The man woke for good when the bus started climbing. “Almost there now,” he said. Then Victor took the note from his pocket, breaking the stitching with his long pinky nail. He didn’t know why he did it exactly; he just wanted the old man to know.
The old man unfolded the paper and read slowly. He turned it over to the list of names. “Have mercy,” he mumbled. “Are you traveling alone?”
Victor shook his head, and pointed at Manau. “My teacher is with me.”
The old man seemed reassured. “Shall we wake him?”
“He’s very tired.”
But Manau was up already. He kneaded his stiff neck and offered the old man a handshake. “We’re going to the radio,” he said when the old man asked what plans they had. “We’re going to see Miss Norma.”
“Will you see her, do you think? Will you really see her?” The old man looked back and forth between them, his face suddenly animated.
Manau shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope so.”
“Have you been there before? To the city?”
“Yes. I was born there.”
The old man sighed. “So you know the place. It’s where the soul of this country is.”
“In the city, they say it’s out here.”
“Who can tell?”
Victor couldn’t follow. The old man turned and smiled. He asked for the list and pulled a pen from his pocket. He held the note against his thigh and wrote a single name in a bouncing, jagged script that shook along with the bus. “It’s my son,” he said to Victor and Manau. “You understand.”
He got off in the next town. The hospital was there, a large, imposing building of brick and steel surrounded by an iron fence. Victor had never seen such a large construction. It looked like a factory he had seen in a picture once, dominating the minuscule town. “Home,” the old man said. “You’re not far now, child. Stay alert.” Then he folded a few bills into Manau’s palm. “Take care of him,” he said. Manau promised he would. The old man gathered his X-rays and his bags, and shuffled down the aisle.
Not long after, the bus crested a pass, and shacks began to appear along the sides of the road. First one or two, then clusters of them. Then they were a steady presence as the bus descended to the coast. The road was better, and the bus seemed to be gliding now. Victor finally fell asleep and awoke to honks and shouting, the city’s noise like a great engine: movement, a sputtering motor, the squalid borders of the capital, its sidewalks overflowing. The city had emerged all at once, the bus crept slowly through the crowded streets, and Victor peered out of his window. He wanted it all to be over. There was no sun, only a gray sky above, the color of the parchment he once did his school lessons on: at home with an oil lamp on the table, his mother frying fish, checking his penmanship and his spelling. That world was gone. The city moved like a forest moves: first sound, then sight, everything invisible and shadowed, a place full of walls. He felt glad to be on the bus, and he prayed it wouldn’t stop. This can’t be it, he thought. There were so many people and so much stone. There’s another, better place ahead, but then the bus was slowing, and then it was pulling into a lot, vendors ready to pounce at the arriving passengers: women with baskets of cheese balanced atop their heads, men selling batteries and sodas and lottery tickets adorned with pictures of the Virgin. Everyone yelling. “Let’s wait a moment,” Victor said. “Please.”
Manau nodded. The bus emptied, and still they stayed put. I’ll make him move me, Victor thought. All he wanted was to sleep, to dream of places he had left behind, of his mother letting go, of rivers and people as transparent as ghosts.
The bus driver lumbered down the aisle and informed them they had arrived.
“We’re aware,” said Manau.
“You two got somewhere to go?” the driver said. He glared like an animal.
“We’re getting off.”
“Good,” he said. It was clear he didn’t believe them.
Then Manau’s hands were on Victor’s back, ushering him through the bus and out the door. What if he had said no? No, I’m not getting off. No, send me home. There’s nothing for me here. My father is a phantom and my mother is floating on the river, halfway to the sea by now. Maybe it wouldn’t have been different at all. Maybe—
They stood on the sidewalk for a moment. Manau was almost smiling. Of course he was: he was home. Victor had imagined approaching a city gentleman, a man in a top hat and severe black suit, and asking, “Which way to the radio, good sir?” He didn’t have to. It was there ahead of them, an antenna piercing the sky.
