The Sleeping World (6 page)

“Madrid's where all the action is,” La Canaria said.

“Sure,” I said. “Madrid. Or wherever.” I traced the cities lodged in my throat. Madrid, as good a place to start as any.

* * *

The woman at the station said that the direct train to Madrid wouldn't come through the town at the base of the mountain for another week. We'd have to take a bunch of regionals to get there. Marco spoke to the teller and figured out a route that avoided most of the strikes. La Canaria handed him a few bills and said it was the last she had. We found four seats with a table between them and sat down. Grito and Marco tried to sleep, but the seats didn't go back. An old lady kept poking their legs with her umbrella whenever their feet slipped into the aisle. Outside the window the mountains rolled into swirls of hue. Tiny villages, stucco houses with dirt floors, shantytowns made of surprisingly bright plastics and tin. The whole country melting into a plaything of the train and time, showing it for what it really was: blurs of carbon.

“What are we gonna do there?” Marco asked hesitantly.

“Where?” Grito said.

“In Madrid, where are we gonna stay, how are we—”

“You want a timetable?”

“We'll start in Madrid,” La Canaria said.

“I'm just saying, how are we—”

“Hey, Mosca.” Grito leaned over Marco to me. “Where'd you pick up this
pendejo
with the suit and tie?”

I tucked my tongue in my mouth and silenced the voice begging we plan for food before we got too hungry to spit, demanding we seek out a place to sleep that wouldn't leave us dew-drenched in the morning. The cities swarmed in my throat. Madrid, Granada, San Sebastián, Barcelona, Paris.

“I didn't invite him,” I said.

“It's not
facha
to want to know what's happening next,” Marco said.

“Isn't it?” Grito drummed his fingers on the sticky table between us. After a pause he spoke again. “But that's not what's
facha
about you, Marco.”

“Oh yeah?”

Grito looked over at me and then quickly away. He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper, as if I couldn't hear. “Yeah, Marco. I know what you are. Who you are.”

“Will you two shut up?” La Canaria said. “I'm trying to sleep.” She got up and moved to the back of the car.

“You have no idea what you're talking about,” Marco said.

“Everyone knows,
tío.
Want a chance to prove them wrong?”

I stood up and followed La Canaria. She leaned her head against the yellow glass and closed her eyes. There was a certain comfort in her, and I edged as close as I could without touching.

“All I know is I'm not going back to that fucking island,” La
Canaria whispered, her eyes still closed. “Nobody is dragging me back there.”

We were silent for a while. I tried to sleep, but Marco sat down next to me and he sat too close. I could tell he wanted to talk, to figure out what I was thinking, but I kept my eyes closed tight and let the towns pass by.

* * *

“Time to switch trains,” Marco said, shaking us awake. The train started to slow, and the blurs of color solidified into red dirt and brown grasses.

“No, it isn't,” Grito shouted from the other end of the car.

“Let's move before we miss our stop.” Marco pulled at my arm. I shrugged him off but stood up. I hadn't paid attention to the route we needed to take.

“Come on,” Marco said, and we followed him off the train. Another train was pulling into the station. “This is ours, come on, we're gonna miss it!”

“
Vale, vale,
” La Canaria said, rubbing her eyes. “We're coming.”

We got on the next train and Marco found us a seat. “Now you can all go back to sleep,” he said. He sat down next to me and I turned to the window, watched the green mountains swirl to soft terraces of yellow dirt.

The night before, I'd managed to get between La Canaria and Grito. I'd pushed myself onto Grito and held him still beneath me. Each of our faces was just visible, lit by something other than the fire, other than the black sky. We looked like ghosts, burnt-wood white, the shape of the dots in your eyes after staring at a lamp too long. Marco had his eyes closed, touching La Canaria. Hers were open and looking right at me. I couldn't read her expression and that made my legs relax and give enough so Grito could push me
off of him and pin La Canaria's face to the wet grass and come on her back, her skin brighter in the places his semen landed.

