–Raising her consciousness, are you? he teased Kassim, who grinned and shrugged.
–Hombre, everyone’s capable of change. That demo — that’s what started it. When your own body feels the impact… He shrugged again. –You should come. There’s big plans afoot.
Instead Nicolás went home and raised his own barricade, one made out of elegant formulas, necklace-like strings of numbers. Someday the world would come to its senses and his knowledge would be needed in the rebuilding. There was probably a mathematical formula for what had gone wrong, and another formula that would correct it, except that his own skills weren’t yet equal to finding the solution.
In July a general strike was called. Once again Nicolás locked the door of the restaurant and joined the tens of thousands in the city’s central plaza, more out of concern for Núria and Daniel than anything else. Nevertheless he sang and shouted slogans along with the others until he was hoarse, until the sun went down and the police on horseback appeared. At one point he thought he saw Paola in the distance, but when he craned his neck she’d disappeared. Kassim was at the microphone, exhorting everyone, even housewives, to join the strike when the police charged. In the melee that followed, Nicolás saw only that Kassim, dragged off the platform by his hair, was one of the first arrested and taken to the waiting police vans. Despite the refrain in his head about his own cowardice he slipped away round a corner and didn’t stop until he reached home.
He shut himself in his bedroom and took out the oud. The hairline crack had widened; he could see the inside of the oud’s belly through it. He touched it with his fingers and thought he heard his father’s voice — saddened, hesitant — murmuring something in that unknown language.
He joined the crowds outside the prison, taking with him a change of clothes, food, and a few books. He was Kassim’s cousin, bringing vital medication, he told the guards, and though they looked at him suspiciously they let him in. Kassim, brought to the other side of a tiny grille, was still in the filthy and bloodied jeans he’d been arrested in, a deep gash over one eye. When he saw Nicolás he narrowed his eyes.
–What are you doing here?
–Bringing you these. Nicolás handed over the items for inspection by the guards. –Is there anything else you need?
–A lawyer. As soon as possible. How’s Paola?
In truth he didn’t know; apart from that possible glimpse at the demo, he hadn’t seen her in days.
–Tell her to stay out of all this. She’ll only get hurt.
As if to confirm what he said a woman’s scream arose from somewhere in the distance, followed by what sounded like a body being flung against the wall.
–This isn’t a revolution, Kassim said, dropping his voice to a whisper. –It’s a war. Oh, and an InScreen, too. Figure out a way to smuggle one in.
He slept with his face on the stones of what had once been his father’s workshop. Around him was only rubble, broken tools, the shattered ribs of an oud. A woman’s voice wailed somewhere in a song of despair and grief and mourning. He shut his eyes and tried to remember what it had been like when he’d pillowed his cheek on wood shavings, when his father’s friends sat there laughing and drinking tea. Where was his father now, and his mother? They’d been taken away, he knew, but he didn’t know where. It was his job to stay in the workshop until they returned, guarding it from further destruction.
It was Rafael who showed him how to smuggle things. Rafael had been one of the leaders of the protests in the first decade of the century and had spent time in jail. He helped Nicolás tape the InScreen to the inside of his upper thigh, right against his scrotum. –Then you go to the bathroom in the jail and remove it and palm it under the grille when the guard isn’t looking.
He managed to palm three InScreens that way — one for Kassim and two more for other organizers of the strike. The pictures that came back were terrifying. People beaten, bloodied, unrecognizable, teeth missing, jaws broken. After a while Nicolás couldn’t look at them anymore. It was weak, he knew — these were merely images, not the real thing — but he was having nightmares. He took to sleeping with an InScreen taped to his own thigh in case he was arrested.
