The Sleeping World (3 page)

“Then they have very short memories,” Marco said.

“Those
fachas
who killed the Communist lawyers in Madrid in January?” Samo said. “They didn't even think they'd get arrested.”

“And they still didn't get the people who were really behind it,” Grito said. “Yeah, Madrid, that's where the real action is.”

The door swung open, and a group of punks with their faces covered by black bandanas rushed in. They pushed a table against the door of the bar. The dogs barked at them and their sweaty, shaky fear.

“
¿Qué coño?
” the bartender yelled. “What's going on?” The punks pulled off their bandanas as if we didn't already recognize them. They'd been the ones tearing up shirts and handing out hooch last night. Felipe was with them, still in his worn brown jacket, though his hair was dripping with sweat.

“It's cool,” one of them said. “We're just going to chill here.” Felipe sat down at the bar and counted his coins to see how many beers he could cover. Then he walked over to our table. I ignored him, but he leaned over us and spoke in a whisper. “Mosca, you should get out of here.”

“Why?” Grito said.

It wasn't that we had forgotten last night, it just hadn't mattered. There was no firm ground. There was no past or future.
You could dream up a night like that and ride the reputation for months. Or you could dream and not wake up.

“That pig from last night? They're looking for you,” Felipe said.

“There was a huge crowd,” Marco said, “and we had bandanas on.”

“You weren't even there,” I said.

“I was,” he said. “I was there.”

“Look, I don't know why,” Felipe said, “but the word is they're looking for you three.” He pointed at Grito, La Canaria, and me.

“
Coño, coño,
” Grito mumbled. “How do they know who we are?”

“No one saw any of us,” I said.

“I just wanted to tell you, Mosca,” Felipe said.

The dogs started whining, their barks mixing with the police's German shepherds outside. Felipe had a handgun tucked in back of his black jeans. We glanced up at the photo of the general with a noose drawn around his neck. Underneath it someone had written our favorite epithet:
el Cabronísimo.
The hash in our pockets felt heavy. The police pounded at the door. The dogs inside went wild.

“I'm outta here,” La Canaria said. We rushed out the back door, spilling our beers. Marco dropped some pesetas on the table for the bartender. “Such a gentleman,” she called after him.

The streets were full of students partying, and the punks lost themselves in the crowds, dragging their dogs with them. We pushed a path away from the bar, and the barking faded.

“How do you know that guy?” Grito asked me over the crowds.

“Who?” I said.

“The punk with the gun.”

“I don't know him.”

“Yeah, you do. He wasn't gonna tell us except he knew you. Wasn't he friends with your brother—”

“Shut the fuck up,” I said.

“Do you think he's right?” Grito said.

A couple of
fachas
pushed between us, spilling beer on my jeans and combat boots.

“You want to fight, Commie?” One of them threw a drunken punch at Grito, which he dodged.

“I want out of this Nazi city,” Grito said. He held La Canaria tight around the waist. He looked skinny up against her, like a little girl with a long greasy ponytail.

“No one saw you,” I repeated, but I was scared, too.

“Let's get out of town for the night,” Grito shouted. “Find a little countryside hostel.” He raised his eyebrows at La Canaria. Real subtle, that
tío.

“Good idea,” La Canaria said, tugging on his ear.

“We'll just hide out for the night,” Grito said. “We'll be back in time for our exams.”

La Canaria pushed Marco over to me. “Here, Mosca, you can bring this along for company.”

Marco's face crisped in that pathetic way it did every time I looked at him.

“He's not the one they're looking for,” I said.

“Maybe he's the one who ratted us out,” Grito said.

“Fuck you,” Marco said. “I was there, same as you. But maybe Felipe's right. We'll get out of town, just for a night.”

It had been years since I'd left Casasrojas, even just for an afternoon. I had to be near for Alexis, just in case, but there was a pulling away, too. I needed only the softest words to wake it. The night before, I'd felt something—something dragging me awake—felt near to him somehow. I wanted that again. I
thought of the calls he would make from phone booths, my abuela forced to accept the charge so she could hear his voice crackling back to us from wherever he'd disappeared to for the night. And the cities he'd describe to me when he returned—Madrid, Granada, San Sebastián, Barcelona—perfect for having held him.

