That night in the jungle, on Zahir’s porch, when the breezes began, he excused himself and led Adela into the darkness, to love her. He carried with him the reed mat that Zahir’s wife had woven for him. Manau bade Zahir a good evening, stepped down the raised porch onto the ground, still soft from the afternoon shower. Adela asked him to wait, and he did, around the corner, just beyond the reach of the light. The moon had not yet risen, and the black night made him impatient. There were murmurings from the top of the stairs. The jungle breathed, noises of all kinds, but there was nothing to see in the inky darkness. Manau was aware of people walking by him in twos and threes, scarcely perceptible, dim shadows. Whoever they were, they said his name politely as they passed by: Manau, Mr. Manau, professor. Could everyone see but him? He smiled brightly, hoping the passersby—his students? his neighbors?—might mistake his smile for recognition. He couldn’t see a thing. It could have been the trees talking. Or any of a dozen ghosts that his pupils believed in. Nico was the latest phantom all the boys and girls claimed to see. Where? he asked. At the edge of the forest—where else? Manau, Manau, Manau. Have you seen Nico? they asked. No, I haven’t. Unless dreams count. They do, mister! the children clamored. Of course, dreams count! The children, like everyone in the village, were always accompanied. Manau was alone. He didn’t allow himself the luxury of believing in ghosts. Now he smiled in the darkness and waited. What were they discussing? It was this obliterating loneliness that Adela had begun to cure. Manau thought then that he didn’t miss the city anymore and never would again. He thought then that he would die here in this jungle redoubt, of old age, having mastered the antique language of the forest, having learned which plants brought nourishment and which were poisonous. It occurred to him to light a match, to survey his kingdom, but it flared and blew out in the breeze: an instant of flittering orange light—and that was all. Enough to see his hands. Clouds had blotted out the sky. It was a lightless, moonless night. Still, he would take her to the river or to the field. Or both. And he would love her.
Then he heard her descending the stairs, heard the creak of the wood. He turned back, but he couldn’t see her. The lamps had been extinguished, and the darkness was complete. Manau reached for her.
“Today is seven years since Zahir lost his hands,” she said.
“I know. He told me.”
“I had to pay my respects. Give him my apologies.” She sighed. “It was my boy that did it.”
Manau nodded, though he was sure she couldn’t see him. They were walking, he thought, toward the field. He could feel the soggy earth beneath his feet. Her voice, he noticed, had nearly cracked. Was she crying?
“It was the IL, not Victor,” Manau said to the darkness. He heard her sigh again. She must know I’m right, he thought. The boy is innocent. Except for her fingers between his, he might have been alone. “What does Zahir say?”
“He won’t accept money. I offer it to him every year. He says he deserved it.”
“He told me the same thing. What did he do?”
“I don’t know.”
They made their way to the field, walking through the town on instinct, muscle-memory: turn here, go straight, let the mud slather your feet, step over this log that has fallen across the path. Even Adela agreed it was the darkest night in years, and so the storm, when it appeared on the distant horizon, was welcome. Lightning shivered across the sky, and Manau turned in time to see her: Adela, made of silver.
“Don’t cry,” he said.
“He has nightmares. They’re worse this year since Nico left.”
Manau pulled her to him. In a week, she would be dead. “Does he remember?”
“Of course he does. Nico never let him forget it.”
The storm began, a music all its own. They were silent for a spell.
“I gave him tea so he could sleep.” Her voice was a whimper. “Poor boy, poor Zahir, poor Nico.”
“Don’t cry,” he said again.
They waited for the rains to begin. Manau lay his mat down. She said no, that she should go back and check on her boy. He kissed her. She kissed him back. In the distance, there was more lightning. Then they were naked, and then they were being rained on. The sky heaved, and the wind blew. “I have to check on my boy,” she whispered, but her body did not complain. Instead, she moved beneath him, with him, the rain falling faster now, until they had both arrived at the same place.
