Cradle of Splendor

by Patricia Anthony

Gingerly, McNatt touched his face. “Oh, just as well.”

  I’ve lost every fucking worthwhile thing in my whole fucking worthless life. Roger couldn’t stop himself. Right in front of the tough guys, he leaned his cheek against the car window and sobbed.

  CNN, Live

  There, Bernie!

  Ye—

  God! Incredible! Thick column of smoke. Up from the Military Sector. The whole area’s burning, I felt the hotel shudder, and we must be—oh—several miles away.

  Um. Preliminary report corning in now from the Pentagon, Susan ... ah, they don’t know what to make of it, either.

  Awesome, Bernie. The noise. The windows here in the room rattled so hard I thought they’d break, and I have, and I have some binoculars with me, and can see ... I don’t know if we can get a picture from this distance ... glass—sided buildings down in the Commercial Sector, um, just shattered. Some panes simply shattered by the force of that explosion.

  The Pentagon is saying this was not a U.N. strike. I repeat, ladies and gentlemen. What you are seeing on the screen, the aftermath of that explosion, was not caused by a U.N. bomb.

  Bernie! Can you hear the sirens?

  Yes, I he—

  So many fire trucks. All headed up Via N1.

  Totally unexpected.

  Down on the sidewalk, there’s a squad of militia. The officer with them is trying to ... but they’re just milling around in complete confusion. And, I suppose, a bit of panic.

  “I REMEMBER the first time we met.” Dolores, having drunk her own beer, deftly appropriated the rest of Ana’s. “You just won your first election, and there was a party—remember? A lot of the Congress was there.”

  Ana pushed her luncheon plate away, half eaten. “Elected officials at a party. Coca—Cola? General Motors? Some American company with shallow slogans and deep pockets.” She sat back and looked wistfully out the window.

  Strange. So many years together. Dolores had forgotten how beautiful, how tiny, Ana was. She should have painted that face while she had the chance. No. Sculpted it in clay. Run her fingers along those ovals and hollows, so that her hands would never forget.

  “It’s quiet here,” Ana said. “Um. The party ...”

  Ana nodded. “Always the same: Barry Manilow, whiskey, blank checks, bad food.”

  The refrigerator, an ancient round—shouldered Climax, buzzed as the motor kicked in. “I can’t remember the year ...”

  Ana said, “Nothing changes but the dates on the checks.”

  “Early, though. Several years away from the CIA approaching me. I was still trying to learn Portuguese, I think.” A time when the hollows in Ana’s face were fuller. Dolores closed her eyes, heard the beep of a car horn. The far, happy screams of children.

  And Ana’s sad chuckle. “You never stop learning. I wish ... But things come too late, don’t they? Knowing what would make you happy. Mountains and beaches and a little quiet.”

  Dolores kept her eyes shut so that Ana could be voice, something to hold onto, something she couldn’t disassemble into visual component parts. “The band was playing the National Anthem, and you came up beside me. ‘Lying eternally in a cradle of splendor,’ you said, and then you asked if I thought Ford—that’s right. It was Ford who gave the party—if Ford would be on top. I was scandalized that a government official could make jokes like that.”

  “Um. Our anthem is immensely lampoonable. Pretty words. Not such a pretty tune. Yours, of course, is impossible. I must tell you: I’ve heard all the anthems now, and only Germany’s and Japan’s and France’s are worth hearing.”

  “Ana. Are you going to let me tell my story?”

  “I thought it was over.”

  “No. I’m trying to make a point. Where I grew up, everything was sacred: high school history, the Pledge of Allegiance, football games, the goddamned nightly news. America’s a place where everybody tells everybody else what to do. Which reminds me, you’re not as irreverent as you were.”

  A tapping sound. Dolores opened her eyes. Ana’s perfect, small head was lowered. No music, at least none that Dolores could hear. Yet Ana was counting rhythm with her fork. “Serious. Yes. I was elected to be Brazil’s designated driver.”

  “Please. Don’t make me leave.”

  Ana dropped the fork. “You should have known what would happen.”

  “The CIA was a lark for me, Ana.”

