Nazaré, page 23
In the end, the only warriors who came were Sombrero and Jesa and a few Bujigangans recently returned from their tours of Balaal building windmills and solar panels. Among them were engineers and inventors, but their dragon had been disassembled and the fake tanks were out of commission.
Sombrero came in from a pueblo where he’d been teaching farmers to read and write. He carried a rifle and was still wearing his hat.
“¿Necesitas mi ayuda, compa?” he said to Kin. “Como siempre.”
“So this is it,” said Jesa. She dismounted the camel. “A nun, a teenager, two teachers, and some tinkers. Do we have a Plan B?”
“We’re working on it,” said Kin.
“What would Fundogu do?” said Jesa.
“Levitate and philosophize.”
Even as he said it, Kin remembered there was a secret weapon lying somewhere out of reach. A levitator of a different kind, with guns and a bomb chute. Where was that Fokker when it was needed?
*
Across a field of pampas grass now turned yellow. Through a brass gate tinted with verdigris. Over a crumbling drystone wall hand-packed and spotted with lichen. Past neck-high weeds which still clambered in the drought. There. There in the long grasses. A Fokker A.III M16 Hybrid, built in Schwerin, Germany in 1916 by a Dutchman. Wood and steel. Red and black paint job. Iron crosses on the wings.
“There she is,” said Kin.
The tip-off from a former Matanza soldier was correct. The plane was sprouting weeds in a field. But when they tried the engine, it was dead. They called in an engineer from Bujiganga. She twiddled nobs and oiled gear sticks. Nothing. They called in a retired mechanics professor from Sondaj. He took measurements, poked and prodded with a chisel. Nothing. They called in a shaman from the hills. He blew mapacho smoke over the controls and said an incantation. Nothing.
“This plane won’t fly,” said Kin. “It’s rusted to hell, and we’re out of time.”
They returned to the city center.
*
When Bashir and his men arrived at the grounds of the palace, they were parched. They lay down in the shade of a tree-lined avenue but didn’t sleep because they were terrified of being bewitched again and growing animal parts in their slumber.
Once he’d caught his breath, Bashir said, “Get up. We attack now. We’re minutes from victory. There are no guards. Just as before, we walk in through the front door and take over. Are we ready?”
He looked at his army. A fiasco of sudor and grime, red-eyed, swatting at flies. But Bashir clenched his fists and stuck out his chest and gradually his soldiers rose to their feet.
They came to the high gate of the palace. Bashir pushed it open. They walked in. Nobody and nothing. Not a solitary guard. They walked under the portico and came to the main door, which now had a wooden plaque saying Museum—Under Construction. The door was locked.
“Museum, ha!” said Bashir. “They’re hiding inside.”
He kicked at the door, which came open with an explosion of dust and splinters. They walked in.
The first thing Bashir saw was an oil portrait on the wall, a Matanza dictator, with a hole in the canvas: an eye gouged out, Bashir’s own handiwork. The building was bathed in a strange silence. Where was everybody? The child ruler? The nun? The woman with the streak in her hair? The revolutionary in his stupid keffiyeh with his straggly beard? Bashir braced himself to fight but the place was empty. All he could see were one-eyed portraits on the walls and glass-topped tables with little plaques. The museum. Objects of all kinds: maps, dogs’ leads, a shield. It was a chaos of clutter, a scene from a Bujigangan junk yard.
One wall was assigned for the recent revolution, adorned with black and white photos of The Battle of Matanza Square, some from the ground up, others from high buildings looking down on the scene. One was from behind the fire-breathing dragon flanked by those fire-eaters.
There were artefacts too. Shovel Belonging to the Rebel Miner Cienfuegos of Bocadelin. Sword Used by the Kakurega. Vintage Grundig 505 Record Player Used to Confuse Matanza Army. Stuffed Parrot Called Madrugada Which Belonged to Rebel Leader Suvaco (Replica).
“We can reminisce later,” said Bashir. “Where are they? The boy and those women.”
