In a vacant lot pooled with black water were half a dozen men on their knees, staring at the ground. They all were or looked homegrown. Makina took her place beside them.
You think you can just come here and put your feet up without earning it, said the cop. Well I got news for you: patriots like me are on the lookout and we’re going to teach you some manners. Lesson one: get used to falling in. You want to come here, fall in and ask permission, you want to go to the doctor, fall in and ask permission, you want to say a fucking word to me, fall in and ask permission. Fall in and ask permission. Civilized, that’s the way we do things around here! We don’t jump fences and we don’t dig tunnels.
Out the corner of her eye Makina could see the cop’s tongue poking out as he talked, all pink and pointy. She could see, too, that even though he didn’t draw, he also didn’t take his hand off the holster where his gun was. Suddenly the cop addressed one of the others, the one beside her.
What you got there?
He took two steps toward him and repeated What you got there?
The man was holding a little book and gripped it tighter when the cop came close. He resisted a bit but finally let him snatch it away.
Ha, said the cop after glancing at it. Poetry. Lookie here at the educated worker, comes with no money, no papers, but hey, poems. You a romantic? A poet? A writer? Looks like we’re going to find out.
He ripped out one of the last pages, laid it on the book’s cover, pulled a pencil from his shirt and gave it all to the man.
Write.
The man looked up, bewildered.
I told you to write, not look at me, you piece of shit. Keep your eyes on the paper and write why you think you’re up the creek, why you think your ass is in the hands of this patriotic officer. Or don’t you know what you did wrong? Sure you do. Write.
The man pressed the pencil to the paper and began to trace a letter but his trembling prevented him. He dropped the pencil, picked it up, and tried again. He couldn’t compose a single word, just nervous scribble.
Makina suddenly snatched the pencil and book away. The cop roared I didn’t tell you to … But he fell silent on seeing that Makina had begun to write with determination. He kept a close watch on her progress, smiling and sardonic the whole time, though he was disconcerted and couldn’t hide it.
Makina wrote without stopping to think which word was better than which other or how the message was turning out. She wrote ten lines and when she was done she placed the pencil on the book and fixed her gaze upon it. The cop waited a few seconds, then said Give me that, took the sheet of paper and began to read aloud:
We are to blame for this destruction, we who don’t speak your tongue and don’t know how to keep quiet either. We who didn’t come by boat, who dirty up your doorsteps with our dust, who break your barbed wire. We who came to take your jobs, who dream of wiping your shit, who long to work all hours. We who fill your shiny clean streets with the smell of food, who brought you violence you’d never known, who deliver your dope, who deserve to be chained by neck and feet. We who are happy to die for you, what else could we do? We, the ones who are waiting for who knows what. We, the dark, the short, the greasy, the shifty, the fat, the anemic. We the barbarians.
The cop had started off in a mock-portentous voice but gradually abandoned the histrionics as he neared the last line, which he read almost in a whisper. After that he went on staring at the paper as if he’d gotten stuck on the final period. When he finally looked up, his rage, or his interest in his captives, seemed to have dissolved. He crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it behind him. Then he looked away, turned his back, spoke over the radio to someone and took off.
Makina stood as soon as the cop had gone, but the others took some time to realize they weren’t under arrest. They looked at one another, half glad and half mistrustful, then looked at Makina but couldn’t say anything to her because she’d started walking again and all they could make out was her silhouette against the sun.
9. The Obsidian Place with No Windows or Holes for the Smoke
She couldn’t stop, she had to keep walking even if she didn’t know how she was going to get back. It was the rhythm, it was her burden-free body, it was the soft sound of her own panting that pushed her on. She quickened her step; with the ashen sun head-on she walked down gray streets and past houses that were all the same, like little boxes lined up in a storefront window.
She came to a park all atwitter with birds about to go to sleep. She walked straight through the middle of it, not around it on the sidewalk, and with each step her feet — pad, pad, pad — left an imprint on the earth. The evening clouded over until you couldn’t see more than one step ahead, and yet Makina didn’t stop: she walked quickly — pad, pad, pad — guiding herself by the trilling in the trees. Suddenly she heard Watch how you go, darlin.
She turned to see who had spoken, because they’d said it in latin tongue, and saw that there, sitting on a bench looking exactly like himself and also quite different — like varnished over, like meaner, or with a bigger nose — was Chucho, grinning at her. First she saw the ember, then the man who made it glow. Makina felt herself smile though she didn’t feel the emotion behind the smile because she’d somehow been emptied of feelings by now.
What are you doing here? she asked.
Doing my thing, looking out for you.
Don’t you work for Aitch? Mr. Q is the one who was supposed to help me on this side.
I work for whoever hires me. Never stopped watching you, I know where you been and how tough things got.
Things are tough all over, but here I’m all mixed up, I just don’t understand this place.
Don’t let it get you down. They don’t understand it either, they live in fear of the lights going out, as if every day wasn’t already made of lightning and blackouts. They need us. They want to live forever but still can’t see that for that to work they need to change color and number. But it’s already happening.
Chucho took a drag on his cigarette so deep he almost consumed it all. Then he said And now you’re here, follow me. He stood and Makina walked beside him. They left the park, entered a little maze of streets that looked like they belonged to some other city and stopped before a low, narrow door behind which nothing could be seen.
Go on in, Chucho said, pointing.
Here? What is this place?
Here’s where they’ll give you a hand.
Makina crouched down to fit through the door, and on taking the first step felt a cold wind coming from inside but didn’t get cold herself; she saw the top of a spiral staircase. She began to descend, turned to see if Chucho was following but he had stayed at the door, blew her a kiss, moved out of the frame and Makina caught a glimpse of the last rays of sun. Then she went on down. After four spiral turns she came to another door, which was answered by a handsome old woman with very long white fingernails and a powdered face, wearing a butterfly pin that held back the folds of her dress. Over the door was a sign that said Verse. She tried to remember how to say verse in any of her tongues but couldn’t. This was the only word that came to her lips. Verse. The woman drew two cigarettes from a black case, lit them both and held one out. Makina took it and stepped through.
The place was like a sleepwalker’s bedroom: specific yet inexact, somehow unreal and yet vivid; there were lots of people, very calm, all smoking, and though she saw no ventilation shafts nor felt any currents the air didn’t smell. Like a song from long ago, a sudden apprehension made her think something terrible was going to occur any second. Something’s about to happen, something’s about to happen. She tensed and felt she loved her skin, but the tension soon gave way, lulled by the only clear and distinguishable sound in the place. She hadn’t noticed it until now: there was no music, no conversation, just the sound of running water, not like through the plumbing but the energetic coursing of subterranean rivers that reminded her that it had been a while since she’d washed, and yet she wasn’t dirty, didn’t smell bad — didn’t smell at all.