Signs Preceding the End of the World (5 page)

Using in one tongue the word for a thing in the other makes the attributes of both resound: if you say Give me fire when they say Give me a light, what is not to be learned about fire, light and the act of giving? It’s not another way of saying things: these are new things. The world happening anew, Makina realizes: promising other things, signifying other things, producing different objects. Who knows if they’ll last, who knows if these names will be adopted by all, she thinks, but there they are, doing their damnedest.

The paper the old man had slipped her bore an address in another city but it seemed there was no need to verse this one to get to that one: it was simply a matter of riding busses and crossing streets and passing malls and after lots of the first and even more of the second and several of the third, she’d arrive.

She almost didn’t realize when she reached it, because the cities had no center for avenues to radiate from. She just suddenly started seeing the name of the other place on stores and fire trucks. She kept walking the way she’d been told by some homegrown anglos she’d spoken to, and as she made her way the sky got redder and the air began to ice up.

Her lips were split and her palms cracked if she pulled them from her jacket pockets.

Eight times she asked before she found the spot and every time the abject answer turned out to be some bleak tundra where they sent her to another bleak tundra:

She asked the way to the city and they told her Over there (finger pointing to where the sun comes up).

She asked farther on for the way to the suburb and they told her There’s four with that name, but maybe she wanted the one by the bridge.

She asked farther on for the way to the bridge, but they told her she didn’t want that suburb but the one with the zoo.

She asked farther on for the way to the zoo and they told her it was near the statue of a man in a frock coat.

She asked farther on for the way to the statue of the man in a frock coat and they said Can’t you see, it’s right behind you.

Then she asked for the way to the street written down and they said This is it.

She asked for the way to her brother, perhaps too urgently, and they shrugged.

She asked finally for the way to the promised land and that person looked annoyed before responding.

There was still some light in the sky but it was turning dark, like a giant pool of drying blood.

Her brother had sent two or three messages back with assorted migrants on their way home. Two or three and not two, or three; Makina couldn’t say for sure because after the first one the one that followed and maybe one more were the same old story.

The first one said:

I haven’t found the land yet, but it won’t be long now, you’ll see.

Everything’s so stiff here, it’s all numbered and people look you in the eye but they don’t say anything when they do.

They celebrate here, too, but they don’t dance or pray, it’s not in honor of anyone. The only real big celebration is the turkey feast, which is a good one because all you do is eat and eat.

It’s really lonely here, but there’s lots of stuff. I’m going to bring you some when I come. I just have to take care of this and then I’ll be back, you’ll see.

The second one didn’t mention the country or the land or his plans. It said:

I’m fine, I have a job now.

And the third, if it existed, might’ve made the same claim, this way:

I said I was fine so stop asking.

It had taken everything she had just to pronounce the eight tundras. To cleave her way through the cold on her own, sustained by nothing but an ember inside; to go from one street to another without seeing a difference; to encounter barricades that held people back for the benefit of cars. Or to encounter people who spoke none of the tongues she knew: whole barrios of clans from other frontiers, who questioned her with words that seemed traced in the air. The weariness she felt at the monuments of another history. The disdain, the suspicious looks. And again the cold, getting colder, burrowing into her with insolence.

And when she arrived and saw what she’d come to find it was sheer emptiness.

And yet machines were still at work. That was the first thing she noticed when they pointed the place out to her: excavators obstinately scratching the soil as if they needed urgently to empty the earth; but the breadth of that abyss and the clean cut of its walls didn’t correspond to the modest exertion of the machines. Whatever once was there had been pulled out by the roots, expelled from this world; it no longer existed.

I don’t know what they told you, declared the irritated anglo, I don’t know what you think you lost but you ain’t going to find it here, there was nothing here to begin with.

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6

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THE PLACE WHERE FLAGS WAVE

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Scum, she heard as she climbed the eighth hill from which, she was sure, she’d catch sight of her brother. You lookin to get what you deserve, you scum? She opened her eyes. A huge redheaded anglo who stank of tobacco was staring at her. Makina knew the bastard was just itching to kick her or fuck her and got slowly to her feet without taking her eyes off him, because when you turn your back in fear is when you’re at the greatest risk of getting your ass kicked; she opened the door and versed.

