Blood of the Dawn Read online

  “I’m fed up. I’m worn out.”

  Gaitán, I miss you. I look at your photo and miss you more. Among the lines of my hands, you appear. Finally. You cross my life line and divide it. Here you are, in this hollow of skin and sweat that yearns for you. This is your new home: the palm of my memories. I feel my body trembling again. That wave of fear is coming over me once more. The floor starts to tremble. Breathe in, breathe out. It presses at my chest and starts to make its way toward my arms and stomach. It is fear. Or, worse yet, its sire, the fear of fear. I look toward the Apu, from where my parents must be watching me, from afar; they died before all this started. I bring my hands under control—they’re cold and don’t want to move—and, just like they did to Justina, with one slash I cut fear’s throat. I let it bleed dry so it will leave my body. I escape.

  I set out, without my little Abel. They couldn’t stem the bleeding. Life left his eyes. I mostly walk at nighttime, listening for the puma. May it not gobble me up. I don’t stop until I get to another hamlet, where I ask the women, Water, mamachas, water, food. Food means a few tiny potatoes swimming in a broth of water and salt. That’s all we have. The soldiers set fire to the grains so we wouldn’t have anything to eat. But those shameless men haven’t left yet. They knock on the door again. I know the sound of those hungry boots. Mamacha, let me answer it, I know them. When they open the door it’s just one soldier, all by himself, saying he wants food. Grab him, mamachas. They take a while to hold him down. He rears up. You scoundrel. I grab the pot of boiling soup and pour it over his parts. He screams as if his soul is escaping him. His rifle has fallen down, and we lift it to strike him across the head. So you’re not so brave after all, little soldier. You’re not going to do any of that rotten business to anyone else, you swine. He has fainted. We leave him lying there. Let’s leave, mamachas, let’s get out of here. They follow me; we’ll continue on together. I hold tight to the rifle.

  I don’t know what’s in store for me tomorrow. How can I think about the future? The future is no more than a word, and now I have to worry about what my companions and I will eat, what we’ll feed my daughter and their children. They’d better not mess with us again, we’re not fields for the taking: they can’t come plant their seed whenever the urge strikes. I don’t know how you do it, Modesta, but I don’t love my little one. He came out of me, but I don’t love him. It’s hard for me to watch him there, the poor little thing, defenseless, if I don’t take care of him he’ll die, but here I am, looking after him by force of habit, nothing more, sometimes I think it would be best if he died, if he just died, it makes me angry…What will happen when he grows up and asks about his father? She started to cry. The thought of abandoning her child reminded her of being abandoned by the Apus. And when he says to me, Mamá, don’t I have a father?

  Her baby took a few short steps toward the door. He looked at us and stuffed a hand in his mouth. He squatted and started scratching the floor, then ate a bit of dirt. My friend and I let him do it. I don’t love him, Modesta. And he kept eating dirt while neither of us made a move to stop him. Is my Abel an angel already? And little Enrique? Are they in heaven?

  I wasn’t about to tell anyone how one day I went to leave my baby by the river. How could I live with that baby? I also wanted to leave her. It was possible someone might find her and give her a good life. But there was almost no one around these parts anymore. She might die and everything would end right there for her. Either case was better than having her with me. I dropped the basket and ran back to the hamlet. Not even ten minutes went by of all that running around, my heart about to jump out of me, when I decided to go back. Breathing deeply, I walked toward the river. The basket was still there. A young vicuña was lapping at the water nearby. It stopped drinking when it sensed my presence. It moved toward the basket and sniffed it a little. The baby had been so quiet, but now she started, out of nowhere, to bawl. She cried so loud. I took her with me. What was I going to do? She was so tiny. What would her life be without me, barely a pampa devoid of animals, a sad river, or a bald hill. She came out of me.

