As Nacho moves forward he sees hundreds bathing in the river and realizes, or rather remembers, what he is seeing. Years ago his father told him about the Great Cleansing: once every ten years, people came to wash away their sins. They walked into the water, some fully clothed, some in a state of ecstasy, others with their families, yet others—pilgrims from far-off lands—come to achieve communion with all humanity. Here mingled the poor, the wealthy, and all those in the middle.
And now Nacho sees ash-covered ascetics sitting cross-legged in white pants, and men in mundus, white sarongs wrapped elegantly around their waists. And behind them, shirtless boys already splashing in the shallows, and women lifting their skirts a few inches and treading gently into the water. He sees a group of shaven-headed monks in nothing but white underwear holding hands as they enter the river, stepping down from its banks until their feet, then their calves, then their thighs, are covered.
All around him voices call out greetings in a dozen languages. A group sitting in a circle begins to chant, and further down the walkway others sing ancient songs. Nacho comes to a bottleneck of people, hundreds jammed together, and finds himself blending with the throng and moving inexorably toward the water, muletas under his arms, carried along by the crowd.
They take him to the edge of the river. Nacho feels his muletas sticking in the mud, his feet in the mulch where thousands have trodden before him. He puts the muletas down and takes off his shirt and his shoes, rolls up the cuffs of his pants to his knees. Suddenly he finds himself picked up under the arms by two smiling men. They walk him into the water.
“Estas bien, pequeño lisiado?”
“Muy bien!”
And they leave him there, knee deep, among thousands of others. He looks to either side, reaches down and takes two handfuls of silt-water and bathes his chest and shoulders. A sense of calm comes over him. Surrounded by so many, he feels safe, as if nothing and no one can harm him. And the stench of the river, for once, doesn’t assail him; it is camouflaged by incense sticks burning everywhere and the smell of chicken frying on the riverbank.
Still the masses come as the remains of the sun stain the sky red. Nacho begins to feel himself disappearing, blending in with the crowd. For once, no one is looking to him to make a decision, resolve a dispute, save the day, and so he lets the minutes wash over him until they turn into hours, the gentle flow of the water winding around his knees. Lost in reverie, he barely notices the naked children splashing through the river and clambering out the other side in a madcap race, or the holy man who sits placidly on the surface of the water, or the circles formed by families standing knee-deep in prayer, the slow current forming ripples around them.
Neither does he notice the sunlight playing on the murky water, forming golden stars, or the arrival of a painted elephant on the flood plain, carrying a princess under a huge blue umbrella. On the other side of the river a line of camels approaches, laden with tents and provisions. The masses part to let them pass, and the camels obediently trudge forward in slow motion, all foul breath and slobber. Women in saris begin scattering orange petals onto the water, and a family in white robes stands together and tips an urn of ashes into the river—an ancestor now cleansed of sin after death.
Eventually Nacho goes back to the shore, picks up his mule-tas and puts on his shoes and his shirt. He walks the riverbank, smells the food, eyes a cauldron of bubbling feijoada and a grill with giant turkey legs, meat charring over the heat. Hungry now, he sees a young black woman in a white kaftan laying out plastic plates of rice and beans on a tray and asks her for one. She smiles and tells him to help himself and refuses money. He finds a low wall, sits and eats ravenously. Rice and beans—the food of damnificados.
He walks a little further down the riverbank and sees a man in a turban stirring two pots simultaneously. Nacho asks him what is in them and the man gives him a bowl brimming with lentils and cabbage stew and a taste of offal and tripe. Nacho eats as if it’s his last meal. He shakes the man’s hand and moves on, past an empanada seller in an apron. The woman sees him and shouts, “Nacho Morales! My sister lives in your tower!” and she gives him an empanada as if in thanks.
“It’s not my tower, but thank you,” says Nacho, and he sits beside the woman on the same low wall and eats the empanada.
He watches the crowd and recognizes the poor—their bad teeth, stooped backs, faces prematurely aged, bodies vandalized with random tattoos—and he thinks of something said by the woman with the dog in a wheelbarrow, and says to himself, ‘They are us.’