* * *

Grito shoved Marco into me and woke me up. His skin on mine was like an alarm. Fine that he wouldn't leave my side. Sitting down next to me whenever he could. But I didn't want him touching me.

“What's your problem,
maricón
?” Grito said, pointing to a list of stops above us. “You made us get on the wrong train.”

“
Joder,
” Marco said. “I'm sorry. I guess I misread the signs.”

“
No me jodas.
You're the one who talked to the lady who said where to go.”

“What happened?” La Canaria appeared above us with a can of orange soda in her hand. “Want some?” She handed me the can. “I made this kid in the dining car buy it for me. He's really cute, even though he's just a baby. I might have to wait for him.” She flicked out her tongue at Grito.

“This
idiota
got us on the wrong train,” Grito said, shoving Marco again.

“Shut up,” Marco said. “I'll figure it out.” He stood up and looked at the list of stops. “Let's get off here.” He pointed to the next stop.

“Why?” I said. He usually had a good sense of direction. I didn't understand how he had gotten turned around.

“We can get back on in the morning. I've got a place we can stay around here.” He said it flatly and wouldn't say anything else about it. We got off when the train stopped outside a town surrounded by olive groves. Across a dirt road loomed a billboard with the far-right candidate staring stoically into the distance. His face was painted over by graffiti that read simply,
LEÓN SIN CASTILLA
.

“We're in the fucking province of León?” Grito said.

We'd been going north all day instead of southeast, toward Madrid, and we'd been too exhausted to notice.

“Wait here,” Marco said. He left us standing in the middle of the tiny station and came back in a couple of minutes. “The bank's closed,” he said when he walked back to us.

“What do you need a bank for?” Grito asked. “How are we gonna buy the next ticket?”

Marco walked up to one of the old Renaults that served as taxis outside the station. He held the door open for us. The driver pulled his hat down at Marco, who climbed into the front seat. The three of us crammed in back. The driver didn't ask where we were going, he didn't even look at us, bulky in our long skirts and sweaters in the dry sun. He just drove down the dirt road lined with collapsing stucco houses. The town—dusty with flaking stone, skinny cats swaying sagging stomachs and swollen tits, dying vines hanging from balconies to graze the cars—didn't notice our arrival, didn't bend or breathe at all. We drove into the terraced hills of olives and grapes. We stayed silent, staring at the red ground between the olive rows, the leaves so dark they almost turned red, too, before our eyes. We passed old people walking along the road. The women in black, bent over, carrying huge bundles of wood or wheat on their shoulders. They stared at Marco, sucking him up with their eyes. They kept their faces as blank as the dirt.

The driver turned off on a gravel lane and stopped outside an iron gate lodged in a high stucco wall that curved around a large villa. A small hut leaned against the outside of the stucco wall, sharing one of its walls with the barrier. A
tío
who looked just our age sat outside the hut, drinking from an unlabeled green wine bottle. When he saw the car stop, he slowly stood up, placing his bottle in the dirt, stepped inside the hut, and
closed the door. Something crashed inside and a speckled hen flapped out the window and down into the dirt yard. Marco reached into his pocket, but the driver shook his head—good thing, because I knew Marco had nothing left. The driver might have been upset that Marco didn't insist on tipping him at least, but his expression remained the same, shaded by a brown shepherd's cap, dry as the leaves on the olive trees and impassive as the sun. We got out and Marco opened the iron gate with the key around his neck I'd seen that morning.

The villa sprawled over the hard red dirt. Several stories with wrought-iron balconies, high windows, and paint peeling off in layers of pink and graying white. A chapel rose in the middle, its bell tower empty. The house sat close to the gate, only a narrow, dusty yard with a worn table and a cork tree between it and the stucco wall. Glasses filled with green slime and seedpods covered the table. Marco opened the door to a huge kitchen, dark and cool. He whistled and a dog came slowly out of the shadows toward him. A sleek bronze hunting dog, not one of the shabby mutts we'd seen on the side of the road following the farmers.