  A slight shake of her head. “I should have known better, too.”

  “What will I do in Canada?”

  Ana finally looked up. “You will ski. Take care of Jaje. Have snowball fights with Jack. Live your life.”

  “There isn’t any life except painting. I don’t have any home but Brazil.”

  Ana seemed startled. “You will do this for me, Dolores. Jaje is my life.”

  “You’re her mother.”

  “She doesn’t need me. She was always more your child than mine. My fault. I should have taken up painting or some other woman’s work instead of—”

  A noise at the door. The major burst in. He had a cellular phone in one hand. “Presidente, General Fernando has just called. Your daughter ...”

  Ana’s face didn’t change, but her hands clenched. Dolores reached out and held onto that small, trembling fist. Held it hard.

  “Oh.” The major must have noticed the melancholy tension. He shook his head. “No. I meant that they have found her. And she’s all right. A little scraped from a fall. A doctor is seeing to her now. Then she is to come here with the man from the American library and the passports. They must leave for Peru at once.” He took a breath. His voice shook. “It pains me to inform you, but there has been an explosion in the Military Sector.”

  * * *

  The guard saw him approach and came to rigid attention. “Director.”

  Edson hurried through the lush garden and into the shade of the triangular roof. “Any news?”

  “Just the one explosion, sir. Perhaps it was a mistake, do you think?” The lieutenant opened the church door.

  “They here yet, son?”

  “No, sir. On their way.”

  The chapel of Our Lady of Fatima was shadowy, despite its architect’s enchantment with light. The air smelled of incense and wax. José Carlos sat alone on the floor near the wall, playing with a toy airplane.

  The plane dipped and rose, carried along on the boy’s zooms. José Carlos’s fly was open, his other hand busy.

  “José Carlinho,” Edson said. “Don’t touch yourself like that.”

  The hand pulled. Pulled. The plane soared and dived.

  “José Carlos!”

  Hard, fast motions. The boy’s whole body jerked. “You promised you would shoot him.”

  “Your father?”

  José Carlos slammed the plane into a pew. The wing broke.

  “Stop.” Edson dropped to one knee and pulled the boy’s hand free.

  José Carlos drove the toy hard, painfully into Edson’s shoulder. “You kissed the thing in papai.” The hand went back into the pants.

  “Don’t, Zézinho. That’s dirty.”

  “You’re the one who’s dirty. You kissed it. It told me you did. And it hurts me. And it never lies. You want me to kiss you, too.” The boy pulled Edson’s zipper down, squirmed his small hand inside.

  Desire came on so fast that it outraced good sense, and even humiliation. “Damn it!” Edson knocked José Carlos against the wall. “Damn it! Don’t ever do that!” He fastened his pants.

  José Carlos looked up, bewildered. Fearful. “But that’s what love is.”

  The boy was on the floor, pants to his hips, so defenseless that he frightened Edson. Edson was afraid, too, of the shadow at the bottom of that open zipper, and what was waiting for him there. He wanted José Carlos to touch him again, wanted it so badly that he doubled up his fist a
nd punched the boy, hard, harder, just to make the need stop.

  José Carlos crawled away until he fetched up against the corner.

  God. No. How could he have done that? Had he hurt him? Oh. Had anyone seen? Edson knelt by the pew, terrified. He knew he should check to see if the boy was all right, but he was afraid that if he touched him, one touch wouldn’t be enough, just like one blow hadn’t been enough.

  “Zé Carlos?” A safe two meters distant, the boy sat, doubled up with pain, and rocking. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  Nossa Senhora. What was happening to him? Edson had never wanted to touch a child like that. Never felt a hunger as sick.

  We are explorers, you and me.

  From her niche, Mary looked down. Could she understand that Edson had no choice? It was either shove his fist into the boy’s stomach, or else his cock into his mouth? The fist was not unthinkable.

  After all, Edson had killed children before. Older ones, predatory adolescents. And then it was only a job. Nothing but duty. Something to do quickly and right. Oh, but this ...

  All the boy’s fault. He had wanted to be fondled, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he begged for it with his eyes? That was it. And Edson had merely felt the pull of gravity: dark appetite to dark.

