Damnificados

by JJ Amaworo Wilson

The priest laughs. “A commune? The last of the great idealists! If the government comes for us, we’ll all be dead.”

  “I doubt that. Someone always survives. That’s why the stories are never told only from the victor’s side. There’s always some poor wretch who gets out alive and spreads the word. That poor wretch was me once, many years ago. I haven’t trusted a man or woman in uniform since.”

  “Ha! Does that include me?”

  “Yes. You wear the uniform of God. I would’ve liked you to help me lead these people. I thought you had experience of the world. You can write and you speak well. But you’re an outsider. You aren’t a damnificado and you can never be. In fact, you’re the opposite—a beatificado. You’re blessed by your faith. The people here are blessed with nothing. And you don’t understand them because you aren’t one of them. I respect you, Don Felipe, but I don’t trust you with the damnificados because you don’t love them.”

  The priest is shocked into a momentary silence. Then he says, “That isn’t true. I love all of mankind. I’m here because I want to help these people. That’s the only reason.”

  “Then help them. Comfort the sick and the needy. Give them hope.”

  “I’m trying. That’s what I’m telling you. But they don’t come to the service.”

  “Then go to them,” says Nacho. “Go to them in their stinking homes. Drink their foul coffee. Sit on their stolen furniture, like you’re sitting on mine. Who cares if you get a splinter in your ass? Look them in the eye and listen to their stories. You can’t love them if you don’t know them. And stop thinking of them as them. They aren’t another species. They are us.”

  “You sound like the woman with the dog in the wheelbarrow. The crazy one.”

  “She isn’t crazy, father. She’s cared for that dog since she was a child. She rescued it from a battlefield and saved its life. It’s lived longer than most humans.”

  A silence passes between them and then the priest gets up to leave, his stooped gait stretching slowly, like something prehistoric.

  “I thank you for your company, Nacho. And I’ll think about your words.”

  “I hope you do. Good night, father. And let me know when you have time for another game of chess.”

  The priest closes the door softly and pads up the stairs.

  The aftermath of the flood brings yet more tenants to the monolith beyond the men and women from Agua Suja. A group of untouchables arrives, haunted and weather-beaten. The youngest child among them was born in the flood. She has spent her life soaked to the skin, sweating in and out of fevers, blinded by rain and now she spits up rainwater the color of mud.

  Another group—more bedraggled still—emerges from the forests of Dahomey-Krill, furtive and panicked. Nacho attempts to welcome them, but their leader, a dreadlocked man in his seventies holding a stick that could be a spear, says, “Ki gen segonde ki ou sou?”

  Nacho understands the creole and says, “I’m on your side. But why do you ask me this?”

  The leader calls another man of a similar age, who comes forward.

  “You speak English?” says the man.

  “Yes.”

  “Who side? Who side you on?”

  Nacho looks at him for a moment. “We’re all damnificados. We live here. You and your people are welcome.”

  “How we know you not kill us?”

  “Why would we kill you?”

  The man speaks to his leader in creole. The leader’s eyes dart nervously. He looks at the Chinaman looming behind Nacho. He says something. His accomplice turns to Nacho again.

  “Sa a se Favelada? Here? This Favelada, yes?”

  “Yes,” says Nacho.

  “War! Begin here.”

  Nacho looks him in the eye, uncomprehending.

  “War!” the man says again. “Fatra lagé! Fatra lagé! You kill us!”

  Nacho says, “My God. Fatra lagé? The Trash Wars? They ended forty years ago. Where have you been?”

  “We hide in Dahomey-Krill. Forest. We live there. But water come up.” He points to neck height. “We escape forest. Come here.”

  “There is no war here. Tell him to put down his stick.” Nacho looks around. “They don’t need the knives. There is no war. It ended. Finished. Fini! Li nan fini!”

  The leader nods. He gestures with his head toward his people, says something in creole.

  Later, once they are given a high floor, the newcomers tell him they have been hiding in the forest for forty years with no outside contact. There they built homes and cleared out a patch of land, farmed it, and owned chickens. They say the rains destroyed everything and they had nowhere to go. Some of the elders still remembered the way to the city and so they trekked back—to the scene from which they had fled four decades earlier, believing the Trash Wars still raged.

