Lost City Radio (16 page)

“We were all very afraid for him. We told him, if the IL comes back and finds you have refused their gift, they'll certainly kill all of you. But Hawa would not be convinced. He was a hunter. He spent most of his
time on his canoe, deep in the forest, killing the animals he saw on the shores of the river: pythons, alligators, the spearfish you can only find three days' walk from here. He said he had seen these IL. They were jokers, he said. He wasn't afraid. I talked to him myself. What about the priest, I asked him. The priest had it coming, Hawa said.”

“And what happened to Hawa?”

“He left, with his two sons, for the war. Years ago. His wife stayed. And then she left too.” Zahir shrugged, as if to indicate the story was over.

“You've left out the best part, Don Zahir.”

“Have I?”

Adela nodded. Manau could make out the sly contours of her smile. The evening's breezes had begun.

“What we did to the house.”

Zahir grinned. “Well, yes. Of course. What else could we do? We burned it.”

The empty house was a hazard. The IL were killers: what if they returned, and Hawa was away? They would kill someone else in the village just to make it right.

On a warm February evening, in honor of Independence Day, the priest's home was burned. They prepared it with axes and saws: disassembling the simple structure until it was just a pile of wood and paper and old, musty clothes. A bonfire. It burned cleanly, part of the last Independence Day that would be celebrated in 1797 until the end of the war. By the next year, the men had begun to leave, and then the boys, and the conflict could be ignored no longer. Manau knew the story. No one was sad to see them go, because they were expected to return.

Zahir never left, and that must have been its own challenge. Almost every man his age went. Manau had heard him say it before, part apology, part denial: “I liked it here; why should I have left?”

Now Zahir recalled playing his guitar while everyone sang, while the fire burned. He sang; he danced. It seemed impossible that he could have forgotten this part. “Was it a beautiful festival, Adela? He doesn't know, you must tell him!”

There was something not right with the story. Where did they bury the priest? Manau wondered. He pushed the question from his mind, and focused on the scene: the party, the breezy night, the towns people when
they were still optimistic. He reached for her again, and touched her. She pinched his foot this time. A breeze curled around them.

“It was very beautiful,” Adela said.

 

M
ANAU WALKED
Victor to the station. Adela's boy.
Adela.
He took him by the hand to the front desk, where a receptionist typed disinterestedly with two fingers. They stood before her, Victor just tall enough to peek over the edge. They waited. A half-minute passed before she made eye contact.

“Yes?” the receptionist asked finally.

“We need to see Norma,” Manau said. He was tired, a kind of exhaustion he'd never felt before. “Norma,” he said to the boy, “will take care of you.”

The receptionist smiled. She had a round face and lipstick on her teeth, just a tiny red smudge of it, and Manau wondered if he should tell her. He didn't.

“I'm sorry, that's not possible,” the receptionist said. She pointed upwards, to small speakers in the ceiling. “She's on the air.”

Of course she was. That was her voice filling the room, reading the news so sweetly. He hadn't even noticed the sound before. It had registered in his mind as a lullaby.

“What is this about?” the receptionist asked.

“The boy,” Manau said. “He has a list for Lost City Radio.” He turned to Victor. “Show her. Show her the note.”

Victor took it from his pocket and passed it to the receptionist. She read it quickly, running her index finger beneath the words as she did. Turning the page over, she glanced at the list of missing, and then instructed Manau and Victor to sit. To be patient. To wait. She handed the note back and picked up the phone. She spoke in a low voice. They dropped their bags and slumped into the cushions of the sofa, while Norma read the news without comment, even-toned. She was masterful. Manau could hardly concentrate on the words.