“I'm coming,” I said. “But I'm not coming with Marco.”

“We'll be back before you know who you're coming with,” La Canaria said. She tugged Grito behind her, deeper into the crowd.

* * *

The train station was full of grandmothers dressed in black who scattered like pigeons when we came onto the platform. The next train out of town was in fifteen minutes. Grito crumbled some hash into his cigarette while we waited. Since we didn't pay any attention to them, the grandmothers regrouped, edging closer to us and cooing about bad habits.

La Canaria jumped up on Grito's shoulders. “I'm hungry,
cariño,
” she said, and slunk her tongue into his ear. “Get me something to eat.” She nibbled on his neck, her teeth moving up and down like fingers doing piano scales.

He tried to shrug her off of him. “You want a sandwich?”

“I'm too starving to walk,” she said. “You better carry me.”

Grito stumbled off the platform with La Canaria on his back. Marco followed them.

“You look like a circus act,” I said. “A clown following a fucking elephant on a beach ball that's about to pop!” They didn't turn around. Once Grito was out of sight, I walked to the phone booth and called my abuela.

“I'm gonna stay at my girlfriend's tonight.” I spoke with the receiver close to my mouth, despite the film that had formed
on it. “Yeah, Susanna—she lives next to the library.” I hung up and heard the last of my coins clunk into the phone. “You're fucking kidding me.”

“Hush,” whispered one of the grandmothers. She could have been my abuela. I swear, the second they turn sixty, every widow in Castile-León goes through this ceremony where they get dropped into a vat of olives and wrapped in serrano ham, and by the time they're pulled out, they all look the same. “Don't talk like that,” she told me.

“
Vale,
Señora. I'm sorry.”

She offered me a hard anise candy. The other widows stepped closer to me. “Where are you going,
chica
?” one of them asked.

“To Madrid,” I said, making up a lie. “To join the protests.”

“What protests?” the little widow asked.

“For the Communist Party,” I told her, wondering how many rosaries she'd had her head under and for how long.

“Why would you want to do that?” one of them said. “Those protests are a disgrace.”

“The general gave the king very clear directions about how to lead our country once God took him,” the widow said, crossing herself. “This election goes against the will of God.”

Grito, La Canaria, and Marco came back then, La Canaria still on Grito's back, Marco following them. La Canaria was holding on to Grito with one arm and biting into a huge tortilla sandwich. Bits of greasy potato and egg stuck to her chin. “What are you talking about to these
viejas
, Mosca?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Let's get on the train.” I didn't want Grito to try to fight these pigeon-ladies. Didn't want to watch them slam their heavy purses into his skull while La Canaria cheered him on. I'd seen it before.

“Here, take this,” Grito said, handing me a bulging plastic bag full of wine boxes and Coca-Cola bottles. “You owe me.”

“No, I got her covered,” Marco said, and tried to put his arm around my shoulder. I bent down to tie my laces, and he stumbled instead. La Canaria, still on Grito's back, laughed.

* * *

The train edged out of Casasrojas. The sun hit the university buildings, turning the gold stones pink. For years I'd known exactly where I would paint my initials on those walls when I graduated. How I would write the extra symbol for honors on the top right corner. The students used to write their names in bull's blood. Now they used red paint. We crawled out of the city. I could still see the spot high above the street. The spot I showed my brother when we were so small, we could barely see it, and he laughed.