“I’M STEPPING out for some air,” Manau said, and surely he meant it. Surely he did not mean to walk away and leave the boy there at the station, waiting for Norma alone. He might have suspected himself capable of such a thing, if he believed what his father had always said about him. But he didn’t—not until that day. He was a weak man, which is different from being a bad man. Manau would walk home from the station, walk through this gray and noisy city, and console himself with this distinction. He’d managed to hide this from himself for a short time in the jungle. Now it was clear. Why had Adela counted on him? Why had the town?
When they were finished, when the rains had passed, Manau rolled up his mat, and invited her to swim.
“I don’t know how,” she said.
The clouds had cleared; the stars cut a bright swath across the night sky. They could see each other. She dressed, she covered her silver body. Manau remained naked. He carried his clothes in a bundle.
“I’ll teach you.”
“But it’s bad luck to swim on a moonless night.”
It was what she said as he dragged her in. “Superstition!” he exclaimed, and soon after she was laughing and must have forgotten it herself. He tickled her. The water was black and slick and calm. When the wind blew, raindrops fell from the trees, disturbing the surface of the slow-moving river. It would rain every night for the next week, and each night would be darker than the last. The river, when it took her, would be something altogether different. Unrecognizable. Violent.
She splashed; a bird chirruped. The silver fish swam invisibly about their ankles. Manau did not teach her anything that night. Nothing about swimming or the currents or the rain-swollen river.
“What’s this?” Victor asked, looking up from his list.
“The money the man gave me for you. On the bus. So I don’t forget.”
“Where are you going?”
Manau said, “I’ll be right here. I’m stepping out for some air.”
The boy nodded. It wasn’t a lie. Outside was the city with its leaden sky, and the street with its waves of sound. The boy didn’t protest, nor did the receptionist with her lipstick-stained teeth.
Outside Manau breathed deeply, that city smell, and he was hit by a nostalgia that surprised him. The station sat on a busy boulevard of ashy green trees. Perhaps he’d been here before, perhaps not, but it was all familiar. Across the street, a computer school had let out its morning classes. Dozens of students loitered in front of the entrance, gossiping, making plans. They had about them that optimism all young people have. Foolishness. A bus came and went, depositing a family of Indians at the corner, and the students paid them no attention. Mother and father looked about with dismay, at the size of the place, at the crowded sidewalk. Perhaps they were coming to the station as well, to see Norma, to be found. The children cowered and disappeared into the folds of their mother’s dress.
Four lanes of traffic and a row of dying trees stood between them and the station. They didn’t cross, and Manau didn’t cross to them. Maybe they were waiting for someone. The crowd of students thinned. Some returned to class, a few waited impatiently for a bus, others set off in loud, happy packs down the avenue. It occurred to Manau that there were more people in the building of the computer school than in the entire village of 1797.
After some debate, the family of Indians trudged off down the boulevard. They clasped hands and walked slowly.
When he looked back through the window of the radio station lobby, Victor was gone. Manau ran in. “The boy,” he said to the receptionist. He was breathless. It was no lon
ger Norma’s voice over the speaker, but someone else’s. “Where’s the boy?”
The receptionist looked startled for a moment, then regained her calm. “They called him in, sir. I’m sorry. The producer came to get him. He’s talking with Norma.” She paused. “Are you all right? Would you like to go?”
It hit him then, a live-wire shock. That last word. “Go?”
“Go in,” she clarified.
“Oh.” He felt numb. A smile adorned the receptionist’s moon face. “No. That’s all right. I’ll wait outside.”
She nodded. He took the bag he’d left by the couch and stepped through the doors again. The street was indifferent and loud. Buses passed, and women on bicycles, and boys on skateboards. He recalled the size of the city, and it awed him. The possibility existed that someone here might be happy to see him. The jungle town he had known would soon sink into the forest. Where was the boy? He was speaking with Norma. Even now, she was solving his problems. Whatever she can do, he thought, is more than I can. He still heard the voices—Manau, Manau, Manau—and they came from everywhere. From cracks in the bricks that had built this place.
