Now Nacho wills himself into thinking like a hermit. ‘Where will I spend my days? What will I wish to see? Where would I position myself if I wanted to touch God?’
As he hobbles on the muletas, he memorizes landmarks and names them, says the words aloud and repeats them so he won’t forget. He passes a cactus shaped like a bottle and calls it Spiked Drink; a sharp dip in the land, looking like an open mouth, becomes Jaw Drop. The trees give him shade but the earth is pocked with holes and ridden with duff, and on crutches, the walk is heavy going. He stops again and again, getting his bearings, trying to glimpse a clue, anything made by man—footprints, a torn rag, the ashes of a fire—but he can find nothing that tells him he isn’t alone.
Steeped in the sounds of nature, he remembers he isn’t looking for God; he’s looking for Torres.
After hours of searching, Nacho sits on a rock and eats the last of his bread and cheese. From now on, it will be berries and plants, maybe a fish if he gets lucky. He remembers Maria’s admonishment, her calling it “a wild goose chase” and thinks, ‘Wild geese would be easier to find than Torres. And what happens next? What if Maria was right? What if I don’t find him?’ He remembers the words of Stoller, too: Solitario is enormous. It isn’t a dot on a map; it’s a vast expanse. There are no bounds, no beginnings or endings marked by signposts. There is just wild space, hidden nooks, endless hills, forests, caves, and in Nacho’s heart he begins to realize he will never find Torres.
As he sits, his thoughts turn to the tower and all he has left behind. He thinks of the constant noise of the city—children’s cries, calls to prayer, traffic, sirens and alarms, the shouts of vendors, and the chattering of TVs. These noises are in his bones now, and the quietness of nature seems alien.
He carries on wearily, wondering whether to call out to Torres. Should he shatter the silence? Would Torres not hide if he heard his name?
The sun goes down. Nacho stops and looks around. He isn’t hungry but he knows he must forage for food. A few white-gilled mushrooms are growing at the foot of a tree. He picks at them, sniffs, says “Amanita phalloides,” and discards the death caps.
He finds a sandy spot close to a dry stream bed. He pulls the blanket from out of his bag, lies down, and covers himself. He knows he should check his surroundings and build a fire, but a great wave of tiredness hits him. He aches all over.
As always, he sleeps badly. A sense of foreboding comes to him. Something bad in the tower. Nothing here. Invisible paths. Invisible hermits. Madmen come to die. He wakes and sees the sun barely risen. He limps to the stream bed, digs a hole, and splashes muddy water on his face. He sits back down and, for the first time, admits consciously the thoughts that have been nagging at him. What if Stoller doesn’t return? Nacho will die here, having abandoned the tower. He will starve or freeze, stranded in this Nowhere with no way out. He will die, and leave the damnificados leaderless.
He pictures Emil lying on Maria’s bed, half-naked, half-asleep, giving orders to Hans and Dieter and the Chinaman; now Emil loading a World War II rifle as an army gathers in the plaza below; now the baker brothers, Harry and his kin, shooting out of the windows with French baguettes, and Raincoat hiding under the bed.
Why did he ever come here?
Nacho wanders all day, stopping only to forage. He picks from shrubs of whortleberries and chokecherries, spitting out the poisonous stones. Under a dead tree, he sees a cluster of black walnuts dropped to the ground, crushes them with his good foot, removes the warty green husks with his fingers, and eats.
He takes refuge from the sun in a hollow and sees a network of small caverns. He peers into them, says ‘hello’ in six languages. No answer. Still hungry, he fingers a covering of lichen and pulls off a layer of rock tripe, dropping the leathery dark leaves into his bag. He sees a seam of quartz close to a cave and finds a loose stone.
He finds a few spindly trees. He peels thin strips of bark and picks several clumps of dry moss. He adds the down from a growth of milkweed and builds a bed of tinder. He scrapes his knife against the piece of quartz again and again until it creates a shower of sparks that drop onto the tinder, which crackles gently into flame. He puts the burning tinder onto a bed of tamarack sticks and sees the smoke rise. In a tin bowl that he brought with him, he boils the rock tripe and a clutch of nettles.
