B004QGYWKI EBOK (8 page)

They applauded him.

“Let’s go down to the river,” I said. “Everybody.”

“Okay. You too.”

“We’ll go afterwards.”

“All of us together or nobody,” replied the same voice. Nobody moved.

Javier returned. He was alone.

“Those kids are calm,” he said. “They’ve taken a donkey away from some lady. They’re having a great time playing.”

“The time,” Leon asked. “Somebody tell me what time it is.”

It was two o’clock.

“We’ll leave at two-thirty,” I said. “Only one guy has to stay here to warn the latecomers.”

Those who were arriving merged with the crowd of kids. They were easily convinced.

“It’s dangerous,” Javier said. He spoke in a strange manner: could he be afraid? “It’s dangerous. We already know what’s going to happen if the principal gets it into his head to come out here. Before he opens his mouth, we’ll all be in class.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “They should get going. We’ve got to stir them up.”

But nobody wanted to move. There was tension. From one moment to the next, everybody expected something to happen. Leon was at my side.

“The junior high kids have carried out their orders,” he said. “Look. Only the ones in charge of the doors have come.”

Scarcely a moment later, we saw the junior high students arrive in large clusters which mixed in with the waves of kids. They were cracking jokes. Javier became furious.

“And you guys?” he asked. “What’re you doing here? Why did you come?”

He was addressing those closest to us. At their head was Antenor, brigadier of the second year in junior high.

“Huh?” Antenor seemed very surprised. “You think we’d go in? We came to help.”

Javier leaped at him, grabbed him by the neck.

“Help us! What about your uniforms? And your books?”

“Shut up!” I said. “Let him go. No fights. In ten minutes we’re going down to the river. Almost the whole school’s come.”

The square was completely filled. The students remained quiet; there were no arguments. Some were smoking. A lot of cars were going by on Sanchez Cerro Street and they slowed down crossing Merino Square. From a truck, a man hailed us, shouting:

“Good going, boys. Give ’em hell.”

“See?” said Javier. “The whole city knows. Can you picture Ferrufino’s face?”

“Two-thirty!” Leon shouted. “Let’s go. Quick.”

I looked at my watch: five minutes left.

“C’mon!” I shouted. “Let’s go down to the river.”

Some made as if to move. Javier, Leon, Raygada and several others also shouted and they started pushing one or another of the students. A single word was repeated without letup: “River, river, river.”

Slowly, the crowd of students started getting roused. We stopped spurring them on and when we became quiet, I was surprised for the second time that day: total silence. I felt myself getting nervous. I broke the silence.

“Junior high at the back,” I indicated. “At the end, lining up…”

Next to me somebody threw an ice cream cone to the ground and it splattered my shoes. Joining our arms, we formed a human cordon. We were advancing laboriously. No one was holding back, but the march was very slow. A head was nearly buried in my chest. He turned around: what was his name? His small eyes were friendly.

“Your father’ll kill you,” he said.

Oh, I thought. My neighbor. “No,” I answered. “Well, we’ll see. Push on.”

We had left the square. The broad column completely filled the breadth of the avenue. Two blocks farther up, above the hatless heads, you could see the yellow-green railing and the huge carob trees along the embankment. Between them, like tiny white dots, the dunes.

The first to hear was Javier, who was marching next to me. There was alarm in his dark, narrow eyes.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Tell me.”

He shook his head.

“What’s going on?” I shouted. “What do you hear?”

At that instant I managed to see a uniformed boy who was crossing Merino Square toward us in a hurry. The shouts of the recent arrival mingled in my ears with the violent uproar that broke loose as if in confusion from the tight column of boys. Those of us who marched at the end of the line didn’t understand very well. We were bewildered for a moment: we unlinked our arms; some freed themselves. We felt ourselves hurled backward, separated. Hundreds of bodies were passing over us, running and shouting hysterically. “What’s happening?” I shouted to Leon. With his finger he pointed at something, without ceasing to run. “It’s Lou,” I heard them whispering. “Something’s happened over there. They say it’s a mess.”

I broke into a run.

At the intersection a few yards from the school’s rear door, I stopped short. At that moment it was impossible to see: waves of uniforms poured in from every side and covered the street with shouts and bare heads. Suddenly, about fifteen feet ahead, I caught a glimpse of Lou perched on top of something. His thin body was outlined clearly in the shadow of the wall that held him up. Then, in the din, louder than the voices of the boys insulting him and retreating in order to avoid his fists, I heard his voice:

“Who’s gonna try getting near?” he was shouting. “Who’s gonna try getting near?”

