Hari Kunzru - Gods Without Men

Keep your head, Nicky. Whatever you do, don’t lose your head. Picking up the plastic bag of booze, he hobbled back in the direction he thought he’d taken, but after a few minutes he lost confidence and retraced his steps. He could still see the big rock formation. Logically he ought to walk away from it. He just wasn’t sure. The ache in his leg made it hard to think. Under his feet, the ground felt spongy. Was he going to die? Mate, he told himself, you really need to get a grip.

His mouth was dry, but he had beer. He could drink a beer. His hands were shaking as he fumbled with the top. Him and his plastic bag of booze, out in the desert, with all the stars smeared across the sky. The ground was breathing. That was odd. The whole desert was slowly inhaling and exhaling and he was just a little wounded animal, standing on its back. The giant rattle of the insects pressed down on his ears and he began to sweat. Every rock, every grain of sand, was pumping out all the heat it had taken in during the day. The cacti raised their arms up to heaven. He wondered about joining them, praying for forgiveness. He felt sick. Would Anouk forgive him? What about all the others? He got down on his knees. Sorry, he whispered. I didn’t mean anything by it.

He vomited on the ground, clutching his sides. His head was throbbing. Oh God, he was all alone. He ought to have been with someone. He was a rock star. He could have anyone. The worse you behave, the more they want you. They humiliate themselves, lose the plot when you walk into a room. Men get jealous. Girls go down on you. It happened in toilets, in dressing rooms, in the little curtained beds on the tour bus. What they got out of it, he didn’t know. It used to make him happy, until he realized they weren’t really blowing him at all. Making it with a rock star — that was the point. Not Nicky Capaldi. When he came, they got points. They were blowing an idea, blowing fame. They were proving they could make fame come.

In the distance he heard his phone ringing. He stumbled towards the sound, which stopped as he got close. He used the lighter, tried to spot the place. Then, just by his feet, he heard a triplet of short beeps. Voicemail. He scooped up the phone and hugged it to his chest. His hands trembled as he called Anouk.

“Baby?”

“You’re alive!”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“You bastard! You selfish bastard!”

“It was an accident.”

“You think that’s funny? You think it’s a joke, pretending to kill yourself?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“You’re actually crazy, you know that? A crazy person.”

“I dropped the phone.”

“I’ve had enough, Nicky. I’m not doing this anymore. You stay out in the desert and play with your gun. I don’t care. I don’t want to know about it. It’s over between us. Don’t call me again.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I mean. It’s over, Nicky.”

“But I’m hurt. I fell over.”

“Mummy, I fell over. I’m hurt. You’re a little boy. A selfish little boy.”

“But I love you.”

“No, you don’t. I’m sorry, Nicky. You don’t love anyone but yourself.”

“That’s not true. Nookie! Nookie?”

There was no reply. She’d hung up. He called back, but she didn’t answer. He couldn’t believe it. This didn’t happen. They didn’t leave him. He left them, they didn’t leave him. His head spun. His leg throbbed. He drank more tequila and the desert breathed and the ground sucked at his feet like quicksand. Now he really thought of shooting himself. The gun would split his head apart like a watermelon. How had it got like this? When did he start hating himself so much? It was a mystery to him how other people ran their lives. What if he’d done more normal things? Washing up, cooking? He had no clue what was in his bank account. Did he have savings? People had savings. They saved up for things they wanted, things they couldn’t have straightaway.

Little by little, the heat went out of the air. He sat and shivered and held the gun out in front of him like a cross to ward off vampires and his mind skipped from one thing to another. His mum crying when she saw him on telly, Jimmy’s dad driving them to their first gigs. His kid sister, who got all the backstage passes she wanted, who did all the gak and drank all the Cristal and hung around China White’s trying to get off with footballers. Did she love him? What about his mum? He’d bought his mum a house. Finally dawn arrived, a thin sliver of orange that spilled over the hills, lightening the sky until he could see some way into the distance and realized he’d been just a few hundred yards away from the car the whole time.

He drove back to the motel very slowly, along an empty road which seemed to writhe beneath his wheels like a snake. By the time he got there, the sun was over the horizon and his leg was broadcasting pain in great red waves. He limped to the pool and sat down on a lounger, still holding the half-empty bottle of tequila. When he shut his eyes, there was redness behind the lids, a hot, sick, heavy redness that smothered everything.

To His Excellency Teodoro Francisco de Croix, Caballero de Croix, Comandante General of the Internal Provinces of the North

Señor ,

With due submission to the superior person of Your Excellency, I have, as instructed, made my way to the Mission at Bac and offer this confidential report on its condition and situation.

Misión San Xavier del Bac is located in an extensive valley, twenty leagues from the new Presidio of San Agustín del Tucson. Pasturage is scarce except in the vicinity of the spring. Around forty leagues to the north there is an abundance of pine, suitable for building. Mesquite, creosote and saguaro are found in the open country, along with quail, rabbit, hare and deer. As for harmful animals, there are none, save the coyote. While the land furnishes all amenities needed to sustain life, the air is alkaline and constipating, and all who come here suffer from chills and fevers. As the northernmost of the Sonora missions, San Xavier del Bac is vulnerable to the depredations of the Coyotera Apache, who make frequent raids and sorties, and harass the Pimas and Papagos in their rancherías, as well as the Mission itself. With these qualifications, it may be stated that the area satisfies the requirements for new settlements, as laid down in the First Law of Don Felipe II, registered in Book Four, Title Five, of the Laws of the Indies.

The Mission is directed by Fray Francisco Hermenegildo Tomás Garcés, a wily old Aragonese friar who seems to have been fitted by Almighty God almost to perfection for the reduction of the savages to our Holy Faith and obedience to His Catholic Majesty. I have seen him squatting in the dust with groups of Indians, eating their food with the greatest appearance of relish, though to a civilized palate it is repulsive and unwholesome. He is fluent in several of their tongues and has become famous in Sonora for his entradas into the country of the warlike gentiles on the far side of the Río Colorado, during which he frequently traveled alone, without an escort of any kind. Fray Garcés shares the stubbornness and secretive nature of his Franciscan brethren, and is highly suspicious of my presence at Bac, which he sees as a possible prelude to the secularization of the Mission. I have been at pains to reassure him that Your Excellency has nothing but respect and solicitude for his holy work.

I am inclined to forgive Fray Garcés his temper, for he has, through faith and determination, transformed a wild and desolate place into a tolerable home for himself and his flock, and has suffered greatly in so doing. When he arrived at San Xavier, despite the Mission being almost a century old, it was unable to furnish even those things most essential for the celebration of the sacred mysteries. His bed was the bare ground, and for his food he had no purveyor but providence, the various temporal possessions of the foundation in the time of the Jesuits having reverted to the savages on their expulsion, and they, like children, having failed to maintain them, allowing the fields to lie fallow, the buildings to decay and the livestock to wander. It is to his credit that in the ten years Fray Garcés has lived in this remote outpost, the Mission has made such progress in agriculture. It now produces a sufficiency of corn, wheat, barley and beans, and in good years is able to generate a small income by selling food to the Presidio. Fray Garcés has also set his neophytes to work in producing candles, tallow, soap and other necessities. There are three looms, on which San Xavier produces a small quantity of sackcloth. This suffices to cover the shameful nakedness of the neophytes, but Fray Garcés also is in possession of several bolts of red-dyed linen imported from Castile. This cloth is much prized by the savages, and the friar uses it to reward and encourage his charges.