Damnificados

by JJ Amaworo Wilson

  Across the slums, damnificados turn in their raggedy beds—makeshift pallets, woodchip boards, piles of old newspaper wadded into mattresses—and writhe and groan in the denouements of their dreams as the sun blasts in through the cracks in doorways and the holes in roofs.

  In the tower, Nacho sits up in bed in the half-light. All night he has been asking the same questions: how is it a man can be murdered like this and nothing happens to the killers? Where was the Chinaman’s protection? How can justice be served when the police don’t recognize us, when they think we’re less than human?

  He takes a deep breath and thinks of the other things he needs to do—prepare a lesson for his half-abandoned students, sort through the Chinaman’s belongings, find himself a wife, and work out how to prevent Torres the Younger from decimating the damnificados—and promptly falls asleep again.

  CHAPTER 19

  Nacho investigates—Ignorance—Conversation with Don Felipe—Security—New arrivals—Conversation with Emil—Nacho teaching—Dinner with Emil and Maria

  WHEN NACHO WAKES, HE INVESTIGATES. WITH A RANCID CUP OF COFFEE IN HIS GOOD hand, he hauls them all in one by one—the sentries who were on duty, Maria, the priest, the baker brothers.

  “What did you see?” he asks a guard called Zaheer. The man is as skinny as Nacho, darker, with a tidy moustache and spidery hands.

  “I see the car. Military. I go to ring bell but no. Bell gone. No bell.”

  “Where was the bell?”

  “I don’t know. I shout. But no one hear. Or not understand me. Man below no speak English.”

  Nacho brings in another sentry who was on duty that day. A big pale ham of a man, blue-eyed and bald.

  “I’m on the fifteenth floor, I sees the car and the soldiers, I gets out my walkie-talkie, pass on the message like, but the other guards is all gettin’ high. S’all they do. Tokin’ on blunts all day, no wonder the shit hit the fan.”

  Nacho talks to the guards on every floor and it turns out that many of them speak no common language so they cannot communicate with one another. He learns that the walkie-talkies don’t work, and the bells are missing, probably sold for scrap metal. He brings in Lalloo, who is red-eyed and hungover.

  “What about the cameras?”

  “What?” says Lalloo, sweating in his jeans and white shirt.

  “The security cameras you put up?”

  “They’re fakes.”

  “You mean they don’t work?”

  “Are you crazy? Do you know how much the real things cost? And you need someone to monitor them. That’s a full-time job.”

  “So we have no footage?”

  “The cameras are plastic shells. They’re hollow.”

  Nacho talks to the old soldier who set up the system of sentries on the walkways, but the man says he was asleep during the attack, only heard of it the day after.

  And so it goes. No one knows anything. Even the twins aren’t sure of what they saw or heard. All Nacho knows is that the Chinaman lies buried in the earth and the safeguards were useless.

  Eventually, Don Felipe pays him a visit, tells him, “The killer will not be brought to justice until he comes face to face with God. This is the way of the world.”

  Nacho, sat at his table, is bent with fury. “Why? Why is this the way of the world?”

  “Listen. People are saying things about you. They’re asking why you weren’t here when the asesinos came. They’re saying you were on some wild goose chase, or on a vacation. A little boy was looking for you, asking if there was school today, and I heard someone answer that you were on holiday, taking a trip on a train. End your inquisition. It won’t bring the Chinaman back.”

  “He wasn’t a Chinaman, goddamn it. He was Japanese.”

  “I don’t care to hear the Lord’s name used like that. In any case, what does it matter? He’s gone.”

  “It matters because you told me soon after we entered the tower that we had six hundred pairs of eyes to keep watch and keep us safe. Now we have fifteen hundred, and a good man was murdered and these fifteen hundred pairs of eyes saw nothing, and no one had the guts to chase the assassins or identify them or call the police. That’s why it matters.”

  “People are afraid, Nacho. These men had guns. And what use would it do to call the police? To them we’re squatters, the lowest of the low. We don’t exist. What would the police do for us? And if they knew it was Torres who’d sent the assassins, they’d do even less.”