She’d been asking after her brother around the edges of the abyss. She’d approach anybody she heard speaking latin tongue, give a verbal portrait of her brother, imitate his singsong accent, mention his favorite colors, repeat the story of the land he was there to claim, state his place of birth, list all the things he could do, beg them, please, to try to remember if they’d ever come across him. Until the frigid squall forced her to duck into an ATM booth, where she curled up like a dog and after much bone-trembling managed to fall asleep and dreamed that she was scaling one, two, three, seven hills, and when she made it to the top of the eighth she was awakened by the thunderous contempt of the redhead.

It hadn’t fully dawned yet—the sky was barely a reddish exhalation that hadn’t quite made up its mind to spread over the earth—but by this time the people who might have information for her were already back in the hustle and bustle. She began to walk, rubbing her palms red and pricking up her ears. As she passed the back alley of a restaurant she heard not only a familiar lilt but a voice she knew. She peeked in and saw the youngster from the bus dragging metal cans up beside the restaurant door; he was working energetically, whistling a song from another time, and though he wore only pants and a t-shirt he didn’t seem to mind the early-morning chill. He had a small bandage on the hand that Makina had schooled. He smiled on seeing her and made his way over, but as he got closer his face clouded, more with sadness than with fear. I must look terrible, she thought.

Fell on your feet, huh? said Makina.

Damn straight, the boy responded. How bout you?

Ok, but I’m not there yet; there’s still someone I have to find.

Your kin came for a grind, too?

Yeah, but I don’t know where.

The kid pondered for a moment and then said Come with me.

They walked into the restaurant. Makina followed him past rows of cauldrons boiling on the stove, knives, hatchets, cressets, skillets, brokeneck chickens and flopping fish, to a corner where there was a woman deveining a pile of red peppers. She was pale and thin and had an extremely sweet face, but to Makina she looked like Cora, perhaps because of the way she worked, as if undressing her grandchildren for the shower, or because straight away, like with Cora, she felt she could trust her. The woman raised her eyes, fixed them for a second on Makina without ceasing her work on the chiles, and lowered them once more.

Doña, I’m bringing you this girl here, the youngster said. She’s looking for one of her kin, and since you seen so many folks come through …

Yes, I know, the woman said, but made no attempt to fill the silence that followed.

What? asked Makina. What do you know, señora?

I know who you are.

Did you ever meet my brother?

The woman nodded.

Turned up all sickly and scared as a stray dog, she said. We gave him soup and a sweater and let him sleep under the dish cabinet. Bout a year ago it was, maybe less. Round about that time an anglo woman came, seemed so sad, asking if we didn’t have a young man, said she needed one urgent for a job, she seemed like a good person and just so sad, and I told your kin he should go see if that would work for him, cause like I say she looked like a good person but real real mournful and I had no way to know what it was she needed. Your brother went to see her and never came back. Reckon it worked out for him.

And do you know where he went?

Let the boy here take you; I showed him the barrio.

The woman gave the youngster an address and Makina was already rushing him out to the street when she stopped and looked back to ask How did you know who I was? Did my brother tell you how to recognize me?

That too, yes. Told me he had a sister who just by looking at her you could tell she was smart and schooled, said the woman. Yes, that too.

After half a block the youngster was already lagging and decided to give Makina the address of the house where her brother had gone. Makina flew; she literally felt her feet not touching the ground, as if she could float, scissoring her legs till she found her brother and brought him home without setting foot on foreign soil again.