In vain they looked. They combed the upper floors. They scouted the kitchen. They turned the bedrooms upside down, hauling thick quilts off poster beds and rummaging in man-sized wardrobes. There was nobody there and no noise save a constant prattling of antique clocks on the wall and the men’s footsteps crashing around the faded luxury.
Bashir stood at the top of the staircase and announced, “I, Bashir, hereby proclaim myself leader of Balaal.”
No one applauded. The rat-men were too busy rifling through the kitchen, and the Bouazizi had found a stash of whisky.
“I said, I, Bashir, hereby proclaim myself leader of Balaal!”
Not a whit.
He tried the words of a former Matanza.
“I, Bashir, hereby proclaim myself His Mighty Highness, Conqueror of Balaal and the Surrounding Towns and Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and the Fishes in the Sea.”
The Fanatics of Bouazizi huddled around the booze, backs to Bashir.
“We need to invade the radio station,” he said, “and find a goddamned megaphone.”
He was about to sit down when the phone rang. It was an old-fashioned hand-dial, ivory colored, with a receiver the shape of a dog’s bone. The Bouazizi didn’t know what it was, but Bashir was a man of the world and he picked it up immediately.
“It’s me,” he said. “His Mighty Highness, Conqueror of Balaal and the Surrounding Towns and Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and the Fishes in the Sea.”
“Bashir, this is Kin.”
“Where are you?”
“Meet me in one hour, where the four roads converge. Just you and me.”
Kin hung up. Bashir thought to himself, the Conqueror of Balaal and the Surrounding Towns and Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and the Fishes in the Sea doesn’t take orders from children. But he decided to go anyway and to take his army with him. What use was a title if no one knew you had it? And what fool would walk into an obvious ambush without an army even if its soldiers were currently draining the dregs of Balaal’s finest hooch?
*
There was only one landmark in Balaal that everybody knew. The fishermen knew Socorro Point, because that’s where they were baptized; the soldiers knew Liberators Plaza, formerly Matanza Square, because it was the center of the city, where the giant statue had fallen, and where a dragon had roared; rebels knew Mount Naranco because that’s where they ran and hid every time a Matanza wanted their head. But everyone knew The Place Where the Four Roads Converge. It was now little more than a grassy hummock with a rock in the middle, but it was the spot where Balaal had been founded.
It was point zero, where a traveler had lain his head, so far from home, so broken by wars and bloodshed. He was lost, his horse long abandoned to the vultures. Dry gore coated the man’s feet up to his ankles. There, that traveler looked to all four corners, smelled water in the earth, heard the distant thunder of ocean waves, and saw the silhouette of a mountain range blurred by sunrays. He fell asleep to the sound of bird squawk and frog croak and dreamed of the great city of Balaal.
Years later he buried his bloodstained shoes at that very point and the mud turned red. After the town was founded, they built four roads off that central hub: one to the river, now dried up in the drought, one to the sea, one to the hills, and one to the wastelands, where, reputedly, the devil played dice with his underlings. They say a city founded in blood always remains in blood.
Now it was midday. The sun burned down from directly above.
*
“Bashir will kill you,” said Jesa.
“Only a fool would face that madman alone,” said Iquique.
“Do you even remember the revolution?” said The Professor. “He brought dynamite and knives. He had landmines. He’ll use them if he needs to.”
Kin looked calmly at them and felt the coral necklace against his chest.
“If you go alone,” continued The Professor, “how can we protect you?”
“You’re not protecting me,” said Kin. “I’m protecting you. And the city.”
Kin stood up. He was no longer a boy. He towered over them all. He had filled out and grown strong while no one was looking. Those days spent hauling nets, eating Jesa’s food instead of scraps from the street, the days recuperating in the mountains at the papery hands of the old woman who fed him, meant he had become a warrior instead of a fisherman. Even those days cooped up in a prison cell sustained by nothing but water and bread had failed to wear him down. As a boy, he’d broken into warehouses and stowed away on trawlers. Now, as a man, he was strong enough to work all night for months on end and to take on the King of the Rats face to face, may the best man win.
“I’ll be armed,” he said. “I’ll be ready. Come along if you want, but stay in the shadows.”
