Authors: Mal Peet
The Penalty (9 page)
T
HE BIG RAINS
did not fall for three more weeks. The sky pressed down on us, making the air thick, but did not break. One morning, I went out through the kitchen and saw Morro sitting on a chair in the yard. A house girl called Madelena was cutting his hair. He had his back to me, and did not see me. I stood under the lean-to roof for a minute, watching. Then I went inside to the mending room next to Ma Rosa’s parlour and took a piece of red thread and a piece of black. I went back out and watched from the shadows till Madelena had finished and showed Morro himself in a mirror. When he went away Madelena started to sweep up, and I went to her and stopped her. I picked up a lock of Morro’s hair and twisted it into a thin greasy cord, doubled it over and tied it with the red and the black thread. I put it in my pocket.
Madelena watched me with big eyes but I didn’t speak. She didn’t speak either, but I knew her, knew she was a mouth and that by the end of the day news of what I had done would be spread among our people in the house and beyond.
Next day, Colonel d’Oliviera and his family set off down the river to San Juan. The colonel’s wife was big with their second child and he wanted her to be near doctors. Truth was, Ma Rosa and her main help, old Ma Perla, knew more about birthing babies than any fool white doctor. Which the colonel got taught cruelly three years later when his wife died giving birth to a girl child. The child died too.
Still, they went, and a fear and quietness spread through the house and the cabins and the village down on the river. Because now Morro was in charge, and whenever the colonel wasn’t there to mind him, his drunkenness and fierceness grew.
When the dark began to fill the forest I took a gourd cup to the butchering shed and filled it with pig blood that was thickening for sausage. I took it to the kitchen and set it down on the big cooking table. Blessing was there, cleaning up with two other women and two boys, the ones who carried out the slops. They all watched me as I went to the kitchen store and filled a dish with salt and took one of the thin black cheroots that Ma Rosa liked to smoke. I stood the cup of blood on the dish of salt and put the cheroot in my pocket. Then I went to the cooking grills and collected hot charcoals on a little iron shovel. I took all these things outside and walked slow and steady through the cabins, knowing I was watched but not looking at those who watched me. It was near dark now.
At the edge of the grove where the long arms of the trees stretched out I collected dry stuff and heaped it on the coals and blew till flame licked up. I swept a little patch of earth clean with the edge of my hand. I dribbled the blood in a square shape; and inside that square I made another of salt. I took out the fetish I had made of Morro’s hair and put it, careful and exact, in the centre. Then with an unburnt coal I drew a long mark down my left cheek, and with the last of the blood from the bowl I drew a long mark down my right cheek. I sat and lit the cheroot from the fire and blew smoke in all the ten directions and began my chant, soft, rocking my body.
Did Maco come to me? I still cannot say. I had no strong trust in myself, felt I had little strength, little wisdom. I was very young, and so far away. Maybe the pai had poured his teaching into a leaky cup. I was steering my soul on strange waters with no stars to guide me. What I can say is this: that first time, Maco did not grow in me the way he did later. He did not spread inside me like a skin spreading under my own skin, making me a shape he could live in. No. If I saw him, his face half red and half black, watching through his closed eyes, it was like seeing him as a shadow on glass. And I was where I was: I sensed people gathering in the darkness beyond the small light of the fire, as I knew they would. But I chanted on, and I smoked on, the taste of the tobacco making sickness rise in my throat. And when I thought it was right, I threw Morro’s hair onto the fire.
It burned stench, like the smell from sores, like something left dead to rot in the swamp. Groans and soft cries then came from the darkness around me. I made one last veneration, strong as I could, then I stood and rubbed away the blood and salt with my foot. I walked to my cabin, not looking at the people parting to let me pass.
After a while Blessing came in and stood with her back against the door.
“Husband,” she said, “what you done? Who you think you are?”
N
EXT DAY AND
the next, I saw that people looked at Morro in a different way. Not scared of him, but scared for him. It gave me a quiet joy.
On the third day the sun did not rise. Instead, the rain finally came, at first slow fat splashes, then so fast and thick you thought you could not walk through it.
About noontime, Ma Rosa came out back and said, “Morro is here. On the veranda in his damn dirty boots like he own the place.”
She looked at me stern. “And you stay away from him,” she said, in a voice that was both hard and soft.
But when she wasn’t looking I slipped into the big room at front and watched him through the glass doors. He was sprawled sideways in the colonel’s hammock, pulling the flesh from fried chicken and drinking rum and coconut milk, staring into the rain.