  At first, those of them who were born in the forest are afraid of everything—television, telephones, even the honking of car horns. They shun other people, scared of the alien dress and manners. But soon they begin to blend in because they have no choice. Like all who dwell there, they are at the mercy of the monolith. They sway when it sways, hear the wind’s songs that blow in and out of the stairwells, and smell the last dregs of the trash left over from the flood—fumes that crawl up the sky even as far as the fortieth floor, where they now live. Nacho fears for them. The city is no place for forest dwellers, but the leader tells him that soon they will leave, find new forests to live in.

  Nacho looks at them, and though they say they are farmers, he sees warriors, men of discipline. They are lean-muscled and broad-chested, and not compromised by the junk of city life—fast food, drugs, alcohol. They are already an army. And he knows he may need their strength.

  CHAPTER 10

  Torres—Remembering the House of Flowers—Saving the damnificados—Sacred land—Visiting Maria—Dreams of Samuel

  THE MONDAY AFTER THE ARRIVAL OF THE FOREST-DWELLERS FROM DAHOMEY-KRILL, THERE is an unwelcome visit. A black sedan pulls up across the street on the north side of the tower. Three men emerge, one in a suit, two in khakis, each wearing sunglasses. The lookout on the thirtieth floor sees them first and picks up his child’s walkie-talkie, souped up by Lalloo to spread its coverage. He contacts the lookout on the first floor.

  “Twelve o’clock,” he says. “Black car. Military.”

  The word gets to Nacho immediately, who tells the Chinaman, “Visitors.”

  The man in a suit is burly with a florid moustache and lavishly ringed fingers. He smells of money but there is something earthbound about him, as if he worked half his life on a farm or chopping wood or breaking heads. As the three visitors approach, the Chinaman stands. The suited man does not hesitate. He breaks into a grin.

  “You must be the famous Chinaman! Thank you for guarding my tower so well! The name is Torres. Where’s the little cripple?”

  Nacho hobbles down the stairs and into the sunlight.

  “Are you referring to me?”

  “Well, hello. Mr. Morales, I believe. I’m Torres. These here are my acquaintances Colonel Bandero and Colonel Hafeez.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Torres?”

  “You can get out of my tower is what you can do for me. You’re sitting in a piece of real estate that belongs to me and belonged to my father before that, and I want it back.”

  Nacho, unflinching, pauses to calculate the scene. Two soldiers, unarmed, one civilian in a suit, looks like he could swallow a cow. It’s not a death squad. Not yet.

  Nacho says, “I believe the land was taken by force, illegally. And then the tower was built illegally without the required permits.”

  “You must be mistaken.”

  “Then the tower was abandoned. By law, when a building has been abandoned for three years it becomes government property. And when government property lies empty for more than two years it can be legally occupied by those in need. And we are those in need.”

  “You are squatters. And you’re squatting in my house. Mind if we take
a walk?”

  “Not at all. Though I may struggle to keep up,” replies Nacho.

  “I walk slowly. Colonel Bandero and Colonel Hafeez, please wait here. I’m sure the Chinaman will entertain you with his charming banter.”

  Torres clasps his hands behind his back and begins a slow stroll around the building, Nacho in his shadow.

  “Mr. Morales, you’ve made a name for yourself. Congratulations. They tell me you’re teaching these people to be good little boys and girls. A model society.”

  “I don’t know about that. There are certain things we don’t tolerate here, but we have our problems the same as anywhere else.”

  “Your people can read and write.”

  “Some of them.”

  “They go to work instead of selling drugs or stealing. And I heard something else. When the rest of the city was kicking sixteen bales of shit out of each other for a scrap of food during the flood, I’m told you shared provisions here. Not a single riot! No murders! You’re like the fucking boy scouts! That’s a remarkable achievement considering the animals you keep in your zoo. Do you smoke?”

  “No.”

