The Sleeping World (21 page)

“I don't need your protection,” I said, and moved away from him, searching for the shadow. “Why are you still chasing someone who doesn't care about you? What do you owe him?”

“Just let me take care of you, stop walking, let me—”

“Next time you want to leave,” I said, “have the guts to actually do it.”

Marco was offering me his hand, off the rope and onto solid ground, or onto something, at least, large enough for us both to stand on. But I wasn't going to take it.

***

The mill was on the outskirts of Paris, an hour on the local train, in a small, fading village. It was freezing when we got inside, the building not meant to be occupied in winter. Marco fiddled with some switches on the wall, but instead of lights turning on, there was a low groan and the creak of iron on wood from behind a stone wall.

“That must be the old waterworks,” Marco said. “I don't think it's connected to anything now.”

“Leave it on,” La Canaria said. She stood in front of an ancient fireplace, thin smoke moving around her. The fireplace was big enough to step into, with thick iron bars across it for hanging pots. The whole building hummed from the grinding turbine.

Marco handed me an old blanket. The dampness hung tightly to us. Above us, a staircase climbed toward the vaulted ceiling and led to hallways and rooms. It probably would have made more sense to stay in one of those rooms, but most of the doors were locked and I couldn't stand the idea of being in an enclosed space after those months in Paris.

“How long do you think we can stay here?” I asked Marco.

“I guess until that guy shows up. Which could be anytime.”

* * *

I slept all night and most of the next day curled by the fire on a pile of blankets and sofa cushions. It was already dark by the time I woke, evening come early so deep in winter.

Marco handed me a cigarette he'd rolled, and I lit it on the low coals.

“What are you going to do?” I asked him. He stared at my cigarette, which was canoeing toward my lips. He licked his finger and killed the ember.

I both wished and dreaded someone would ask me what I wanted. Would ask me anything, because then the air bubbles might escape from my throat and into the water, my words unable to be shoved back down.

“I don't want to stay here,” Marco said, looking up at the ceiling of dark interlaced wood. La Canaria had crossed to the kitchen and stood staring at the black window.

“And then what?” I asked.

He opened his mouth, and I thought I'd done to him what I feared would be done to me. That words and air would come out of his mouth and water would rush in to fill the vacuum and there would be no way for me to reverse the process, to exchange air for water. I thought that he was finally going to speak.

“There's someone at the door,” La Canaria said.

“Just ignore them,” I said. I was trying to act the way I thought she would. To slink on that bravado and act like anyone who was watching was too mesmerized to move. But she was tamped down and had been for months, giving me no mirror. She went to the door and opened it. Marco took my arm and pulled me into the shadows, where the light from the fire didn't touch us. I wanted to stand up to hear what La Canaria was saying and who she was speaking to, but I was so worn that even the slightest resistance was more than I could fight against. A breath could have blown me down.

“Who is she talking to?” I whispered.

“I don't know—a neighbor? The police?”

“Shut up,” I said. “It was stupid to listen to her.”

“I didn't hear you say that when we decided to stay at his apartment.”

“Then why don't you go back?” I said.

“How can I?” he said. He moved his hand to mine and
opened my clenched fist. Traced his fingers across my palm and then between my knuckles. “Return with your shield or on it,” he said.

It should have been easy to say something back to Marco, to react to his fingers hovering over mine as if my skin were too hot to touch. We hadn't lost a shield, we'd abandoned a limb, a self, a friend—that's what Grito was—we couldn't name, to water too cold to speak of, instead we waded through it all night long. I couldn't move my tongue and I couldn't move my arm. I doubted Marco's hand, I doubted any words I might shape, I doubted everything but the slow beat of my pulse and the shadows I saw when I closed my eyes. My words to them, my chase. I saw the room as an undeveloped film of itself—different versions of different shots. Exposed paper about to disappear into a tub of chemicals. Only the red light of the darkroom visible until the images took shape from blankness. Then there were so many choices, a crop here, a different exposure, all a matter of light and perspective, of aperture. These choices in that red room changed who entered the door. First it was whoever owned the mill. He slipped his arm around La Canaria. It took him a moment to notice us, but when he did, he changed and it wasn't he who walked through the door but Marco's mother, holding folders full of papers and screaming. Then Grito came in. Each of these entrances etched on top of the other. They weren't even different shots to choose from but the same strip of film, exposed again and again. Grito's old white shirt was wet. He came in dragging the branches and weeds of the river behind him like those old-fashioned ghosts who carry their sins in labeled chains around their necks. And then it was Alexis rolling a cigarette, lifting his face to the rafters.

La Canaria stepped back inside and closed the door behind her.

“Who was that?” Marco said.

“Just a neighbor,” La Canaria said.

“Are they suspicious?” Marco said.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I don't know how much longer we can stay here,” Marco said.

La Canaria laughed, a sharp, broken sound. Her skin hung off the bones in her face. She was yellowed as old ivory worn down by someone's hands.

Marco went outside to see who she'd been talking to. I rubbed my hand and wrist. There was a cold feeling in my palm where his hand had kept me warm. Return with what you came for or why return at all.

* * *

I woke again to an early twilight. No one was in the big room at the mill, but I heard something above me. The sound clear but the location uncertain. I climbed the stairs and walked to the end of the narrow hallway at the top of the stairs. The mill was hundreds of years old. The wood stained in a way no varnish could replicate. La Canaria materialized from around a corner, carrying an armful of flattened cardboard and plastic bags of rags and wire. Since we'd gotten to the mill, she hadn't stayed put. She'd wandered around the mill or outside of it, come back with cardboard, cloth, bits of wire, and plastic crates. The geography of the place revealed itself to her. Its halls mirrored the twists of her veins, and she didn't get lost or spooked like Marco and I did.

