Interfictions 2 (20 page)

Q:
You don't think he knows what happened here?

Paraguana:
My personal opinion? No. If anyone even reported it, wherever he is, I doubt he read about it.

Q:
You sound envious.

Paraguana:
[
Pause.
] Sometimes I feel like I'm walking backward all the time, always looking at what happened years ago. To this country. To our parents. My brother never fell for that. He just worked with what was right in front of him, what he could put his hands on. And I think that's how he got out, while the rest of us are still here.

Batide:
All Pedro wanted was a gig. He was hoping for a set a day, but he would have settled for less. On the dance floor if they wanted, or in one of the bars or lounges. By the pool. Anywhere at all. I told him it was a bad idea. They're not interested in our music, I said. If they were, they would have hired us by now. Because Pedro really was the best at what he did. I saw other guitarists put away their instruments when they saw him walk through the door. Three or four younger musicians, teenagers, followed him around town, staring at his hands. Too afraid to talk to him. He was a hero to them, or a ghost. Something unreal.

Newton:
I know that Pedro Paraguana came to visit me, but in all honesty, I can't remember talking to him. I've had to look at the security tapes to see what happened. He looked to me like the men who worked at the pier, except skinnier and quieter, and he had a beat-up old guitar case with a broken handle, held shut by a piece of rope, that he was carrying under one arm. He had a stammer. What do you play? I said. San Marcan music, he said. And I said, yes, like what they play at the Good Foot. That's right, he said. I play there all the time. I'm not sure we're the right place for you, I said, but if you have a recording, I would love to hear it. He said he didn't have a recording, and he started to get out his guitar. I must have said something disparaging then, or maybe the look on my face was enough, because then he got very quiet, and he tied the rope around the case again and patted it, saying it's okay, it's okay. As though it was his child.

Batide:
After the peace accords, things got so bad. A lot of the people with money left the country, and
pffft,
there went the parties we used to play in the capital. The weddings, the holidays. Just like that. We sold the truck to buy strings and fix a crack in the back of Pedro's guitar.

Q:
Did you still play?

Batide:
Oh, all the time. There just wasn't any money in it anymore. But I don't think Pedro could have stopped playing if he wanted to, and we didn't want to stop playing with him. There was something in his music, something you couldn't destroy. And the worse things got, the happier the music became. [
Pause.
] I miss him so much.

Longo:
But money is money, and Pedro is no fool. He knew how much Apus Apus could give away just to keep people pacified, and he figured that the people who came to the parties probably had a lot more than that. But it wasn't just the money. I believe to this day that if Apus Apus had given Pedro Paraguana that gig, none of what happened would have happened. What else could have been the signal?

Shimura:
There's no question that what Pedro Paraguana and the Silver Diablos did started everything. And on the other hand, you could argue that if that's all it took, then anything at all could have triggered it. Anyone who was there at the time could see it. A quarter of the ships coming into San Marco were carrying guns, and they weren't for the army. There were rumors—more than rumors—that the rebels were training again, in the jungle where the government helicopters couldn't see. Every other night at the Good Foot something seemed to go down, a lot of money moving around, people shaking hands. Now and again, someone getting shot in the back of the head. People said they were rooting out traitors early, not that the police ever found any evidence. Oh, they investigated, but it always ended in nothing. Or a detective would get shot, and that was it.

Q:
What about the army?

Shimura:
[
Pause.
] Let me tell you something. I worked in the clinic in San Marco near the water, and I was involved in knife fights and shootouts. I saw a man almost beaten to death with a hammer. But I never felt more unsafe than I did when the army showed up.

Q:
So given the choice between the rebels and the army—

Shimura:
Look, I just worked in the clinic there. I'll be back there again in a couple of months. I treated the sick and the hurt; I didn't ask what their politics were. It wasn't in my job description. But to be unaware of what the different sides meant for my safety and the safety of most of the people in San Marco, who just wanted to get through it—to not know it or act on it would have been naive, bordering on stupid. You don't get involved, but you don't stay out, either. And you never give a straight answer if you want to get home.

Q:
Did you know the rebels were moving guns through San Marco in the Apus Apus days?

Machado:
[
Pause.
] Turn that recorder off, and I'll tell you some stories. [
Laughs.
] I'm not an idiot, and I know that politics don't follow the laws of physics. But sometimes they do. You have a balloon full of hydrogen and a match. What do you think is going to happen?

Batide:
Pedro first told me about his idea after a gig at the Good Foot. I thought he was joking, but he wasn't laughing. We haven't really had a decent gig in six months, he said. Six months isn't so bad, I said, though Pedro could tell I was listening, that I needed the money. Then he said, if we do this, we can make enough for the next six years. All we have to do is disappear for a while, meet somewhere else, far away, and we can play what we want to.

Longo:
I thought it was a great idea. The only trick was what to do afterward. You had to take the money and then disappear from San Marco, never see the piers and the boats, or the Good Foot, again. Not so hard a trick, you say. But we're all San Marco boys. Which is why Batide and I ended up in jail, then back here worth nothing, and we haven't seen Pedro Paraguana in ten years.

Paraguana:
My brother was so quiet about it, I didn't know what he was planning. I didn't see him bring in the uniforms or the guns. He must have done it in his guitar case. But then, two days before, he took me out to the Good Foot and said the drinks were on him, which he'd never done in his life. Then he told me that he loved me, and he'd always respected what I did—being a fisherman, he meant. He said he was almost a little afraid of it, because I did something that fed people, and what did he do? Make noise. You can't feed people on noise, he said. Then he told me about his plan. Did I want in. I said yes without thinking. We had to help each other home afterward, and all I can remember is me lying in bed, and him in the next room playing guitar and singing to himself, and the window open and the sounds in the harbor coming in, the waves against the shore. I haven't slept like that since.

