by Mal Peet
I learned then that the spirit of this river was not like Loma. It had a savage playfulness and its water was full of strong thin fingers. They snatched and dragged at me when I had kicked free of the boat’s shadow, and it took all my strength to escape them and climb into the air. The boat was already a spear-throw away from me. I heard shouts through the rain, saw Morro crouched at the stern, his arm raised, saw the oarsmen struggling to turn the boat into the current. I spread myself in the water and worked my legs. The clothes made me heavy. I thought that death and freedom were both close to me but I could not choose between them. Then I thought of Abela, and I lifted myself and turned this way and that but I could not see him.
When I was facing the boat again it was much closer, as if by some magic. A snake fell from the air and hit the water close to me. A rope. I reached it and held it, turning on my back to breathe what air there was between the river and the rain. I felt something hard and warm strike my legs, and I cried out, choking water.
Abela rose up close to me with death in his face. He may have known me, because he raised his arm with the iron bracelet on it. I tried to reach him with my hand but I could not and he was gone.
I pulled myself along the rope until hands grasped me, and then I was kneeling on the floor of the boat. The oarsmen had steadied it now, holding it skilfully into the current. Morro and the other white man were staring into the rain. The four chained men looked at me with eyes like moons. Then Morro shouted and pointed. The river and the rain were green smoke and grey smoke. Close to where they met and melted I saw something black for a moment. A head and a raised arm. Or the branch of a drifting tree that vanished.
The two white men shouted and snarled at each other. Morro seized the gun man by his shirt and raised his fist, but the gun man pulled away and went to the front of the boat, kicking me out of his way. I fell against the legs of the oarsmen and wanted to stay there and sleep or die. But I was taken by the front of my shirt and pulled up. Morro’s face was close to mine. It was like the mask of an evil spirit with the hair painted on and yellow teeth in the twisted mouth and some terrible animal looking through the eye-holes. He howled at me, then before I saw it coming his fist struck my face. My head filled with noisy light and the brown taste of blood flooded my mouth. I fell to my knees and when I put my hand to my face I knew that my lip was in two parts.
The rain stopped late in the day. The sun returned, a ball of red fire hanging low above the river. So when I saw Santo Tomas for the first time, the big white house on the hill seemed stained with diluted blood, like my clothes.
There was full darkness when the boat reached the dock, and men with flaming torches stood above us. I climbed up towards them in chains and began another life.
Two: A Guide to San Juan
FROM WHERE PAUL Faustino stood there was possibly the best view that San Juan had to offer. Which, in his opinion, wasn’t saying much. Many of the old colonial houses around the steeply sloping plaza had been restored, or at least given a coat of paint. Confectioner’s colours, mostly: candy pink, pistachio green, marzipan yellow. The blue and white bell towers of the Church of Our Lady of the Good Death were quite impressive in a doll’s house sort of way. And because the Old City had been built at the top of the cliff, you couldn’t see the squalor, ancient and modern, of the port far below. Beyond the tumble of rooftops and churches there was only the blue division into sea and sky. Photographed from here, San Juan wouldn’t look too bad; which was why, Faustino realized, this was the view that featured on ninety per cent of the postcards you could buy in this otherwise miserable hole.
Faustino’s unfavourable opinion of the city of San Juan had been formed long ago. It had nothing to do with the fact that right now he had an iron collar around his neck, iron manacles around his wrists and ankles, and was fastened to a wall by three stout iron chains. The other members of his tour group – two gay Swiss men, a Spanish couple on honeymoon, three sombre African-American Baptists and four intense Japanese – took photographs of him. The guide continued his spiel.
“The terrace we are standing on is called the Old Slave Market. However, the truth is slightly more complicated. For over two hundred years, San Juan was the centre of the slave trade in South America. The majority of the houses around this plaza were involved in the selling of slaves. Most of them had walled yards in which slaves were displayed and offered for sale. Only one of these yards still exists, and that will be the next stop on our tour.
