Useful fools, p.13
Useful Fools, page 13
Gabriela laughed. “Yes, he will. You’d be amazed.”
With a sigh, Rosa leaned against the car. “I ruined your evening.”
“If you say sorry again I’ll smack you.”
A weak chuckle rose from Rosa’s stomach. She was hopeless, a disaster, but Gabriela would never admit it. “Don’t tell my father, okay?” She dabbed at her eyes, hoping the mascara hadn’t turned her into a goblin. “He fusses too much.”
Papá wanted things to be normal. That’s what he’d said to Mamá last night, his voice tired and snappish. Let’s just try to be normal, okay? And Mamá’s gentle reply, always trying to smooth things, to make things right once more. Sí, amor, sí.
“We’re trying to be normal at home,” she told Gabriela. The thought struck her as outrageously funny, and she started to laugh.
To her relief, Gabriela laughed with her. “Normal, huh?” Inside the pub, the band started up again, thundering out their biggest hit. “Listen.” Gabriela cocked her head. “They’re singing ‘The Towers.’”
One terrorist, two terrorists, were balancing on a bombed-out tower . . .
Gabriela laughed again. “Normal. Right.”
ELEVEN
The suds were disappearing, tiny bubbles popping one by one. The bar of laundry soap had thinned to a disk. Alonso plunged Livia’s blouse into the water. Holding it under, he scrubbed, then pulled it out and scrubbed some more.
In. Rub a bit. Out. Rub a bit. Carajo, he hated doing laundry. Nothing to look at but dust and walls and the frayed stripes of the laundry line. Nothing to think about but stuff he wanted to forget.
In. Mariela.
Out. Mamá.
In. Mariela . . . Rodolfo had cried at the funeral, surrounded by a dozen somber young men and women. He hadn’t seemed to care if his comrades saw the tears running down. The young men had kept their arms around him. The young women had circled Rodolfo’s mother, bearing her up. Rodolfo’s little brothers had flitted between people’s legs, scared and lost. Rodolfo’s father wasn’t there, though. Didn’t even bother to show up.
Ay, Mariela.
Now for the sheets. They billowed upward on the water, ballooning as he punched them down.
Every Saturday for the past month, he’d gone to the prison with Rodolfo. Not sure why, but going anyway, like a drunk going back to a bar. After morning assembly, with the hymns and the chants, the visitors would gather in a cell filled with wooden benches. They’d sit facing a cracked green chalkboard while one of the prisoners talked about the Party and the People’s War. The Senderistas called it an Escuela Popular. A People’s School, right there in the prison.
Alonso grabbed the laundry brush. One of the sheets had a stain where Gustavo had spat up. He scrubbed, and the stain faded to a reddish brown.
Last week, he’d sat again with Comrade Felipe at the little wooden table. They’d sipped coffee while the comrades chanted in the mist outside the window. Comrade Felipe had reminisced about going to the highlands as a young man. About joining Chairman Gonzalo and turning the rocky mountain-scape around Ayacucho into a liberated zone.
How that man could talk. He painted pictures, every word a brushstroke.
We all worked together, Alonso. All the campesinos and all the cadres, together. No one goes hungry in a Liberated Zone. We were up before dawn to plow, and all the campesinos came to help. Practically barefoot, most of them, and, carajo, it’s cold up there. They brought thirty teams of oxen. Have you ever seen an ox? Enormous brutes with tongues as big as towels. They’re like bulldozers with hooves. . . . We put red flags around the field and started plowing. When the sun came up, it was like an orchard in springtime, the wind flapping all those red flags. . . .
Alonso scrubbed and scrubbed. His knuckles stung in the cold water. He saw that rocky field. Oxen like bulldozers and an orchard of red flags.
They can’t stop us, Alonso. We’ll pay our quota of blood, and the People’s War will triumph. It’s a law of history.
Alonso hauled the sheets from the basin, wringing as he pulled. Streams of water gushed down.
Now Rodolfo wanted him to come out at night. That’s how you got started in the Party. A couple of cans of paint, a few scribbles on a wall, and you were a Senderista. Livia could lock the door behind him. Their old man would never know. He never stumbled in before two or three in the morning anymore.
What did his mother used to say? Do something. Don’t just sit around feeling sad.
