Sevastopol

by Emilio Fraia

  He didn’t want to find them when he entered a room, he didn’t want to see them above the fireplace. In his bedroom, before going to bed, he preferred to be alone with the bare walls, boots in the corner, jacket on the coat rack. It was a simple room. With a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. A bed that creaked, devoured by termites.

  Every so often you could see him through a crack in the door, lying on the bed, masturbating with his eyes closed, in silence, his limp dick in his hands. After he came, a dry emission, Nilo would look at the wall, at the empty shelf. No photos. He’d rather not trade turmoil for piety, old men shouldn’t be good or pious.

  Nilo looks at his watch, Walter walks beside him. Adán disappeared exactly forty-eight hours ago. Forty-eight hours and thirty-two minutes. He asks Walter if the man might be in the pool. Walter says no. We drained the pool, don’t you remember? Nilo blinks. I’d drain all the water from everything if I could! Because water’s got a mind of its own. Just like objects. And fire. Nilo had been initiated into Shamanism. He saw shapes in the fire. Fire is linked to clarity and consciousness. Many nights, he would build a fire and sit there, alone, on a log, watching the flames. Man looks at the world through eyes that are circles. The Earth, the Moon, the Sun, and the planets are circular. Sunrise and sunset follow a circular movement. The seasons form a circle. Birds build circular nests, animals mark their territories in circles. Sitting on the concrete bench beside the tennis court, Adán drew circles with a stick in the dirt.

  Nilo thinks that men’s stories are all one and the same. So when our past is hollowed out, when we free ourselves from it, we can go on to live other lives, find our story in other lives, as if there were a continuum of bodies and minds, and Adán’s story is also his story, and also his life.

  In Lima, three nights a week, after work, Adán drove a taxi he rented from an acquaintance. It was a Fiat. One of those little ones. He thought about trying to fix his father’s Belina, which was still sitting in the garage, but kept putting it off. Deep down, he thought it should stay there, like a fossil. He’d heard his father liked cars. So, every day before he left, Adán stood there, staring at that car. Then he’d go on his way. He would pick up the Fiat at six in the evening and return it around five in the morning the next day.

  That week, when this all happened, early one evening, Adán parked behind the Surquillo market, where people go to buy chickens, pork, beef, shellfish, eggs, grain, and fruit. The city’s air was poisonous. The last time it rained in Lima, old pal, as I’m sure you know, was in 1940. On the sidewalk, I remember, a blind guy was listening to music at full blast on a battery-powered radio and out of nowhere, I remember it clearly, a mototaxi cut in front of me and a bride and a little girl with an earthy-colored complexion in a yellow dress jumped out, holding a paper bouquet. She must’ve been about three years old, my son’s age.

  In the late seventies, Adán later learned, the Surquillo market caught fire and had just been reopened that year, in 1983. Adán thought about how, in one way or another, fires always followed him. This might have seemed symbolic, but deep down, of course, life’s accidents can’t explain anything, old pal, absolutely nothing. As I recall, it was a market that took up a whole block. Its white walls were painted with lime, and in contrast to the gray of the city, it stood gleaming behind a curtain of soot and pollution.

  I’d never been out there before. I didn’t know that a man, at one of the stalls in the back of the market, sold guinea pigs. Because that was my mission: to get a guinea pig. It took me a while to figure it out.

  On the phone that afternoon, Gracia had said that Oscar was still in bed, and that her mother, an old Indian woman with a craggy face that looked like a crumpled brown paper bag, said we should find a way to get a guinea pig. Gracia repeated this on the other end of the line: that I would have to find a way to get a guinea pig.

  First, I thought Oscar had brought up getting a pet again. And I blamed myself for not giving him one when he’d asked me. I thought about how he was sick now, and that it was my fault. Children get sick in situations like this. But it wasn’t about that.

  I was twenty-five when Gracia got pregnant. We stayed together for the first four months, I wanted to have a family, or at least I believed I did, but one day, I couldn’t explain why, everything seemed to fall apart. Or maybe it had never held together to begin with. It was an uneasiness, something physical that I thought would pass, but didn’t, as if that formula — the formula of fairy tales, living happily ever after and having lots of kids — now only left me feeling something between dread and indifference.

