“So what’s the answer, Moya? More violence and dogmatism? Didn’t the armed revolution in your own country fail because the guerrilla forces were, in fact, too ruthless? Don’t they have to share the burden of so many civilian deaths caused by the army’s counterinsurgency?”
“I don’t know,” said Moya, who was in no mood for this conversation. “I don’t blame the guerrilla forces for that, for existing, if that’s what you mean. Certainly not.”
“They’re blameless then?”
“I didn’t say that. But if the armed movement had been stronger, Sylvia, perhaps they would have been able to create enough pressure for true negotiations and a true political opening,” said Moya. “Isn’t that realpolitik too?”
“Perhaps a strong and nonviolent mass movement, with no armed movement to muddle the picture, would also be able to create that kind of pressure, but much more effectively. And more cleanly. Grant it, Moya, there would still be . . . martyrs. But you have to admit, it hasn’t been tried.”
“We did, for ten years—”
“More than three decades is a long time ago, Moya. Conditions change.”
“Not so much, I don’t think.”
“You’ve read Le Rouge et le noir, haven’t you?” said Sylvia, trying another tact; Moya certainly had, though not in French. “You remember the scene between Julien and Comte Altamira, who led a liberal revolution in Spain that failed because he refused to cut off three heads? Julien thinks that’s wimpy, doesn’t he? To save four one must kill three! he declaims. To drive ignorance and crime from a country, man must pass through it like a whirlwind, violent, unafraid of poisoning himself! Is that what you think too, Moya?”
“No. But I’ve never been faced with such a choice, really,” dissembled Moya. “Not when it mattered.”
“You’re faced with it every time you ask yourself what you would countenance in the name of change,” said Sylvia. “Would you support and make excuses for any revolution, so long as it destroys what you already hate? Is that, finally, what you believe in, a politics of hatred and vengeance?”
“Any revolution, Sylvia? How many have I seen?” stammered Moya. “I’m sure there’ll be adequate time for me to make up my mind before the next one comes along.”
Moya, who wanted peace, justice, and liberty for his country (and a woman like Flor de Mayo, or even Sylvia, for himself) and who had recently decided that he was now a Socialist Parliamentarian Reformer (somewhat like Celso Batres was perhaps waiting to be), fell asleep that night dreaming of whirlwinds.
Then came the loneliest months, during which Moya hid, even from Sylvia. Vos, when other women had occasion to ask him where he was from, you know what Moya started doing? He found himself answering, “Mexico,” or Spain or even Ecuador. Often the women knew much more about these countries than he and immediately recognized that his accent was incorrect. But Moya insisted. They went away convinced that he was quite strange. This was ridiculous of him, he knew, but, in his own experimental way, he was trying to get to know himself.
But instead of himself, Moya began to find Flor de Mayo. He found her everywhere in his lonely winter wanderings, during which he always felt dilapidated and sad, though eventually he began to feel dignified rather than frightened by his own sadness. Her shadow was everywhere, asking him why she was a shadow and whispering to him of the one period in his life when he had felt relieved of himself and on the verge of learning something else. “Boy wonder,” her shadow teased him, and suddenly he felt full of pride and overwhelming embarrassment. Those solitary winter walks, when his shadow talked silently to Flor, both challenging and exhausting him, truly were Moya’s first experience of freedom; so many opposites felt balanced within him: love and hate, to name the most obvious, but also high-mindedness and banality, bravery and cowardliness, vengefulness and forgiveness, loyalty and betrayal, absence and presence, guilt, no guilt—those walks when he knew he couldn’t bring harm to anyone no matter what he confided to his own shadow or to Flor’s or to anyone’s.
One day, well into his stay at Harvard, almost exactly a year to the day after Flor perished, Moya saw a little niña indígena in a snowsuit playing in a snowy yard. His epiphany spawned an idea that spawned a conviction: a chronicle that, like that little girl, would be part of both the smaller world and the larger, one grafted almost seamlessly onto the other, and thus its actual range enlarged! That very night he pulled out his old and unfinished newspaper chronicle and spent weeks trying to complete it for his nonfiction narrative class final paper. But he failed utterly to abolish himself; it was as if Moya needed this story, along with all his stifling Moya-ness, to be adopted by someone else, someone living in an at least theoretically wider and more ventilated world. As has been told, he eventually thought of his old friend Roger Graetz. It was just an idea, and it was acted upon.
