by E. J. Swift
She plucks a few notes on the guitar and starts to sing.
As he listens, Vikram feels a strange, tingling sensation filling the room. The chatter drops away. Drinks are cradled, the glassware hushed, the room falls still. In a dizzying moment, Vikram understands that something special is happening here tonight. This girl, Pilar y el Loro, has the most beautiful voice he has ever heard, perhaps anyone in the room has ever heard. The hairs are raised on the back of his neck.
He sees his choice then. He sees it very clearly.
There is the new world. These people, this country. He could make his way here, maybe even be happy. He can see a life for himself. Perhaps in this city, perhaps out in the landscapes they have walked through, the valleys of flowers that drive Taeo mad, the mountains where he saw the guanaco. He is smart enough, resourceful enough. He could make his ground dreams into a reality he trusts.
But there is the place he comes from. The place he cannot escape, however far he runs. He understands that too, listening to the voice of Pilar y el Loro, which speaks to him as song follows after song: waves and salt and kelp and red hair and green eyes and hot battered squid and roses and ghosts. The place he vowed never to go back to. The place where Adelaide’s body drifts, somewhere beneath the waves. The place that is imprinted on him.
Osiris.
All those souls, living in secrecy. The westerners and the Citizens. The one thing they share is their ignorance.
He knows then that there is no choice.
When the girl has done her set, he’ll go back to the rooms, get his stuff, find a way past the quarantine barriers. He’ll go back to Osiris, and Taeo can make his choice: stay here, or come with him.
The girl stops, breaking off mid-lyric. She is standing in front of the stool, one hand gripped very hard against the edge, as if to hold her up. Her skin is blotched and she is sweating all over. She starts to sway.
30 ¦
THE ADDRESS THAT clown-face girl gave Mig is some swanky off-street place full of wankers who have decided to party because they think it’s the end of the world. But there is Pilar, up on the stage. Looking and sounding like the real thing. She is going to be on the radio. She is going to be incredible. Everyone in the room is holding their breath because of her, including him. Mig feels awash with emotion. It frightens him, the hugeness of what he feels: relief that he has found her, terror that she will be snatched into the plump arms of the rich, and at the same time he is riding on a great swell of pride and love. Pilar is from his block. His warehouse. Maybe one day she will let him say she’s his girl. He imagines stepping up to the stage and kissing her, showing everyone that: Mig and Pilar, they’re the ones to watch. They’re a unit. She has the words and he has the spaces around the words. Together, they are unbeatable.
He won’t go up to her, not here. Pilar wouldn’t allow it.
But he’ll wait. And later, when these drunken idiots have all gone back to their homes, then he will find her.
Pilar stops singing in the middle of a song. Mig waits. He has heard this one before. It’s a favourite of his, one of her fado ones with lots of verses, and she is only halfway through. Has she changed her mind? Seconds pass – five seconds, ten seconds. The crowd waits sympathetically. Mig can feel them silently urging her on. The curator hovers at the edge of the stage. Pilar’s lips are moving. There’s a pulse in her throat. From what he can see it looks like she’s trying to sing but nothing is coming out. Has Pilar lost her voice? She can’t have lost her nerve.
Something is wrong. Mig’s heart constricts. He tries to push through the crowd but they keep him back with jostling elbows. Pilar. Pilar, what is it?
The curator is offering Pilar a glass of water. She takes it and drinks the entirety of its contents in one go. When she hands back the empty glass, Mig sees a thin line of blood running from the corner of her mouth. She clutches her stomach. She spasms. Her head jerks forwards and she vomits a rush of watery blood all over herself and everyone in front of her.
Screams fill the room. The crowd back away, wiping dementedly at their faces, arms, any inch of exposed skin. The curator has been sprayed. Spots of blood stand out clear on her bare throat and her face. She stares at Pilar in shock. Pilar is focused on the ground, the blood that’s come out of her. She moans and holds her stomach.
