The Boat

by NAM LE

  So we meet, he says.

  Yes.

  His eyes flick to something behind me. I remember from when I first walked in that there are two others in the room: the chica and another guard who carries a rifle and has a joint in his mouth. El Padre looks at me again.

  You know, Ron, you will never become an agent. His voice is soft.

  Because I'm too dark?

  Because you think you are smarter than your superiors.

  I do not say anything.

  You were given an assignment and you refused to carry it out.

  I did not find the target, I say quietly.

  He pauses. A good soldado does not choose which orders to obey from his general, does he?

  No.

  He swivels around on his chair, leans back and speaks out through the bay windows as though addressing the night. I am your general, he says. I must look after an entire army. If two women fight, I shave their heads. If somebody cheats me, I shoot them in the hand. If a soldado fails me, or betrays me . . . what choice do I have?

  I watch as a gecko runs along the top frame of the window. It stops, testing the night air with its tongue. El Padre turns back around to me and frowns.

  You have been getting high on the sacol, he says.

  I recognize the insult. I do not do that stuff anymore, I say. It is for children.

  The heat from the candles on the desk, the scent of wax, the smells of marijuana and cocaine from the guard's spliff – all combine and condense in my head.

  You disobeyed me, he says – I who have been your benefactor – and decided instead to spare your friend.

  I do not say anything.

  Do you know what your friend has been saying? For the first time El Padre raises his voice. Do you know what ears listen to those kinds of words? Do you know what it costs to quiet those words? You pull on the hand that feeds you.

  I remain silent.

  Worse, you make me lose face. Respect.

  You can send other sicarios for him, I hear myself say.

  When you have already told him to run?

  I told you I could not find him.

  I have already sent Zeno, he says.

  I do not know Zeno. But I hear he is good.

  Yes, Zeno is good. His thick lips purse together, then part. Already he has achieved his mission. Two days ago.

  I feel my mouth pool with cold spit. I remember I am sitting before a snake. I remember that Hernando is skilled in the ways of leaving the city unseen. And that he has had four days.

  Yes?

  I do not lie, he says, as though reading my thoughts. In fact, Zeno told me this himself when I visited him earlier today. In the Hospital San Vicente de Paul. He looks at me intently with his dark empty eyes. Then he says, Where he was admitted for a severe fracture of the skull.

  Once again, I feel myself sliding out of my own body.

  This is peculiar, El Padre goes on, because Zeno said Her-nando did not resist. An easy hit. So his injuries must have been caused afterward. But of course you do not know anything of this?

  It is not easy for me to contain my surprise. I am looking at El Padre but what I see is the black body underneath the cardboard roof, the red donut crumbs and the sugar on his lips. My mind races like a fast-rewinding movie. So they all knew, I think – Luis and Claudia and Eduardo. I should not have gone into hiding. But I had to go into hiding – to give him time to escape. Above all this I think of Claudia, who knew, who knew where I was hiding, and who had made a choice not to tell me. I realize El Padre is still waiting for me to speak.

  If you do not trust in my ability, I say, I can go away. My voice sounds like a series of echoes inside my head. You can take my salary for this month as compensation.

  That is generous of you, Ron. Perhaps I will return the favor and give it to your mother.

  He has not taken his eyes from me. I say to him, I am a soldado. You said this. There is no reason to involve my mother.

  We look at each other. On the desk between us a thick candle sputters in a sudden draft, but neither of us blinks. His eyes are black puddles.

  A bell rings in the outside darkness. I cannot hold my eyes to his – I look away. Everywhere I look are the flames of candles. It is truly like the inside of a church, I think, although I cannot remember having been inside one for years. My head feels humid. I look at El Padre again and realize I no longer know the words to any prayers. Hail Mary, full of grace, I think, but after that my mind is as dark as an empty barrel. I wonder if the stories are true. I wonder where he conceals the knife. I wonder if he will ask me to turn my back to him, or if he will come to stand behind me.

  ***

  HERNANDO WAS READING THE NEWSPAPER over an evening meal as I watched from my concealed position, behind a thick shrub, in his backyard. Four days ago. My Glock loaded and ready. I watched him for a long time before coming in. When he saw me his face was grave with surprise, his eyes blinking down and up from the gun. Then he stood to embrace me.

  They sent you? he asked quietly.

  I nodded.

  And?

  He looked at me, calmly, as though I were a brother he had grown up with every day of his life. He looked at me as though he already knew what I would say. I wondered whether he knew better than me what I had been thinking as I stood outside in his yard, underneath the warm, polished leaves, testing the trigger in the half dark.

  I told you, I said. I told you.

  He smiled. My fingers tightened around the Glock. I looked at his forehead. Then, as though following a separate will, my hand lowered the gun to the table, let go of it.

  Run.

  I was not sure if I said it aloud or merely thought it.

  His smile froze. Run?

  He will send others. You must go. Now.

  What of you?

  I did not know. I had never thought it would happen this way. My mind was still clear – as it was whenever I did the business – but before the broad calm of Hernando's look I could feel the clarity slipping away.

  He asked, Are you sure? After a while he frowned, then said abruptly: Come with me.