That night in the jungle, on Zahir's porch, when the breezes began, he excused himself and led Adela into the darkness, to love her. He carried with him the reed mat that Zahir's wife had woven for him. Manau bade Zahir a good evening, stepped down the raised porch onto the ground,
still soft from the afternoon shower. Adela asked him to wait, and he did, around the corner, just beyond the reach of the light. The moon had not yet risen, and the black night made him impatient. There were murmurings from the top of the stairs. The jungle breathed, noises of all kinds, but there was nothing to see in the inky darkness. Manau was aware of people walking by him in twos and threes, scarcely perceptible, dim shadows. Whoever they were, they said his name politely as they passed by: Manau, Mr. Manau, professor. Could everyone see but him? He smiled brightly, hoping the passersby—his students? his neighbors?—might mistake his smile for recognition. He couldn't see a thing. It could have been the trees talking. Or any of a dozen ghosts that his pupils believed in. Nico was the latest phantom all the boys and girls claimed to see. Where? he asked. At the edge of the forest—where else? Manau, Manau, Manau. Have you seen Nico? they asked. No, I haven't. Unless dreams count. They do, mister! the children clamored. Of course, dreams count! The children, like everyone in the village, were always accompanied. Manau was alone. He didn't allow himself the luxury of believing in ghosts. Now he smiled in the darkness and waited. What were they discussing? It was this obliterating loneliness that Adela had begun to cure. Manau thought then that he didn't miss the city anymore and never would again. He thought then that he would die here in this jungle redoubt, of old age, having mastered the antique language of the forest, having learned which plants brought nourishment and which were poisonous. It occurred to him to light a match, to survey his kingdom, but it flared and blew out in the breeze: an instant of flittering orange light—and that was all. Enough to see his hands. Clouds had blotted out the sky. It was a lightless, moonless night. Still, he would take her to the river or to the field. Or both. And he would love her.

Then he heard her descending the stairs, heard the creak of the wood. He turned back, but he couldn't see her. The lamps had been extinguished, and the darkness was complete. Manau reached for her.

“Today is seven years since Zahir lost his hands,” she said.

“I know. He told me.”

“I had to pay my respects. Give him my apologies.” She sighed. “It was my boy that did it.”

Manau nodded, though he was sure she couldn't see him. They were
walking, he thought, toward the field. He could feel the soggy earth beneath his feet. Her voice, he noticed, had nearly cracked. Was she crying?

“It was the IL, not Victor,” Manau said to the darkness. He heard her sigh again. She must know I'm right, he thought. The boy is innocent. Except for her fingers between his, he might have been alone. “What does Zahir say?”

“He won't accept money. I offer it to him every year. He says he deserved it.”

“He told me the same thing. What did he do?”

“I don't know.”

They made their way to the field, walking through the town on instinct, muscle-memory: turn here, go straight, let the mud slather your feet, step over this log that has fallen across the path. Even Adela agreed it was the darkest night in years, and so the storm, when it appeared on the distant horizon, was welcome. Lightning shivered across the sky, and Manau turned in time to see her: Adela, made of silver.

“Don't cry,” he said.

“He has nightmares. They're worse this year since Nico left.”

Manau pulled her to him. In a week, she would be dead. “Does he remember?”

“Of course he does. Nico never let him forget it.”

The storm began, a music all its own. They were silent for a spell.

“I gave him tea so he could sleep.” Her voice was a whimper. “Poor boy, poor Zahir, poor Nico.”

“Don't cry,” he said again.

They waited for the rains to begin. Manau lay his mat down. She said no, that she should go back and check on her boy. He kissed her. She kissed him back. In the distance, there was more lightning. Then they were naked, and then they were being rained on. The sky heaved, and the wind blew. “I have to check on my boy,” she whispered, but her body did not complain. Instead, she moved beneath him, with him, the rain falling faster now, until they had both arrived at the same place.

 

“I'
M STEPPING
out for some air,” Manau said, and surely he meant it. Surely he did not mean to walk away and leave the boy there at the
station, waiting for Norma alone. He might have suspected himself capable of such a thing, if he believed what his father had always said about him. But he didn't—not until that day. He was a weak man, which is different from being a bad man. Manau would walk home from the station, walk through this gray and noisy city, and console himself with this distinction. He'd managed to hide this from himself for a short time in the jungle. Now it was clear. Why had Adela counted on him? Why had the town?