‘She’s sick. Get away from her, she’s sick—’
‘It’s redfleur, it’s redfleur!’
‘Let me out, let me out of here!’
Something clicks in the curator’s face. Mig can see the influx of terror in her eyes. The curator leaps off the stage and starts to fight her way through the crowd, which screams and parts before her.
Pilar staggers about the stage. Her face is full of confusion and fear, so much fear. Mig has never seen her look like that. He watches, trapped by the mass exodus and unable to move from the side of the room. He wants to go and put his arms around her and say he’ll look after her, but he can’t – he can’t. He can’t do anything.
The audience trips over one another in its haste to get out of the single narrow exit to the building. Mig sees a girl fall, feet stepping on her, not seeing the girl or not caring. He hears yells amid the screams.
‘Get an ambulance!’
‘Call the enforcers!’
His heart sinks.
A hand tugs at his. He looks down, sees the scaly hand, sees Ri’s face, not scared, no expression because Ri never has any expression. He is saying, ‘Mig, we got to go. Mig, we got to go.’
‘I’ll follow you.’
Another tug.
‘The enforcers,’ says Ri, insistently.
‘I’ll follow.’
Ri disappears. And then all at once the room, with its low-lit stage, is deserted. The bartenders and the audience are gone. There is no one left inside except Pilar, collapsed in a puddle of her own bloody vomit, shuddering over her guitar, and Mig, standing a few metres away. For a moment he believes it is a terrible dream. Pilar’s eyes open. They meet his.
Recognition.
He can smell the ripe tang of blood.
He is aware of the commotion outside, the shouts and one girl shrieking like a lunatic, but gradually that too fades away, or at least he cannot hear it. There’s only him and Pilar, Pilar’s brown eyes on his, wide and terrified.
She whispers, ‘You should go.’
‘I can’t leave you here.’
‘It’s the redfleur.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Yeah I do. And if it isn’t, they’ll shoot me anyway. Contagion law, isn’t it.’
Mig thinks of the girl under the bridge and he knows that Pilar is right.
She says again, ‘You should go.’
‘You could try and escape. Go down into the sewers. They wouldn’t come after you there.’
‘My insides feel like they’re eating themselves. Not just my stomach. It’s like there’s teeth everywhere. Fuck it hurts.’
‘Pilar—’
‘I felt kind of weird this morning. I had cramps in my stomach. I thought, don’t be so pathetic. You’re El Loro. El Loro. Ha ha. Hey, if you won’t go you could come a bit closer. Just a bit. Don’t touch the blood.’
He steps closer, avoiding the spatters of red on the floor, the contagious smears where shoes have skidded on her blood. Carefully, he climbs onto the stage.
‘You twat, what are you—’
‘Shut up,’ says Mig. He crouches, as close to her as he can get without touching anything.
‘You’re stupid as hell.’
‘I love you.’
Pilar starts to cry. Tears stream down her face and snot is coming out her nose. There’s even blood in the snot.
‘Why d’you say that, you stupid—’
She coughs, a horrible sound, like there are claws scraping around inside her throat. She clamps her hands over her mouth, turning away from him, leaning into the floor.
‘Because it’s true. I always have, ever since I’ve known you.
I know you’ve never noticed me much, but that’s how it is.’
‘I did notice you, course I did.’
‘I’ve been saving up. I’ve almost got enough for us to get out of Cataveiro. We can go anywhere you want. I don’t care. You can choose. Somewhere better than here.’
She smiles. White teeth show through the red blood. He knows this is how he’ll remember her. Not with feathers stuck in her hair, but helpless, like this, when her life – and his future – is collapsing around him.
‘Mig, I want to say something to you – you got to be careful with that woman, the one you work for. You know what she is – what they say about her—’ The coughs start again. Her eyes widen in pain. Is this the end? It can’t so be soon, so sudden. He reaches out a hand but she cringes away.
‘No! Not you too. The army will be here any second. You’ve got to go. Go on, get out of here.’