  A sound at the door brought Edson upright, his cheeks burning. Bracing himself against a pew, he stood.

  Nando was striding down the aisle. “A whole barracks gone. We are still pulling out bodies. And you know what the reporters say on CNN? That it was an accident. Oh, yes. Our accident. And they can prove it, can’t they? American Army intelligence has satellite photos. Therefore a barracks becomes an armory. And a cruise missile becomes our own damned fault.”

  Edson’s eyes moved to the corner where José Carlos was hiding. Would the boy talk? What would Nando do then?

  In his passing. Nando battered a pew so hard that the wood boomed like a drum, hit it so hard that Edson flinched and, in his corner, José Carlos shook. The general’s bellow pounded the silence. “God help me! Little children in uniform, Edson. With legs gone. With arms missing. What will I tell their mothers?” He halted when he caught sight of José Carlos.

  The boy’s pants were still down. God bless. Nando would know. Because however gentle Nando was, like everyone, he had grown up touching himself under the covers, thinking childhood’s nasty thoughts. Yes, Nando knew how iniquity felt. And perhaps if he had murdered more than his brother—in—law, he would learn to love killing, like Edson.

  “Come out of there, boy.”

  José Carlos got up, holding his side.

  Nando said gruffly, “Pull up those pants, José Carlinho. Little boys play with their pauzinhos, but not in church. And especially not in front of Our Lady. Oh. Look what you did with your pretty airplane.” He bent, gathered up the bits of the toy, and gave them back.

  Such kindness that it made Edson ache. Nando had more innocence in him than Edson had ever had, more than was left in José Carlos. What sort of monsters was Freitas making?

  “Nando,” Edson said. “I want my gun.”

  The general straightened, ruffled the boy’s hair. He turned, and Edson realized Nando knew not only what had happened, but the penance Edson had chosen. “Not yet,” he said.

  A noise at the door snagged Edson’s attention. Ana was walking in.

  When she was halfway down the aisle, Nando shouted, “I will not fire back!” His voice echoed along the high pitched ceiling. “We could not see the missile coming! They have stealth bombers, and we will not see them coming, either. Young boys, Ana. Young girls, nineteen and twenty—who only know parking tickets and directing traffic. You have given me an army of children, and I tell you what I will do with it: I will surrender.”

  “No, Nando. You won’t.”

  “Is that man of yours more important to you than this city? This country? Please. Please, Ana. The technology he channels to us is not worth this. Let the inspectors into Cabeceiras.”

  She spoke, and Edson had never heard such a soft voice. The answer brushed past the shadows, breathed along the banks of candles: “I can’t.”

  Nando closed his eyes, pressed his palms against his temples, as if her voice had been too loud to bear. “Then let me destroy it.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I warn you: if I can’t make the Americans fear me, I will send them to their knees with pity. I have taken the guns away from the militia. Even from the officers. The Americans will shoot, and when they see what they have done, they will weep, and put their weapons down.”

  God help the people of Brazil. Nando’s plan would kill them all. For Edson had discovered how good hurting the defenseless felt; and so he knew that once the Americans started killing, they would not stop.

  * * *

  Jack came, dragging suitcases, huffing and puffing enough to blow the frame house down. “Jaje’s on her way.”

  Dolores and the major fought a tug—of—war over who was going to help him. The major won possession of a makeup case and a pink overnight bag.

  “Stole this stuff.” The largest suitcase, a red Samsonite, hit the floor with a thud. Jack leaned over, put his hands on his knees, and tried to catch his breath.

  Dolores said, “You’re too old for this crap.”

  Jack laughed weakly. “The airport’s a mob scene. I stole these from a departing American Airlines flight.”

  The suitcase Dolores had wrenched from the major was leather, with earth—tone fabric inserts. The name on the tag read: Mrs. Nelson Albright. Mrs. Nelson Albright, as if marriage had absorbed her. Inside would be Family Value dresses, a June Cleaver strand of pearls, unliberated undergarments. God. And if she complained to Jack, he would look surprised. Then he would look hurt.