NOW THE street had filled, and he was surrounded by a hot and panting mass of strangers. Victor buried his face beneath Norma’s arm, closed his eyes, and willed the moment to pass. The white-haired man had disappeared, and the woman, too, both absorbed by the rushing crowd. Victor breathed Norma’s city smell, the scent of acrid smoke on her clothes, and felt her heart beating. Was she afraid too? Voices rose around him, urgent human sounds, the heat of shouted prayers, calling Norma, Norma, Norma! And so it was everywhere, he thought, this worship of her. Not just in my faraway village, but here too, in the central city, in the capital. He looked at the people, at the dark forest of men and women. There was no way out except through them. Norma was warm, but he could feel her body tense. He had brought all this on, this rush of needy pleas, of outstretched hands fingering tiny, faded photographs—all of this, by simply saying her name. A bearded man pressed closer, wailing toothlessly, his hands caressing an unseen figure as he repeated a name again and again. There was something pained in his eyes. He wore too-small rubber sandals, his toes pushing out beyond the soles, grazing the dirty pavement. He looked sicker than the man with the X-rays, closer to death. Victor could see their insides. The people were upon them, tangled and anxious; and suddenly they were moving, Norma holding him tightly, Victor unwilling to let go.
The white-haired man appeared and whistled again. He waved his arms frantically, and then, quite unexpectedly, there was silence. “Form a line,” he ordered. The crowd thinned and spread and organized itself. Victor felt he was watching a choreographed dance. He looked up at Norma: she was pale and tense and afraid.
A moment later, a table and two chairs had been arranged for them. The line of people snaked down the block. A hundred eyes were upon them. It seemed they had no choice but to sit. The white-haired man apologized to Norma and Victor.
“What’s going on?” Norma asked. “I can’t.”
“One name per person!” the white-haired man shouted. “No more! No cutting in line or you’ll lose your ration card!”
He turned and smiled at Norma. “I’ll begin, if you please, madam.” He closed his eyes. “Sandra. Sandra Tovar.”
Someone passed Norma a pen and a piece of paper. She looked at the page and back at the white-haired man, saying nothing.
“Aren’t you going to write it down?”
Norma blinked.
“I’ll do it,” Victor said.
“Can you?” Norma lowered her voice. “Can you write?”
He nodded and took the pen. “Sandra Tovar,” the white-haired man said again, and Victor wrote the name carefully. The man thanked them both and stepped to the side with a bow.
Victor took dictation. The line moved slowly: each person stood before Norma, patted Victor on the head, and uttered a single name. They lingered, each of them, until Victor had written the name out and Norma had checked it. She thanked them in a tired voice, offered her condolences. She promised to read the name on the air. A few names she had to spell for him, and for those moments, it seemed he was in school again, back home where nothing had changed. The chatter of the people became the sound of rain in the forest. And so it was all a nightmare; perhaps he had never left the village. He filled a page without thinking. He kept his head down, his eyes on the paper, on these names, on his own hand carefully tracing letters.
Then: “Adela.”
He’d been at it for twenty minutes when he heard his mother’s name. Victor
looked up to see a thin, unshaven man holding a knit cap in his hands. Victor thought for a moment he must know the man, that the man must know him, that his two-day journey was over, that there was some sense in all this. Victor put the pen down. He noticed for the first time that it was night.
“Adela,” the man said again in a low voice. He began spelling it.
“I know how to write it,” Victor said. How could he not?
“What manners!” a woman in line said.
“Do you know her? Do you know my mother?”
The man frowned. “Who are you, boy?”
Victor felt suddenly light-headed. It wasn’t his mother at all. It couldn’t be: how many Adelas were there? He heard Norma ask if he was all right. Through nearly closed eyelids, he saw the man put on his knit cap and walk away quickly.
“Victor?”
He leaned over and threw up beneath the table. Then there was a commotion. “Don’t hold up the line!” a voice called. “Move the child!”
