For a moment they stared at each other. Patrik had that expression in his eyes from a long time ago, before he imperceptibly and then all the more clearly changed into someone else. Eva assumed it was the teenager’s way of developing, distancing himself in order to find himself, but she still missed the old connection and closeness.
Now it was there again for a few seconds and Eva realized she had to tread carefully.
“I’ll put on some tea,” she said.
Patrik took off his jacket, which was covered in blood, and held it indecisively in his hand.
“I’ll take care of it later,” Eva said. “Drop it on the floor.”
A jacket, she thought, bought for a couple hundred kronor-what does it matter? Her whole body trembled at the sight of him. At that moment the door to Hugo’s room opened.
“What is it?”
Eva knew he must not have slept a wink.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Go back to bed.”
Hugo looked bewildered and a little frightened at his brother.
“No, I take that back, you can have tea with us.”
While the water was heating up, Eva wiped Patrik’s face clean. The wounds were not so large: one three-centimeter cut at the hairline, a scratch across his right eye, and a swollen lip.
She wondered if the cut at his hairline needed stiches, but decided in the end that it didn’t. It would heal fine and a small scar, concealed by his bangs, wouldn’t matter.
Patrik winced every time she dabbed at the cut with disinfecting solution. He smelled of sweat. His hair was sticky and his face pale.
Hugo had put out mugs. At the center of the table on a small plate were three tea bags, all with different flavors. Now he was standing at the window in his robe, looking out.
“Do you think he’s coming here?” Hugo asked.
“Who?”
“Zero.”
“I don’t think so, and we don’t know what’s happened. Are you afraid of him?”
Hugo shook his head while Patrik sat at the kitchen table.
Eva poured out the water.
“Tell us about it,” she said.
Fourteen
Manuel’s grandfather had been a bracero, one of those who traveled around the United States in the 1940s in order to fill the gaps left by the men who had been called up to war. Most of them had done well for themselves, returning from Idaho and Washington with colored shirts, leather shoes, and cash.
This created an impression that life in the United States was easy, that one could quickly amass a fortune there. Many followed the pioneers. Manuel’s father was one of these. He returned, thin and worked to the bone after three long years, and with a gaze that alternated between an expression of desperation and optimism. Two years later he died. One day his carotid artery burst and he was dead within minutes.
In 1998, two days before he turned twenty-two, Manuel made his first trip.
It was easy to be impressed by the land in the north. What Manuel noticed first were all the cars, then he saw how he, as a Mexican, was not regarded as fully human. He worked for a year, saved four hundred dollars, and returned to the village.
Patricio worked out that if all three brothers worked for two years in the fields to the north, they would be able to rebuild the house and buy a mule, and so they set off together.
Those who went to the border rivers had three to choose from: Rio Grande, Rio Colorado, and Rio Tijuana, all different, but out of whose waters thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children crawled.
Manuel, who had heard of people drowning, chose the highway. The first time he crossed the border near San Ysidro, south of San Diego, and everything was simple. He understood that the terrifying descriptions of all the Mexicans who had died in their attempts to cross over-people spoke of numbers in the thousands-were exaggerated, perhaps these were rumors spread by the Border Patrol or the vigilantes, volunteers who helped to patrol the border.
But four years later it was significantly worse. A wall, that did not appear to have an end, had been erected. There was something absurd and frightening about this construction that cut through the desert landscape.
Angel and Patricio stood silently by his side. A few other men from Veracruz, whom they had met in Lechería and had joined up with, laughed in exhaustion and nervousness. Angel, who was severely rundown, glanced at Manuel. Patricio stared east.
“I guess we just have to walk,” he said.
“Walk?” Angel repeated.
He had been suffering. He had misplaced his cap and the sun had beaten down on him relentlessly. He scratched his forehead and large strips of skin came off.
“We can cross over by Tecate,” one of the men from Veracruz said, and pointed east. “This wall can’t go on forever.”
Patricio had already started to walk. They arrived late in the evening. The men from Veracruz, who had the experience of several border crossings, led the group to a dried up riverbed and across a godforsaken stony slope where only cacti were able to survive. Signs that warned them they were approaching the border made them shrink reflexively. The only thing to be heard was the sound of feet stumbling over rocks. Suddenly the light from a mobile watchtower was turned on and caught the men in a circular dip in the landscape.
In the distance they heard the frantic barking of dogs. The brothers ran, tripping their way across the stony ground. Angel fell and was helped up by Patricio. Manuel urged them on. He had read about dogs and the new ammunition that the border patrols were armed with. The bullets that tore your body apart.
Two of the group were driven into a ravine. One of them tried to climb up the steep cliff but lost his footing and fell when he was only a meter from the top. Manuel saw the shadowy figure fall and disappear from view and heard the scream that ended abruptly.
Perhaps the patrol unit was satisfied with two Mexicans in their net, for the brothers and four others managed to get across the border, reach highway 94E, and thereafter set their sights on Dulzura. They were in California. Angel laughed and suggested they rest for the night, while Patricio wanted to push on. If he had been allowed to set the pace they would have made it to Oregon before sunrise.
Their father had worked in Orange County, and this was also the brothers’ destination. It was no better or worse than anywhere else. They picked fruit and planted new fruit trees that would in the future be harvested by new generations of young men from Mexico and Central America.
Manuel realized, once they had reached a broccoli farmer where they would build an irrigation system, how many of his fellow citizens had come north. The farmer, who was the best one they had encountered, would come by in the evenings, sit outside their barrack, open a few beers, and talk.
“Half a million a year, at least,” Roger Hamilton said and smiled. “There are twenty-three million people in this country with Mexican heritage.”
He held out a beer to Manuel, who took a swig and tried to imagine this amount of people, unsure of what he was expected to say.
“It is because of your own government,” the farmer continued. “They do not want to keep you.”
Manuel had heard similar arguments at home. In the headquarters of the farmer organization in Oaxaca they had discussed NAFTA, the free-trade agreement between Mexico and the United States. For Manuel, and most others in the room, it was too big. He did not understand the implications of NAFTA. Not until cheap surplus corn from Alabama and Georgia started to flood the country.
The villages shrank and everything old broke up. Who wanted to celebrate when the village was being drained of youngsters? For many young men, the move north was a kind of rite of passage. Manuel thought that was one of the reasons why Angel and Patricio were so insistent that Manuel bring them along to California. They wanted to become men.