Damnificados

by JJ Amaworo Wilson

  The pig began sniffing at Hellibore, nuzzling his midriff.

  “OK, can you call off the pig? And mind the gun. It’s loaded.”

  “Who your leader? You?” asked Naboo Lalloo.

  “We don’t have a leader.”

  Hellibore was still lying prone.

  “Stop the fighting. Why you kill us? We suffer enough.”

  “We need your land. We have nowhere to live.”

  “Why you not ask us? Why you kill us first? Is not polite.”

  Outside, the sound of explosions and screams pierced the night air. Naboo Lalloo shifted in his seat.

  “We make deal with you. We live in peace.”

  Hellibore, who had been a legendary thief with hands as fast as squirrels, looked around. The room was lit by one lamp and a dozen candles, casting shadows on the walls. He had no idea where the pig had come from and no idea why Naboo Lalloo hadn’t shot him already.

  “OK,” he said. “Let’s make a deal.”

  With Las Bestias decimated by arrows, bullets, and grenades, and the ex-inmates of Mundanza Asylum for the Insane weary of battle, Hellibore and Naboo Lalloo brokered a peace. Hellibore staggered to his feet and agreed that there would be no more bloodshed. Facing a madman holding a loaded gun, Hellibore also agreed that Las Bestias would take a plot of land by the river, build their own settlement, and that someone called Konnichiwa could be the nominal governor of Spazzatura. He didn’t know that it was Konnichiwa who, at that very moment, was nuzzling his shoes.

  In later years, the two men became friends, and Naboo Lalloo explained that the music and the movies that had been part of the battle were the very weapons used in the insane asylum to keep the occupants passive. Beethoven and Tchaikovsky had been their daily diet of music to soothe and calm the blood, and on the occupants’ escape they had stolen the equipment used to play it: the loudspeakers, amplifiers, and the ancient scratchy records. They had also purloined the movie projectors and old film reels that had been their evening treat at the asylum. In other words, Spazzatura was a home away from home. Everything else—mirrors on springs, fireworks, and arrow-shooting devices—came from the fevered imagination of Naboo Lalloo, who credited Konnichiwa with the deployment of these, saying the pig spoke to him in Pigg, a language only the two of them could comprehend, and told him where his enemies were and how to defeat them.

  Once the peace was brokered, they cremated the dead and sprinkled their ashes in the river, just more waste to add to the world.

  CHAPTER 16

  More rumors of an attack—Nacho and Emil discuss their options—Maria’s tuppence—Dog—Conversations with statesmen—Mayhem—Nacho hatches a plan—In bocca al lupo—Train journey to Bieb ta ‘Niket—Alone—Nacho’s double lets him in—Johann Stoller

  WORD TRAVELS FAST IN FAVELADA. A CHILD HIDING IN A PILE OF TRASH EAVESDROPS ON A pair of off-duty soldiers shooting the breeze. A cleaning lady overhears her boss ranting on the phone through thick walls.

  And so it is in these days of tranquility that a rumor goes around the tower—another attack is imminent, and this time there may be no wolves to save the damnificados. The object of the rumor is a monster. Nothing with two heads, but a monster all the same, and with the same name as the other monsters of the past hundred years: Torres.

  When one Torres is defeated, another appears. They are like rabbits pulled out of a hat. A sleight of hand, a showman’s flourish, and there it is: another! And another! One becomes a monk hiding out in the wilderness of Solitario, but his younger brother then emerges, sounds his barbaric yawp. He is bigger, nastier, meaner, stronger, braver, and, if the rumors are true, hell-bent on avenging the indignities wrought on his family. He knows his brother has become a laughing stock—chased away by a group of damnificados and a pack of puppies, dropping his weapons and running through the streets like a madman, hugging a priest’s leg, leaving his troops unattended without orders, every man fending for himself. What humiliations upon the noble name of Torres, worse even than the idiota Rolo Torres, who jumped off the fiftieth floor with a broken parachute, and the cobarde mayor Torres who urinated in his military garb when his enemies lined him up against a wall. The family name must be redeemed, its honor restored.