“The slaves sold in these houses were mostly women and children, and most were second-hand. Usually their owners did not want to keep them because they were not capable of doing the hard manual work on the sugar-cane plantations or tobacco farms. They were not economic. Or perhaps they were troublesome slaves who had run away and been recaptured. They were private sales. Only slaves fresh from Africa were brought up to the terrace for public auction and chained to the wall like this gentleman here.”
Faustino tried to bow ironically but the iron collar bit his throat.
The guide had an identity badge clipped to his shirt pocket – EDSON BAKULA – with a small photograph that did not do him justice. He was, Faustino thought, possibly the most handsome young man he had ever set eyes on. Beautiful, actually; but the habits of a lifetime made Faustino shy away from the word. The truth was, though, that only the guide’s good looks could have persuaded Faustino to make such an exhibition of himself. He would never have allowed himself to be chained to a wall by anybody plain.
“They were chained like this for two reasons. One was that they were not trusted. It was widely believed that all African men were warriors capable of killing with their hands and feet in ways unknown to white people. This was not true, of course. The second reason was that, after they had been bought, these men were made to witness the terrible punishments that took place in the Pillory, the square in front of us. And it was thought that seeing these sights might make them difficult to control.”
The Swiss with the shaved head now asked a question.
Edson Bakula said, unsmiling, “No, they were not entirely naked. The Catholic priests would usually insist that the private parts of the slaves were covered, in case the women in the crowd became…” He was stuck for a proper word.
Faustino croaked, “Inflamed?”
“Yes, perhaps,” the guide said, with some slight hesitation. “Inflamed. Thank you, Señor. Now, I think it is time you were released.”
Forty-five minutes later, when the group emerged from the Church of Christ the Redeemer and dispersed, Faustino backtracked to the Pillory and found a bar that claimed to have air conditioning. The tour guide’s rather too vivid descriptions of the whippings and maimings that had taken place in the square had left Faustino feeling both queasy and empty. A cold beer and a toasted sandwich were called for. The bar also sold newspapers, and he bought three: his own paper, La Nación; the regional tabloid, El Norte; and the local weekly, Voz de San Juan. He took them to a table at the back of the room and spread them out. All three, of course, featured prominently the story that had been dominating the news for the last seven days: the sensational and mysterious disappearance of Ricardo Gomes de Barros, otherwise known as El Brujito.
Voz had the headline BRUJITO: THE MYSTERY DEEPENS and a photo of the eighteen-year-old prodigy celebrating a goal. The article recapped the story so far. After missing a penalty during Deportivo San Juan’s cup semi-final against unfancied Atlético, Brujito had been substituted. He had gone straight to the dressing room, apparently in “a state of deep dejection”. At the end of the game – which DSJ should have won but, “in a shock upset”, lost – the disgraced players returned to the dressing room to find that Brujito had vanished. At first it was assumed that the young star had been too shamed by his performance to face his teammates or, perhaps, too afraid to face the wrath of his manager, Victor Morientes. But DSJ became extremely worried when, after two days, they had failed to make contact with their player, and had alerted the police. Now
, a week later, there was still no trace of Brujito, despite the fact that the police had “explored every avenue of investigation”.
The rest of the piece was padded out with background stuff and quotes. Morientes was “baffled and deeply concerned”, while the chief of San Juan’s Criminal Investigations Department was “deeply concerned and baffled”. Gilberto da Silva, the Deportivo chairman and owner, was “unavailable for comment”. No surprise there, Faustino thought. It was his wife, Flora, who did the talking. And wore the trousers, for that matter. But it seemed that on this occasion she had nothing to say either.
