It’s a desk job, watching everything on CCTV monitors. If we walked about the yards in person, we could see only a small part of it at a time. But the disadvantage is that when I see movement on a screen, it can take me six minutes to appear at that location in person, so whatever it was that I saw, it had a good chance to scoot off. So I just log my observation. Even though it was confusing. I didn’t know what I had seen. The brain tries to interpret a blur, a shape, a shadow that shouldn’t be there and the brain fails. The CCTV camera isn’t at all like being there. Really, if your brain doesn’t recognize something, then it might as well not be there. If they hired a second security guard, they’d pay twice as much but then they’d have a little security. I could be on walkie-talkie with the second guard, who would on average take only three minutes to get there in person. However, a Hang-gu person needs only a few seconds to disappear.
I don’t know much about the Hang-gu people. That’s my name for them. They probably call themselves, in whatever their own language is, “The people.” All we really know is that they know how to get what they need to live from shipping containers and refuse bins. Also that they are good at hiding. Also that they can embark and disembark without being seen. We don’t know how many are at our port, or at any port. We don’t know anything about their social structure, if they have one.
A seaport is a complicated and regulated place. I think that they had to have started as insiders, employees. Otherwise, they wouldn’t know what we know, and what we don’t know. Maybe they met as employees and escaped from our civilization so they could create their own.
Why do people want to disappear? You tell me. Why would you want to disappear? Even young people have nervous breakdowns. Sometimes, for some kids, in some families, the pressure can be too much. You think life can be simpler, even if it’s only a different kind of complexity, one that you are better suited for, one that could be a big relief. Before you’re twenty-five, or maybe thirty, you don’t choose who you are supposed to be. And maybe who you are just doesn’t fit. Like being born neither male nor female, you don’t choose the life you’re given. Your parents have chosen it; your clan has chosen it; your religion has chosen it; and your language has chosen it; so there’s no room for who you need to be.
Maybe you don’t want to marry the person everyone expects you to marry, or to live the life that everyone expects you to live. Maybe you have a job and you hate your boss, and a great existential doubt creeps up on you and you realize that you’re too young to die as a custodian, or a gantry operator, or a security guard. That’s the problem. That’s the problem that disappearing solves. You can drop all the shoulds, all the pressures that you can’t even name. You can escape it. You can just walk away, leave your problems behind. But instead of walking off a pier with a lead belt on your waist, you can disappear. Someone has been watching you, and they catch you before you jump. Meanwhile, everyone at work and at home can assume that you’ve drowned and can never be found in the salty sea. They can assume whatever they want, because what you care about is better for you than anything they’ve ever offered you.
These people who have disappeared have had many origins, but then they meet others like themselves, and they find opportunities to merge. A French or Provencal couple from Marseille, where I work, a pair of women from Seoul, a young man from Amsterdam or New York City, and many others from other seaports. They meet in similar circumstances and not only share their knowledge but begin to create their own language, at first in pidgin, but then they teach it to their children, and so a new language emerges, grows, transforms, and matures.
This new language makes it easier for them to do what they do. It gives them keys to their environment, the ports of the world, keys for how to survive, keys for how to connect with each other, and keys for how and when to disappear.
What are their lives like? I guess that they make comfortable homes in a container, and that they know how to have it moved where they’ll be safe, and how to remove their container from the system, so they won’t be bothered. That’s their apartment. In other containers are their shops, storage rooms, and entertainment centers.
Then there are their daily needs. A lot of shipments that travel through our ports are food and water. If some boxes are missing on arrival, the workers at the origin or destination port take the blame, but insurance pays for it in any case. Sanitation requires more care, but it’s not difficult to arrange. A very small part of their day is needed for obtaining their necessities, which leaves time for making art, music, singing, dancing, and playing games. I imagine that they’ve developed their own games, their own music, a fusion of many cultures, their own cuisine, unlike any others.
I’ll say one thing for them. Any port that has Hang-gu has fewer rats. I think that’s because they outcompete them. The Hang-gu are smarter, and they don’t eat the poisoned bait that we put out for the rats. I don’t think that they eat rats, but maybe they have their own traps that work better than ours. At any rate, they fill a similar niche in the same environment, so—fewer rats!