Leaving the city, I thought I'd see Alexis. It had been two years, but I still thought I'd see him in Casasrojas, his black hair cresting above the mass of wool hats the old men wore out walking after siesta. He'd started writing his name in spray paint on the city walls—first making fun of the students and then as something else. He wrote in black spray paint, making curved and delicate letters, spelling out
ALEXIS
,
and later just
A L X S,
sometimes a meter long, sometimes smaller than an outstretched hand. I looked for the signatures throughout Casasrojas. Most of them had been painted over or bleached out, but he said he'd tagged every place he'd been. I'd go on walks before dawn in the tunnels that the new streets passed over. The fluorescents would flicker, a power outage or a surge. I'd think, he must be here, he must have scared the pigeons flying toward me, but the lights jerked back on and it was only me who scared them, the echo of my footsteps. Or someone else walking in the dark before dawn.

The train was mostly empty. The cars smelled of smoke
and ham sandwiches, the windows yellow and smudged with kids' handprints. We opened the boxes of wine, chugged some, poured in the Coke, and swirled it around.

Even in our abuela's apartment on Calle Grillo, I'd turn my back to the front door and know he was coming in. I could feel him, not his breath but his whole body, his whole life, pressed down on the back of my neck. Soft as the place in a baby's skull before it's formed, heavy as that, too. And I would wait, wanting to hear his keys in the door even after my abuela changed the lock. I'd wait for his steps, the pattern I'd know anywhere, because if he made it to the door, he might be too weak or frightened to knock. It had to be me who let him in. I was the reason he wasn't coming back.

I'd stand there until my abuela called out, “What are you doing,
mija
?”

“Nothing,” I'd say. But she knew what I was doing. I was never sure what I could hide from her. That I knew I couldn't.

* * *

The train jerked to a stop several meters from the platform outside a speck-dust town two hours from Casasrojas. After a few minutes when the doors didn't open and we didn't keep moving, Grito walked to the front to ask about what had happened.

“The tracks are blocked. It's the strikes, I guess,” he said when he got back. He opened another box of wine. “They say we could be here all night.”

“
Coño.
” La Canaria grabbed the box from Grito's hand. “I'm not staying here all night.” She slugged the wine and Coke and pulled me out of my seat. “Come on, Mosca, let's find something to do.” Marco and Grito pried the doors open and we jumped out onto the tracks.

The town was one of those dumps with one bread shop,
one café, and one ugly church butting up against scraggly foothills. No countryside hostel. The streets were full of widows again. La Canaria ran at them cawing, but they refused to scatter; instead, they shook their crooked fingers at her. The café owner saw our clothes and wouldn't even let us sit down, let alone sleep above his shop. The town ended at the foot of a steep hill, and we climbed it, La Canaria and Grito swaying arm in arm. Marco walked in front of me, carrying the wine and smoking. We turned off on a shepherd's trail and kept climbing, the scent of pine heavy in the air. Pollen glowed in the twilight.

We climbed higher, and the ground got soggier until the pines finally stopped and there was only grass. Wild daffodils covered the hills, their spiky yellow buds reaching up to us. The earth was soaked with snowmelt that trickled down in hundreds of slender streams. Sheep shit was everywhere, but the air smelled of grass and sun and water. La Canaria bent down to drink from one of the streams.

“Are you crazy?” I said, kicking a dried lump of manure at her. She just laughed and crouched down, lapping up the water.

“So we'll camp up here and catch the earliest train back in the morning?” Marco said. “Is that the plan?”

“You and your fucking plans,” Grito said. He pounced on La Canaria and wrestled her to the wet grass.

“Why do you need to go back in the morning?” La Canaria teased. “Got something important scheduled?” She rolled on top of Grito. Marco had set himself up for their taunting.

“Mosca told those old ladies we're going to Madrid,” Grito said. “Is that the plan, Mosca?”

“Nobody said anything to me about Madrid,” Marco said. “I still have one more exam to take, and I need to pass it to graduate.”

“Don't listen to that
pendejo,
” I said, and started climbing again.

“Where are you going?” Marco called after me. “There's nothing up there.”

I didn't answer him. I wanted to see how far he'd follow me.

* * *

The air changed quickly as soon as the sun went down. The scent of hot pine lingered, but with no moisture in the air, it suddenly turned cold. We noticed it slowly, our skin adjusting until it couldn't and we were shivering.