  If we don’t bring it all under control, there’s no way of establishing order, he thinks. The same room, he’s the third since all this started. But there is not just one, now there are two who think, organize, give orders. They’re everywhere. The two of them are seated face to face; no one occupies the head of the table. They talk, look at each other; one’s slight movement of the eyebrows is read by the other. It has to be very carefully located, a well-aimed blow. The other scrawls a few things but doesn’t lower his gaze. The pen moves mechanically. Notes that will later become a decree, or not. The color of their suits is the same grayish. We’ll tell the general and he’ll take care of it. One of them wavers, the one who has the official title. And if they’re not? he voices his misgivings. And if they are? replies the other. They also do such things, no matter the losses. He’s worried they might be civilians; moreover, it’s the capital, it won’t slip under the radar, it will be in all the papers and we already know what the human rights people are like. Isn’t there more information from Intelligence? He tells him this is the surest piece of information they have. He wants to know more about the leaders. We have to take down the leadership right away. They know there has been progress in that regard. At any moment the leaders will be captured. They will wait for new developments. But we have to be forceful about this. They’re civilians who will be having a good time. A party. It won’t cross anyone’s mind. They won’t even be able to react. The two of them adjust their glasses at the same time. He clears his throat, a little uncomfortable. He owes the other a lot. Why wait? We’ll give the order to the general that they should go all out.

  While I wait for the major, I overhear the soldiers whispering. That terrorist looks a bit butch. They laugh. I turn to glare right into their mindless sheep eyes and they stiffen, pretend they don’t see me. Miserable fools. What do they know about women? They probably call me butch because of my short hair. They don’t know the feminine is the origin of everything. It’s ferment, magma, purification, creation. The dawn that will rise when the revolution is complete. Teresa of Ávila knew what it was to be a woman. She had so many daughters, she lived on many more times over than if she had married. Why have a husband when you can create more without one? Reproduce an ideal, strength, a revolution. That’s where I went wrong; I have to think it over, examine it, perform a self-criticism. Why did we take so long? When should I have kept shooting? When should I not have shot?

  To become military commissar of the central zone I had to go through so much first. The appointment was a gift from Fernanda. There were more than enough men. Fernanda knew that. They had known Comrade Felipe longer than they’d known me. Felipe thought he would be made commissar.

  Our Leader had identified the need for death squads to ensure the success of the revolution. My chances of joining the leadership were not all that high; the male majority preferred Comrade Felipe for sure. He longed to destroy, to be on the frontline. Felipe believed blindly in the armed struggle. Fernanda made it clear that all military commissars had a central ideological mission: to remember, always, that the party rules, not the barrel of the gun. I saw Felipe clench his fist and fix his gaze on Fernanda. If he could have, he’d probably have shoved a stick of dynamite into her gut. Pure ideology is a fallacy, comrades, without the barrel of the gun there is no power. He said it all by himself, and all by himself he slipped the noose around his own neck. The Leader intervened and with one slash cut off the stupidity. The party rules over the barrel of the gun; thought dominates, not force. His words quashed Felipe’s aspirations. Fernanda had set the trap and the brute had walked right into it. Silence was my strength. The path had been cleared.

  “It still surprises me to know that, with so many men available for the position, they ended up choosing you, teacher.”

  “You think I wasn’t capable?”

  My sharp retort takes Romero by surprise, which he attempts to
hide by averting his gaze.

  “Not at all, teacher, you’re more than capable. What I mean is that the natural choice would have been Comrade Felipe.”

  The natural choice. You’re just like everyone else, Major. Whatever you think, it’s all the same to me. What worries me is why you’re going to such pains to get along with me. I hate those snakes who think they’re capable of manipulating a woman but don’t know how to proceed with their objective. I, in contrast, knew how to proceed. Fernanda had paved the way for me. I made the most of it and asked for the floor. Each of us had to be willing to pay the price. To give one’s life for the revolution is the most sacred honor for any combatant. That’s how I sealed my position in the party. Words, Major Romero, words, in the right moment, in the right ear. They chose me.

