Treasure of the World

by Tara Sullivan

  After the jostling of being carried down the mountain, Daniel’s face is almost gray and his sweat has soaked through the collar of his shirt.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I tell him.

  “How”—Daniel scowls at me between gasps—“is any—of this—okay?”

  I look at his eyes and realize they’re wide not just from the pain.

  “Are you scared?” I ask.

  Daniel hesitates, then nods.

  “Don’t be,” I say softly. “You’re getting away. Far away from here. Far away from the mountain and the mines. Far away from the rocks and the cold. You’re going to a green valley, and you’re going to sink your toes into the soft black soil. You’re going to breathe air full of oxygen and grow strong and healthy.”

  I see tears gather in the corners of Daniel’s eyes.

  “We were—supposed—to do that—together,” he manages.

  “Maybe it’s not quite like we planned,” I admit. “But having you alive is still a dream.”

  With a screeching of brakes, César’s cousin’s bus arrives. She’s extra short and round with very bright eyes and a high, clear laugh. She reminds me of a bird in her bright colors and with her quick ways. César greets her with a hug and introduces her to Mami. As the women go over Daniel’s care and how they’ll stay in contact, César walks over to where we’re sitting.

  “Time to get on the bus,” he says to Daniel. “Are you ready?”

  Daniel looks at me. I squeeze his fingers and give him an encouraging smile.

  “Better air is waiting,” I say, tucking what’s left of the little mud angel into his hand.

  Daniel’s fingers wrap around the angel, and giving me the ghost of a smile, he turns to César.

  “I’m ready,” he says.

  17

  I’m amazed at how easily my days fall into a new routine. Mami and I get up before dawn, like we always did, and prepare breakfast. After that first day we don’t have soup anymore, but it’s a refreshing treat to always be able to lay out loaves of flatbread to eat with our coca tea. Once the tea is ready, Mami wakes César, and I help Belén brush and braid her hair. After breakfast, César heads off to the mine, and Belén meets up with her friends from the neighboring houses and walks down the mountain to attend half-day school.

  So far, in the two weeks since Daniel left us, I’ve found an excuse every day to avoid going back to school. And every day that I’ve let it slide has made it easier to skip the next day.

  There’s plenty to do: merging two houses means that there’s lots of laundry, cleaning, preparing food, and thinking about what we need to buy and what will have to wait. I’m kind of surprised that Mami hasn’t made a bigger fuss about me going back to school since, as a supervisor for the cooperative, César must make more than Papi did, but she’s let me work as a palliri with her and Abuelita every day without comment.

  Though there are times I miss the quiet, it’s nice being near other people. I hadn’t realized how lonely our life was before. I like seeing the glow of other windows when I’m working outside past nightfall, and it’s cheerful to say hello to people during the day. It’s also nice to see Mami and Abuelita start to make friends. Instead of breaking rock alone, we all now sit on the slag heap down the road from El Rosario with the other mining wives. They’re mostly women Mami and Abuelita knew from before, but never had the time to talk with. Now that they’re three minutes away instead of the better part of two hours, Mami and Abuelita are rekindling all kinds of old friendships.

  And though it’s hard to have new people inside the house too, I do like Belén. And César is still nice. He doesn’t drink too much and, so far, he hasn’t hit Mami.

  Yet, for all the good in my new life, there are times when I miss the life that fit me more comfortably. Times I even find myself missing Papi, just because I knew how to live the life that he was part of and now I feel so unsure of myself. Times I still wake up, haunted by dreams of the devil, as if nothing had changed at all. Most of all, though, I miss Daniel. I don’t remember life when he wasn’t one step behind me. I keep turning around, expecting to share something with him, and not seeing him there. I miss the way he could make me laugh. I miss having someone who knows what life used to be like. I even miss his mischief and the way he used to tease me.

  Every few days, one of us makes the effort to go to the post office in Potosí. We send letters to Daniel, money to César’s cousin, and pick up any letters they’ve sent us.

  Dear Mami, his last letter said. You were right. It is so much easier to breathe down here. I don’t feel like I’m choking all the time. Everyone is nice to me and I’m learning about farming by watching them. Someday soon maybe I can start to help out for real. Yours, Daniel.

  His letters are positive, encouraging. It still hurts to have him gone.

  This morning, though, doesn’t follow the pattern. Instead of his standard mining gear, César comes out of the bedroom in dark trousers and a knitted alpaca-wool sweater. I blurt out the question before I can stop myself.

  “Why are you all dressed up?”

  “We’re off to the city,” César says, as if that explains it all. “Your grandmother wants to catch Mass.”

  I raise an eyebrow at him. We’re not that religious and today’s not even a Sunday. We only go to Potosí if we need something or when we’re getting Daniel’s letters. In fact, now that I think about it, the last time I sat in a church was for my father’s funeral.

  “It’s a Friday,” I manage, still not entirely able to decipher the sparkle in his eyes.

