The Nicotine Chronicles Read online

  “Sister Hilde understands German—according to her he’s an investigator from Berlin.”

  Berlin. With her senses on alert now, she knew she’d put the convent in danger if she was discovered.

  Sister Valentine rushed into the oven area.

  “I need to wear a habit, sister.”

  “But rules forbid that.”

  “I’m sure the pope would grant an exception. Get me one from the laundry, please.” Mila reached under the flour sack for the carte d’identité she’d hidden.

  “This one’s large enough for you.” Sister Valentine thrust a nun’s black wool habit at her, helped her put it on, and attached the starched wimple below her chin. “You’ll go with Jacques and deliver the bread.”

  At the back of the cloister by the chicken pen, Sister Valentine handed her the basket with a bottle of unlabeled wine. A man with a red-veined nose sat on a horse cart. “He’s going to the next village. Bonne chance.”

  Before Mila could thank her, she was gone.

  Jacques took the basket and the wine. In the heavy wool nun’s habit, Mila’s leg dragged as she struggled climbing up into the cart. Jacques clucked and the horse took off, tumbling Mila onto the seat.

  For the first time in weeks Mila felt the sun, smelled the cut hay, heard cows mooing. Alive. Not hiding in the dank, vaulted cloister by the bread oven, the engineer’s festering wounds, his ravings at night.

  Gunshots came from the cloister.

  Her heart sank. “Go back.”

  “You crazy?”

  She grabbed the reins, turned the cart around.

  “What are you doing?”

  Outside the henhouse she got down. “Go get what partisans are left.”

  “Who?”

  “You know, old man. Now.” She slapped the horse’s rump.

  Perspiration dripped down Mila’s back under the black wool. She took the pitchfork off the wall by the haystack. The driver, the soldier who’d accompanied the Berlin investigator, was coming toward her from the cloister.

  “What’s going on?” she said, pretending not to have heard.

  He stepped close to her, gesturing with his machine gun. “Come along with me. Orders.”

  The sounds of prayers and women’s screams came from the cloister. Gunshots.

  They were murdering the nuns.

  Mila stabbed the soldier with the pitchfork. Hard. As he crumpled in surprise, she pulled his machine gun off him. Took the keys in his pocket and the grenade attached to his belt.

  The peace of the cloister was riven by gunshots and moans.

  Sister Valentine was sprawled on the cloister’s pavers. Blood trailed from her gunshot-ridden body. Her eyes open to heaven.

  But what had God done for her?

  She closed Sister Valentine’s eyelids, kissed her still-warm brow. Pain lanced her heart. So senseless.

  Seized by fury, she limped through the cloister, the machine gun hanging from her shoulder hidden in the folds of her habit. She reached the old oven. There were the engineer, the man in the rumpled linen suit, and Azores.

  “Looking for me?”

  “We’ve caught every partisan,” said the man in the suit. His pistol pointed at her. “Except you.”

  She drilled him in the chest. Looked at the engineer and Azores who’d reached for a sharp bread knife. She shot Azores in the knees, sending her to the floor; next the engineer, who collapsed in pain.

  “Now for you two, spécial treatment.” She crouched beside Azores, pulled her head back, and took the knife. “Traitor.” She slit her throat.

  The engineer she’d nursed cried out, his hands on his bloody knees.

  “You too.” She sliced the knife across his thick throat.

  That done, Mila took off the bloody habit and left it on the stone floor.

  As she hobbled through the cloister, she took a pinch of tobacco, rolled it in the cigarette paper. Licked the tip. She paused and took the pin out of the grenade. Tossed it back. Mila slid into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes.

  As the grenade exploded, she slid the keys in the ignition, lit her cigarette, and shifted into first gear.

  Yasiri

  by Michael Imperioli

  We found a man in a canoe . . . he had with him some dried leaves which are in high value among them, for a quantity of it was brought to me at San Salvador.