I could hear sounds throughout the house, but no one seemed to acknowledge our arrival, and I didn't know where in the house the sounds were coming from. Marco opened the icebox. He pulled out an unmarked wine bottle with pale, almost green liquid, some chorizo, and a hard cheese wrapped in brown paper, then grabbed bread from the low, long table. Then he led us silently through the dark house. The voices seemed to both follow and precede us, the words inaudible. The dog circled lazily, licking Marco's ankles when he could catch them, unbothered when he didn't. Marco's pace wasn't slow enough to acknowledge that he was making sure we followed him or fast enough to seem like he was hurrying. He touched a few things—a table, a low-slung curtain covering something on
the wall—but his fingers didn't linger. The dog didn't bark or whine. He was as determined as Marco to keep the silence. We slunk through the long, high halls, easing through the scent of dust and closed rooms.

As we stepped out of the dark house, the sun hit our eyes, silent and lethal. I thought of the rebels who had hidden in these hills during the war, sucking on their fingers to drink their own sweat. Their bodies were found curled up like children baked in a witch's oven. Red dirt swirled, tossed up by chickens the dog ignored. The dirt ended abruptly at a tile-lined pool with leaves in the water.

Grito jumped messily into the pool and howled at the cold water. He stayed in the shallow end because he couldn't really swim. “
Cabrón,
what is this place?” he said.

Marco put the wine down on the side of the pool and dove in, parting the leaves with his body. The water didn't look very deep, but his form was perfect. He came up for air after making a full lap underwater and opened the bottle of wine. “It's my home,” he said.

“The wrong train?” La Canaria said to Marco.

Grito pushed through the water to us and pulled himself half out of the pool. He pushed his wet hair back from his face. “This was your plan all along?”

“Now who's asking about plans?” Marco said, and dove back into the pool.

I got in slowly but didn't really notice the water. Marco had never mentioned his family, so I'd assumed they were gone like the rest of ours were, or an ocean away like La Canaria's. The shame of it: villa, land, pool, the sounds of what were probably servants airing out embroidered linen above us. There was only one party that parents like this could belong to; there was only one side they could be on. I could see it on him in
retrospect, in the way he blushed every time he offered to pay for anything or how he always bought something that was a little too nice. Those expensive bottles of brandy. I wondered if he'd kept the wealth a secret from Alexis, too.

I went deeper into the water, and it was cold, but all I really noticed was the sky—a blue that was closer to red, scorching our retinas, and silent, an echo of the peasants we passed who nodded at Marco though he didn't nod back. The water seemed to numb all that, to keep me separate. I was just looking at the sky that could kill, not at those people who surely wanted to. The wine tasted sharp—too fresh to be drinking. It made me sink to the bottom of the pool. The water kept me where I wanted to be until it didn't.

* * *

My abuela had been sitting with only her lips moving for six hours when the police came with Alexis's wallet, watch, and gold medallion—what they'd collected from the pile on the sand by the river. She took a handkerchief out of her sleeve, one of the white hankies that her sister had embroidered for her dowry, the lace edge pulled off and sewn onto new cloth many times. She was careful not to touch the policeman's hands but brandished the handkerchief in front of her and wrapped what he dropped into it with the same careful folds she used to cover a pastry or a piece of tortilla for our midmorning snack in grammar school.

“Thank you,” she said to the policemen.

I held my breath, afraid they'd stick a foot in the door before she closed it. Afraid they weren't done with us. I knew we could be questioned and the house searched. Maybe I'd be dragged out with them, and a week later the same pair would bring her my medallion. I knew more than enough to justify this.

But the door closed and the policemen left. My abuela handed me her handkerchief and took off her apron. She placed her finest
mantilla
on her head and walked to our church to arrange the service. It would be the same Mass as all the other ones when they couldn't find a body. The same my parents got.

That week of waiting, I'd left the house only to fuck Grito in the alley behind our apartment, silent, my mouth closed. But when I told him about the police and Alexis's medallion, he didn't want to touch me. I was crying and screaming, I needed him to hold me down and fix me to the earth. He just walked away. I didn't see again him for months.