  He collapsed into a chair. “So. Red case is mine. You and Jaje can fight over the rest. Maybe the stuff’ll fit, maybe not, but at least Peruvian customs is going to see native American products.”

  The major was impressed by what Jack, the hunter, had brought. He squatted to pull the tags off the cases. “La—uuu—reu?” he read off the makeup bag. “La—u—reu Es—ski—nar. Puxa. A woman, neh? Everything smells like perfume.” He wiped his hands on his trousers. “They must be nice people. They must all be nice people. Myself, I think the explosion was a mistake. Whitney Houston. Bugs Bunny. E. T. It is not in your nature to slaughter. That is why General Fernando has ordered us to give up our weapons. I have even locked my sidearm—”

  Jack sat bolt upright. “What? He what?”

  The major was on one knee by the pile of bags, looking so small. Not brave like a soldier. Frightened, suddenly, like a mouse.

  A clatter at the door. A loud laugh. Jaje came limping in. “Titía Dee! Oh, look. You got banged up, too.” She had a bandage on one ankle, a scrape on her arm, and a wide smile. That small, perfect face could have been her mother’s when she was young—if Ana had led a sheltered life.

  “The CIA, like, captured me and everything? And they told me Mom was dead, and that the Army took over, but I knew Uncle Nando wouldn’t ever do that, so I jumped out of the car. And they tried to stop me? But I, like, kicked him real hard in the face, this guy. The CIA guy. This moreno hunk. He’s American, so maybe you know him and everything. A real to—die—for pão. And then they—oh, yeah—the hunk? So he like kills this guy right in front of me. Strangles him and everything. Really gross. And this guy at your house, Roger something? Some kinda computer guy or something, not the hunk, but I think he was CIA, too. And we drove around together, and he was, like, you know, trying to save me? I mean, Captain Geek—o to the rescue. But then the CIA found us ... Oh.” The flood halted. She looked confused. “Maybe he’s sort of in trouble now.”

  A militia colonel, a redheaded woman, came in the door behind Jaje. The major shot to his feet. Saluted.

  “Let’s go,” the colonel said. “The flight crew to Lima
is pretending they have problems with a tire, but they can only stall so long.”

  Dolores got up, gathered her purse. The major picked up the big leather suitcase before Dolores could grab it.

  “Lima?” Jaje stood in the center of the room, the center of attention, her hands on her hips. “I mean, I’m supposed to go to Lima? I don’t get to say anything about it? Isn’t this just like Mom. She never cares how I—”

  The slap was so odd. Dolores never felt her arm move, didn’t even know it had—until that sound. Until the skin on her palm tingled. Until that too—familiar cheek went red.

  And after the slap was over—it hadn’t been much of a blow, not really—the room went very still.

  Then the colonel said, “Ready?” and Jack picked up his bag, and Jaje, tears in her eyes, picked up the pink overnight case, and life continued smoothly out the door and to the waiting car, as if the slap had never happened.

  * * *

  The soldiers didn’t follow. No one tried to stop them. And as they drove on, it looked like the militia were leaving the streets. Jerry pulled to the curb and got out of the car. Artie slid behind the wheel. A few blocks later they played musical car again: Artie got out, McNatt climbed in the front and ordered Roger into the passenger side.

  Roger sat, glum. Why hadn’t he heard the thumps? Had they run over her or not? Was Jaje dead or alive or maybe hurting? He wanted to jump out of the speeding car himself and go find her. He wanted to ask McNatt if he’d heard anything, but the major looked preoccupied.

  On a side street on the northeast side of town, they abandoned the Buick. Roger followed McNatt to a sprawling house that overlooked the lake. Then walked with him through a thicket of palms and elephant ears to the servant’s quarters.

  McNatt opened the door, and by the time the door started to close—one, two, quick as that—he’d handcuffed Roger’s right wrist. Roger jumped sideways. Let out a squeal like a hog. “Jesus! Oh, Jesus!” How had McNatt done that? Where had those handcuffs been hiding? Christ. Were those Marcel’s death handcuffs, or not? Roger whipped his left arm around wildly, keeping it from McNatt’s reach.