The Sleeping World (9 page)

At some point the city lights went out. Or I dreamed they did. I watched the water dance, ushering in new musical movements, streaks of diesel shimmering in taffeta over the surface. In my pocket, I found the bullet La Canaria had given me at the shepherd's shack in the mountains. I couldn't remember how I'd kept it. Maybe Marco had found it in my widow's clothes and had been about to throw it out but I'd grabbed it from his hand, drunk and reaching, and put it in the pockets of the polyester trousers I woke up in, dragged across the dirt by his mother. The bullet fit right in my palm and I ran my fingers over the writing—the name of the gun and where it was made. The same gun my abuelo used for hunting. Alexis went with him several times until he refused to go again. He was twelve. They had been hunting pheasants. The birds hung
from their shoulders. Alexis handed my abuelo the gun and his old wool hat.

“He doesn't like killing,” my abuelo said. But he didn't mean that Alexis was weak. He meant Alexis understood something we didn't.

La Canaria's bullet warmed in my hand, the only warm and dry thing around me. I pulled at a frayed bit of rope by my feet until I'd loosened a thin strand. When I was young I used to read books aloud to Alexis about these kids whose lives were really terrible but they found this amazing new world where they were kings and queens. The thing about this world was that you could access it through ordinary things—a closet, a park bench, whatever. We always hoped we'd find that right thing that could get us in. Of course, our parents would be there, but we never said that. We were always looking for a way, even after we stopped believing in it. After so much searching, I'd gotten into somewhere, but it wasn't that place. And the things that had been solid before no longer were. No object or act held definition. I floated between the wants realized in sleep and the loss found in waking, unable to distinguish between them.

I wrapped the frayed rope around the bullet and put it over my head. It hung on my sternum beside Alexis's medallion. Gijón was somewhere I had never been, but it was somewhere Alexis had never been, either. Madrid, Madrid was the first city. I felt the name, the shape the syllables had made in his mouth, pulling me. I looked up and met Marco's eyes. I could barely look at him. Marco had lied. But far worse was what I'd already known: he kept Alexis alive in front of me—nothing more cruel or more gracious. I didn't want to want him because of who he'd been close to, what he'd meant to Alexis. I didn't want to be that cruel. But I was. I'd do worse. And I wanted to hurt
him for the same reason and because he was stupid enough not to see what I was. I knew what he felt about me and I wanted to punish him for it, for being the one person who could really see I was bloody rocks to break on and chains and gulls at his eyes and he was still following my every move. I would have told him if I could, what I wanted him to bear, but I couldn't meet his gaze long enough.

The water and the lights continued their flirt, a slow torture for no one else to see. If Marco heard the cities I whispered when the moon set, he didn't say.

* * *

“I've got money, but it is going to have to last us,” Marco said when it was just light enough to see beyond one another's faces to the edge of the boat. “It's not endless.”

“No, Marco, it's just your family's land and peasants that are endless,” Grito said.

“Do we have to do what you say, Marco?” I said. “Or you'll sic your father on us?”

“It's not very much money; it'll just get us to where we're going.”

“Which is where?” I asked.

“I don't know, maybe we could go south, to Cádiz. We could stay there, get jobs, I don't know,” Marco said without looking at me.

“Why do you want to go there?” I asked. It was the first time I'd ever heard him mention Cádiz. Grito talked about it sometimes because the rumor was that now that el Cabronísimo was dead, the ban on Carnival would be lifted, or people would just have it anyway. Cádiz was famous for having the best Carnival before the war.

“Carnival isn't for almost another year,” Grito said.

“We're going to Madrid, like we said we would,” I said.

“No,” Marco said. “We should go to Cádiz. We should start there.”

“Marco Francisco,” Grito said, laughing and using Marco's middle name for the first time. “They even gave you the ­general's name. Somebody to live up to?”

“Mosca, listen to me—”

“Got more land in Cádiz?” Grito continued. “An uncle you can sell us out to?”

“Shut up, Grito,” I said. “Madrid is where we said we'd go. It's where we told La Canaria we'd go. It's where I'm going.”

The cities were an itch in the back of my throat. Cádiz was not on the list. Madrid first, then the rest. I couldn't get rid of the thought. I didn't need to talk about it. Why I heard them, why I listened to them, why I wanted so badly to go to them and trace their walls with my fingertips. The want unformed but there, letting me know it wasn't leaving.

