by Rita Indiana
Sirens, alarms protect the android. Guards with black helmets come out from under rocks, from Cilí’s mouth, and Cilí herself comes at me with a machete in her mouth. Leysi, China, they all come at me with billy clubs to club me. They distributed Papi’s golf clubs and baseball bats among themselves and now they’re coming to beat me to a pulp. I run, I run and pull out the false tooth from my pocket and swallow it, I swallow it, I jump, I fall into a river, I swim, I splash about, I get out, I run, run, run, run, run.
It goes on like this for days, weeks, and years. Not so many years though. Really, it was just a few minutes. Maybe two or three. When I’m safely in the dark, squashing squashes with my feet, I stop. In the distance the voices of the black helmets and the tear gas are fading. It smells like gum. There’s a smell of mint gum and Constanza cigarettes in the air. I look up and there’s not a single star or light. The smell of mint gum and Constanza cigarettes blends with the cricket noise and fills my lungs. I squat and breathe, waiting for the blow that’s gonna smash my skull like a pumpkin. I stay that way for hours or, well, whatever. Then there were lights up high, very white, and they blinded me cuz I had been years in the dark. They were headlights. On an old Mercedes from the seventies, from the eighties. Between the curtain of smoke from the Constanzas, the banana leaves, and the smell of mint gum, I recognized the Mercedes logo illuminated by its own light. And I knew I would be saved. Perhaps forever. I ran toward the light, squashing squashes with my feet, squashing the heads of the dead, and, well, I ran for years. When I was almost within reach of the Mercedes logo, I fell face first in front of the driver’s-side door, which opened, and then there were one, two, patent-leather shoes with metal tips, fine hose, and under the Dubble Bubble mint smell, I detected the scent of Drakkar and looked up and saw the hair in silhouette, the wave, the wide and white smile like a waning crescent in that dark sky. It was Puchy, and then the other door opened and it was Milly. She was exactly the same, with her wave, her shoes, her waning crescent smile. Damn, what luck.
They say, We came looking for you. You know better than them. Papi is not dead, Papi is alive. We were in New York and we saw him. We talked to him. He’s there. He’s waiting for us. He’s coming. The day he comes back everybody’s gonna be fucked, except us. We know better.
We were in the Mercedes going very slowly down the side streets, the dry earth screeching beneath the tires. Puchy was explaining everything to me and he would pause now and then so he could run over some drunken peasant with a raised machete asking for my head. Their skulls would screech like dry earth. Puchy would look back in the rearview mirror and then go on: Papi knows too much. That’s why he had to hide. His business associates wanna do away with him. His associates wanna keep Papi’s stuff. They wanna rule the earth. They’ve made up Papi’s death. Don’t believe anybody, anybody. The associates have bought everybody out; some are descended directly from Atlas, from the Templars. Nanotechnology and BS; it’s a conspiracy.
I feel very intelligent and now Milly and Puchy are talking at the same time and very fast, faster than the devil. Faster than the Mercedes. Sometimes they pause to run over a black hen crossing the road or to open and close the windows before and after Milly smokes a Constanza. Sometimes we stop at a roadside stand and Milly says, Two pasteles en hoja, and a lady shows up with the pasteles and charges us while drying her hands on an apron and the electric windows screech as they go up to close and the AC screeches as it cools my bones.
The twins are talking to me now with their mouths full of pastel and salsa picante and the salsa and the pasteles are also talking to me.
Everything will be different now, you’ll see, say Puchy or Milly or the pasteles. And as soon as I heard that, I began to make sense of everything, as if a Rubik’s Cube was falling into place in my head, and instead of color, yellow or red or blue, the pieces rotate and rotate and rotate and on each square there are people’s faces, gestures, words, sunsets that begin to give shape to things while the rest move and move and on to infinity. In this way, Juliana was an envoy for the twins, and Soti was an archangel and the same for those little pastries I had that Easter Sunday. I saw rays shining and tying everything together. It was very clear. Papi was in me, and I was in Papi. I even licked the salsa picante from Papi’s impeccable cuticles. I was exactly the same as Papi. I was Papi. I am Papi.
