Sunspot Jungle

by Bill Campbell

  Yesterday, Motassim was welcomed by Bill Clinton’s wife wearing a red and black dress! Today, she bombs me! Two years ago, Britain, that whore! They sold me military planes, chemical weapons, today they have bombed me seven hundred times! France, two years ago, also, military planes and fuses, today they’ve bombed me two thousand times! Italy, electronic equipment and military planes, Belgium, small guns! Today, they are all bombing me! Why? Who did I hurt? Who have I hurt? Their people? Because of Lockerbie? That was a long time ago! What else did I do? I did nothing else! Oh, okay, the discotheque I bombed in Berlin? I paid compensation!

  I will make a bonfire of the world with the Sarkozy documents waiting for me next week in Algiers when I go to see my wife. You will see! Do you know why NATO is here? This war is for our …

  Sshhhhh …

  —I see many legs approaching in the wrong way, to the sewer, to this sewer. A face.—Peeping.—It’s looking at me. Hana?

  “Is. Is that you, Motassim?”

  “Come out! We have slaughtered your sons like the swines—”

  “Who are you—”

  “—they are! The whores you surround yourself with, we’ve raped and killed! Your fighters bleated like sick goats when we cornered and slaughtered them like flies!”

  “Liar!”

  “This blood-soaked singlet in my hand belongs to that cunt, Motassim. You son of a whore! Come out in peace or die like a dog! Muammar Qaddafi!! The people’s revolution is here for justice—”

  “Ah—Alla-hu Ak—bar …”

  The Lady and the Poet

  Walter Tierno

  translated by Christopher Kastensmidt

  Drizzle

  In the old days it drizzled a lot around these parts. Now not so much. Nowadays, the skies punish the people with raging storms, heartless cold, and dog day summers. The drizzles were irritating, it’s true, but they had a soft hand. A shameless caress, as the Poet would say. Today, the skies hand us beatings. They take revenge for all the garbage we breathe on them.

  I was born in those days, when the drizzle still treated us with affection. It wasn’t so long ago. It was a few years after the so-called revolution broke out, won by generals in their bedclothes, without a fight or a shot. Just orders, trickery, and phone calls. A sad revolt carried out by almost normal men full of fear and boasting, their heads burning in rage. Lots of people found it pretty. They still do. They never realized how many soldiers of distorted honor and bandits with recycled files received license to exercise their quirks in a variety of creative and confusing ways.

  I was born at a time when disagreement wasn’t open to debate, only to a beating. In those times, they silenced voices and songs, dreams and ironies. They hung some from the “parrot perch,” so they might sing pleas and the names of their companions. Some spirits ended up broken beyond repair. They rained down blows in the name of so-called liberty, the opposite of communism, a confusing term that even today few people understand. Even Dona Nha, who has an explanation for everything:

  “They said ’round here that cumnism was gonna be good. Who knows? I’m too old to understan’ these thangs.”

  Dona Nha’s greatest treasure doesn’t lie in her political convictions but in her repertoire of stories. She has many to tell. Even from those times of beatings and kind drizzle. Most, of course, are invented. But good causes are like that. A liar like no other, she says she was born a slave and that she saw and heard more than human eyes and ears should. Among the many lies that inhabit her memory, one beautiful and sad memory speaks of the Lady’s love for the Poet.

  Of when they met

  Dona Nha and the Lady met in a cell. Their bodies naked, intertwined to exchange heat, they also traded names and stories. The Lady told Dona Nha that it drizzled a lot on the day that she met the Poet and drizzled a lot on the first night they had under a black and overcast sky. It was with sweet words that she had never heard that the Poet convinced her to give herself to him up there on the building’s flagstones without ceiling, heat, comfort, or shame. Under the drizzle, their heads, backs, and feet got wet, and in those places the water turned icy. The pubes between her legs also got wet, and there the water turned flavorful and hot. He had no qualms and an appetite for everything. He didn’t just have her. He devoured her, and for that, he became the Poet. Not this poet or that poet. To the rest of the world, maybe, but not for her. For her, he became the Poet with a capital P. He was the Poet less for the force of his art than for the music he played on her body with fingers, tongue, and humidity.