  He nodded, as if it had been I who had made the suggestion, then nodded again, more vigorously, saying to himself, Yes, yes. But where? Far away. The coast. North is better. Cartagena. Come with me to Cartagena. We will be fishermen. He laughed aloud. After all this! he said.

  Cartagena?

  Yes, he said. Why not? He spoke playfully now, as if we were kids again, as if we were in one of our mocos and bragging to each other about our day's score.

  I cannot go, I said.

  I will not go without you, he said. When I brought my eyes to his I realized he was serious.

  Even then, I understood the consequences. He was my brother but I owed him nothing – he knew that. I had not seen him for three months. He knew I had come in from the streets and – like them – had promised nothing, was incapable of betrayal. He laughed, and as I watched him laughing, his face made childlike in the act, I suddenly saw a glimpse of the old Hernando and in that moment I realized how completely he had left that person behind. I remembered him tall and bronze-skinned, then handing me the gun on the hill, then weak-kneed and pale, and now as I watched him his face was again new. It was unlike any of the faces I had seen in their last moments – always too tight or too loose – his was settled somehow, clear of weakness, the face of a soldado ready to die – for what, I did not understand – but whatever it was, I knew then it was not mine to impede. I would let him go. I thought of El Padre. I thought of my mother, and of Claudia. I thought of Cartagena and wondered how many times a person could start over. After a while I started laughing as well.

  Yes, he said again. Yes, yes. He paused, his face sly: Claudia likes Cartagena.

  Fishermen, I said.

  Yes, he nodded, grinning widely. Do you remember how Luis described it?

  I brought my hand to my mouth, tapped my teeth with my fingernail. This sent Hernando into a renewed fit of lau
ghter. We were like two drunken schoolgirls. Do I remember? I said. Only after the fortieth time.

  ***

  AFTER A LONG SILENCE, El Padre sighs, his breath fluttering the candle flames on his desk, then smiles with his mouth and says:

  You are right. You have been a good soldado.

  I do not say anything. He leans back in his large chair and clasps his hands behind his neck. Even the darkness of his armpits somehow suggests violence. Hail Mary, full of grace ...

  When I was your age, he says – even younger – I too had to eliminate my friends. He pauses. His voice has changed; it is softer now, damper. I did not mark your friend as a hit, he says. But I chose you to make the hit.

  I bow my head, not knowing what to say. I remind myself that, of course, I already knew this. I think of the World Cup story, and wonder distantly if El Padre's face looked then as it does now: like a gangster in an American music video.

  He continues speaking. As he speaks, it seems that his words harden into deep noises. Afterward, he says – he is saying – afterward, I learned to not care so much about the death-only the details. Death is just a transaction. A string of consequences.

  I nod. I am becoming heavier. His words are weighing me down. My body is a rock in this chair.

  Take me, for example, El Padre says, looking at me carefully. If I die, do you know how many deaths will follow? He tells me the number. I do not know whether he is saying it with pride or sorrow or disbelief.

  But part of me is capable of thinking that this is an extraordinary thing. That one life can hold so many others up. That the other lives can be ignorant of this. It reminds me of a game of wooden blocks I used to play with my parents, where the push of a single piece could bring the whole tower crashing down.

  El Padre watches me and I watch him back, and when the realization comes through the hot swamp of my mind it comes with no satisfaction. You are no Hernando, a voice says in my head, and at that moment I know it to be true. Then another voice says, You are no El Padre. And as it speaks I watch him – this man sitting in front of me with a head of gleaming corn-rows, in this warm atrium of candles – I watch him, in control, alive, and absolutely alone in a power he cannot share.

  I understand, I say.

  You have been a good soldado, he repeats. He takes a deep breath. You understand that you cannot continue in your job, however?

  Yes.

  And I will require the weapons back.

  Of course.

  I will send Damita to tell your friend who waits in the alley. She knows where they are?

  I pause. Hail Mary. Then I say, I must tell my friend myself or she will not go.

  He watches me impassively.

  The weapons are at our moco, I add.

  He thinks, and then nods. Then go with Damita, he says. To the alley – no farther. And come back afterward for a drink.

  In the front yard outside, before we reach the gate, Damita says, He likes you.

  I laugh shortly, the first time tonight. There is something about the coolness of the air that brings me back closer to myself. It is almost over, I tell myself.

  No, he does, she says. I can tell. He always acts that way, the first time. She gives me a sidelong look. Her face is the kind they put on the cover of shiny magazines. The first time I met him, ay! I heard the same speech! If two women fight, I shave their heads, she mimics, then laughs, a quick darting laugh that makes me imagine sparks from a fire racing into a night sky.

  She stops at the gate to have a cigarette with one of the guards. Stand where I can see you, she says, waving to me like a schoolgirl stepping down from a bus.

  At first I cannot find Claudia, then I hear her harsh whisper from the opposite alley.

  Just come out, I say. They know you're here.

  She comes as far as the corner, her forehead and kneecaps glowing white under the streetlights, and I walk to meet her there. She frowns – it makes her face look angry.

  He is letting you go?

  I don't know, I say.

