The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [101]
“Does he use it himself?”
Rosenberg shook his head.
“What is his name?”
“He is called Zero.”
Lorenzo smiled.
“Now we are starting to get somewhere,” he said and waved the waitress over. “I think we will have cognac.”
Forty-Three
The lid of the dishwasher started to vibrate. Manuel leaned back, regarded the shiny machine, and heard the water rush into it. After the first hour’s initial confusion at everything new, he worked with increasing satisfaction and pleasure. The heat in the dishwashing station did not bother him, quite the opposite. Nor all the dishes that were brought over to him. The towers of plates and all the glasses took his thoughts away from drugs and Patricio and Armas.
In addition, he liked the other staff members. Above all, the Portuguese cook, but also Eva, the waitress, who was also the one he had the most contact with. She knew no Spanish but could make herself understood in broken English.
Manuel had been told that she was also new at Dakar. She had a way of looking at him that made him bewildered. She looked him straight in the eye, with curiosity and a smile on her lips. She asked about Venezuela, what the country looked like, the clothes, climate, and how the food tasted. She wanted to know everything, the questions seemed never to end and she showed such interest that he could not ignore her.
For a moment, he was tempted to tell her the truth, that he was a Mexican. He did not really want to lie to her, the first person in Sweden who he had real contact with and who showed this bold interest. Instead, in order to speak truthfully, he created the country anew, added his experiences from the mountains to the north of Oaxaca and applied them to Venezuela. He described the peasant farmers’ lives and found that Eva liked it, those slight details about how the coffee was dried on the roof and who fired up the stove in the mornings.
Manuel had felt no guilt in this, for he believed that the people in Venezuela and Mexico lived basically under the same conditions. He realized that the driving force behind the waitress’s inquiries was a longing for something else, and in this intense conversation they could join in mutual enthusiasm for a land that in reality was two. Eva made him speak and experience longing, and he looked forward to their brief meetings when she came flying in with more dishes.
Once he had looked out into the restaurant and received a shock. The fat one was sitting at the bar with a beer. He had his attention directed at the bartender and did not notice Manuel, who quickly ducked back inside.
Once he was back at the dishwashing station the old hate, which that had temporarily fallen away in his conversation with Eva, rose up. When Feo came over to see how things were going, Manuel asked what the fat one’s name was and how often he usually came to Dakar.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” Feo said, “we have talked to him and he knows that you have been hired.”
“Is he nice?”
Feo laughed heartily.
“You don’t need to be afraid,” he repeated.
Manuel was not afraid but he was unsure of what he should do. He had looked for a job at Dakar on impulse. He had come here in order to see what the place looked like and perhaps catch sight of the fat one. Now he found himself in the lion’s den.
There was an advantage in working at a restaurant: he could eat his fill. During his first days in Sweden he had not indulged in more than bread and canned corn and it was only now, in the presence of so much food, that he realized how hungry he had been.
He spent the remainder of the evening trying to figure out what he should do. One way out would be to destroy the drugs that he had stolen from the house, say good-bye to Patricio, and fly back home. That was the easiest solution, but he knew he would never attain any peace if he went back with his tail between his legs. The thought of his brother behind bars, while those who had masterminded the drug smuggling would still be free, was unbearable. He wanted to make things easier for Patricio, that was his duty as an older brother. But