  “He’s running for office. How can a man running for office send out assassins to kill his enemies?”

  The priest looks at Nacho for a moment, brings his hands together as if in prayer.

  “You have a lot to learn about the world. Men running for office routinely kill their enemies. It’s been going on for thousands of years. This is how men achieve power. They take it by killing. You of all people should know this.”

  “OK, I know it. I know it.”

  “We can rebuild the defenses for the tower. Bring in new people, reorganize. Do whatever you have to do. But call off your inquisition and let the Chinaman rest in peace.”

  “For the hundredth time, he wasn’t Chinese. His name was Sato Kazunari Maeda. He was the son of a great sumo wrestler.”

  “Then let’s honor his memory and move on with our lives. You are our leader. It doesn’t become you to harangue the people here. They are afraid, afraid that more men will return with weapons, afraid they will be made homeless again. They don’t have your courage. Or Emil’s. Please just let it be. Let the Japanese man rest in peace.”

  “His name was Sato Kazunari Maeda.”

  “Sato Kazunari Maeda. Let him rest in peace.”

  Nacho changes the security routines. He places guards on every fifth floor, finds them walkie-talkies that work, and briefs them on what to do when they see visitors they don’t recognize, or army trucks and soldiers. He places guards on the ground floor, twenty-four hours a day, all four sides of the building.

  “It’s becoming a fortress,” says Nacho to Emil. “It was supposed to be a home.”

  And then something unexpected happens: nothing. For months on end. And the tranquility brings more damnificados in search of refuge.

  Slowly, they arrive and become tenants: mule drivers, well diggers, palm tree trimmers, and a host of street entrepreneurs—the types who conjure up a batch of cheap umbrellas as soon as it rains or find the city’s hottest traffic jams and walk between the cars selling bottled water at a marked-up price.

  The influx continues—hotel workers, artists, migrants, window cleaners, road constructors—until the monolith is full. In lieu of rent they do jobs on the building or the surroundings. The window cleaners clean the windows, the men in construction repair walls and floors with smuggled tools, and others take shifts on the night watch, perched on the walkways of the high floors, binoculars jammed to their faces, or strolling the plaza below, looking out for enemies. Others tend the gardens, clear rubble, or help put water tanks on the roof.

  Nacho greets the new arrivals and notices how different they are from his original damnificado army. These newcomers aren’t dressed in rags. They aren’t pock-marked by the travails of their lives; they are unwrinkled, they walk with straight backs, their hands are steady, and even the middle-aged have a full set of teeth. Nacho talks to them and discovers that few know what it is like to wake up under an overpass, build a cardboard home next to railway tracks, or squat in a tin shack at the end of a runway. He learns that some have years of education, can read and write as well as him. Others have ambitions beyond finding a roof to sleep under; they dream of better jobs, their own house, a place in the world.

  The newcomers sleep in hammocks and tents until they can arrange mattresses to be brought in from reclaimed trash piles or used goods depots. They buttress their crumbling walls with stolen cement, and reinforce rusted guardrails on the walkways with cinder blocks.

  Emil tells Nacho, “These new people are anarchists and artists. They aren�
��t damnificados. They’re opportunists. They’re going to blow your little utopia out of the water.”

  “Why should that be, brother?”

  “They’re living here, taking advantage of all you’ve built. But they weren’t part of your invasion, were they?”

  “Neither were you.”

  “But I risked my neck to bring you food. Twice. And you know me. But, hey, it’s your party. El pequeño lisiado.”

  “It’s not my party. I’m not an elected official. But if we have empty rooms, they should be filled. We’ve always said the tower belongs to everybody. That’s why we came in the first place.”

  “Yeah yeah. I hear you.”

  “And you sound more like Maria every day.”

  The brothers are on the walkway one floor up, standing in shade, drinking coffee that looks and tastes like river silt. Emil has his fidgeting dog on a leather lead. It has been three months since the murder of Sato Kazunari Maeda and the tower has remained unmolested, uninvaded.

