Signs Preceding the End of the World (6 page)

On her way to the army base Makina passed a building whose steps were crowded with people holding multicolored flags; her excitement and hurry having subsided, she stopped to see what it was about. There were couples holding hands lining up to see a very solemn man who said something to them and after he said it everyone cried and there was rice and clapping and rejoicing galore. They were getting married. Makina was so dazzled by the beauty of the ceremony that she didn’t at first notice that the couples were either men or women but not men and women, and on realizing it she felt moved by how many tears were being shed, like flowers from their eyes, over how hard it had been to get there, and she wished that the people she’d known in the same situation could have been that happy. What she couldn’t understand was why the ring, the official, the godparents mattered so. Makina had admired the nerve of her friends who were that way inclined, compared to the tedious smugness of so-called normal marriages; she’d conveyed secret messages, lent her home for the loving that could not speak its name and her clothes for liberation parades. She’d witnessed other ways to love … and now they were acting just the same. She felt slightly let down but then said to herself, what did she know. It must be, she thought, that they know other marriages, good ones where people don’t split up, where fathers don’t leave and they each keep speaking to the other. That must be why they’re so happy, and don’t mind imitating people who’ve always despised them. Or perhaps they just want the papers, she said to herself, any kind of papers, even if it’s only to fit in; maybe being different gets old after a while.

She went on her way, toward the west, and after many blocks made out another array of flags, equally pretty but all lined up and all the same size. This was where the soldiers were.

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7

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THE PLACE WHERE PEOPLE’S HEARTS ARE EATEN

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Wait here, the soldier said.

As she waited at the entry booth for the anglo whose name the black man had given her, Makina wondered what she’d do if they brought bad news, if they told her that her brother had died or that they had no clue where he might be. Mr. Aitch might lend a hand in exchange for an additional favor, but that would mean mixing with crooks again just for the sake of a tip-off she couldn’t necessarily count on. And what was the point of calling the cops when your measure of good fortune consisted of having them not know you exist.

The soldier returned to the booth and sat down behind his desk. He opened a folder and went back to concentrating on the papers he’d been reading before Makina arrived. He’d only just started when he seemed to remember she was there. He looked up and told her the soldier would be with her right away, and went back to his reading.

A few minutes later the door opened and there appeared before her, dressed in military uniform, her very own brother.

Neither one at first recognized the specter of the other. In fact, Makina stood up, greeted him and began to express her gratitude and ask a question before picking up on the soldier’s uncanny resemblance to her brother and the unmistakable way in which they differed; he had the same sloping forehead and stiff hair, but looked hardier, and more washed-out. In that fraction of a second she realized her mistake, and that this was her brother, but also that that didn’t undo the mistake. She stopped breathing for a second, placed the fingertips of one hand on the desk so as not to lose her balance, and reached out the other to touch the apparition that was this man she had not asked to see. He took her arm, said to the other soldier I’ll be right back and versed out to the street with Makina.

They walked awhile in silence. They turned their heads to look at one another, first him, now her, then stared ahead again, disbelieving. They pondered some more what each should say. Finally, still staring straight ahead, he started off:

Did you have a hard time finding me?

Kind of; I only found you when I stopped trying.

How’s Cora?

Alive, said Makina; she thought of the message she’d brought him but instead she said What about the land?

Her brother chuckled. You went to see it, didn’t you?

Makina nodded.

After that I bounced from back alley to back alley and ass-kicking to ass-kicking, till I met the old lady at the restaurant. She fed me soup till I had strength enough to come home.

But you didn’t come home.

No, he said, I didn’t come home.

Her brother told Makina an incredible story. After the land fiasco he was too ashamed to return, which is why he accepted the first job that came his way. That woman had come offering the earth itself for his assistance. She spoke latin tongue and asked for his help with every term of entreaty she could find in the dictionary. She took him to her house, introduced him to her husband, to her young daughter, and, after waiting for him to come out of his room, to a bad-tempered teen.

This is who you’re going to help, said the woman. But I wanted you to meet the whole family you’ll be saving.

He must have been about the same age as him, just barely grown-up. Like him, without consulting his family he’d decided to do something to prove his worth as a man and had joined the army, and in a few days they were going to send him to the other side of the world to fight against who knew what people that had who knew what horrific ways of killing. He was of age, but acted like a child: for the whole insane hour that their interview went on he kept clenching his fists and pursing his lips and only looked up when everything was settled. Over the following days he approached Makina’s brother several times to ask who he was, where he came from, if he was scared; but he didn’t speak enough of their tongue to respond and only said the name of his Village or the term for its inhabitants, which didn’t begin to explain his previous life, or he simply said no, he wasn’t scared. The other adolescent nodded and went off tight-lipped, as if there were something he had to say but didn’t dare.

This was the deal: Makina’s brother would pass himself off as the other. On his return, the family would pay him a sum of money. A large sum, they specified. Plus, he could keep the kid’s papers, his name, and his numbers. If he didn’t make it back, they’d send the money to his family. And you, would they send you back, too? Makina asked. We didn’t discuss that, he replied.

He accepted without quibbling. He was going off with the most powerful army in the world and he thought that was enough of a guarantee that he’d make it back in one piece. He spent his last days before he shipped out at the family’s house. They made him learn by heart the answers he’d have to give when he reported, they taught him to copy the signature of the kid he was replacing, he memorized his social security number, they gave him pancakes and warm milk, he was treated well. All those nights he slept in the boy’s room and wondered why anyone would give up such a soft bed, but he answered his own question immediately: everyone had to do something for themselves.