And the shadows was where Bashir now waited. From there, he could see through a pair of binoculars The Place Where the Four Roads Converge. The city had expanded to the east, so the meeting point was on the outskirts of Balaal, and, despite its history, the area was run down. There were derelict stores, a warehouse, a littered park. Only a massive boulder at the center of the roundabout told the tale. On it were inscribed the words: “De hac urbe condita est sanguis hominem.” From a man’s blood this city was founded.
Bashir stood under a tree. His army was convened behind him in a faux Roman phalanx, facing outward, weapons drawn. They were down to twenty-eight men and half of those were drunk.
At the appointed hour, Kin arrived. He was wearing army fatigues and scuffed boots.
“Stay here,” Bashir said to his soldiers.
He let the binoculars hang down from the leather strap around his neck, felt the gun in his holster, and walked into the light toward the boulder at The Place Where the Four Roads Converge. Kin walked from the opposite direction and they met in the middle, the earth under their feet cracked and still tainted with the red of that first warrior’s bloody shoes.
Kin greeted Bashir: “I hear you want to lead Balaal.”
Bashir squinted at Kin and appraised him. No weapon, but the boy was now as tall as him.
“You’re illegitimate,” he said. “No one elected you and you didn’t win the revolution alone. Why are you our leader?”
Kin said nothing.
Bashir went on, “Do you have Matanza blood? Is it your birthright to lead us? You have no more right to the throne than I do.”
“I have no throne,” said Kin. “I’m not a king.”
“But everyone says you’re our leader,” said Bashir.
Kin kept his eyes on Bashir’s hands. The King of the Rats looked fat and slow and he had a piece of shrapnel in his leg, but Kin had seen him in battle.
“We offered you a part of the city,” said Kin, “for yourself and your men. Remember? It has a water supply and roads. There are trees and fertile land. If it ever rains again, you can run it as you want, as long as you obey the law. We already offered you this, remember? But the next we heard, you were marching to the palace with your army.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” said Bashir. “Why are you our leader?”
“Because Fundogu decreed it. He said it was the prophecy.”
Bashir let out a hollow laugh. “You’re illegitimate,” he said. “And you’re a child. Did you rescue your people when their town was bombed? Did you comfort them when their families were murdered? What have you ever led?”
“I led the revolution which overthrew Matanza. You know this because you were by my side. I planned it with Jesa and Iquique. I dreamed it when I was in a cave and then in a prison cell after the first failed attempt.”
“The revolution is done,” said Bashir. “It’s finished. Move out of my way and I’ll spare your life. Go back to the fishing village where you belong. You’re a fisherman. You can grow old with all the other octopus-eaters. Go home.”
“No,” said Kin. “I am the ocean. I am the four winds. I am the stars that guide the living. I am the memory of the dead.”
A silence passed between them. A remembrance of blood and war. The fire of the dragon’s breath in Matanza Square. The toppled bronze horse and rider.
Bashir had a gun in his holster and a knife in his belt. But while he hesitated, the sun retreated behind a cloud and then a drop of rain—the first in ten months—landed on his forehead. Bashir fell to the ground with a thud. His limbs didn’t twitch and he uttered no soliloquy. His heart didn’t slow to a halt and his life didn’t flash before his eyes. He was dead as a stone, killed by a raindrop.
The Fanatics of Bouazizi stared from the shadows. They broke off from their phalanx formation and approached slowly in ones and twos. Like Kin, they were dumbfounded. They looked for the gunshot wound, the geyser of blood. They looked for a poison dart or a rock fired by a slingshot. But they saw nothing because there was nothing to see except a trickle of water on Bashir’s forehead, his own personal Nazaré which had washed him off the face of the earth.
In the shadows on the other side of The Place Where the Four Roads Converge, Jesa, Iquique, Sombrero, and The Professor watched in confusion. Bashir was on the ground but they’d heard no gun blast and had seen no attack.
A few of the Bouazizi began wailing. Some dropped their weapons. The remaining rat-men ran back to the shadows and disappeared.