He looks at her frightened face. Pilar, his girl, his beloved. He can’t touch her. Can’t hug her goodbye or hold her hand. He can hear sounds from outside, and now he realizes they were there all along. She’s right. The army is coming.
Pilar closes her eyes. Later, Mig will believe that this was to make it easier for him.
‘Bye, Pilar,’ he whispers.
He slips into the wings of the stage. Hesitates.
‘Go,’ she says. He ducks behind the stage and finds the back way out and a fire escape. He gets up high off the streets, expecting the shout of a soldier at any moment, and doesn’t stop until he reaches the roof.
The situation in the street is bad. The curator is crashing about in terror, trying to grab anyone who hasn’t fled. Mig sees the army trucks arrive. The hazard suits. The masks. The breathing apparatus. The ground is slippery in the rain. They throw a sheet over the curator. She shrieks and fights it but they throw her into the truck and he sees her feet in their high heels kicking. The soldiers don’t stop there. He can hear other trucks in the vicinity. They have cordoned off the entire area. They grab whoever is nearby, whoever the curator might have touched. There is fighting, screaming, running. Mig sees a face that looks familiar and hears a yell, ‘No, not me!’
The words are not Spanish, they are Boreal words he has seen in the Alaskan’s book. He remembers where he saw the face before, the briefest glimpse, in profile. Where the Antarctican lives. The other man.
The suits go inside. They go inside for Pilar. They bring her out. Her body hangs motionless in their arms under the sheet. They throw her in the back of the van and drive off. Soldiers cordon off the area, putting up a white tent with a sign:
Contagion Zone. Do Not Enter.
It takes maybe three minutes.
Mig is not the only one to have come this way. He can see a group of the little kids, the ones that always huddle together. Ri is there. Faces he knows, wet with rain. They look at him sorrowfully and their whispers brush over him like flies.
She saw the jaguar.
Last night.
The jaguar looked at her.
Last night, in the street.
The jaguar.
31 ¦
FLASHES OF RED, of gold. Bright dots on blackness.
She is swaying, shifting from side to side.
She hears breathing. A scrape into the throat, a rasp back out again. Is it hers? Can it be hers? Surely she must be dead.
But if she is dead then she does not know where she is. She does not believe in an afterlife.
Flashes of red, of gold. Bright dots on blackness.
She is swaying. She is being carried. Her face is covered and she cannot see.
Faint sounds: a hoarse voice murmuring, a grunt of effort. The deadening impact of boots on sand.
Under the palm of her hand, she feels the soft fur of the jaguar. Padding alongside, his powerful shoulders shifting. She smells meat on his breath.
Teeth, sharp, against her fingers. A long jaw smoothed by a million grains of sand. The caiman’s skeleton twists into being before her and it dances. Its spine rattles and its bones knock against one another. The caiman says: Here we are. If we give you your life then you will belong to us. And the desert will have you for always …
Flashes of red, of gold. Bright dots on blackness.
When Ramona wakes, she remains still for a long time, not certain if she is alive or dead. She is lying on her back in a low bed. On the other side of the room is a window with the shutters closed. Chinks of light shine through the slats and fall in bars across the room. Ramona is dressed in unfamiliar clothing. Something loose and pale. Her boots have been removed and her feet are bare.
She wriggles her toes. Presses her feet together, one on top of the other. Her toenails are hard and faintly yellowed. They need cutting. She can see the scars of blisters on her feet, a patch of newer skin growing through. There is a reddish tinge to the skin of her lower calves and she thinks of the sand, the blood-coloured desert. Her feet ache.
She is aware, at the edge of her mind, of a weight of things that have passed which she is unable to recall. They press uneasily against her.
Cautiously, she feels her ribcage. Still painful, but she can bear it. Opening the robe-like folds of her clothing, she sees that someone has bandaged her body. She pulls the clothing back.