  —Christopher Columbus, Journals

  Domingo, 7 de Octubre

  Chu will come for me a little past eleven, which means we will have to hurry in order to begin precisely at the stroke of midnight. Chu has brought me many clients over the past five years and for that I am grateful to him. Our relationship has been beneficial for us both and for the many people who have been in need of my services.

  But tonight . . . tonight will be different.

  Chu has asked me to lie. And I am very ashamed to admit that I have agreed to lie. And though I have a very good reason, a reason that is not based on greed or my own personal gain or profit, it remains a lie and for that I will pay. Skillful means is not an acceptable excuse in my line of work; the lie carries its own weight of negativity.

  I have always kept my cuadro clean. That is, I have always used my gift with integrity. But tonight I have consented to something that puts my gift in jeopardy. I have agreed to this, so do not feel sorry for me. I will be judged; my sin will be measured in terms of damage inflicted, nature of intent, and final result. I will accept punishment and do penance. I go to be sentenced willingly.

  I am what is called a vidente, a seer. I am not an interventor, “one who intervenes.” Chu has told tonight’s client (a very rich American who builds apartment buildings) that I am an interventor and will be able to affect and influence whatever fateful situation the client has found himself in. The truth is that I have no ability to intervene on anyone’s behalf, no ability to change or manipulate the fabric of reality. As I said, I am a seer. Or more accurately, “He” is the seer, “The Leaf” is the seer and I am His voice. He (The Leaf) is the holder of power, my gift is the means to interpret what He sees.

  “He has eyes. You are His mouth”—the words of my mother’s mother, my Grandma Martita.

  Yes, I am His mouth, but still they call me a seer.

  In addition to being a seer, I am also a torcedor—a roller. And despite how the two skills may seem to go hand in hand, it is very rare that one person would be adept at both. I do want to state, for the record, that rolling (and cutting or shredding) is not something I pursued to enhance my craft of seeing. I am merely fortunate to be the heiress to two lineages: one of seers and one of rollers. My mother’s father, my Grandpa José Ivan, was a roller who married a seer. In most cases, these two lines would exist far apart from each other. Seers tend to live in the cities and rollers can be found predominantly in the countryside or farmland. The rollers that you might see in the old city are usually not very skilled and just for the tourists who are killing a few hours buying trinkets before they go back to the cruise ships. They are the bottom of the barrel among torcedores.

  Most rollers today work for big companies that export their products all over the world. There are some rollers who only roll for seers and interventors, usually these people have other sources of income. A very small percentage roll for both commercial and ritual purposes.

  Grandpa José Ivan was one of the few who rolled for both the sellers and the sacred. I would watch him as a little girl (before I or anyone else knew about the gift of sight I possessed), sitting near his feet on the floor of his cobertizo as he worked. I would often play with a set of building blocks he made out of ceiba wood. They were painted with bright-colored letters and pictures of little animals.

  One day when I was nine he had me sit at his table and poured me a cup of coffee. He was rubbing leaves of different sizes and colors in his hands. He would rub fast and soft at the same time, firm and delicate, with respeto. That was the word he used most often to describe the attitude a torcedor must have toward
Him. Never The Leaf, always Him or He, as in:

  He does not tolerate disrespect.

  He does not tolerate abuse.

  He does not tolerate overindulgence.

  To dishonor Him is to unleash grave vengeance.

  It is with this mind-set that he would rub the leaves between his stained and calloused brown hands. He rubbed like he was washing his child or caressing his lover. So deliberate, so kind. Then he put his hand in my face.

  “Tell me what you smell.”

  My first reply to this was: “I smell the leaf.”

  “No, no, no . . . tell me what you smell.”

  I tried for an answer he would like: “I smell Him.”

  “No, no, my little love . . . like what? . . . Like what does it smell?”

  “Like leaf?”

  “Beyond the leaf . . . like what?”

  I sat silent. I was angry at myself for not knowing the correct answer. He rubbed again and put his hands over his own face and inhaled deeply.

  “I smell the eight-day storm and the Trujillo fires.”

  He rubbed again, took another deep inhale.

  “I smell the funeral Mass of Valeria Oquendo’s babies, the twins.”