But, vos, it was never meant to lead to this, was it? The mad idea circuitously deposited in Roger’s letter? That Moya’s boast could in some way have had something to do with Flor’s death, because it had so briefly plunged Flor into grief, turmoil, and maybe even self-destructiveness that she had given in to her wickedest invisible self or perhaps had just been so disoriented that she had sent one María de la Luz Caycam Quix to France without her brother Lucas?
“—because if you did know, and you lied to me about that like you did about the guerrilla thing, or even if only your goddamned hair knew, Moya, and that’s why it’s turning white, well then is that what you wanted me to find out all along? You wanted me to find out so that I could tell you not to blame yourself? Well, finally, Moya, I don’t in fact blame you, OK? Not for that, just so long as it’s not more important to you than knowing who actually murdered her. I don’t blame you for that, and maybe I am just going crazy, because all I want to know now is, DID YOU KNOW? And when I get to Mexico, any day now, you will tell me, won’t you?”
On that second evening in the Omni, Roger finally returned from his missions, knocking on the door. Water was running in the red heart-shaped tub in the bathroom. After scrubbing the tub twice with the cleaning implements he’d let the chambermaid pass through the revolving hatch, Moya was preparing a bath. He turned the water off, began putting his clothing back on, and shouted, “Rogerio?”
“Yup,” answered Roger, drawing out yup’s vowel.
Moya hurried to unlock the door, and Roger came in, carrying a large envelope, which he tossed onto the bed before going directly into the bathroom to urinate. As he did so, he told Moya a little story: “That night I was here with Zamara, as soon as we finished making love she jumped out of bed and ran in here and took a shower. I mean as soon as we finished! I was kind of hurt, you know? But then she came back and we made love all night practically.”
Then Roger came out of the bathroom, sat down on the bed, and looked at Moya, who was leaning against the red velvet wall and enduring an ulcerous cramp in his stomach, undoubtedly caused by stress and not the greasy fried chicken that had been served through the hatch for lunch.
“Are you going to marry her?” asked Moya, to break the silence.
“I already got my inheritance,” said Roger. And then he sighed and said, “So you ready? You better sit down.”
Moya decided to remain standing. Did Roger feel he had some new power over him simply because he’d saved Moya from a death squad the night before and now had spent the day arranging his fate? He sensed in Roger something he never had before, a capacity for petty cruelty.
Now Roger talked, explaining that Consul Simms had said that it was only “a heavy-handed tail,” meant to send an unambiguous message, to Moya, not himself of course, they could have splattered Moya like tomato sauce all over the sidewalk while Roger just stood there if they’d wanted—
“You mean like tomato juice,” said Moya.
“Whatever . . . So I didn’t save your life.”
“Claro, you did, Rogerio,” insisted Moya. Was that what was bothering Roger? “Maybe just by being there.”
&
nbsp; “But it doesn’t matter what I did, they were just trying to scare you.”
“But that’s good news, Rogerio!”
“Well, I guess,” said Roger glumly.
“And the embassy, vos?”
“That refugee program is full. They say go to Mexico, to the embassy there, fill out these forms I brought you. The embassy here will recommend they take you if after a few months in Mexico you still want to go to Canada.”
“And how am I going to get to Mexico? Did you say a few months, vos?”
“I booked you a ticket. Noon tomorrow. I’ll give you some money to live on, it should last until you get to Canada, I hope it will.”
“If I get to Canada,” said Moya, who, in fact, never did and is in Mexico still. “In Mexico I will starve!”
“They’re turning away an awful lot of people, Moya. The only reason I didn’t have to wait in line for hours was because of that urgent action telegram from Aunt Irene. You know why they really won’t let you come to Canada right away? Their policy is they’re not going to give you all this money and an apartment and let you go to their universities and everything if in the end you’re just going to come back here like some kind of addict next time things cool down. They know that’s what you did the last time.”