  The Lady and the Poet met each other as you might expect for a solitary man with more fire than reason and a whore with less ambition than passion. A night of partying, alcohol, and smoking. An orgy of the alienated and politicized, infidels and believers. Some in search of a release that no one knew how to describe with words, even those they swore to understand. Others in search of something for which to search.

  The Lady wasn’t working. She had accepted the invite from a friend, a more experienced and disputed professional, those with money to burn and a delicious decadence in their eyes. Those who hadn’t visited the beds of both ladies had lived just a bit sadder life.

  The ladies’ civilian disguises fooled most but not the Poet. He hadn’t visited their beds but was infatuated by others of the same nature; he was quite familiar with love professionals and genuinely respected them as only a Poet can.

  He was there because he was the friend of someone but didn’t quite remember who, and no one seemed to care. It was one more welcome mouth for drinking, smoking, conversing, and—depending on how the night went—kissing and sucking. When he laid eyes on the Lady and her friend, he smelled their goals and doubts, stories, regrets, and conceits. The goals and doubts of the Lady stirred him the most. He introduced himself. He flowered his brazenness with verse and capped off his conquest with a hot and wet kiss.

  And don’t think, reader, that the nature of the Lady’s profession had dried her heart. The pleasures that she offered “down there” were obtained for short periods of time with large bills. But her spirit, a source of pleasure reserved for few mortals, could only be reached “up there” and never with money. The Lady fell in love, and that’s saying a lot. Even Dona Nha’s only eye sparkled with sincerity when she spoke of that love because she had seen and confirmed it—later on, I’ll tell you how.

  Love bloomed, watered by sweat, fertilized by intimacies, rooted in the genitals. The Lady and the Poet connected on beds, sheets, sofas, carpets, tiles, plates, and silverware. They invaded each other under the sun, the rain, and the drizzle. Principally under the drizzle. And they repeated rituals, positions, and scenarios many times.

  But never under the full moon.

  Never.

  The reader might find this strange. But there isn’t so much mystery if I say that he was the youngest, the first rod after a progeny of six girls. If you don’t understand what kind of life is reserved for that type of unlucky soul, I repeat the words of Dona Nha:

  “You don’ know? Boy like that ’comes a werewolf.”

  The Lady knew that recipe.

  “You’re a wolf?” she whispered in her lover’s ear during a random night on the bed. They had just come, their bodies asking for rest and their spirits clamoring for intimacy, and he had just numbered the members of his family.

  The Poet neither denied nor confirmed. He just entered into her one more time, a debauched smile on his lips, a loving jolt with his pelvis. Their pubes mixed below, and their mouths pressed up top. Everything trembled when she came again. This time, provocatively, he didn’t accompany her. He let her tremble alone: a bit embarrassed, a ton happy.

  “You ruin me for clients,” she said. And she regretted it. Why talk about clients to a boyfriend?

  Boyfriend.

  The word sounded sweet in her head, but she didn’t repeat it out loud. She was scared of its fragility. Could a whore date? Her older friend said yes, and the Lady pretended that her opinion was wor
th a lot.

  “You’re my wolf-boyfriend,” she said, but not aloud. She feared the frailty of happiness. She enjoyed her love in silence, and it was for love and silence that she messed up.

  The Poet was shameless. He embraced everything that was pleasant and immoral except for the lack of justice. And justice is a slippery thing that everyone tries to grab, feel up, and keep as company.

  To make it worse, the Poet wasn’t one to simply hate. If he hated, he acted. And he would take up iron and lead to fight in the battles that arose in those times against the old, pajama-wearing generals.

  Dona Nha, in her simplicity or wisdom, I don’t know which, summed up the gang well:

  “A group o’ sonbitches, tha’s what …”

  His visits to the Lady diminished. He got involved with the comrades. He fought.