Four yards away two Coyotes, also surrounded, were defending themselves with sticks and desperately trying to break through the circle and join Lou. Among those in pursuit, I saw faces from the junior high. Some had picked up rocks and were throwing them, although without coming close. At the same time I saw in the distance two other gang members who were running away terrified: a group of boys with sticks chased them.

“Calm down! Calm down! Let’s get to the river.” A voice full of distress rose up beside me. It was Raygada. He seemed about to cry.

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Javier. He was laughing loudly. “Shut up, can’t you see?”

The door was open and students were eagerly rushing through it by the dozen. More schoolmates continued to arrive at the intersection; some joined the group surrounding Lou and his followers. They had managed to unite. Lou had his shirt open: you could see his thin, hairless chest, sweaty and shiny. A thread of blood trickled from his nose and lips. From time to time he would spit and he looked with hatred at the boys nearest him. He alone kept his stick raised, ready to crash it down. Exhausted, the others had lowered theirs.

“Who’s gonna try getting near? I want to see the face on that hero.”

As they were entering the school, they were putting their caps and class badges on, any which way. The group surrounding Lou was disintegrating little by little.

Raygada nudged me. “He said he could beat the whole school with his gang.” He spoke sadly. “Why did we leave that numbskull alone?”

Raygada went off. From the door he signaled to us, as if in doubt. Then he went in. Javier and I went up to Lou. He was trembling with rage.

“Why didn’t you guys come?” he asked, frantic, raising his voice. “Why didn’t you come to help us? There were only eight of us, because the others…”

He had a sharp eye and was as lithe as a cat. He quickly ducked backward as my fist barely grazed his ear and then, with the weight of his whole body, he swung his club in the air. I took the blow on my chest and reeled. Javier slipped between us.

“Not here,” he said. “Let’s go to the embankment.”

“Let’s go,” said Lou. “I’m going to teach you all over again.”

“We’ll see,” I answered. “Let’s go.”

We walked half a block, slowly, because my legs were unsteady. On the corner Leon stopped us.

“Don’t fight,” he said. “It’s not worth it. Let’s go to school. We have to be united.”

Lou squinted at me. He seemed embarrassed.

“Why did you swing at the kids?” I asked him. “Know what’s going to happen to you and me now?”

He didn’t answer or make any gesture. He had calmed down completely and his head was lowered.

“Answer me, Lou,” I insisted. “Do you know?”

“It’s okay,” said Leon. “We’ll try to help you out. Shake hands.”

Apparently sorry, Lou raised his face and looked at me. When I felt his hand in mine, I realized that it was soft and delicate, and that this was the first time we’d greeted each other this way. We swung around and walked Indian file, toward the school. I felt an arm on my shoulder. It was Javier.

Each time a twig cracked or a frog croaked or the windowpanes rattled in the kitchen at the back of the garden, the old man jumped spryly from his improvised seat on a flat rock and spied anxiously through the foliage. But the boy still had not appeared. Through the dining room windows opening onto the pergola he saw, instead, the beams from the chandelier lit some time ago and below them moving shadows that slithered from one side to the other with the curtains, slowly. Ever since he was a boy, he had been nearsighted, so his efforts were futile in trying to determine whether they were eating already or if those restless shadows came from the tallest trees.

He went back to his seat and waited. The previous night it had rained and the ground and flowers gave off a pleasant odor of dampness. But the insects were teeming; and waving his hands around his head desperately, Don Eulogio still did not succeed in chasing them away: every second, invisible lances managed to sting the flesh of his trembling chin, his forehead and even the hollows around his eyes. The enthusiasm and excitement that had kept him ready and feverish during the day had dwindled and now he felt tired and a little sad. He was cold, the darkness of the huge garden bothered him and he was tormented by the persistent, humiliating image of someone—maybe the cook or perhaps the butler—suddenly surprising him in his hiding place. “Don Eulogio, what are you doing out here in the garden at this time of night?” And his son and son-in-law would come, convinced that he was crazy. Trembling nervously, he turned his head and divined the narrow path that led, between the clumps of chrysanthemums, spikenard and roses, up to the back door, skirting the pigeon house. It hardly even calmed him to recall that he had checked three times to make sure that the door was shut, its latch undone, and that in a few seconds he could escape out onto the street without being seen.

And what if he’s already come? he thought nervously. Because there had been a second, a few minutes, after he had stealthily gotten into his house by way of the nearly forgotten entry through the garden, when he lost his sense of time and remained as if asleep. He only reacted when the object he was stroking now without realizing it fell out of his hands and struck his thigh. But it was impossible. The boy could not have crossed the garden yet, because his frightened footsteps would have awakened the old man, or the little boy would have shouted when he made out his grandfather, hunched over and sleeping, right at the edge of the path that should lead him to the kitchen.