“But the last time I had not had such a heavy-hand message, vos!” The last time, on that day the previous year when he had phoned Sylvia and Laura Moore in Washington and set his first exile swiftly in motion, he hadn’t been receiving anything more than the usual threats; what had become unbearable was the stifling nausea of helpless disappointment and regret he’d been suffering in silence ever since Flor’s death.
“The guy did recommend that if you belong to any of the guerrilla organizations, then you should put that in the form, because, once you’ve admitted that, then you really can’t come back. But I told him you don’t. I was right to tell him that, wasn’t I?”
“Gracias, Rogerio,” said Moya, after a moment’s silence. “Eres un amigazo. You are a great friend.”
They were silent for a long moment. Then Roger stood up and said, “Crazy fucking world. Sorry, I can’t just sit here another night.” And then Roger went swiftly out the door again, saying, “Listen, Moya, you stay right here.”
He came back at five in the morning, smelling freshly dusted with the same putas’ cheap perfumes that lay faint and stale over everything in the Omni, and in something resembling a transcendent mood.
“She loves me, Moya, I can tell! I danced with her all night! And it’s nuts, but I think I love her too, in a way. I mean she’s just so . . . I don’t know.”
“You do not know, vos.”
“Oh come on, Moya, don’t go getting all uppity now.”
“You have no right to do this, vos,” said Moya. “It is like colonizing a heart, making it your own banana finca.”
“Moya, for Chrissakes, not every fucking thing is politics—”
“Except she is going to believe that you love her. What she loves is the life she thinks you can give her, Rogerio. OK, vos, we all take our chances. But her heart can break like any other, so don’t go telling yourself that it won’t, just because she is a puta.”
“She’s not a . . . Well, technically she is, but—Moya, I won’t hurt her, I couldn’t—”
“And that lieutenant of López Nub, vos?”
“The hell with Nub.”
“Rogerio.”
“She hasn’t seen him in days.”
“Rogerio, you cannot mess with—”
“Moya, I’m not suicidal. OK?”
So it went until nearly dawn, when the two friends finally managed to catch a few hours’ sleep. Still ahead was the ride to the airport, that always dangerous stretch of highway into the airport where so many heavy-handed messages turned into the crudest and most final hoax of all.
In the morning we phoned a taxi and rode back into the city so that Moya could pack some things from his room in the Pensión Bremen. I’d thought that was unsafe, but Moya said it was a risk he was willing to take so as not to arrive in Mexico like some shipwrecked sailor. So we went to my house first, so I could change my clothes too, get some more money, and give Moya what I had to give him. Moya didn’t want to say good-bye to his mother in person, though, it was better to leave her out of it, he said. He’d written her a letter, which I would mail for him, that would have to suffice.
Moya’s room: cans of Doral frijol negro on the sill, bread rolls moldy in a humidity-fogged plastic bag; paperbacks piled in a corner, newspapers everywhere; no television, one plastic radio; his clothes carefully hung and folded in an old stand-up wardrobe; his chess computer; a desk with an old Royal portable typewriter on top, and drawers stuffed with papers, which he searched frantically through, making instant decisions, leaving some in the drawer, putting others directly into a large, tattered cowhide suitcase, including, of course, your old notebook, his photocopied version of it. He put on his Harvard necktie and paid a week’s rent in advance (with my money), apologizing profusely to the Bremen’s manager, who said he understood and would clean the room out himself.
When we came back outside, and his suitcase had been put away in the trunk, two large men stepped out from the doorway next to the pension’s and got into the taxi with us without saying anything, one into the front passenger seat, the other in back. They were both young, in their twenties like us, both of them solid looking, one chunky, the other tall and strapping; one wore a denim jacket with large front pockets, the other a zippered windbreaker. The taxi driver’s eyes, huge with worry, were fixed on mine in the rearview mirror. My first frantic instinct was to run, but I was sitting, stuck, in the middle—Moya leaned across me to shake hands and calmly told the driver not to worry. Then they were introducing themselves by name, which probably weren’t their real names though I didn’t catch them anyway; nor was I really able to focus on the small talk passing between them on the long ride out to the airport. Everyone fell silent and kept his eyes out the windows when we passed through the old aqueduct arch and into that long stretch of road running between a military base and the military airfields in the remoter stretches of the airport complex. The guy in back held one hand poised over his jacket pocket the whole way.