“All right,” Marco said. “Madrid to start.”

“Excellent choice,” Grito said. “Maybe you'll become the first Lara to slaughter pigs exclusively.”

I touched the bullet around my neck, wondered if that or a thin blade to the throat was better. I had a bullet, but the farther we moved away from Casasrojas, and especially there on the water, the half-light remaking every form, the less I could believe that it was Alexis who had gotten the blade. The less I could see him how I'd imagined him—on his knees, throat pulled back—the more something else twisted in me. It no longer seemed as certain. Other passages felt possible.

In the summer we used to take trips to Abuelo's old farm. That's where our parents' clothes, our mother's childhood toys
were kept. I knew Abuela's apartment would freeze until we got back and then be set in motion when she turned the key in the lock. The more I thought about it, the more real that thought felt. I never saw Alexis's body. Without a body, nothing is certain.

MADRID

Six

Her feet before the rest of her, in the Atocha train station, La Canaria's dirty toes curled around the edge of the marble steps, easing into the depression at the center, making home. Then her voice, yelling at the pigeons gathered around her, cupping a handful of bread to keep them close. “
¡Hijos de putas
!
” she shouted, just loud enough for it to echo a bit. “Suck it,
¡maricones
!
” I knew this act, the crazy one she made when she didn't want anyone near her, when she wanted to feel safe sleeping somewhere strange. “
¡Cabrones! ¡Pendejos! ¡Co-o-o-ño
!
”

Looking right at us, yelling at the pigeons, the whole train station, and us. We walked straight toward her, Marco and me first, Grito following, staring at the polished marble floor. She threw a shoe at Marco but missed by a lot. It wasn't hers. “
¡Hijos de putas
!
” La Canaria waved the other shoe above her head, moving it with the rhythm of her words.

“Where did you go?” Marco said when we were close enough.

“I tried to run away to America, you
comemierdas,
” she said, still waving the shoe above her head. “But they kicked me off the boat!” She was laughing and I couldn't tell how angry she
was. I knew that was how she wanted it. “I grabbed this as a goodbye present.”

Marco tossed the shoe back to her and she clapped it in her hands before it hit her in the face. She kicked her legs in the air, pretending she was a can-can dancer. She stood up and revealed an expensive-looking suitcase. “The bitch overpacked. Want a bikini, Mosca?”

She tossed it in the air and I caught the bikini—a skimpy gilded thing. With that I let her slip back in, her breath on the back of my neck. The kind of weight you have to turn around for, because what person would stand so close unless she wanted something. And you always turn, not knowing how much you're willing to give or how much you'll be asked to.

“What were you going to do?” I said.

“I got plans,
tía
,” she said. “I was heading to Paris—I know someone there. But that can wait.” She tossed Marco the suitcase she'd stolen. “It took us so long to get here, let's see this fucking city.”

She was wearing a pair of black tights with her sandaled toes peeking through the seams and a green silk shirt that barely covered her ass. Marco wanted to say something but didn't. I knew he didn't want to stay in Madrid but wanted to keep moving, to Cádiz, for whatever reason. “Fine,” I said.

Marco walked over to a boy selling newspapers. The demonstrations seemed to have died down for the time being. Instead the headline was the murder of Oscar Luis Romero, a young attorney.

“Well, at least it's better than it was before,” Marco said.

“You would think that, Don Lara,” La Canaria said. She was walking ahead of us.

“I mean at least the newspapers are covering it,” he said. Marco and Grito hurried to catch up, the stolen suitcase banging against Grito's leg.

I'd never been to Madrid, and I'd always thought it would be different from Casasrojas. It was where the demonstrations had started, where all the artists lived, it was supposed to be modern. In Madrid, everything we always talked about had happened, was happening. It was supposed to be much more alive than Casasrojas, a place that couldn't collect dust or suspend you in oil your whole life.

The train station was far more grand than the one in Casas­rojas, an expansive metal and glass arcade both delicate and threatening, but the people looked the same. The same men scurrying in their faded black suits and crumpled hats, the same gypsies with dirt worn into the creases in their dark skin, their foreheads bent over the cement, arms outstretched and hands clasped in prayer. The same frantic movements when someone gave them money, tucking a coin into their dresses so their sardine tins always stayed empty. I followed La Canaria, wanting to wash this grime off of me, to see my surroundings for what they really were and not with the tired tinge of what I expected and what I was capable of seeing.