The demonstrations continued, though his mother — at home now that the schools weren’t functioning — begged him not to go. Millions of people up and down the country, and the politicians huddled in their offices not knowing what to do. His sister Núria took over the bread run for several neighbourhoods; his brother Daniel slipped in and out carrying messages that couldn’t be entrusted to electronic communications. Nicolás found himself at the meetings of what was left of the Grupo Cinco de Junio: a middle-aged woman called Ana who had once been a nun, and several workers from the furniture factory, and Miriam, a student like himself who was their liaison with the university cells. It was Miriam — tiny, fearless, indefatigable — who came up with the most daring plans. They ought to infiltrate a cabinet meeting, hold the ministers hostage until the prime minister agreed to their demands. Others argued that it would lead, at best, to only token change.
Meanwhile the country was paralyzed. Students had ceased to go to classes, people to work. Most of the police had walked off the job, too, and there was a kind of cheerful anarchy in the streets. People travelled by bicycle or on foot, since there were no longer any oil deliveries. Many shops were boarded up, their owners fled. The Enrejado network was still functioning, though with governments in other countries collapsing the supplies were intermittent.
When Paola’s bruised and bloodied face showed up on his InScreen one morning, he knew he had to act. He’d got her involved, after all; she’d taken more risks than he had. He thought first about calling his grandfather — he must have contacts, still, among the upper echelons — but he didn’t want to involve an old man, long retired, in this business. Instead he bicycled to the Chamber of Deputies in the middle of the city and asked to speak to his uncle. Fortunately one of the longtime guards there remembered him and allowed him in past the steel barricades and barbed wire.
–Ah, the young revolutionary! His uncle stood up to embrace Nicolás, who pulled away. –Okay. We’re enemies. I understand. He lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of his desk.
–No, you don’t. You don’t understand anything. Nicolás took out his InScreen and showed his uncle the picture of Paola. –How would you feel if that was Caterina?
–Caterina’s a sensible girl, we brought her up properly. She isn’t mixed up with all this — this holding the country to hostage.
–Paola’s brother’s a banker, Tío. He probably contributed to your campaign.
His uncle shrugged. –And she broke the law. Which is why she’s in jail. He blew smoke, reflectively, at Nicolás. –But I’d feel the same way if I were sleeping with her.
He swung without thinking at his uncle’s face, but his uncle caught his wrist with a surprisingly strong grip. –Don’t be a fool. Go home, look after your mother. This business is for niños mimados, spoiled kids.
Here was another language he didn’t know, a language of distortion and stereotype and dismissal. He and his uncle were speaking past each other, on parallel tracks. For a moment he saw his uncle among the thugs who’d destroyed the oud workshop, their faces contorted with fury and disgust and hate.
When he was little — probably on one of those nights when he couldn’t sleep — his grandfather had told him a story about a boy who lived in a balloon. He didn’t know if his grandfather had made this story up or read it in a book. The boy lived in the balloon with his pet rabbit and floated wherever he wanted. Where should we go tonight? his grandfather would ask, and Nicolás would cry, Let’s go to the mountains! And the next minute there they were, hovering above tall snow-covered peaks where people lived in nests like birds and served drinks made of crushed ice and moonbeams.
If only he had such a balloon now.
They came for him three nights later. There were four of them, in balaclavas and civilian clothes, and they pushed him around
and searched the flat while his mother and his siblings sat huddled in a corner. Then they bundled him out of the flat and into a waiting van, using their fists on his face. A bone snapped, loudly, in his cheek; his ears filled with blood and a strange high-pitched screaming he recognized, belatedly, as his own. When he came to he was in a dark cell among others who groaned and muttered and cried out. He lay there, stunned and battered, until greying light filled the tiny barred window and the guards came past, hammering on the doors to wake them up. Opening his eyes, he looked into the face of one of the members of the Grupo Cinco de Junio.
–Luis? he said, with what felt like a mouthful of broken teeth.
Luis helped him sit up and gave him some water and held him, tenderly. He wanted to weep and couldn’t.