Later I fell asleep and everything was revealed. The place, the mission, the mysteries. I’d wake up from a little dream and would tell the twins where to turn. They were driving the Mercedes and would stop now and then to get gas and cheese sticks. We saw every landscape on the island: woods, desert, and coast, cuz the revelations had us all out of sorts. I was in the backseat, dreaming about our mission, waking up only to recite another short verse so Milly could write it down on a napkin. Whenever we weren’t sure which way to go, Milly would sing me a song so I could go back to sleep, usually “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears. I’d fall asleep again and a very old man with a long white mane and beard, or a little blond boy with blue eyes, would show me maps on plasma screens, and sometimes they’d get mixed up, and instead of directions, they’d give me lottery numbers and I’d jot them down without telling the twins. It went on like this for years. Honest. Up and down. More revelations than the devil. So many, in fact, that Milly bought a cardboard accordion file folder to keep all the napkins, the scraps of paper, the receipts on the back of which she’d scribbled what I’d dictated.
Apart from the list of things we needed for the mission (tape recorders, photocopiers, toilet paper), I’d started a wish list for our team (a Walkman for Milly, a lifetime supply of cologne for Puchy, and Saona Island for me). It dawned on Puchy that we had to find a place, a kind of sacred space or something like that. So Milly sang me Rick Astley’s “Together Forever” and, while I was falling asleep, I thought Milly had finally given up Tears for Fears. I dreamt Nat King Cole was singing: toma chocolate, paga lo que debes. When I woke up, I told the twins we had to stop to buy lottery tickets and I started spewing numbers. We spent all our money and that was the first miracle: not a single ticket won.
The following Sunday I convinced Puchy to sell the Mercedes so we could buy more lottery tickets. The Sunday after that we were going door to door begging and three Sundays after that we were so dirty and stinky from sleeping on the streets and dumpster diving that we looked like real prophets. We numbered forty when we entered San Juan de Maguana, where the San Juan Paleros (which were actually all the landowners, government employees, and ordinary people of San Juan) came out to welcome us in vans and jeeps cuz they were waiting for us and they guided us through the weeds, lighting the way with their halogen lamps until we arrived at the perfect place for the settlement, a clearing between the brambles, the rain trees, and the brush. As soon as we got there, Milly pulled out her gun and shot a wandering black goat which we ate with a side of chenchén. Everyone ate as we sat on the ground, licking their fingers, then they went into the forests to gather sticks or break off branches to make little houses or drums. By sunrise, they’d erected three houses using mud, wood, and hay, one to be used as a temple and the other two for lodging for the people. At about noon, two vendors came by. I healed the daughter of one and his bull calf too. I pulled forty-nine worms from the other guy’s foot. At about six, the mayor and his wife showed up, bringing with them a little TV and a PlayStation console so I’d entertain myself and by evening, in an operation that lasted four hours, we had three lamp posts, a transformer, and enough wiring for bulbs and outlets.
