The Barbarian Nurseries

by Héctor Tobar

  She began walking again, but was aware that by stopping and starting with the passing of the patrol car she had drawn attention to herself.

  “Hey, that’s her!” shouted the voice of an adolescent boy standing behind her on the sidewalk. She continued walking without looking back. “That’s the lady! From the TV!”

  Araceli took a few more steps until a second voice shouted from one of the doorways, “¡La secuestradora!“ She turned and saw a woman with dimpled cheeks pointing at her from a cement porch, with the glee of a person who has scratched the skin of a lottery card and discovered a twenty-dollar prize. Araceli stumbled away, walking faster, frightened as much by the voyeurism of the people around her as by the idea that they might hand her over to the police. “¡Es ella! La vi en el canal 52. ¿A dónde vas?“ She began a light jog, thinking that she might be safe as soon as she turned the corner and escaped this block and its Greek chorus of television watchers, people who believed she was the secuestradora in the news montages, a villainous taker of children.

  “¡Córrele!” a man shouted with a gusto usually reserved for horse races and cattle roundups.

  “¿Y los niños?” a woman’s voice pleaded as she turned the corner, and Araceli was tempted to turn and say, I don’t have them, I never took them. She reached a block where narrow bungalows were lined like railroad boxcars in parallel rows, their square lawns transformed by drought into flat and featureless dust squares. Plastic curls of Christmas lights hung from the eaves, and all the residents were inside, glued to their televisions, she guessed, looking at Araceli’s fuzzy picture on their screens. A block later she found herself standing underneath the enormous zinc torso of a power transmission tower, eight lines attached to four arms that stretched out like a woman having herself measured for a dress. The lines loomed above a corridor of vacant land that ran several straight miles through residential neighborhoods, one tower following another until they gradually disappeared into the midday ozone bake of dirty-blue haze and nothingness. Araceli took a second or two to contemplate the hugeness of the tower above her, and the oddity of the notch that had been cut into the grid of homes. She jumped over the short fence that proclaimed NO TRESPASSING and began to walk under the trunk lines, thinking there would be no nosy television watchers to bother her as she walked here, and that she might be able to follow the lines northward to the peopleless heart of the metropolis, and the safety of factory buildings and warehouses. Her legs labored against the uneven, weed-covered ground, because she was entering a kind of urban wilderness, a nursery of odd flora sprouting up through the mustard grass. A cypress tree, its canopy shaped like a large wing. Sickly rosebushes without buds. Strawberry plants clinging to a patch of loam. Bamboo grasses and a stunted palm with thin leaves that sprouted, fountainlike, from its trunk, and the wide, tall bouquet of a nopal cactus. She had stumbled into the back closet of California gardens, the place where seedlings of plants discarded and abandoned came to scratch their roots into the dry native soil. If she hadn’t been on the run, she might have stopped to admire this freakish landscape, and she might have noticed too the cluster of cameras and lights in the distance.

  Instead, the film crew saw her first, when, about eight hundred yards to the north, an Estonian cinematographer peered into the viewfinder of his camera. Araceli was under the second tower in the distance, a woman stumbling forward in the dancing waves of rising heat, lifting her legs over the weedy land like a woman wading through snowdrifts. “Someone is in my shot,” the cinematographer said, his neck bent and face attached to the eyepiece. “They are coming into the shot.”

  “Again?” the director called out. “Where?”

  A dozen or so members of the small film crew began squinting at the horizon. They were shooting the coda of an indie feature with a modest $3.1 million budget, and they had already been bedeviled by the appearance of the helicopters, which were driving the sound guy loopy. At the director’s behest the cinematographer had filmed the circling craft for two minutes and forty-five seconds, capturing their lead actor looking up at the machines circling over the wires, the expression of foreboding and curiosity on his tanned face completely in line with the themes of the screenplay. Electrical towers appeared at the end of each of the film’s three acts, and the cinematographer had shot other towers and wires in the San Bernardino Mountains, and in the plain of tumbleweeds outside Henderson, Nevada, and the Cimarron Grasslands of southwestern Kansas. The Huntington Park shoot was intended for the epilogue, the towers and the barren channel of weeds at the actor’s feet symbols of the protagonist’s failed search for self in Las Vegas casinos and a Kansas beef-processing town.