  “I have a cigar habit. Shameful. I picked it up in Hagr El-Malesh when I was running a commando unit there. We confiscated six tons of Honduran tobacco and got the POWs to hand-roll them. When I left, they gave me a box of two hundred.”

  He lights one up and the acrid fumes rise and vanish in the sun-fuzzed air.

  Torres goes on. “I’m not a monster. I’m a businessman. So I’ll make you a deal. You have one week to leave peacefully. After that, if you’re still here, you and your tenants will be massacred. I will hang your flayed corpses on the city gates and let the vultures eat your insides. Not because I’m a monster but because I intend to run for office, and as you know, there’s nothing like a show of strength to keep the voters happy. You do know that, don’t you? How was it you became the leader of these animals?”

  “I’m not their leader.”

  “Really? Then why am I speaking to you?”

  “And they’re not animals. I was never elected. I have no title.”

  “So anarchy reins in the Torres tower. And el pequeño lisiado is a nobody. You have any other fairy tales for me?”

  Torres stops and looks upward at the outer walls of the tower. He sees clothing hanging out to dry, flapping in the breeze. Satellite dishes perched on the stairwell like giant coins. Figures moving in orderly silence. He sees signs: the salon, the bakery, a tattoo parlor, a barber.

  “You know,” Torres goes on, “I’ve seen so many nasty things in my life.”

  He nods at Nacho, scratches his moustache, looks as if he’s about to burst into tears.

  “When I was five years old my grandfather made me watch him sacrifice a sheep. He cut its throat and the blood was supposed to drip into a bucket but the old man fucked it up and the blood flew all over me and this stupid sheep was gurgling and its legs gave way like it’s slipping on ice. I’ve always disliked killing since that day, but you see I had a family and my reputation to take care of, so I killed. I killed maybe a hundred men. A few women. But it was never a pleasure for me. Not like these crazy people, these monsters. That’s why you’re still alive. You see, I’m a humanitarian at heart.”

  They walk a little further. Torres pauses to tap the ground with his toes.

  “They say there’s fifty feet of garbage under the surface. Garbage living on garbage. My great-grandfather was a hero in the Trash Wars, and my grandfather acquired the land and built this tower. Then my beloved father, God rest his soul, they gave him the title of mayor.”

  “He named himself mayor,” says Nacho. “A building doesn’t have a mayor.”

  “They worshipped the man.”

  “They were scared of him.”

  “Same thing when it comes down to it. You seem like a civilized man, Mr. Morales. You’re well respected in the city. You have big balls. They say you speak a dozen languages. Why don’t you leave and earn an honest living? Go find yourself a desk job or teach little children. Buy a house in the country, settle down with your childhood sweetheart. Spend your weekends growing roses and walking the dog. Well maybe not the last part. Walking isn’t your strong point.”

  “Funny, I was thinking the same about you. The bit about earning an honest living.”

  “Those two colonels I came with. Bandero and Hafeez. Imbeciles. They don’t know their tits from their tonsils. But they command a battalion of two hundred men. Professional soldiers. Killers. Bang bang bang! They’re on my payroll. I click my fingers, everyone dies. So that presents you with a tickly fucking dilemma, Mr. Morales. Either you get out of my tower or I’ll kill you all.”

  He blows a cone of smoke and swivels sharply, striding away from Nacho. Turns a corner and gestures to the colonels to get in the car. Doesn’t look back.

  The car pulls away and melts into the traffic. It slides in and out of packed lanes, narrowly missing street vendors wandering in the roads. It pulls up at lights, where impromptu shows take place—ten-year-olds juggling plastic balls for change, window-cleaners with buckets of water and squeegee bottles—before accelerating away with a muffled roar to the wide-gated parts of the city damnificados never see.

  Alone in his room, Nacho perches birdlike on a chair and tries to remember.

  He would stand on a box to help his mother cook. There was nothing Anna couldn’t make. Somehow when the pantry seemed to contain nothing but potato rinds and a clove of garlic, she would produce a stew bubbling in a pot, the odors drifting into every corner of the House of Flowers. He must have been four or five, already lopsided, balancing on his stronger leg.