Faustino’s sandwich arrived and he scanned El Norte while he ate. The front page consisted almost entirely of a headline in a huge typeface: BRUJITO RANSOM DEMAND A HOAX – POLICE. For some reason, the colour photo that ran down the page was of a nubile girl wearing a bikini made, apparently, from three postage stamps held together by strands of cobweb. Faustino studied it for some time and then turned to the story, which was continued on page three. It seemed obvious to him that this kidnap stuff was what his boss called “life rafting”: something thrown in to stop a good story from sinking when there was nothing new to keep it afloat. So he was surprised when he turned finally to La Nación, where the Brujito affair had been relegated to the bottom of the front page, below the lead story which featured the latest atrocity in the Middle East. The piece was captioned RANSOM DEMAND FOR MISSING SOCCER STAR. The byline read: From Maximo Salez in San Juan. Faustino groaned aloud, but read the thing anyway. Then he sat brooding, pinching his lower lip with his fingers.
It was a pain in the rear end, to put it mildly. Here he was, the senior sports writer for the country’s biggest paper, the best – no point being modest about it – football journalist in the business. And here was this Brujito story, the biggest story since the World Cup. A perfect Paul Faustino story. He was even here, in godforsaken San Juan, right where it was all happening. But he wasn’t covering it. Couldn’t cover it. Because he was on leave, researching a book he wasn’t sure he could write. Keeper: The Autobiography of El Gato “as told to Paul Faustino”. A great man, El Gato, certainly the best goalkeeper – or ex-goalkeeper, now – the world had ever seen. But also maybe a liar. Also maybe a nutcase. Mind you, the money…
Faustino had been staggered, alarmed even, by the amount the publishers had offered him. The equivalent of two years’ salary, upfront, before he’d written a word. He’d taken it, of course. And agreed to deliver the book in six months. Dear God. He lit another cigarette. Nope, he’d have to leave the Brujito story alone. Leave it to halfwit semi-literate hacks like Maximo Salez, and morons who used phrases like “shock upset”. Damn!
Faustino looked at his watch: not quite noon. Now that his interview with Cesar Fabian had been put back a day, an empty afternoon yawned ahead of him. He ought really to visit the Park, that swathe of preserved forest where Gato claimed to have seen a ghost. But he didn’t fancy the trek out there, not in this heat. There were the famous churches, of course; San Juan was stuffed with them. Those old slave owners sure loved to build big churches. Amazing what you could do with a bad conscience and plenty of cheap labour. But to hell with churches. Monuments to dread, all of them. If he wanted to depress himself thinking about sin and the insignificance of human life he could do that right here, without getting off his backside. Two more beers and another read of the newspapers would do the job.
Maybe some sea air, then. Yes, why not?
FAUSTINO WALKED FROM the Pillory past the bars and video stores on the Plaza Jesus and joined the queue for the public elevator down to the port. In the crowded, plummeting car he was the only white person. Two children, their faces level with his knees, gazed up at him as if he were a plaster saint that had left its niche in the cathedral wall to go among the poor. At ground level he was swept by the tide of people out onto the forecourt. Faustino dimly remembered that the quickest route to the harbour was through the great grim building on the far side of the road, the food market. He dodged his way through the fried-fish sellers, the beggars, the blind hawkers of religious trinkets and lottery tickets. He survived the murderous traffic on the boulevard and, passing through the market’s great arched entrance, found himself in an avenue lined with raw flesh. On both sides of the aisle, flayed carcasses hung heads down from hooks, their eyes still wide from shock, their snouts bloody. Between them, festive swags of dark red sausages; below them, steel counters heaped with ears and feet, spongy tripes and slippery livers. Business was being conducted in a roar of argument and laughter. Faustino hurried through, keeping his eyes fixed on the exit, the archway that framed the blue level of the sea.
The open area between the market and the harbour was crowded with plastic tables and chairs. Faustino found a shaded place at the furthest edge of the throng. A waitress appeared beside him the instant he sat down. He ordered an iced coffee which, when it came, was better than he’d expected. Smoking, he watched the incessant comings and goings of the ferries carrying humans and other cargo between the islands that lay humped in the bay like grey whales.