  “I told you these Eastside locations were a bitch,” the key grip said. “I told you.” Most of the local residents had behaved themselves: they were used to being put out by film crews drawn to the grim and epic backdrop, and only the appearance of an A-list actor or Mexican television star really got them very excited. Every few minutes, however, there was the straggling homeless person, or a gangbanger on his bicycle, people who hadn’t read the letter: Sorry for the inconvenience: We’re bringing a little bit of Hollywood to your neighborhood!

  “Now I see him,” the director said.

  “Her. It’s a she.”

  At that instant a helicopter swooped in close to the trunk line and a police car emerged with a squeaky skid on one of the streets that cut through the corridor. Two officers jumped out of the car and the figure of the woman began to run toward the crew.

  “Whoa, they’re chasing her.”

  “They’ve got their sticks out.”

  “Is this real?”

  “Batons. You call them batons, not sticks.”

  “Are you getting this?” the director yelled to the cinematographer. He called out the name of the lead actor, a bright young prospect whose presence in the film had assured its funding—he was a twenty-four-year-old Australian with a sparse chestnut beard that matched his eyes, and a Gary Cooper everyman quality that screamed out he was destined for big-budget greatness. “In character,” the director said. “Stay in character.” The actor took a breath and a moment to remember his drama-school improvisation training and stretched his arms down at his sides. He relaxed his facial muscles into a look of genuine puzzlement and muted pleading captured in profile as he watched the foot chase that was now headed in his direction, a Mexican woman towing a cloud of dust and two running men in black, a spectacle now about one hundred yards distant.

  “They’re going to beat her,” a crew member said breathlessly. “They’re going to beat her to a pulp.”

  “Take a step toward them. Just one step.”

  The actor moved hesitatingly toward the running woman, as if he wanted to help her but was not sure he could.

  “Good. Now one more. Just one. Are we still getting this?”

  “Yes, I’m on a tiny f-stop,” the cinematographer said. “The depth of field is magnificent.”

  “Beautiful.”

  Weeks later in the editing room, the director and his editor would incorporate about seventy-five seconds of this footage into the final version of the film. Araceli never saw the camera, or the actor, or the film crew. She was focused on the men trailing behind her and the idea that she might elude them. They had come to grab her and bind her hands in plastic strings, but she still found herself suppressing a laugh as she ran, even with brambles scratching at her ankles, because there was the quality of a schoolyard game to being chased around like this. There are other, easier ways of returning to Mexico. They will grab me and drag me across the dirt like a calf in the rodeo, and then cage me. We must endure these rituals of humiliation: this is our Mexican glory, to be pursued and apprehended in public places for bystanders to see.

  If you let me go, señores, I will merely walk to the bus station and buy a ticket back to my country. No les molesto más. They were far behind her, at first, and for a moment she entertained the thought that if she could reach the next street, or slip into
an alleyway or a backyard, she might elude them and find her own route home. But she was not a good runner. The first police officer quickly closed the gap, sprinting with a determined, middle-aged ferocity that surprised and frightened her, his face turning crimson and sweat bursting from his face and chest. When he reached her he was still running much too fast, and stumbled on top of her while trying to apprehend her, his body crushing hers as they both fell to the soil, their mouths filled with dirt and sticky weeds.

