Gustavo’s cinder block bungalow has no windows, so he’s surprised when he steps out at half past dawn to find a man in an olive uniform digging post holes for a semi-assembled fence scattered in the dusty yard. The soldier stands, puffs his chest, and dusts off his brass buttons. He is young, tall, and handsome—some proud mother’s son. Gustavo is old, bent, and ugly as the day he was born.
The soldier announces that Gustavo’s trees have been declared community property. To access them, Gustavo will need a card certifying his rights. These cards will be available from eight this morning in the alley alongside the church. Gustavo should hurry. The line is already long, and supplies are limited.
That’s fine, Gustavo says. He’ll go right away, but first could he water the trees? It hasn’t rained all week, and their leaves are starting to droop. The soldier grants permission, but Gustavo will have to stay behind the fence line. The fence doesn’t exist yet, so it’s hard to say where the line is, but anyway, the spray won’t reach. The pressure is too low and the water falls short of the trees.
So Gustavo puts on his church clothes and walks to town to get the card he needs to water his trees. A mob sloshes in the plaza, breaking at the alley mouth to trickle into line. Hot from the walk, Gustavo sits under a guayacán while he looks for a way through this minor riot, which stretches from city hall to the slaughterhouse. The air reverberates with the baying of semi-feral dogs and children, the drone of adults speculating, fantasizing about these new cards. Will they be real plastic, or those crappy laminated cardboard things? Will they take our pictures? What if there’s a chip? With a chip they can track you. Every question has a dozen answers, every answer argued by a dozen local wits at full volume.
The bells toll eight. The line starts to move, and Gustavo joins the mob. Nobody speaks to him, or even looks at him. Nudging, shuffling toward the alley, a space opens around Gustavo, because nobody’s forgotten he was a guerillero. The rumors he’s heard about himself are more sinister than anything he ever did, though he did several things he considers atrocious. Gustavo has committed atrocities, so he’s accepted and become accustomed to his pariah status. It’s only fair. When he first returned to his hometown he was very lonely—he missed his compañeros dearly—but now he appreciates being left in peace. Talking would tire him. Even thinking is often too much.
The government gave him the little house with three guava trees, and he lives from them—selling fruit, seeds, paste, and jam—and he lives for them, pruning, watering, weeding, spraying for fungi. The historical global struggle of poor versus rich doesn’t worry him like drought worries him. The soil is turning to dust. Now this absurd fence, this silly card. At least he won’t waste the trip to town. The trash cans here are full of treats for his trees, fruit peels and cores, coffee grounds and eggshells.
It’s another sweltering day, so stepping into the shady alley is a relief, until the screams of children, confined by stone walls, resurrect memories of a basement where he once stood guard. He starts to sweat. Lightheaded, he wants to sit down, but there’s nowhere; he needs to lean on someone’s arm, but there’s no one. He braces himself against the wall. It is cool and unforgiving. It smells like the rain that won’t come. Gustavo is seventy-eight. Few people in this town live past seventy, almost none of them men.
He’s near the front of the line when the officials announce they’re down to their last card. A scuffle becomes a melee that sets off a stampede, which plucks Gustavo from his feet and carries him back into the plaza and deposits him on a bench, where he waits until everyone is gone except himself and the body of a trampled boy lying in the sun. Bruised men stagger off with pieces of the last card. In the alley, the officers and clergy fold up the plastic tables, break down empty cardboard boxes, and store everything in the church basement.
On his way home, Gustavo hears a hiss. He’s being hissed at. A woman beckons him into the mouth of another alley. Years ago he would’ve considered this a clumsy ambush. Now he knows nobody cares enough about him to kill him. That hiss is the closest he’s come to conversation in years.
Her name is Silvia. She’s about his age but better kept, with clean hair and nails, a red flower-print dress and a necklace of big yellow beads. Maybe it’s because she seems so upstanding that she was able to swipe a dozen cards and talk her way into three more for her bedridden, nonexistent sisters. Silvia offers to sell him a card for an amount of money he’s only seen once, in a duffel bag in the back of a Willys Jeep.
“Maybe I should introduce myself,” Gustavo begins.
“I know who you are.”
“Then you know that I don’t have any money. All I have are my trees, and good hands for working.”
