The Demon of Dakar aka The Demon from Dakar

Thirty-Two

It is like California, but much smaller, Manuel thought. Even so he was pleased with his new location. The landscape constantly awakened memories of his brothers and their time in Anaheim, but he liked this place better than the last one and not only because of the connection with Armas.

Here his gaze did not get snared in brambles and stones. When he climbed up the steep ravine he could look out over wide swathes of good earth, and that had a calming effect.

He recognized the strawberry plants and they were still bearing fruit. The first morning he had been awakened by a tractor and the sound of voices. The evening before, he had wandered down the rows of plants and concluded that there were not many berries left and he was surprised that they still took the trouble to harvest them.

He had picked a few strawberries and put them in his mouth, but this reminded him too much of Angel and Patricio for him to really be able to enjoy the sweetness. How he longed for his brothers! This feeling tore at his heart like a furious animal. It had only gotten worse since he arrived in Sweden.

Slashing that gringo’s throat had not helped, if he had even imagined it would. The first night after he killed Armas and dragged him down to the river, in the hope that he would sink or float away, he had suffered hellish nightmares and woken innumerable times, alternatingly in a cold sweat and feverishly hot. He fell to his knees outside the tent and prayed to San Isidro for forgiveness, ben ládxido zhhn, to make his little heart bigger.

In the darkness of the night he thought he could see a beautiful woman with waist-length hair and copper-colored skin. She disappeared in the direction of the river with a taunting laugh. It was matelacihua and he chanted his prayers more intensely. The bad air surrounded him, constricted his chest, and threatened to suffocate him. He was afraid of losing consciousness only to wake up many miles away.

He knew that his crime was enormous. He had taken on the role of God. This was unforgivable.

The next day he had gone back to the river and discovered that the body was gone. It was as if part of his guilt had washed away with the water. He relaxed, turned his face up to the heavens, and spoke to Angel.

Now, some days later and in a new spot next to the same river, his guilt pricked him like tiny mosquitoes, but not more than he could wave away. He had done the right thing. It had been an act pleasing in the eyes of God to kill a bhni guí’a. The world was the better for it, and Manuel was convinced that Armas’s soul was now subjected to the torments of Hell.

What were the alternatives? he debated with himself. Should he have allowed himself to be killed like a dog? But the knife-why did he carry it in his pocket, if not to use it? Hadn’t he unconsciously prepared himself to kill when he took it out of the bag and slipped it into his pocket? Had he sensed Armas’s intentions as they drove to the river?

If he went to the police he would join Patricio in jail, he knew this. To be thrown in jail was nothing foreign to Manuel and his family. Zapotecs had been persecuted in all ages in any manner of ways, and many were holed up in Oaxaca prisons. Eleven campesinos from a neighboring village had been taken away four months ago and subsequently imprisoned or killed. No one had heard from them again.

But these cases were grounded in defending their land and forests, in matters of autonomy and justice. Manuel had admittedly killed in self-defense, but he did not think anyone would believe him.

He lay in the river ravine in the shadow of fir trees that reminded him of cypresses. A couple of predatory birds hovered in the sky, just as in the valley at home. Would he ever see his village again?

He got to his feet quickly, in one movement, just like a startled animal, but it was only a lone man walking along the riverbank, a fishing pole in one hand and a bucket in the other. Manuel had seen him the day before. The man’s tall, gaunt body was topped by a small head with a face so wrinkled that Manuel was reminded of the old woman in his village who gathered bunches of epazote that she sold for fifty centavos apiece.

Did he sell the fish, or was it done only for enjoyment? Manuel knew so little about Sweden, about the people who lived in this country. He had read a little in a guidebook in a store in Mexico City, that was all.

He knew that there were many different types of Swedes but didn’t really care. His role here was not the eager curiosity of the tourist nor the systematic investigation of the ethnographer.

The fisherman disappeared behind a bend in the path and Manuel left his secluded spot. Ever since he had set fire to the short man’s house he had felt a growing anxiety. There were so many. He had aimed for Armas and the fat one, but in encountering the short one his task had suddenly increased. Although the short one had not been actively involved in the recruitment of Angel and Patricio, he was a link in the chain, and apparently an important one. He may even have been the brains behind the whole operation, and perhaps Armas and the fat one had simply been his errand boys?

The anxiety also stemmed from something Patricio had said to him in prison: “We could have said no.” That was true. Manuel had said no, and had warned his brothers against going to Oaxaca, where they were going to stay in a hotel and receive new clothing. They could have spoken up, continued to cultivate their corn, which others now harvested.

But they had chosen to say yes. How far did their responsibility extend?

Manuel drew a deep breath, locked the tent with the little padlock, and then strolled up to the parking lot. He looked around before wandering out into the open. Some twenty cars were parked in the lot. His rental car did not stand out, it blended in with the others, but he felt like an exotic creature as he carefully made his way to it.

The parking lot was located at the edge of an arts and crafts village that appeared to have a steady stream of visitors. The place was ideal. He knew that no one would pay any attention to the car, even if it stayed there overnight. It could belong to one of the workers from the strawberry fields.

That morning he had bathed in the river, scrubbing himself thoroughly, and relished it despite the cold temperature. He had swum back and forth, caressed by waterlilies and reeds, and thereafter dried in the sunshine back on shore.

He was a short, wiry man and there were those who misjudged his slight build. But he knew his own strength. Like all Zapotecs, schooled in farm labor, he was capable of working long and hard. He could carry a hundred kilos on his shoulders, clear the land with his hoe or machete for hours without tiring, take a break, eat some beans and posol only to resume his work, walk for miles up and down through valleys and over mountain passes.

He was the kind of man Mexico relied on, trusted. He would support himself, his family, and also take part and help add to other peoples’ riches and excess. He had erected all churches and monuments, put in roads along steep mountain ridges, cultivated corn, beans, and coffee, so why could he not be allowed to rest for a few minutes at an unfamiliar river, stretch out and let the sun dry his limbs?

Nonetheless his anxiety was there and he sensed its source: he had lost his ability to rest, to feel happy for the moment, to take pleasure in the small things and nurse his hope for the future. It was the “man from the mountain” who had taken from him these attributes so necessary for a Zapotec.

He despised himself, aware that his ládxi-his heart and soul-were lost. He had become exactly like them.

When he reached his car, he tried to shake off the sombre mood of the morning, because it made his movements plodding and his thoughts dull. He needed all the sharpness he could muster. This foreign country was placing great demands on him, there were no resting places here, whether in time or space.

After a glance at the map he started the car, turned onto the main road, crossed a bridge, and drove toward Uppsala. The landscape was varied, with fields of wheat, newly harvested with the golden brown stubble that reached toward the horizon, and gracious mounds, shaped like women’s breasts, where the grazing cattle, fat and healthy, looked up unconcerned as he passed. His mood immediately improved.

On the horizon he could see the cathedral with the towers pointing up into the clear blue sky. Up in that sea of air, thousands of black birds were struggling in billowing formations against the blustery southeasterly wind. They, like Manuel, were on their way into town.

Right before he entered Uppsala from the north, he stopped and checked the map for the best way to “K. Rosenberg,” the name that he had seen on the short man’s door.

He parked the car outside a small mall, crossed the street, and took the final stretch to the building on foot.