  Rubbing again and breathing it in.

  “I smell your mother’s twenty-eighth birthday cake, the pink one.”

  Another rub, another sniff.

  “I smell Raffi’s rum, the eight barrels broken when the cart collapsed on itself and crushed poor old Locoburro.”

  He rubbed twice as long and put his hands over my nose. “Tell me what you smell.”

  I closed my eyes and breathed in as deep as I could. “I smell the brown dog from Polanco’s hill. The one they shot after she ate her own puppies.”

  I had no prior knowledge of any brown dog or a hill called Polanco’s. I had seen for the first time. My grandpa later told me that he had witnessed the aftermath of the mad bitch who devoured her young out of starvation. This had occurred on another island during a hunting trip my grandpa had made nine months prior.

  He put me on his knee and hugged me. I think he cried a little bit though I am not certain. I never saw him cry but he may have that day. I have an image of tears in his eyes. Shortly after this incident, my grandpa began to teach me how to cut and roll. But even more importantly, my grandma began to allow me to sit with her when she was with clients; a privilege not granted to my sisters, who were both older than I, or even to my mother.

  My sisters and my mother were not seers.

  This would incite much jealousy in them, causing me to suffer greatly for many years.

  Lunes, 8 de Octubre

  Chu was late. We didn’t arrive at the client’s house until well after midnight. In the past I would have refused to go any further and would have demanded he take me back home. But in light of the fact that the night was a sham . . . a lie . . . well . . . the time we would begin had no importance at all.

  Chu must have felt the same way. He smoked a Marlboro in the car as he drove me to the client’s house near Miramar. Chu had never, never, ever smoked a cigarette in my presence. The overprocessed, pulverized, corrupted, and degraded leaf was an assault and an affront on everything that I held sacred.

  But on this night, none of that mattered in the least.

  The rich American lived in the penthouse apartment of a building that he’d built and owned. In the daylight he had glorious views of the ocean, the lagoon, and the bridge. But at this time of night, all that was visible from the floor-to-ceiling windows were the lights of the old city and the tourist hotel strip.

  His housekeeper led us into the foyer which opened into a large living room, dining room, and kitchen; all one huge, open space. The housekeeper said nothing as she showed us to the table where I would be performing the charade. I asked her name, and without looking at me she replied, “Milagra,” in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

  After Chu and I sat at the table, Milagra began bringing over the items I had requested: a bowl of cooked (but cold) rice, a glass of milk, three uncooked eggs, a large loaf of bread with all the crust removed, a bottle of white rum, and a small dish of sugar. She arranged everything in a neat row in front of me then looked up and smiled, silently asking for my approval.

  I nodded, opened my leather bag, and extracted three Gran Coronas, a box of wooden matches, and a white ceramic ashtray made especially for me by Grandma Martita. It was crafted in the shape of the Hand of Christ, the center of which was marked with stigmata: a small bloodred island surrounded by the smooth whiteness of His Holy Palm.

  When the aroma of the Coronas reached my head, tears began to fall from my eyes. It was then that the American entered the room. My tears were ignored and the necessary introductions were made; his name was Fred (which I assumed was fake) and Chu told him my name—Yasiri—which may as well have been fake. The American sat across the table from me. Chu said his farewells and offered to drive Milagra home. She conveniently lived near the bar that never closed, which was where Chu would always wait out my sessions.

  Before they departed Chu asked when I thought I would be finished. I stared at him and didn’t answer. He had never asked me this question before. It had always been two and a half hours, invariably 150 minutes. Why should this night be different? Should we shorten the time spent since it was all phony anyway? Why waste a possible precious hour or two of sleep . . . or drink, or cocaine, or whatever it was that Chu would be doing? I wanted to tell him to come back in ten minutes to pick me up and put us all out of our misery.

  But I said nothing.

  Chu said he’d be back at three and then he and Milagra were gone. I was alone with Fred.