The rain stopped halfway through the afternoon and the clouds slid away like a sheet pulled from a bed. I went and stood on the back steps down into the yard to breathe the fresh-washed air. Light in splinters came off the trees and the air was riot with birdsong and frog call. One of the young yard boys came splashing through the red mud, leading Morro’s horse round to the front of the house. I went to the glass doors and watched Morro ride off, watched him turn the horse down the hill towards the river.
I knew where he was going. Alongside of the big jetty, there was a big stone house with bars on all the windows. One half was boat repair, one half the store. Morro and the white overseers liked to spend nights in there with the store boss, drinking and gambling. Usually they kept themselves pretty quiet. But when the colonel was away they sometimes got worked up loud and wild, and dragged our women in there, and fired their guns out of the windows to make a scare.
That night I waited till I knew Blessing was asleep then I stole out. The moon was fat and everywhere was black and silver-blue. I moved from shadow to shadow through the cabins, then on down the hill. I cut left through the trees and came out on the track that went from the buildings on the river along to the barrack house where Morro and the other overseers lived. Near where I came out, the track crossed a little creek on a bridge made of thick planks. In the dry season there was just a trickle in the creek, but now it was already full, the water up to the underbelly of the planks and spread out over the track and into the bushes.
I got the knotted wedding cord out of my pocket. I took off my light-colour clothes and hid them in a mostly dry place under some big wide leaves. Then I melted naked into the darkness under the trees.
It was a long wait but I was not restless. My blood ran cool and peaceful and my heart went steady like the slow tick of the colonel’s big stand-up clock.
I heard the horse first, going
brrr-brrr
with its lips, then Morro mumbling a song mixed with curses. I looked down to the bridge and the horse came into the moonlight there with Morro swaying on its back. When it got to the flood it stopped and would not go on, even though Morro kicked it in the belly with his heels. In the end he slid off the horse and stood crooked, cursing some more. I could see now he had a brown clay bottle in one hand. He splashed and staggered onto the bridge, hauling on the reins, and after much trouble he got the horse to walk onto it and across.
Now he was close to me. I could see he was muddled because he knew he was too drunk to get back into the saddle. I took one silent step towards him. He pulled the stopper from the bottle and lifted it to his mouth. While he was still swallowing I stepped up behind him and looped the wedding cord over his head down onto his throat. I crossed my hands and pulled tight. Such strength I had then! He made a sound like sucking mud, and rum came out of his nose.
I pulled his head back and whispered in his ear, “This is for Blessing.”
When his hands and legs went useless I dragged him back to the creek and drowned him.
Like I expected, the news came up to the house early next day. Ma Rosa was still telling us our work when she was called out. Morro had fallen drunk from his horse and drowned in the creek, she told us. Her face tried to keep cloud in it but the sun kept breaking through. She didn’t look at me.
Later, when the rain was coming down heavy again, I had to go into the kitchen and Madelena was there. She went on one knee and took my hand and placed it on top of her head.
“Pai,” she said. Just that one word.
We were like that when I looked over to the entry into the hall and Blessing was standing outside it. She watched for two heartbeats then closed the door.
So that was how I began. With a vengeance.
T
HE CATHEDRAL CHURCH
of Saint Francis contained more gold and silver than any other church in Latin America, according to the leaflet Faustino had picked up at the entrance. The saint’s side chapel alone boasted more than thirty kilos of gold leaf which, laid flat, would cover three football pitches. Standing at the elaborate railing that separated the chapel from grubby worshippers, Faustino figured that would be about right. The far wall was a vast and grotesque fantasy coated in the stuff. A horde of pouting golden cherubs with plump golden buttocks hovered around golden niches within which golden madonnas suckled golden baby Christs. From below, gold pillars erupted into golden birds, flowers, weirdly imagined animals. (What were those, Faustino wondered. Camels? Turtles on stilts?) Golden plants writhed around forms and faces that choked on gold. And there in the middle of it all was St Francis himself, who’d taught that poverty and simplicity were the surest routes to God. He was wearing a plain brown habit and was looking upwards, startled, as if to say, “Jesus, what the hell happened?” If he’d asked Faustino that question, Faustino would have said, “Well, Frank, it looks for all the world like some really big guy ate a mix of plaster and gold dust and threw up all over your wall.” But Faustino was hung over, and in a sour mood.
Faustino glanced at his watch: ten past ten. A creased and ancient woman appeared at his side. She closed her eyes and began a murmured prayer to the saint, although, from the look of her, she didn’t need any tips from Francis on how to live a life of poverty. Faustino ambled back to the central aisle, looking towards the main doors, which were today fully opened. Worshippers were beginning to assemble for Mass; a jumble of fractured and mingling silhouettes moved among the glare. Two of them became distinct as they approached. Edson Bakula and a young girl.
