Chapter Titles
1 The Earth
2 The Water Crossing
3 The Place Where the Hills Meet
4 The Obsidian Mound
5 The Place Where the Wind Cuts Like a Knife
6 The Place Where Flags Wave (note juxtaposition with opening line of chapter)
7 The Place Where People’s Hearts Are Eaten (see end of chapter)
8 The Snake that Lies in Wait
9 The Obsidian Place with No Windows or Holes for the Smoke
I’m dead, Makina said to herself
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The
Little Town was riddled with bullet holes and tunnels bored by five
centuries of voracious silver lust, and from time to time some poor
soul accidentally discovered just what a half-assed job they’d done of
covering them over.
Note:Capitalism : even the earth rejects it
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who Makina had once shucked.
Note:Created slang
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She thanked him, Mr. Double-U said Don’t mention it, child, and she versed.
Note:Slang: versed
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thugs all looked alike and none had a name as far as she knew, but not one lacked a gat.
Note:Slang . Gat
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You
don’t lift other people’s petticoats. You don’t stop to wonder about
other people’s business. You don’t decide which messages to deliver and
which to let rot. You are the door, not the one who walks through it.
Those were the rules Makina abided by and that was why she was
respected in the Village. She ran the switchboard with the only phone
for miles and miles around. It rang, she answered, they asked for so
and so, she said I’ll go get them, call back in a bit and your person
will pick up, or I’ll tell you what time you can find them. Sometimes
they called from nearby villages and she answered them in native tongue
or latin tongue. Sometimes, more and more these days, they called from
the North; these were the ones who’d often already forgotten the local
lingo, so she responded to them in their own new tongue. Makina spoke
all three, and knew how to keep quiet in all three, too.
Note:WHy a phone operator?
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Makina
had neither been naive nor lost any sleep blaming herself for the
invention of politics; carrying messages was her way of having a hand
in the world.
Note:On her role as operator
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she
didn’t want to stay there, nor have to endure what had happened to a
friend who stayed away too long, maybe a day too long or an hour too
long, at any rate long enough too long that when he came back it turned
out that everything was still the same, but now somehow all different,
or everything was similar but not the same: his mother was no longer
his mother, his brothers and sisters were no longer his brothers and
sisters, they were people with difficult names and improbable
mannerisms, as if they’d been copied off an original that no longer
existed; even the air, he said, warmed his chest in a different way.
Note:Whatt does she meann here?
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versed
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Chilango
Note:Mexican slang for mexico city
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what’s
more, it had been an entirely forgettable foray. And, no question,
she’d shaken off the exhaustion of an ordeal that was now over; but
even though she hadn’t wanted to be fawned over, just wanted a man to
lend himself, he had touched her with such reverence that it must have
been smoldering inside him for ages. She’d seen him before at the door
of the elementary school where he worked, had noticed the way he
wouldn’t look at her, looking instead at every other thing around her;
that was where she picked him up, sauntered over saying she needed a
shawl so that he’d put his arms round her, took him for a stroll,
laughed like a halfwit at everything he said, especially if it wasn’t
funny, and finally reeled him in on a line she was tugging from her
bedroom. The man made love with a feverish surrender, sucked her
nipples into new shapes, and when he came was consumed with tremors of
sorrowful joy. After that the man had gone to work in the Big Chilango,
and when he came back months later he showed up at the switchboard to
tell her something, looking so cocksure and so smart that she guessed
what it was that he wanted to say and fixed it so she wouldn’t be left
alone with him. The man hovered in silence for hours on end until she
said Come back another day, we’ll talk. But when he came back she asked
him about his gig and about his trip and never about what was going on
inside. Then she asked him to stop coming to her work, said she’d seek
him out instead. And she did: every weekend they’d shuck, and whenever
she sensed he was about to declare himself, Makina would kiss him with
extra-dirty lust just to keep his mouth shut. So she’d managed to put
off defining things until the eve of the journey she was being sent on
by Cora. Then, before she could silence him, he threw up his hands and
though he didn’t touch her she felt like he was hurling her from the
other end of the room. You’re scared of me, he said. Not cause of
something I did, just cause you want to be. He’d stood and was facing
her, straightening his sky-blue shirt; he was leaving without making
love, but Makina didn’t say anything because she saw how hard it had
been for him to get up from the bed; she could play dumb—I don’t know
what you’re talking about—or accuse him of making a scene, but the
slight tremble betrayed by his lips, the bottled-up breathing of a man
barely keeping his composure, inspired in her a respect that she
couldn’t dismiss; so she said It’s not that, and he raised his head to
look at her, the whole of him an empty space to be filled by whatever
it was that Makina had to say, but she stammered We’ll talk when I get
back and then … Before she was through, he’d nodded as if to say Yeah,
yeah, just sticking your tongue in my mouth again, and then turned and
versed with the weariness of a man who knows he’s being played and
can’t do a thing about it.
