… rained overnight and the ground was clagged and heavy. In the shade under the trees, puddles are filmed with a thin coating of ice and he shivers despite T-shirt, jeans and the jacket supplied by the company. Jacket, hi-vis vest, boots, to be paid off in deductions each week. The jacket was a size larger than he’d have preferred. They’d run out of his size by the time it was his turn to be kitted out, but it was warm. Way better than nothing. He’d been warned.
‘It’s cold down there,’ Uncle Joe said before they left. But he had had no idea. Not until he walked off the plane, backpack over one shoulder, hours of flying behind him, watching all the movies, good Chinese action movies, drinking all the wine, eating all the food and the little packs of peanuts. Asking for extra. He had paid for it, after all, out of his own pocket. Might as well make the most of it.
Beside him, Uncle Joe had slumped into heavy sleep from the moment of take-off, his head lolling. Around him the others slept or sat in tiny pools of light playing games or watching some superhero leap and kick, the body count rising. Some he recognised from the time doing their assessment task, proving their skills doing renovations to the agency office.
There’d been four hundred waiting for interview. A great milling crowd of men like himself from all over, all gathered outside the Aspiration International Placement Agency off Don Quijote Street. Lining the stairs, clutching their CVs, ready to answer the questions: Where have you worked? (Dubai, he answered. And Iraq. US bases, big companies, lots of experience.) Proving he knew his job, was a good worker, a skilled worker, not some new boy fresh from the provinces trying to break in. Proving he could do the calculations, knew how to measure, knew how to estimate, doing his best in a few minutes to stand out from the crowd.
‘Are you excited to work in New Zealand?’ the employer had asked, a big unsmiling Kiwi with white hands. ‘Helping with the rebuilding of the city after the earthquake?’ And he had replied, ‘One hundred per cent, sir! Oh yes! One hundred per cent excited!’ Only twenty places.
And then the two-month assessment for those who had been shortlisted, doing renovations at the agency offices, all of them putting in the hours, sleeping on the floor so they could get an early start. Then another assessment, another month at some resort on the coast, some fancy tourist place where they worked fast, they worked hard, proving their CV was no lie, the slow, the lazy ones dismissed on the spot. Off you go. Not wanted.
But he had made it. Borrowed his costs — airfare, visa processing, agency fee, accommodation, clothing, tools — from a lender Uncle Joe had recommended: not cheap but reasonable, not someone who’d send round the heavies to threaten the family should there be a problem. Would not demand his collateral. Would not seize the house. At least, not right away. A hundred and fifty thousand pesos at 18 per cent.
But soon he’d be earning. A three-year contract. He’d pay it all off, debt and interest. He’d prove himself, obtain good references, apply for an extension to his visa, set about getting residency, for himself and for his family. He had it all planned as he took his place among the chosen ones, waved goodbye to Maria, the press of her body still with him, to his daughter, who had clung though she had known him only six months, who was not accustomed yet to this father who arrived, then left again. She had been suspicious at first, watching warily, thumb in mouth, considering this stranger in her house. Then abruptly fell in love, climbed onto his lap, hung onto his hand, stayed as close to him as she was able. The imprint of her arms was still tight about his neck. And the boys, who watched from behind the barrier, wide-eyed, as their father joined the line of men filing through the gate, learning how it was done, this leaving. And his mother, who had pressed a little crucifix into his hand as she kissed him goodbye, weighing him down with her usual protection, the candles already lit in San Agustin, the prayer cards already purchased. He would fly once more with angels. Or Uncle Joe. A plump angel.
The cabin door had opened onto the icy air. It smelled empty. And the airport, when they walked through, was silent as if everyone had been vaporised, disappeared. The streets, too. He had sat in the van the company had sent to collect them that morning, looking out at the low wide ranks of houses rising from fog like alien craft, unanchored. Adrift. And he felt that familiar clutch of longing for home.
He’d get over it. It never lasted long. He’d work, start sending money to Maria and the point of what he was doing would take care of the longing. The hostel was company-owned, $150 a week for a bed in a shared room in one of those houses. His roommates were Filipinos, a couple of Brazilians had the room next door, and the front of the house was occupied by some men who might be Irish, he couldn’t tell. Just workers, like himself, caught up in the global tide, swept this way and that as they were required to build this, demolish that. A great flood of men in knock-off Nikes, jeans and sweatshirts bearing the logos of Harvard, or Oxford, or some other noble institution. Some of that shoal, washed into this bywater, playing cards around a kitchen table, waiting until the time is right to Skype over the time divide, to talk to the child’s face peering into the screen to find him, holding up the picture she has drawn at school of the plane flying through a blue strip of sky and that’s you, that’s you sitting in the window looking out. In red felt-tip, one of the floating world, the drifting world of men who fly about the planet from one site to another. The world is full of such people, such sites.
This one is demolition. A big house in a garden near the river. They’ve already got the trees out, sawed them down to stumps in order to let the machinery in. It’s going to be a messy job. The place has been partially burned, leaving joists and rafters turned to charcoal. The ground is littered with shattered glass, buckled iron and smoke-blackened bricks. They’re loading the rubbish into a dump truck for disposal at some waste site, buried under the earth or dumped into a harbour for reclamation.
‘Here you go, Tarzan,’ said one of the Irishmen, handing him his tool kit. ‘Straighten out that lot. Might get something for that.’
It’s a kind of turret propped up with scaffolding to one side of the house. Little arched windows, wooden panelling, more or less intact and untouched by the fire. Something here might be salvaged. He sets his hard hat straight and starts work. The sun is up. Light catches the drops of water strung on every length of old timber. It gleams on broken glass, melts the ice puddle under the broken trees. The earth steams where the light falls. He takes the hammer he has been given, not the best quality, not the best fit to his hand, but it will do, and he sets the tines about a nail. He tugs. He pulls up and away.
The nail doesn’t loosen. It has been well hit, driven firmly into the wood, but he works at it and suddenly it comes away. A piece of framing splits apart. It falls to the ground.
And up on the roof, where they are wrenching off the iron, and already stand in the full light of the winter sun, someone begins to whistle …