and when the crisis was over and my father and I had work again, I could return what I’d taken. I would only be “borrowing” the food.

  I was pretty sure that the Benzes wouldn’t have hired a new security guard. That didn’t mean, of course, that I could sneak in at the gate or climb over the barbed wire, but I had another idea. I knew a place behind the bushes at the foot of the garden wall where the Benzes’ dogs used to dig like wild things. Something drew them to the spot; they’d churn up the earth and burrow right under the foundations of the wall. I was always having to fill in the holes. That part of the garden abutted an undeveloped and overgrown plot of land that I could get into without being seen—if I dug in the right place, it wouldn’t be long till I was under the wall and out on the other side. There was a barred door to the cellar at the back of the villa, and I knew where Joe, the Benzes’ son, kept a key for when he came home late at night and didn’t want to wake anyone. The dogs would recognize me; I wouldn’t have to worry about them.

  I had made up my mind. I got up, grabbed my flip-flops, stepped over my sleeping parents, and crept out of the shack. If all went to plan, I’d be back by dawn.

  TWO

  I knew I was taking a big risk. Anyone caught on the street after curfew without special permission faced a hefty fine, and if you couldn’t pay, you went to jail. The better-heeled neighborhoods were even said to be patrolled by soldiers who shot suspects on sight.

  It was about an hour to the Benzes’ house from our settlement if you walked straight there. But I had to avoid the broad, brightly lit boulevards and thoroughfares; only the dark backstreets and alleyways offered relative safety. The cloudless, moonlit night didn’t make things any easier.

  I took a piece of rusty corrugated iron to dig with, climbed through a gap in the fence, and slipped out onto the street. The silence was creepy.

  At first I met no one but stray cats and dogs, and they kept out of my way. After walking for a few minutes, I found myself at the corner of Patriots Avenue, an eight-lane thoroughfare with so many
lights and streetlamps that you could see every cockroach on the road. In the past, I’d seen traffic jams here even at midnight, but now the place was deserted, as if everyone had fled the city. I needed to cross the avenue and walk a good quarter of a mile under the streetlamps before I could turn off into the next alleyway.

  Head down, I hurried past a hotel and a row of shuttered stores, and was about to dash across the road when I heard sirens and roaring engines in the distance. I looked around nervously. There were no parked cars or cookshops to hide behind. The noise came closer. I wriggled under a bench at a bus stop and lay flat on the ground, clutching a metal bench leg in both hands, as if it could protect me. When I thought of the grief it would cause my mother if I got picked up by soldiers, I felt physically sick. Two police cars streaked past with blue lights flashing, followed by three, four, five military trucks. Even when they were well out of sight and earshot, I didn’t move. My body was rigid with fear. I contemplated turning back, but the thought of Thida’s hunger drove me on.

  I didn’t start to feel safe until I reached the Benzes’ neighborhood. I knew my way around here; the streets were relatively narrow and only dimly lit, and they were lined with parked cars that would provide cover if necessary. Through the black-barred gate at the Benzes, I saw the banyan tree and the spirit house in the pale moonlight, and I thought with regret how good we’d had it here. I crept on to the vacant lot next door. Two palms and a bougainvillea spilling over the wall marked the spot I was looking for. The soil was soft and damp; the rainy season had begun with a heavy downpour the day before. The corrugated iron made a good spade; I could use it to cut through roots and shovel earth out of the steadily growing hole. The bottom of the wall was a good arm’s length down, and it took me half an hour’s sweaty work to break through to the other side. Another half hour and I’d made the hole big enough to crawl through.

  Garden lamps buzzing with insects lit up the villa, a white, two-storied house with a roof terrace overlooking the city as far as the river. A broad driveway led to the pillared portico of the main entrance. I’d heard that an American businessman had built the place at the turn of the century as a miniature version of the White House.

  I crept past the sprawling hibiscus and bamboo, hurried over the neglected-looking lawn, and dived down the stairs that led to the cellar door. The key was behind a loose brick in the wall. I turned it soundlessly in the lock and slipped inside. My heart was pounding in my throat. Keeping my fingers on the wall to get my bearings, I groped my way through the darkness. If I remembered right, the first two doors led to lumber rooms and the third to the laundry; beyond that was the storeroom.

  I worked my way forward, one door at a time, and when I came to the fourth door, I pushed it open a crack, squeezed through, and pulled it shut behind me. I took a few deep breaths, then felt around for the light switch. What I saw when the light flickered on was like something in a dream: the room was stacked from floor to ceiling with bags of rice, boxes of noodles, flour, sugar, salt, bottles of various kinds of oil, fish sauce, soy sauce, spices, eggs, vegetables. I spotted pasta and mineral water from Italy, jams from England, beer from Germany, crates of wine from France and Australia. The Benzes had laid in enough to last them for years.