The streets were covered with the smiling photos of all the different candidates, their faces repeated for blocks. Most of the posters were shredded and wilting, but someone could always be paid to plaster more on top of them. Torn pieces crumbled off, adding more trash to the streets. La Canaria kept walking like she knew where she was going, and maybe she did. I never knew when she was boasting or not. She always acted the same way, no matter what spot she was in. The newspapers all had the same photo of the young attorney who'd had his throat slit outside of his apartment in Lavapiés. He'd been trying to prosecute members of the Falange. The centerfolds had a photo of how he'd been found. It looked like he'd tripped falling down the stairs, but blood pooled on the steps below him in a dull
gray. All the articles contained the same minutiae about his daily life and the weather the night he was killed, painting a perfect picture and not pointing any fingers.

Marco kept looking at the cafés we passed and I could tell he was hungry. Grito and La Canaria walked ahead of him. I was glad to be somewhere farther south, where it was warmer. In Casasrojas, the sun coaxed each stone warm one by one, and all its efforts were washed away with some rain. It took months to shake the damp and then it was too hot, the city emptied, people piling into cousins' farms in the country, everyone in search of cool water, a window big enough to catch the breeze. But Madrid was full of people. Maybe the weather didn't matter much here. The rules of a job or a crowd's movements probably meant more than the sun. Or maybe it was because there were just so many people that if even half left for the summer, the city would still seem busy to me.

It was around six. All the men were getting off work and stopping in cafés for a
caña
before they went home. The old people had just left the house and were walking through the city. Groups of old men with canes and summer jackets walked arm in arm in front of their wives, who held on to each other's hats when delivery trucks sent up gusts of hot air. The young businessmen tried to skirt the edges of these groups, but sometimes the old people would take up the entire width of the sidewalk. The businessmen kept walking behind the old people, their pace the same, just taking smaller steps, moving like those windup plastic ducks with feet that go really fast but don't go anywhere and that do flips if they're working right. I thought one man ahead of me in a worn green fedora was about to flip right over the old women who had stopped to look at hosiery in a window and were fighting over whether it was indecent to show a mannequin in her dressing gown. They had their arms linked,
and though they had stopped, they hadn't huddled together by the window because the one farthest away considered even looking too immodest.

Someone brushed into me and I felt something cold and wet reach right under my ribs and grab my spine. It was a young guy—he looked like Alexis. His head wasn't shaved but he had those same curly lips, the proud way of holding his neck that contrasted strangely with his hunched, defensive shoulders. A few minutes after he passed, I realized I'd stopped looking at the old people and the businessmen. I looked for groups of young people, for young men carrying packages or smoking on balconies. Instead I saw
fachas
in stiff suits, skin wishing to be encased in military uniform, hands drifting to guns that were perhaps still within easy reach. I thought of how the police hadn't questioned my abuela or me when they gave us Alexis's medallion. I'd been relieved, but it seemed strange now, an omission, one that might have to be circled and revisited. We had thought no one was watching us in Casasrojas, but that was because we forgot. Like a child forgetting to breathe, we forgot there were no unsurveyed moments. That was as true in Madrid as in Casasrojas. Nothing was secret.

We passed the huge museums and rows of carts selling used books. On balconies, pudgy women in tailored suits and heavy gold jewelry, wives of the old guard, knitted under parasols. Their feet bulged out of tight leather sandals, arched into high heels even when sitting. Women in pleated pantsuits with matching bright plastic jewelry stood in doorways, smoking and waiting for it to be time to close up shop. We turned down smaller streets that the dipping sun couldn't reach. Last Easter's palm fronds had been woven into the window grates. Children's fingers or the long nails of women about to go out picked at the fronds. The streets were already dark and damp even
though it wasn't yet night. It didn't take long for the buildings around us to start crumbling. Empty lots appeared, with kids and old ­people picking through the rubble like tongues surfacing through missing teeth. La Canaria walked up to a group of young people sitting on the steps of a grimy café, drinking liters of beer.

“Buy us a couple,” she said to one of guys. He was skinny and short with dirty pants cut off mid-calf and a dark shirt, the sleeves rolled up like James Dean's. His hair looked like the scruffy hind legs of a circus bear. His face was shaved and his nose turned up like a boy's.