Godunov:
It's not news how controversial Apus Apus was from the beginning, even before the news got out about how the city had helped Mr. Hodges buy the land. I know the San Marcans always said that Hodges could have done more. But they never talked about what Hodges did do. The commerce—legitimate commerce—he brought to the port, freight and passengers. Additional income for local farmers.

Q:
But Apus Apus never hired anyone from San Marco to work inside the facility, where the money was.

Godunov:
We and the development people talked to Mr. Hodges about that many times. But you have to understand, also. He needed people with significant experience in the high-end hospitality industry, no, don't interrupt, because I know what you're going to say: couldn't he have trained San Marcans to do the work? The answer is obvious: yes. But to me, Apus Apus never quite realized its enormous potential. It ran, what, five years? And not full-time. That's just enough time for a venture like that to figure out where the bathroom is. I think if Apus Apus had lasted ten years, fifteen, twenty, you would have seen local training and employment, community projects, infrastructure improvements, maybe some social services. But people can't wait that long. Not that I blame them, but that's where the tragedy lies. The need is always so great, and the remedy takes so long.

Newton:
I remember that last party being the biggest, though looking at the books, I know it wasn't. There were over a hundred fewer people at it than there'd been at the one before, and one less band. Which meant fewer support staff. Fewer animals slaughtered. All the way down the line. Perhaps it seems like the biggest in my mind because it was the hardest to put on. Supplies kept disappearing. Trucks from the capital bringing in the most mundane things—linens, liquor—kept being held up on the highway, much more than before. A few of the trucks vanished. And the port was right there, but it wasn't any better. I understand now that it was the rebels, making a last sweep before the war started, but at the time, it was just a logistical nightmare. In the end, we were using our own planes, our own helicopters, to bring in the more expensive items we needed. [
Pause.
] You know, I told Mr. Hodges that this one was going to be a real loss. It's a bad year all over, he said, in that quasi-mystical way of his. He still wanted to throw the party. Honestly, I don't know how he ever became so successful. They always call him a visionary businessman. I saw plenty of the visionary, but not much of the businessman ... anyway, you can imagine that we were very worried about how to get the guests to and from the facility without them losing, how should I put this, pieces of their persons. If I had to do it all again, I would have demanded big raises, for me and my staff. Oh, we lived well in San Marco, of course, the strength of our currency to theirs being what it was. But for us to go back home on that? At any rate, before the whole thing started, about a dozen people cancelled. Have you been reading the paper? they said. Have you seen what they're saying about San Marco? They described it to me over the phone. Sounds like every other piece I've read about San Marco, I wanted to say, but I'd already lost them as clients. Anything else I would have said might have tarnished the brand.

I do have to say that I always thought San Marco's reputation was never quite deserved. It was all based on—please forgive me, because I know you're a journalist, but it was all based on what you read in the papers, never on what the place was really like. I'm not saying that the papers made anything up, but the reporting blew the crime way out of proportion, and it always annoyed me when people commented on it, because many of them lived in big cities elsewhere, and isn't it just as true there? If all you did was read the paper in any city, you would never go. If you lived there, you might never leave the house. But the same people who would read their own papers with skepticism were completely credulous when they read the news from San Marco. It just didn't seem fair.

Hodges:
But everything was beautiful when the party started. It really was. The people, the clothes, the music and dancing. The birds, as always, under the lights in that thick, warm night air, like I've never felt anywhere else. I have photographs of it all so I can remember the colors of it, the motion. But it doesn't help me remember the way the food tasted, or the way the music really sounded. In my head, it's something rarified, abstract. Maybe perfect. I was heartbroken at what happened there, just heartbroken.

Newton:
What was considered to be the best soul band in Europe was on the stage, halfway through their second set, when my phone started in on its panic ring—which had never happened until then. But before I could even answer it, the music had stopped, and there were four men with rubber masks, army uniforms, and machine guns in among the musicians. Three of the gunmen were just strutting around the stage. The fourth one had his gun to the singer's back and was whispering in his ear. And the singer—professional even under such circumstances—said—

Jeremy Goddard, singer:
I said, the armed gentleman to my left says that he and his compatriots are representatives of the United Revolutionary Front of San Marco and now consider Apus Apus annexed to their territory. As we speak, rebels are occupying the city and will defend it to the death. It is thus recommended that you leave your valuables on the ground in front of you and depart from the country as quickly as possible, lest you be held as enemies of the new regime. [
Laughs.
] Or something like that.

Newton:
One of them fired his rifle into the ceiling, then leveled it at the crowd. Well. I've never seen so much money and jewelry hit the floor at once. Not just that. Shoes, watches, sunglasses. And the sound it all made, this long rustling slide. Like chains falling onto the floor.

Goddard:
Then the other three went running through the crowd, collecting it all in big plastic bags. I remember one of them took a pair of shoes, tied them around his arm. The one with the gun on me stood right where he was. And when nobody was looking—nobody believes me when I tell them this, but he leaned in and said, in very hesitant English, I love your singing.

Q:
What did you say?

Goddard:
Thanks. [
Laughs.
]

Newton:
They were gone in ten minutes, and after that, Apus Apus was in complete chaos, there's a war starting, there's a war starting. [
Pause.
] It was kind of genius, I think, the way they played the crowd. Played to their fears and insecurities about where they were. The people who came to that last party, I think, were ready to believe that the whole country was ready to blow. They were primed. All those four did was spark them off. But I was skeptical even then. It didn't look right. The guns were real, the clothes, even the masks. But if there really was a war on, why were there only four of them? I knew from the beginning it was all a hoax, and for what? six or seven hours? that's what it was. Then, all of a sudden, it wasn't.