Coin

by Ronil Caine

  Following this phone call, and after what Danny Cazares said, it really seemed that the coin possessed magical powers. It was made for emperors. They really did need a lot of luck to remain in power for a long time, and they would not have bothered about attracting bad fortune. But it was equally possible that the coin performed differently for the Incas five or six hundred years earlier. It could even be a cursed coin, which gives its owner everything while taking everything away.

  The important thing now, however, was to get to Lima, possibly without ruining every city on the way. Luis started to giggle at this and felt like he was going mad. He could see himself laughing hysterically in a few months time as he wins millions, survives accidents, terror attacks and hurricanes, while each and every member of his family dies in seemingly accidental tragedies. Meanwhile, he just laughs and laughs and laughs.

  Luis went home and told Camilla everything. He tried to relate the story in such a way as to reduce its seriousness and to avoid appearing utterly mad. He failed. Camila burst out crying and packed her bags. She told Luis she would take Marcos to her mother because she could not take it any longer. Luis asked for a few more days, saying he needed to go to Lima and get rid of the coin, and when he comes home, everything would be back to normal. Camila told him she would go to their new house in a week’s time. Luis should be there by then, and should be his old self, too, or he would never see either of them again. Luis agreed to this.

  Luis bought his ticket to Lima, packed a few change of clothes and went to the airport. His wallet and the coin were in his pocket, and he took only hand luggage with him on board. He phoned his office, saying he would take a few days off due to a viral infection. His boss was understanding and wished him a swift recovery, but Luis knew both him and the entire firm were under considerable pressure. He only had a few days or his career would collapse.

  Whilst waiting to board the plane, it occurred him that perhaps it was not a good idea to fly on an Airbus A320 with a hundred and fifty other people when he had a lucky charm that also attracted ill fortune in his pocket. But statistically there was only a one in ten million chance for accident on these planes, and anyway, what else could he have done? He could not walk all the way to Lima.

  He trusted the pattern that misfortune only came after he had a lucky break would hold. He went through every single instance and realised that luck always proceeded catastrophe—which always happened to someone else, but someone near him, as if he had to see, had to know the exact price of his luck.

  Just before the plane took off, Luis received a voice message from Camila. His wife was in tears as she told him that their old flat burned out, together with two other apartments. The old lady who lived downstairs fainted as she was cooking, but she was the only victim of the inferno. Camila asked Luis to take care of himself and begged him to come back to them because they needed him more than ever.

  Luis looked at his phone in shock. The important things, including the dollars they found, were already moved to the new house and only useless knickknacks and discarded furniture were left in the old apartment. Camila and Marcos were at Luis’s mother-in-law and he was at the airport. Their home burned down and they were all unharmed and hardly lost anything. They were lucky. Luis was paralysed by one single question as the Airbus took off. Was this luck big enough to bring down an airplane? He looked around on the plane. The potential victims for his family’s escape from burning to death. Old people, young people, children, businessmen, families.

  Ding! A friendly male voice called in. The captain announced they had reached cruising altitude.

  8

  From the left side windows of the Airbus, they could see Peruvian cities and the stark peaks of the Andes for a while, but Lima was still a long way off. The captain slowly started to descend when the entire plane was rattled unexpectedly. The impact felt like they collided with another airplane head on. The rattle was followed by a thundering noise and a loud hiss. The plane tilted right, and the Peruvian coast flipped out of sight.

  The co-pilot told the captain that their left engine was on fire and the captain sent out the distress signal. They managed to stabilise the plane but were losing altitude too quickly and, worse still, the landing gear had jammed. They asked the Peruvian Jorge Chavez Airport’s help for urgent evacuation on water. The captain already knew they would end up in the water; the only question was if they landed in one piece or a million fragments.

  The passengers started to panic, but even that did not go beyond shouting, weeping, and it even subsided a little when the captain announced they needed to perform emergency landing on water and everyone should stay in their places, with their seatbelts fastened. At this very moment the oxygen masks dropped, which distracted people’s attention from the quick emergency drill the senior attendant was trying to give them. The shouting was replaced by wailing, prophecies of doom and whispered prayers.

  The plane dipped again and one of the air hostesses fell and hit her head hard on a seat. She did not get up and her body rolled between the seats like a discarded rag doll.

  Luis was the calmest on the plane. He knew he would survive and he suspected he would escape unscathed. But even so, he was utterly terrified and gripped the armrest so hard his knuckles went white. When the oxygen masks dropped he put his on and tried to breathe normally. The woman next to him crouched down and protected her head with her arms. The man on his other side unfastened his seatbelt and stood up. Perhaps he wanted to help the fallen hostess. They hit the ocean at this very moment. The captain managed to put the plane down at a gentle angle, but the force of impact was still elemental. The plane immediately shattered into several pieces. The wings broke off and exploded in a cloud of splinters, lashing the water into huge waves wherever they hit. The fuselage broke into two at the wings, and this was when the man standing by Luis disappeared, like a pawn taken off a chessboard. Luis closed his eyes; he did not want to see what happened around him. There were people tied to their chairs flying everywhere, not all of them in one piece. There was an explosion in the front of the plane, and fifty people were, quite paradoxically, in the middle of the ocean, burning to death. Luis could feel his mask tear off, he could feel the heat of the explosion on his face and the way his chair peeled off the floor. He no longer knew up from down. His body was afloat in nothingness and his consciousness drew back into the deepest, safest recess of his mind and closed the door on himself.

