The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [81]
He recognized the strawberry plants and they were still bearing fruit. The first morning he had been awakened by a tractor and the sound of voices. The evening before, he had wandered down the rows of plants and concluded that there were not many berries left and he was surprised that they still took the trouble to harvest them.
He had picked a few strawberries and put them in his mouth, but this reminded him too much of Angel and Patricio for him to really be able to enjoy the sweetness. How he longed for his brothers! This feeling tore at his heart like a furious animal. It had only gotten worse since he arrived in Sweden.
Slashing that gringo’s throat had not helped, if he had even imagined it would. The first night after he killed Armas and dragged him down to the river, in the hope that he would sink or float away, he had suffered hellish nightmares and woken innumerable times, alternatingly in a cold sweat and feverishly hot. He fell to his knees outside the tent and prayed to San Isidro for forgiveness, ben ládxido zhhn, to make his little heart bigger.
In the darkness of the night he thought he could see a beautiful woman with waist-length hair and copper-colored skin. She disappeared in the direction of the river with a taunting laugh. It was matelacihua and he chanted his prayers more intensely. The bad air surrounded him, constricted his chest, and threatened to suffocate him. He was afraid of losing consciousness only to wake up many miles away.
He knew that his crime was enormous. He had taken on the role of God. This was unforgivable.
The next day he had gone back to the river and discovered that the body was gone. It was as if part of his guilt had washed away with the water. He relaxed, turned his face up to the heavens, and spoke to Angel.
Now, some days later and in a new spot next to the same river, his guilt pricked him like tiny mosquitoes, but not more than he could wave away. He had done the right thing. It had been an act pleasing in the eyes of God to kill a bhni guí’a. The world was the better for it, and Manuel was convinced that Armas’s soul was now subjected to the torments of Hell.
What were the alternatives? he debated with himself. Should he have allowed himself to be killed like a dog? But the knife—why did he carry it in his pocket, if not to use it? Hadn’t he unconsciously prepared himself to kill when he took it out of the bag and slipped it into his pocket? Had he sensed Armas’s intentions as they drove to the river?
If he went to the police he would join Patricio in jail, he knew this. To be thrown in jail was nothing foreign to Manuel and his family. Zapotecs had been persecuted in all ages in any manner of ways, and many were holed up in Oaxaca prisons. Eleven campesinos from a neighboring village had been taken away four months ago and subsequently imprisoned or killed. No one had heard from them again.
But these cases were grounded in defending their land and forests, in matters of autonomy and justice. Manuel had admittedly killed in self-defense, but he did not think anyone would believe him.
He lay in the river ravine in the shadow of fir trees that reminded him of cypresses. A couple of predatory birds hovered in the sky, just as in the valley at home. Would he ever see his village again?
He got to his feet quickly, in one movement, just like a startled animal, but it was only a lone man walking along the riverbank, a fishing pole in one hand and a bucket in the other. Manuel had seen him the day before. The man’s tall, gaunt body was topped by a small head with a face so wrinkled that Manuel was reminded of the old woman in his village who gathered bunches of epazote that she sold for fifty centavos apiece.
Did he sell the fish, or was it done only for enjoyment? Manuel knew so little about Sweden, about the people who lived in this country. He had read a little in a guidebook in a store in Mexico City, that was all.
He knew that there were many different