“Show me your hands,” she says. She sounds like a cop, but he obeys anyway. She takes one of his hands and turns it over. Gustavo always keeps his nails clean. She paints hers red. Her rings are too big. They rattle on her trembling hand, until she starts to bargain and she tightens her fist. They settle on a price of one kilo of guava paste, one sack of fresh guava, two cords of wood, and two sacks of compost.
It takes Gustavo all day to gather wood and shovel compost. He did these jobs for years in the brigade. He thinks he should be stronger and faster, more resistant than this, but his hands ache and his lower back spasms and he has to eat his lunch lying down. The kilo of guava paste is the last one in his cooler, and he’d intended to sell it at the weekend market to get the money for next week’s rice. Guava season is near its peak, though, so if he can get access to his trees, he can make more by Saturday.
All he’s missing is a sack of fresh fruit. The guard says no. No card, no fruit. The fence is finished, with an acrylic sign in bold red letters prohibiting entry under Articles Three, Eight, and Nine of Section One of Law 2,457. As Gustavo can see, this is serious business. It seems dumb to the guard, too, but the law is the law and his job is a good job.
Yes, of course, Gustavo understands. The war is over and the law won. But could the officer kindly kick some fruit under the fence?
“Also no. That would violate the spirit of the law.”
“It’s right there, rotting on the ground. Can’t you smell it? Look at the flies.”
The officer agrees it’s disagreeable. Gustavo says he should at least take the fruit himself, bring some home for the family, but the guard doesn’t like guava, and neither do his wife and kids. What his wife and kids like is cash. If Gustavo were to offer the guard a little tip, perhaps they could do business.
Gustavo loads his wooden barrow with the guava paste, wood, and compost. Silvia’s house isn’t far, but it’s like another world. Her street is paved, lined with guayacánes blooming yellow and orange. Her two-story house is made of brick, not cement, with a tile roof and wooden veranda, windows and curtains in the windows, like something from a foreign film.
Silvia directs him to the backyard, but the cart wheels tangle in dandelions and nettle, so Gustavo has to carry the compost and wood. The weight on his shoulder throbs in hot waves down his spine. He leaves the wood on the back porch, and she sends him to the far end of the grove with the compost, past two dozen trees, avocado and lemon, orange and tree tomato, with a stand of six guavas by the back hedge, where he drops the bags. The trees are draped thick with black-eyed Susans, pink fungus on their ragged leaves, all fruitless.
Silvia is tiny in the distance, and still tiny up close, but Gustavo fears her. What if she uses the missing fruit as an excuse to withhold the card? She’s rich. Rich people do that. They take and don’t give, so they got exactly what they deserved, but it’s peacetime now, so Gustavo should try to explain the situation, the guard and the fence, the rotting fruit.
“I promised Father Jaramillo a guava tart for the bake sale,” she says. “I need that fruit.”
“I’m very sorry, ma’am, but I’m going to need the card first,” Gustavo says, not meeting her eye. “Then I can get the fruit. If you could just give me the card now, I could bring you fresh fruit tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is too late,” she says. “I was expecting it today.”
Gustavo draws a deep breath, then lets it leak through his teeth. “You’ve got a good orchard here,” he says. “But it needs tending. I could see to that from time to time. I’m just asking for a little mercy today.”
“That was my husband’s orchard,” Silvia says. “Andrés loved those trees. He would tend to them before he left for work. Andrés was a police officer. We were still kids when we got married, practically still kids when your people made him disappear. Maybe you killed him, Gustavo. Who knows? Nobody. I pray to an empty grave. And where is his soul? I don’t know. I don’t know what mercy you’re talking about, because I’ve never seen any myself.”
She goes into the house, and he’s about to leave when she returns with her purse. She takes a card from it and hands the card to Gustavo. The card is laminated paperboard, no photo, no name, certifying the bearer as a member of the community in full standing, with all rights and privileges pertaining thereunto. “I want that orchard to bloom,” she says. “You owe me that. And I want another kilo of paste. I’ll make bocadillo for the bake sale.”
He trudges home behind his barrow. He’s felt guilty so long he almost doesn’t recognize that nauseous sensation. Yeah, he’s killed a few cops, but those weren’t atrocities. Cops were enemy soldiers, poverty’s enforcers. Did he kill Silvia’s man? He doesn’t remember shooting anyone in the back, but if he did, it would’ve been a cop, and it makes sense he would’ve forgotten.