  Fred was in his early forties. He was tall and large-boned, tanned and handsome. He had a thick head of dark-brown hair peppered with flattering gray. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and his stubble was mostly white. His lips were thick and fleshy and turned down slightly at both corners of his mouth. His eyes were red and moist and revealed that he was exhausted, his vital energies drained to low levels. My first impression was that he liked to drink expensive red wine and eat lots of beef. This was just an assumption I made, mind you . . . I was not seeing yet. It was not a difficult deduction to make. Many rich Americans came here and bought houses and condominiums to indulge their gluttony and avoid paying income tax by establishing residency for six months and one day out of the year. His kind was more and more common on the island.

  Fred asked if I had everything I needed. I told him I did.

  “A man I was business partners with is trying to destroy me.” He looked toward the kitchen as if he’d forgotten that Milagra had gone home. “Can I have a glass of wine? Is that okay? You’re welcome to join me if you like.”

  “It’s better if you don’t.” I don’t know why I said that. It wasn’t true in the least.

  “All right,” he said with annoyance. “Should I continue?”

  “Please. And please refer to your business partner by name.”

  He began talking in a rapid, manic burst of words. “Alvaro. His name is Alvaro. Alvaro and I have been successful together in the past but now he is proving himself to be very unreliable as a partner and I am constantly being put in the position of having to pick up his slack. Alvaro is a man without discipline, a reckless man who carries on affairs with many women, some of whom are close friends of his wife’s. He drinks too much, smokes marijuana, and snorts cocaine. On top of all that, he doesn’t really know the development business. I brought him into it and taught him everything he knows. He can’t function in this type of work without me. But I can’t rely on him anymore so I requested that we dissolve our partnership.”

  Fred looked to the kitchen again. He shook his head and continued: “My request sent him into a rage and a panic. You see, I have a great opportunity to develop the abandoned naval base into a resort complex. He knows this and wants to be a part of it, of course. It’s a project that will be very, very lucrative. But I can’t carry him anym
ore. My reputation has suffered because his behavior is a reflection on me and it’s put my relationships with investors in jeopardy.”

  He stopped talking and stared at me as if he wanted my approval, my agreement that he was in the right, that he was just. “Alvaro’s cousin is in a very high position in the Ministry of Health and Human Services. He has the ears of the most powerful politicians and can make a lot of trouble for me if he wanted to. And not only does Alvaro want to be involved in the naval base project, but as revenge for my wish to be rid of him, he wants to become the majority partner, which is what I’ve been throughout the relationship. I tried to reason with him and presented my case and made a very generous offer to dissolve the partnership, but he refused and has threatened to ruin me by spreading poisonous lies and rumors among our associates.”

  He looked to the kitchen a third time. “Can I get myself a glass of water? Is that permitted?” His annoyance had turned to anger.

  “Yes. Water is fine.”

  He did not offer me any and returned from the kitchen with a tall glass of ice water and sat back down across from me. “Can you help me?” It pained him to ask this of me. He was not a man used to asking for help. Especially from a young woman. A young native woman.

  “Of course I can help. It’s why I am here.” It was the most blatant lie I’ve ever told. “What would you like me to do?”

  “I want Alvaro out of my life. He’s an evil man, he beats his wife and abuses his children. He abused his son so terribly he drove the poor boy to suicide. I’m also afraid he may do something to physically harm me. I want him out of my life. I’ll pay whatever you ask.”

  I could easily tell he was lying too. But who was I to judge? I stared at my hands for a long time, then I picked up one of my Gran Coronas. I had already cut all three of them at home. I lit a match, let the sulfur burn off, and then toasted the end of the cigar. I did not pray or offer up the white substances as I normally would. There was no need. Tonight was a perversion. A blasphemy. I didn’t want to desecrate it any more than I had to.

  I lit my Corona and puffed. It drew tighter than I was prepared for. For a second I thought perhaps I had been mistaken and it was not rolled by my hands at all. But that assumption was ridiculous. It was mine of course and I had rolled it too tight. It was shoddy work. Like work I would have done when I was a child. I took this as a very bad sign.