Saint Death

by Marcus Sedgwick

  —¿So?—he asks.—¿What happened to you?

  Siggy shrugs.

  —I wised up. Or I started to. The first thing that dealer made me realize is that I was a migrant too. I came from Austria, but because my parents had money, because we were white, no one gave us a hard time. Almost everyone in America is a migrant, or their families were. Almost everyone. That started me thinking, what that dealer said. I set out on a long journey. I began to understand things. It is a journey I am still making, but at least now I have someone to travel with.

  Arturo looks at Carlos. He seems somber, heavy. As if Siggy’s mood has infected them all. Arturo sees there are tears collecting in the corners of Carlos’s eyes.

  —I’m sorry—he says.—Arturo, our friend, I’m sorry. You are in trouble, and I can only cry for us all.

  Arturo shakes his head, wondering what is wrong.

  —I’m okay—Carlos says.—But our society is so very machista. ¿You know? It can be hard. For people like us, it can be hard. It was hard before I found Siggy. I had no meaning, and you know, man cannot bear a meaningless life. But with Siggy, I found meaning.

  Arturo nods, gently. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t mind about Siggy and Carlos, about their life. He’s known them almost all of his short life. He knows some people still give them a hard time, but mostly strangers passing through, not people from Anapra. In Anapra, everyone knows Carlos and his white friend, the German from America. Everyone lets them be.

  Arturo has a different question for El Alemán.

  —¿Siggy? You said you set out on a journey. ¿What did you find?

  Siggy shrugs.

  —Too many things, I think. I think sometimes it’s better to know nothing. Be dumb and happy. ¿Right?

  Carlos laughs.

  —¡You don’t believe that for one minute!

  Siggy’s head droops, he takes a breath. He seems tired, so tired, and yet he lifts his head once more and looks at Arturo, who frowns. Siggy reaches out his hand and grasps Arturo’s forearm tight. Arturo is almost shocked by this gesture, how hard his old friend squeezes his arm. Life comes to Arturo in a moment and everything vibrates around him, as El Alemán looks deep into his eyes, so deep Arturo feels the need to look away, and just as strongly he feels the need to keep looking. The sun has moved farther still. Arturo’s face is sliced in two by the soft black shadows of the bars on the window.

  —Arturo—Siggy says.—You have to be strong. You will find a way. You will. Carlos and I, we are a long way down the road. You are only just beginning. But you are at the hardest point of all. You are not a kid. You are not a man. You are somewhere in the middle. You are walking over a bridge between the two, and you know how dangerous bridges are. In Juárez we all know how dangerous bridges are. ¿Right? But stay strong, be brave. Your future lies on the other side, and you can make it. Remember this: every man has to find out for himself in what particular fashion he can be saved. I believe that. You just have to find out what it is you’re looking for.

  * * *

  And it’s just about then, as I talk about these things—as I talk about dishonest trade agreements and corrupt politicians, as I talk about the vested interests of the rich nations, which is to say the rich people who run them, as I talk about life for the poor outside the borders of “civilization,” as I talk about shady deals made between dubious organizations—that I realize that people have stopped listening to me. They don’t make eye contact with me anymore, they cough quietly and suggest that no one wants to know about these things, and it’s just about then that I realize that I am the crazy one, not them. They are sane and sensible and in the right while I am the lunatic, staring at them with mad eyes and thinking furiously to myself that surely we have something better to offer than this: polite embarrassment.

  For that, it seems, is all we can manage in the face of these crimes, these breaches of brotherhood, which are the shattering of pledges we made long, long ago around campfires in dark caves, when we swore in our first tongues that we would be as one, and in that way, would prosper.

  Polite embarrassment.

  Then, I leave the room.