I asked that the lights be turned off cuz the moon was so full and you could see the whites of everyone’s eyes. A girl from the capital brought me a loudspeaker, along with a list of people who believed Papi was alive. She explained there was a website where people could see a photo of Papi, sign up, and make a request. Right there and then I made her chief of media and propaganda for Papi’s next earthly administration. She dropped to the ground, overtaken by the spirit of Asela
Mera or Zoila Luna, I’m not sure which. More people began to arrive in buses, minivans, mules, with flags, posters, and songs they’d come up with about Papi and about me:
We got the key
To join this race
A thousand white Mercedes
One for whomever keeps the pace
My Papi has great power
Look how strong and fast he is
Red is the color of his bat
And at softball he’s a wiz
At eight in the morning I stood at the pulpit that had been built in front of the temple and read the new prayer. People cried and jiggled their raised key chains. Then more people came, grown-ups and kids and pets, with camping equipment and gifts for me: peanut butter, guava juice, German porn on VHS tapes, all so that when Papi returned, he’d do something for them, cure their toothaches and such. I had them calling for Papi after a quick slap. But what people liked most was to be called upon and so, from my inflatable chair with velvet wheels, I passed out titles left and right: delegate for Papi’s telepathic circumcision, viceroy of Papi’s state of siege, commander in chief of all of Papi’s messes. I did it all to the rhythm of pre-pre-hip-hop, techno shootout and minimal merengue, which the paleros improvised along with some Norwegian DJs brought in for the occasion. The kilometer between our settlement and the nearest town was now lined with food stands and gift shops managed by Puchy where, for a modest price, you could buy key chains with replicas of Papi’s dick, including his Mercedes-Benz logo tattoo, and CDs of my recorded voice so people could hear me listing more than a thousand different titles they could own, all guaranteed to take immediate effect upon Papi’s next earthly administration.
One day, I think sometime in July, the apparitions started. People began to see Papi everywhere. In the parking lots, in the woods, near the drinking fountains, at a cheap diner on the outskirts of town. I thought people were going crazy. Every morning when people gathered in front of the pulpit to hear me, I would calm them down by explaining the new terms on which Papi’s next earthly administration would make its triumphant arrival on the world scene: signs, black helicopters, extraterrestrials, earthquakes, sour milk, stinky cheeses, stale Doritos. Around that time, journalists showed up and took my photo as well as photos of the altar, which was in fact just a photo of Papi, a cup of Chivas Regal with seven upside-down daggers, and a gold cell phone. They wanted to interview me and ask me about the nine-year-old girls who were getting pregnant in the settlement and I said, It’s just that Papi’s power is overwhelming, it’s all over the place.
By November people were getting desperate. Some were saying Papi even talked to them and I thought maybe we needed a psychiatrist to get group therapy going or something. Sometimes I’d be at the pulpit speaking and I’d see somebody throw themselves from a balcony, panic stricken, and screaming, I saw him, I saw him, before crashing to the ground. I told them what they were seeing were simply ethereal releases of ghostly molecules from the regulating specter of the cosmic memory of the great power that is Papi, and which manifested in moments of great expectation. Another day I told them the Papi they were all seeing was nothing more than the result of a plan by his business associates to confuse the believers, that it was an impostor, and that when Papi actually returned, he would do it like a king and everyone would see him. Another day I told them it was the Fifth Apostle of the cross of Caravaca, and yet another I said it was the Templars, then NATO, then Dr. Spock from Star Trek.
They hung garlic when I told them it was a vampire, drank castor oil when I said it was the result of pneumonia, and then one day, in the evening, when I was strolling and thinking about that new PlayStation that was on its way in the hands of some pilgrim, I got thirsty and walked over to the Coke machine behind the temple. The white and red halo illuminated the woods and I pushed in five coins and pressed the button, all the while appreciating the dry stalks and the new green buds on the trees. When the can didn’t drop, I gave the machine a couple of swift kicks. I felt a sudden shiver and my throat completely dried up. Not a soul was awake and I wanted to run cuz I’m always scared of places with vending machines. I kicked the machine again and it purred. I squatted to see if it had returned my change but there was nothing. That’s when he appeared before me, barefoot, right next to the machine, wearing the same suit in which they had buried him, a little medal of the Virgin of Altagracia pinned to his jacket, the buttonhole crooked. He smelled and looked as bruised as a zombie. He opened his mouth and pointed to his false tooth, or rather, the space where the tooth should have been, the tooth I had extracted and swallowed before fleeing his funeral. I shitted out that tooth a long time ago, Papi, I heard myself tell him, and he closed his mouth, which had been emitting a fartlike odor. The Coke can finally dropped and I grabbed it. The dead robot could not speak very well. He could ask for water but since he was in the process of decomposition it was best not to give it to him cuz the stink would just get stronger. The rotting was guaranteed by the manufacturers and I felt bad for him, wandering aimlessly like an apparition that didn’t understand he would soon be transformed into fertilizer.