  She begins to cry – and I realize it is the first time I have ever seen her cry. Not even after her mother tried to kill herself did I see Claudia's face like this. It is all soft.

  Hernando is dead, I say. I have to force myself to say it rather than ask it.

  I know.

  Hearing her say it severs something deep within me. For a moment it is as though I have lost contact with myself. I force myself to concentrate. In that case, I say, tell Luis I thank him. For organizing the business today.

  She nods.

  He knew that you would want revenge, she says. But he did not want to tell you about Hernando's death, if you were in hiding, and did not already know, and there was no need ...

  She trails off, seeing where that leads. Everyone knew, I think again. But I do not feel bitter at all.

  El Padre knows you are here, I repeat. He wants you to go to our moco and bring back the guns.

  I do not want to look at her crying face. I look into the half dark behind her, make out the contours of a ditch, the banks of rubbish packed hard as rock. I think I see the face of a child appear behind a candle, and then disappear. The sky feels like it is sinking closer and closer to earth.

  My mother, I say.

  Don't worry about that, she says. I will take her away.

  A strange look crosses her face and her narrow shoulders lurch toward me. Her teeth scrape across my lips. I feel embarrassed. I try to kiss her back but I have difficulty controlling my mouth. Her lips are on my ear. She is saying something. She is saying something but I cannot hear her, and when I try to listen I cannot remember what her voice sounds like. I am pulled back into myself.

  She is saying, Take it. She presses it into my hand, guides it into my pocket. It is hard and cold and shaped like an apple. It is one of Pedro's grenades. I do not dare to look down.

  How do you feel? she asks me for the second time tonight. She asks it with a small laugh.

  I do not know what to say. Can I say, My body feels like it is all water? Can I say, Perhaps, perhaps I am glad?

  The revenge killings will not finish for a few weeks, I say.

  She nods again. You are scared.

  Her left hand is still wrapped around mine and it is trembling. This, I think, from Claudia, who has the steadiest hands I know. I look at her and then, in her eyes, I see a window, framed by her mother's body, and I find myself thinking about how easy it seemed for her mother to jump to a death she did not want that badly.

  Yes, I lie to her. Yes, I am scared.

  I look back toward the house and it is clear from Damita's posture that she has finished her cigarette, is bored with the guards, is cold and is waiting for me. The house, with its candlelights, looks somehow sacred under the gray clouds, and the moon, which has come out beneath them, looks like a huge yellow magnet.

  My fingers rub against the cold metal in my pocket. I have to go, I say.

  Claudia embraces me again, her fingertips digging into the gaps between my back ribs. She is breathing shallowly now. Tell him you will never come back. Tell him he can trust you. She says it quietly but there is enormous pressure behind her words.

  Yes, I say. But first you must go get the guns.

  She will not let go of me.

  I hate this place, she says, wiping her eyes on my shoulder. We will leave together. Your mother too.

  My mother, I say.

  I look up at the house, shimmering high on the black hill before us. Claudia clings to me. Her body is warmer than usual. From the gate, Damita looks in our direction and I step back, away from Claudia, seeing her now as though from a growing distance. She is small, and soft, and alone, and I force myself to look away from her.

  You must get the guns, I say.

  He will let you go.

  She has gathered her voice with effort. I smile into the night.

  He will let me go, I say after her.

  At the front door Damita loops her arm around my elbow and le
ads me inside. This time the guards do not search me. As we walk up the stairs, Damita's hip bumps against mine and her bare stomach shifts and lengthens in the angled light. El Padre is behind the bay windows, standing outside on the balcony. He gestures for me to join him.

  From the balcony, the brightness of the candlelit house makes the hillside seem even blacker. We stand there in silence – El Padre and I, and a guard motionless against the far railing. As my eyes adjust, I can make out hazy lagoons of light in the distance.

  El Padre makes a quick gesture with one hand. I spin around: another guard holding a submachine gun is jogging toward me. I fumble against the leathery skin of the grenade in my pocket and maneuver it between my fingers: the pin.

  Better than basuco, says El Padre. He continues to look out over the hill. It is only when the guard is next to me that I realize he is holding out a spliff. El Padre takes it from him, takes a long drag, then holds it out to me.

  I nod – I am unable to speak – and unclench my fingers from the pin of the grenade. When I draw in the smoke it rushes deeper and deeper, without seeming to stop, into the cavities of my body.

  Much cleaner, no?

  He smiles now: a charming host. In the deflected light, I notice for the first time a fiabbiness in his cheeks. His braided hair looks wet. We stand on the balcony and look out over the blacked-out barrio. There are valleys out there, and swells, and rises, all unseen by our eyes. The night air gives off traces of wood smoke, sewage. In the immediate candlelight, the glass on top of the walls glimmers hints of every color, and it is beautiful. For a moment I imagine the house is a ship floating on the silent ocean, high in the wind. This thought calms me, which is strange, for I have never seen the ocean – and I am reminded of evenings when I have stood in the cobbled yard outside my mother's back window, watching her asleep with her makeup on, or taking her medicine with aguardiente when she thinks no one sees, or coming out of the glowing bathroom with her hands in her hair, a towel and a quick unthinking motion. It calms me, watching her like this.