Rough Justice

I tried to raise myself off the floor but the pain in my skull forced me back down again. The room was in semi-darkness from the cloth that covered the window opening but I could see that it was bare like a prison cell.  In the opposite wall there was a door which I knew would be locked even before I managed to crawl across to try it. The events which had led me to this place came back to me through the dull aching in my head and I cursed myself for having stopped.  I should never have stopped.

I had been into town to post some letters and spent an hour on the café terrace drinking cold beer in the shade. To get back home I’d taken the path through the olive groves which came out above the small village of Goncinha where I was staying.  It was autumn and the carob pods were dark and heavy on the trees which lined the path.  I heard the shouts up ahead of me and rounded a corner to see four gipsy youths with long bamboo poles trying to dislodge the pods from a tree onto a sheet of sacking which they’d spread on the ground beneath.  In the higher branches two more boys were precariously perched attempting to get the carobs which couldn’t be reached from the ground. 

As I watched there was a disagreement between the boys up in the tree and I saw the bigger of the two push the other.  The smaller boy lost his footing and fell to the ground bouncing off branches as he dropped.  He lay at the base of the tree unmoving and, after exchanging looks, the boys on the ground dropped what they were holding and fled.  The youth in the tree and I looked at each other and there was a smirk on his face as though he was challenging me to tell what I had seen, but my immediate concern was for the boy who had fallen.  He still hadn’t moved but he was breathing fitfully as I crouched over him, and I knew that I would have to call an ambulance.

Before I got back to my feet I heard the approach of running men and a group of gipsies appeared with the boys who had summoned them at their heels.  The youth still up in the tree shouted something, pointing at me, and rough hands grabbed my arms and held me immobile.  I protested in my stilted Portuguese not knowing whether they understood me, so I struggled violently against my captors, and that’s when something exploded in my head.

The door to the room opened and I recognised one of the men who took hold of me as one who had been at the tree.  There was another with him who was more neatly dressed and spoke to me in English.  He explained that the boy who had fallen out of the tree had died and I was being brought before the head man to give my version of events.  We emerged into the harsh sunlight and crossed a patch of ground where chickens fled from beneath our feet.  I looked at the sprawl of dilapidated structures which made up the gipsy camp and marvelled that little more than a few hundred metres distant was the main road from the town down to the capital city on the coast.  I felt as though I was in a different country altogether, and more disturbing still, a place which operated under a different set of laws, and where I was looked upon with suspicion.

We passed through a curtain into the interior of a stone dwelling and entered a large room where several men sat or leaned against the walls.  I was turned to face a man of some fifty years who sat alone at one end and was clearly the authority in that place.  It was unlike any courtroom that I had seen or read about, though that was clearly its function at that moment, and this man would preside as judge.

The youths who had been harvesting the carobs were opposite me and their version of events had already been heard.  The one who spoke English told me that the bigger boy had declared that I had shouted at the boys to stop what they were doing and leave the carobs alone.  He said that I had thrown a large stone at the other boy hitting him on the head and causing him to lose his grip and plunge to the ground.  I hotly disputed these accusations saying that the tree didn’t belong to me and even if it had I would not have stopped the boys. I told my story that there had been a dispute in the tree ending with that fatal push, but the group of boys shook their heads when it was translated for all to hear. 

My interpreter approached the leader and there was a heated discussion at the end of which the set of the head man’s shoulders told me that his decision had been reached.  The other came back to me and explained that the head man knew the bigger boy to be a troublemaker and, although he was inclined to believe my story, it was his job not necessarily to see that justice be done, but that his people were appeased. By stopping to try to help the stricken boy I had in fact provided the gipsies with a scapegoat for something which would no doubt otherwise have been passed off as an accident.  To deny the father of the dead boy vengeance for the loss of his son would not be in the best interests of anybody.  Apart from me. But in their world I didn’t count for much, just as they didn’t in mine.

A man separated himself from the others pulling a knife from his jacket.  He started towards me.  I should never have stopped.