  Then Oscar was born, premature. He fit in the palm of my hand. After his birth, I disappeared for several months. Gracia got depressed, she lost eighteen kilos, I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said she nearly died. Whenever I came around, we’d end up having terrible fights. I’m not proud of it. The boy grew a little, she started to drink, and later ended up going to a support group. I went there one day. I think it was one of the saddest days of my life. It was in this shabby room, lit by bright fluorescent bulbs, with school desks arranged in a circle. Some parents only reconnect with their children many years later. Some parents vanish into the world. Some parents may actually be present, but deep down they’re not. They said things like this, which all seemed to be directed at me. The group was sponsored by the church on the ground floor of the building. Gracia didn’t show up that day. In her absence, I sat watching one woman. She spent the whole time with her eyes downcast and, near the end of the meeting, she took the floor.

  She started to talk about her husband who had died, her son who’d left home, and then segued into a story about the ocean, the waves — it’s out of our hands, we have to fight it, but it’s out of our hands, on calm seas there comes a time when we get tired of just treading water. Then she went back to talking about her husband and son. And, once more, to talking about the sea. Everyone listened without interruption, hypnotized. The stories ran in parallel, never meeting.

  Gracia told me about the animal, I remember, on the phone, in a faint voice, and a silence grew on the other end of the line. She sounded tired.

  It was as if Gracia had lost the will to argue and just wanted me to remember that I had a son, and that this son had spent all week throwing up, with a high fever, and had taken a turn for the worse. She said I had to get a guinea pig. Preferably female, less than ten days old. A cuy, from the Quechua quwi.

  Until that moment, I knew almost nothing about those animals, except that people in Peru eat them, something that always turned my stomach, which seemed more the result of hard times than anything else. At the time, I didn’t know the Incas plotted war strategies according to the patterns they found in the entrails of those animals, for example. I didn’t know the blood of a guinea pig was sprinkled on the wall of newly built houses to ensure their solidity. Or that old-timers used the animals to heal the sick, to undo hexes, to help lost causes. That’s what this was about. Gracia had watched her mother do it all her life. The healer holds the live animal by the paws and rubs it against the bodies of the sick. Then comes a series of chills, sweats. The animal is rubbed against the legs, torso, arms, over the head of the patient. Highly sensitive, the cuy absorbs all the illness from the sick body. And then, at the end, the animal dies. The men cut the animal open from chest to abdomen and examine its organs, looking for anything rotten or injured. And it never fails, it’s always there. That’s how they determine the type of illness the sick person has. If the animal’s liver is bad, it’s because there is a problem with the person’s liver. If it has a diseased paw, the person’s leg should be treated. If its little heart has some kind of tear, the healer has to cleanse the heart of evil and affliction. With a series of prayers and in a sort of trance, a healing treatment is performed on the animal’s body. This healing gets transferred to the person and then, at the end, the guinea pig’s dead body is placed in a bowl with coca leaves and offered to the spirits.
r />   Walter didn’t know whether the stories people used to tell about Nilo were true or not. But he did know that Nilo was a good boss. Even with everything going wrong, he’d never once paid him late. He was relaxed and easygoing. People said he’d been married to a woman, that this woman was young, that she played tennis and liked to swim. They also talked about a daughter. They said that over and over. In different ways. Like old stories from centuries past. There were rumors that over time Nilo had lost everything, that this piece of property was all he had left.

  Hermes knew that sooner or later he’d have to sell it. He knew about his problems, about the legal issues. So it would make sense for Nilo to accept his offer. He wanted to expand his farm, his business. It would be better for Nilo in the long run. He was old, he should go back to live in the city. The city is better for old people. Anyway, it was time for his daughter to come back, take care of her father, do something, get him out of that situation.