Gustavo goes straight to the fence, where the officer checks the card’s serial number against a list on his clipboard. Gustavo’s feeling impatient. He can see the edges of the leaves beginning to crisp. He checks the sky. No clouds. The rainy season should have started last month. The officer hums as he reviews his list. Gustavo counts dead leaves on the ground. Nine. Yesterday there were three. The flies are loud. Can’t he please just water?
The officer would be more than happy to let Gustavo water, and hopes he’ll clean up, too, but first he has to verify the authenticity of the card. “Some cards were stolen, you see, and we’ve received reports of people buying their civil rights on the black market.” The officer taps the card twice on his clipboard. “This card, for example, was stolen.” He shows Gustavo the matching numbers. “Don’t worry. We know you’re not the thief. You should expect to be summoned, you’ll have a case, but you’ll get a fine at most.”
The officer carries scissors in a leather holster. He cuts the card, returns it to Gustavo, then also checks the sky. Almost dark. Quitting time. He puts a large padlock on the little gate, salutes the sign, and leaves whistling.
Gustavo watches him shrink, then tries to climb the fence. It isn’t high, but he’s so tired. The shrapnel behind his knee hurts. He tries crouching to squeeze between rails, but his spine won’t bend, his thighs keep quivering, so he has to lie down and roll under. The running hose soaks his trousers with warm water. It feels like he’s pissed himself. He sticks his thumb in the hose to spray in circles around the trees. He fancies he hears the trickle of underground rivulets, sighing roots. Once the ground is soaked, Gustavo uses the last light to fill sacks of fruit, which he hides in the house.
His mattress on the cement floor is neatly made with a pillow, blanket, and sheets. Beside the bed, under the reading lamp, is a library book on soil formation and structure. Tonight’s chapter is called “Redeposition.” Sleep seems so close, but he’s afraid if he sleeps he’ll lose twelve hours, and he has to get to the store before it closes to trade guava for sugar and lemons.
He walks comfortably in the dark, though his night vision isn’t what it once was. On the way home, he picks hierbabuena from the roadside and gathers kindling to start a cauldron boiling. In the kitchen, under the dim bulb, he sorts good fruit from bad. The bad fruit he mashes and sets by the window to collect yeast; then he bags the unripe fruit in plastic to sell this weekend. The bruised fruit is for paste.
Peeling and chopping, he waits for the water to boil, then sits sweating by the fire in his tin folding chair, stirring the mixture, swatting mosquitoes, and watching the moon rise. By the time he finishes cleaning the kitchen and scouring burnt paste from the cauldron, it’s nearly set.
Gustavo sleeps all day in his black cell. When he wakes, he makes instant coffee on last night’s embers. He waves to the gate guard, who’s just leaving for the evening. The guard calls back to Gustavo, “Hey man, thanks for cleaning up. The flies were much better today.”
Gustavo can manage without a card. He’ll tend to the trees at night. He can still pick his living from their branches. It’ll be an inconvenience, not being able to ride the bus with a senior discount, and he hopes there won’t be any trouble over his library card. He can’t vote in local elections, but he’d never vote for any of those swine anyway.
But on Saturday, they won’t give him a stall at the weekend market. It’s for certified community farmers only. He has to sit outside the tented area with his fruit on the ground. The sun ruins the fruit like it ruined Gustavo. Their skins harden and crack, and the flies come. Nobody buys anything, though a girl gives him a coin from pity.
When the market closes for the hottest hours, he loads his barrow and takes everything to Silvia’s house. She sniffs at the bags piled on her porch. “What am I supposed to do with all that? It’ll attract ants; take it away.” Yes, ma’am, he will, certainly, but could he possibly step inside for a moment? He’s been in the sun all day. If she could spare a glass of water, he’d thank her.
Silvia hesitates. She says a few women have gotten killed recently, a couple girls disappeared. She’s not saying it was him. He’s obviously too old for that kind of thing. It was probably their husbands and boyfriends. She’s just saying it’s a bad habit, letting strangers in the house. He ought to know that better than anybody.
Gustavo closes his eyes and listens to the birds. It’d be a good day to die.
“Fine,” she says. “Come in.”
It’s dark and cool inside, with wooden floors and soft carpets; too many chairs; a sofa, television, and record player; shelves full of books and records. There are framed paintings, ceiling fans, a breeze through the open windows. It smells like wax and dust. It reminds him of a museum he saw once.
Silvia gives him a glass of water and asks again, “What’s all that fruit for?”
