By the end of that day we were all as excited as Pancho about the new plan, and we decided to go over the details in the following days. As I was leaving, I saw that someone had written on the curb with a piece of charcoal:
Give up education as a bad mistake.
Walking home, I felt excited as I thought about what the coming days would hold. I didn’t know how the whole matter of the heist would turn out, but thinking about it filled me with energy and confidence. Above all the uncertainty and adversity I could see ahead, there prevailed a feeling of invulnerability that lifted me up. I imagined us sneaking into the evangelical church at night and emerging triumphant. The goal of stealing the instruments was diffuse—I couldn’t exactly picture myself playing “How Soon Is Now?” on the keyboard. I just saw myself and the Carrascos having a ball with some instruments we would never have been able to pay for.
At home I was hit by the aseptic smell of bleach that had pervaded the house for weeks now. A new smell, and one that contrasted with the familiar scent of damp, burned wood that used to reign. My mother had been obsessed with hygiene and order ever since she’d gotten work cleaning houses for some families in Concepción.
Everything was dark except for my mother’s room, where she and my sisters were talking and laughing. She had never worked outside the house before, and I figured they were happy to get to spend some time together the way they used to. They were listening to a cassette of mine, by Los Tres. I heard how they laughed and sang: Quién es la que viene ahí, tan bonita y tan gentil. I stayed hidden in the dark behind the half-drawn curtain that served as a door. It was strange to see my mother cheerful. She looked especially young, almost like one more sister. My father wasn’t home. I spied on them for a while, and at a certain point my older sister, Carola, looked over to where I was standing. I thought she would call me out and say something mean—for a while now she had been constantly reproaching me, though I didn’t know for what—but instead she pretended not to see me. She started singing louder, almost shouting, and she snapped her fingers while she danced, shimmying in a ridiculously provocative way, making my little sister and my mother laugh and clap in encouragement. I stared at Carola, knowing that she knew I was watching, and for a second, watching her from the shadow, I remembered how much fun we’d had when we were little. I remembered how close we’d been back then, when it was just the two of us. I went to the bedroom then and lay faceup on the bed, and I listened to them sing and laugh until very late, when my father got home.
His key turned in the lock, and in a few seconds the house was silent. He walked straight down the hall. I saw his dark profile outlined in the bedroom doorway, his head high. He still had his marine’s haircut, shaved at the neck and smoothed to one side at the crown, his cheeks shaved close and his mustache meticulously trimmed, though he had nowhere to go. I could almost catch a whiff of his English cologne from my bed. But it was impossible to relate such a fresh smell to his flaccid face and listless expression. He didn’t greet me. Maybe he thought the room was empty or that I was asleep. Maybe he just didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t greet him, either. He took a deep breath and went into the bathroom. Then he left the house again, and I didn’t hear him come back.
The next morning Pancho was waiting for me, sitting on the steps with a pile of books beside him. He looked even more agitated than the day before, and he seemed to have gotten up very early or not slept at all. In an enigmatic tone, he informed me he’d had an amazing idea for the heist, and he’d tell us about it once we were all there. The books he had turned out to be encyclopedias and dictionaries, stolen from who knows where. Marquito arrived soon after with the bag of tobacco; he sat on the steps and started right away to roll a cigarette. Marquito had an innate talent for rolling. We collected the tobacco from cigarette butts we picked up in the street and stashed in newspaper. Marquito also took care of the rolling papers—he stole them from his mother’s purse.
Pancho took the cigarette Marquito handed him and took a deep drag, then said: “This is the last smoke.” He showed it to each of us, then brought it close to his face and looked at it as though saying a last goodbye, and he flicked it away with his thumb and index finger. “We’re going to have to make some sacrifices to get the goods.”
“And you’re going to make us?” Camilo suddenly appeared in the doorway. Pancho replied with a sigh and a condescending smile.
“I never said this was going to be easy. But if you’ll just let me explain.” Pancho paused and filled his lungs with air. “We’re going to give up smokes because we’re going to start training for the robbery.” He stood up again and looked at us with his eyes wide, excited. “Because we’re going to train in the ancient Japanese art of espionage and guerrilla war: ninjutsu.”
“Ninjas?” said Camilo, laughing uproariously. “You want us to dress up like ninjas? Like the Ninja Turtles?”
Pancho’s eager smile vanished for an instant.
“Let me finish, Camilo,” he said, annoyed, but he didn’t explain any further. He was quiet for a moment and then he turned to me. “What do you think?” His eyes begged for approval.
“Yeah, what does our little brain think?” said Camilo.
“I don’t know . . . aren’t ninjas supposed to be the bad guys in movies?” I asked doubtfully. Pancho’s eyes lit up and his confident smile returned.
“And how are we supposed to just turn into ninjas from one day to the next?” asked Camilo, which led to another fight between the two brothers. Marquito and I took the chance to roll and smoke the cigarette Pancho had robbed us of.
Pancho had a talent for mixing things together and complicating them. He came up with one idea after another and didn’t follow through on any, although that didn’t take away from the marvelously authentic way he invented his schemes, fascinating in its unreflective spontaneity. It was as if, for Pancho, the world were a place specially designed to astonish him in particular. Even today I can picture him absorbed in thought, his face determined. I suppose Camilo envied him, and that’s why he used to make fun of him. Next to Pancho, everyone else seemed like a fraud.
Camilo sank his fist into Pancho’s ribs and said: “Okay, okay, what’s the plan?”
Pancho explained that there really wasn’t much information about ninjutsu, so for now we would read what he’d found in some encyclopedias, and then we’d see what we should do next.
“And why don’t we try something else?” asked Marquito. “I took some kung fu classes at school.” Pancho raised his hands to the sky, as if to say “Finally.”
“We’re going to learn the art of ninjutsu because ninjas are like us.” His tone was so ridiculously solemn that even he couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Then he calmed down, hopping in place a couple of times, and looked at us with a seriousness that was comical for being forced. He nodded, as if agreeing or convincing himself of something, and then he couldn’t hold back any longer and burst out laughing again.
After reading what Pancho assigned me—some encyclopedias styled as newspaper facsimiles—I thought I understood what he meant when he said ninjas were “like us.”
Much of the information we managed to collect didn’t refer directly to ninjas, but rather used them as an excuse to talk about samurais; ninjas were reduced to foils, the samurais’ historical enemies. But as far as I understood, ninjutsu techniques and combat strategies had basically evolved from those of samurai warriors, and the main difference lay in the ideals that inspired them. The samurais were a military elite that governed Japan for hundreds of years, and their philosophy was full of values associated with superiority, honor, obligation, and loyalty. Ninjas, on the other hand, were mercenaries who always perpetrated their sabotage and espionage anonymously. Ultimately, all the differences that led them to take opposite paths in the art of war seemed to come down to this: to be a samurai you had to come from a certain caste; that is, you had to have a name and money. The only condition for becoming a ninja was that you had nothing to lose. They were poor, so they accepted all kinds of jobs, honorable or not. I supposed that was why they had so enchanted