The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [0]
The Princess of Burundi
The Cruel Stars of the Night
The DEMON of DAKAR
Kjell Eriksson
Translated from the Swedish
by Ebba Segerberg
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS
ST. MARTIN’S MINOTAUR NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
THE DEMON OF DAKAR. Copyright © 2005 by Kjell Eriksson. Translation © 2008 by Ebba Segerberg. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36669-8
ISBN-10: 0-312-36669-8
First published in Sweden under the title Mannen från bergen by Ordfront
First U.S. Edition: May 2008
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One
The clouds slid lazily down behind the mountain on the other side of the valley. The slender, bone-white streaks of mist that crept through the pass in the east, often during the late afternoon or early evening, ran together and formed white veils, sometimes intensely silver-colored, that were illuminated by the sun sinking behind the mountain peaks. The trees along the ridge stood out like soldiers in a shiny column that stretched farther than Manuel Alavez could imagine.
The clouds had been out in the world, down to the coast of Oaxaca to gather nourishment and moisture. Sometimes, for a change, they went north, to taste the zsaltiness of the Caribbean.
When they returned, the sides of the mountains were still damp and steaming, a hot breath exuding from the thick vegetation. The people and the mules that were only marginally larger than their loads inched their way down the paths toward the village, where the dogs greeted them with tired barks and the smoke rose from the brick-shingled rooftops burnished by the sun, shimmering in warm red tones.
The clouds shifted indolently closer to the mountain. Manuel imagined that they and the mountain exchanged fluids and then told each other what had happened during the day. Not that the mountains had more to report than some idle gossip from the village, but the clouds let themselves be satisfied with that. They craved a little everyday chatter after having sailed forth across a restless continent, marked by despair and hard work.
La vida es un ratito, life is a brief moment, his mother would say and display an almost toothless mouth in a little grin that both underscored and diminished her words.
Later he reformulated her expression to La vida es una ratita, life is a little rat, a little rodent.
Manuel, his mother, and his two brothers would look at the mountains from the terrace where they dried the coffee beans. From this vantage point they could look out over the sixty houses in the village.
A village among many, remote from everyone except themselves, about an hour away from the nearest larger road that would bring them to Talea and from there, after a five-hour bus trip, to Oaxaca.
The coffee was packed in some harbor, no one knew which one, and shipped to el norte or Europe. When the buyers loaded the sacks and shipped them away, the villagers lost control. They knew their coffee tasted good, and that the price would increase tenfold, perhaps twenty-fold, before they found their consumer.
Manuel leaned against the cool airplane window, staring out into the crystal-clear Atlantic night, exhausted by the long trip from the mountains to Oaxaca and another seven-hour bus trip to the capital and then a half-day of waiting at the airport. It was the first time he was flying. The worry that he had felt had transformed into an amazement that he was now at eleven thousand meters.
A cabin attendant came by and offered coffee, but he said no. The coffee he had received