The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [120]
If we kill everyone who sucks our blood and throws us on the dirt pile when we are used up, then will it be a better world? The Zapotecs would benefit from it. No one would be forced to go to el norte, the villages could live and no corn would be dumped on the market in Talea.
Patricio’s thoughts were not new, they had emerged in prison, but now for the first time they appeared possible to realize. For the first time he would be able to make a contribution to his country and his village. To demonstrate in Oaxaca that to be subdued by police dogs, batons, and water canons did not lead anywhere.
The white ones always won. Again and again they triumphed. For five hundred years they had always picked the longest straw. Now he, Patricio Alavez, Zapotec, would easily defeat two white men. Angel would be revenged and Miguel would not have died in vain.
Patricio grew as he stood outside on the sidewalk. He looked down at his new clothes and realized it was his fighting gear. He would not have to feel ashamed. Even a Zapotec could look sharp.
Afterward the police could take him, throw him back into jail, perhaps kill him. It wouldn’t matter. He would no longer be dishonored.
Forty-Eight
The tent flapped in the wind. Home, Manuel thought, and sat down in his favorite spot on the riverbank with a stone shaped like a back rest. From there he had a view of the river and the opposite bank where the well-fed cattle grazed. But now he shut his eyes and tried to squeeze everything to do with Sweden out his mind. He sat like this for several minutes before getting up and scouring the landscape. The sun was in the southwest and its light was reflected in quick-moving glints in the river water. Downstream some birds chattered anxiously. Manuel lifted his gaze. A hawk was circling up in the sky.
He made his way up the riverbank on stiff legs, but neither the billowing fields nor the pencil-straight lines of the strawberry plants could give him peace. He only felt bewildered by the fact that there were so many realities. All over the world, people were standing at the edges of fields, by deserts and lakes, in front of homes and graves. Or else they were resting in bed or on a sleep mat, alone, or with their beloved by their side. Many were on their way somewhere, restless or full of anticipation.
Everywhere there were people with dreams and beating hearts. Manuel looked down at his hands as if they could tell him who he was and where his rightful place was.
Miguel’s death, the violent force of the bullets that struck his body, his children at the window. Angel’s sprint across the railway tracks in Frankfurt, his mother’s sad eyes and her body worn and aching from a lifetime of work, the scent and beauty of the fields and crops, words of love exchanged in the dark with Gabriella—everything was mixed together in a burning anguish.
Give us a land to live in, he thought, a land where we can toil and love in peace. Why do you have to come to us with your manipulated seeds, your pesticides that give us panting lungs and burning wounds, your agreements that no one can understand until it is too late, fierce police dogs, armed thugs in souped-up jeeps, your drugs and your newspapers and radio stations that only lie? Why can we not till the earth in peace? Is that too much to ask?
Manuel did not understand the world. Everything was racing, as if life were a flock of horses stung by a gadfly, setting off at a furious pace.
“Patricio!” he shouted across the Uppsala plains, overcome with terror.
He looked around as if looking for his brother, but the only person he saw was a lone worker with a pesticide applicator who walked between the rows of plants and gave them their dose of poison.
The man, who may have heard his cry, looked up and waved his free hand in greeting. Manuel waved back.
A thunderclap from