  * * *

  DIOS ESTÁ AQUÍ

  As Arturo emerges into the sunlight on the stoop of El Diván, he knows that something has just happened. He has the powerful feeling he has just been given something, though what it is he cannot yet say. He stands for a moment and looks west down Rancho Anapra. From here, he cannot see Mount Cristo Rey and its martyred king. What he sees instead are the people of the colonia, and their dreams. He sees the Adrenaline bike store, the grubby burger joint next to it, and, though their shutters are still rolled down, he can feel the energy inside them, behind them, the energy of people’s yearnings and strivings and desires.

  A little way down the road, a teenage girl is wheeling a plastic barrel of water she must have bought at the twenty-four-hour kiosk. It’s heavy and she’s struggling but she’s managing. She’s going to make it home. A couple of cars come and go, and Arturo catches glimpses of the drivers, feels their needs and their passions. All around him, Anapra lives, despite the horrors, despite the poverty, despite the struggles, and Arturo is sure he has never seen the place in quite this way before. Every color seems just a little brighter, every detail seems just a little sharper, every smell a little stronger. Anapra buzzes into him, and he is sure he has just been given a gift of some kind, he’s just not sure what the gift is.

  You just have to find out what it is you’re looking for, that’s what Siggy said. ¿What I’m looking for? Arturo thinks bitterly. ¿Apart from five thousand dollars? He has wasted enough time, and outside El Diván the same world is waiting for Arturo. He knows that he left El Diván as poor as when he went in, and as desperate, and he knows he has only a few hours left in which to save his skin, and Faustino’s.

  He steps down off the stoop, and is walking away when a voice calls from behind him.

  —¡Arturo!

  He turns and sees Carlos hurrying out of the door toward him.

  In his hands is what can only be their five hundred dollars.

  —Here—Carlos says.—Take it. Please.

  Arturo shakes his head and tries to say no, and that he can’t take it, but Carlos will not be persuaded. He reaches out a hand and then, to Arturo’s discomfort, taps him right in the middle of the forehead, on the very same spot where Raúl’s gun of a finger pointed.

  —It’s all in here—he says.—With you, it’s all in here. So wrapped up in thinking. And I’m telling you to stop thinking. Take the money. Maybe you find nine more people like us today, and you’re saved. ¿Right?

  It’s a ludicrous suggestion, but Arturo cannot win the argument, and in the end Carlos practically shoves the cash into his pocket.

  —Listen—he says. He glances over his shoulder at the bar.—There’s something else, but I don’t think Siggy would want me to tell you. There’s someone you should try for the money.

  Serpents wind up out of the ground and into Arturo through the soles of his feet. They squirm up his legs and into his body and they whisper to him, Be afraid, Arturo, be afraid, be afraid, but what it is he should be afraid of, they will not say. Something just feels wrong, that Carlos would keep something from Siggy, that there is something that Siggy would not want Carlos to tell Arturo. But there is no time to wonder at these things, because Carlos is already whispering hurriedly.

  —¿You remember your old teacher? ¿Margarita?

  Arturo nods. Yes, of course he remembers her. That year and a half when he went to school, when he and Faustino went to school, they were the best months of his life. And though he has a sudden vision of how Doña Margarita scolded him for smearing paint over Eva’s name and her handprint, she was good, she was kind. She even made sure the hungry kids got fed, somehow, when their parents were not able to do it.

  —I saw her a while back. You know she moved out of Anapra. ¿Right? Anyway, she’s well off now, living in the city. She’s the
kind of person who would have money and she’s the kind of person who would lend it to you.

  —¿Really?—asks Artruo.—¿You think so?

  Carlos is nodding his head.

  —I know so. I have her address. Go there, niño. I know she’ll help you. Just don’t tell her I sent you, don’t tell anyone. Especially not Siggy. ¿Right?

  He shoves a scrap of paper into Arturo’s hands, and Arturo sees a hastily written address.

  —Go there, niño. Go there, now.

  With that, Carlos steps forward and folds his arms around Arturo briefly. He whispers something in his ear. Then he’s gone, leaving his words hanging.