  He regained consciousness with a thundering crack, and suddenly, he was immersed in cold water. He slammed into the ocean and started to think. He unfastened his seat belt and swam up to the surface. Finally, he thought. It was over. He saw a life vest floating by, grabbed it and inflated it. He did not dare to look around, even though he could hear the cries. He saw debris in front of him, and flaming machine parts. He recognised a few clothes, but refused to take a closer look to see if they came from a broken suitcase or off a passenger.

  The coast guard and the emergency services arrived at the scene fifteen minutes after the accident. They rescued Luis and thirty-two other passengers out of a hundred and nineteen. But, as it often happens in such cases, many of the initial survivors died in the coming days and months. Some succumbed to their injuries, others could not take the psychological burden of losing their loved ones or facing the injustice of having lived where so many others died.

  Luis was discharged from hospital the next day. He was lucky that his wallet stayed in his pocket, even though he lost his phone and luggage. The coin was in his pocket, too, which seemed almost impossible after such a plunge and impact, but it was there nonetheless. It would not let him go, Luis thought.

  At the hospital, he was approached by a lady with a kind voice. She told him if he wanted to talk about what happened later on, he should seek her out, but Luis just told her he was preoccupied with more serious issues.

  He called Camila from the hospital. He told her he was alright and lied to her, saying he was not on the airplane that was all over
the news.

  After this, he withdrew some Peruvian cash and bought himself two changes of clothes, a pair of hiking boots and a backpack, and went down to the docks to find that man with the strange name who could hopefully put an end to his nightmare. He had a hamburger-like sandwich on the way with coca leaves in it. Luis knew that this was normal in Peru and that kitchen coca leaves had nothing to do with cocaine, but had high potassium content. He did wonder, however, about the fact that one of the restaurants he passed offered guinea pigs for lunch.

  The first man he asked in the docks turned out to be Guayasamin himself. Luis's impression based on his voice and occupation was of a younger man but this man was about sixty. He had few facial wrinkles but these he had were deeply ingrained into his features.

  “I didn’t think you would come all the way here,” Guayasamin said wiping his hand on a rag before extending it to Luis. He had a pair of heavy duty gloves under his arm.

  “There was nothing else I could do,” Luis said.

  “I believe you.” Guayasamin looked around the docks and tapped his square chin. “Well, my shift doesn’t end for another six hours, but I could make myself available tomorrow and take you to the priest.”

  “What priest?” Luis asked.

  “The one who can help you. I’ll tell you everything in the evening. Where are you staying?”

  “I haven’t really given it a thought yet.”

  “Go to the Orca. It’s a small bed and breakfast in East Lima, on the Jirón Áncash. It’s run by a friend of mine and I can find you there. Just tell him I sent you and he’ll get a room for you no matter what.” A weak smile passed across Guayasamin’s face.

  “Alright.”

  “I'll come by in the evening and tell you what I know, and you tell me what happened.”

  “That’d be great. Thank you!”

  “Don’t thank me yet! I don’t know how your story ends, Señor Moreno, but I’ll try to help. And please, just call me Gua.”

  “Alright, Gua. Thank you.”

  “And one more thing. You are Raúl Moreno’s son, right?”

  Luis could not hide his shock. Nobody, not even his own mother told him anything about his father since the day he died.

  “Yes,” he answered, nearly stuttering. “How...”

  “You look exactly like him, except you are a bit slimmer. And I remember the name Moreno very well; it is not a particularly rare name, but I’ve not known another man of the same name, save your father.”

  Luis’s mind was full of questions, but Guayasamin said goodbye and returned to work before he could ask them.

  Luis left the docks and went to find the hotel. He had never been to Lima before, but since Spanish was the official language in Peru as well, it felt like a trip to the countryside. He was lucky he did not find a French or a Chinese coin. Though truth to tell, he would have had a hard time getting by in an English-speaking country, too.

  He found a room in the Orca hotel—the last room available, according to the girl at the front desk—closed the curtains and tried to sleep. Lima was the hottest at this time of the year, in early March, which meant it was twenty-eight degrees that day, but it felt hotter in the tepid air.

  Luis kept tossing and turning and thinking about the coin. From the moment he picked up the coin, it belonged to him, and this must have been magic, because he could not throw it away, lose it, or even hand it over to someone else. Obviously, he would not be able to sell it, smash it or melt it down. But then how could he get rid of it? And who could that priest be that Guaya... Gua mentioned?

  Luis thought his death would most likely solve the problem. The coin could only have power over him for as long as he lived, it would not pass on to Marcos. Oh well, Luis thought, but how do people with infinite luck die?