I called a meeting. Puchy sprayed the air with gardenia and asked me if I was sure. First, I thought I would just tell the crowd the truth: What you’ve seen isn’t Papi, it’s not a zombie, it’s nothing. It’s a body, an android cadaver sponsored by Opus Dei and the Colombian mafia that was used during Papi’s so-called official funeral, but the robot has a manufacturing defect and left the grave instead of laying still and rotting. But instead, so as not to scare them, I said, Here’s Saint Lazarus, raised from the dead through Papi’s great power in me. Thus the stink. We put a fake beard on him so people wouldn’t suspect, and some green Capri pants, but we left him shirtless so people could see the sores and the multicolored worms. The people said, A miracle, a miracle, and plucked the worms off him to make bronze replicas and then put the bronze worms on Papi’s altar. Since he didn’t make pronouncements as he rotted, nor perform miracles, but rather just stared at the horizon for long periods with his robot eyes, his resolute dead man’s eyes, people became convinced he was a chosen one.
One day he started coming apart from the inside and a bit of his intestines poked out of his lower belly. I continued to be very impressed by the advances in science that took such details into account. He got used to the settlement and was soon integrated into all the rituals, especially after Puchy found him writing graffiti on a wall with a turd and we bought him Magic Markers and sprays and paints so he could develop his talent. The people just loved his drawings and began to say Papi guided his hand, that it was Papi’s own hand that traced those symbols. Groups formed to interpret the stinky saint’s graffiti; they met on Thursdays, they had their own chat room.
We became famous and would appear in the media now and again, accused of reviving the cult of Papi, of superstition, of prostitution, of rape, of deflowering virgins, of taking children out of school, of chewing gum, of destroying the national economy, of not accepting food from the Peace Corps, of prohibiting our followers from voting, of telling them to vote, of giving refuge to Trujillo supporters, to communists, to deserters, of distributing firearms, of actually being Haitians, of trafficking in sacred objects belonging to Haitian voodoo, of eating dirt, of conspiring against the government, of conspiring against the cardinal, of sacrificing babies, of training our followers in kung fu and aikido and capoeira, of having a foul mouth, of being dirty, of extorting an ignorant population, of being ignorant, of murdering nuns, of fucking nuns, of dressing up as nuns, of dancing naked on the rooftop as nuns walked by, of being into the occult, of listening to Marilyn Manson, of listening to Tulile, of being drag queens, of being homophobic, of trafficking in the organs of elitists, artists, activists, magicians, charlatans, fascists, Tarde Alegre columnists, bohemian thugs, pedophiles, of reading Nietzsche, of being illiterate, of having Chinese or Arab parents. Of being terrorists.
Our photos would appear on the front page. Me with my PlayStation co
nsole, Puchy with his Lysol spray, and Milly and her Walkman. The caption would explain how terrorists use ordinary technology in their criminal acts against the world. There would be red circles on the photos marking my PlayStation console, the gardenia spray, and Milly’s Walkman, respectively, as irrefutable proof of nuclear arms being used by remote control, of biological weapons in their final phase, and the sophisticated telecommunication network operating from our base. And then the biggest photo of all, the photo of the shirtless dead robot with his nylon beard sitting on a cinder block, surrounded, the people’s gaze following the little twig in his saintly hand as he scribbled his earthly graffiti. The caption identifies him as “the brains of the operation,” “the real blood sucker,” the guerrilla trained in Albania by the descendants of Fu Manchu. Next to the photo there were two or three graphics along with his drawings, which look like digital circuits, and maps of the island superimposed on them which proved the lines were nothing but plans for attack, or rather, “access maps to the underground tunnel system where the reptilian brethren and Neo-Nazi mutants, whose collaboration with the sect is well known, live.”