He realized suddenly he’d been holding his breath. He inhaled deeply. Then he walked down the avenue. It was so simple. A block passed by as if in a dream. And then another and another.
Each was easier than the last.
When they were done swimming, they gathered their things and walked back to the village. Their wet clothes clung to them, but the night was cool and dry. Everything was fine. He recalled it now as he walked through the city, how recently his world had been dismantled. The storm passed that night, but of course another was on its way. They found Adela’s hut, and she lit a lantern so she could check on the boy. A forest of insects was sawing away at the night.
“Will you take care of him?” she asked. “If something happens to me.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“But if it does.” She was serious. She whispered in his ear, “Say yes,” and Manau did as he was told.
TEN
FOR NORMA, the war began fourteen years earlier, the day she was sent to cover a fire in Tamoé. She was just a copy editor at the radio station then, and had never been on the air, her voice an undiscovered treasure. She and Rey had been married for more than two years, but she still thought of herself as a newlywed. He was due to return from the jungle that afternoon. It was October, nearing the sixth anniversary of the beginning of the war, though no one kept time that way in those days.
Norma arrived on the scene to find the firemen watching as the house burned. A few men with guns and masks stood in front of the fire. A polite crowd had gathered around the house, arms crossed, blinking away the acrid smoke. Norma could still make out the word TRAITOR painted in black on the burning wall. The terrorists didn’t move or make threats—they didn’t have to. The firemen were volunteers. They wouldn’t take a bullet for a fire. It was late afternoon at the edge of the city, and soon it would be dark. There were no streetlights in this part of the district. Norma’s eyes stung. The firemen had given up. One of them sat on his hard plastic helmet, smoking a cigarette. “Are you going to do anything?” Norma asked.
The man shook his head. His face was dotted with whitish stubble. “Are you?”
“I’m just a reporter.”
“So report. Why don’t you start with this: there’s a man inside. He’s tied to a wooden chair.”
The fireman blew smoke from his nose in dragon bursts.
And for the duration of the war, more than the firefights in the Old Plaza, more than the barricaded streets of The Cantonment or even the apocalyptic Battle of Tamoé—this is what Norma remembered: this man inside, this stranger, tied to a chair. For the rest of that long night and into the early morning, as the news came from a dozen remote points in the city, news of an offensive, news of an attack, as the first of the Great Blackouts spread across the capital—Norma took it all in with the drugged indifference of a sleepwalker. Cruelty was something she couldn’t process that day. On another day, perhaps, she might have done better. She looked the fireman in the eye, hoping to find a hint of untruth, but there was none. The people watched the flames dispassionately. The fire crackled, the house fell in on itself, and Norma listened for him. Surely, he was dead already. Surely his lungs were full of smoke and his heart still. For Norma, there was only a light-headed feeling, like being hollowed out. She felt incapable of writing anything down, of asking a single question. At the edge of the crowd, a girl of thirteen or fourteen sucked on a lollipop. Her mother rang the tiny bell on her juice cart, and it clinked brightly.
WHEN REY returned from the Moon to live on his father’s couch, it was Trini who made certain he didn’t give up. It was Trini who told him stories and reminded him of better, happier times. On the evenings Rey’s father taught at the institute, Trini would come to look for his nephew, and convince him with persistent good cheer to leave the cluttered apartment, to see what the city had to offer. “The streets are full of beautiful women!” he would say. So they took long evening walks through the district of Idorú, toward Regent Park and through The Aqueduct, often making it as far as the Old Plaza—known simply as the Plaza in those days. Once there, they gave themselves over to the noise of the street musicians and the comedians, to the crowds of people seated around the dry fountain, all smoke and talk and laughter, and Rey, because he loved his uncle, made every attempt to be happy, or more precisely, to appear so.