The raindrop that killed Bashir was followed by a steady drizzle which turned into a torrent. All eyes in Balaal were raised to the heavens. In Bujiganga the people rattled pots and pans. In the fishing village they sang to the sky god. In Qo’zg’olon, the miners ditched pickaxes and danced a samba. In the Valley of the Lepers, they strung up tarpaulin between trees to catch the water. In Andantino Dolente, feral cats yowled. Every sound in Balaal was now drowned out by the beautiful hiss of the rain.
CHAPTER 30
The rat-men and the Boo begin to forget—la bruja—burial—days of peace and prosperity—Jesa returns
MANY YEARS LATER, A FAMED PUPPET SHOW WOULD DEPICT BASHIR’S REVOLT AS A COMEDY, his army a troop of drunk lollygaggers, vaudevillian villains, lounging indolent on the yellow grass, sunbathing or napping before the imminent attack. They’d get up and trip over cobblestones. A seagull would crap on their heads. They’d shoot themselves in the foot while trying to load their guns. It was the insurgency as slapstick, with the figure of Bashir as the hero-clown blundering in broad daylight toward the palace and succumbing to a raindrop, God’s fallen tear.
Only Kin of the Waves understood that Bashir had given his life to bring water to Balaal. Nothing else could have killed him, indomitable as he was. His death was the price of the rain that ended the drought.
*
Not one of the rat-men or the Bouazizi thought to remove their fallen leader. Even as they turned their backs, their memories began the cleansing brought on by the deluge and by his demise. Who was the one-eyed basher? Why had they followed him in the first place? What was that fetor that stuck to him in death? Could not even the rain annihilate the smell of Macanudo cigars?
They departed to make new homes somewhere in the city. They went in clusters, taking different routes, for there were four roads that converged at the point where Bashir’s body lay. Some headed for the sea, others the river, others the hills, and others the wasteland, where the crows cawed long and loud and the devil played dice.
And as the rain came down, the body got drenched. The deluge clung to Bashir’s moustache in tiny transparent globules. It turned his military fatigues dark. The binoculars still hanging from the leather string around his neck tipped into the mud like a discarded bauble. His eyepatch was soaked. His beret, rain-battered and crumpled with its own weight, slipped off Bashir’s head leaving him exposed to the torrent. His blood turned to clay.
The muddy floor where Balaal was founded now became soft as if beckoning the King of the Rats inside. His massive back formed an indent. Gradually he started to sink.
The Professor, Sombrero, Jesa, and Iquique came out of the shadows to share in the jubilation of rain but also to see what had happened to Bashir.
“What now?” shouted The Professor, as he approached Kin and the fallen rebel.
In the old days, the victors would have tied the dead man to a stallion and dragged him through the streets. They would have left him on a hill for the vultures and hyenas. No gravestone, no marking, not even a wooden post. His name like his flesh tossed to the four winds to be forgotten.
“I can’t hear a word!” Kin shouted into the rain.
But Kin knew what to do. He bent down and tugged at Bashir’s body, which was sinking into the rain-battered soil where the four roads converged. Using all his strength, he rescued the dead man from this impromptu interment and hauled him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. To be drowned in earth with no ceremony was almost the same as to be left on a hill, a humiliation saved only for the worst, for the most depraved.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” shouted Jesa over the downpour. She could see no blood and had heard no shot.
“Feel his pulse,” said Iquique.
“He’s dead,” said Kin, and he staggered toward shelter—the awning of a shop—where he placed the body in a sitting position against the wall.
Out of the deluge now, Jesa said, “Did you kill him?”
“No,” replied Kin. “He was killed by a drop of rain.”
And Jesa watched the boy and thought: he pushed a whale into the water, he killed The Butcher, and now he’s ended a revolt without spilling blood.
“Shaman,” she said, “a drop of rain?”
The inundation turned the sky gray. And from the mizzle, a form appeared but only Kin saw it. At first, he thought it was an eagle or a pterodactyl, but finally he recognized it. Fundogu, way up in the air. Through the blast of rain the old man’s spirit shouted, “Heed my words! Find Amador’s killer. Bury your enemies. Go to the island. Look in the warehouse.”
