Cradle of Splendor

by Patricia Anthony

  “Freitas,” Edson called.

  The hands stopped.

  “José Carlos.” Edson knew he should look away. He couldn’t. “Pull your pants up.”

  A whisper from the dark. “Time for bed.”

  The boy fumbled with his clothes.

  Freitas helped with a button. “Give papai a kiss good night.”

  A chaste kiss. José Carlos was gone in a flash. Edson walked around the chair.

  “Taking his place?”

  The man’s fly was unzipped. The last two buttons of his shirt were open.

  “You’ll have to get on your knees.”

  The room tipped. Edson couldn’t catch his breath. It felt as if he was falling.

  “You’ve always wondered what it would feel like—a child’s body.”

  “Never.” Edson couldn’t look—not at the open zipper, not at the man’s face. He went to the window, thought about his own children. Had he ...? No. Not once.

  “Wondering doesn’t mean you’re bad, Edson, only curious. You just want to feel things, like the times you felt the corpses.”

  Edson looked into the glass. His own startled reflection looked back.

  “You see, I know you. I know, for instance, that you closed your eyes the first time you pulled the trigger. And I know that you watched the fourth man twitch. By the sixth, curiosity got the best of you, didn’t it? You’re an inquisitive man, and that was inevitable. You put your finger on the corpse’s open eye.”

  Impossible. He’d been so careful. No one could have seen. Edson’s breath fogged the pane, and he watched himself disappear.

  “Don’t be ashamed. You and me, we’re explorers. The bullet hole: so perfectly round. Did you know the nine millimeter makes an opening in the skull the exact size of your index finger? Of course you did. The wound is dark, isn’t it? Mysterious. You always wanted to stick your finger inside.” Freitas said, “Come here.”

  Edson turned. Freitas was watching him. Had they touched yet? Surely he would remember. He walked closer. It didn’t have to go this far. He could run away. He would have. But his legs felt weak.

  “Kneel down.”

  In Freitas’s eyes, the heavy gravity of the abyss. “I know what you want.”

  Edson didn’t want it, but he couldn’t help himself. It was only because he felt weak, and his thighs wouldn’t hold him ... He dropped to his knees between the V of Freitas’s legs.

  Suffocating body warmth and the salty smell of him. Edson couldn’t look at ... there. Look at the wall. That was safe. Porky Pig. Round flesh—colored head, smooth as a child’s belly.

  An exploratory touch on his hair, Edson squeezed his eyes shut. If he wasn’t so weak he would get up and walk away. If he wasn’t so numb, he would fight that hand’s pressure.

  Lips against his. The kiss surprised Edson, that was all. Freitas’s mouth moved. Overripe lips and an assertive tongue that tasted of beer and garlic.

  The shocking scrape of a late—afternoon beard against his cheek. A whisper: “You think I’m a devil.” Freitas shoved him back. “You’re wrong.”

  It couldn’t be disappointment that Edson felt. Please. Maybe it was only confusion. He blundered up and hurried to the door, scrubbing his mouth with his sleeve.

  Freitas’s voice followed. “I’m what you touch when you stick your finger in the hole.”

  * * *

  Hiroshi stayed awake past sundown, past the time the dust settled and the air turned sweet. Seated at the kitchen table, he fought sleep as if he had hired on as wakefulness’s soldier.

  As Sunday ticked into Monday, his head became so heavy that his neck could not support it. The drone in his ears was deafening. Just for a moment, he thought, and laid his cheek on his arm. He shut his eyes, and dreamed.

  Lost in a market amid flats of spiked berries and translucent bananas. Boxes of green raisin—sized things that could have been fruit, that might have been spice. Monkeys climbed braids of purple chilies. Their screeches echoed the rafters.

  Hiroshi wanted to ask the shopkeeper the names of things, but was shamed to discover that he had lost Portuguese. All the words came out English, and the man behind the counter began to cry.

  Outside, lush vines bloomed and twisted across the desert. The Southern Cross glowed in the daytime sky. Hiroshi tried to find his way home, but the buildings had been stolen.