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But
in the meantime the thug took Makina’s brother out drinking and washed
his brain with neutle liquor and weasel words and that night her
brother came home saying I’m off to claim what’s ours. Makina tried to
convince him that it was all just talk but he insisted Someone’s got to
fight for what’s ours and I got the balls if you don’t. Cora merely
looked at him, fed up, and didn’t say a word,
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Makina
turned to him, stared into his eyes so he’d know that her next move was
no accident, pressed a finger to her lips, shhhh, eh, and with the
other hand yanked the middle finger of the hand he’d touched her with
almost all the way back to an inch from the top of his wrist; it took
her one second. The adventurer fell to his knees in pain, jammed into
the tight space between his seat and the one in front, and opened his
mouth to scream, but before the order reached his brain Makina had
already insisted, finger to lips, shhhh, eh; she let him get used to
the idea that a woman had jacked him up and then whispered, leaning
close, I don’t like being pawed by fucking strangers, if you can
believe it.
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Only
then did Makina inspect her side. The bullet had entered and versed
between two ribs, ignoring her lung, as if it had simply skimmed
beneath the surface of her skin so as not to get stuck in her body. She
could see the gash of the bullet’s path, but it didn’t hurt and barely
bled.
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The
city was an edgy arrangement of cement particles and yellow paint.
Signs prohibiting things thronged the streets, leading citizens to see
themselves as ever protected, safe, friendly, innocent, proud, and
intermittently bewildered, blithe, and buoyant; salt of the only earth
worth knowing. They flourished in supermarkets, cornucopias where you
could have more than everyone else or something different or a newer
brand or a loaf of bread a little bigger than everyone else’s. Makina
just dented cans and sniffed bottles and thought it best to verse, and
it was when she saw the anglogaggle at the self-checkouts that she
noticed how miserable they looked in front of those little digital
screens, and the way they nearly-nearly jumped every time the machine
went bleep! at each item. And how on versing out to the street they
sought to make amends for their momentary one-up by becoming wooden
again so as not to offend anyone.
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They
speak an intermediary tongue that Makina instantly warms to because
it’s like her: malleable, erasable, permeable; a hinge pivoting between
two like but distant souls, and then two more, and then two more, never
exactly the same ones; something that serves as a link. More
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Using
in one tongue the word for a thing in the other makes the attributes of
both resound: if you say Give me fire when they say Give me a light,
what is not to be learned about fire, light and the act of giving? It’s
not another way of saying things: these are new things. The world
happening anew, Makina realizes: promising other things, signifying
other things, producing different objects. Who knows if they’ll last,
who knows if these names will be adopted by all, she thinks, but there
they are, doing their damnedest.
Note:great note on language
"The Place Where Flags Wave" Note juxtaposition.
Scum,
she heard as she climbed the eighth hill from which, she was sure,
she’d catch sight of her brother. You lookin to get what you deserve,
you scum? She opened her eyes. A huge redheaded anglo who stank of
tobacco was staring at her. Makina knew the bastard was just itching to
kick her or fuck her and got slowly to her feet without taking her eyes
off him, because when you turn your back in fear is when you’re at the
greatest risk of getting your ass kicked; she opened the door and
versed.
Makina glared as though reproaching him for being
skinnier and blacker and older than her brother, as though this man
were attempting to pass for the other. She was about to say something
when he beat her to it with I could put on a blond wig if you like.