  BOOK THREE

  Circus Californianus

  I would take up wickedness again … And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again …

  —Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

  16

  Araceli refused to speak for the first two hours she spent in custody. She did not complain after being covered with dust by the police officer’s clumsy collision tackle, or offer a retort to the taunt of the second officer, who said, “Back to Meh-hee-coe for you, buh-bye,” as he escorted her to the patrol car. She said nothing as they walked past the cluster of residents who repeated in whispers the accusation they had heard on their Spanish-talking televisions: la secuestradora. She resisted the temptation to sling back a riposte when one of the more ignorant members of the crowd spat at her in English, “What did you do to those kids, bitch?” She merely squinted up into the midday glare and the fleet of circling television helicop fers, which had joined the police helicopters in an aerial hyena prowl, and then at the crowd, recognizing a face or two from the lynch mob that had gathered outside the Luján residence the night before: they were looking at her with the same mixture of morbid fascination and inch-deep pity with which a chilango crowd greeted a corpse on the sidewalk, and she thought of all the sarcastic things she might say if she had the nerve. Look, and look closely, because any one of you might be next. But of course she said nothing, and she kept to her mute act as another set of officers took her fingerprints and escorted her to a holding cell at the Huntington Park Police Station. Nor did she speak as a third set of officers drove her across many suburbs and freeways and interchanges, through city air heavy and opaque with the gray haze and smoky aroma spewed by a distant and massive brush fire. When she arrived at another holding cell, at the South County Operations station, she told herself she would remain silent until they escorted her across the border, or until she landed at the airport in Mexico City. Obviously, I would prefer to take the plane back. She’d watch the route she took to this country pass beneath her feet, backward: the American highways, the desert passes, the Sonoran cities, the toll roads through arid landscapes dotted with oak trees and adobe walls painted with the slogans of presidential candidates, and finally the mouse-maze sprawl of that last metropolis she had once called home and would call home again soon, that city of museums and galleries and monuments that Griselda wanted to visit, but could not.

  They brought her to an interrogation room and told her to sit down and she began to think about what she would say to her mother when they saw each other, and how much time would pass before she found herself working in that cramped kitchen next to the old woman again. She wondered if there might still be a way to get to that money she had in the bank in Santa Ana. Saving that money had been a “bad girl” thing to do, but now it might emancipate her from her mother’s kitchen and open the path to a new, radical Mexican self. There were rebellious things a woman could do in Mexico if she didn’t care what people said, bohemian gathering spots that awaited the free spirit: Huatulco and the hippies on the Oaxacan coast, Palenque and incense-burning shamans of Veracruz.

  Now three men entered the room: a police officer in a stiff wool uniform and a brass badge; a green-eyed police detective of about fifty in gray blended slacks, emitting an air of slovenly boredom; and a smartly dressed man of about thirty-five, with a narrow face that sprouted like a tree stump from his stiff collar, and blond hair that swooshed across the top of his head like a golden wave frozen at midcrest. Alone among these three, the last man was not perspiring, and he took a seat at the table where Araceli was sitting, the older police detective squeezing next to him, and after an elbow collision or two it was clear the room was too small to accommodate them all. The room was about the size of the walk-in closet off the master bedroom in Paseo Linda Bonita, and the three men bumped chests and shoulders as they tried to sit down at once on the empty chairs, until the officer in uniform finally stood up and took a place in the open doorway.

  “Damn. Couldn’t we get something bigger?” the younger man in the suit said.

  “Budgets,” said the man with the gray slacks. “We asked for more rooms. So they took the ones we had and split ‘em in half.” Settling into his chair, he now introduced himself as Detective Mike Blake, and said the younger man in the suit was Assistant District Attorney Ian Goller.

  “And your name, according to this card we have here, is Araceli N. Ramirez,” the police detective said, speaking with a weary congeniality that caught Araceli by surprise. He placed a manila envelope on the table, removed her Mexican election card, and studied it, as if he were trying to discern the meaning of the words Instituto Mexicano Electoral, which circled an eagle clutching a serpent. “Interesting. I guess you need this to vote in Mexico.”

  Araceli remained silent, remembering the little speech given by the officer who’d put her in the patrol car, reading in Spanish from a card that he drew from his back pocket: Usted tiene el derecho a guardar silencio. That’s another thing I really like about this country, she thought. The right to keep your lips pursed together like a chaste nun in a convent is enshrined in their Constitution, and there is no officer or judge who can force you to open your mouth.

  “Had lunch yet?” Detective Blake asked. “Because I can get you something to eat. But I need you to start talking to me.”

  “Or we can send you back down to that little cell without lunch,” Goller said.