He kicks the fire down and goes on, seeking out the flat land where his crutches will hold.
He decides to turn back, thinking that if he gets lost he will die. His only hope is to return to the spot where Stoller left him, and wait out the two remaining days. The list of landmarks has grown to over twenty, and he doesn’t want to test the limits of his memory because one wrong turn will be the end of him. As he walks, he counts off the landmarks: the Crucifix Tree, the Burning Bush, Hole in the Wall, Jaw Drop, Spiked Drink.
The walk is harder than before, and he stops regularly. He crouches at the river, wondering if he can catch a fish with his hands. He looks around for the materials to fashion a net, but he has forgotten the lessons from his father, the ability to make something from nothing, and in any case his hands have grown soft and useless for making objects. Instead, he kicks open a rotten log, pulls out the white grubs, and eats them alive.
He builds another fire in the evening, eats a bowl of kinnikinic berries and dandelions, and watches the sky. Thirsty, he wanders a while in search of big leaves with accumulated rainwater, but finds none. Instead he swallows the juice of whortleberries and tries to get warm, wrapping himself in the blanket.
The second night is worse than the first. Hunger and cold. He enters a cave but hears the stirring of bats above him and goes back to the woods. He finds a place to camp out, lies down, and realizes it’s crawling with bugs he is too tired to catch. He moves again in the dark until he gets to flat land and makes his meager bed there, turning and turning to fight off the cold, but then gets up and collects a bed of leaves for an extra cover. His body begins to shiver and he wonders if he will freeze if he falls asleep. Somehow he doesn’t and the night passes, a sky full of stars long dead winking down on him from another age.
In the morning he digs a seep in a dry creek bed, and drinks. He feels the pangs of hunger gnawing at his insides, but while he has strength keeps following his landmarks toward the spot where Stoller left him.
In the middle of the day he is overcome by fatigue and hunger and stops to rest on a rock. He eats some amaranth and cattail and a handful of wild mushrooms and soon his mind begins playing tricks. Psychedelic bushes, talking ferns, a two-headed Torres in a soldier’s uniform prancing like a peacock. A swirl of color, projectiles skidding at him like boomerangs of glass, faces hidden in the trunk of a tree. He thinks of the effects of burundanga and levo-duboisine, the hallucinogens Emil told him about, potions used by the bruja of Estrellas Negras. A wave of nausea washes over him. He lies down on the duff and closes his eyes. For an hour he is drifting in and out of consciousness, seeing and unseeing carved stone saints, a yogi levitating, dreadlocked sadhus with talcum-whitened faces.
In his state of half-sleep he wonders if he is dead. The stillness, the silence, it could be Heaven, but then he is returned to the world by a voice singing in a smooth baritone, slightly out of tune: “I was born under a wandering star. I was born under a wandering star. Wheels are made for rollin’! Mules are made to pack! I’ve never seen a sight that didn’t look better looking back. I was born under a wandering star. I was born under a wandering star.”
He knows the voice. It rings clean and true in his memory like a hammer striking a bell.
Not twenty meters away, Emil is walking in dappled sunlight, leading a heavy black horse. His eyes alight on Nacho.
“Whoah,” he says, and not to the horse.
Nacho is lying on the floor of the wood, so Emil appears to him upside down and though Nacho knows the physique and the swagger and the dulcet voice, some part of him thinks he is still hallucinating. He fights to focus, zooming in and out, trying to locate the fi
gure in space and make sense of this noise-maker in a land of silence. He staggers to his feet and, seeing Emil in three dimensions, lurches forward without his crutches. He falls down again, like a drunk poleaxed by shock and headspin, toppling toward Emil’s feet, where he catches a glimpse of a pair of madcap boots—Sicilian pullstraps, hand-stitched Parisian outsole, and an ornate tan shaft with a Greek warrior sewn on.
Emil hauls Nacho up by the shoulders.
“Damn, Nacho, you got skinnier. In three days. What were you doing—fasting in the wilderness?”
“It’s really you.”
“Sure is. Come to take you home.”