  The lovers’ trysts became every time sadder and more bureaucratic. One day, she gathered her courage and complained. He didn’t glance at her eyes when he responded:

  “It’s not the fight that makes a guy limp. The fight, when there is one, is good. What makes a guy limp is the inglorious thanklessness.”

  “What happened.”

  “Our blood for what? For sheep? For people that don’t see. Not because it’s not in front of their eyes but because they don’t want to see it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m tired of this shit. Of living like a warrior, to be remembered as a thief. If that’s what’s it’s for …”

  He didn’t say anything else. He just fucked her, quickly and unsatisfactorily. While he put on his underpants, he grumbled:

  “Anonymity castrates.”

  The Lady’s pain

  A week after that conversation, the Poet landed in the Lady’s hovel without warning, breathless. His tongue out, eyes tired. She was on the job, and he was blunt and objective:

  “Get out!”

  With considerable strength for someone so thin, he booted an old man from the room. The clothes followed right after.

  He slammed the door and turned to the Lady.

  “You’re not going to receive anyone else today!” It had been an order, not a question, and it surprised her so much she didn’t know how to respond.

  The Poet had brought a full suitcase and pushed it under the bed. As if he hadn’t done anything unusual, he hugged and kissed his lover. His lips rubbed her ear while he whispered:

  “Don’t attend anyone else until I get back.”

  “What’s this? I have to work.”

  “You’re not paying attention,” he hollered. “I need you to pay attention. Don’t attend anyone. And don’t touch the suitcase. Don’t open it. Never. And don’t talk about it or show it to anyone. Do you understand?”

  She hadn’t understood.

  “When are you coming back?”

  “There’s going to be a full moon. I’ll come back afterwards.”

  “When?”

  “When the moon changes, you know that! Just … just do what I ask, all right? It will be worth it, I promise.”

  She looked at him with mistrust, hurt, and excitement.

  “What’s in the suitcase?”

  “Our future.”

  She tried not to laugh at his strange, solemn silence.

  “A big suitcase like that could carry a lot of kinds of future. But it could also be empty.”

  “It’s not. It carries a lot more than it seems. Believe me, that’s our future there. A new life, without glory, but with our asses free and happy. And fuck everything.”

  “You’re crazier than usual.”

  “It’s true. But don’t open the suitcase. Leave it hidden.”

  How many other lovers haven’t sinned for foolish zeal? For the senseless will to protect the other, keeping them ignorant? If the poet had revealed the suitcase’s contents to the Lady, she certainly would have found a better place to hide it. And how many other lovers haven’t suffered for blind faith? For the senseless will to obey? Had the Lady searched the suitcase, she would have avoided the men finding it two days later.

  They kicked the door in, and the only reason they didn’t turn the entire apartment upside down was that the suitcase was in such an easy place to find. They threw it on the bed and opened it with a pocket knife. Inside shone every type of bill from old to fresh. The cops laughed with debauchery and pocketed a lot of it without the least decency.

  “Where?” growled the German, a subject with eyes full of disgust and disdain, a soft belly spread over the badly strapped belt. The lackluster hair color had earned him his nickname among his subordinates. German had been a crook. He had a nose for hunting communists. For that, they had forgiven his crimes and given him a troop of scoundrels.

  “Where, dammit?” he repeated, confronting the Lady.

  “What?”

  It wasn’t the answer he’d been waiting for. He slapped her with the palm of his calloused hand.

  “Where’s that cuckold boyfriend of yours? Hurry up, whore, out with it!”

  “I don’t know,” responded the Lady, between tears and pain.

  “This one’s a whore and stupid? Your boyfriend fucked you over, do you understand? He fucked everybody. You see this money here? Where do you think it came from? From a robbery your boyfriend participated in.”

  “Lies …” she sobbed.

  “Huh? Speak up, dammit!”

  “It’s a lie.”

  “Are you calling me a liar? He smiled. “That’s disrespecting authority, isn’t it, Sideburns?”