How long he spent in the cell he didn’t know. Food — bread and bowls of thin gruel — came at irregular intervals. New arrivals were brought in, other inmates transferred out. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his InScreen, so he couldn’t let anyone know where he was. Luis, taken away on the second day, urged him to remain strong and said he’d get in touch with Nicolás’s family, if he got out. Wild rumours circulated — that the New Dawn Party had formed a government and reintroduced capital punishment; that the prime minister had been assassinated; that the Chamber of Deputies had been torched. Nicolás hoped simultaneously that his family had found out where he was, and that they hadn’t. His mother must be worried sick. And Núria…had they come for her, too? He shut out the images of his sister’s bleeding face. His whole body ached, the cuts on his face festered and filled with pus. At night he summoned the balloon and floated through the night sky. Below him the cities were spread out like glowing nets thrown over the globe — beautiful nets full of menace, designed to trap small insects like himself.
A new arrival, a grizzled elderly man, brought him a message: Don’t lose heart, help is coming. The man had no idea who the message was from. Kassim? It seemed unlikely. His family? When nothing happened he decided the message was a mistake. Or perhaps the sender had been arrested, too. Half the city seemed to be incarcerated now, judging from the numbers of new arrestees, the rumours about the mobilization of the army.
One morning the cell door opened and Nicolás was ordered out. Stiff from inactivity, he could hardly walk. The guards took him into a kind of reception area where other guards sat at computer screens, and where a man he didn’t recognize stood on the other side of a glass wall. Tall, erect, turning his old Guardia Civil cap in his hands, his face so aged Nicolás could have wept.
–Abuelo, he said, but it came out in an indistinct croak.
The guards led him to a door at the far end of the glass wall and handed him over to his grandfather, who took his arm. –Don’t talk, he said, and led Nicolás outside. Around the corner one of the antique motorbikes from the Guardia’s early years was parked at the curb. –Here, his grandfather said, and helped him onto the back of the bike. –Can you stay upright? Nicolás put his arms round his grandfather’s waist and hung on shakily as they growled their way through the streets, empty except for the soldiers guarding each intersection. At the sight of the old man’s cap with its Guardia insignia, they snapped to attention and saluted.
On the outskirts of the city they began a slow climb into the hills. Where were they going? Wherever it was, they were taking back roads rather than the main highways. It was all he could do to hang on and not pass out. The day lengthened; he was starving and dying of thirst; yet still they rode on into a brilliant cold twilight. The stars were coming out when they turned onto a dirt track and entered what must once have been a village, though it stood in ruins. His grandfather pulled up outside one of the derelict houses, parked the bike, and half-carried Nicolás inside. A couple of beds, freshly made up, and a rough table and chairs, and a wood stove. His grandfather helped him to one of the beds and made him lie down. Then he went outside and Nicolás heard the sound of a well handle being pumped. His grandfather came back inside and held a glass of water to Nicolás’s parched lips. Afterwards he made a fire in the stove, heated water in a basin, and tenderly bathed Nicolás’s battered face.
–Nieto mío, he said sorrowfully, over and over. –What have they done to you?
–How did you find out where I was? His voice cracked as though it too had been beaten.
–An old colleague. His grandfather made a dismissive gesture. –We’re not all on the side of the government, you know. Those putas — yes, I know what you call them… His jaw tightened. –There was respect for the rule of law, once.
He brought Nicolás a bowl of warmed soup, but after a few mouthfuls nausea overwhelmed him; he lay back, exhausted. –Where are we?
–In your great-grandmother’s house. Where I grew up. These last weeks I’ve been restoring it, I thought we might need a refuge.
He had so many other questions — where his mother and Núria and the others were, how his grandfather had got him out — but he must have fallen asleep, because when he woke it was fully dark except for a nearby candle. His grandfather sat there in the flickering light, his hand resting on the quilt. Nicolás couldn’t stop his tears.
–Don’t waste your energy, nieto. You need to regain your strength. You don’t suppose we’re just going to roll over and let them win, do you?
–You’re turning into a revolutionary, Nicolás murmured, smiling. –You, of all people!
–Christ was a revolutionary too, wasn’t he? He was on the side of the ruled, not the rulers. Listen, I brought you something, I know how much it means to you.