The morning he turned up at the barracks he felt an unspeakable fear from the moment he opened his eyes and remembered that that was the day he was going off to war, but he was aware that there was no turning back and he announced himself and answered the questions they asked and signed with the signature he’d learned. The officers who received him looked doubtful at the discrepancy between his name and his face, between his fear and the fact that he’d volunteered, but they took him all the same. And off he went to war.

What was it like? Makina asked. The war.

Her brother tried to avoid the question with a shrug of his shoulders, but the gesture itself betrayed him: when his shoulders returned to their place it was as if they were dragging his whole body down and his expression hardened from the inside out.

Why do you want to know, he said. You wouldn’t understand.

So I can understand you.

He took a breath, suddenly raised a hand and tugged Makina’s hair; he lowered it again, rubbed it with his other hand and nodded.

It’s not like in the movies, he said. I know that here everything seems like in the movies, but it’s not like that there. You spend days and days shut in and it’s like nothing’s going on at all and then one day you go out but you don’t know who you’re fighting or where you’re going to find them. And suddenly you hear your homie died that morning and no one saw where the bullet came from, or you come across a bomb nobody saw get thrown, but there it was, waiting for you. So you gotta go look for them. But when you find them they’re not doing jack and you just gotta believe it was them, they were the ones, otherwise you go nuts.

Did you get hurt? Makina asked.

He shook his head and pooched out his lips, neither proud nor relieved.

Not a scratch, he said. So happened that whenever things kicked off I was taking guys out, not getting took … Some get a taste for it right away. Not me. Still, you know: if tears are gonna fall, better their house than mine …

After he finished his few months’ stint he returned to the family’s house. He didn’t ask them for anything, just went, knocked on the door and got let in. They stared at him with eyes like saucers, astonished to see him there, alive and decorated: alive. He saw it made them uneasy to have him back, as if he were a stranger who’d shown up to talk about something that bore no relation to their white dishes and their white sheets and their station wagon. The father congratulated him, offered him a beer, thanked him on behalf of his country and then began to stammer something about how hard it was to get the money together and how complicated it would be for Makina’s brother to use his son’s identity and about the possibility of him working for them instead and that way, if he wanted, he could stay in the country legally. But the mother didn’t let him finish. Said No. Said We’re going to keep our promise. But everyone here knows him, said the father, referring to his offspring. Then we’ll go someplace else, the mother replied. We’ll change our name, reinvent ourselves, the mother replied.

Since they’d assumed he wasn’t coming back, they didn’t have the money they’d promised; they gave him something, less than he was hoping for but much more than he could have earned bussing or waiting tables in that time. And they went away.

They bumped into a soldier who started talking to Makina’s brother.

Last night I will go to the bar they will tell us about, he said in anglo.

Oh, yeah? How was it, angloed her brother in return.

There will be many women, they will be so pretty, and they will all like the uniform.

Is that so? You speak to any?

Yes, I will speak, I will speak all night, she will give me her number, I will kiss her a little.

First base, huh? Good for you!

I will get very drunk after that. She will go but she will promise that we will see each other again.

Makina’s brother laughed and slapped the guy’s back, and he carried on his way to the barracks gate.

What was that about? asked Makina.

He’s homegrown, he said. Joined up just like me, but still doesn’t speak the lingo. Whereas me, I learned it, so every time we see each other he wants to practice. He speaks all one day in past tense, all one day in present, all one day in future, so he can learn his verbs. Today was the future.

And there he was. It was an incredible story, but there was her brother in his battle-worn uniform, alive and in one piece. All of a sudden he had money and a new name, but no clue what to do, where to go, what the path of the person with that name should be.

There wasn’t any land to claim. Course you already know that, he said. So I was left hanging.

He stopped and reflected for a minute.

I guess that’s what happens to everybody who comes, he continued. We forget what we came for, but there’s this reflex to act like we still have some secret plan.

Why not leave, then?

Not now. Too late. I already fought for these people. There must be something they fight so hard for. So I’m staying in the army while I figure out what it is.

But won’t they just send you back over there?

He held up his palms. Who knows, we’ll see.

They’d made their way back to the entrance to the barracks. They stood there, in silence, until he said I got to go.

Makina nodded. She didn’t know what else to say.

You have enough to get back? he asked, anxious. He pulled out his wallet, took out a few bills and handed them to her. Makina accepted them mechanically.

I got to go, he repeated.

He leaned in toward her, and as he gave her a hug said Give Cora a kiss from me. He said it the same way he gave her the hug, like it wasn’t his sister he was hugging, like it wasn’t his mother he was sending a kiss to, but just a polite platitude. Like he was ripping out her heart, like he was cleanly extracting it and placing it in a plastic bag and storing it in the fridge to eat later.

Sure, said Makina. I’ll tell her.

Her brother looked at her one last time, as if from a long way away, turned and walked into the barracks. Makina stood staring at the entrance for some time. Then she pulled out the envelope that Cora had given her, took out the sheet of paper it contained and read it.

Come on back now, it said in Cora’s crooked writing. Come on back now, we don’t expect anything from you.

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8

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THE SNAKE THAT LIES IN WAIT

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She’d already left the barracks when she heard You too! Assume the position! You too! She turned and saw a horribly pasty policeman pointing at her. Are you deaf? Get in line.

In a vacant lot pooled with black water were half a dozen men on their knees, staring at the ground. They all were or looked homegrown. Makina took her place beside them.

You think you can just come here and put your feet up without earning it, said the cop. Well I got news for you: patriots like me are on the lookout and we’re going to teach you some manners. Lesson one: get used to falling in. You want to come here, fall in and ask permission, you want to go to the doctor, fall in and ask permission, you want to say a fucking word to me, fall in and ask permission. Fall in and ask permission. Civilized, that’s the way we do things around here! We don’t jump fences and we don’t dig tunnels.