He sees other handicapped people led by the able-bodied toward the water as if this filthy sludge that stinks to high heaven could cure them. He remembers Shivarov and the devil’s work that man did for money, and then casts out the thought and watches the carers and their charges descend the riverbank together.
The last wisps of cloud streak the sky, and Nacho wonders if he has ever been happier. All that is missing is Emil, longhaired, bandy-legged, laughing at the world, king of the hobos, the rescuer and savior, the vagabond. For a moment, Nacho also thinks of his mother and father, imagining them there, unchanged by the years. Now they would be in their sixties were they alive, but to him they will always be in their forties, young, unlined. He pictures his father sitting on the wall or peering into the water to find some mudfish or river reed. And his mother smiling at her boys, bringing them food, code-switching in Spanish and English.
As the light fades down by the river, the music swells. All around Nacho now are drummers and singers, people dancing. Figures emerge dripping from the water and go straight to the little groups that have struck up, singing traditional songs, clapping out rhythms, or chanting mantras, eyes closed.
Nacho moves on. His belly full, he cannot sit anymore. But then a man frying anchovies on the river walk catches his eye and calls, “Nacho!” and hands him a fistful of the fish wrapped in paper, and Nacho thanks him and eats again.
The moon comes up and Nacho catches a bus to Favelada. He has no idea that this echoes the first journey he ever made, the bus ride with Samuel to the House of Flowers. From the window, he sees the streets of Fellahin, and the long fence full of graffiti, buildings jerry-built and jammed together. Then past Minhas, its vast holes yawning, where the miners spend their days. And through a No-Man’s-Land of brush and scrub and stones, and finally to Favelada.
He climbs down the steps of the bus, and walks across the plaza, past a mural and the children’s playground. How peaceful the tower looks in the light of the moon. From the windows the rectangular glow of stolen electricity, and drying clothes flapping in the evening breeze.
“Mr. Morales?”
A child’s voice.
“Hello.”
Nacho turns and sees a group of boys aged ten or eleven. They are on their knees playing with marbles. The boy who called him is one of his regular pupils, and immediately Nacho remembers what he has forgotten.
“Is there no school this evening?” says the boy.
“I’m sorry! Come tomorrow. If we’re still here, I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”
“Yes, Mr. Morales.”
The boy goes back to his marbles, and Nacho walks toward the tower.
Something different. His walk. He feels strong. He looks down. In the place where his left leg should stand—the shriveled bit of string and bone he’s propped up all the days of his life—he sees something else. His left leg is whole. He looks at his withered arm. No longer withered. He drops the muletas and leaves them where they land. Begins to run. Takes the steps of the tower two at a time till he’s in his room.
CHAPTER 27
Morning dawns—Nacho in stasis—Torres—A convoy rolls through Favelada—What the lookouts see—The Fifth Trash War
FOR ONCE, MORNING DAWNS AND NACHO ISN’T THE FIRST UP. MARIA AND EMIL ARE knocking on his door. He gets up slowly and lets them in.
Maria says, “I hear you were partying at the river last night while we were getting read
y for Armageddon.”
“Shut up,” says Emil. “Torres is coming.”
Maria looks at Emil, scandalized. “Did you just tell me to shut up?”
Her hand is on her hip, so she looks like a lithe and exquisitely coutured teapot.
“No, I was talking to myself. Nacho, we’ve got to get ready. Word is that Torres is on his way. What are we gonna do?”
Nacho makes coffee. He puts the water on to boil and pulls a filter from a plastic bag. Rubs his eyes. Feels his left arm through his nightshirt.
“Hey, brother,” says Emil. “Did you hear me?”
“You want coffee?”
“Nacho! It’s today! Torres is coming!”
“I hear you,” says Nacho, resigned. He ruffles his hair. “What can we do?”
“You’re the leader.”
“You trained some of the men, right? To fire a gun. So we’ll shoot at them. See what happens. The families need to evacuate before Torres blows us all up. That’s about it, isn’t it?”