Diana sat chattering in the doorway, a bald and ancient Barbie doll in her hand. She rolled one of Gustavo’s toy cars and sent the Barbie hopping after it. “Buy from me, señor,” the Barbie wheedled. “Don’t be mean. Buy from me.” Like an ambulante.
What kind of future do you want for your sisters, Alonso?
Shit, his sisters! He’d forgotten Livia!
He dropped the sheets into the basin, sending water surging over the sides. “Come on,” he cried, wiping his hands on his jeans. Gustavo was napping inside on the double bed. He started to whine as Alonso snatched him and ran out the door. Shushing him impatiently, Alonso looked up and down the street.
Shacks. The market. An old man pedaling a tricycle cart. No kids in gray uniforms. Alonso cursed. School must have let out half an hour ago. Where the hell was Livia? A colic of fear bit his gut, and he told himself not to be an idiot. The Pishtaco wouldn’t wander around in broad daylight.
Only they said it had been morning, the last time he grabbed a girl.
Alonso began to run. Gustavo bounced in his arms, whimpering sleepily. Diana trotted behind, still prattling with her Barbie.
Ahead of them, the outer walls of the María Auxiliadora School jutted into the road. Beside the schoolyard gate, Alonso could see two people leaning against the wall. One taller than the other. “LIVIA!”
The smaller figure stepped away from the wall and watched him approach.
“Livia, get over here! Get away from . . .” Pressing his hand against the stitch in his side, Alonso slowed to a stop. Livia’s lips were smeared with chocolate. The person standing next to her was a young woman, not a yellow-eyed Pishtaco. Alonso panted and stared. She had short hair and a gap between her two front teeth. She was smiling, but Alonso recognized her. She was the somber, hawk-faced young woman who’d stayed with the kids the day of Mariela’s wake.
“Alonso, Victoria found me here.” Livia spoke stickily, her mouth full of chocolate. “She’s—”
“Hello, Alonso.” Victoria held out her hand. Alonso shifted Gustavo to his left arm and shook it, carefully. A tiny hand, on the most delicate wrist he’d ever seen. He could easily have encircled it between his thumb and his forefinger.
“I was coming to see you, Alonso,” Victoria said. “And I saw Livia crying.”
“I told her about the Pishtaco,” Livia said. “But she wasn’t scared.”
Diana butted up to Livia. “Can I have some chocolate?”
Gustavo started to squirm. “Me too, me too.”
Livia looked at the tiny square of chocolate in her hand. She tried to snap it in two, but squashed it instead.
Victoria laughed. “Finish your chocolate, Livia.”
Diana yelped in outrage. “But I want—”
“AH!” Glaring, Victoria held up one finger. Diana’s mouth snapped shut.
Balancing her backpack on her hip, Victoria unzipped the front pocket. With a dramatic flourish, she pulled out two more chocolates.
Diana jumped up and down, grabbing for the chocolate. Still jumping, she peeled off the waxy white wrapper and shoved the whole square into her mouth. Victoria unwrapped Gustavo’s chocolate and handed it to him.
“What do you say, Diana?” Livia spoke primly, her tongue darting out to lick her lips.
Diana mumbled through melting chocolate. “Gracias.”
With a sigh, Alonso shifted Gustavo back onto his right hip. “Come on, then,” he muttered.
Livia slipped her hand into Victoria’s as they walked to the shack.
“I have to finish the laundry,” Alonso said. He walked out the back door, leaving Victoria besieged by the kids. Diana wanted to show her Barbie’s car, Livia the tattered baby doll, Gustavo his favorite yellow truck. Alonso could hear them. The kids babbling, Victoria laughing. Her laugh was surprisingly low-pitched for such a tiny person.
He stuck his hands into the basin and started pulling out the sheets.
The back door swung open. “Let me help,” Victoria said. She slid off her backpack and placed it carefully beside the door.
“I can handle it.” Alonso’s face burned as he stared at the tangle of sheets. Bad enough that she found him doing laundry. Now she’d see him turning purple.
Slender hands slid into the water. They hauled out a length of sheet and began twisting. A string of muscle popped up across her forearm.
Alonso sighed and twisted.
They wrung out the sheets, water dripping everywhere, and hung them over the line like narrow white tents. Victoria shook her head. “They’ll never dry by night,” she said.
