Lost City Radio Read Online Free PDF

to the rock. Nico’s father worked clumsily, glancing up at the river, now back at his stumps and the knot he could not quite tie. He had the rope between his teeth. He’d lost his hands in the war.
    â€œGood for nothing,” Victor muttered to himself. “Useless cripple.” It was the cruelest thought he’d ever had.
    The line was nearly set, stretched taut across the river. Who would wade into the current to pull her free? The men had fashioned a raft to carry Victor’s mother’s body back to shore. They organized themselves, and there was Manau, barreling into the water, and the village watched breathless, and Victor knew before it happened that he wouldn’t reach her in time. Manau was up to his chest in its turbid black waters when the river surged, and she let go. Victor never saw her face, only the back of her, his mother set free, her body bobbing and sinking beneath the surface, and then she was gone.
    Victor had lied to Norma at the station. He knew why they’d sent him: there was no reason to stay. His mother had prepared it all. She’d wanted him to leave, they said, and it was her instructions that formed the essence of the note he carried to the station. The women of 1797 had sewn the note carefully into the pocket of his pants—there are thieves on the road, they warned him—along with a small sum of money, and a list of all the town’s disappeared. Take it to Norma, they’d said, and he promised he would. He looked at the list, at the dozens of names filling two columns on both sides of a sheet of lined paper. Nico was there, the very last name, but the others he didn’t recognize. One of them was his father, but Victor didn’t know which one. There were so many, strangers mostly, young men who had gone and never returned. Did they suppose Victor could bring them back?
    Just to have the names read would count for something. Victor’s voice filling the crowded canteen would be enough. The old spinsters, the men who remained, his classmates—they would celebrate him, as if he had done something extraordinary: conquered a foreign land, crossed a frontier, or subdued a monster. He would read, that would be all; read the names and remind the radio listeners to pray for his mother, who had drowned and been carried by the river to the sea.
    This was only three days ago. Since then, his life had acquired a velocity he could scarcely comprehend. Everything was out of order, the contents of his world spilled and artlessly rearranged. Here he was, watching the river boil and steal his mother. Here he was, planting a cross in the sweet-smelling field at the edge of town, a dark-clad throng of mourners behind him at a respectful distance. Here he was, having his head shaved—these were the protocols of mourning—and saying good-bye to his friends, one by one, trying not to cry.
    Though his contract was for one more year, the town didn’t have the heart to make Manau stay. He’d been in love. It was what everyone said, and Victor knew it was true. Manau would travel with Victor to the city. He’ll help you, the women told him, and so they left 1797 at dawn, in the back of an old truck, mist still clinging to the hillsides, along a red-earth road cut through the jungle. A small crowd, a half-dozen women, some of his schoolmates, gathered to wish him luck. Victor carried a small, woven bag with a few belongings: a change of clothes, a photograph ofthe city his mother had saved from a magazine, a bag of seeds. On either side was the forest, a wall of green and black shadows. The truck bounced along the road, through deep ruts pooled with water, and left them in a village named 1793.
    Here they waited, but no boat came. The morning grew hot and bright. There was a sign by the river, and a few young men waiting in its shadow. At noon, a small launch came, just a raft with a motor. He would take six, the captain said, but a dozen people