But it wasn’t until we reached the terminal and it was decided that one would wait in the taxi while the other came in that I was sure. Because the one in back took off his jacket before getting out, and that was when I saw the hanging weight of a gun in that denim pocket as he laid it on the seat. The three of us went inside, and through the metal detectors, and then did everything else you do in an airport, including killing some time over coffee and sweet rolls in the upstairs café, where Moya tried to explain himself to me. When at last it was time for Moya to go through migración, we stood suspensefully watching from the other side of the fenced-off area, because sometimes they snatch people there at the very last second. The two of us watched until the official had checked through Moya’s papers and finally stamped his passport; then he was let through the glass doors, into the long murky corridor leading to the departure gates, where he turned to wave good-bye.
So Moya kept that one secret, the secret that justified all secretiveness, the one he must have always told himself it was the most important to keep, so important to keep that he barely admitted it even to himself. He’d maintained only the most ambiguous and sporadic contacts anyway (he’d hurriedly and whisperingly tried to explain as we sat upstairs in a deserted corner of the café), since that’s how they do it in the city now. He’d never before even met the two compañeros who’d accompanied us that day, he’d simply phoned his contact from the Omni, speaking in a code. So did I understand? “Rogerio, you too could be ‘organized,’ and even though we work together, I might never know it.” His duties had required little more from him than that he be exactly as I’d always seen him. Well, what could I say, then and there, in the airport café, with his bodyguard listening in, occasionally contributing a softly assent
ing “Sí pues.” I just sat there nodding.
I never saw them again, Moya’s compañeros in a nearly defeated army, who must have thought highly of Moya, to provide an armed escort to the airport. To be honest, I was frightened of riding back in the taxi with them. We shook hands, exchanged the usual pleasantries, I gladly insisted on paying their fare to wherever they were going and told them that I just felt like walking. It’s a short walk, from the airport into Zona 10; I thought I’d go and have a good lunch outside by the pool at the Biltmore Maya.
On that stretch of road leaving the airport there is a very long wall that was obviously put there to keep people from seeing whatever happens in the military airfield on the other side. The wall’s entire length is decorated with murals painted by schoolchildren, each one displaying a signature like “Colegio Santa María, Jocotán, 4th grade.” Schoolchildren from all over the country were selected to paint their happy and universal daydreams on that wall. Some of the murals depict village fiestas without the drunkards, others circus scenes and animals; a fabulous white ocean liner in an ocean full of smiling sea creatures; farm scenes with roosters and pigs; happy families standing outside happy houses with happy pets. I didn’t feel afraid anymore: if anything I even felt a little exhilarated, the ordeal and scary excitement of the last few days behind me, something new ahead. I knew I was safer, more “invisible” than ever now, with Moya gone. Browsing along that wall that informs travelers they are in a country that puts the happiness of children above everything else, ignoring the traffic behind and the varied air traffic overhead, I suddenly recalled the strange sensation of a remote childhood happiness of my own: those long-ago winter evenings, always just before supper, when I had to go outside and shovel Klink’s puppy shit up from the snow, wrap it in newspaper, and put it into the small aluminum incinerator that resembled a funny little robot without limbs. I always struck more of the long wooden matches than necessary and stayed out there longer than I had to, smelling newspapers and puppy shit burning, watching damp white smoke pouring from the incinerator and floating up into the dark winter air. Except now I couldn’t at all remember what it is I actually used to think about out there, or what it was exactly that had always made it pure bliss. But in my imagination I sort of painted myself onto that wall anyway, standing there beside a smiling little incinerator, puffy smoke rising into a sky the color of an old dirty nickel, snowflakes coming down, the Copacabana behind me and your light on in the basement, bright yellow in the small rectangular window just above the lawn.
The Long Night of White Chickens Page 53