  On the sidewalk, a man hailed the taxi. It was almost ten o’clock. Adán pulled over the Fiat, the man brought his head to the car window, saying he was going to Avenida San Martin, 626. Adán unlocked the back door, the man lugged his big body inside, sat down, slamming the door. He was fat, out of breath. When he saw the cage with the animal in the front seat, he scowled, saying he knew all about this, that it was the kind of thing that made him hate that country, made him hate the whole continent. If you can, my friend, get out of here as soon as possible. Go far away. Here’s what the insides of that animal are going to tell you: this is a sick place.

  The man lit a cigarette, rolled down the window. Looking out, puffing smoke, he said the smell of shit in that city was unbelievable. They drove down wide avenues. The man talked about a nagging toothache that was giving him not only a lot of discomfort but also insomnia and a vague feeling of disillusionment. Adán punctuated the conversation with one-word answers, nodding automatically. Out of the blue, the man asked if Adán was from there. Adán said that he was born in Lima, but had grown up in Brazil, that his mother was Brazilian. The man chuckled, shook his head. It’s the same lousy story. They’re all crooks. Children getting killed every day. Blacks and Indians everywhere. Barricades. The demons have nowhere else to go. A pipe dream. I’ve been around, my friend. I know what I’m talking about.

  Adán turned onto an avenue and everything came to a standstill. Something had happened. He thought it might have been an accident. Then he saw men in helmets. Men working at different points along the road. Craters had been opened up in the asphalt. The car crept along slowly. It was like a glimpse into the future. Yesterday I saw a movie, the man said, about the diesel emissions fraud scandal. Mass murder. Nitric oxide. The automakers turned this city into one huge gas chamber.

  Out on the road, the men were melting, trapped by the hot air from the engines of the machinery. They descended, disappeared under the hot asphalt. It was as if there were an enormous furnace beneath the city, with Indians stoking the fires. Taking turns in eight-hour shifts. Logs were stacked in an attached depot, from the eucalyptus trees, from the felled trees. They use the toxic water from the Rimac to control the temperature. The thermometers have to stay at exactly sixty degrees, no more, no less.

  It was twenty past ten when Adán parked in front of 626 Avenida San Martin. The man asked him to wait.

  In the rearview mirror, Adán could see that something was wrong. The man checked a piece of paper he’d taken from his pocket. The yard at the house at number 626 was covered with weeds. It was probably abandoned.

  He went back to the car, got in again. He scratched his head. It’s not here, he said. He didn’t seem to understand. The cuy stuck its snout through the bars of the cage. It was getting acquainted with the car. It scratched the aluminum with its teeth, causing a terrible noise.

  Until that moment, Adán hadn’t realized that there was a sort of bundle sitting on the back seat next to the man. He got a glimpse of it and tried to look back over the seat again and saw, poorly wrapped in brown paper, a stone bust.

  Sculpted eyes, the head of a statue. The figure of an animal, a kind of brass llama, escaped from its top. It felt like a bad omen. He couldn’t explain it.

  There being nothing at that address, the man asked Adán to take him back to Avenida Nicolás de Piérola. I’m sorry, sir, Adán interrupted, but that won’t be possible. He explained that his son was ill. That he was late, that this was his last fare, that he had to go to Callao and that Nicolas de Piérola was on the other side of town.

  The man was silent at first. Then, realizing that Adán was serious, that he really wasn’t going to take him, he got out of the car, slamming the door, cursing, saying nothing would ever go right in that shitty country. He carried the bundle with him. As the man waited to cross the street, it became clear that the bundle was nothing more than some hideous knickknack, one of those that adorn the shelves in someone’s home, maybe it was a gift, maybe the man was taking it to someone else. Adán then turned around and took the coastal road. He was driving fast. The wires on the lampposts curled against the dark sky and the dim lights illuminated the roofs of the houses coated in dust. On the other side of the avenue, he saw the light from a fire burning behind a wall. A light that moved like the ocean. He saw an acacia planted along the sidewalk and its sad leaves. There was a layer of dust over everything. The windshield was covered in dust. Dust clung to things and people. He thought about his son. He thought he should take a stand, take the child with him, find a doctor, a hospital. The guinea pig was poking its snout through the openings in the cage, trying to sniff something. Adán thought he wouldn’t let the old woman cut open that little animal’s body, that Oscar would be well soon and it could be his pet. He wasn’t sure why, but at that moment he imagined his face pressed against the cold head of that statue. A shiver ran down his spine.