Sombrero came in from a pueblo where he’d been teaching farmers to read and write. He carried a rifle and was still wearing his hat.
“¿Necesitas mi ayuda, compa?” he said to Kin. “Como siempre.”
“So this is it,” said Jesa. She dismounted the camel. “A nun, a teenager, two teachers, and some tinkers. Do we have a Plan B?”
“We’re working on it,” said Kin.
“What would Fundogu do?” said Jesa.
“Levitate and philosophize.”
Even as he said it, Kin remembered there was a secret weapon lying somewhere out of reach. A levitator of a different kind, with guns and a bomb chute. Where was that Fokker when it was needed?
*
Across a field of pampas grass now turned yellow. Through a brass gate tinted with verdigris. Over a crumbling drystone wall hand-packed and spotted with lichen. Past neck-high weeds which still clambered in the drought. There. There in the long grasses. A Fokker A.III M16 Hybrid, built in Schwerin, Germany in 1916 by a Dutchman. Wood and steel. Red and black paint job. Iron crosses on the wings.
“There she is,” said Kin.
The tip-off from a former Matanza soldier was correct. The plane was sprouting weeds in a field. But when they tried the engine, it was dead. They called in an engineer from Bujiganga. She twiddled nobs and oiled gear sticks. Nothing. They called in a retired mechanics professor from Sondaj. He took measurements, poked and prodded with a chisel. Nothing. They called in a shaman from the hills. He blew mapacho smoke over the controls and said an incantation. Nothing.
“This plane won’t fly,” said Kin. “It’s rusted to hell, and we’re out of time.”
They returned to the city center.
*
When Bashir and his men arrived at the grounds of the palace, they were parched. They lay down in the shade of a tree-lined avenue but didn’t sleep because they were terrified of being bewitched again and growing animal parts in their slumber.
Once he’d caught his breath, Bashir said, “Get up. We attack now. We’re minutes from victory. There are no guards. Just as before, we walk in through the front door and take over. Are we ready?”
He looked at his army. A fiasco of sudor and grime, red-eyed, swatting at flies. But Bashir clenched his fists and stuck out his chest and gradually his soldiers rose to their feet.
They came to the high gate of the palace. Bashir pushed it open. They walked in. Nobody and nothing. Not a solitary guard. They walked under the portico and came to the main door, which now had a wooden plaque saying Museum—Under Construction. The door was locked.
“Museum, ha!” said Bashir. “They’re hiding inside.”
He kicked at the door, which came open with an explosion of dust and splinters. They walked in.
The first thing Bashir saw was an oil portrait on the wall, a Matanza dictator, with a hole in the canvas: an eye gouged out, Bashir’s own handiwork. The building was bathed in a strange silence. Where was everybody? The child ruler? The nun? The woman with the streak in her hair? The revolutionary in his stupid keffiyeh with his straggly beard? Bashir braced himself to fight but the place was empty. All he could see were one-eyed portraits on the walls and glass-topped tables with little plaques. The museum. Objects of all kinds: maps, dogs’ leads, a shield. It was a chaos of clutter, a scene from a Bujigangan junk yard.
One wall was assigned for the recent revolution, adorned with black and white photos of The Battle of Matanza Square, some from the ground up, others from high buildings looking down on the scene. One was from behind the fire-breathing dragon flanked by those fire-eaters.
There were artefacts too. Shovel Belonging to the Rebel Miner Cienfuegos of Bocadelin. Sword Used by the Kakurega. Vintage Grundig 505 Record Player Used to Confuse Matanza Army. Stuffed Parrot Called Madrugada Which Belonged to Rebel Leader Suvaco (Replica).
“We can reminisce later,” said Bashir. “Where are they? The boy and those women.”
In vain they looked. They combed the upper floors. They scouted the kitchen. They turned the bedrooms upside down, hauling thick quilts off poster beds and rummaging in man-sized wardrobes. There was nobody there and no noise save a constant prattling of antique clocks on the wall and the men’s footsteps crashing around the faded luxury.