From a corner his grandfather brought out an old leather case decorated in Arabic letters. Nicolás didn’t have the strength to open it, so his grandfather did it for him. He lay with his arms round the instrument, watching the shadows on the walls. His grandfather, sitting by his bed, began singing some ancient song, one Nicolás thought he remembered from childhood, something about exile and lost love. He didn’t try to puzzle out the old words. Instead he burrowed deeper under the blankets and held the cracked oud close. Under his grandfather’s voice, if he listened hard, he could make out another, just barely audible — his father’s in his workshop, speaking that strange language, the two voices weaving in and out until he was no longer sure which was which.
SIGNS
AND
PORTENTS
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
She was carrying the mail up the path to the house when she noticed. It was imprinted on the inside of her wrist, like the pale echo of a bar code. She must have been clutching some flyer or other too tightly, and it had transferred to her skin. At the kitchen counter Boas danced round her as she sorted, demanding his walk. Fall mornings, on the island, meant flocks of sandpipers and rain dripping from the arbutus trees, not the ancient chestnuts under the limestone clock tower, the murmurations of students. She took down the leash, eliciting excited barks, and stepped outside again. She’d been retired for eight years — had been pushed out, none too gently, at seventy-five — but September still brought a quickening excitement, a sharpening of the mind. The sharpening had begun with her father, a classical scholar who taught her the rudiments of Latin before she could read English, and in his honour she enlivened a dozen new pencils every Labour Day.
In the afternoons, staving off senility, she sat at her desk with the sharpened pencils and worked on a long-delayed paper, “Lenition in Kwak’wala and Anishinaabemowin.” Her mother had drifted into early dementia, though her father had done crosswords until he was ninety-two — had left one uncompleted the morning of his death, which no doubt infuriated him. The desk faced west over the Georgia Strait in the cabin built to his specifications, a large window let into each octagonal wall, the San Juan Islands a blue haze beyond. As a child she’d spun herself dizzy on her father’s office chair above that view. These days Torin did the same thing, his feet tucked up, giggling.
Somehow, without noticing, she’d reached the beach. A yacht floated across her line of vision. Boas, with
a Scottish terrier’s disapproval of water, made little growling forays into the waves, carrying the stick she’d thrown. There was the ferry, bleating its regular crossing from the mainland. She ploughed along the sand, head down, looking for sea glass. A large jar of it sat on her windowsill, added to mostly on Torin’s visits. There — what was that bit of yellow? Too opaque to be glass. Still, she lifted it from its indentation, rubbed it clean with her thumb. The perfect whorl of a snail shell that shouldn’t be here — Littorina obtusata, the northern yellow periwinkle. Shouldn’t be, but was.
An uncle, a marine biologist, had brought her to this beach at night with a flashlight. He’d lifted the checkered periwinkle, Littorina scutulata, from the tide pools to show her the tiny rake for gathering algae that pulsed in and out of its mouth. But this one, Littorina obtusata, was an Atlantic coast species, introduced from Britain in the ballast of nineteenth-century ships. What was it doing here?
At the house she washed off the shell and checked her copy of Harbo’s Shells and Shellfish of the Pacific Northwest. No mention of northern yellow periwinkles migrating, somehow, to the west coast. But unexpected things turned up on the beach all the time. Once, inexplicably, the carcass of an Asian house shrew, identified by a zoologist from a mainland university. There was bound to be some sort of explanation.
The paper — the staver-off of decrepitude — was supposed to be delivered in Berlin, in November, at an international congress on comparative linguistics. Which meant suitcases, hotels, flying at thirty thousand feet above the earth — the tired apparatus of the physical body, dragged through a particularly modern hell. Did she really want to spend the time she had left in airtight conference rooms, enduring a disrupted digestive system? She wanted to master the tasks she’d set herself in old age: throwing pots on a wheel, raising plants in a greenhouse. Tasks for her hands and eyes, those concrete organs that she’d always taken for granted and might now be taken away at any minute.
Hour of the Crab Page 10