He sits at his chair with his minuscule xicara of thick, sweet coffee. Maria goes to the window. Emil sits opposite Nacho on the other chair. The chessboard is between them.
Suddenly Emil reaches over.
“Your arm.”
“I’m cured.”
Maria turns around.
“I was at the Great Cleansing yesterday. Something happened to me. I’m cured.”
Maria says, “But that’s a miracle.”
Emil withdraws his hand. “My God,” he says.
Maria walks over and feels Nacho’s arm.
“Stand up,” she says. “A miracle. What happened to you?”
“At the Great Cleansing. There were thousands of people. They took me to the river and I went in. And I just waded a little. An hour later I could walk. And my arm was as you see it now.”
That’s impossible,” says Emil. “Did you go to see the bruja of Estrellas Negras? She’s been known to …”
“I’m telling you the truth,” says Nacho. “I went in the river. I was cured.”
A moment later a boy knocks on the door.
“Mr. Morales, I found your crutches on the playground.”
The boy hands them over. Nacho thanks him and leans the muletas against the wall.
“I won’t need these now.”
“Yes, sir,” says the boy, his eyes agog, and walks out the door.
Emil touches the chess pieces.
“This is Torres,” he says, handling the white king. “And this is us.”
“Not really,” says Nacho, who, in great handfuls, moves all of the black pieces except the king off the board, and places them on the white side. Pawns tumble and a bishop rolls. “This is us. One defenseless tower against an army.”
“We have to come up with a plan,” says Emil.
“What do you have in mind? Summon the wolves? Get bows and arrows from Dahomey-Krill? It’s too late for plans. When he comes, I’ll talk to him. Appeal to his better nature and probably get my head blown off for my pains. Then you can start shooting. OK?”
“No,” says Emil. “Not OK.”
“How many men is he bringing?”
“We don’t know.”
“How do you know he’s coming?” asks Nacho.
“We have people all over the city. It’s the word on the street.”
“The word on the street?”
“Nacho, do you want to die today? You just acquired a working leg and an arm.”
Nacho looks at his brother, sips his coffee calmly. Emil waits for an answer. When he doesn’t get one, he speaks again.
“We have to do something.”
“I’m all out of ideas. I asked my contacts, I asked Lalloo, I went to the history books. Endless war. That’s just what happens around here. People live and die and blood is spilt and nothing ever changes. We fight the good fight or we run away and leave the tower for Torres. What does it matter? How many people live here? A couple of thousand? Let them find other homes. Tell them about the places we scouted last week. The toxic tower in Fellahin, the factory full of bats in Oameni Morti, the abandoned zoo. Move them out. We can’t win a war, so let them walk away. At least give them the choice.”
Maria turns on him.
“Walk away? My business is here. Thousands of libros of equipment. What do you want me to do?”
“What do you want me to do?” says Nacho.
“Get Torres to change his mind.”
Nacho almost snorts. “You want me to bargain with a psychopath? See if he changes his mind? He’s a Torres.”
Maria lets out a snarl. “I’ll talk to him myself,” she says.
“Be my guest.”
“Your body may be cured but you’re as useless as every other man.”
She turns on a stiletto like a knife and flounces out of the room.
Emil says, “That’s not going to work. You’re our leader, Nacho. Now’s the big moment and you’re sitting here drinking coffee, admiring your new leg.”
“If you want me to play the hero, I can do that. I can show off my body and say miracles are possible. I can make a big speech about us fighting for our survival. I can preach about justice in seven languages, but it’s not going to change anything. Torres is going to kill us. The end.”
“But we need to do something.”