Bashir stood at the top of the staircase and announced, “I, Bashir, hereby proclaim myself leader of Balaal.”
No one applauded. The rat-men were too busy rifling through the kitchen, and the Bouazizi had found a stash of whisky.
“I said, I, Bashir, hereby proclaim myself leader of Balaal!”
Not a whit.
He tried the words of a former Matanza.
“I, Bashir, hereby proclaim myself His Mighty Highness, Conqueror of Balaal and the Surrounding Towns and Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and the Fishes in the Sea.”
The Fanatics of Bouazizi huddled around the booze, backs to Bashir.
“We need to invade the radio station,” he said, “and find a goddamned megaphone.”
He was about to sit down when the phone rang. It was an old-fashioned hand-dial, ivory colored, with a receiver the shape of a dog’s bone. The Bouazizi didn’t know what it was, but Bashir was a man of the world and he picked it up immediately.
“It’s me,” he said. “His Mighty Highness, Conqueror of Balaal and the Surrounding Towns and Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and the Fishes in the Sea.”
“Bashir, this is Kin.”
“Where are you?”
“Meet me in one hour, where the four roads converge. Just you and me.”
Kin hung up. Bashir thought to himself, the Conqueror of Balaal and the Surrounding Towns and Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and the Fishes in the Sea doesn’t take orders from children. But he decided to go anyway and to take his army with him. What use was a title if no one knew you had it? And what fool would walk into an obvious ambush without an army even if its soldiers were currently draining the dregs of Balaal’s finest hooch?
*
There was only one landmark in Balaal that everybody knew. The fishermen knew Socorro Point, because that’s where they were baptized; the soldiers knew Liberators Plaza, formerly Matanza Square, because it was the center of the city, where the giant statue had fallen, and where a dragon had roared; rebels knew Mount Naranco because that’s where they ran and hid every time a Matanza wanted their head. But everyone knew The Place Where the Four Roads Converge. It was now little more than a grassy hummock with a rock in the middle, but it was the spot where Balaal had been founded.
It was point zero, where a traveler had lain his head, so far from home, so broken by wars and bloodshed. He was lost, his horse long abandoned to the vultures. Dry gore coated the man’s feet up to his ankles. There, that traveler looked to all four corners, smelled water in the earth, heard the distant thunder of ocean waves, and saw the silhouette of a mountain range blurred by sunrays. He fell asleep to the sound of bird squawk and frog croak and dreamed of the great city of Balaal.
Years later he buried his bloodstained shoes at that very point and the mud turned red. After the town was founded, they built four roads off that central hub: one to the river, now dried up in the drought, one to the sea, one to the hills, and one to the wastelands, where, reputedly, the devil played dice with his underlings. They say a city founded in blood always remains in blood.
Now it was midday. The sun burned down from directly above.
*
“Bashir will kill you,” said Jesa.
“Only a fool would face that madman alone,” said Iquique.
“Do you even remember the revolution?” said The Professor. “He brought dynamite and knives. He had landmines. He’ll use them if he needs to.”
Kin looked calmly at them and felt the coral necklace against his chest.
“If you go alone,” continued The Professor, “how can we protect you?”
“You’re not protecting me,” said Kin. “I’m protecting you. And the city.”
Kin stood up. He was no longer a boy. He towered over them all. He had filled out and grown strong while no one was looking. Those days spent hauling nets, eating Jesa’s food instead of scraps from the street, the days recuperating in the mountains at the papery hands of the old woman who fed him, meant he had become a warrior instead of a fisherman. Even those days cooped up in a prison cell sustained by nothing but water and bread had failed to wear him down. As a boy, he’d broken into warehouses and stowed away on trawlers. Now, as a man, he was strong enough to work all night for months on end and to take on the King of the Rats face to face, may the best man win.
“I’ll be armed,” he said. “I’ll be ready. Come along if you want, but stay in the shadows.”