  “I need to get out of here,” says Emil. “Just for a while.”

  “Can you wait?”

  “For what?”

  “Mayhem.”

  “What?”

  “Torres Junior. The rumors have died down and we haven’t heard from him, but I watch the news and read the papers. He’s running for office, opening up businesses. Sooner or later he’ll come for the family tower. You can be sure of it.”

  “It’s been ages, Nacho. I think he’s forgotten about the tower. Sit down, you stupid mutt!”

  “No. He’ll come.”

  “And when he does?”

  “That’s when I’ll need you.”

  “To shoot those muskets? Fire a water gun? If Torres wants the tower, he’ll get it. Unless the wolves show up again, we have no chance of protecting this place. He’ll bring an army, and you’ve got what? Two thousand homeless scaredy-cats. Women and children.”

  “But they aren’t homeless, are they?”

  “If Torres comes, they will be. We all will be. And I’m sorry—I’d die for you, but not for a tower. It’s bricks and mortar.”

  Together they look out over the square. Groups of damnificados are planting trees, sweeping paths.

  “See those people below?” says Nacho. “See what they’re doing?”

  “Planting trees for this dog to piss on.”

  “You don’t do that unless you want to stay somewhere for a long, long time. It takes years for a tree to grow from a seed. They’re in their home here.”

  “Sure, little brother. But it isn’t my home.”

  “Tell that to Maria.”

  They stand in silence for a moment, stopping to watch the world from on high. A child chases a pigeon until it flies away. A woman on a bicycle weaves her way through the walkers. Groups of sentries mill about, lighting cigarettes.

  “Who’s going to replace the Chinaman?” asks Emil.

  “He’s irreplaceable.”

  “I said this to you weeks ago. You need a permanent sentry at the gate. Someone has to mind the entrance, like the Chinaman did.”

  “I’m working on the twins. I know, I know. They’re kids. But I’m all out of ideas at the moment. I can’t trust any of the others. They like their substances. Or they have other jobs. Let me know if you find a soldier who can do it full-time.”

  “Get a defector.”

  “What?”

  “Get one of the survivors from the wolf attack—one of the older Torres’s men.”

  “I don’t think so. D’you really believe they’ll come near here again? Torres himself went crazy that day. The soldiers are probably still in hiding.”

  “Maybe.” Emil shrugs.

  “What are you doing for work?” asks Nacho.

  “I’ve got some labor lined up next week in Basura. But there’s a boat-building job waiting for me permanently in Ferrido.”

  “Your old job. Ask Maria if she wants to go mix with a bunch of tattooed sailors in a port. That’s no place for a hairdresser.”

  “She’d adapt. She’d open a tattoo parlor. Or a brothel.”

  “Don’t even think of it.”

  “You eaten?”

  “No.”

  “Come over later. We’ll crack open some wine. Meat and potatoes. Utopia. Want me to fix you up with a girl, too?”

  “I’ll see you at sunset. Clown.”

  Nacho teaches his class, but while they write, he finds himself lost in his own little reverie.

  He is no longer in Solitario, but a little of Solitario is in him. He imagines life far, far away from the tower, from damnificados, from the Torres family. He is sitting in a swinging chair, drinking a mojito from a long glass, a clutch of fresh mint sitting on the surface. He is watching the sun go down over his land. It isn’t the type of land owned by the rich—ten thousand acres ringed by pecan trees, stolen from the peasants—but just a modest lease-hold, a patch where a dog can roam and where he can harvest corn, green beans, a little mint for his mojitos, a half-dozen apple trees. On an adjoining leasehold, Emil, rocking gently in a mohair hammock, waves at his brother, raises his glass. Maria, in a peasant smock and no make-up, comes out momentarily to stare at the sunset, trailed by the smell of baking bread.

  “Mr. Nacho, how do you write motorcycle?” says a girl of twelve. Nacho limps over to the desk where the girl is sitting and pieces the word together with her, sound by sound.

  “What’s the mmm sound?” he asks, and she hazards an m.

