“Where are you going?” José asked unexpectedly.
“I don’t know,” Patricio answered. “I don’t know anything.”
“I’m driving north,” José said.
Patricio had heard that there were mountains in the northern part of the country. It was said to be beautiful there, or so the prison minister had said when he had described Sweden.
“Uppsala, where is that?”
“You’re going to Uppsala? I don’t think that’s a good idea,” José said. “It’s full of cops.”
“Where are you going?”
“North,” José said, and even though he tried to look impassive, Patricio could sense the faint smile of satisfaction in his thin face—a face that appeared almost emaciated, as he had also managed to shave his beard off during his brief trip in the van.
“I want to go to Uppsala,” Patricio said.
“Do you know anyone there?”
“Maybe.”
“I would like to help you, since we are countrymen. But I cannot go there, you understand that, don’t you? It’s crawling with pigs. But I can tell you what you should do. I have some money, check the glove compartment.”
Patricio was touched by his thoughtfulness. He had the impression that José was genuine when he said he wanted to help. He opened the glove compartment and saw a brown envelope.
“Open it,” José told him.
Patricio did as he was told and saw a wad of bills.
“There should be twenty thousand kronor,” José said. “Take five.”
Patricio protested but accepted in the end. He knew the money would come in handy.
José slowed and pulled into a church parking lot, took a map out of the door pocket, unfolded it, and showed Patricio where they were, and traced the way they were going to proceed through Uppland.
“I can let you off in Tierp. From there you can take the bus or train to Uppsala. You can speak a little Swedish, can’t you?”
José thought for a moment and then explained to Patricio what he could do: board the train as calmly as possible, buy a ticket from the conductor, simply say “Uppsala” and nod if the conductor asked any questions, as this was likely to be as to whether or not it was a one-way trip.
In Uppsala he should get off the train, buy a map, and mingle with people downtown, not check into a hotel, buy food in a large grocery store and thereafter try to find some place where he could spend the night.
“Buy a blanket or sleeping bag. If anyone asks where you come from, tell them you are a Spanish tourist. Okay?”
Patricio nodded.
“You can’t get in touch with your friend right away, understand? The cops might be keeping an eye out.”
“I don’t think so,” Patricio said, who only now started to think about his brother, who had told him he was going to Uppsala to look up the tall one and the fat one. Where was Manuel?
“You won’t change your mind?”
“No,” Patricio said, but he wasn’t convinced it had been right to escape from prison.
“If you get caught then never tell them how we did it, that you came with me in this car, and where I let you off.”
“I’ll keep quiet,” Patricio said.
José gave a chuckle. Patricio looked at him and smiled. It felt good to hear a laugh in freedom, to have found a friend.
“We live a while longer,” José said.
Dark clouds were pulling in from the south as Patricio stepped off the Upp-train at the central station in Uppsala. The rain came down with an almost tropical force and for several moments he stood absolutely still and let himself be struck by the strong, hammering drops before he ran over the platform, crossed the tracks, and hurried into the station.
There was a convivial atmosphere in there, with laughter and a cacophony of voices. A damp heat rose from the travelers’ clothes and a metallic voice issued from the loudspeakers. People poured effortlessly through the station like lava streams down a mountainside, curving around groups of stationary people, continuing on out the doors that reluctantly slid open and let in the smell of rain and car exhaust.
Patricio stopped for a moment, shivered from the dampness that had soaked through the T-shirt, listened and was amazed at this throng of colors, voices, and movements. Then he followed one of the streams and ended up on some stairs by a small square. A patrol car was parked on the street.
“Manuel, where are you?” he muttered and looked around. To the left there was a parking lot and beyond that, a bus terminal. To the right there was a disorganized army of a thousand bikes. It was in this direction that most people walked and Patricio followed the river of people in toward the city center. The rain had stopped as quickly as it had started. The clouds in the sky were torn apart, a pale sun peeked out and spread a warm, indolent light over Uppsala.
Patricio was gradually overcoming his shock at having escaped the prison and no longer being imprisoned by closed doors and walls topped with barbed wire. Nothing prevented him from walking in any direction he chose. He could sit on a park bench, rest for fifteen minutes, an hour, or half a day, and then saunter on to wherever he wished.
Nonetheless it still seemed as if others determined his steps. During his walk he became a helpless victim of other peoples’ desires and directions and found himself standing outside a hamburger joint. He walked in, and once he had satisfied his thirst and hunger, he tried to come to his own decision.
His brother was somewhere in this city, but at his visit to the prison he had not mentioned where he was planning to stay. Patricio could not imagine him checking into a hotel, but he must have spent his nights somewhere. He could not simply sleep outside as they did in Mexico, resting on a petate and rolled up in a blanket.
And where should he himself spend the night? He sank down onto a bench, suddenly exhausted. The scent of coffee from an outdoor cafe brought back memories of the village. Should he call Gerardo back in the village so he could get word to his mother? No, she would be beside herself with worry. He could see Maria, the shriveled body that had become more stooped over the years, the abundant hair gathered into two braids running down her back, and her busy hands. What was she doing now? His longing for Mexico and the village caused him to let out a sob. A youngish woman walking by glanced at him. The child walking at her side—with apparent reluctance, a boy of perhaps five or six—stopped short and stared wide-eyed at Patricio, but the woman pulled him along.
