The Boys (16 page)

On the path around the lake there were wooden observatories for watching birds. Inside, each had a long bench beneath a narrow, glassless window that ran from one end of the belvedere to the other. The window looked out on the lake. Sometimes, if he didn't see anyone around, he would
go inside and spend a while contemplating the ducks and the birds with sinuous necks, or wait for the train to pass by, the reflection of its cars on the water by the other shore. If someone came in while he was there, once the newcomer's gaze grew accustomed to the dark and found him there alone, without binoculars or a camera, with only a supermarket bag on his lap—a bag that occasionally crackled, or suddenly inflated slightly because an insect inside had jumped—with his two ponytails and his flesh tunnel, it never failed: they got up and left.

That morning he came across a high school class on a field trip, about twenty kids with two teachers Nil's age. The teachers were young, attractive women who would have been frightened by the sight of him, but he didn't mind. He'd have time to focus on girls when spring came, when his hibernation was over and he emerged from his lair. Then he'd no longer be living in the shack; he could drop by Can Bou and, without forcing anything, find himself attracted to Iona. He could count on that, and would try to make up for stealing her dog, maybe even for Jaume Batlle's death and everything else, and Nil's satisfaction would be the same as his parents'. And one day, decades later, he would confess to Iona the long road he'd taken as a young man to reach the land, which would then be three lands: Dalmau, Batlle, and Sureda.

The high school kids were thirteen or fourteen years old, surely he would be the father of kids like these by then—Nil Dalmau, in his mature fifth period—and his eldest son and heir would go out with him to their land the way he would very soon begin to go out with his father. The school group
stopped and made a circle around one of the teachers, and gradually they grew quiet.

Since he was still far away, Nil left the path and approached them, discreetly, stepping softly amid the trees and brambles so they wouldn't hear him. The teacher had opened a book and spoke loudly, so the teenagers could follow her:

“You've heard the legend of the cauldrons of Pere Botero, right? Well, that happened in this area. Many, many years ago. . . in 1608, to be exact. That year, a farmer from Tordera named Pere Porter. . . Pere Porter. . . You see the resemblance to Pere Botero? And do you know why it mentions cauldrons? Well, because he saw them. Yes, don't laugh. He saw them because he went down into hell . . . and he entered hell right around here. Do you see this book? It's an edition of the anonymous manuscripts that tell the story of Pere Porter. Pere Porter was a farmer who was forced to repay a debt that he'd already paid, because of an evil notary. . . it was some sort of a scam, you get it? And Pere went to Maçanet to look for the money demanded from him and came across a young man on horseback, pulling another horse behind him, and they went on the road together. As they walked, Pere Porter explained what was going on with him, and when they reached Lake Sils, Pere asked if he could ride the other horse. And the young man said he could and . . . Now be very quiet, and I'll read you what happened. Pay attention, because it's old Catalan. ‘Porter crossed himself, and when he mounted the horse it all changed: every hair on his head rose as he heard and saw the steeds speaking with one another. . .' His hair stood on end because the horses started talking to each other! And then the young man said
he would take Pere to see the evil notary who hadn't recorded the payment of his debt . . . and you know where he was, right? Where do you think that evil notary was?”

“In hell?” said a girl.

“That's right, he was in hell. ‘Hence,' the young man said, ‘hold tight to that steed, for I am the devil!'”

The teacher had adopted a deep voice to imitate the devil, and the students laughed. She continued reading, slowly, so no one would miss a thing:

“‘Porter, hearing those words, said: “Jesus, save me, don't forsake me, Blessed Virgin, be with me.” And thereupon . . . ,' which means at that point, the horses: ‘both steeds proceeded through the lake, mountains, valleys, talking all the while . . .' The horses talked, they talked the whole time they took Pere to hell, what do you think? Can you imagine what they were saying to each other?”

What would animals say as they carried you off to hell? What was the beetle saying as I dismembered and squashed it, what had the bitch been saying all night long; what was it saying right now, locked up in the shack, tangled in the net? He saw a worm on a leaf. It must talk like a little snake. He collected the worm and put it in the bag. He turned over another leaf and peeled a snail off it. He kicked over a rock. Underneath, it was filled with earwigs and damp beetles, which he gathered and put into the bag.

“And do you know what Pere Porter was doing?” continued the teacher. “Well, he was holding on ‘tight to the mount. After an hour on horseback, having passed great valleys, great mountains, great rivers, and great seas, they entered the mouth of a cave and then egressed'—which means that they
went out—‘onto a great plain that was all fire and demons, with multitudes of people.'”