Someone handed Victor a glass of water. They were surrounded again. How long had they been there? The white-haired man was yelling, but this time no one was listening. Norma had him in her arms. “We’re going,” she whispered to Victor. “We’re going. Can you stand?”
He nodded. He was wobbly on his feet, but he managed.
The crowd parted, but they let their fingers graze over Norma as she passed—light, inoffensive touches, hopeful touches, as if she were an amulet or the image of a saint. Their hands washed over Victor as well. There was noise, shouting, an engine backfiring. The crowd swelled. It was impossible to tell how many people there were, or where they had come from. They towered over Victor and blotted out the sky. He wanted to tell Norma that he was sorry. He cowered. The people loved her, and he understood this. They called her name. They would never hurt her. He was safe.
Victor and Norma escaped the crowd through narrow alleys and crooked paths, the noise and the people fading with each step. The dirt beneath their feet was packed hard, cut by tiny streams of water drawn on the path like a system of veins. The farther they got from the crowd, the faster they went: soon they were running, Norma ahead, Victor doing his best to follow. His palm stuck to hers, his heart raced, and then they had emerged in a wide, desolate plaza graced with palm trees, lit by orange streetlamps. The buildings were ornate and self-important, but the fountain at its center was dry and gathering dust. An Indian woman sat on the curb, stooped over a coloring book, an infant asleep in her lap, and she didn’t even look up at them. A lone soldier stood watch in front of one of the buildings, rocking back and forth on either foot, machine gun at his side.
Norma and Victor waited a few minutes, catching their breath, not speaking. A man tipped his hat as he pedaled his creaky bicycle across the plaza. It was night, Norma told him, and the city lived indoors at these hours. “It’s all these years of curfew. We’re accustomed to it now.” It didn’t look at all like the same place Victor had seen that morning. The people had vanished. After a while, a cab rolled by, tapping its horn lightly, and Norma stopped it with a wave of her arm. They rode silently across the city, Victor with his face pressed against the window, his heart still beating raggedly. He was sure he saw them in every shadow: the lost and the missing, huddled on corners and in doorways, asleep on benches. The cabbie drove and tried to chat with Norma, but she seemed to be in no mood to talk. She kept her lips pursed tightly, only nodding or responding when decorum demanded it. The driver didn’t mind: he complained about his work, making a joke of it, his voice raspy and affected. “After a few hours,” the cabbie said, “I lose feeling in my legs.”
Norma sighed. “That sounds dangerous,” she said.
Victor heard her alter her voice, draining it of its sweetness. The driver didn’t know. He couldn’t know.
It was dark when they arrived at home. Norma’s apartment had a wide window that looked out onto a quiet street. She had said it was small, but to Victor it seemed palatial. “You’ll sleep here,” she said, and pointed to the couch. A neon sign cast a harsh blue light over the room. Norma explained that it was a pharmacy, that you could buy medicine there. She turned on a lamp, and the shadows dispersed. He could see she was tired. He expected to be reprimanded, but instead she slipped away into the kitchen and set some water to boil. Victor sat on the sofa, staring at his hands. He was afraid to look at the strange apartment.
Norma emerged with tea and a basket of bread. “Are you feeling better?”
He hadn’t eaten all day, and the emptiness in his stomach stirred. She must have seen the hunger in his eyes. “Eat,” Norma said. “A boy needs to eat.”
The bread she served was strange: square, with a neat brown trim, its center a white the color of milk. Victor bit into a slice, and it dissolved in his mouth, coming apart like string. Still, he ate greedily, and it felt good. He strained to swallow mouthfuls of the stuff, but it expanded like bubble gum, rolling over his teeth and against his cheeks. He looked up. Norma, he realized, was smiling. He stopped chewing.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I was just watching.”