And the shadows was where Bashir now waited. From there, he could see through a pair of binoculars The Place Where the Four Roads Converge. The city had expanded to the east, so the meeting point was on the outskirts of Balaal, and, despite its history, the area was run down. There were derelict stores, a warehouse, a littered park. Only a massive boulder at the center of the roundabout told the tale. On it were inscribed the words: “De hac urbe condita est sanguis hominem.” From a man’s blood this city was founded.
Bashir stood under a tree. His army was convened behind him in a faux Roman phalanx, facing outward, weapons drawn. They were down to twenty-eight men and half of those were drunk.
At the appointed hour, Kin arrived. He was wearing army fatigues and scuffed boots.
“Stay here,” Bashir said to his soldiers.
He let the binoculars hang down from the leather strap around his neck, felt the gun in his holster, and walked into the light toward the boulder at The Place Where the Four Roads Converge. Kin walked from the opposite direction and they met in the middle, the earth under their feet cracked and still tainted with the red of that first warrior’s bloody shoes.
Kin greeted Bashir: “I hear you want to lead Balaal.”
Bashir squinted at Kin and appraised him. No weapon, but the boy was now as tall as him.
“You’re illegitimate,” he said. “No one elected you and you didn’t win the revolution alone. Why are you our leader?”
Kin said nothing.
Bashir went on, “Do you have Matanza blood? Is it your birthright to lead us? You have no more right to the throne than I do.”
“I have no throne,” said Kin. “I’m not a king.”
“But everyone says you’re our leader,” said Bashir.
Kin kept his eyes on Bashir’s hands. The King of the Rats looked fat and slow and he had a piece of shrapnel in his leg, but Kin had seen him in battle.
“We offered you a part of the city,” said Kin, “for yourself and your men. Remember? It has a water supply and roads. There are trees and fertile land. If it ever rains again, you can run it as you want, as long as you obey the law. We already offered you this, remember? But the next we heard, you were marching to the palace with your army.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” said Bashir. “Why are you our leader?”
“Because Fundogu decreed it. He said it was the prophecy.”
Bashir let out a hollow laugh. “You’re illegitimate,” he said. “And you’re a child. Did you rescue your people when their town was bombed? Did you comfort them when their families were murdered? What have you ever led?”
“I led the revolution which overthrew Matanza. You know this because you were by my side. I planned it with Jesa and Iquique. I dreamed it when I was in a cave and then in a prison cell after the first failed attempt.”
“The revolution is done,” said Bashir. “It’s finished. Move out of my way and I’ll spare your life. Go back to the fishing village where you belong. You’re a fisherman. You can grow old with all the other octopus-eaters. Go home.”
“No,” said Kin. “I am the ocean. I am the four winds. I am the stars that guide the living. I am the memory of the dead.”
A silence passed between them. A remembrance of blood and war. The fire of the dragon’s breath in Matanza Square. The toppled bronze horse and rider.
Bashir had a gun in his holster and a knife in his belt. But while he hesitated, the sun retreated behind a cloud and then a drop of rain—the first in ten months—landed on his forehead. Bashir fell to the ground with a thud. His limbs didn’t twitch and he uttered no soliloquy. His heart didn’t slow to a halt and his life didn’t flash before his eyes. He was dead as a stone, killed by a raindrop.
The Fanatics of Bouazizi stared from the shadows. They broke off from their phalanx formation and approached slowly in ones and twos. Like Kin, they were dumbfounded. They looked for the gunshot wound, the geyser of blood. They looked for a poison dart or a rock fired by a slingshot. But they saw nothing because there was nothing to see except a trickle of water on Bashir’s forehead, his own personal Nazaré which had washed him off the face of the earth.
In the shadows on the other side of The Place Where the Four Roads Converge, Jesa, Iquique, Sombrero, and The Professor watched in confusion. Bashir was on the ground but they’d heard no gun blast and had seen no attack.
A few of the Bouazizi began wailing. Some dropped their weapons. The remaining rat-men ran back to the shadows and disappeared.