  Something wicked was about to happen. Hiroshi felt it. He started to run. American bombs began thudding to the ground like rotting oranges from a tree. Hiroshi looked up, saw incoming missiles high overhead, small as grains of rice. They tipped with the weight of their warheads, fell faster.

  He ran, afraid. So afraid of burning.

  A gasp. Hiroshi’s eyes popped open. His heart knocked his chest wall, not the feel of meat against meat, but that of iron bell against clapper.

  His living room was dark.

  The gun was on the table, and he found it by feel. Perhaps there had been a power outage. Perhaps that was all.

  No. The darkness had a smell. A pulse. Holding the pistol, he got up and crept to the kitchen. The room was empty; whoever had been there was gone. But the furtive visitor had left behind a reminder of his control: another burning candle.

  Baka! It was no more than he deserved. Hiroshi had betrayed his mentor, the good name of his bun. Baka! You stupid! When they came the next time, Hiroshi’s dead eyes would be left open, the candle left burning in his mouth. There was no one he could turn to, no one to protect him. And that was his own fault.

  Hiroshi slid to the kitchen floor, the muscles in his chest and arms twitching. Had he the energy for it, he would have put the muzzle to his head and pulled the trigger himself.

  * * *

  Sometime during the cold predawn, Ana fell asleep. Careful not to wake her, Dolores turned the lamp off and sat quietly in the rocker beside the bed. A strip of light shone from under the door where soldiers stood guard.

  This was the bright part: the comfort of mothers, the protection of sentries. This was the doorjamb light, the way things should be.

  Dolores let her eyes fall half—staff. Black dresser hulked against blue—black wall. The gray bed, with safe shadows under. Never given guards, Dolores learned to be a little mouse. Interesting how mice could hide anywhere. How if they didn’t move, and if they breathed softly, they could disappear.

  Strange how a woman could save a country, could start a war, and be such a tiny, tiny thing.

  Dolores yawned. Her eyes felt grainy, and there was a dull ache at her temples. What time was it getting to be? They had taken her watch: Harry, Edson Carvalho, Gilberto Muller, the CIA, they had taken everything. She got up, her back stiff, and shuffled into the neighboring room.

  She expected a group of soldiers playing cards, telling jokes. There was only one man. The major who had brought her here.

  He sat at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. Asleep sitting up? Then she saw his Adam’s apple bob. He was silently crying. And not so much protection, after all.

  She whispered, “You want—”

  He recoiled.

  Dolores gave him an off—center smile. “Sorry.”

  A flustered, “You startled me. So quiet ...”

  “I’m CIA—trained, remember? Want some coffee?”

  He nodded.

  She ran water into the pot, searched the cabinets until she found the coffee—things the major had never thought of. Funny. When she was younger, she believed Harry would learn to cook if he was hungry enough. By the time he was forty, she knew she was wrong. He would starve to death before it entered his mind to put food in pot, to put pot on stove.

  “Is the president all right?” the major asked.

  She turned the knob on the burner. Flame sprang into being. “Asleep,” she said.

  He asked, “How will it be to
be invaded?”

  Dolores sat in the chair across from him, placed her hands in her lap. “I don’t know. I’ve never gone through it.”

  “I received a call twenty minutes ago. Planes incoming from Bolivia. Do you think this is it? The bombers?”

  In the shadows of the kitchen, that pure blue flame. “How many radar returns?”

  “Six.”

  “Then probably not.”

  He scraped his forefinger across the emerging beard on his jaw. “Should I awaken a Presidente? The colonel said I was not to worry her, but ...”

  “Then don’t.”

  An anxious nod. “I have forty—two boys outside. This night is the first they have spent away from home. The first dinner they have not eaten at their mother’s. We teach our militia to direct traffic, to keep order at soccer games. They don’t understand war. Do you think the Americans will consider that?”

  The coffeepot began to sputter. The fire blazed orange; it danced and hissed.

  “I doubt they will,” she said.