That was when a boy in the group turned excitedly toward him, and Nil felt exposed. He crouched down, then fled with his head bowed like a chastened animal. He walked through the trunks, got tangled in the brambles, and when he raised his head again he realized that the boy hadn't been startled by him, but by what Nil now saw before him: a hot-air balloon, inflated but still on the ground, that peeked out above some trees on the other side of the road.

The plain functioned as a base camp for the balloons; it was an ideal place for them to take off and land. A great plain that was all fire and demons, once flooded and centuries later drained for plant terraces and woodlands. The top of the balloon emerged above and a bit to one side of the tree branches; in fact, it looked like another tree, a colorful tree in the bloom of spring, and Nil crossed the road—he heard a couple of horns honking behind him but didn't turn—and kept making his way to the shack before changing direction to get a better look at the balloon. He came out from the trees and approached it; they had inflated it in the middle of a barren field; there were two cars, a van, and a man who was watching the seven passengers in the basket about to take off. The pilot lifted his arms every once in a while with two lit flares, two vertical columns of fire, which he stuck into the belly of the balloon to heat up the air. The passengers—four adults, two kids, and the pilot—waved good-bye to the man who had remained on the ground, and when the pilot lit the fire, the jets of helium roared, and two luminous horns showed through the balloon's fabric.

A great plain that was all fire and demons, and the balloon detached from the field and began to move horizontally, at first slowly and floating only just above the ground, walking, running as if carried by a breeze that didn't move a single branch, that Nil couldn't feel on his skin, and then it passed alongside a group of poplars and climbed diagonally toward the sky.

Planes out of the Vilobí airport were flying higher up; Nil followed them with his gaze as he waited to hear the bursts of fire from the balloon. The fire was light, painters were pyromaniacs, all artists were, he himself was a demon, working in fire . . . But who knew, deep down, what he was. An artist? A demon? What is a demon? What does
demon
mean? Who knows if a murderer can ever become a murderer within himself, even if he wants to; who knows what we might find all the way inside a word. Words are traitors, they're full of dregs; action, on the other hand, is luminous, it can be filmed.

He heard the bitch's moaning before he reached the door of the shack. He opened it and saw the animal, still caught in the net. She had dragged herself from under the table to beside the fireplace. When the bitch saw him she reacted. She couldn't move, but she lowered her eyes—she knew who was in charge—and was quiet for a moment, but then that unbearable whimpering began again.

Nil had no time to waste. He had gotten too distracted by the balloon; he had to empty the bag. He put the plug into the kitchen sink, poured the insects in, and watched the costume ball of beetles, grasshoppers, the earwigs he had found under the rock, the centipedes he'd grabbed crossing the
road, spiders, snails, praying mantises, and ants, all hugging the steel dance floor. . . Along the way there had been fights and deaths in the bag, and the hurly-burly in the sink was disturbing. He wanted to turn on the tap to give those empty little boxes stuffing, flesh, but it was just that emptiness that meant it would be hard to drown them—they would float like a raft of tiny pieces, a mosaic of colors.

He started by separating out the grasshoppers, who were big and had quickly freed themselves from the other critters and were jumping about the kitchen. He scooped them up and used a funnel to get them into a plastic bottle. He had half a bottle full. Then came the beetles, and then the backswimmers, the worms, and the snails, each type in their own container. Once the separating was done, he covered the bottles with perforated tops, put them in a cardboard box, and took them to his workspace on the other side of the wall.

He went back into the dining room. The bitch tried to roll over, like a fish. Her claws had gotten stuck in the strings, and she'd made a mess of the net with her legs. Nil put on gloves and covered one arm with protective padding, and he cut a hole in the net with a bread knife so the animal could get its head through. The dog growled and sunk her teeth into the arm pad. He let her. After she tired herself out, he put a muzzle on her. Then she didn't moan because she couldn't, but she started to whine. Maybe it was her leg, or maybe she had a broken bone; he tightened the muzzle with five layers of packing tape.

II

At midday he was in the parking lot of El Capitell restaurant, on the outskirts of Bescanó. The place had been closed for months, but you could see the building better from the highway now than when the restaurant was in business, because over each of the three windows on the ground floor, which was the dining area, they'd hung large independentist flags as curtains. The independentist movement had upended the power balance—Nil's parents had hung the starred flag at their house, and he would have put one up at the shack, except no one ever passed by in Serradell.