Nacho stands there trembling. He begs something to eat and Emil reaches into a saddle bag and pulls out bread and cheese, which Nacho devours. Then he takes great swigs of Emil’s water.
“Easy, brother,” says Emil. “You’re OK. We’re getting out of here.”
Nacho sits on a rock, keeps eating, feels lightheaded as if still hallucinating. Eventually, he says, “I can’t find Torres. I can’t find anyone. It’s a wilderness out here. I walked for two days, saw no one. Not a trace. My food ran out so I’ve been eating leaves and berries and whatever I could find. It’s good to see you, brother. You have no idea. Maria’s going to kill you.”
“Wrong! Maria sent me. She asked me what the hell I was doing letting my little brother go to Solitario on his own, on crutches, on a wild goose chase. I couldn’t answer so she answered for me. Packed a bag, stuffed five hundred libros in my pocket, kicked me out of the house, and said don’t come back if you don’t find Nacho. And I thought it was me she liked.”
“I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Quit gawping and get on the horse. We don’t have much daylight left.”
“Help me up.”
Emil lifts Nacho onto the saddle, hooking his good foot into the stirrup.
“As for Torres the elder,” says Emil. “We’ll get no help from him. Not now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll show you later.”
“How did you find me?”
“I’m your brother. I think like you. You remember hide and seek when we were kids? I always knew where you were. Didn’t even have to look. Sometimes I even knew one turn ahead where you were going to hide the next time.”
“Who’s in charge of the tower?”
“No one. They aren’t children. But if anything happens I guess Maria will sort it out. You look kind of spooked. Are you OK?”
“I ate a root. Or maybe it was the mushrooms.”
Emil leads them past Nacho’s remembered landmarks until they are at the verge of the frozen lake. They pause and then cross, Emil walking ahead, leading the horse by the reins. Emil points down under the ice.
“There’s Torres. He won’t bother anyone anymore.”
Nacho looks closer, recognizes the florid moustache.
“The Screaming Man,” he says.
“Looks like he’s just seen a wolf.”
They are still some miles from Bieb ta ‘Niket when the sun goes down, but Emil insists they keep going. The sky is smeared with orange strips, bars of flame shredded to wisps, and a massive moon full as a coin, blurred at the edges. By the light of this freak lantern, they find their way to Bieb ta ‘Niket in silence, arriving in the dead of night. As they approach the few scattered buildings, they see the faint light illuminating the train station at Bieb ta ‘Niket.
“Now what?”
“I have to return this horse,” says Emil.
“Where?”
“A stable over there. A couple of miles away. You’ll need to wait here.”
“Don’t tell me you stole it.”
“I stole it.”
Emil helps Nacho down and mounts the horse.
“If anything happens to me, like I don’t return, get the next train from here. Take this.” He hands Nacho a bag. “There’s money and provisions in here—a blanket, some fruit.”
“What do you mean, you don’t return?”
“I stole the horse. Out here, they shoot people like me. If they catch me.”
“Just get back here. I’ll be waiting.”
Emil gallops away. Nacho hobbles through the gate to the station. It is deserted. He sits on a bench, and then after a while, lies down. An hour later, Emil returns.
“There’s an early train,” he says. “Try to get some sleep.”
He covers Nacho with his blanket, but Nacho lies awake.
“I met a man called Stoller. He took me to Solitario and promised to pick me up. I paid him already. He owes me a hundred libros.”
“Ah, so you met Stoller.”
“You know him?”
“Everyone knows Stoller. He was an assassin. One time he found himself out here for a job, to kill a monk who was the heir to some fortune, but instead of killing the guy, he had some kind of spiritual experience in the wilderness. He repented his ways and came to live here. I didn’t know he was still alive. He must be seventy, seventy-five.”
“He still looks strong. I guess I should get my hundred libros back. And save him a journey, too.”
“No. It’s the middle of the night. We’ll wait a few hours. Get it once the sun is up.”
Stoller answers the door in his windcheater and boots, as if he sleeps in them, rubs his eyes, hands over the money without a word, and closes his door on the outside world.