When they were finished, when the rains had passed, Manau rolled up his mat, and invited her to swim.

“I don't know how,” she said.

The clouds had cleared; the stars cut a bright swath across the night sky. They could see each other. She dressed, she covered her silver body. Manau remained naked. He carried his clothes in a bundle.

“I'll teach you.”

“But it's bad luck to swim on a moonless night.”

It was what she said as he dragged her in. “Superstition!” he exclaimed, and soon after she was laughing and must have forgotten it herself. He tickled her. The water was black and slick and calm. When the wind blew, raindrops fell from the trees, disturbing the surface of the slow-moving river. It would rain every night for the next week, and each night would be darker than the last. The river, when it took her, would be something altogether different. Unrecognizable. Violent.

She splashed; a bird chirruped. The silver fish swam invisibly about their ankles. Manau did not teach her anything that night. Nothing about swimming or the currents or the rain-swollen river.

“What's this?” Victor asked, looking up from his list.

“The money the man gave me for you. On the bus. So I don't forget.”

“Where are you going?”

Manau said, “I'll be right here. I'm stepping out for some air.”

The boy nodded. It wasn't a lie. Outside was the city with its leaden sky, and the street with its waves of sound. The boy didn't protest, nor did the receptionist with her lipstick-stained teeth.

Outside Manau breathed deeply, that city smell, and he was hit by a nostalgia that surprised him. The station sat on a busy boulevard of ashy green trees. Perhaps he'd been here before, perhaps not, but it was
all familiar. Across the street, a computer school had let out its morning classes. Dozens of students loitered in front of the entrance, gossiping, making plans. They had about them that optimism all young people have. Foolishness. A bus came and went, depositing a family of Indians at the corner, and the students paid them no attention. Mother and father looked about with dismay, at the size of the place, at the crowded sidewalk. Perhaps they were coming to the station as well, to see Norma, to be found. The children cowered and disappeared into the folds of their mother's dress.

Four lanes of traffic and a row of dying trees stood between them and the station. They didn't cross, and Manau didn't cross to them. Maybe they were waiting for someone. The crowd of students thinned. Some returned to class, a few waited impatiently for a bus, others set off in loud, happy packs down the avenue. It occurred to Manau that there were more people in the building of the computer school than in the entire village of 1797.

After some debate, the family of Indians trudged off down the boulevard. They clasped hands and walked slowly.

When he looked back through the window of the radio station lobby, Victor was gone. Manau ran in. “The boy,” he said to the receptionist. He was breathless. It was no longer Norma's voice over the speaker, but someone else's. “Where's the boy?”

The receptionist looked startled for a moment, then regained her calm. “They called him in, sir. I'm sorry. The producer came to get him. He's talking with Norma.” She paused. “Are you all right? Would you like to go?”

It hit him then, a live-wire shock. That last word. “Go?”

“Go in,” she clarified.

“Oh.” He felt numb. A smile adorned the receptionist's moon face. “No. That's all right. I'll wait outside.”

She nodded. He took the bag he'd left by the couch and stepped through the doors again. The street was indifferent and loud. Buses passed, and women on bicycles, and boys on skateboards. He recalled the size of the city, and it awed him. The possibility existed that someone here might be happy to see him. The jungle town he had known would soon sink into the forest. Where was the boy? He was speaking with Norma. Even
now, she was solving his problems. Whatever she can do, he thought, is more than I can. He still heard the voices—Manau, Manau, Manau—and they came from everywhere. From cracks in the bricks that had built this place.

He realized suddenly he'd been holding his breath. He inhaled deeply. Then he walked down the avenue. It was so simple. A block passed by as if in a dream. And then another and another.

Each was easier than the last.

When they were done swimming, they gathered their things and walked back to the village. Their wet clothes clung to them, but the night was cool and dry. Everything was fine. He recalled it now as he walked through the city, how recently his world had been dismantled. The storm passed that night, but of course another was on its way. They found Adela's hut, and she lit a lantern so she could check on the boy. A forest of insects was sawing away at the night.