  I heard the abbot’s voice in my head: “You must not steal. The Buddha forbids it.” He had been a patient teacher, sympathetic and understanding, but absolutely intolerant of pupils who disobeyed the Buddha’s teachings. I saw him before me, his shaven head, his wise eyes, his round, wrinkled face with its gentle smile. For ten years he had taught me at the monastery school, and all that time I had been an eager and biddable pupil. He would not approve of what I was about to do.

  In my mind I began to argue with him: My little sister is crying with hunger. My mother is sick. We don’t have the money for a small bag of rice or even a cupful, let alone medicine. My father and I can’t get work, no matter how dirty or badly paid. I would trim the lawns of the rich with nail scissors till I had blisters on my fingers. I would clean their toilets with my bare hands if they’d let me. But they won’t. Employment has become as scarce as gold.

  Gingerly I hefted a twenty-pound bag of rice off the shelf. A bottle of oil. Two cartons of eggs. Noodles. Then it occurred to me that I had no idea how I was going to carry all this stuff. And suddenly I heard noises. A door creaked. Someone was tiptoeing down the stairs. I didn’t dare move, but held my breath and looked around for somewhere to hide. The footsteps came closer. It was too late to run away—or even to turn off the light.

  I was trapped.

  Out in the passage, someone pushed down the handle and opened the door.

  It was Mary.

  She cocked her head to one side, just as she had as a child. “Niri. What are you doing here?” She sounded curious rather than surprised.

  Mary. My heart began to race the way it used to. It was like going back in time. Mary and I hadn’t spoken for four years. If I’d heard her voice at all during that time, then it had been only once, at a distance. I’d never dreamed we would one day stand face-to-face again.

  “I saw you from my window. How did you get over the wall?” She hobbled into the room, closing the door behind her. She was wearing a red dressing gown embroidered with flowers and tied at her waist in a double knot. Her long black hair was piled up in a bun on top of her head.

  “I didn’t come over it, I came under it.”

  She looked at my filthy arms and hands, and raised her eyebrows in respect. “Not bad. But you should have cleaned yourself up a bit. You’re leaving quite a trail.” She pointed at the dirt on the ladder and on the shelves I’d touched.

  I was so ashamed, I said nothing. I was embarrassed, too, by my appearance. The grime on my body and clothes wasn’t all from my tunneling effort. It was weeks since I’d last had a proper wash or shower, or even cleaned my teeth. I probably stank.

  “How did you open the door?”

  “I know where Joe hides the key.”

  “You were lucky. My father’s about to have a burglar alarm installed. Another few days and the sirens would have woken the entire neighborhood.”

  “What were you doing at your window in the middle of the night?”

  “What do you think? I was bored. Couldn’t sleep. Weren’t you scared of getting shot? I thought there was a curfew.”

  “I don’t think they’d really shoot you just for being out at night.”

  “Oh yes, they do. There’s been quite a spate of burglaries around here recently—didn’t you read about it on Facebook? A lot of houses are empty, because people have fled the virus and gone to their second homes by the sea. Yesterday the police shot a taxi driver who was walking along Patriots Avenue in the middle of the night. They thought he was a looter. You were lucky. What’s it like out?”

  “Creepy.”

  She looked at me. “You’re pretty brave.”

  The admiration in her voice made me feel better. But maybe I was imagining things.

  Mary and I were almost exactly the same age. She’d turned eighteen a few weeks ago; I’d been eighteen for a few months. As kids we’d spent a lot of time together. Even when we started school and she was chauffeured back and forth to a private school while I was taught by the local monks, we had continued to see a lot of each other. Every afternoon I would wait patiently by the gate, and as soon as she saw me, Mary would jump out of the car and run to meet me. Unlike her brother, she came to the bungalow almost every day. I helped her with her math homework; she helped me with reading and writing.

  Like brother and sister, my parents once said wistfully.

  All that would change. Mary suddenly had little time to spare for me; she spoke to me less with every passing week. Her mother asked me to start calling her Mary rather than Narong, because that’s what she was called at school. I continued to wait for her at the gate every day, but instead of jumping out of the car to meet me, she only waved furtively from the back seat. It hurt terribly. I felt so abandoned. There was no one to explain what had happened, and I was left wondering what I could have done to deserve such punishment. No one, I told myself, loses his best friend for no reason.