Victor nodded. She wasn’t old. She wasn’t like the abandoned elderly that crept through town with their bent wooden canes, but she was older than his mother, and didn’t have the copper glow his people had. She was pale, and her black hair fell straight in a ponytail down to the middle of her back. She gave the impression of not caring so much what she looked like. In 1797, Norma would have a hard time finding a husband. Victor ate and watched her. Her angular face contained a geometry he didn’t recognize, like the bread she offered him, built of right angles. Maybe the softness of her voice clashed with her sharp features. He’d never seen anyone like her up close, not that he could remember. No one this color. After having listened to her for so many years, strangely, it had never occurred to him to put a face with that voice. He had never wondered what she looked like, not once. Did anybody? That lack of imagination struck Victor as strange: had he thought of her as some kind of spirit? As a voice without a body or a face or even a soul? More ghosts. He’d never thought of her as real.
“You must be tired,” Norma said after a while.
Victor nodded.
“I’ve never been to the jungle,” she said.
He chewed and nodded. “It’s different,” he offered.
“I imagine it is,” Norma said. Could she see how tired he was? Did she know what he wanted to tell her? They were silent for a moment.
“You don’t want to talk, do you?” Norma asked.
“No,” Victor said, surprising himself. There was too much to tell.
THREE
IF NORMA were honest, she might remember Rey’s disappearance as what it was: a series of tiny flashes of light, a rising sense of danger, and then, in place of some plosive event, only this: a surreal, mystifying stillness. He leaves for a trip into the jungle—a trip like dozens he’s taken before. Then there is the cold, hard fact of his silence. No news, no word, and Norma’s life changing with each passing day, flattened beneath a crushing weight, bled of its color.
It had been ten years now.
The early days were torturous: a pain emanating outwards from each cell in her body, and the fact of his absence everywhere. She stopped strangers in the street, inspected the faces of people on buses and trains, their wrinkles, their smiles, the shapes of their tired eyes, even the shoes they wore. Each day her husband did not return, she felt herself losing her balance, the work of carrying on too much and too cruel. The ways she missed him were endless: his smell still pervaded their apartment, that mixture of sweat and cheap soap. She missed his dimpled cheeks, his kiss, and the affected way he read the newspaper, as if his sharp gaze could bore a hole in the text. He folded it into lengthwise thirds and was embarrassed to admit he indulged only in the sports section. She missed this, too: his body, his touch. His hands running up and down her back. Her own fingernails finding his spine, clawing, as if she could tear into him. She missed the face he made, alway
s the same anguished expression, eyes flittering closed, deep concentration, and when he was behind her, she loved it, but she missed seeing him, seeing the blood rush to his face, the clouding of his features, the release. At night, she stayed awake and thought of him, too afraid to touch herself. Dread was everywhere. What if he never came back?
For ten years, he had existed in memory, in that netherworld between death and life—despicably, sadistically called missing—and she had lived with the specter of him, had carried on as normal, as if he were away on an extended vacation and not disappeared and likely dead. In the beginning, she had played detective, and in a sense, everything had been easier since she stopped. Not given up; simply stopped. In the first year of his absence, she had visited each of his colleagues at the university to ask for information. Where had he gone? It was a bent older gentleman who told her: he wasn’t sure, but he’d heard the number 1797. What was he researching? Medicinal plants, said another, but this much she knew. Had they heard anything? And here they all shook their heads and looked away.
One professor told her Rey’d had a taste for psychoactives, jungle juju, he said, but this wasn’t news, was it? Norma shook her head: of course not, of course not. It was a bright autumn day, and the war had been over for two months. The list of collaborators had been read on the radio a week before. The professor scratched his beard and looked distractedly out the window at a swatch of blue sky. His office and his person were in disarray. “Maybe he just lost it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s just a thought. Took too much of something. Went native.” He smoothed the wrinkles of his suit. “Maybe he’ll snap out of it. Maybe he’ll wander back.”
Norma shook her head. It made no sense. “What about the list they read? What about the IL? Was Rey IL?”
Why did she ask? Did she even want to know? It was the same every time: a blank look, a stammered response, and then a pause as her husband’s colleagues took the measure of her. Doors were closed discreetly, blinds drawn, telephones unplugged—all this at the mere mention of the IL. But the war was over, wasn’t it?
Lost City Radio Page 4