The house was beautiful and big and pink and a wooden fence surrounded it. Makina opened the little gate in the middle of the fence, went up to the front door, rang the bell, waited. She heard a man’s footsteps approach and got her hopes up that it was him, that he himself would be the one to open the door, that they’d be reunited right then, no more delays. The door opened and there stood a small man with glasses, wrapped in a purple bathrobe. He was black. Never in her life had she seen so many black people up close, and all of a sudden they seemed to be the key to her quest. Makina glared as though reproaching him for being skinnier and blacker and older than her brother, as though this man were attempting to pass for the other. She was about to say something when he beat her to it with I could put on a blond wig if you like.

Makina was thrown for a second and then laughed, embarrassed.

Sorry, she said in anglo, it’s just that I was expecting someone else to open the door.

Someone white? Do you think this is a white person’s house?

No, no …

Well, right you are, this is a white person’s house, there’s not a thing I can do about it, except dress like a white person. Do you like my robe?

No … Yes … I mean, it’s just I was expecting someone different.

A different black man? Are you saying I’m not black enough?

Makina laughed. The man laughed. Suddenly her anxiety had passed. For the first time since she’d crossed she felt welcome, even if she still wasn’t invited in.

No, not white or black, I’m looking for my brother. They told me he came here to work, in this house.

Oh shoot, the man said with exaggerated disappointment, I knew my prayers couldn’t have been answered with such celerity … Last night I knelt down and begged the Lord: Lord, send me a woman to relieve me of my misery.

I’m sorry …

Right, I know, the brother. He’s not here. I’m here. The family that lived here moved. To another continent. They sold the house and I bought it. I don’t know why they left, but times are changing and this is a lovely place to stay put.

Makina felt all of the strength she’d been recovering from her own ashes begin to ebb, felt herself extinguishing, felt she wouldn’t be able to verse from this one last dead end and that her luck had finally run out. To hell with it all, she thought, to hell with this guy and that one, to hell with all this shit, I’m going to hang myself from a lamppost and let the wind whip me around like an old rag; I’m going to start crying and then I’m going to go to hell too. She gestured farewell to the black man and prepared to go.

There’s one left, though, he said.

Makina stared intently, as if trying to read his lips.

What?

They left the oldest son behind. He’s a soldier. If you go to the army base you’ll find him there.

Makina had no idea what so-called respectable people were referring to when they talked about Family. She’d known families that were truncated, extended, bitter, friendly, guileful, doleful, hospitable, ambitious, but never had she known a Happy Family of the sort people talked about, the sort so many swore to defend; all of them were more than just one thing, or they were all the same thing but in completely different ways: none were only fun-loving or solely stingy, and the stories that made any two laugh had nothing in common.

She’d seen people who’d run off to save their families and others who’d run off to be saved from them. Families full of endless table chat as easygoing as families that loved each other without words. (In hers there were just three women right now. Her heart skipped a beat when she thought of her little sister; it only started back up when she concluded that, like her, she’d know how to take care of herself.)

Plus, all families had started off in some mysterious way: to repopulate the earth, or by accident, or by force, or out of boredom; and it’s all a mystery what each will become. One time she’d been in the middle of an argument between sweethearts. The woman had run to the switchboard, planted herself behind Makina and stood there responding to each of the man’s grievances; it was sheer pigheadedness till Makina began to rephrase their respective complaints: You like my cousin better, you can keep her, She says that was low, you getting with her cousin, What are you bitching about? I’m the same cat I was when you met me, He says he’s acting like the man you wanted him to be, Oh, then me too, so don’t get in my face cause I already knew that friend of yours, She says what’s good for the gander is good for the goose, But you’d never done nothing with him before and me and your cousin was an item, He says that’s apples and oranges, I don’t care if you was an item back in the day, but I damn sure care if you still are, She says to stop playing dumb, It was just one kiss, the last one, He says they were saying goodbye, Oh, right, then mine was a goodbye, too, She says why can’t she if you’re still messing around, I’m not saying you can’t, but it bugged me when everyone found out, He says he’s not that jealous but you shouldn’t be so brazen. Then they both shut up and Makina concluded I think you’re both saying that the both of you could be more discreet. For a while after that, every time she bumped into them they’d thank her for getting them back together. Then she didn’t see them anymore.