“I need another card. Not a stolen one. One of the ones you got cleanly. I’ll pay whatever you want.”
Silvia looks him over while he twists his hat in his hands and stares at the floor. He’d forgotten how nervous it makes him, having a woman looking at him. “I don’t know if you’ll agree,” she says. “My price might be too high.”
Gustavo stays standing in the doorway. Propped against the wall beside him is a machete. The door is the only way out, the windows are all barred. There are no neighbors close enough to hear her scream. Like she said, a lot of women around here get hacked up. What’s one more? He has no public relationship to Silvia. The cops would have no more reason to suspect him than they already do. It’d be another offense to his conscience, but he knows how to cope. Just don’t think about it. But, goddamnit, it’s just a stupid little card, and he’s too old, the world is too old for any more of that.
He sits on the bench beside the door and asks her husband’s name. She gives him Andrés’s four names. Sure, yeah, Gustavo knew his brothers. They were from a village so small and poor most people around here don’t know it, though it’s only two hours walking. Gustavo hid out there one rainy season. The village has a billiards table, which was how he met Andrés’s brothers. Nice guys. Nice people there generally. He imagines her husband was the same. Was he an honest cop?
As far as she knows. Truth is, Andrés never wanted to be a police officer. They recruited him from the village, gave him an education, a uniform, and a gun, and he was proud of all three, but he didn’t love the job. What her husband really wanted was a car. He was training at night to be a mechanic, planning to start by fixing other people’s cars until he could build one of his own. After he had that, Andrés always said, he’d never want anything else for himself except kids.
Gustavo sets his hat on his knee. He hasn’t talked to any of those people in a long, long time, but if he tries, it’s possible he could find out who killed Andrés. If it was the guerillas, someone might know where his body is. If it was a cartel, probably not. Does she really want to know? Is it that important?
“It is.”
“Why?”
“If you ever loved anyone, you would know.”
Gustavo stands, puts his hat back on. He’s not sure where to start, how to get the phone numbers, but he’ll think about it. He’ll be in touch. She can keep that fruit. Skin’s too thick for ants.
He stops on the lawn and looks her in the eye for the first time. “Can I ask you something? Why did you give me that first card? Was it to see if I’d get arrested?”
Silvia looks back at him. “I wanted to help you,” she says.
“What for?”
“Because I remember when they took you. I was two years behind you in school. Maybe you don’t remember me, but I remember you. They took other kids after you, so many I’ve forgotten all their names, but you were the first, so you were the one I prayed for most. When you came back, I recognized you right away. I don’t know what they did to you. I don’t need to know what you did. Maybe I don’t care enough anymore. Wait here.”
Silvia leaves and comes back with another card, hands it to him. He looks at it, at her, then shoves it in his pocket. “It was so expensive you couldn’t even say the price out loud, and now it’s free because we were at the same school?”
“No,” she says. “I was going to ask you for something. Now I think not.”
“Ask me.”
“No.”
“I’m not leaving until you do.”
“I was going to ask you to sell your house.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To live here. I have an orchard, but no one to tend it. I’m too old, this house is too big, and I’ve seen where you live, Gustavo. It’s a disgrace. But if you sell it, we could do well here. I have spare bedrooms. There’s the caretaker’s hut, if you prefer. We could marry, if it’s convenient. That’s what I thought, anyway. I thought: Why not try to be happy? We’ve tried everything else.”
Gustavo takes a long look around. He’s been in houses like this, but only to rob them. He never imagined living in one. A soft bed would hurt his back. He’d feel uncomfortable around so much beauty. Even now it makes him angry. If he were handsome, he might fit in, but his clothes are stained and ripped, he has rude manners, a woman like Silvia would get sick of him, and then he’d be homeless.
Does he remember her? He closes his eyes. During guava season, Gustavo would run with the other kids, snatching fruit from the limbs hanging over the cement walls that hide the houses from the street. Where the walls were high, they’d boost smaller boys like Gustavo into the branches, but there were some older girls who’d climb up, too. One of them could have been Silvia. He can imagine her, tiptoeing around the glass shards embedded in cement, one of the girls who’d strip the branches clean, toss down the fruit, then launch herself from the wall, and the boys had to catch her.
David Serafino has published fiction in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and India. He has been nominated for various prizes and lives near Medellín, Colombia, where he works as a translator. For novels in English, visit DavidSerafino.com.