On the door of the closed restaurant hung a sign that said
FOR RENT
/
FOR SALE
, with a cell phone number. As he maneuvered into the empty parking lot, Nil saw a flag-curtain lift slightly, and an old man peeked out from behind the glass. Nil got out of the Honda and walked to the door. He found it locked, but since he'd seen the man, he knocked on the glass. Nothing moved inside. He knocked a few more times, then sat down on the entrance steps. The highway
was very empty and the few cars raced by. He got tired of waiting. He went back to the door and knocked harder and harder. He could see the keys hanging from the inside lock; he tried to force the door and knocked some more. The blows reverberated in the empty dining room. If he kept knocking like that, he would break the glass.

“What do you want?” the old man finally shouted from behind the door.

“I'm Nil Dalmau, I've come for the tables! We have an appointment!”

The old man approached the glass, shaking his head.

“You must have talked to my son-in-law!”

Nil was used to these roles. “The truck's coming now!” he said.

It seemed that the old man was calming down, but he shook his head again. “Where's the truck?” he shouted.

“I said it's on its way! Can you show me the tables?”

“Haven't you seen the photos?”

“Hey!” shouted Nil. “Do you want to sell the tables or not?”

The old man hesitated for a moment, and then shook his head yet again.

“Are you saying you had me come all the way here for nothing?” asked Nil.

Just then the truck arrived. Miqui stopped in the middle of the parking lot and, without turning off the engine, hopped down from the cab and came over to shake Nil's hand.

“Should I bring the truck closer?” he said.

“Wait, there's a problem,” said Nil, pointing with his chin to the old man behind the door. “He doesn't want to open up.”

“He doesn't want to open up?” Miqui went over to the door to talk to the old man. “Good morning! What's wrong?”

“Nothing. We just changed our minds.”

“What's that?”

Nil also approached the door. He had ten fifty-euro bills fanned out in his hand.

“Do you think we'd bring you the money if we were planning anything bad?” he said.

The old man hesitated again. His hand was already on the knob, but he stopped, lowered his head, approached the glass, and said:

“I can't. We've got coffeemakers in here, refrigerators, machinery. . . I can't risk it, it's all we have. The faucet factory closed down, we used to get the workers in for lunch every day. But there's no cash register, no safe. My son-in-law left me here alone. I can't open up. He would never forgive me. Come back later today, he'll be here, he's usually here, but this morning they called and he had to go to the bank . . . The bank calls the shots, it's not his fault. Come back this afternoon, please, let's do it that way. I'm sure he'll give you a discount.”

“Open up,” demanded Miqui. “We're good people, for fuck's sake!”

They could have broken the glass door with one kick. The old man was starting to sweat. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.

“Come back this afternoon, please,” he said. “Leave, or I'll call the police.”

“You know what?” burst out Miqui. “You're fucking with us. Don't call the police, because if you call the police, I'm
going to come back some day and do something that'll make you and your son-in-law never want to fuck with anybody again. Who do you think you are? Screw you and your fear! I've had it with old people who think they're the kings of the world! I have a job, I make an honest living, you hear me? Do you know what it costs, just in gas, to get here in my truck? You think I'm loaded or something? You think I have nothing better to do with my time? Have a little respect, goddamn it. No one fucks with me, you got that? Open the fucking door right now, or I'll break the glass and come in myself to get the tables. Put down that phone!”

The old man started to dial, and Nil grabbed Miqui by the arm. He didn't know whether his threats were serious or not. He pulled him away from the door, signaling to the old man to calm down.

“Don't call, please,” said Nil, and he came back over to the door, making sure to turn his face to show his good ear. “We'll come back later when your son-in-law is here. I'm interested in the tables. We'll come back this afternoon when your son-in-law is here, no problem.”

The old man looked up from the cell phone and said, yes, they needed the money, but as he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief his eyes widened like saucers and the cell phone dropped to the floor. The trucker was pointing a shotgun at them from the door of his truck.

As Miqui approached the door with the barrel raised, it became clear that he was threatening the old man. But Nil didn't take that for granted at first. Nearly anyone who had to choose between shooting a frightened old man and a freak like him wouldn't hesitate. His tunnel was provocative,
being different was provocative, and even more so outside of Barcelona. Leaving the herd made you stronger, but it provoked other people: strength is as effective a provocation as weakness. Now that the starred independentist flags were the majority, their presence incited the other flags. But it was misleading—difference, when exposed, lost strength. Any form of expression weakened it. Maybe he would pay the price for wanting to speak with his body—without words or gestures, with physical, permanent, and solitary actions—for having been foolish enough to turn inward. What was he looking for by playing the artist, to turn inward until there was nothing left? And the end would be his disappearance? Ending up flat out with a bullet in his chest at the door of a closed restaurant in Bescanó? And the earring, the fires, what were they? Signs leading to him?