  The four of them would sit and eat together, a little cramped but happy around a makeshift dining table reclaimed from floorboards and packing crates. All of their furniture was like this—things made from other things. Uneven, cobbled together, ill-fitting. Bits of wood sticking out, sharp edges, loose screws. He remembers picking splinters out of his thighs in the days before he even knew his legs were not made the same way.

  Wherever you sat, wherever you looked, the house was made of leftovers and extras and found objects. Cushions of patchwork: rags and skirts and ripped upholstery. The tablecloth was a curtain and the curtain was a tablecloth. Beds that were pallets. A desk that was a bench. As a child, he never noticed. That was just the way things were.

  An improvised house bore witness to his father’s improvised life: garbage man, busboy, laborer, teacher. To Nacho, the world was out of kilter, not his house or his family. Later, as he grew and saw more, he wondered why the Morales household didn’t just have the right things in the right place: a door where a door should be, chairs of mahogany and oak, like the downtown libraries he visited and the churches he hid in when the weather turned cold.

  He remembers Samuel’s wandering mind. The head so full of stories he might walk to work in mismatched shoes and not notice or care. The man was simply dazzled by life. Anna was Samuel’s salvation, his guide in the world of real things. She found him a watch in a used goods store in Fellahin and told him he should wear it so his hours would not pass by without him knowing. She kept him fed and cleanly clothed and instructed him on how to live in the realm of normal human needs. She taught him about bills, running water, shopping, electricity, and the falling-apart of furniture, clothes, and walls. With infinite patience she told Samuel what needed doing, and when, and what it would cost. She was his adviser.

  These thoughts come to Nacho now because, alone in his room in the Torres tower, all he can think of is the fate of the damnificados, men and women he barely knows. They are from all over: Favelada and Fellahin, Agua Suja, Minhas and Balaal, the forests of Dahomey-Krill. Some speak Creole, others Spanish, others Arabic, Afrikaans, Gujarati, Tagalog, Urdu, Lao. They are carpenters and cleaners, beauty queens, fixers, ex-junkies, glue-heads, hobos. Uniting them is impossible, but saving them … he has no choice.

  The tower has seen too much death already. The b
ullet holes in the walls are a testament to its history. On that island of junk ringed by potholed roads, firstly the Trash Wars had ripped apart families, then the tower itself had been built on the graves of the dead. A dying shaman once told him, “This land is sacred. The blood of the ancestors flows here, under the earth.” Yet others told him the place was cursed, an island of the misbegotten, where people lived and died in trash, drowned in a mountain of cast-off plastic and cardboard.

  Hundreds had fought to stop the tower from going up. They had watched as the surveyors came in and took measurements. Seen the digging machines come clanking down the street. Torres the Elder had made arrangements to relocate the people. He handed them contracts, which they were unable to read, and forced them to sign with fingerprints, giving away their homes. Those who did not want to leave fought with all they had: firstly words, and then knives, chains, bricks. Their blood had watered the trash piles, mingling with the blood of the fallen in the earlier Trash Wars.

  Maybe Torres was right. They were the refuse of the city living on top of the city’s trash.

  Nacho looks out of his window and sees it is late. He imagines Don Felipe is sleeping at this hour, dreaming up sermons for his empty church. With no one else to turn to, Nacho makes his way up the outside stairwell. One of the motorboys sees him, helps him onto the back of the motorbike, and gives him a ride to the sixth floor. Maria’s salon is closed but he knows she is in there. He knocks on the door. No answer. He rings the bell. Maria opens the door, hair up, dressed in a silk gown and full face paint.

  “Ugh. Wrong brother. The barber’s two floors up. And you’re a lost cause anyway.” She lets him in. “Do you have news for me?”

  “Emil?”

  “Emil.”

  “No. Sorry. Something happened today. We were threatened.”

  “You want some tea?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Who’s we?”

  Maria beckons Nacho into the back room. He sits on a deep sofa and momentarily imagines his brother lying there being hand-fed grapes by a perfumed harem.