  pachacuti between the buildings pachacuti in the capital bomb cars fire the vehicle was meant for the bank but it hit the building bomb drizzle of blood as far as the park the roads the municipality the schools the sea the doctors’ offices the workplaces the ministries revolution boom it wearied of the countryside bleeding ear glass glass city ravine bomb the street seller screams everyone runs bomb bomb bomb blood as well bastards her leg is gone his son among the rubble lost arm shattered bones bomb spattered walls cracked columns police officers firefighters broken windows a hand falls bomb fingers bomb fingers bomb hands bomb fire bastards burnt face everyone screams can scream bomb bleeding wounds she falls down bastards elsewhere they dance in hiding bomb they run what was up is now down rise up bomb pachacuti you heard bomb tarata

  “Lord, why do you send so much death our way?

  Why do you look on as we kill one another?”

  ANDEAN SONG

  And if I tell you about it? Tell you every last bit, Daniela? Something lodged in my body but it’s not there anymore. Why did I come to Paris? To get it out, a fruit that shouldn’t exist, that holed up in my body against my will. I came because I wanted to see you. The city of drizzle was hemming me in. You cause a river in my mouth. The center of the universe on the tip of your tongue. My body screams five five five, but that scream no longer resounds. Now five means your fingers, which travel across my skin. Surrendering to the desire in your eyes, the scream becomes a moan. This is what makes living worth it. You become a river in my mouth. Lake, sea, ocean in me. Now you navigate. You drink the water I give you. Our legs are intertwined, they moor you to me, a liquid knot. The chords of your pleasure constrict my waist. Your fingernails nest in my back, another victory. This is why, Daniela, this is what it was for. You loosen the knot and open a space between my legs. Your fingers are serpents that guide me in their dance. A welcome invasion.

  “Ready to go hunting?”

  Jimena is thrilled to see me after all this time between the mountains and Paris. Willing to follow me on my forays to the club, always just a phone call away. That hasn’t changed.

  “I’ve been away so long, I’m out of practice.”

  “Out of practice? You? As if, Mel, your aim’s always right on. Whoever you look at falls hard, and today’s Friday.”

  Jimena lights up a Marlboro. We’re in my SUV on our way to Kraken. The band Frágil is on the radio: Hunters stalking here and there flushing out their prey in the city, roaring motors everywhere. The drizzle dampens the roads. Now I just need to forget the campesina who, in her confusion, called me Melanía. Forget Álvaro. It was a game of Russian roulette in the mountains and the bullet happened to get him. What I happened to get was something different. Poor Álvaro. I want to kill a man. Kill five, to be honest. Watch them suffer, bleeding out.

  When I look at Jimena, so cheerful and vibrant, learning to smile again comes easy. We’re off hunting, to see who will get lucky tonight. A few dogs appear nearby. They sicken me, I don’t want to look at them anymore. I accelerate; the green lights along the avenue usher us through in a wave that doesn’t stop. Open. The city of drizzle opens up before me and I dissolve into her. Everything can go back to normal. Everything will be normal again, or almost everything. They step out into the night, they set the tone, they hop into their ride. They’re ready for anything.

  The drizzle hits the windshield. Tonight the air is fine and fresh, light, so different from that thick air in the mountains. As if the dead bodies had become particles of air and wanted to come back to life in our nasal passages. As if they were saying We’re still here. I think about Paris and Daniela. Jimena lights another cigarette and offers me one. Perfect for overpowering my sense of smell. There are some who fail, others who never try. That’s when they decide, the river has run dry. My hand demands the camera. I’ll have to go back into that hell.

  I have the rest of my life to think and keep on remembering. All the time in the world to think about my daughter, too. How is she? How much has she grown? Does she remember me? The dawn has left her without her mamá. Will she understand? Will she forgive me? Now’s the time to weigh up each detail, each excess, because we made no mistakes. There were none. Violence is the midwife of history. There were excesses that should have been contained. Perfection is found in containment. Through asceticism, one can achieve anything. That’s why I think and go over everything; I have the rest of my life to do so.