  * * *

  The brightening horizon startled Roger, sent his head banging into the car window, sent Dee’s pistol sliding off his lap.

  In the shadows of the backseat, Jaje muttered. Her eyes were puffy. Mascara had run. Her hair looked like a bird’s nest wanna—be. God. She tore his heart out.

  “Ready to get up and get at ’em?” No matter how encouraging he sounded, he himself was not. His back was stiff, his sinuses stuffy, his mouth furred.

  She groaned and pulled the blanket over her head. He fumbled around on the floorboard until he found the gun.

  “I’ll drive up the road. Bound to be a town. We’ll get some breakfast, how’s that?” He received a grunt in reply.

  Roger rolled the window down. The morning breeze tickled his cheek, ruffled his hair. It stirred a layer of dust on the dash. He yawned. Thirty degrees above a golden horizon hung the searchlight that was Venus, and above that, silent and smooth, six contrails sketched the sky.

  “Jaje?” he breathed.

  He heard her sit up.

  How could the morning be so hushed? The white contrails against the bowl of the heavens so beautiful? To have struck moisture, the planes had to be high, far higher than a commercial jet. The dull thunder of a sonic boom followed them—they were moving fast.

  “Look.” She sounded awed.

  He started the car, headed back to the highway, and followed the planes east, toward dawn.

  “What does that mean?”

  They were already gone, the chalk marks of their passage growing fat and gauzy. “They were too high for bombers,” he said. “Fighters? I don’t know. Maybe it was a warning.” He thought: Maybe it was scouts.

  His hands shook. Ten kilometers. Twenty. Winds in the upper atmosphere pulled the remains of the contrails apart.

  Over the next rise lay a small town. Roger parked and they got out. The venda door was open. Bare dangling light—bulb. Music from a radio. A periquito in a bamboo cage. Everything was so ordinary.

  The one—room store had bread and fresh cheese and soft drinks. Roger bought toothpaste and toothbrushes, deodorant, jeans, and knit shirts.

  Carrying her toothbrush and new clothes, Jaje walked behind the counter, pushing through a curtain of onion braids and frilly little—girl dresses. She went to the bathroom to change.

  The storekeeper said, “I saw the planes early. Heard a boom.”

  “Sonic boom. They were going faster than sound.”

  “Ah. The Americans invading?”

  The store was flour—dusty, fragrant with sugar and cinnamon, sour with vinegar and lye. “I don’t think so.” Roger took a breath. “I don’t know.”

  She wrapped the cheese. “You American?”

  “Australian.”

  “Kangaroos,” she said, and nodded.

  “Yeah.” Roger dropped his eyes. “Kangaroos.”

  When they had changed, Roger and Jaje went outside. While the sun rose, and before the dust came up, they ate. “I know you want to talk to your Aunt Dee,” he told her. “But I just don’t see how you can do that. I mean, she’s in jail.”

  The expected argument never came. Jaje nibbled absently on a piece of cheese.

  “Jaje, you have to get out of the country.”

  She hugged her knees. “Those could have been our planes.”

  He reached out and took her hand. She didn’t pull away. “You can come back when it’s over.” He knew she couldn’t. At least, wouldn’t want to. Not to what was left. “Let me just call somebody, okay? You can trust them. They can take care of it all.”

  “The CIA?” The sarcasm had deserted her voice. Roger already missed it.

  He squeezed her fingers. “MUFON,” he said.

  CNN, Live

  ... rumors that a coup has taken place.

  Their embassy here is vigorously denying that. You’re familiar with the situation, Susan. What do you think?

  Bernie? It’s true that Bonfim hasn’t been sighted for a couple of days. And the way Brazil historically hands over the reins of power is during a quiet palace coup, not a bloody revolution. Portugal works the same way, as a matter of fact.

  Who would have taken over, then? Machado and the Army? O.S. and the police?

  Well, I’m not sure anyone has taken over.

  So ...