“At the Great Cleansing in Agua Suja last night … like I said, there were ten, maybe twenty, thousand people there, eating, singing, bathing together. It was the happiest and the best thing I can remember. Today that same river may run with our blood, and it’ll be a footnote in history. Maybe not even that. Maybe just a scrawl in the margins. Long-term or short-term, we’re all dead. There are no happy endings. This is the way the world is. So why don’t you get a bunch of cardboard boxes, borrow a truck, pack up Maria’s junk, and drive to Ferrido and make boats for the rest of your life. I never asked you to stay or be a martyr.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Well, I’m taking it back. Get out of here. Take that precious, beautiful, wonderful woman and run for your life. Make a new start. Between you, you can’t go wrong. She has more balls than the rest of us put together and you’re not so bad in that department either. So go. Go make babies. Start a business. Do whatever you want to do. You have my blessing.”
“I don’t need your blessing. I’m your big brother. And I’m not walking away. Why do you think I came here in the first place? To rescue you.”
“Well, you did it. I thank you. Really I do. But you can’t rescue me again. Not from Torres. So don’t try.”
“I have to try. I’m my father’s son. And besides, he keeps coming back to me in my sleep telling me everything will be OK. Mother, too.”
He pauses, looks at Nacho. “What? What is it?”
Nacho nods. “I’ve been having the same dreams. And not always when I’m asleep. Visitations.”
At that moment, a cry goes up, and the walkie-talkies begin to crackle. Torres.
The streets of Favelada are closed off. Wooden barriers and orange traffic cones divide up the city and turn it into a maze, pushing the streams of traffic down back streets, under obscure bridges and over roads that are barely roads: trails of rubble, rutted creeks, and dried-up riverbeds. Large signs warn drivers away—flashing lights and upper-case letters. Pedestrians, too, are redirected by men with guns, and even the stray dogs are hustled back into the shadows where they came from.
On the main street—the artery that runs through Favelada—a few soldiers mill about. Electronic messages echo in their radios, and they ready themselves for an arrival, flicking cigarette butts into the road, discarding the dregs of their morning coffee into the drains.
At 8:30 a.m. a rumbling comes, so deep and dolorous that it seems to emanate from under the earth, the breath of some medieval behemoth. The roads, already baked from six weeks of relentless heat, crack under the weight of a convoy of heavy metal.
Along Haggadah Street, the infantrymen come jogging, dressed in
khaki, gripping rifles. Some wear helmets customized to their tastes: ostrich feathers or badges that say Death or Glory or stenciled crossbones. Others come unhelmeted, piratical in bandannas or shaven-headed. They run past the old watchmakers and the clothes factory, the smoke and musk of the city hanging in the air, an acrid brume that muffles everything like a layer of snow. In the graffiti-covered tenements, faces peer out over the balconies, and children kicking a ball stop and stare, the ball rolling untamed into the street.
The foot soldiers keep running, wet with sweat in the clustering heat: fifty, eighty, one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred in all, and a straggler faints, bangs his head on a sidewalk, and is left behind, later to be stripped raw, liberated of his gun and his shoes and his helmet, the last of which will be rinsed clean and used for soup by three generations of damnificados.
Behind them come armored cars, tricked out in spine-like shields, a herd of triceratops. Their drivers wear huge goggles which make them look like insects crouched behind the wheel. The cars come in pairs because the street is narrow.
Seventy armored cars later, the real story reveals itself. A massive clanking. A grinding of gears. A throbbing in the road. Fifty tanks, platinum gray, turrets rotating, aiming their tube-like schnozzles at the shabby bungalows, the moldering tenements, the wastelands off Haggadah where the cats spend their days. The tank tracks crush everything in their path. Dust rises and from the tracks tiny flecks of compacted stone are spat up in whizzing parabolas that clink on the windows of the stores.
The sound is inhuman. A clamor of robot noise, a symphony of iron and gear sticks and metallic coughs and stutters underpinned by a droning baritone—the internal workings of machines of war. Some cries go up, squad leaders bellowing orders, but mainly it’s a wordless procession. Faceless, too, until the final tank appears with Torres himself manning the hatch, grinning hugely, his moustache ends twirled for the occasion. Even in the heat he wears a combat jacket festooned with medals he’s awarded himself. His hair is slicked back like a ’30s film star and he waves at pedestrians who stare, bemused.
Damnificados Page 23