Makina was thrown for a second and then laughed, embarrassed. Sorry,
she said in anglo, it’s just that I was expecting someone else to open
the door. Someone white? Do you think this is a white person’s house?
No, no … Well, right you are, this is a white person’s house, there’s
not a thing I can do about it, except dress like a white person. Do you
like my robe?
No … Yes … I mean, it’s just I was expecting someone
different. A different black man? Are you saying I’m not black enough?
Makina laughed. The man laughed. Suddenly her anxiety had passed. For
the first time since she’d crossed she felt welcome, even if she still
wasn’t invited in. No, not white or black, I’m looking for my brother.
They told me he came here to work, in this house. Oh shoot, the man
said with exaggerated disappointment, I knew my prayers couldn’t have
been answered with such celerity … Last night I knelt down and begged
the Lord: Lord, send me a woman to relieve me of my misery. I’m sorry …
Right, I know, the brother. He’s not here. I’m here. The family that
lived here moved. To another continent. They sold the house and I
bought it. I don’t know why they left, but times are changing and this
is a lovely place to stay put.
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Makina
had no idea what so-called respectable people were referring to when
they talked about Family. She’d known families that were truncated,
extended, bitter, friendly, guileful, doleful, hospitable, ambitious,
but never had she known a Happy Family of the sort people talked about,
the sort so many swore to defend; all of them were more than just one
thing, or they were all the same thing but in completely different
ways: none were only fun-loving or solely stingy, and the stories that
made any two laugh had nothing in common.
Her brother told
Makina an incredible story. After the land fiasco he was too ashamed to
return, which is why he accepted the first job that came his way. That
woman had come offering the earth itself for his assistance. She spoke
latin tongue and asked for his help with every term of entreaty she
could find in the dictionary. She took him to her house, introduced him
to her husband, to her young daughter, and, after waiting for him to
come out of his room, to a bad-tempered teen.
This is who you’re going to help, said the woman. But I wanted you to meet the whole family you’ll be saving.
He
must have been about the same age as him, just barely grown-up. Like
him, without consulting his family he’d decided to do something to
prove his worth as a man and had joined the army, and in a few days
they were going to send him to the other side of the world to fight
against who knew what people that had who knew what horrific ways of
killing. He was of age, but acted like a child: for the whole insane
hour that their interview went on he kept clenching his fists and
pursing his lips and only looked up when everything was settled. Over
the following days he approached Makina’s brother several times to ask
who he was, where he came from, if he was scared; but he didn’t speak
enough of their tongue to respond and only said the name of his Village
or the term for its inhabitants, which didn’t begin to explain his
previous life, or he simply said no, he wasn’t scared. The other
adolescent nodded and went off tight-lipped, as if there were something
he had to say but didn’t dare.
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Makina
had admired the nerve of her friends who were that way inclined,
compared to the tedious smugness of so-called normal marriages; she’d
conveyed secret messages, lent her home for the loving that could not
speak its name and her clothes for liberation parades. She’d witnessed
other ways to love … and now they were acting just the same. She felt
slightly let down but then said to herself, what did she know. It must
be, she thought, that they know other marriages, good ones where people
don’t split up, where fathers don’t leave and they each keep speaking
to the other. That must be why they’re so happy, and don’t mind
imitating people who’ve always despised them. Or perhaps they just want
the papers, she said to herself, any kind of papers, even if it’s only
to fit in; maybe being different gets old after a while.
After
he finished his few months’ stint he returned to the family’s house. He
didn’t ask them for anything, just went, knocked on the door and got
let in. They stared at him with eyes like saucers, astonished to see
him there, alive and decorated: alive. He saw it made them uneasy to
have him back, as if he were a stranger who’d shown up to talk about
something that bore no relation to their white dishes and their white
sheets and their station wagon. The father congratulated him, offered
him a beer, thanked him on behalf of his country and then began to
stammer something about how hard it was to get the money together and
how complicated it would be for Makina’s brother to use his son’s
identity and about the possibility of him working for them instead and
that way, if he wanted, he could stay in the country legally. But the
mother didn’t let him finish. Said No. Said We’re going to keep our
promise. But everyone here knows him, said the father, referring to his
offspring. Then we’ll go someplace else, the mother replied. We’ll
change our name, reinvent ourselves, the mother replied. Since they’d
assumed he wasn’t coming back, they didn’t have the money they’d
promised; they gave him something, less than he was hoping for but much
more than he could have earned bussing or waiting tables in that time.
