“A narcocorrido.”
“The greatest narcocorrido ever written, Veracruzana style!”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Are you serious? Why?”
“Yes. Serious in this.”
“I’ve been kidnapped by you and half raped by your son. My husband has been beaten and you’re stealing a lot of our money. I’m pregnant and I’m terrified of you people. All of you. I won’t write for you. Terror does not write songs.”
He looked at her morosely. He walked to the accordion and laid a hand on it. “We make music to defeat terror.”
“We make music to express joy.”
“A life without joy needs music also.”
“I’m sorry for your life but I won’t write a song about it.”
“But I am not sorry. I do not regret. I want my life to be told. I want them to know who I was. And what this time was. And this place.”
“I won’t write for you.” She heard her words held fast by the fine acoustics of the tracking room, and she heard the fear and anger in them.
“You have strong convictions and these I understand,” he said softly.
“I’m glad you understand.”
He eyed her with a cagey expression. “The studio would of course be yours if you wanted it. You can compose in your room or here. You may use the Hummingbird or the piano or both of them. You are to choose. I have pens and paper. Do you like the sheets with the staffs for composing? I have several small digital and tape recorders. If you would like a different guitar, you tell me what it is. I have some very old Martins that have magical properties, and some nice Gretsch hollow-bodies, and some exquisite Kirk Sand guitars from California. I have expensive five-string electrics for the open tunings of Keith, and I have a genuine Monteleone arch-top guitar. They would be very honored to be played. You know how they enjoy it. How only then are they alive. Perhaps you would be more happy here in the studio. It reminds you of other studios and the pleasures of music. It does not remind you of being a prisoner.”
“You don’t understand. You pretend to, but you refuse to, and this is an insult.”
“I understand but I try to persuade.”
“You can’t persuade me to write about you.”
“I will continue to try. For you to write about me you must be…encantada.”
“Enchanted? You do not enchant me. I’m the opposite of enchanted by you.”
“Not by me. By my accomplishments. You must have a great impression by them.”
“I am not impressed by hell.”
“Hell?”
“You. Saturnino. This whole place.”
He regarded her with a long stare. She saw no guile in it and no anger, but something stonier and less negotiable. Will? Nature? Character? Then he looked down at the accordion and touched it thoughtfully.
“Then this I will do. Enchant and impress. You will now please come with me.”
He nodded and motioned her back into the control room with some urgency. She walked out of the tracking room and turned when he had closed the heavy door behind him.
“Where?”
“I want you to see my accomplishments. The third floor.”
“That’s where the lepers live.”
“They appreciate my accomplishments. That is why they live there.”
“Accomplishments? I don’t understand.”
“What I have achieved.”
“They must be special if the elevator doesn’t even stop there. And if there’s no landing on the inside stairway.”
His look contained small amounts of joy and conspiracy. “So we take the elevator to the ground floor and we use the outside stairs, yes okay?”
24
The outside air was weighted and cool but the breeze felt good against her skin. She hadn’t been outside since the attack, nearly three days ago. She saw no remnants of the Thursday night party, nothing of the stage or canopy, not a beer can or a roach or a cigarette butt. Small songbirds splashed in a pool of rainwater and a pig lay on its side in a wallow of hurricane mud. She glanced off toward the clearing where the vehicles had been parked that night and where no policeman or politician or reporter would help her. She saw Saturnino’s face on the rising glass of the SUV and felt a cold front shudder down her body.
The stairway to the third story began in a small walled-off patio. The entrance to the patio was through a white plaster archway featuring an elaborate gate made of stainless steel. In the middle of the gate a steel sun either rose or set, the slats of its light fanning up and out to the edges of the frame.
“At first the gate, it was made of black iron. They did not like it. They wanted the hope of light, not the darkness they live in. So I had this made. It reflects sunlight even on a day of clouds. It turns moonlight into sunlight.”
“Are they contagious?”
“They are treated by a very good doctor. He is here once a week. They are not contagious. But do not go close to them.”
“Why?”
“It is offensive to them. They are proud. They do not want to be near us. It is not true that pieces of their bodies fall off. That is a popular myth. But sometimes there are amputations.”
Armenta opened the gate with a conventional key, not a plastic card. He slowly pulled it open, the hinges creaking and the stainless steel sun flashing dully in the low light of evening. He waited.
She entered the patio and stood on the cobalt blue tiles and looked at the clean white plaster of the archway, and at the steps leading up to the third floor. The steps were limestone, thick and wide, the slabs fitting together so tightly that the entire stairway appeared to have been chiseled from one piece of stone. They looked like they had been worn smooth by the centuries and would be worn smoother by many more.
“The stairway once was part of a Mayan ruin near Kohunlich,” said Armenta. “It is believed to have been an observatory. The man who built this castle discovered it buried in the jungle. He had the stairway collected and reassembled here. It was built in approximately twelve hundred, A.D.”
“Interesting history,” she said.
“We are interesting history also. That is why I want you to put us in music. So we will be remembered.”
“I will not write music about you.”
“Would you write music about hating me?”
“Hate can’t write music.”
“Fearing me?”
“Fear can’t write music either.”
“You are wrong. Music is our protest against hate and fear. You must protest. You must write music about the horrors you have endured here in what you call hell. How else will the world know?”
“Your words only make sense on the outside.”
“Will you write music about Felix and the leopards? Who will remember him if you don’t?”
“Stop. You’re just adding confusion to savagery.”
He looked at her evenly, nodding. He shut the gate and the lock clicked into place. He pointed to the west-facing wall and Erin saw the scores of small dark geckos. They looked like commas but they moved every few seconds as they took the mosquitoes.
Erin climbed the steps behind Armenta. They stood at an arched wooden door with wrought-iron straps and a speakeasy with its bars festooned with fanciful copper butterflies. “They will only open the door for the doctors, nurses, one teacher, and for me. No one else.”
“Can they go to other floors?”
“They do not use other floors.”
“Are they allowed?”
“Have you seen them on other floors?”
Armenta knocked. A long moment later the panel behind the butterflies slid open and Erin could see the twinkle of eyes watching them from the darkness inside.
— Benjamin. Give us a few moments.
— You have all the time you need. We will wait.
The panel slid shut.
“They need to prepare for us. The temperature will be cold for you. Because they wear the long clothes. They do not like having their faces and bodies visible to themselves or other people.”