  “Look, I’m sure it was just some misunderstanding, right?” Detective Blake said. “Explain it to us.”

  Araceli looked firmly into their English-speaking eyes and wondered if she should trust them.

  “Listen, we know you speak English perfectly well,” the representative of the district attorney’s office said brusquely. Ian Goller had received this essential bit of information from Maureen back at Paseo Linda Bonita, and he now believed that Araceli was deliberately pretending not to understand, which only added to his frustration. He had seen this behavior many times before: criminal suspects from foreign countries who believed their non-English-speaking tongues gave them additional immunity from speaking the truth. “So why did you run away?”

  Araceli almost replied to this question, because of its transparent stupidity. Why does the rabbit run from the fox? she wanted to say. Why does the hen run from the woman with the knife in her hand? Instead, she narrowed her eyes and glared back in approximate imitation of an irritated Mexican schoolteacher.

  “Wanna go back to the cell?” Goller barked. “We’ll send you back now. Without lunch. Or you can just tell us what you were up to. Why would you take those two boys on a little jaunt? To what purpose? Where did you go?” It had been ages since Ian Goller found himself sitting across a table from an uncharged criminal suspect—he was, almost exclusively, an administrator now—and he was quickly falling back to a bad habit from his early days as a prosecutor: losing his professional detachment. “Here’s what I see. You took these children without permission to a dangerous corner of the city. You left two good parents worried sick inside the house, without a clue to where you might be.” The detective sitting next to him was looking irritated, but Goller didn’t notice and wouldn’t have cared if he did. “You never expressed any interest in the welfare of these boys and suddenly, when you’re alone with them, you go off. Why?”

  The assistant district attorney did not fully appreciate the bewilderment that had suddenly taken hold of Araceli’s face, though the detective did. Detective Blake decided he should try and take back control o
f the interrogation. But before he could, Goller blurted out, “What did you think? That you were their mother? Or was it money you were after? Because, obviously, you weren’t being paid enough for all the work you did. Right? So you wanted more money.”

  Araceli took a few seconds to digest the insinuations and to study the man making them. She was struck by the embittered outrage with which the assistant district attorney embraced his vision of her. He seemed to believe that she lacked basic human morality and intelligence; at the same time, he thought her capable of great criminal cunning. Certain backward men in Mexico looked at all women this way and Araceli was momentarily reminded of a few ugly encounters in her past. “You just couldn’t stand working for this family,” Ian Goller continued, and fell back in his chair with a satisfied lean, as if he had figured it all out, striking the flimsy wall of the interrogation room as he did so and causing the tiny room to shake. “They trust you with their kids and you want to make them suffer? I don’t get it. Or are you just incredibly irresponsible?” Araceli tried to see the events of the past week as this excellently dressed and coiffed gentleman imagined them. She formed a mental picture of herself taking Brandon and Keenan to a bank, exchanging them for their weight in gold; or to some mustachioed broker of stolen children, for a stack of pesos. In the prosecutor’s vision, Araceli was doing those things, while Maureen and Scott were two parents who dutifully entrusted Brandon and Keenan to her, maybe even kissing them goodbye as they left them in her care. These absurd thoughts, and the prosecutor’s look of deepening revulsion, caused her mouth to explode suddenly with a loud and sustained guffaw, what Spanish speakers call a carcajada, an onomatopoeia that suggests a cackling bird. Araceli’s laugh, however, was a deeper mammalian sound, born below the esophagus, a laugh she associated in her youth with certain mean-spirited street vendors in Nezahualcóyotl, and with her own hidalguense grandmother. She laughed and felt the lifting of the day’s sum of tension, a release that gave her mirth its own momentum, and she leaned forward in her chair with a true burst of joyfulness that showed the three men in the room the grinning teeth that had seduced Sasha “the Big Man” Avakian so long ago. She kept on laughing as her eyes caught those of the detective and the police officer, who were both raising their lips in subtle smiles that suggested they got the joke too. Her laughter pinged off the steel table and the glass of the two-way mirror that dominated the room, for thirty seconds in all, until she finally stopped and let out a satisfied half sigh.