And they went away.
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He’s
homegrown, he said. Joined up just like me, but still doesn’t speak the
lingo. Whereas me, I learned it, so every time we see each other he
wants to practice. He speaks all one day in past tense, all one day in
present, all one day in future, so he can learn his verbs. Today was
the future.
I guess that’s what happens to everybody who comes,
he continued. We forget what we came for, but there’s this reflex to
act like we still have some secret plan. Why not leave, then? Not now.
Too late. I already fought for these people. There must be something
they fight so hard for. So I’m staying in the army while I figure out
what it is. But won’t they just send you back over there? He held up
his palms. Who knows, we’ll see.
He leaned in toward her, and as
he gave her a hug said Give Cora a kiss from me. He said it the same
way he gave her the hug, like it wasn’t his sister he was hugging, like
it wasn’t his mother he was sending a kiss to, but just a polite
platitude. Like he was ripping out her heart, like he was cleanly
extracting it and placing it in a plastic bag and storing it in the
fridge to eat later.
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You
think you can just come here and put your feet up without earning it,
said the cop. Well I got news for you: patriots like me are on the
lookout and we’re going to teach you some manners. Lesson one: get used
to falling in. You want to come here, fall in and ask permission, you
want to go to the doctor, fall in and ask permission, you want to say a
fucking word to me, fall in and ask permission. Fall in and ask
permission. Civilized, that’s the way we do things around here! We
don’t jump fences and we don’t dig tunnels.
He
took two steps toward him and repeated What you got there? The man was
holding a little book and gripped it tighter when the cop came close.
He resisted a bit but finally let him snatch it away. Ha, said the cop
after glancing at it. Poetry. Lookie here at the educated worker, comes
with no money, no papers, but hey, poems. You a romantic? A poet? A
writer? Looks like we’re going to find out. He ripped out one of the
last pages, laid it on the book’s cover, pulled a pencil from his shirt
and gave it all to the man. Write. The man looked up, bewildered. I
told you to write, not look at me, you piece of shit. Keep your eyes on
the paper and write why you think you’re up the creek, why you think
your ass is in the hands of this patriotic officer. Or don’t you know
what you did wrong? Sure you do. Write. The man pressed the pencil to
the paper and began to trace a letter but his trembling prevented him.
He dropped the pencil, picked it up, and tried again. He couldn’t
compose a single word, just nervous scribble. Makina suddenly snatched
the pencil and book away. The cop roared I didn’t tell you to … But he
fell silent on seeing that Makina had begun to write with
determination. He kept a close watch on her progress, smiling and
sardonic the whole time, though he was disconcerted and couldn’t hide
it.
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We are to blame for this
destruction, we who don’t speak your tongue and don’t know how to keep
quiet either. We who didn’t come by boat, who dirty up your doorsteps
with our dust, who break your barbed wire. We who came to take your
jobs, who dream of wiping your shit, who long to work all hours. We who
fill your shiny clean streets with the smell of food, who brought you
violence you’d never known, who deliver your dope, who deserve to be
chained by neck and feet. We who are happy to die for you, what else
could we do? We, the ones who are waiting for who knows what. We, the
dark, the short, the greasy, the shifty, the fat, the anemic. We the
barbarians. The cop had started off in a mock-portentous voice but
gradually abandoned the histrionics as he neared the last line, which
he read almost in a whisper. After that he went on staring at the paper
as if he’d gotten stuck on the final period. When he finally looked up,
his rage, or his interest in his captives, seemed to have dissolved. He
crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it behind him. Then he looked
away, turned his back, spoke over the radio to someone and took off.
she
thought back to her people as though recalling the contours of a lovely
landscape that was now fading away: the Village, the Little Town, the
Big Chilango, all those colors, and she saw that what was happening was
not a cataclysm; she understood with all of her body and all of her
memory, she truly understood, and when everything in the world fell
silent finally said to herself I’m ready.