  “Well,” he says, straight-faced, “no time like the present to get more devout.”

  I can tell he’s teasing me, but I still haven’t figured out the joke when Belén comes shrieking into the house, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet.

  “It’s the first of April! It’s the first of April!”

  César scoops her into a hug.

  “Is it?” he asks, pretend confusion on his face. “So what?”

  “Pa-pi!” she groans, making the second syllable go on forever. “They’ve been talking about it in school all week. I had to practice a special dance and everything! Tell me we’re going into town, pleeeeeease?”

  “We’re going into town,” he says, and puts her down.

  Belén shrieks with joy and runs off to change into something fancier.

  Now I’m in on the joke. The first of April is the anniversary of when the Spanish first found silver in the Cerro Rico in 1545. It’s a festival day, and down in the city there will be speeches and parades all day long.

  “The first of April, huh?” I say to César, who managed to keep a straight face through all of Belén’s ruckus. “I suppose it’s as good a day as any to get holy.”

  I hadn’t noticed before, but César’s eyes crinkle in the corners when he smiles.

  * * *

  We head out as a family: Mami and Abuelita in their many-layered skirts and bowler hats, César in his slacks and sweater, Belén in a frilly pink disaster of a dress with bows in her hair. I’m in a knee-length skirt I saved from my school days and a pretty blouse with embroidered flowers on it. Even though they make my toes cold, I’m wearing strappy sandals with little heels that were hand-me-downs from Susana because I like the way they look, and a cardigan to keep me warm. The adults walk in front and Belén and I follow half a dozen steps behind.

  That’s the way it is here, I think. Girls follow in their mothers’ footsteps; boys in their fathers’. It wasn’t something I had ever really thought about before, like you don’t think about having two hands or one nose. It just always was. But now, with Daniel off in the lowlands instead of in the mines, and Victor swearing to never come back, I wonder if there might be other paths for me too. It’s a surprising thought, like wondering what life would be like with two noses.

  When we get to
church, we shuffle into a spot—off to the right, toward the back, where no one will give us dirty looks for being miners—and sit down. Mami and Abuelita smile when they see women they know. I’m sandwiched in between Mami and Belén. Abuelita and César sit on the edges.

  As the opening song starts, César gives Mami a soft look and she smiles back at him. I know they both entered into this marriage because they felt they had to, but more and more, I catch them in moments like these and I wonder whether they’re starting to like each other too. I feel like a spy and focus on the rounded shoulders of the woman in front of me.

  My mind wanders through the opening prayers and the readings, but when we stand to hear Padre Julio read the Gospel, I pay attention again. I’ve always liked Padre Julio. He’s an old man, so old you sometimes wonder how much of anyone’s confession he hears before he absolves them, but he’s kind. For a moment before he starts reading, he lets his rheumy eyes wander around the church.

  “A reading,” Padre Julio starts, “from the Gospel According to Matthew.”

  We all mumble the response, each one a little faster or slower than everyone else, so that, if you didn’t know the words, it would be an unintelligible murmur.

  “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

  Cold washes over me as Padre Julio’s reedy voice begins the passage. Ever since my first day working in El Rosario, I’ve paid a lot more attention to mentions of the devil than I did before. He still stalks my dreams, though most nights I wake and don’t remember what happened in them.

  “When he had fasted forty days and forty nights,” Padre Julio goes on, “he was hungry afterward. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth.’”

  An icy trickle of sweat traces its way between my shoulder blades. I went into the mountain with Papi because the price of zinc and tin was high and we needed more money for food. Is God telling me I was wrong to do that?

  “Then the devil took him into the holy city. He set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written: He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, so that you don’t dash your foot against a stone.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Again, it is written: You shall not test the Lord your God.’”

  I think of my brother, struck down by stones. When had Daniel ever put God to the test? And if he did, God failed that test: Daniel was so badly hurt he had to leave us. Moments like this, standing in the middle of my new family, make me miss my brother even more than usual.

  “Again, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. He said to him, ‘I will give you all of these things, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For it is written: You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’ Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and served him.”

  I think about all the times I’ve gazed down at Potosí and wished for all it contained, and I cringe. What is the passage trying to say? Why is it so bad to want better things? Religion is confusing.

  Padre Julio looks up from the book in front of him. “The word of the Lord,” he proclaims, and his voice has lost all its weakness.

  “Glory to you, Lord Jesus,” I manage, then I collapse into the pew, relieved that the reading is over. It feels too close to home.

  I try to focus on Padre Julio’s homily, but my thoughts are like the dust motes swirling in the colored light coming through the stained-glass windows—directionless, spinning.

  It’s time for the presentation of the gifts, and I think about how the same men who bring up the bread and the wine to the priest will bring coca and cigarettes to the devil in just a few hours, when the feast day is over and they head back to the mine.