“Why should I?” he said, taking a drink of his beer and looking La Canaria up and down.

“Because we're cute.” La Canaria grabbed my arm and wrapped her hands around my waist. Grito and Marco stood back, not speaking. The guy smiled and went inside the store. A group of gypsies had made camp in one of the abandoned buildings across the street and were roasting potatoes in a trash can. A family was asleep in an old Renault 4, the children's faces smudged against the glass hatchback.

“His cousin works here—he gets a bunch of stuff for free,” said a tall guy with a Mohawk. A dog sat with his head on the punk's legs, lapping up the cold sweat from the beer bottle.

“Well, I don't do anything for free,” La Canaria said. She sat down on the side opposite the dog. The dog pulled his tongue away from the beer bottle and sniffed La Canaria's knees. She ignored him. The guy came out of the café with two beers. He handed one to me and one to La Canaria.

“You
punki
?” La Canaria asked.

They laughed. “Yeah, we are,” said the one with the Mohawk.

She introduced us. They said their names but didn't stand up, just waved lazily. There were about five of them, two guys and
three girls in leather jackets and miniskirts. Paco brought us the drinks and Borgi, with the Mohawk, had the dog. Marco kept twitching toward them to offer his hand, but they stayed still.

“What, are these your brothers?” Paco said to me, jutting out his beer at Marco and Grito. Marco looked at me quickly and then away. I ignored him.

“No, they're not our brothers,” I said.

“
Vale, vale,
” Paco said, stretching out his long fingers to scratch behind the dog's ears. “Where are you from?”

“Casasrojas,” I said.

“We came for the protests, but I guess we're late,” Grito said, speaking for the first time.

“
Joder,
I thought everyone in Casasrojas was a
facha,
” Borgi said. The girls sitting behind him laughed. When he spoke, his Mohawk flopped around in front of his eyes. He was taller than the others, taller than anyone I had seen before, though he was sitting down. He was as skinny as the rest of us, but his limbs seemed to contain a barely reined current. Paco was stockier; the veins in his forearms pulsed when he gripped his bottle.

“We had huge protests for the Communists,” Marco said. “Almost all of the students were involved. A bunch of teachers just passed their students without even looking at the final exams.”

“I hope they did that for us,” La Canaria said.

“I guess that would have been the only way you could've passed,” Grito said. It made him angry when she talked to any other guy except Marco.

“We're not in school anymore,” I said. “I don't know why we have to talk about it so much.”

“We haven't mentioned it for days,” Marco said. “Not since—”

“Then we shouldn't now.” I couldn't remember a time when
I hadn't been in school. Everything that I could remember doing had happened while I was getting ready for an exam or after I'd been studying in the print shop beneath the philology library or leaving it. That I'd never do that again was not quite touchable.

“Did you drop out?” Paco asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Cool. Us, too.”

I drank from my beer bottle.

“We're artists,” he continued when I didn't speak. “Public artists.”

I swallowed my beer and nodded as if I understood. Then I handed the beer to Marco. He was still standing over us, expecting someone to ask him to sit. I don't know why I handed him the beer. It was making me laugh, him leaning, up on his toes. But I wanted to make it clear just what I was accepting from these punks and what I wasn't. La Canaria looked at me and handed her beer to Grito. She grabbed it back when he took two sips in a row. I took mine back too.

“
Coño,
” she said, “public artists, what does
that
mean?”

I peeled off the label of my beer bottle. The beer wasn't quite cold enough for it to come off in one easy strip.

“We make public art,” Borgi said. “In the street—wouldn't you say, Zorra?” He reached back to tickle one of the girls' legs. I handed my beer to Marco again and tried to iron out the torn label on my thigh.

“They're just a bunch of hicks,” Zorra said, brushing him off. She stretched her long legs out around Borgi and flexed her feet, moving through ballet positions. Then she tightened each of the three ponytails that stuck out in a row on top of her head. “They don't know what we're talking about.” The girl next to her nodded and took a slow drag, leaving a ring of bright purple lipstick
on her cigarette. Their clothes were nice, the leather jackets new, the zippers shining. They smoked American ­cigarettes—Winston Slims—blowing the smoke high above them. They were slumming it, but there was no dirt under their nails.