  Um, but I think they’d go for a coalition government, one set up simply to expedite ... you know how that works, and then there would be some behind—the—scenes backstabbing, and either the Army or the police would come out the eventual victor.

  Bets on?

  Army. Let’s face it. They have the tanks. They have the trained troops. Machado’s had experience. He’s been through a power struggle before. And Carvalho’s got too much bad history to be effective. I don’t think the Brazilian people would go for him. I know the United States would find him a problem. And the one thing Brazil wants to avoid now is problems.

  DAY BROKE, gold and royal blue. To a fanfare from the Valley’s roosters, chickens paraded the yard. From the center of the village, the temple bells rang. Hiroshi sat huddled in his blanket on the cold hard clay.

  The sun was a hand’s span high when a yellow hound limped out from under the steps, regarded Hiroshi suspiciously, and then lay down, one paw to each side of his water bowl. By the time Xuli emerged from her house, it was mid—morning.

  “Why you here?”

  Hiroshi rose and bowed. “Please. I have no one else to turn to.” His joints were stiff. His back ached. He unwound himself from the blanket. Only then did he notice how hot the day was, and how he was sweating.

  “Why you got the gun?” A face like a scowling dark moon.

  He had forgotten he was holding it. “They are after me, and soon they will kill me.” His knuckle had cramped around the trigger. “Please. You must tell me what to do.”

  She nodded. “Come in.”

  The house stank of old garlic and beans and of the rank foreign smell of her.

  “Sit down,” she told him.

  He wanted the clean taste of green tea, but she served him dark syrupy coffee. The white bread she gave him stuck like paste in his throat. “There is nothing left for me. I have turned against my own people,” he said. “I have betrayed my position. I cannot pay the debt of my father.”

  She nodded. “Maria Bonita says you don’t sleep anymore at night, and that it is the Americans’ fault. Eat your breakfast.”

  He lowered his head. The wood tabletop was worn smooth by years of scrubbing, bleached bone—white by lye soap. On it, tarnished silverware, cracked crockery plates. The kitchen smelled of dust and mold and strange spices. Hiroshi felt such a rush of homesickness that it brought tears to his eyes. “Sorry. Please. I cannot eat this food.

  “You eat what I serve you,” she
told him. “This is the road you take now, the way to your destiny.” She spread a roll with butter, stuffed it with cheese, with sausage.

  He ate, gagging. The food lay heavy in his belly. When he was finished, she took him to the living room, lit candles, and closed the shutters. She pulled the curtain at the kitchen doorway to.

  “Kneel down,” she said. “Don’t sit, Samurai. You kneel. There’s gods watching.”

  Warm in the room, and close. Yet Hiroshi could not stop shivering. Candle flames leaped in the shadows. It might have been night, but for the incandescent wedge of sun between shutter and jamb.

  “Close your eyes. I been talking to Exú about you,” she said.

  A scratching at the window, like a curious cat. The smell of incense. Afraid, Hiroshi opened his eyes. The room had changed. It was darker, most of the candles out. Before him squatted the massive form of Xuli.

  “Don’t look at me!”

  A strange, youthful timbre in her voice. He obeyed. The blackness behind his lids terrified him. The drone in his head returned.

  No Bahian anymore. No African lilt. Xuli spoke in the hardscrabble accent of the northeast. “I am that spirit which enters the body of the entity you call Xuli. I fill her like water. You are to be a vessel for a spirit called Brazil. It will fill you to bursting. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now.” A rustle of clothes. She leaned close; breath warm against his face, voice intimate as a kiss. “Tell Maria Bonita what makes you afraid.”

  His throat was tight. He swallowed. Maria Bonita, the pretty one, who fought and died alongside the bandit Lampião. A spirit with the voice of an angel. He wanted to open his eyes and see. “I am afraid to be alone.”

  “And tell Maria Bonita what makes you ashamed.”

  The question rocked him back on his heels, made him want to howl with grief. “I am ashamed to have forgotten my place.”

  “Shhh.” A touch on his knee. “Maria Bonita knows someone has betrayed you. I want you to call this someone’s name.”