Then Nacho and Emil catch the train. They recount their adventures in the wilderness until, overcome with tiredness, Nacho drifts off to sleep. Emil looks out the train window, watching the landscape go by, and longs quietly for the open road, the great lashing sea. Eventually they arrive in Fellahin and take a rickshaw to Favelada.
CHAPTER 18
A shooting—Susana—Last rites and soliloquy—Cortege—Legend—Nacho and Emil pass the House of Flowers—Burial ground—Worms and the man—Wake at the five stone heads—Forgetting—A new day
AS THEY APPROACH THE TOWER, NACHO GETS A TINGLING IN HIS BONES, SENSES SOMETHING is wrong. In Solitario he had felt a sense of foreboding. Now his premonition—vague and undefined, but connected with loss—returns. A small crowd is gathered at the tower’s entrance. Nacho and Emil dismount the rickshaw, pay the driver and walk toward the tower. The twins see Emil and Nacho and go out to meet them.
Hans says, “Come quickly. It’s the Chinaman. They shot him.”
The Chinaman stays in an anteroom, a boab’s chamber besides the entrance. The door is ajar and a dozen people are around the bed in which the Chinaman lies with his eyes closed, a tableau from a sixteenth-century painting, Dutch, dimly lit. The air is thick with the smells of foggy breath and sweat and blood. Among the watchers are Don Felipe, the twins, Maria and two of Harry the baker’s brothers. But it is Susana who administers to the Chinaman, mopping his brow with a damp rag. And as she tends to him, Nacho sees in an instant that she and the Chinaman are partners. She seems tiny next to the vast boulder that is the Chinaman’s head and the deep mound of his chest that swells and contracts in slow rhythm. His torso is swaddled in a makeshift bandage, stained and heavy with blood.
“What happened?” asks Nacho.
Heads turn.
“You’re back,” says Don Felipe. “Torres sent his thugs. They were looking for you, but they shot the Chinaman instead.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
Maria gives Nacho a look. “Back from the wild goose chase? Good timing. The bullet had your name on it.”
Nacho makes his way to the Chinaman’s bedside. The bed is made of reinforced metal, with a scratched-up cedar wood headboard and legs of heavy iron tubing. The pillow is stained with sweat and grime.
Nacho looks at his old friend. The giant appears to be sleeping.
“How many of them came?”
One of Harry’s brothers says, “Maybe six of them. Maybe ten.”
“It was twenty,” says his brother.
“I heard three,” says Don Felipe.
> “I thought it was an army,” says another.
“There were five of them,” says Hans. “One of them called out your name and said Torres wanted to talk to you. When the Chinaman came out to meet him, he shot him. Point blank.”
“Everyone out,” says Nacho. Nobody moves. “Clear the room, please. You too, Emil. And you, Maria.”
They look at one another and, after a pause, traipse out.
“Not you.”
He is staring at Susana. She stops, a wet towel dripping in her hand.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Susana.”
“Susana? Is he going to be OK?”
She ushers Nacho out of the room for a moment and into the waning sunlight. She is tinier even than him and looks up as she speaks.
“I’m not a nurse. But the bullet’s in his chest.”
“Why didn’t we take him to a hospital?”
“We tried. No one would see him. We’re damnificados. We can’t pay.”
“There’s a free hospital in Fellahin. Why didn’t he go there?”
“It was full. They had no beds or doctors. Some kind of massacre happened there yesterday. So we brought him back.”
They return to the room and Nacho pulls up a chair and sits while Susana goes to the Chinaman’s bedside. Nacho glances around. A gunny-sack in the corner. An open wardrobe with a few clothes, two pairs of shoes the size of duffel bags standing on a box by the wall, a fraying red carpet, and a table with the legs sawn off. On it, a white bowl of soup, half-full, its opaque surface glazing over like a pond.
Later, Nacho leaves the room as the sun goes down. A pair of chasing swallows comes swooping and the call to prayer rises across the rooftops. Nacho wipes his brow, glad to feel the evening air on his skin. Maria and Emil are outside waiting for him.
Maria says, “You need to get the bullet out. Otherwise he’ll die.”
Damnificados Page 16