It’s true that his days were oppressively lonely, that he slept poorly, that the same nightmares kept coming back. Rey spent his time pacing his father’s apartment, rearranging scattered papers or reading his old man’s dictionaries. During the morning hours, he prepared mentally for his midday excursion out to the corner for a bite to eat. It was pure torment. He was afraid that no one would speak to him, and equally terrified that they might. He postponed lunch as long as he could, until three or even four in the afternoon. Once it was taken care of, Rey could sleep, sometimes for as long as an hour.
But on these night strolls beneath the city’s yellow streetlights, everything was softer, simpler. The shoeshine boys and pickpockets gathered at one end of the Plaza, counting their day’s take. Along the alley on the north side of the cathedral, a half-dozen women set up their stalls, selling fresh bread and old magazines, bottle caps and matchbooks from the city’s finer hotels. A crew of jugglers might be preparing for a show, and everywhere, the industrious city seemed poised to relax.
One night in June, Trini and Rey arrived in the Plaza in time to see the flag being lowered. It took fifteen soldiers to fold it. A cornet played a martial melody, and some tourists took photos. Rey kept his hands in his pockets. He felt nothing. In a week, he would start his work in Tamoé, become a representative of that flag. He and his uncle had been talking about it, how strange it was to be tortured by the state and then employed by it, all in a matter of months. The government, after all, was a blind machine: now its soldiers stood at attention, and the flag was folded and passed from one to the next, down the line, until all that remained was a meter square of blood-red fabric and a set of hands at each corner. The cornet blew a last, wailing note. Rey was going to say something, when he turned and noticed that Trini had stopped, was standing still with his back straight and his hands together. Then Trini saluted. He caught Rey looking and smiled sheepishly.
Trini had started a new job a few months before Rey was taken to the Moon, as a prison guard in a district known as Venice because it flooded almost every year. In fact, it was by petitioning Trini’s supervisor that Rey had been released. The prison in Venice was dangerous and sprawling, with multiple pavilions for the nation’s various undesirables. Six days a week, he was in charge of terror suspects. The war hadn’t officially begun yet, and there weren’t many of these men, but their numbers were growing, and their demeanor was unlike that of any prisoners Trini had previously encountered. They were not cowed by any show of force, and their
swagger was not a put-on: it came from a very honest and confident place. Some had the look of students, others came from the mountains. They felt they owned the prison, and of course, they were right. If it was trouble Trini had wanted, here it was: violent and unremitting. It could boil over at any time.
Rey and Trini walked through the Plaza, past costumed men selling jungle medicine, past hunched-over typists at work on love letters or government forms, to a side street where Trini knew a woman who sold excellent pork kebabs. “Special recipe,” he said, “my treat.” Sure enough, there were a dozen people waiting. They got in line. Down the street, a city work crew painted over a graffitied wall. “A guard was killed today,” Trini said to Rey. “An execution. The IL.”
“Did you know him?”
Trini nodded. “We’re in for trouble. Lots of it. Those little boy soldiers folding the flag—they have no idea.”
The line inched forward. The smoke made Rey’s eyes water. He inhaled the scent of charcoal and burning meat. One night at the Moon, he had smelled something like this. It had gutted him: the realization that these soldiers were going to burn him alive, that they were going to eat him. He’d decided very early on that these torturers were capable of anything, and he’d never expected to leave that place alive—why not let himself be eaten?
Of course, they were only celebrating a birthday.
“Are you all right?” Trini said.
Rey nodded. A moment passed. Trini hummed the melancholy tune of an old song.
“How come no one’s ever asked me what happened?”
“What?”
Rey looked up and down the line. He felt something sudden and hot within him. “At the Moon,” he said, and a few heads turned. “What they did to me. How come no one’s ever asked. Don’t you want to know?”
Trini gave his nephew a blank stare. He blinked a few times, and the edges of his mouth curled downwards. “I work in a prison.” He coughed and waved away the smoke. “I know exactly what they did to you.”
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