  If he put a bullet in his head, it would definitely miss the delicate brain parts which cause instant death. No matter how much damage he would do to himself, eventually, he would recover; that was obvious. If he jumped off a building, a truck full of goose feathers would pass right under that building, he chuckled. And it would be similar if he tried to poison himself, hang himself, or use any other contraption to end his life: anything that would certainly kill another man would leave him unscathed. He would survive anything because his luck was unlimited.

  This was true, but he was just very lucky, not immortal. The two were not the same, so there has to be a thin line where luck and death met and where the balance could tip towards the latter.

  He hoped that it did not have to come to this, but he had to remember he came here to protect his family. His little Marcos and his wonderful Camila.

  He thought about how Danny Cazares found Guayasamin. He could have asked, but he could almost hear the answer. Through unlikely coincidences and enormous luck. If this was the case, his luck was like the roots of a tree: it tangled around everyone he knew, and as long as they worked in line with his luck, they were lucky, too. This thought made Luis’s head spin, so he settled for the answer that Cazares and his men had great connections and it must have taken them just a few phone calls to reach Gua.

  Guayasamin arrived at the Orca at nightfall. He was considerably friendlier now that he did not have to work. He pulled his hair back in a ponytail—not one grey strand in it, despite his age—and his eyes above his wide cheekbones were peaceful, but strong. He wore a thick vest over a worn polo shirt.

  They walked over to a bar and ordered two beers. Luis told him everything that happened from the moment he found the coin, from the dog to the airplane, and how his wallet and the coin stayed with him throughout his tribulations. Even though Gua said that the hotel usually had plenty of rooms, Luis could not help but feel he had luck with that as well. He saw everything in this light lately; this was another sign of madness. It wrapped its sticky tentacles around him so slowly it seemed to toy with him.

  Guayasamin explained Luis that his ancestors were Incas and he decided to help him because he owed a lot to Luis’s father. Raúl often visited Lima, they had dealings together which profited Gua as well. Those days were long gone, and so was the money he earned, but he was still very grateful to Raúl and he still missed those nights out when they celebrated yet another month of success.

  Gua explained that his ancestors had told him of a sect who performed magic for the Inca emperors. A small cabal above the laws and above the people, who only answered to the monarch himself. They read the future, they decided when to send the warriors to battle, they made the amulets and totems, all sorts of sacral objects which helped the emperor in war, in love and in all his decisions. They called upon the powers of nature and the ancestral spirits to create these objects. Nobody had any idea what sort of objects survived the ages and how many of them were still around. Some of them were harmless, but Gua firmly believed that, unfortunately, some of them preserved their magic powers.

  He told Luis he could take him to a tribe in the mountains. Where the priest he already mentioned lived. His position and his knowledge was passed down to him from one generation to the next. He could probably say more about the coin. They decided to meet in the morning and Luis agreed to cover all expenses of their trip. They drank to their health and had another round. The two of them had a tough case to crack. Luis felt dizzy when he thought he carried the lucky charm of a secret cabal of magicians, a coin that could manipulate events to his advantage.

  9

  Guayasamin arrived at the hotel in a cab a few minutes before sunrise. They went to the airport together and took a small Bombardier with seventy-eight passengers to Jauja. Luis told Gua they would not crash because nothing particularly lucky happened to him in the past few days. Then he remembered the catastrophe he survived two days earlier and wondered if it counted as such, but then he convinced himself that was not how the coin worked.

  The plane did not crash: it landed softly on the tarmac of the Francisco Carle airport. They rented an SUV in Jauja and headed out into the depths of the Andes. They carried spar
e cans of gasoline and food in the back of the car.

  Guayasamin disclosed interesting details about the Incas as they drove, and Luis listened intently. Gua told him that several tribes still lived in the mountains, practically the same way they did in the 15th-16th centuries. The Incas were always good at passing on information, so if only one such temple survived, or if there was someone who knew about this cabal, they would find out. He told Luis that according to the Inca worldview, man had a duty to protect nature and keep up mutual respect.

  The roads were uneven. As they went through an ever-changing countryside, the bleak rocks gave way to flourishing plant life and the dry gravel roads were replaced by a dirt track. Once, they took a rope ferry across a river, another time they had to haul the mired SUV across a muddy spot with their windlass. It was hot and Luis’s shirt was dripping with sweat; later, it was caked with dust, while his boots and his trousers were covered in mud. He looked like an archaeologist excavating at a dig.

  Guayasamin’s raspy, but comfortable voice kept telling him about the Incas, and how their empire spanned three thousand miles in it's heyday. Their cities were connected by well-paved roads and hanging bridges that made even the Spanish conquerors stare. They carved terraces into the hillside to have arable land and dug canals to water them, and did all that without inventing the wheel. They built their empire with their hands and their animals and their buildings still survived to modern times. Neither rain, wind, nor even earthquakes could destroy them.

  After this he told Luis about their emperors, whom they believed to be the children of the Sun; and the hosts of protective spirits who guarded them, their totems and the huacas which marked the extraordinary in this world, such as an oddly shaped tree, a cave, a meadow.