Women knew that sort of thing. Though it probably didn’t take a genius. It was just that Alonso never seemed to do things in the right order. To wash the clothes after breakfast. After dressing the kids. After getting Livia to school but before cleaning up from breakfast. And definitely before heading back to the comedor to pick up lunch. He still couldn’t get it right.
Alonso dumped the water in a corner of the yard, then tossed the basin onto the counter. It spun for an instant and stopped.
“Alonso.” She stood beside him, that little hand on his forearm. “I need to ask you a favor.” Her grip tightened. “I need you to hold on to something for Rodolfo.”
Gently, he pulled his arm free and looked at the wall surrounding the yard.
“You don’t have to do anything with it,” she went on. “Don’t tell Rodolfo you have it. Don’t tell him anything, even that I was here.”
Alonso kept his eyes on the wall. Made of adobe bricks, the wall was just dried mud, cracked and filthy and poor.
“In a couple of weeks, he’ll ask you. Do you have a package for me? And then you give it to him.” Her voice lightened. “That’s all.”
Alonso’s gaze traveled up the wall. It was topped with poor man’s razor wire, jagged pieces of broken glass stuck in the mud. The walls shut out the sky, all but a tiny jailbird’s rectangle of gray.
Victoria stepped away from him and he heard her unzip the backpack. Maybe it was a gun.
She held it before him. A rectangular package, wrapped in brown paper and taped up like a gift. Alonso took it from her. He could feel, from the shape and the heft of it, that it held paper. Lots of sheets of paper.
He looked up and saw that little gap between her front teeth. She was smiling again. Hawkish, but smiling.
She stayed with them for a couple of hours, playing with the kids while he chopped vegetables for the night’s soup. She kissed his cheek when she left. Murmured, too low for the kids to hear, “Gracias, comrade.”
Alonso put the package at the bottom of his box, the wooden one with all his treasures.
After that, saying no to graffiti didn’t seem to make much sense. He and Rodolfo met up on Saturday nights in Lima’s crummiest shantytowns, the ones with no electricity and no lights. Misty, unlit darkness became their best friend. Alonso never knew beforehand where they were going. He just went where Rodolfo told him to go. Finally, one Wednesday night, Rodolfo asked him. Do you have a package for me? Neither of them mentioned Victoria. Inside the brown paper they found five hundred fliers announcing the upcoming paro armado, the strike that would bring the revolution to Lima for a day. They wallpapered San Juan with the fliers, racing each other around corners with a bucket of homemade flour-and-water paste. They were almost finished when they bumped into a pair of drunks. The drunks lunged at them, but the boys sprinted off, laughing and invincible.
That was how Alonso felt. Like nothing could stop him now. Striding down a dark street for the fourth Saturday in a row, he scanned the shadows like a cyborg. Left to right, right to left. He could almost hear the beeping in his head.
Only this was real. A kid with paint in his backpack, walking down a dark street at eleven o’clock at night. His old man’s belt was happy hour compared to what the cops would do if they caught him.
Rodolfo stood at the next corner, a slender shadow leaning against a bodega. Alonso’s muscles sprang to life as he broke into a jog. Every cell awake, as if he were back on the soccer field, bouncing between the goalposts. Just try me, he thought. History was on their side. A thousand Cesips, nobody hungry, and orchards of red flags blossoming in the sunlight.
Rodolfo drew him into the shadows as a car emerged from a side street. The car had a little red light on the dashboard and a rubber TAXI sign, the kind cab drivers spit on to make them stick to the windshield. The taxi stopped beside them, sputtering.
“Get in back and don’t look at the driver,” Rodolfo said in a low voice.
Alonso opened the door and climbed in, shoving his backpack under the seat in front of him. Without a word, the driver pulled out, bumping through the ruts until they reached the avenue. He shifted gears and hit the gas. Micros rumbled by. Cars darted like minnows from one lane to the other. The driver followed the expressway around Lima and turned onto the Panamerican Highway.
This was familiar territory. Alonso felt a shock of recognition when the taxi pulled onto a sandy shoulder. “One hour,” the driver muttered. The boys tumbled from the car.