Faustino began to relax, relishing the breeze from the sea and enjoying the small dramas and comedies taking place along the quays and jetties. So it irritated him greatly when a familiar and unwelcome rhythm disturbed his peace. At the far side of the café a small circular stage had been set up. A quartet of musicians stood beside it: two skinny guys in knitted Rasta hats playing hand drums, a kid with a tambourine, an older man tapping at the strings of a kora. The music they produced was light, but slow and monotonous; the kind of stuff you might play at a slightly jolly funeral.
Sighing, Faustino leaned back in his chair to watch. Half a dozen slim but muscular young men appeared from somewhere and stood alongside the musicians, solemn-faced. They wore pale blue singlets and shiny yellow tracksuit bottoms with a green stripe, and were barefoot. At a nod from the old kora player, two of them stepped onto the stage and went into their routine: fighting but not fighting, dancing but not dancing. A series of feints and ritual attacks, mostly made with the feet, the legs lifted high, the kicks made backwards, bodies cartwheeling and ducking, never making contact. Karate blows that landed on empty air. The performance was lithe and elegant and Faustino couldn’t help despising it. In his opinion, it was typical of the so-called “African culture” of the North: empty gestures accompanied by “ethnic” music. Pointless and backward-looking. Meanwhile, the streets of San Juan were haunted by rag-arsed children begging for money to feed their mothers’ crack habits. That was the real “culture” of the Deep North, and no amount of prancing about to tom-toms was going to fix that.
The two boys left the stage to be replaced by another pair. Faustino returned his gaze to the sea.
A voice from a neighbouring table said, “Paqueira.”
“I know,” Faustino said, not looking round.
“From a West African word meaning ‘combat’. On the plantations fighting was forbidden. So the slaves disguised their traditional ways of fighting as dancing. The owners didn’t know the difference. Only the slaves knew who were the winners and who were the losers.”
Faustino said, “Very interesting.” Turning, he saw that the tour guide was no longer wearing his identity tag. His face was bisected vertically by the shadow of the awning. Like an elegant mask, half copper, half ebony. Faustino noticed for the first time that it had an imperfection: the man’s lower lip had a kink in it, above a short pale scar. Someone, it seemed, had found his handsomeness irritating and had tried to spoil it.
Edson Bakula smiled. “You find it tedious.”
Faustino shrugged. “Have you been following me? To give me another history lesson?”
“No. I usually stop off here between shifts. I live over there.” He made a gesture towards nowhere in particular. “May I join you, Señor Faustino?”
Faustino pushed the free chair away from the table with his foot. “Be my guest. So, you know my name?”
“Yes. I read the papers. Some
of us can, you know. And I saw you on television being interviewed when El Gato announced his retirement. Very interesting. I got the impression that there were things you chose not to talk about.”
Faustino watched the young man’s eyes but said nothing.
Bakula smiled again. “No,” he said, “you are quite right. None of my business. I apologize.”
Faustino forgave him with a gesture.
“I would like to thank you again,” the guide said. “For coming to my assistance. For volunteering to be chained.”
“It didn’t look like anyone else was going to.”
“No. People find it a bit embarrassing. For one reason or another. But the Tourism Office insists that we try to do it.”
Maybe, Faustino thought. Or maybe you enjoy it.
“So, Señor, you are here to investigate Brujito’s Sensational Disappearance?” Edson Bakula spoke the phrase as if it were a newspaper headline.
“As a matter of fact, I’m not. I’m … on holiday. It’s damp down south at this time of year. I’m here to soak up the sunshine. And the history and the, er, culture, of course.”
The guide nodded seriously, as though he had not heard the irony. He tipped a hand towards the building behind them.
“The market was originally the slave hospital, did you know that? Built in 1724. Restored in 1980. It is an official historical monument.”
Faustino tried to sound interested. “Hospital? I’m surprised they bothered with that kind of thing.”
“It wasn’t a hospital in the modern sense of the word. More like the kind of place where you fatten up cattle before they go to market. By the time the slaves got off the ships – the ones that survived the voyage – most were too weak to fetch a decent price. They didn’t have the strength to climb up to the city. Most of us had to be carried ashore.”