This thought cheered him. The wind had died down, his body was growing accustomed to the surroundings, he had stopped trembling. Groping in the pockets of his jacket, he found the hard, cylindrical body of the candle he had bought that afternoon at the corner store. Delighted, the old man smiled in the dark: he recalled the saleswoman’s surprised expression. He had stood quite serious, tapping his heel quite elegantly, beating his long, metal-plated cane softly and in a circle, while the woman passed different-sized tapers and candles under his eyes. “That one,” he said with a rapid gesture meant to indicate annoyance with the disagreeable task he was carrying out. The saleswoman insisted on wrapping it, but Don Eulogio refused and left the store hastily. For the rest of the afternoon he was at the National Club, shut up in the small card room, where nobody ever came. Still, carrying to an extreme his precautions for avoiding the waiters’ attentiveness, he locked the door. Then, comfortably sunk into the scarlet armchair, he opened the briefcase he had carried with him and took out the precious package. He had wrapped it in his beautiful white silk scarf, exactly the same one he was wearing the afternoon of the discovery.

At the most ashen hour of dusk he had taken a taxi, telling the driver to drive around the outskirts of the city: a delicious, cool breeze was blowing, and the sight of the sky, between grayish and reddish, would be more mysterious in the middle of the countryside. While the car sailed smoothly over the asphalt, the aged man’s lively little eyes—the only active signs in his flaccid face, sunk in bags—slipped distractedly along the edge of the canal running parallel to the highway, and suddenly he sighted it.

“Pull over!” he said, but the driver did not hear him. “Pull over! Stop!” When the car stopped and backed up to the mound of rocks, Don Eulogio verified that it was, in fact, a skull. Holding it between his hands, he forgot the breeze and the countryside and with growing anxiousness minutely studied that hard, unyielding, hostile and impenetrable form, stripped of flesh and skin, with no nose, no eyes, no tongue. It was small and he felt inclined to think it was a child’s. It was dirty, dusty, and its bare cranium was punctured by a coin-size opening with splintered edges. The nasal orifice was a perfect triangle, separated from the mouth by a thin bridge not quite so yellow as the chin. He amused himself slipping his fingers through the empty sockets, covering the cranium with his hand to form a cap, or burying his fist in the lower cavity until he held the skull supported from the inside: then, sticking one knuckle through the triangle and another through the mouth like a long, sharp tongue, he worked his hand in a series of gestures and amused himself immensely, imagining that the thing was alive.

Not revealing his discovery to anyone, he kept it hidden for two days in the bureau, carefully wrapped, swelling the briefcase. The afternoon following his discovery, he stayed in his room, pacing nervously in the midst of his ancestors’ opulent and luxurious furniture. He seldom lifted his head: it might be said that he was examining with profound devotion and some terror the bloody and magical figures in the middle circle of the carpet, but he did not even see them. At first he was undecided, worried: family complications could occur; perhaps they would laugh at him. This idea irritated him and he felt distressed and wanted to cry. From that moment on, the project never went out of his head but once: that was when, standing in front of the window, he imagined the dark pigeon house, full of holes, and remembered how at one time that little wooden house with innumerable entrances had not been empty, lifeless, but was inhabited by gray and white birds that insistently scarred the wood with their pecking and sometimes fluttered above the trees and the flowers of the gardens. He thought nostalgically about how weak and affectionate they were: trustingly, they would come and perch in his palm, where he always carried some seed for them, and when he squeezed them they would half close their eyes and a very brief tremor would shake them. Afterwards he stopped thinking about it. When the butler came to tell him that dinner was served, he had already made up his mind. That night he slept well. The next morning he forgot how he had dreamed about an evil column of large red ants that suddenly invaded the pigeon house and made the birds uneasy, while he watched the scene through a telescope from his window.

He had imagined that cleaning the skull would be somewhat difficult and quick, but he was wrong. The dust—what he had thought was dust and was, to judge from its biting odor, perhaps excrement—remained soldered to the inside walls and shone like sheet metal at the back of the cranium. While the white silk of the scarf became covered with gray stains without the coating of filth disappearing, Don Eulogio’s excitement increased. At one moment, irritated, he flung the skull away, but before it stopped rolling he had repented and was out of his seat, crawling on the floor until he reached it and lifted it up carefully. Then he guessed that the cleaning might be possible if he used something greasy. Over the house phone he ordered a can of olive oil from the kitchen and waited in the doorway for the waiter, out of whose hand he tore the can violently without paying any attention to the troubled look the boy tried to throw around the room, staring over the man’s shoulder. Full of anxiety, he soaked the scarf in the olive oil and, gently at first, then increasing the rhythm, he scraped to the point of exasperation. Soon he enthusiastically confirmed that the remedy worked: a soft rain of dust fell to his feet and he did not even notice that the olive oil was also dampening the edge of his cuffs and the sleeves of his jacket. Leaping to his feet suddenly, he stared in wonder at the skull he held up over his head: clean, radiant, motionless, with several little drops like sweat on the rolling surface of the cheekbones. Lovingly, he wrapped it up once again; he shut the briefcase and left the National Club. The taxi he got at Plaza San Martin dropped him off behind his house, on Orrantia. Night had fallen. In the cold semidarkness of the street he paused for a moment, fearing that the door might be locked. Weakly he stretched out his arm, and he gave a jump for joy when he realized that the handle was turning and the door was giving way with a tiny squeak.