  When he pulled into La Punta, he could smell the ocean, the boats, the bustle. Is that where the Spaniards had landed in the Americas? Was that where people disappeared at sea in the seventies? He could hear the little paws of the animal next to him. It was getting agitated, pacing back and forth. Adán put his hand against the cage to calm it down. He made a long, wide turn that seemed to never end. He pulled the car over and, before coming to a complete stop, he saw Gracia across the street, in front of the house, sitting on a doorframe. Oscar was in her arms, covered in a small beige blanket. It was a long night, old pal. Adán prefers, in fact, not to say anymore. A tear runs down his face, it seems more like a wave goodbye.

  The river water is darker this time of year. That’s the impression it gives. Steadying himself against a rock, Nilo crouches down, fills his cupped hands, splashes water on his face. The river divides the properties and its water is icy cold. It feels like the skin on his face stretches taut when the water hits it.

  Nilo is squatting on a rotten eucalyptus log. A log carcass. It must have rolled off a truck carrying lumber from Hermes’s farm to the city, to the warehouses, before going to the paper and packaging mills, before being turned into money. Ultimately, that was how money flowed: to the buildings, the airplanes, to vaults at the banks. There are deep and shallow sections in the river. Even in the shallow part it’s very easy to drown.

  A summer’s day, when it seems like nothing can go wrong, bam: a woman jumps in the water, having a good laugh and squealing from the cold. But all of a sudden she gets a cramp, the current is stronger than it looks. Her leg gets caught on a branch. She goes under for a second, then reappears. She waves her arms around, and still it all seems like part of the joke. Then she goes under again. It happens twice more. Nobody else is around. It all happens quickly and quietly. After a few days, the search stops. The fire brigade gives up. The body, gone forever.

  He can’t ask his employee to drain the river. Nobody can drain the river. He wondered if maybe everything didn’t wind up at the bottom of that dark water. He’d be able to see the skeletons of those who’ve disappeared. They
would be green, covered in silt.

  Nilo looks up. Ahead, across the river, the lights come on in the house on Hermes’s farm. Nilo crosses the bridge. On the mountain, he can see the machines at work, the machines that uproot, strip, and stack the eucalyptus. A mountain is an attempt to get closer to the gods. Like in Egypt, and in many of the desert regions of Central America there were no mountains. That’s why the Incas and the Aztecs needed to build the pyramids. To get closer to the gods. The gods, always the gods. In other regions, however, volcanoes made perfect pyramids. The highest ones were chosen as altars, where the Incas took offerings and performed their rituals and sacrifices. The Incas had their own way of mummifying. The ones chosen to be sacrificed were children. Because children were the only ones pure in heart, so they would be entitled to see and speak with the gods. They were the transmitters of information from here to the cosmic world. Some children may have been chosen before they were even born. For those civilizations, it was an honor to have a child sacrificed. It was a powerful thing, in spiritual terms. The process was simple. The Incas went with the children to the top of the volcano. There, they were given a mixture of hallucinogenic plants. The air up high is thin. It’s very cold. The children would become drowsy, and hypothermia took care of the rest. Whenever one of these Inca child mummies is found, the preservation of their bodies is astounding. They look like they’re asleep, like they could wake at any moment. On one volcano, almost seven thousand meters high, near Santiago, they found the southernmost mummy of the Inca period, El Niño del Plomo. And there are the Children of Llullaillaco, some of the most well-preserved mummies in the world. The oldest is known as the Inca Maiden and she was mummified when she was fifteen. The Lightning Girl, killed at seven, was found with burns on her face from a bolt of lightning that struck her on the mountain. The youngest, called the Boy, was three years old when he was offered up as a sacrifice to the gods of the pre-Columbian world.