He folded his tray table. It had been a long trip but he would soon be at its end. If he had understood the details correctly there were buses that went up into the mountains. If not, he would have to rent a car and maybe someone to guide him. He had a generous travel kitty.
The mountains looked ominous. How could people live this way? Was it really possible to grow anything in this broken terrain?
He saw the plane’s shadow on the ground. It looked like a hawk darting forward. The shadow grew clearer. They would be landing shortly.
His mission was simple. The only thing that worried him was the possibility of catching a stomach bug. He hated suffering from uncontrolled diarrhea.
Gerardo’s only son, Enrico, came rushing down the alley under the Alavez family’s house. Manuel and Patricio were on the roof. They had carried up sacks of coffee in order to spread the beans to dry. They saw him come running, out of breath. “A gringo,” he got out.
Manuel leaned over the fence that surrounded the roof terrace.
“What are you saying?”
“A gringo came on the bus. He is asking for you.”
Manuel stared at the boy.
“For us?”
Enrico nodded avidly.
“What does he look like?”
“Like a gringo.”
Manuel turned to his brother. Patricio stood frozen, an empty bag in his hand.
“Pack our things,” Manuel said, running down the steps. He took a firm hold of the boy’s shoulders and looked him in the eye.
“Tell me everything!”
“That is everything!”
Enrico stared at his neighbor who had never before been threatening or violent. Manuel let go of the boy and Enrico shook himself, as if he wanted to rid himself of the remaining pain from his bony shoulders.
“Follow me!”
Manuel set off down the alley, the boy at his heels. They ran along a drainage ditch, turned down toward the village center, and took the stairs. There they were forced to slow down. The stone steps were damp and slippery. They heard panting chimes from the little bell of the church.
Manuel peered out from behind the dilapidated house where the recently deceased logger Oscar Meija had made the best plows in the village. He was partly concealed by a set of stacked yebágo. Then he spotted the gringo. It was a tall man. A leather suitcase stood at his feet. It resembled a fallen animal. He was talking to Felix, the village idiot, the boy who never grew big or sensible. A flock of children stood nearby. The exhaust from the bus that the man had come on still hovered like a dark cloud over the square outside the veranda of the town house where the local officials of the PRI were drinking as usual.
Felix pointed first here then there, and laughed wholeheartedly. Manuel knew the gringo would get no help there. Felix pulled on the man’s arm. The stranger shook him off but turned his body to see where the boy was pointing. He looked up toward the school where the faded portraits of the heroes of the revolution hung in a row, and then he turned around completely.
Manuel staggered back. The man from the mountains had returned! The man whom he had killed by slashing his throat, and then heaved into the water far away in Sweden now stood here in the flesh.
“What is it?” Enrico whimpered.
“Bhni guí’a,” Manuel whispered, turning around and stumbling on a pile of lumber. He got back on his feet and ran away as if he had seen an evil spirit.
Enrico remained behind uncertainly, but when he saw the gringo reach for his luggage he followed Manuel, who had now climbed to the top of the stairs and disappeared behind the bushes.
The dead return, the dead return, Manuel recited silently to himself as he ran. The tall one had not only returned, he also looked younger and healthier than when Manuel had met him in Sweden.
When Manuel stormed into the house, Patricio had packed two bags of clothes. Maria stood beside him, pulling on his shirt. She repeatedly asked them what had happened. Patricio freed himself from his mother and took a machete down from the wall without a word.
“We have to flee,” Manuel said vehemently and yet controlled, as if his face had congealed into an unchanging death mask.
He grabbed his own machete and a small ax. Patricio and his mother looked fearfully at him. They had never seen him so distraught.
He went up to his mother, gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, took hold of one of the bags and ran out.
“We will be back,” Patricio said, hugged her and left.
She followed them out into the yard where Manuel was anxiously looking into the alley. The neighbor’s boy stood waiting by the gate.
“Where will you go?” the mother asked with such despair in her voice that the brothers paused for a moment.
Manuel shot Patricio a glance before he replied.
“El norte,” he said.
Kjell Eriksson
Karl Stig Kjell Eriksson is a Swedish crime-writer, author of the novels The Princess of Burundi and The Cruel Stars of the Night, the former of which was awarded the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy Best Swedish Crime Novel Award in 2002. They have both recently been translated into English by Ebba Segerberg.