At that moment he heard voices in the pergola. He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he had even forgotten the reason for his feverish activity. The voices and the movement were so unforeseen that his heart seemed like an oxygen tank connected to a dying man. His first impulse was to crouch down, but he did it so clumsily that he slipped off the rock and slid flat on his face. He felt a sharp pain in his forehead and a disagreeable taste of wet earth in his mouth, but he made no effort to stand up and stayed there, half buried in the grass, breathing laboriously, trembling. In his fall, he had had time to raise the hand that held the skull, so it had remained up in the air, a few inches from the ground, still clean.

The pergola was some fifty yards from his hiding place, and Don Eulogio heard the voices as a delicate murmuring without making out what they were saying. He got up painfully. Spying, he then saw in the middle of the arc of large apple trees, whose roots reached to the foundation of the dining room, a precise, slender silhouette, and he realized that it was his son. Next to him was a woman, still sharper and smaller, reclining with a certain abandon. It was his son’s wife. Blinking, rubbing his eyes, he tried anxiously but in vain to catch a glimpse of the boy. Then he heard him laugh: a boy’s crystalline laugh, spontaneous and open, that crossed the garden like a bird. He did not wait any longer; he took the candle out of his jacket and gropingly collected branches, clods of earth and pebbles, working quickly to fix the candle securely on the rock and to place the rock like an obstacle in the middle of the path. Then, with extreme precision to keep the candle balanced, he placed the skull over it. Seized with great excitement, putting his eyelashes up to the solid, oily object, he felt happy: the height was right, the candle’s small white point stuck out through the hole in the cranium like a spikenard. He could not stay watching. The father had raised his voice and although his words were still incomprehensible, the old man knew they were addressed to the boy. There was something of an exchange of words among the three people: the father’s heavy voice, increasingly vigorous, the melodious sound of the woman, his grandson’s shrill yelps. Suddenly the noise stopped. The silence was very brief; his grandson exploded it, shrieking: “But remember—my punishment ends today. You said seven days and it’s over today. Tomorrow I’m not going.” With the last words he heard hurried footsteps.

Was he coming running? It was the decisive moment. Don Eulogio overcame the anguish strangling him and carried out his plan. The first match gave off only a brief blue thread. The second took fire. Burning his nails, but not feeling any pain, he kept it next to the skull, even seconds after the candle was lit. He hesitated because what he saw was not exactly what he had imagined, but then a sudden flame shot up between his hands with an abrupt crackling, like a heavy footstep in a pile of dead leaves, and the skull was completely illuminated, throwing out light from the eye sockets, the cranium, the nose and mouth. “It’s all lit up,” he exclaimed in wonder. He stood still and repeated like a record: “It was the olive oil, it was the olive oil,” stupefied, bewitched before the fascinating skull enveloped in flames.

Exactly at that instant he heard the shout. A savage shout, the howl of an animal pierced by many javelins. The boy was in front of him, his hands extended, his fingers convulsed. Livid, shaking, his eyes and mouth open, he was mute now and stiff, but his throat was making strange sounds independently, snorting. “He’s seen me, he’s seen me,” Don Eulogio said to himself in panic. But looking at him, he knew immediately that the boy had not seen him, that his grandson could not see anything but that flaming head. His eyes were fixed, with a deep, everlasting terror painted in them. Everything had been simultaneous: the sudden blaze, the howl, the vision of that figure in short pants suddenly possessed by terror. Enthusiastically he was thinking that things had turned out even more perfectly than he had planned, when he heard approaching voices and footsteps; and then, not caring about the noise, he turned, and jumping off the path, trampling the beds of chrysanthemums and roses, which he glimpsed as the reflection of the flame reached them, he crossed the space separating him from the door. He ran through, accompanied by the woman’s scream, also strident but less genuine than his grandson’s. He did not stop; he did not look back. Out on the street, a cold wind cut through his forehead and his few hairs, but he did not notice it and continued walking, slowly, rubbing the garden wall with his shoulder, smiling in satisfaction, breathing better, more calmly.