In less than a second he could be lying beside the two boys killed in the accident. In less than a second he could have more in common with the Batlle brothers than with any sucker who was still breathing. The old man in that restaurant, the grasshoppers and worms he collected, the guy with the shotgun, the bitch locked in the shack, the family in the balloon, Iona Sureda, his father, the fucking poplar plantations would have more in common with each other than with him. The land they'd left behind had more life in it than the two boys. Even as he was crushing it, the wingless, legless beetle's life was worth infinitely more than all the human and nonhuman lives that had been snuffed out since the universe began. Supposedly, he was involved in a gambit to become an heir, to embody a succession—he'd had a stroke of luck. But now that land might be used to bury him. Damn immortal
land. What would happen to the fields? Who would inherit them? That desertion, that lack of an owner—that was death.

He wanted some steel tables, and he had needed someone to transport them. On Tuesday, he was at the club with Iona, and this Miqui showed up like a godsend, giving him a business card. Like a godsend. Now he might blow him away by squeezing his finger half a centimeter. His mother had been right. The shack was a bad idea. Without the shack he wouldn't have come back to Vidreres, without the shack he wouldn't have thought about setting up a workspace, he wouldn't have needed the tables, and a nut wouldn't be aiming a shotgun at him. In the four years away from home, the year and a half surrounded by weirdos, he'd never seen anything like this. Ah, but then he had been among his people! And now, where was he? In no-man's-land, neither here nor there. There was nothing he could do: death always comes without warning, that's the only way it can catch you, always by accident; even for the terminally ill death has to be a surprise, it catches you by surprise or it doesn't get you. Tell that to the animals he collected in the mornings or that he picked up at the pound, tell that to the bitch he had in his shack, or to the Batlle brothers. He was about to enter that world shared by people, animals, and plants, where life was the same for everyone: zero. Where did this Miqui person come from? Why was he carrying a shotgun? Had he been looking for Nil? Was he part of one of the groups of thieves who had the remote homes so frightened, who made their owners check the windows, doors, and blinds, who made the whole family hush if the littlest brother thought he heard some slight sound, maybe some footsteps, something
falling to the floor—I heard it perfectly, said the boy, and I'm scared—so the family kept still, waiting in silence, with their eyes wide and their fingers crossed, to see if someone really had broken into the house. . . With that same attention, with that microscopic precision, with his ears pricked up, with the vibration of his metal tunnel in the surrounding flesh he would hear the click of the trigger that would release the hammer and expel the bullet. That's how death approaches, by surprise, always uncertainly, never sure.

Once he was dead, his parents would lock up the shack. They would let the bitch go. She would run, limping and moaning in pain, back to Can Bou. What good is the land, his father would say, when, without children, it's worthless? I'm tired of it all! This time for real! Now I know true disgrace! And why? What is this, a punishment? Haven't I had enough, seeing it happen to my neighbor twice over? Do I have to go through it myself? Me? A truck shows up at the shack, his parents wait by the door, it's there to take away the furniture, the extractor hoods, the clothes, the shoes, the camera, the computer with his videos . . . What are these bottles, Lluís? Some of them are still alive! Is this what my son spent his time doing? Collecting insects? Where did he learn to do that? And why? Why did he do it, Lluís? And why did he come back so strange and unsociable? What happened to him in Barcelona? Why did he do that to his ear? And the videos? Why can't I see them? Was our son crazy? Is that why he came back to Vidreres—to get killed?

But the shotgun ignored Nil. The old man opened the door, crying, and the two guys went in. Nil picked up the cell phone off the floor, locked the door behind him, put the key
in his pocket with the phone, and asked the old man if the tables were in the kitchen.

They went through the empty dining room and there were the tables, of course, the same wide, heavy tables he had seen in the photograph online before calling the man's son-in-law. Miqui and Nil carried them to the entrance, and from the entrance to the truck. They put them on the flatbed with the crane and tied them down for the trip.

Nil went back into the restaurant for a moment. The old man was sitting at a table with his head in his hands. Nil placed the money beside him, with the cell phone and keys on top. The man didn't dare lift his head.

Miqui was waiting for Nil, smoking, beside the truck. He'd leaned the gun against one wheel. Anyone passing on the highway, a police squad car, could have seen the shotgun.

“Artists,” muttered Nil.

The truck followed him to Serradell. They unloaded the tables with the crane just as they had loaded them up and brought them into the workspace. They put them in the empty spot beneath the extractor hood.

“Are you a chef?” asked Miqui. Then he saw the tripod and camera. “You take photos? Photos of food?”

“Videos. