by Yuri Herrera
“Take him in.” And strode back to the Palace.
The Heir stayed back to ask: Who was on guard, What was the truck like, How many were there, And you, what did you do. Not a soul had seen a thing. He ordered two of the guards to be taken in to make sure they didn’t know more than they said and then left. Cold. Too calm for all that rage, thought the Artist. But I bet he knows what he’s doing. He, too, followed the entourage to the Palace chapel, where the Doctor was extracting the dagger from Pocho and saying: Never seen anything like it. Then the Father arrived. The Artist hadn’t met him yet, tho he knew of the services he lent the Court in exchange for the King’s money, funding churches to get the poor hooked on heaven. Those in hats took them off and made the sign of the cross. The Father blessed Pocho quietly and then said, louder:
“What path is this we’re on?”
The courtiers said Amen tho it was out of place, and then the King entered. Without waiting for the order almost everyone filed out, and just the Witch, the Father, the Heir and the Gringo remained in the room. The Artist stood back in the shadows and kept quiet.
“This was those bastards from the south,” said the Gringo. The Traitor could never have pulled this off alone; they have to be backing him.”
“If they want war, give it to them,” said the Witch, who was the only one not looking at the corpse but at the King’s eyes, her gaze a tense rope.
The King bent over and brushed his fingers through Pocho’s hair, said something to him without speaking, just moving his lips. Suddenly he turned to the Heir. How do you read this?
“We can take down whoever we need to,” he said, “but what if that’s what they’re looking for? Whose interests are served by a war? Not ours, I tell you that.”
“Coward!” spat the Witch. “They bring a body to your door and you don’t retaliate? Those traitors challenge your Lord and you do nothing?”
The Heir cut her off. “That’s not the way we kill,” pointing to Pocho’s wound, “which means that’s not the way they kill. You ask me, this is about something else.”
“Listen,” the King stepped in, addressing the Gringo, “you’re going to find out what else Pocho was into on the other side. We’ve got to make sure we get it right, don’t want to find out this was payback for some shit from back in the day. Meanwhile, find me the Traitor, he’s in for it anyway, but don’t bring him down till I say so.”
“If we wait…” the Witch protested, but the King interrupted her.
“I said we wait. You don’t know war.”
Like saying shut up. The King took the Father by one shoulder and said:
“Bury him for me, the Manager will give you what you need for the box.”
“And what I still need for my ranchito…” the Father slipped in. The King nodded, turned and left the chapel. The others followed, with the exception of the Father. The Artist emerged from the shadows and stood beside him.
“Probably deserved it,” said the Father to Pocho’s remains.
The words made the Artist flinch, like a slap. He left the chapel without a word, hoping that it would be taken as an affront but knowing that it wouldn’t, since he was invisible; but the Father’s lack of judgment offended him. If he knew one thing it was that in the course of life, sooner or later, you cause pain, and it was better to decide up front who you cause it to, like the King. Who was brave enough to accept it? Who bore the cross for the rest? He was their mantle, the wound that took the pain that others may not hurt. They couldn’t fool the Artist: he had grown up suffering at the hands of badge and uniform, had endured the humiliation of the well-to-do—until the King came along. So what if the man moved poison when they asked for it on the other side? Let them have it. Let them take it. What had they ever done for the good guys?
“Probably deserved it,” the Artist hissed in rage, and then thought: if there’s one thing we deserve, it’s a heaven that’s real.
The boss was coming back, the one they’d done a deal with, and to keep spirits up, the King arranged amusements. No only were the guests supplied with hooch, smack and women, but they set up a casino and organized a shooting contest.
The whole Court moved to the grounds. They brought cages with dozens and dozens of doves, black ones that wouldn’t get lost in the desert glare. The King, the Heir and the other boss and his top dog positioned themselves, shotguns aimed up at the sky. Each marksman had a guard in charge of fetching the pieces he shot and putting them in a sack behind him. The cages were opened and suddenly there came a great skyward flutter and a hail of bullets. The crowd clapped each time the shooters hit a bird and it fell, leaving a dark trail.
The boss was a good shot, even allowed himself the luxury of taunting his birdboy, firing at his feet while shouting:
“Ándele, ándele, ándele, bastard, time to earn your keep.”
The spectators whooped at his antics, while the boss—laughing his head off, hardly taking aim and not stopping to see if he’d hit—fired his gun nonstop, up and down, sky and ground. The fetchers to’d and fro’d with the pieces, sometimes squabbling, ripping a bird. Even then it was clear that the King, tho he took careful aim and almost always hit his mark, was not fast enough, and he was losing.
A sequence of images flew through the Artist’s brain in quick succession: the King defeated, the scorn and petulance of the no-account winner, the faces of the Courtiers—dejected, when yet again it rained on their parade. More than a reflex, his reaction was an instantaneous understanding of how he could be of service. He scooted out in front of the spectators and, while everyone was gazing at the hullabaloo up above, edged over to the King’s sack while his fetcher was out in the field. The Artist crouched and pulled a bird from the bag and then stood there, waiting, until the King turned and, utterly astonished, saw what he was doing. Then the Artist sidestepped repeatedly, his back still to the crowd, until he was at the capo’s sack. Now he waited for the capo to see him and then swiftly, wearing a guilty face, chucked that same bird into his sack. There was one more cage to go, but the boss was no longer laughing; instead he’d turned to stare at each sack between shots. When there were no more doves in the sky, the kingpin approached the King.
“What the—?” he asked, face uncomprehending.
The King lifted his chin a bit: what are you on about? The boss then demanded:
“Show me your hands.”
The Artist held them out, bloody, and the King wiped off his innocent expression, burst out laughing as though he’d just gotten the joke, and clapped the capo on the back.
“Don’t be angry, friend, it’s just that my boy here told me you’d been given a faulty shotgun by mistake.” The King opened his arms wide and added, “And that’s not how we roll here. At my house the guest always wins.”
The capo stood in suspense, as if waiting for a conclusion to draw itself. Then his laughter grew louder and louder, and he embraced the King.
“Sly fox! They told me you were a gentleman.” And he turned to the public and pointed to the King: “This is your winner! This is your winner right here!”
The public applauded without having heard what the bosses had said, happy because they seemed happy. The King beamed in his blue shirt with bright reds and yellows. He invited the boss to a game of poker and the crowd trailed after to the casino. But halfway there he stopped and turned, hands on hips, gazing intently at the Artist, his face one of surprise and satisfaction.
“So you’re a crafty bastard,” he whispered, and turned back to the Palace.
“So, does a girl have to carry a gun for you to write her a song?” said she, the Commoner.
Staring at him. She was staring right at him, and the Artist didn’t know how to handle the astonishment he felt with her almond eyes trained his way. He stood frozen until she arched her eyebrows like this—Well…?—as though aiming a cannon at his chest, and then he replied.
“It’s not about the guns, it’s the stories. What�
��s yours?”
“I don’t tell the truth to anyone in this place,” she said, and started walking back down the hall that the Artist had ended up on. The Artist followed a little ways, finding and discarding the precise words he needed to prolong their conversation. They went out to the grounds, strolled by a fountain in whose center stood a god spitting water through its mouth, carried on to a maze of shrubs that spelled out the King’s name, and on reaching a swimming pool tiled in mosaic made to look like leaves and grass, the Artist got it right.
“So don’t tell the truth, tell me lies.”
The Commoner turned and stared for a second, astonished. She leaned over the water as if searching for someone to take it out on. Then she gazed out at the perimeter, the electrified fence, the desert; and after awhile she said:
“What’s the point? You might end up believing me.”
They walked to where the King’s collection was. There were snakes, tigers, crocodiles, an ostrich and, in a bigger cage, almost its own garden, a peacock.
“His favorite,” said the Commoner, swooping out an open hand, ironic. The animal flapped its wings and the Artist saw that it had a small bandage around its foot. He was about to ask how the animal got wounded there and who took the time to treat it, but the Commoner said:
“I need to go see my mother.” Seeing the question in his eyes she added, “The one who’s always with him.”
The Artist shivered a bit at the hatred with which she’d referred to the witch, and more at the confirmation that they were blood. He opted not to follow her when she returned to the Palace as if she’d been out alone. Still, tho she’d turned her back to him, she had left a trail of pebbles with which to find her: rage and secrets; she’d looked at him.
The days that followed would have been the happiest in the Artist’s life since his encounter with the King were it not for the fact that they were also the most unsettled. Suddenly his lyric urge abandoned him and his ear served only to listen for the Commoner’s footsteps, his eyes only to surveil corners, his hands only to tremble at her absence. But he pretended. He aped the self that kept its cool.
When he came across the Commoner he stuck to her side and they spoke on the go: she wore loose men’s pants and uncinched shirts, hiding her body, but when she moved the cloth and her skin met and the Artist could see it. They almost never sat, and when they did the Commoner would sink into her chair as if impressing her shape.
That was the way they roamed the Palace. Treacherously, the Artist slowly learned her curves as they ran through topics and rooms. In the ballroom he grazed her forearm and told her of his parents on the other side of the line; in the game room he brushed her back with an elbow as she spoke of when she’d had friends, as a girl; in the armory he stroked her hair and told her stories of cantinas—but the topic made her stop listening, for some reason she switched off and slowly began to close her eyes, curling up like a kitten, and the Artist felt the urge to accompany her silence, for in it he understood her a little better; when they spoke of the Witch his thigh glanced her thigh as they rambled around the boardroom with built-in cantina, the study with built-in cantina, the balcony with built-in cantina, the dining room with built-in cantina, and the cantina proper, so magnificent.
“She frees him of a demon,” said the Commoner. And she told him how, long ago, when he was not yet who he would become, the King had asked her mother for help and the two of them had left her father, a good man who was therefore a useless man, and now a lonely man.
From that moment on, the soundtrack of his desire took on a strident tone, because he realized he had no permission to touch the Commoner: the King had not consented, and without his say-so things could never move forward. He had gotten close to the Commoner because he took the Girl at her word when she’d said that that was what she was: one of many. And now what was he doing? Not only longing to touch her but to be with her, to share her solitude. He stood at a distance when they strolled but could not calm his trembling. She knew it when he stared at her perfect little nose, aching to trace a finger across her eyebrows.
“If there’s a fly on my face, get it off,” the Commoner said, and the Artist hid his hands like a thief. She laughed tenderly, perhaps, and then led him to a room lined with empty shelves.
“The library,” she stated with absolutely no emphasis, as tho she hadn’t said anything at all. Yes, there were a few sheets of paper, a bible, maps, newspapers with stories of dead men, a magazine with a color photo of the members of the Court at a wedding. Mentally, the Artist unfolded a scrap of paper on which he scribbled the idea for a song about the King and his men planning war.
Soon the Artist began sweating distress, because he could feel the Commoner’s body getting closer: as they gamboled by the Girl’s room, which at the time was still his, too, she sunk her nails lightly into his waist; passing the guards’ barracks she pressed her face to his at the slightest pretext; in the trucks’ loading bay he endured the tips of her breasts pointing against his back. That very afternoon he decided to take off the brakes, to find her and come undone in confessions. He caught sight of her on the same balcony where he’d heard the Heir and the Journalist scheming, set off so she couldn’t get away, and a few meters before he reached the corner where there was nothing but the balcony and the locked room, felt someone jerk his shoulder.
“I was looking for you,” the Journalist said. “There’s a problem with your songs.”