Patricio stood up. The wet T-shirt was still cold. The pants he had put on in the van were too short and the large shoes from prison looked clumsy. He looked around and spotted a clothing store nearby. He could spend some of the money José had given him on some new duds.
He came back out onto the street sixteen hundred kronor poorer. He had not realized how expensive it was going to be, but he had not wanted to protest or haggle at the register. Now he was wearing yet another pair of blue jeans, a red T-shirt, and a short jacket. In the bag he had an extra T-shirt, a pair of underpants, and three pairs of socks.
He put on the sunglasses and cap that he had bought and immediately felt better. He looked down at his shoes, but decided that they would have to do for now.
The sales clerk had been friendly and had not seemed surprised that Patricio only knew a few words of Swedish. On the street he saw many dark-hued people and realized that Swedes were used to foreigners.
He walked toward the central square that he had seen earlier. It was an old habit. In the village and even in Oaxaca, the zócalon, the square, was the meeting place where you strolled around, sat on a bench, bumped into people you knew and exchanged a few words. He was hoping that Manuel would think along similar lines and find his way to the square. What else was he to do in a strange city?
He heard music coming from a pedestrian zone, and he paused. A group of musicians were giving a concert. He immediately saw that they were South Americans. He had encountered similar groups of usually Peruvians and Bolivians in California. He gave them some of the ch
ange he had received from the clothing store and lingered there. During a pause in the music he mustered some courage and walked up to one of the men.
“Hi, companero, do you know where the restaurant Dakar is?” he asked in Spanish.
The flute player gave him an interested look. Patricio almost regretted asking. What did he know about Dakar, perhaps it was an infamous hangout for bad people.
“It’s not far from here,” the musician said and pointed with his flute. “Take the first street to the right and then you will see Dakar about fifty meters away.”
“You play well,” Patricio said.
The man nodded curtly as if he did not care for compliments.
“Where do come from?”
“California,” Patricio said.
There was nothing unfriendly about the man, but his expression what somewhat sullen and forbidding. Patricio had the feeling he was on his guard.
He walked in the direction the man had pointed at. The tension in his body made him want to run, but he controlled himself and tried to match the rhythm of those around him on the street, without looking back.
He turned to the right and saw the restaurant sign at once. It had the name of the place and three blinking stars in red and green. I’ve finally arrived, he thought, and had the unpleasant feeling of having been on this sidewalk, looking at this sign before.
The next thought that struck him was just as unpleasant. If I had not gone along with the fat one’s talk of innocent letters that needed transporting to Europe, or rather, if I had admitted to myself what I deep down believed about the package, where would I have been then? Who would I have been? Who am I today?
His life was wasted. He had, against his better judgment, allowed himself to be tricked, had been seduced by the power of money and dreams of a better life. What he and his family had gained was not a fortune but dishonor. Why not complete this thread by walking into Dakar and killing the fat one and the tall one? For his own part, nothing could get worse. They would not judge him back in the village, perhaps they would even hail him as a hero. They would see this as the appropriate punishment for a bhni guí’a. Angel would be doubly revenged and no more Zapotecs would be tricked, at least not by these two.
If we kill everyone who sucks our blood and throws us on the dirt pile when we are used up, then will it be a better world? The Zapotecs would benefit from it. No one would be forced to go to el norte, the villages could live and no corn would be dumped on the market in Talea.
Patricio’s thoughts were not new, they had emerged in prison, but now for the first time they appeared possible to realize. For the first time he would be able to make a contribution to his country and his village. To demonstrate in Oaxaca that to be subdued by police dogs, batons, and water canons did not lead anywhere.
The white ones always won. Again and again they triumphed. For five hundred years they had always picked the longest straw. Now he, Patricio Alavez, Zapotec, would easily defeat two white men. Angel would be revenged and Miguel would not have died in vain.
Patricio grew as he stood outside on the sidewalk. He looked down at his new clothes and realized it was his fighting gear. He would not have to feel ashamed. Even a Zapotec could look sharp.
Afterward the police could take him, throw him back into jail, perhaps kill him. It wouldn’t matter. He would no longer be dishonored.
Forty-Eight
The tent flapped in the wind. Home, Manuel thought, and sat down in his favorite spot on the riverbank with a stone shaped like a back rest. From there he had a view of the river and the opposite bank where the well-fed cattle grazed. But now he shut his eyes and tried to squeeze everything to do with Sweden out his mind. He sat like this for several minutes before getting up and scouring the landscape. The sun was in the southwest and its light was reflected in quick-moving glints in the river water. Downstream some birds chattered anxiously. Manuel lifted his gaze. A hawk was circling up in the sky.