  The rumor comes from Susana’s best friend, who cleans the house of a politico. The woman hears the politico discussing the younger Torres, describing him as a man of courage, a likely leader who will stand for office in place of his runaway brother, once he has proved himself by taking back his property in the center of the city. She finishes her cleaning job, returns to the tower, and knocks on Nacho’s door. There is no answer, so she tells the priest instead, who tells Raincoat. Raincoat finds Nacho at the gardens of the tower, and tells him:

  “We’re going to be attacked again. Soon! Torres’s younger brother has an army and has sworn revenge on you and all of us. I heard he’s already hunted down the wolves and done them in. Now he’s making plans to destroy the tower.”

  “Why would he do that? The Torres family thinks it owns the tower.”

  “I’m just telling you what I heard. He has tanks, artillery, fighter jets. One or two heroes like you and me aren’t going to be able to save us this time. What are you gonna do?”

  “I’ll talk to the leaders. My brother, too. The priest. And we need to find out more about Torres Junior. I can’t make decisions based on rumors. Is he here in Favelada?”

  “They’re all here except the one we chased off. And they all want revenge.”

  Later that day Nacho calls on Emil, who is lying half-naked in bed, tossing grapes in the air and catching them in his mouth.

  “We need to talk. Hey, is this how you spend your days?”

  “Give me ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be in the gardens by the south face. The bench.”

  Thirty minutes later they are sat together, with a view of the gardeners planting and watering, and beyond them Favelada’s traffic coughing up smoke.

  Nacho says, “Word has it that Torres’s younger brother will attack.”

  “Oh man.”

  “I don’t know what to do. Do we stand and fight?”

  “You saw what happened last time. We don’t have any fighters. They’re civilians. Families and drunks and working people. Without the wolves, everyone here would be dead or living on the streets. You need to find another solution. Talk to Torres Junior. Cut a deal.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “Does he want the tower or does he want revenge? If he wants revenge, we’re all dead. If he just wants the tower, we may be able to … I don’t know. Why am I here? Nacho, this isn’t our war. I could be sailing the seven seas or digging for gold or lying under a palm tree somewhere. I never wanted a home here.”

  “But you’re here now. And we need your help.”

  “What I know about the Torres family is this: the oldest male is the patriarch, makes all the decisions. The others obey his commands, even if he’s an idiot. That means the other Torres, the one who ran away, he’s the head of the family. If he tells his brother to call off any attack, the brother has to call it off. That’s if there is an attack in the first place. You told me it’s just a rumor.”

  “But Torres Senior is far away. He lives in the wilderness.”

  “Then go and see him. He’s a monk, right? Maybe he’ll tell his brother to become a monk, too, and all our problems will be over.”

  Nacho ruffles his hair and mutters to himself, “Go and see Torres. Find him in Solitario. Ask him to call his brother off.”

  “Got any better ideas? Or do you want to build an army again? Those wild men from Dahomey-Krill have all gone back there, back to the forest. They didn’t believe the Trash Wars were finished and maybe they’re right. Maybe escaping now is the best thing for everyone, you included.”

  “Can’t do that.”

  Maria appears behind them.

  She says, “Escaping? Who’s escaping?”

  “Honey,” says Emil. “Torres has a y
ounger brother. Might attack the tower. I’m telling Nacho to go speak to Torres the Elder and get him to call off the attack.”

  “What a stupid idea,” says Maria, parking herself on the bench, and crossing her fishnet-clad legs. “The elder one disgraced the family. He ran away, didn’t he? Why would anyone listen to him?”

  “Because he’s the oldest male,” says Emil.

  “So what?” shouts Maria. “The oldest male ran off crying and became a monk because he lost a fight! What authority does he have over his family?”

  “Yeah, you’re right, but it’s family tradition: the oldest male makes all the decisions.”

  “Pah,” says Maria. “Not in my family.”

  She gets up and struts her way back to the tower, calling over her shoulder, “Dinner’s ready. Get your ass upstairs or it goes to the dog.”

  “What dog?” asks Nacho.

  “She bought a dog. One of those little squiggly things, nips at your feet, barks all the time.”

  “Why?”