The Artist turned to fling off the hand that restrained him, looked at the spot where he should have found the Commoner, and a second before he could confirm it, knew that he wouldn’t find her, knew that there, people disappeared.
They didn’t want his songs. Jockeys at the station said his words were coarse, his good guys were bad. Or they said yes, but no: they liked the lyrics but had orders to shut his groove down. It wasn’t the Artist’s unbuttery voice, he’d only recorded one little tune; other singers, finer voices, were tasked with giving his songs a smoother sound. One of the DJs said to the Journalist, hey, between you and me, the Supreme G is turning the screws tight these days: a show for the gringos, temporary hush-hush till the advertisers cool down. Couldn’t he ask the Artist to clean it up a little, write sweeter songs, less crude?
“Don’t look at me,” said the Journalist, “I’m just letting you know, and now I’m taking you to Señor so we can figure out what to do about this… He’ll be free in a minute.”
So they didn’t want him, thought the Artist, so he was chump change for the big-money men, so he made their ears itch. He’d been insulted a hundred times before, only this time he wasn’t humiliated: he swaggered, felt superior. He clenched his jaw and suddenly could see it all clearly. It was the rejection of others that defined him. Shit, so what if his singing pained them, in the end what the Artist enjoyed was gazing into the eyes of his audience, bringing their bones to life on the dance floor, singing to the people, real people.
His footsteps and those of the Journalist rang out on the marble: an energetic echo. The Artist spouted off under his breath and as the marble sped by underfoot he got madder and madder, and surer of himself, as if the answer lay waiting at the end of the hall. In the Gallery.
“Here we are,” said the Journalist.
People lined up, coming in through a big door, in shawls and tattered trousers, carrying kids, their faces blank but shining slightly with faith. The Gallery was a controlled chaos, alarmed yet deferential, and smelled of dirt and salt, and a kind of curdled heat.
“Where were you?” demanded the Jeweler the second he saw him walk in. “Don’t you know what today is?”
The Artist didn’t know, and felt ashamed since he saw that somehow it was his duty to know, for as soon as he entered and sensed the atmosphere, he got goosebumps and suspected that he was not alone in his anger, that his anger was incarnate.
“Every month there’s an audience,” the Jeweler explained, “and you have to be present for whatever might ari
se. Some are only looking for meds, or a job, or payback, but for others, he changes their lives with some little thing: Señor as their baby’s godfather, or helping out with a quinceañera. He grants things to them all. And what was he supposed to do if someone asked for a corrido?”
The Artist nodded, suddenly both guilty and excited at the scene. The crowd at the back was a blur, an indistinct mass of gray, but he could clearly see those almost at the front of the line, who stood straight, tugged their hair to the side, kept quiet, did up a button. And at the head, surrounded by the Court, the King looked them each in the eye, listened to the favor requested, motioned to the Manager and the Manager made a note. Some he stroked their hair or counseled in a grave tone of voice. Then they wanted to kiss his hand or embrace his knees, and the King allowed them to adore him for a moment before casting them off with gentle force.
The Jeweler, too, was dazzled by the audience; he, so fine, seemed to flourish at the passion expressed by the simple; outside he likely would have looked straight through them, but here he didn’t miss a trick when it came to seeing that Señor worked miracles, and they were transformed.
“That’s why we’re here,” said the Jeweler, “to give him power. By ourselves, what good is any one of us? None at all. But in here, with him, with his blood, we’re strong… And let no one think they can take anything from Señor!”
The Jeweler was almost shouting by the end, and the people cowered for a second, until the Journalist slapped him on the back.
“Easy, tiger, easy now.”
The Artist tried to distract the Jeweler by asking, “You ever make special pieces for the people?”
“All my pieces are special,” he replied, “and all the special pieces you see here were made by me.”
For a second the Artist thought the Journalist and the Jeweler exchanged a look of surprise, or that the Journalist was about to fly off the handle, but it was only for an instant, because then the Audience ended.