  When the class is nearly finished Susana appears, apologizing for her lateness, and he puts her in with a group, one of whom explains their task. Nacho wants to believe that he is now bonded to Susana by her tending to the Chinaman after he was shot, what he assumes was her love for the man, by her presence in the Chinaman’s final moments, but she hasn’t spoken to Nacho since, nor he to her. At night he ponders how he can talk to her about it, composes imaginary conversations with her, and in the morning wonders how he could ever be considered a leader when he cannot find the courage to talk to a washerwoman. He ponders, too, his mistake in thinking that she was looking at him the way a person looks at someone who they might fall in love with. Instead, she loved his best friend.

  As class ends, he stands at the door and bids the students good night, Susana among them. He has trained some of the younger ones to help him tidy the room, and they do so, putting chairs back in place and dropping scraps of paper into a metal basket. Some days they sweep the floor, but not today. He thanks them and watches them disappear up the stairs to their homes, and begins his trudge to Maria’s apartment for dinner.

  “Where’s the girl you promised?” he asks Emil.

  Emil laughs. “I didn’t see much enthusiasm from you, so I abandoned the plan.”

  Maria walks in bearing a tray of food. As they eat, Nacho tells them about the newcomers. A group of artists have begun a mural on the north wall of the tower. It depicts the history of the monolith: the two-headed wolf, the Chinaman, a swarm of mosquitoes emanating from a flood, and in the center, Nacho himself, made large and defiant and handsome, his muletas held like weapons, not crutches. The work is half-finished, with parts sketched only in outline, but Nacho tells Maria and Emil that it is a masterpiece that will make residents proud and give them a daily vision of their story. They nod in assent. Only Nacho thinks, ‘The story isn’t yet finished. Torres will come for the tower. He believes it’s his birthright.’

  After dinner, the three of them stand on the walkway, leaning against the guardrail, taking in the night air. Behind them is the sign ‘Marias Beautty & Hare Salon’ in massive black letters against a white background. In front of them the lights of Favelada glow.

  CHAPTER 20

  Shivarov

  ONE EVENING, THERE IS AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL AT THE TOWER. UNEXPECTED BUT NOT unknown. A man named Shivarov. He comes wearing black rags and an unkempt beard, and his eyes are ringed by dark circles—mementos of his haunted nights. His face is filthy with the soot of a recent fire.
Like the Bruja of Estrellas Negras, Shivarov is a myth, a chimera. His name is used up and down the land to scare children into doing their parents’ bidding. “If you don’t behave, Shivarov will get you!” “Eat your greens or I’ll send you to Shivarov!” His name has even entered the language in an idiom, “Do it now or I’ll give you a Shivarov!”

  He has spent thirty years living in the same basement room, which is also the room where he does his legendary work. He barely sets foot outside, some say because he is allergic to the light, while others claim he fears to come across the fruits of his labor on the streets of Favelada, where he was born with six fingers on each hand (“It’s a blessing from God,” said the midwife).

  His room at first glance looks like any other shabby squat inhabited by a damnificado—bed, lamp, rusting fan, covered bucket to do his ablutions, upturned crate where he sits to eat. But in the corner of the room is a long wooden box. It could be the coffin of a large snake or a rifle container, but it isn’t. It’s a toolbox of a very special kind, and when it opens it does so with a creak and a crack, as the hinges need oiling and the two drawbolt latches that keep it closed are imperfectly aligned or at least they are now, for the box is thirty years old and subject to the wear and tear of anything that age that is used with such chilling frequency.

  His room is in the basement of an abandoned block and gets so little light that visitors, or rather patrons, because no one visits Shivarov unless it’s for business, claim that when they first enter, it’s impossible to see, and Shivarov himself is little more than a silhouette against the lamplight. Sometimes the smell of apple tobacco drifts upstairs for it is known that he enjoys a shisha pipe, but other than that he is a mystery. Although thousands have seen his face and experienced his work, the heat of the room and the stench of burning flesh and camphor and the unholy noise tend to trump the memory of what he looks like. And of course barely a living soul has seen him in daylight.