I worked here for twenty-three years and I actually don’t know if I ever met a Hang-gu. After all, they’re just people, like us. But I think that they can appear and apply for work, if they want to or need to, as operators at the port, cleaners, repairmen and women, or even security personnel, not that the company has ever wanted to hire more than one person per shift.
Today, people have to have identities. You know what I mean. Each of us has an identification number from a government. It’s become nearly impossible for anyone to disappear, or to appear out of nowhere without a birth date, a home town, parents, siblings, ownership records, credit cards, and so forth. I don’t know how the Hang-gu do it, but I think they can. I think they could go into business serving witness-protection agencies, helping people disappear and then reappear in another place where nobody will recognize them. They could also help criminals on the run disappear and find a new life in Buenos Aires, but somehow I don’t think that they’re running a criminal enterprise. I think that the safety and security of their own people would be more at risk if they collaborated with anyone they couldn’t trust.
I guess they hadn’t trusted me. I don’t know why. Maybe I would have reported them, but I don’t think that any law-enforcement agency would have any more ability to apprehend them than we had. You can’t catch a butterfly without a net, and I think that a net for catching a Hang-gu hasn’t been invented. It’s like the cat trying to pounce on the red spot of a laser, or like finding the end of a rainbow.
You can’t beat them, but maybe you can join them. Not me; I’m too old. Their own population might be self-sustaining, but I’m sure they know about inbreeding and look for young people who want to disappear. I doubt that they abduct anyone. If a person’s been abducted, they’d more likely want to escape their Hang-gu life, and that could risk “The people.”
Maybe I’m overestimating them. Early one Saturday morning, I came to work and found that their means were more limited than their needs. It was still a bit dark out. After I exchanged positions with the colleague who had worked the night shift, and took my seat before the monitors, I noticed an unusual sign on a container in the eastern sector. It was the Croix-Rouge symbol. I decided to investigate it myself. I thought I could log my observation later.
The door of the container with the Croix-Rouge was away from our nearest camera, and it was open a crack, which was also unusual, and a light shined out from it. I swung it open and found a small child, maybe seven years old, lying on a cot and moaning. I’m not a doctor but I can recognize a sick child when I see one. I said bonjour and his or her eyes opened. The child didn’t seem to be afraid, so I felt its forehead. Obviously, a high fever.
I have a cousin, Pierre, who’s a doctor, so I called him. I put the Croix-Rouge sign inside with the child and went to meet Pierre at the gate. He arrived with an emergency kit, complete with medicines and bandages. I rushed him to where the child was, and was relieved that the child was still there. Pierre examined the child and found an infected cut on the left ankle. He gave the child a pain killer and antibiotic, then dressed the wound and wrapped it up. I told Pierre that I would pay for this treatment, and I asked him for his discretion. He said, “No problem. Also, I won’t ask you whose child this is and why you’ve taken this responsibility, at least not until later.” I knew the child’s parents were listening, and I realized that we’d be in danger if they thought the child was threatened, so I reassured Pierre. I didn’t tell him about the Hang-gu, but I told him that I was only accidentally involved, but that I knew the child’s parents were near, but that they didn’t want to be discovered .
All the confusion immediately cleared up for me. I realized that whereas I had looked for evidence, expecting to find things that shouldn’t be there, I should have noticed the absences, the lack of evidence. When you use a chalkboard, your lines of chalk are evidence that can be interpreted, but when you clean a chalkboard, you are creating negative evidence. I hadn’t realized before that negative evidence can be interpreted, too. Maybe seeing the absence of life though CCTV monitors had blinded me to the possibilities that I didn’t know had always existed.
Now the Hang-gu had to trust me, and also respect my trust in Pierre. Pierre left for the child a two-week supply of antibiotics, and sufficient bandages and ointments for the wound. Pierre was a bright man and a gentleman. On the way back to the gate, I thanked him profusely. He said we could talk later. When I got back to my office, there was a small package with my name on it. It was box of bonbons. In French, that means “good-good.” I decided not to log the incident. Everything was quiet.
Monologues