  —Siggy is right, you are on the bridge. Be careful.

  Arturo looks at the address; it’s somewhere in the area called Versalles. He’s never been there, but he knows it’s upmarket. Margarita must have made good somehow, really good.

  Yet he hesitates. He used to see her all the time, in the streets of Anapra, always with kids around her, none of them her own. He hasn’t seen her in a couple of years, and now he knows why: she moved somewhere better, and he cannot blame her for that.

  He’s just looking at the address again when he sees the Five coming, the bus heading into the city. He fishes in his pocket and sees he has enough pesos left from what Faustino gave him. Enough for a ride into town. So he knows that Santa Muerte has not left him altogether, perhaps. Perhaps she is angry with him and testing him again, but has not abandoned him completely. So he runs across the street in time to flag the bus to a stop. Moments later, he’s riding into Juárez for the second time in twenty-four hours.

  * * *

  • NAFTA: the North American Free Trade Agreement. A minor footnote in the American presidential election of 1992, barely discussed or debated.

  • NAFTA: part of what James Morgan of the Financial Times described as the “new imperial age,” the “de facto world government”: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Group of Seven nations, and other such organizations.

  • One notable feature of such organizations is their immunity to popular influence; to give one example, various groups wishing to comment on the NAFTA treaty were given less than a day to read it and submit their thoughts on a document that runs to several hundred pages.

  • “Free trade” is a somewhat misleading term; many of the rules in NAFTA are aimed at making trade more advantageous for American companies; it is due to NAFTA that the maquiladoras of Mexico are able to flourish.

  • In 1998 the US International Trade Commission estimated that American companies stood to gain $61 billion a year from developing nations because of such schemes.

  * * *

  FIVE IS THE BRIDGE

  The ride is slow and hot. The morning is wearing on and the bus stops frequently as more and more people climb aboard, heading into the city. Arturo stares out of the window, speaking to no one, trying to make eye contact as little as possible. He rode the same way last night, with Faustino, then he curses himself; he should have left a message with Carlos, just in case Faustino comes by. He hopes his four aces are still tucked into the doorframe; he hopes they can still be read.

  At the church of San Lorenzo, Arturo gets off the bus. This is Juárez at its finest. This is not a city that reeks of violent death, of mutilated cadavers in the dust that blows in from the desert. Here are expensive stores; smart streets filled with cars that do not look as though they are about to drop dead.

  He walks down the sidewalk beside a six-lane highway that carves through the heart of the city. Here are more totems: a giant Pemex station, then later a Shell station. Burger King. And the only sign that perhaps everything is not totally right with the world is the line of people, a block long. Arturo sees what they’re queuing for: a bank. They’re lining up to use the ATM. Something wrong maybe, some financial scare, perhaps the people want their money out before it’s gone forever.

  He walks on.

  It’s still a way to Versalles and he has never been there before. He stops people a couple of times, gets directions, and heads on, and then he’s on Margarita’s street: Calle Valle de los Olivos.

  It’s a nice street. Most of the houses have two stories. Many are set back from the road, behind tall gates with spikes on the top, but the gates are new and the houses are freshly painted and everywhere are the signs of money: kids’ bikes propped by the front door, nice plants in pots standing to the side. Good cars parked outside, fancy ones even.

  Arturo checks the address one more time: number five.

  Five, again. He remembers the fives he was dealt last night, playing calavera. Five is the turning point, five is the only moment when you have to make a call, one way or the other. Five is the bridge, and he’s on the bridge now.

  He looks at the house; it’s not finished; parts of it are unpainted concrete and bare brick, but it’s going to be beautiful. It’s two floors and it’s not just something thrown up as fast and cheaply as possible. It has been thought about, it has been designed. Through the gates, Arturo sees that five little steps twist up from ground level in a quarter spiral to the door. Just to the left of that is an open balcony with large glass windows, and yes, there are shutters that can be brought down, but no bars. There’s a carport to one side, and there’s a brand-new gold-colored Jeep lurking in the shadows there.