  “I dunno. Domesticity? Guard dog? The stupid thing shits everywhere and rips up the furniture.”

  “What name did you give it?”

  “Nacho.”

  A week passes and Nacho uses his contacts to find out everything he can about Torres the Younger. He asks a statesman, a retired ambassador he traveled with for a month during rainy season in far-off Chuveiro. All those years ago, Nacho remembers, the rain had come down so hard they’d been unable to do anything but stay indoors and talk. And here they are again, in a café owned by the statesman, indoors and talking.

  “The younger Torres?” says the ambassador, his genial round face skewed as he chews on a rancid cigar. “The same as the older ones, but worse. He’s a gathering storm.” The ambassador’s trouser legs are rolled up, feet in a bucket of water to soothe his gout. “He already has half the generals in his pocket and he’ll run for office soon. It’s the Torres way. Put an army behind you and then make a claim for power. He has blood on his hands already and he’s not yet thirty.”

  The ambassador parks his cigar in an ashtray and slurps at an espresso, the cup dainty in his sausage fingers.

  “We have an old Ligurian saying: Chi ammazza gatti e chen o no fa mai ciu de ben. Those who kill cats and dogs will never do anything good. I knew the family. Torres the younger was the type of child who pulled the wings off birds and set fire to street cats. If he ever rises to power, expect hell to break loose. His nickname was Mayhem.”

  The next step is to find out if Torres Junior is planning an attack on the tower. Nacho hatches a scheme to cultivate a spy, a cleaning woman from Oameni Morti who works for a Torres associate and frequents a bar known to the damnificados. But in the end this is unnecessary because a damnificado overhears a drunken soldier boasting about a raid on the tower.

  “Two weeks!” shouts the soldier. “And that tower will be empty! The Torres kid’s a hustler. He’ll be mayor in a year! And I’m gonna be by his side!”

  The following day, Nacho is with his brother and the priest.

  “I’ll go to Solitario,” he says. “See if I can find the older Torres and ask him to talk his brother out of the invasion.”

  “I’m coming with you,” says Emil.

  “No. You need to stay here and take over the leadership. If something happens, we’ll need a leader.”

  “No way, little brother. How are you going to get to Solitario on your own? It’s in the wilderness. There’s nothing there but wild animals and monks.”

  “I’ll ask the twins to take me. If they can’t do it, I’ll go alone. I’ll be OK.”

  “Those twins are just kids. You need me to take you.”

  “We need you here. Don Felipe, am I right?”

  “You’re right,” says Don Felipe. “Emil, you should stay.”

  “Dammit,” says Emil. “I need an adventure, not a week babysitting damnificados.”

  “I won’t be gone a week. I’ll find Torres, persuade him to come back with me, and then I’ll return. That’s all.”

  In the event, the twins cannot go. Their father needs them to work. Nacho asks if one of them can go, but they look at each other.

  “We’ve never been apart,” says Hans.

  “Where he goes, I go,” says Dieter.

  “And where I go, he goes,” says Hans. “And our father needs the truck. It’s that time of year.”

  “I understand,” says Nacho.

  Maria, Emil and Nacho sit around a table examining a map. The yappy dog is silent for once, scratching away at some itch in an absurd canine contortion under the table. Emil traces a route with his finger.

  “It’s here. See, it’s not even named. Solitario is here. I went across the plains here, years ago. It was icy cold.”

  Maria snorts. “How do you know this map is reliable? It looks about a hundred years old.”

  “It is about a hundred years old,” says Nacho. “I got it in an antiques store.”

  “Your route is this,” Emil goes on. “You need to catch a train to Bieb ta ‘Niket. There’s one every two days that leaves from Fellahin. The train will go through forests, over mountains. Don’t get off, whatever you do. That’s bandit country. Keep your head down. Once you’re in Bieb ta ‘Niket, you’ll need to go across the plains to Solitario. There’s no public transport. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Can you ride a horse and take another one along?”

  “Emil, I can’t even ride a bicycle. You know that.”

  “That’s why I should be going with you.”

  Maria says, “Why does he need two horses?”