The raindrop that killed Bashir was followed by a steady drizzle which turned into a torrent. All eyes in Balaal were raised to the heavens. In Bujiganga the people rattled pots and pans. In the fishing village they sang to the sky god. In Qo’zg’olon, the miners ditched pickaxes and danced a samba. In the Valley of the Lepers, they strung up tarpaulin between trees to catch the water. In Andantino Dolente, feral cats yowled. Every sound in Balaal was now drowned out by the beautiful hiss of the rain.
CHAPTER 30
The rat-men and the Boo begin to forget—la bruja—burial—days of peace and prosperity—Jesa returns
MANY YEARS LATER, A FAMED PUPPET SHOW WOULD DEPICT BASHIR’S REVOLT AS A COMEDY, his army a troop of drunk lollygaggers, vaudevillian villains, lounging indolent on the yellow grass, sunbathing or napping before the imminent attack. They’d get up and trip over cobblestones. A seagull would crap on their heads. They’d shoot themselves in the foot while trying to load their guns. It was the insurgency as slapstick, with the figure of Bashir as the hero-clown blundering in broad daylight toward the palace and succumbing to a raindrop, God’s fallen tear.
Only Kin of the Waves understood that Bashir had given his life to bring water to Balaal. Nothing else could have killed him, indomitable as he was. His death was the price of the rain that ended the drought.
*
Not one of the rat-men or the Bouazizi thought to remove their fallen leader. Even as they turned their backs, their memories began the cleansing brought on by the deluge and by his demise. Who was the one-eyed basher? Why had they followed him in the first place? What was that fetor that stuck to him in death? Could not even the rain annihilate the smell of Macanudo cigars?
They departed to make new homes somewhere in the city. They went in clusters, taking different routes, for there were four roads that converged at the point where Bashir’s body lay. Some headed for the sea, others the river, others the hills, and others the wasteland, where the crows cawed long and loud and the devil played dice.
And as the rain came down, the body got drenched. The deluge clung to Bashir’s moustache in tiny transparent globules. It turned his military fatigues dark. The binoculars still hanging from the leather string around his neck tipped into the mud like a discarded bauble. His eyepatch was soaked. His beret, rain-battered and crumpled with its own weight, slipped off Bashir’s head leaving him exposed to the torrent. His blood turned to clay.
The muddy floor where Balaal was founded now became soft as if beckoning the King of the Rats inside. His massive back formed an indent. Gradually he started to sink.
The Professor, Sombrero, Jesa, and Iquique came out of the shadows to share in the jubilation of rain but also to see what had happened to Bashir.
“What now?” shouted The Professor, as he approached Kin and the fallen rebel.
In the old days, the victors would have tied the dead man to a stallion and dragged him through the streets. They would have left him on a hill for the vultures and hyenas. No gravestone, no marking, not even a wooden post. His name like his flesh tossed to the four winds to be forgotten.
“I can’t hear a word!” Kin shouted into the rain.
But Kin knew what to do. He bent down and tugged at Bashir’s body, which was sinking into the rain-battered soil where the four roads converged. Using all his strength, he rescued the dead man from this impromptu interment and hauled him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. To be drowned in earth with no ceremony was almost the same as to be left on a hill, a humiliation saved only for the worst, for the most depraved.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” shouted Jesa over the downpour. She could see no blood and had heard no shot.
“Feel his pulse,” said Iquique.
“He’s dead,” said Kin, and he staggered toward shelter—the awning of a shop—where he placed the body in a sitting position against the wall.
Out of the deluge now, Jesa said, “Did you kill him?”
“No,” replied Kin. “He was killed by a drop of rain.”
And Jesa watched the boy and thought: he pushed a whale into the water, he killed The Butcher, and now he’s ended a revolt without spilling blood.
“Shaman,” she said, “a drop of rain?”
The inundation turned the sky gray. And from the mizzle, a form appeared but only Kin saw it. At first, he thought it was an eagle or a pterodactyl, but finally he recognized it. Fundogu, way up in the air. Through the blast of rain the old man’s spirit shouted, “Heed my words! Find Amador’s killer. Bury your enemies. Go to the island. Look in the warehouse.”