  He tries the gate. It’s locked, of course, but he sees there is an intercom in the pillar beside it. Without thinking any further, he tries the buzzer.

  Nothing.

  He tries it again, and then he hears dogs barking inside, at least two dogs. He’s about to walk away when the intercom hisses.

  It’s a woman’s voice; it could be her, it’s hard to tell.

  —¿Hola?

  —¿Margarita?

  —Yes—says the voice.—¿Who is it?

  —Arturo.

  —¿Arturo who?

  Arturo isn’t surprised. It’s been a couple of years. At least.

  —Arturo Silva.

  There is a long pause. A very long pause. The intercom has gone silent. Arturo turns away; she’s given him as clear an answer as any she could have spoken. She wants nothing to do with him and cannot even be bothered to tell him so. But the intercom hisses again.

  —Come in—the voice says, and the gate buzzes and Arturo presses himself against it quickly before she changes her mind.

  The door opens before Arturo is even halfway across the yard.

  She stands there, waiting for him. She is looking at Arturo strangely. He cannot read the mixture of thoughts that are pouring from her head, but he can tell one thing: she looks at him as if she’s looking at a ghost. But there are other things too, other, darker things.

  She looks more or less the same; a little older, a little plumper, perhaps. Her eyes are tired but they still smile at him as she suddenly rushes forward and throws her arms around him.

  —¡Arturo! ¡Dios mío!

  She steps back, staring at him, shaking her head.

  —You scared me—she says next, and Arturo feels the serpents crawling into him again, ancient serpents that know more than we do.

  —¿Scared you? ¿Why?

  Margarita shakes her head, as if disbelieving something.

  —Because I thought you were dead, Arturo. I thought you were dead.

  From nowhere, Arturo laughs. He cannot help himself.

  —¡But here I am!—he says.—¡Here I am! Alive.

  He cannot bring himself to say alive and well, but the bad joke that Margarita thought he was dead is too much for him to ignore. And he isn’t dead yet, not yet.

  —So I see—says Margarita and then Arturo sees the darker things surfacing again. Anger is one of them.

  —I don’t understand—he says.—¿Why did you think I was dead?

  —Because he told me you were, of course—she says, and her face has darkened with that anger.

  —¿He?—Arturo asks.—¿Who’s he?

  Now it’s Margarita who looks confused.r />
  —¡My God!—she says.—¿Who else? Your father, of course. ¿You’ve come to see him? ¿Right?

  Then something moves in the doorway over Margarita’s shoulder, and Arturo looks there, and sees a man staring at him, and yes, it is his father.

  THE PRIMAL KILLING

  Now the world has erupted and bends and breaks and folds in on itself. Now the ancient gods crawl out from under rocks where they have lurked for centuries. Now they slide into the October sunlight, their claws clacking and their tongues lolling in expectation, in anticipation of blood, primal blood. It is all Arturo can do not to be sucked down into the maw of the earth, right here and now. Sucked down into deep and terrifying regions of the underworld, there to be destroyed.

  Arturo stares and his father stares back and Arturo knows he has to fight the urge in him, the urge to run, because there is nothing he wants to do more right now than that; run, just pound his way out of the city and into the desert and lie in the dust and die, to be consumed by dogs. He fights that desire, because if he runs, he will never know. He will never find out anything. And he won’t know what is happening here in this house, where he has found his old teacher with his father.

  Margarita is looking between the two of them. Arturo sees there is anger inside her, barely concealed, and yet he also sees that she is doing her best to withhold her anger. He knows without question that she is doing it for his sake.

  She takes a step toward the doorway, turns back to Arturo.

  —I think you’d better come in—she says.

  Arturo does not want to, because there is his father, blocking the way. He wants to run, but then he sees his father run a hand backward over his hair and sigh and turn aside, allowing the way in.