  “Because he’s trying to bring Torres back and Torres is a fat ox. At least he was before he became a monk. If you can’t do the last part of the trip alone, you’ll need to find someone to take you by horse and cart or you may get lucky if someone has a truck or car. It’s rumored that recluses and monks live there, but you’ll have to ask around for Torres’s whereabouts.”

  “Last I heard, he was in a wooden hut. No electricity or running water.”

  “Hey,” says Maria, “sounds like a wild goose chase to me. What if you don’t find him? Or if he won’t speak to you? Or doesn’t recognize you because he’s lost his mind? Or maybe he moved somewhere else.”

  “I’ll take that chance,” says Nacho. “We don’t have much choice.”

  “In bocca al lupo,” says Maria.

  “That’s the second Italian idiom I’ve heard in three days.”

  Emil says, “What does it mean?”

  Maria replies, “It means good luck.”

  “But the words mean something else,” says Nacho. “In the mouth of the wolf.”

  Nacho boards the train outside Fellahin. The Chinaman hands him his gray burlap bag and salutes him goodbye.

  Emil embraces Nacho and says, “Remember to keep your head down. No one will save you in Bieb ta ‘Niket. Solitario neither. It’s wild there.”

  Nacho takes a seat in an empty carriage. The cushion of ripped plastic leaks a tuft of yellow foam, but Nacho is comfortable enough, relieved to be seated and alone for now. Above his head is a luggage rack, and next to him a large window, smeared with patches of grime. He places his muletas under the seat, rests his arms on the table in front of him, and tries to clear his mind.

  The train bumps into motion, stutters once, twice, then pulls away at a steady pace. The outskirts of the city move by.

  Nacho spreads out the map on the table and plots the route in his mind for the tenth time. He recognizes the names of the towns closest to Fellahin, and tries to remember those places where he has already been.

  He looks out the window, seeing the last vestiges of Fellahin: a gaggle of children playing with a ball beside the bone-dry creek, all remnants of the flood having disappeared. A trash pile comes into view, overseen by hovering birds and garbage-sorters picking at the shallow mountain for bits of metal, glass, and plastic. Then the next town.

  As he passes Cancello del Dolore he sees men tilling distant
fields, backs bent, wide-brimmed hats warding off the sun. Behind them, mountains rise, the deep shadowed crevasses rippling downward, where here and there a trickle of water becomes a cascade. Goats dot the mountainsides, white flecks nosing past clumps of gorse and heather. The sun is rising.

  As the morning settles, they pass dozens of villages: Maqsuma, where the great poet Khalid Khamseen went to live in a cave for the last decade of his life; Vojta, where the autumn winds once lifted a house clean off the ground and deposited it in a field; Ti Kras Moun, ruled by a family of dwarves; and Toten Hund, a hamlet where they built a cemetery for dogs on the side of a hill and where they said you could hear ghost-hounds howling at night.

  At Pobrea he sees wretches—men and women in tatters, like rag dolls, sitting dead-eyed in doorways or collapsed on the street; shirtless children wandering to and fro; and a man pushing a shopping cart stuffed with boxes and polythene bags. Here there is nothing but crumbling shacks already half reclaimed by the weeds and the owls, with ivy—like the fingers of a lunatic—choking the life out of the walls.

  In Caryatid he sees the corpse of a lion abandoned in a cage, all rib bones and discolored flesh, the thing having been picked clean long ago by the vultures and rats. The sight shocks him and then it is gone as the train ambles its leisurely way toward the wastelands.

  At Piede di Dio the train shudders and lurches for a moment and stops. Nacho sees agitated figures jogging, hears a hubbub of languages shouted at cross purposes, and ponders every moment of the delay. What is happening? Suddenly the train pulls away again, finding its cadence, opening out onto vast plains, tracts of untouched land.

  Later they pass a mine, a great gouge in the earth where hundreds of men are milling, tiny shapes against the louring landscape.

  “Ticket, please.”

  He pulls out the ticket from his pocket and the collector stamps a hole in it with his ticket punch and moves on.

  By now Nacho has lost track of time, so he looks out the window again to get a glimpse of the sun high in the sky. Midday, he thinks. The train pulses onward, a slow-burning flame on a five-hundred-mile fuse.