The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [139]
Patricio nodded while his gaze followed the fat one, who was now drawing out of sight and finally turned a corner.
“He’s gone,” Manuel said.
Patricio’s entire stance changed after Slobodan Andersson disappeared. He collapsed into a heap, sobbing.
“Patricio,” Manuel said with so much love in his voice that the city around them no longer existed, no cocaine and no prison walls, no death and no reprimands stood in the way of the happiness the brothers felt.
This state of unity lasted until Manuel asked the question.
“Why?”
Patricio looked down.
“It just happened,” he said. “There were some others …”
“There are always these others,” Manuel growled, but the flare of anger subsided when he saw his brother’s crushed expression.
“We can’t stand here,” he said and pulled Patricio with him into the shadows.
Patricio started to say something but Manuel put up his hand and shushed him. What should we do, he wondered. His previous plans were no good now. He had to remove Patricio from the streets, hide him, and figure out a way to … yes, what?
“Wait here,” he told his brother, “don’t go anywhere. I’ll get the car.”
“What car?”
“I’ve rented a car.”
He left and half-ran down the street. A patrol car came gliding along. Manuel jumped over a low fence and landed in a thicket. The patrol car drove on. Eva has called the cops, he thought, getting up and running to the car that he had parked on the street on the next block.
He had been chased by the police once before. That was when he and a dozen other Indian activists had left the headquarters of Consejo Inídgena Popular de Oaxaca to take the bus and join the demonstrations in Oaxaca’s central square. The police were waiting behind the school by Carretera Nacionàl and threw themselves over the group. Manuel managed to climb the school wall and through the schoolyard to the other side of the neighborhood. In the background he heard sirens and the barking of police dogs. Manuel ran for his life. Two policemen came after him, one tired after only a couple of hundred meters, the other Manuel managed to shake next to the soccer field by crawling into a shed. Manuel heard the policeman’s heavy panting, and he fingered his machete. If the dogs came at least he had this.
Manuel spent the whole night there before he dared leave his hiding place. When he came down to the square the following day the demonstration had been dispersed and only a torn poster bore witness to the small-farmers’ monthlong protest.
Now there were no police in sight and no sound of dogs. He swung out onto the street from his parking spot and made a U-turn. As he passed Dakar, some customers were stepping onto the street. They were noisy, laughing, and sauntered away. It was a good sign and Manuel grew calm. If the police were inside Dakar, the guests would probably have stayed inside from curiosity.
He rolled slowly to the place where he had left Patricio.
Fifty-Five
Manuel was awakened by bird song, or rather, a violent screeching outside the tent. After a second or so, when he became conscious of the previous evening’s events, he threw back the blanket and sat up. Patricio was gone. They had fallen asleep next to each other, like they used to when they slept in the mountains, and in the darkness Patricio had asked Manuel to tell him about the village.
Manuel crawled out of the tent and looked around before he crawled up the slope. From the top he anxiously scanned the riverbank area. He worried that Patricio had run away yet again, but then he saw him. His brother was sitting some hundred meters downstream, up close to the river. Perhaps he even had his legs and feet in the water.
Manuel walked over to him slowly, following the edge of the field, plucking a couple of grass stalks and trying to figure out what time it was. The sun was still low in the sky.
Patricio turned when Manuel came down the riverbank with running steps. They smiled at each other.
“It was worth the escape just for this moment,” Patricio said. “Now I could go back to prison.”
Manuel sat down at his brother’s side.
“You