“This is Salvador!” Alonso exclaimed. Spinning up grit, the taxi lunged in front of a passing truck.
“Ya. Let’s go. We don’t have much time.” Rodolfo began to trot away.
Alonso didn’t move and Rodolfo paused a few meters off. “C’mon,” he said impatiently.
“Tell me where we’re going.”
“You know I can’t—”
“I don’t care. Tell me now.”
Rodolfo grinned. “To church, hermano.”
“You want me to spray paint Padre Manuel’s church?”
The grin slipped from Rodolfo’s face. “It’s not his church,” he snapped. “He’s gone. What difference does it make?”
“No,” Alonso muttered. He shook his head. “Unh-unh.”
“Why not?”
“He was my friend!”
“Some friend,” Rodolfo snapped. “He got your mother killed and then he took off. He used her, Alonso, and what did he ever give you? Or your family? Religion is the opium of the masses, remember?”
That’s what the Senderistas said. People who believed in God were like drogadictos, running away from reality. Praying was not all that different from rolling cocaine paste into a cigarette and lighting up.
Rodolfo stuck his hands in his pockets. “Come on, Alonso.” There was an edge to his voice, to the way he tilted his head.
Feed those dying of hunger, because if you haven’t fed them, you’ve killed them. That’s what Padre Manuel always said.
People die for the simple reason that they’re poor. Comrade Felipe.
Do something. Alonso could hear her, the way she always said it. Hopeful, but a little exasperated.
“Let’s go,” he said, and started to jog up the hill.
“This way,” Rodolfo said. “The Special Forces might be at the Cesip.”
They ran along the highway and up a narrow lane. Sneakers thudding, past houses and bodegas and shacks. Up, up, up. They passed the shack where Rodolfo had lived, and a narrow alley that led to Señorita Ana’s old house.
Finally they stood in front of the whitewashed churchyard wall. Rodolfo looked down the road at the Cesip. “Looks like it’s all clear,” he said softly.
Alonso was peering through the wrought-iron gate. Padre Manuel’s churchyard lay buried under a layer of sand and dust. Five months of it, blown down from the hills. What had he said? I’ll be back in two months.
Alonso kicked savagely at the gate.
“Hey!” Rodolfo grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away. “Quiet!”
“Quiet yourself!” His head humming with anger, Alonso unzipped his backpack and tossed Rodolfo a can of spray paint. Then he pulled one out for himself, shook it till it rattled, and popped off the lid. Grimly, he fired an arc of red paint onto Padre Manuel’s wall.
Long live the People’s War!
“What are you doing?” Rodolfo asked.
“Sending a message,” Alonso snapped.
Rodolfo shook his head. “Well, write this instead: ‘Long live the Armed Strike!’ Only write it big.”
Alonso started writing, his anger shooting out with the paint. It felt good. He was leaving a mark. “Next Wednesday,” he murmured. “It’s almost here.”
“Ya, ’mano, we’re gonna shut Lima down. I wish I could be here to see it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you later.” Rodolfo started spraying, the paint hissing gently. “Get back to work.”
Alonso flinched at Rodolfo’s tone, but he let it pass and shook the can again. He was spraying huge letters now, stretching as high as his arm could reach. Big, big, big. He wanted the Special Forces to see it from the bottom of the hill. He wanted everyone to see it.
Someday they’d understand. He was on the right side of history now.
Rodolfo was still spraying when Alonso finished and stepped back to view his work. ¡Viva el paro armado! he read. At the bottom of each letter, wet paint dribbled down like a streak of blood.
A rumble sounded at his back and he whipped around. Far below, a truck was climbing the hill, headlights bouncing yellow beams off the Cesip’s walls. Alonso froze. “Rodolfo!” he hissed. “Special Forces!” Dropping the can with a clatter, he broke into a run.
The truck began to roar up the hill. They’d been spotted.
Alonso sped along the wall toward the narrow lane they’d come up. Rodolfo ran in the opposite direction, slipping behind a row of houses. The truck screamed to a halt, and as Alonso raced down the lane, he heard shouts and thudding feet.
Halfway down the block, he slipped into a narrow passageway. It was a tight squeeze. Bricks scraped him as he struggled through, gritting his teeth. At the end of the passage stood another wall, and beyond it Señorita Ana’s old house.