  “We’re going to take you to see your leader, teacher. He’s going to sign the agreement set out by the government. Peace has come to us at last,” Major Romero announces. “Come on, why so serious, I know this is exciting news for you. It’s okay to get swept up in it.”

  “Control is the line separating actions that meet with success from those that do not.”

  “You always think so much, teacher. Look, so you can get ready to meet him, we found a few things your leader wrote. This one’s priceless: ‘Whatever remains will be burned and its ashes will scatter to the four corners of the earth so that not even sinister memories of what must never return are left behind, because it cannot and must not ever return.’ It must not ever return: he himself said it.”

  “You must have made that up. Something that never departed can’t ‘return’: exploitative governments, treacherous politicians, abused campesinos, exploited workers. We won’t be here, and it won’t happen in our name, but the onward march of history continues and it can only be birthed with violence.”

  Romero keeps looking at me and shuffles his papers. In his eyes I see that other man I can never forget. A coup de grâce would suit Romero nicely. I notice an odd-looking insect making its way across the white melamine, closing in on his documents. I exterminate it with one slap and roughly wipe my hand on the table.

  The Apus remembered us at last. A good number of us women have decided to work together, to try to get back something, even just a tiny bit, of the lives we led before. We weave. The rifle is hidden away. Some women are quiet; others, more talkative.

  My little one regards me with her big eyes. I don’t want to remember because all that hurts a lot. It still hurts. Memory is a sword in my heart stirring it all up. But there’s my little girl, so tiny, a little guinea pig. Mine and who else’s, I wonder. There were so many of them. She has five little fingers on each hand and five little toes on each foot. She is whole, perfect. It took all my courage to take her to the civil registry. She was so tiny and fragile, with her huge eyes, black and bright, which confronted me with my own reflection of rage. I might learn to love her one day. The señor at the registry took down her details with those letters that look like mountains, a cup handle, bent irons. The only thing I thought to say when he asked about the little one’s father was Soldier.

  It’s been almost two years since I got away. I’ve thought about death a lot. When I remember the sasachakuy time my heart hurts. Difficult years, they were. Each time I remember, it hurts. Each time I forget, life seems peaceful. Sometimes we stop our work and another woman comes to join us. One takes up some thread and starts weaving. The threads cross over each other and the fabric grows. The weavers saying things. Just between us—we’re all women. That’s the only reason I talk. Another thr
ead. Our voices weaving.

  My heart felt like it was tightening and there was pressure on my chest snap the length of yarn grows snap they remember snap I hate sloppy seconds her husband said splat memories snap like a machete blow snap snap it sounds snap mouth snap bruised snap no teeth crack rotting inside snap I reported it but they paid me no heed rip rip rip the fabric rips flesh snap they cry break them split them his sister his daughter his mother his wife snap his grandmother kerosene his now we’re all miserable with no family stab her in the gut snap boots balaclavas uzi fal bullet bullet bullet ten twenty thirty crack entire battalion comes in bomb crack no one hears soldiers sadism comrades a little fun terrorists crack she was already dead and they kept going going going another thread brains in the corners kerosene burns guts fire splat fire snap fire quick walk for fuck’s sake stab him crack señora help us move the bodies she opens her mouth doesn’t scream nothing comes out she can’t she shrieks unfolding dawn unfolding brains unfolding revolution attacked splat a piece splat open flesh crack thread the body was found by his other daughter splat kick crack her son her father her brother her husband crack her grandfather snap the pack feeds on your face your eyes your tongue they devour pieces raw kerosene she remembers snap if you don’t eat we’ll slaughter you stab pampa hungry grave snap they don’t exist body smoke body lump dread dread thread so much his neck dread arm fingers teeth dread breasts dread nipples thread blood in the streets dread machete ax pincushion crack silence weave scream weave pain crack pregnant with pain snap snap dagger shut up bullet shut up bullet annihilate you must also have sisters you must also be born of woman snap remember we live much thread we live we cry out another thread we live many voices so many too many all of it.