  One of his companions, owner of generous sideburns, agreed with a nod.

  “He’s no bandit,” she defended him pathetically. “He’s a poet.”

  “A poet?” German guffawed. “Besides a terrorist, a cuckold, and a son of a bitch, he’s a fag! Had to be.”

  “Don’t bother sticking the broom handle into that one, he might like it.”

  “Shut up, Sideburns!” yelled German, while he turned back to the Lady. “Listen here, you whore. Your little fag poet is a terrorist and communist son of a bitch. He assaulted a bank with a bunch of communist sons of bitches and turned tail on his comrades. They’re all singing in jail already. Your fucking boyfriend is the only one left. Where is he?”

  The Lady said nothing.

  “All you have to do is tell us where the cuckold is, and we’ll let you go …”

  The Lady sealed her lips and looked away.

  German laughed.

  “Is that right? Not going to collaborate? Fuck it! Your problem!” He turned to Sideburns. “That’s exactly what I wanted.”

  “Tasty …” growled Bubblegum, who stood next to Sideburns and caressed his revolver.

  “Frame this bitch,” continued German. “We’ll talk in the cooler.” To the Lady he said, “You don’t want to do what’s right, go to hell! Shitty bitch.”

  They dragged the Lady by her hair. They forced her to march with slaps to the neck and thighs, her wrists decorated by handcuffs. They got in a small car, the Lady squeezed between bodies with little care for hygiene. Before the darkness of the hood, a whisper with the smell of sour beer puffed in her right ear:

  “This little peacock won’t take long to sing like a bird.”

  They laughed.

  The trip lasted longer than the Lady’s stomach could manage, and she arrived at the jail with her ears burning for having obliged the cops to stop for her to vomit. They had raised the hood but hadn’t uncovered her eyes.

  They threw the Lady into a cold, humid, fetid cell. She stayed there for many hours. Between her and the corridor: thick, rusty bars. Over her head, a strong lamp. And growing fear.

  When German remembered her, he made a point of getting her personally. Walking down the corridor, they were accompanied by a symphony of shouts and moans. They entered a dark cell. The diligence men were there, sweaty, surrounded by cigarette smoke and the smell of sweat, come, and piss. Their faces were lost in the penumbra. They put her under a lamp brighter than the one i
n her cell.

  “Take off your clothes,” said German.

  She didn’t move.

  “Now the whore is embarrassed? I told you to take off your fucking clothes, dammit! Hurry up! If you don’t take them off nice, you’ll do it under a beating, you bitch.”

  “What do you …” she tried to ask.

  “Shut up! The one who asks the questions here is me!”

  A slap to the face, another to the back of her head, a kick in the thigh, a hand ripping her blouse here, another pulling her skirt there. The tears, inevitable.

  “Are you shy? Take off the panties and the bra, too. Move it! A whore with decency, ever seen that before?”

  She obeyed.

  The Lady felt pain in many forms. Shock, drowning, beaten by a wet rag, and swinging from the parrot perch.

  “What are you complaining about? You’re a whore, aren’t you?” was what each of the five men who raped her said. “And if you get pregnant, you’ll remove the little shit because sons of whores turn into communists when they grow up,” said the last one who came in her.

  They asked about the Poet. Who he was, where he came from, and where he was hiding.

  “Open that beak, that’s what’s best for you. The guy is worthless. He tricked his own associates and filched all the money.

  They asked about lots of other things. Many times. She didn’t have a response for anything.

  “Why are you protecting that fag?” The cop took on a conciliatory tone of voice. He held her head by the back of the neck. The parrot perch stopped swinging. “We know he left the suitcase with you, didn’t he?”

  They said his name. It sounded strange in her ears and not just because of the buzzing. To her, he was just the Poet. Her wolf-boyfriend. Not that dull, pompous name.

  Her love faltered when something in her anus heated up and burned.

  Suddenly, the questions stopped. The men, frustrated.

  “Wash this whore and take her back. Tomorrow, we’ll continue. I have a date with the missus.”