She was, Faustino guessed, fourteen or thereabouts. Breasts budding beneath the pink T-shirt. Three-quarter length cut-off jeans; dusty flip-flops on her feet. Lighter-skinned than Bakula. Her face was strong and handsome rather than pretty: the face of an older person. Faustino extended his hand to Bakula, who, instead of taking it, grasped Faustino’s elbow, turning him gently.
“Over here,” he said, and led the way along an avenue of vast pillars and into a small side chapel. It was deserted apart from a group of soiled marble conquistadors kneeling in embarrassment below a crucified Christ. The girl stood looking up at Faustino, not smiling. Examining his face as if he were a famous person who had turned out to be rather disappointing in real life. Above their heads, thick blades of light from the lancet windows sliced the dim air. Dust motes danced like a million golden flies.
Bakula said quietly, “This is Prima. Primavera de Barros.”
Faustino’s face began a conventional smile, then froze.
De Barros?
“She is Brujito’s sister. She knows where he is.”
Later, much later, Faustino tried to recall what he’d felt at that moment. It wasn’t that gleeful uplift, the electrical surge, that a lucky journalist experiences maybe half a dozen times in a working life. That goal-scoring moment of triumph. No, what he remembered was a sort of sudden vertigo. Like walking along an ordinary city pavement and seeing that just ahead it turns into a narrow footpath along the brink of a sheer and infinite precipice. And wanting to turn back but not being able to because the way back, and the city itself, has gone. In fact, at the time, he was immediately and deeply suspicious. But he completed the smile.
“Señorita,” he said.
She hesitated, then took his outstretched hand, looking at their hands joined together as if it were the strangest thing.
Faustino turned to Bakula. “Look, if this—”
But the girl interrupted him. “Rico came home. He was frightened, yeah? He slept one night in the house then next morning he told Auntie he had to go somewhere an’ I followed him. He went to the graveyard. That’s how I know where he is. There’s only one place you can go from there.”
She spoke rhythmically, like someone speaking the words of a song while trying to ignore the tune. Or like someone reciting something that has been rehearsed. Her voice was husky, low-pitched, with a strong, almost Caribbean, accent.
“Rico?”
“Ricardo,” Bakula said. “Brujito.”
“Right.”
The girl said, “I came to find Edson. He said to talk to you.”
She stood looking at Faustino like somebody lost and helpless but also stubborn, as if she were a foreigner insisting on being understood. It annoyed him.
“Okay, when was this? When did your brother go home?”
“Night after that game. The one when he got took off.”
Faustino looked at her, waiting for some small sign of embarrassment, perhaps, or guilt; but there was none. He turned to Bakula.
“This is some kind of joke, right?”
“No.”
“No? What then? A scam? There’s shit breaking loose all over the country about this thing, and suddenly you pop up with the kid’s sister? Come on, Edson.”
“We’re telling you the truth, Paul.”
The girl’s gaze switched back and forth between the men’s faces.
A thought, an ugly one, occurred to Faustino. He said to her harshly, “Did you try this on Max Salez?”
“Señor?”
“Maximo Salez. Another journalist. Like me. Did you tell him this story?”
“I don’ know no one called that. I ain’t told no one ’cept Edson.”
Bakula said, “Prima didn’t get to San Juan until yesterday evening. She came on the late boat.”
Boat? Faustino’s head swarmed with questions that the sensible part of his brain didn’t want answered. He wondered fleetingly if in San Juan it was all right to smoke in church.
“Okay, Prima,” he said, “tell me this. Everyone’s been looking for Brujito for nearly two weeks. So why haven’t you gone to the police?”
She looked at him as if he had spoken in a strange language. Then, glancing briefly at Bakula, she said, “No police.”
Faustino sighed through his nose and raised his eyes heavenward. He found himself looking at Jesus. The sculptor had been at pains to depict the agony of crucifixion. The tortured body seemed on the verge of coming apart under its own weight. The fingers were hooked into claws as if trying to pluck at the spikes through their palms, and the wound in the side had ragged, pouting lips. The face, though, wore a bland, almost blank, expression. Or was that the ghost of a slightly sceptical smile?
Faustino was startled when the girl expressed what he was feeling.
“I don’ like it here, Edson,” she said.
“No? We can go somewhere else. Is that all right with you, Paul?”
“Sure. You go wherever you want. I’ve got things to do.”
Faustino then made the mistake of looking at Prima’s face.
“Please, Señor,” she said.
Her eyes were wide and moist. Faustino could detect no trace of guile in them. He looked at his watch, then shrugged and said, “Okay.”
Which turned out to be a second mistake.