“What are you doing with all that trash?” I asked.

“Marco coughs too much at night. I'm looking for a place where I don't have to listen to him.” She looked flushed and tired.

“But what is all that stuff?”

She moved past me without answering. Perhaps I could not be heard. I no longer knew when I was speaking. If the words actually came out, in what language. She had been close enough to touch me, but instead of warmth, I got only a fetid scent coming off the layers of sweaters she wore. The same scent that lurked behind me when I walked.

“I said, what are you doing with that
mierd
a
?”

She stopped in the hallway and moved her hands up into her shirtsleeves. She wriggled slowly until both arms were against her torso, sleeves hanging limp.

“Who are you looking for?” she said.

I pushed past her. She couldn't catch her balance and stumbled.

“When you're walking around? Who do you think you're going to find?”

The hallway stretched behind and in front of me. I turned around and she'd disappeared. I hurried down the stairs. Marco was out. The fire a weak, suspended string of smoke. I started to make it again, shivering and not looking behind me. When I was a kid, sometimes I would get scared and scare Alexis just by being scared. Then the only way we could fall asleep was to check every room in the apartment, under the beds, press back the clothing in the closets, check behind the shower curtain, until we were certain no one but our abuela was there. We had to move strategically through the apartment so no one could double back and get into a place we had already looked, a place we thought was now empty. It made it worse, though, thinking of all the places someone could be and all the ways the body could bend and shrink. There was no way I could search the whole mill to make sure no one was there.

I went outside to collect more wood. I crossed the small iron bridge over the dam that directed the river underneath the mill. There were no lights on the street and the outside world was a black curtain, no stars or moon. I don't know how long I stayed out there, long enough to start shivering. I was so pliable—­anything was enough to make me forget what I was doing. Through the windows I could see Marco walk into the kitchen and La Canaria follow him, as perfectly lit as a play. He'd been outside and was holding a paper—he must have come in though the back door. I could hear them talking through the leaden glass.

“I think you're afraid of her,” La Canaria said.

“That's ridiculous,” Marco said. “Why would I be afraid of her?”

“You're afraid she'll find out what you did.”

Marco put the paper down on the ancient farm table covered with our trash and cigarette butts. He stared at the glass. I was inches from him, but he couldn't see me. He lit gold by the kerosene lamp, I covered in night. He moved his hands over his face as if smearing his skin. I could tell his hands were cold from how white they were—he'd had to walk a while to steal the newspaper. The pressure from his hands turned his face red. I wanted to stay like that, just for a minute. To read what his face held when he thought he was turned to a black wall, as if I were entering his sleep and walking there with him. But he stepped away from the window.

“What do you know about it?” he said.

I opened the door and they both looked up at me.

“They're killing the whistleblowers.” Marco gestured toward the newspaper on the table. “Anyone with information.”

“This is your news?” La Canaria said. “They've been doing that for decades. It's the party line.”

“This is different,” Marco said. I couldn't tell if he was worked up about the news or what Canaria had said. “Remember what they said in Madrid? Before, you accuse an officer of killing a militant, an artist, so what? He'll never face trial. After the elections, they don't know what will happen. They might have to pay for their crimes. They're making sure they'll never have to.”

“But what does any of this have to do with you?” La Canaria said. She dug our pouch of tobacco out from under the newspaper and began rolling a cigarette with a page of an old book we'd found upstairs.

“It has nothing to do with us,” I said quickly.

“Then stop talking about it. I'm sick of hearing about shit that's happening a million miles away. Unless you did something that you can fix, shut up.” She finished rolling the cigarette and walked out the door. Cold air entered and shifted the moldy curtains across from the fireplace. They wavered as if they held a melodrama villain who'd just been found out.

“How much does she know?” Marco said once La Canaria was gone. I cupped my face to the glass and I could see her on the small stone bridge, leaning over the dam. “About what Alexis was doing?”

I stopped moving, my fingers pressed against the windowpane, my breath clouding the small range of vision I'd created. I held my breath and tried to see through the fog. I couldn't remember the last time Marco had said Alexis's name. He stumbled over the sounds, as if both wary to speak them in front of me and unaccustomed to their shape.

“I mean—I think,” he started again, voice strained, “I mean—they were broken up when he disappeared. He told me he didn't want her to know about any of it. I don't think she knows what happened—”

“Don't,” I said. Marco had crossed a chasm with only a few letters, but I stood unreachable across many more.

“Mosca, we have to figure this out. If there's anything that could link us to the militants Alexis knew.”

“We're not even in the same country anymore,” I said. “No one cares.” I moved my hands away from the glass, slowly straightening up, my movements as controlled as if I were drunk and trying to hide it.

“It's happened before. Remember that writer they poisoned? He was in Chile.”

“Yeah, but he was a big deal. He had big secrets,” I said. “Names and photos, lots of them.”

Marco turned away from me. “The package Alexis had was important, Mosca.”

I wanted to ask what he knew, why he was afraid, even here. But I couldn't. I couldn't talk about that night and the part I'd played in its aftermath.

“We need to be careful,” Marco said. “We need to figure out what we're doing next. We can't just wait here for something to happen.”

I couldn't listen to him anymore. La Canaria came back inside. I moved past her, through the door, and the night fell on me. I could just make out someone leaning against the wall of the mill, shoulders hunched against the cold and smoking a cigarette. Though the night was dark, the shadows seemed to start at that cigarette, as if it were their entry port. Through the windows, Marco and La Canaria bent over the farm table, not speaking, just staring, each into their own empty space.

I walked toward the shadows, but when I crossed to the bridge, there was no one. On the stones was the end of a hand-rolled cigarette, fragile and still damp from landing by the water, still glowing faintly.