It is not cool but it is almost cool. She looks at the ceiling, where the long blades of a fan are turning slowly, and wonders where she is and what the roof is made of. Turning her head, she sees a pitcher of water has been left at her side. At once she is aware of a huge thirst. She tries to sit and exclaims at the pain.
A door opens, allowing a blast of light and heat into the room. The figure who enters is female. She shuts the door and it is almost dark and almost cool again.
‘You are awake,’ says the visitor. ‘We are glad to see it.’
Ramona tries to speak and finds that she has no voice.
‘Lie still,’ says the woman. ‘You’re not recovered yet.’
She comes to sit at Ramona’s side. She dips a sponge into the water pitcher and presses it against Ramona’s mouth, squeezing the sponge so that the drops trickle steadily out. The water tastes pure and sweet. It tastes good. It tastes real. The woman squeezes the sponge several times until Ramona’s tongue feels a little looser.
‘Who are you? Where am I?’
‘I am Yamila. This is the Exchange Point. You were carried in from the desert by travellers. They brought you here, to my clinic, and I treated you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘There is nothing to thank. At the Exchange, everything is a trade. What we do for you, you will do the measure of for us. That is how it is here.’
‘Still, I have to thank you. And the people who brought me here. I’d be dead …’
‘It’s true,’ says Yamila. ‘You are a lucky one.’
She looks at Ramona. Her expression is impenetrable. Now that Ramona’s eyes have adjusted to the low light, she sees that the woman is small and spare. She has neat, very regular features, only marked by a triangle of small moles in the hollow beneath one eye. She is dressed in the same robe-like attire as Ramona and her hair curls tightly to her head.
‘Are you a northerner?’ Ramona asks.
‘Here we are not one thing or the other. Not south, not north. This is the belt. Panama is not like other places. In Panama, there must be balance. That is the only price. You should sleep some more. Tomorrow, you may rise.’
Ramona struggles to sit up.
‘Wait – you don’t understand, there are things—’
The woman pushes her back, using the tips of her fingers against Ramona’s good shoulder. Ramona senses a lean, powerful strength behind the simple gesture.
‘Tomorrow. Tomorrow the balance will be right. You cannot bring your body to such a low and expect to raise it within the day.’
‘In the desert, I had a pack – some things—’
‘The pack is here. Now sleep.’
Ramona does not believe she can sleep any longer, but the sweetness of
the water is on her lips and tongue. It is only as a surge of tiredness washes over her that she is aware it is not water alone she has been given. The Panama woman slips from the room, and closes the door on Ramona and daylight.
When she next wakes, the pitcher of water is full and there is a note beside it. It reads:
Welcome to Panama.
Her ribs still ache but the sharp pain has gone; she is able to sit up. She pours a glass of water, sniffs it cautiously, then sips. She drinks more deeply, sating her thirst.
There is no sign of Yamila. Ramona goes to the door and listens. Despite the generosity of her rescuers she is wary; she is a stranger here. All she knows of this place is the fleeting impressions Félix has given her over the years, all of them imbued with the chaotic franticness of the Exchange. She opens the shutters a few inches and light floods the room. She opens them further, blinking.
A strong saline breeze whips against her face. The building she is in overlooks a large town which slopes down to a bay lined with docks. Its buildings are low, no more than three storeys, painted white with tended gardens on their roofs. She sees no tramlines or traffic. The town backs onto the desert.
From here, Ramona can distinguish the heads of motionless cranes against the horizon, the tall curve of the sea walls that shield the town, the warehouses and the trucks and the rows of containers. Beyond the docks and the bay, the Atlantic stretches east, a deep shade of aquamarine.
There are ships in the bay, but none of them have docked. Ramona screws up her eyes against the blazing light, struggling to recognize any of the vessels, but she realizes quickly that they are larger than any Patagonian vessel. The fleet she is looking at is that of the Boreal States.
Ramona feels a swell of rage. She embraces it, allows herself to feel the full extent of the revenge she will enact. Rage is good. Rage will keep her centred.
