“Zero is actually not stupid, you know? He is easy to deceive, that’s his biggest problem. He wants to be king but doesn’t know what to do.”
Eva figured out that by “king” Patrik meant “liked.”
“Has he been in touch with you?”
Patrik nodded and took a sip of his tea. Eva waited.
“What are you doing?” Hugo called out suddenly.
“None of your business,” Patrik yelled.
“Patrik!”
“He’s so annoying.”
“What did Zero say?”
“He’s hiding.”
Eva wondered where a fifteen-year-old boy could hide.
“He doesn’t dare go home. His brothers will beat him up.”
“Has he been in touch with his mother?”
“He called but she cried the whole time.”
“What did he say to you?”
Patrik looked up. After a couple of seconds’ hesitation he told her that Zero had been selling drugs in Sävja for the past couple of months. There was a man who had turned up and given him the drugs to sell to his friends.
“You wouldn’t believe what he makes. It can be a couple thousand. He’s planning to go to Turkey and rescue his father,” Patrik said.
“What really happened that evening?”
“That man came by with more drugs but Zero didn’t want to keep going. He was scared, but he didn’t say that. He started to pull some racist crap instead. The man made trouble and Zero punched him.”
“What about you? What did you do?”
Eva forced herself to remain calm. The least slip of the tongue or sign of being upset could result in Patrik clamming up.
“Helped Zero out,” he mumbled. “Then we took off.”
“That was when you came home bleeding?”
Patrik nodded. Eva could see that he was close to tears and felt an enormous gratitude in the fact that he was sitting there across from her, that he was talking, and that he could cry.
“And later, the next evening?”
“Another man came. We were up at the school, just hanging and talking. Then the other man came and started to talk. At first I thought it was a cop.”
“He was the one who was stabbed?”
“He started it!”
Eva nodded.
“Whose knife was it?”
“Zero’s.”
“Do you have a knife?” she asked, wishing she hadn’t the moment she saw Patrik’s expression.
The sound from the computer had stopped and Eva was convinced Hugo was listening.
“Forget it,” she said. “Go on.”
“He started in on Zero, said something about how he owed him money and stuff about, you know, what happens to people who don’t pay their debts. He was pretty scary.”
“What did Zero do?”
“Nothing! He was scared shitless, I could tell. Then the man wanted Zero to go with him to his car but he didn’t want to, he started to run. The guy caught up with him and pulled him down on the ground. The whole thing went so fast. Zero shook him off and then took out the knife. And then he was just lying there, the guy.”
“And this is what you told the police?”
Patrik nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell them this from the beginning?”
“I wanted to talk to Zero first,” Patrik said, and now his eyes were shiny with tears.
Eva stretched out her hand and put it on his arm.
“I’m glad you told me. I’m proud of you, you know that?”
After a couple of minutes of silence, Patrik stood up, took his teacup and put it on the counter.
“Helen called,” he said. “She wanted you to get back to her.”
Eva glanced at the wall clock.
“I’ll do it tomorrow,” she said.
“She said you could call late. She sounded really worked up. She has some stuff she’s doing, I didn’t get what it was.”
Eva took the handheld phone with her into the bedroom and dialed Helen’s number.
Thirty-Two
It is like California, but much smaller, Manuel thought. Even so he was pleased with his new location. The landscape constantly awakened memories of his brothers and their time in Anaheim, but he liked this place better than the last one and not only because of the connection with Armas.
Here his gaze did not get snared in brambles and stones. When he climbed up the steep ravine he could look out over wide swathes of good earth, and that had a calming effect.
He recognized the strawberry plants and they were still bearing fruit. The first morning he had been awakened by a tractor and the sound of voices. The evening before, he had wandered down the rows of plants and concluded that there were not many berries left and he was surprised that they still took the trouble to harvest them.
He had picked a few strawberries and put them in his mouth, but this reminded him too much of Angel and Patricio for him to really be able to enjoy the sweetness. How he longed for his brothers! This feeling tore at his heart like a furious animal. It had only gotten worse since he arrived in Sweden.
Slashing that gringo’s throat had not helped, if he had even imagined it would. The first night after he killed Armas and dragged him down to the river, in the hope that he would sink or float away, he had suffered hellish nightmares and woken innumerable times, alternatingly in a cold sweat and feverishly hot. He fell to his knees outside the tent and prayed to San Isidro for forgiveness, ben ládxido zhhn, to make his little heart bigger.
In the darkness of the night he thought he could see a beautiful woman with waist-length hair and copper-colored skin. She disappeared in the direction of the river with a taunting laugh. It was matelacihua and he chanted his prayers more intensely. The bad air surrounded him, constricted his chest, and threatened to suffocate him. He was afraid of losing consciousness only to wake up many miles away.
He knew that his crime was enormous. He had taken on the role of God. This was unforgivable.
The next day he had gone back to the river and discovered that the body was gone. It was as if part of his guilt had washed away with the water. He relaxed, turned his face up to the heavens, and spoke to Angel.
Now, some days later and in a new spot next to the same river, his guilt pricked him like tiny mosquitoes, but not more than he could wave away. He had done the right thing. It had been an act pleasing in the eyes of God to kill a bhni guí’a. The world was the better for it, and Manuel was convinced that Armas’s soul was now subjected to the torments of Hell.
What were the alternatives? he debated with himself. Should he have allowed himself to be killed like a dog? But the knife-why did he carry it in his pocket, if not to use it? Hadn’t he unconsciously prepared himself to kill when he took it out of the bag and slipped it into his pocket? Had he sensed Armas’s intentions as they drove to the river?
If he went to the police he would join Patricio in jail, he knew this. To be thrown in jail was nothing foreign to Manuel and his family. Zapotecs had been persecuted in all ages in any manner of ways, and many were holed up in Oaxaca prisons. Eleven campesinos from a neighboring village had been taken away four months ago and subsequently imprisoned or killed. No one had heard from them again.
But these cases were grounded in defending their land and forests, in matters of autonomy and justice. Manuel had admittedly killed in self-defense, but he did not think anyone would believe him.
He lay in the river ravine in the shadow of fir trees that reminded him of cypresses. A couple of predatory birds hovered in the sky, just as in the valley at home. Would he ever see his village again?
He got to his feet quickly, in one movement, just like a startled animal, but it was only a lone man walking along the riverbank, a fishing pole in one hand and a bucket in the other. Manuel had seen him the day before. The man’s tall, gaunt body was topped by a small head with a face so wrinkled that Manuel was reminded of the old woman in his village who gathered bunches of epazote that she sold for fifty centavos apiece.