Nazaré by JJ Amaworo Wilson

Author:JJ Amaworo Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Gifts—Jesa, Kin, and Iquique recruit an army—the fairground—cockfight in Bouazizi—Kakurega—Sklonište—the basher—the temptation of Cienfuegos by a slug of aguardiente

JESA, IQUIQUE, AND KIN PREPARED TO LEAVE BUJIGANGA. IT WAS TIME TO RECRUIT AN ARMY. They were packing supplies when there was a knock on the door. The soothsayers again, three clairvoyants in bowler hats, each carrying gifts. Three men, wrinkled as Methuselah, one blind, one deaf, one dumb, none with his head backwards. The first knelt in front of Jesa and handed her a large cloth bag. She took it and felt heat emanating from its contents. She peeked inside the bag and saw thin slices of bread heaped one upon the other.

“Thank you,” she said, “but this is too much. This…”

The clairvoyant had already bowed, stood, and turned. The second, a blind man, felt his way toward her. He too knelt and offered her a bag, this one clinking and clanking. She looked inside. A dozen small glass bottles of some clear liquid. She looked closer and saw the bottles were all the same: a label proclaiming Red Horse Aguardiente, A Taste of Heaven, a liquor like fire.

“I thank you also, but…”

I don’t drink, and surely Iquique and Kin don’t either. The third clairvoyant was small and squat even by the standards of Bujigangans, and the band of his bowler hat was adorned with cockatoo feathers. He knelt and gave her a box of cigars. By now she knew to say nothing but thank you. The three old men backed out of Iquique’s shack with a final nod.

“Here in Bujiganga,” said Iquique, “the one thing we never ask is why.”

*

Minus the camel, which had again wandered off on an epic pilgrimage through a mushroom-filled wood, they had to walk. Bujigangans didn’t have cars. It was the bleakest day of the year, a day when an unseasonal frost had kicked in for no reason but a whim of the weather. And when they arrived at the disused fairground, they blinked into the mist and took in a sight so desolate their spirits flagged.

The skeleton of a rollercoaster stood stark against the sky. Matchsticks and pipe cleaners on a grand scale. Spindles of rust. A disused Ferris wheel and a half-collapsed shooting range came into view. And a merry-go-round choked with weeds that pierced the wooden floor and grabbed at the legs of the painted horses.

Here lived a group of rough-edged travelers. They were knife merchants and experts in the wielding of their tools. Rumor had it they could hit a bullseye from fifty yards, slice up javalina in minutes, sever an ear clean as a whistle.

Jesa, Kin, and Iquique were there to recruit them as weapons suppliers and trainers in hand-to-hand combat. After all, these people had been persecuted for four generations by the Matanza family and they knew how to fight.

Throughout the reign of the Matanzas, these men and women had been kicked off their own lands and harassed constantly by the Tonto Macoute. They’d stood on trial for

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