He made his way up the riverbank on stiff legs, but neither the billowing fields nor the pencil-straight lines of the strawberry plants could give him peace. He only felt bewildered by the fact that there were so many realities. All over the world, people were standing at the edges of fields, by deserts and lakes, in front of homes and graves. Or else they were resting in bed or on a sleep mat, alone, or with their beloved by their side. Many were on their way somewhere, restless or full of anticipation.
Everywhere there were people with dreams and beating hearts. Manuel looked down at his hands as if they could tell him who he was and where his rightful place was.
Miguel’s death, the violent force of the bullets that struck his body, his children at the window. Angel’s sprint across the railway tracks in Frankfurt, his mother’s sad eyes and her body worn and aching from a lifetime of work, the scent and beauty of the fields and crops, words of love exchanged in the dark with Gabriella—everything was mixed together in a burning anguish.
Give us a land to live in, he thought, a land where we can toil and love in peace. Why do you have to come to us with your manipulated seeds, your pesticides that give us panting lungs and burning wounds, your agreements that no one can understand until it is too late, fierce police dogs, armed thugs in souped-up jeeps, your drugs and your newspapers and radio stations that only lie? Why can we not till the earth in peace? Is that too much to ask?
Manuel did not understand the world. Everything was racing, as if life were a flock of horses stung by a gadfly, setting off at a furious pace.
“Patricio!” he shouted across the Uppsala plains, overcome with terror.
He looked around as if looking for his brother, but the only person he saw was a lone worker with a pesticide applicator who walked between the rows of plants and gave them their dose of poison.
The man, who may have heard his cry, looked up and waved his free hand in greeting. Manuel waved back.
A thunderclap from the sky interrupted his thoughts. A fighter jet appeared as if from nowhere, zoomed over at low altitude, banked, and disappeared. It was over in a couple of seconds. The man with the pesticide applicator and Manuel stared at the horizon and thereafter at each other. Manuel thought he could see the man laugh and how he made a gesture with his hand before he returned to his work. Maybe he’s happy that something broke the monotony, Manuel thought, even if it was a war machine that created the diversion.
He stumbled down the slope to his tent, pulled over his bag of clothes, undressed, and carefully stepped into the river. Last time he had slipped in the slick mud and fallen headlong into the reeds and cut his arm. The water was cool and the stiff and cold stems of the lily pads brushed against his limbs.
The water did him good. He swam several strokes, turned onto his back and let his head sink, and saw the sky above the water line as if in a kaleidoscopic shimmer. For a moment he had the sudden impulse to allow his body to sink to the muddy bottom. A burst of anxiety made him shoot up out of the water and quickly swim back to the edge.
He combed and shaved with care, pulled on clean pants and a T-shirt with a design by José Guadalupe Posada on the chest: a man on a horse riding across a field of grinning skulls.
From his hiding place under a low bushy juniper growing in the middle of a hawthorne thicket, he pulled out the sports bag he had stolen from the summer house, unzipped it, and checked to make sure the cocaine was still there.
At the sight of the packets wrapped up in plastic and tape, he felt a pang of grief at his brothers’ ignorant greed, but also triumph at having been able to cheat Slobodan Andersson.
As he left his tent he carefully looked around, as if it was his last time by the river. He let his gaze wander back and forth. A gray heron made a low, swooping dive over the water, some small fish rippled the surface of the water, perhaps chased by something bigger. He watched how the cattle on the other side lazily helped themselves to grass and shook their heads in order to ward off their buzzing tormentors. The cows looked dully at Manuel before resuming their c
hewing.
Again the image of Miguel’s death rose up in his mind. It was the thought of the children who from the window became witnesses to the execution of their father that plagued Manuel the most. One of them was also physically marked for life as she had been hit by a ricocheting bullet and received an ugly scar on one cheek.
Had the villagers actually done anything to protect their neighbor and friend? They observed passively as the murderers came to the village and asked for directions to Miguel’s house. Surely no one could have been unaware of their intentions? The villagers made their way up through the alleys to Miguel’s house without speaking, and arrived in time to see him being dragged out. He who had started the association and unselfishly had made himself a target for threats and harassment was shot in front of their eyes without anyone lifting a finger. In fact, they betrayed him even in death by giving in to idle chatter and leaving the association in dribs and drabs.
Why did no one offer any resistance? Why did I do nothing? Their shared indecision and cowardice had haunted him ever since Miguel’s murder, but now his self-contempt grew so intense he started to shake.
There was only one cure: do the right thing. Standing there before the foreign field, he made the sign of the cross and promised himself that if he ever returned to his village he would honor Miguel’s memory. What form this would take, he was not sure.
Manuel drove in the direction of Uppsala in order to meet Slobodan Andersson. The latter had described how to get there: take a left at the roundabout where the freeway to Stockholm began. It was the same road as when he had followed Slobodan and the short one. After a hundred meters he should turn right onto a parking lot.
He had left in plenty of time, found the roundabout without any difficulty, but drove straight on the road without turning into the parking lot. After a couple of hundred meters he reached the turnoff to a golf course. There he turned and stepped out of the car. He wanted to reach the agreed-upon meeting place from behind so that Slobodan would not see his car and in that way be able to track him down.
The Demon of Dakar Page 28