  We shuffle up to Padre Julio in a line for communion, like miners shuffling into the mouth of the mine at the beginning of a shift. Then we’re back in our seats, heads bowed, eyes closed.

  I must have made a noise, because beside me, Belén whispers, “Shh, or we’ll get in trouble!”

  I raise my head off my hands. I am not in the mine, I remind myself—I’m kneeling in a pew. Padre Julio is cleaning up the altar. Belén gives me a look that begs me not to wreck this special day by getting us in trouble. When we sit back, my eyes catch César’s, and hiding a smile behind one of his battered hands, he gives me a small wink.

  I give him a tiny ghost of a smile and then stand with my family for the last blessing.

  * * *

  I’m worried we’re going to be stuck near the church forever while Mami and Abuelita talk to everyone they’ve ever known, but César says we should get going if we want to find a good spot to watch the parade. The streets are packed with people, but I don’t see Yenni or Santiago or Victor. Not that I’m really expecting to see any of them at the parade, of course. But still.

  We find a spot on the steps of the cathedral, high enough above the street to be able to see the marching groups as they enter the plaza before they loop around in front of the bishop’s residence and the Municipality. César steps away from us, and I see him bend double in the shadow of one of the cathedral’s pillars, coughing. But then he straightens and finds a food vendor. When he comes back, he hands me a sleeve of popcorn and gives a big pink puff of cotton candy on a paper stick to Belén. If I hadn’t been watching him instead of the parade, I would never have known he had gone away for any reason other than to find us snacks. I want to ask him if he’s okay, but then the music cranks up and none of us would hear each other anyway. I smile to thank him for the popcorn and settle in to watch the groups.

  There are hundreds and hundreds of people in the parade. All the divisions of society are represented there—from neat rows of government workers in suits to secretaries wearing makeup and high heels to construction workers holding their banners in thick-knuckled hands to blocks of kids in matching uniforms representing the different schools of the city. Belén squeals with delight when the traditional dancers passed us, dressed in short skirts and bright blouses, twisting and twirling to the music. My favorite are the crossing guards because of their silly white tiger costumes. Though I would never admit it to anyone, one of my favorite things about coming into the center of downtown Potosí is having the tigers take my arm and escort me across the crosswalks.

  “Today is the day,” booms the mayor over the dance music, “that we commemorate the discovery of silver in our mighty mountain in 1545. Think of the glory,” he goes on. “A city built at the foot of a richness that changed the world. The great city of Potosí was larger than London, Paris, Rome, or Madrid. It was the hub of wealth of the Spanish empire; it was called the eighth wonder of the world. Is it any surprise that the first coat of arms of our city read: I am rich Potosí; I am the treasure of the world; I am the king of all mountains and the envy of all kings? No, because it was all that, and more.”

  I lift my eyes from the mayor to the brick-colored beast looming behind the Municipality. Someone has put lights along its outline so that, even after dusk, people down here in the city can see the silhouette of the marvelous hill that has gifted the world with its treasure.

  I live on that mountain. I walk its slopes and live in a house made with bricks and rocks from its sides. My father died on it; my brother was crushed in it. It has ruled my days and my nights for my entire life. And for all that, listening to the mayor as he drones on about the wealth of nations and the glories of the world, I don’t recognize it at all.

  Worst of all, the music is no longer loud enough to cover the sound of César coughing.

  I find I’ve lost my taste for popcorn.

 
Though we usually stay as long as possible to make the most of our trips to town, today we end up leaving early. When the parade ends and the mayor finishes his speech, even Mami and Abuelita notice that César isn’t feeling well. So, step after slow step, we all trudge home, onto the mountain that seems less and less of a thing to celebrate.

  18

  By the time we get home, César is having trouble walking more than a dozen steps without pausing to cough. And the cough is everything a cough should never be: a barking, wet, wrenching sound, followed by a rattling inhale. And then another. And another.

  As soon as we get to the house, Mami hurries him into their bedroom and closes the door. Abuelita, Belén, and I trail in and stand awkwardly in the main room, unsure how to help.

  “Ana, go put on some tea,” Abuelita says as she starts to loosen Belén’s braids. I move quickly, grateful to have something useful to do.

  When I bring in the tea, Abuelita has managed to get Belén sitting in a corner, reading from her schoolbook, so I walk up to the bedroom door and knock. Mami lets me in and I hand her the pot and a cup. When she turns to set it by the bed, my gaze snags on César. He’s hunched over on the mattress as a coughing fit grips him, fighting to breathe. I notice he’s changed out of his church clothes into a plain T-shirt and sweatpants.

  That’s the detail I latch on to: his clothing. It helps me ignore the waxy sheen of his face, the way his huge hands clench the sheets, and the bright red speckles staining the pillowcase. Mami is shushing and muttering gentle nothings like she would when Daniel was sick, wiping his face with a cloth and trying to coax him to sip from the cup. I feel shaky and, not sure my legs are going to hold me up, lean against the doorframe and watch them.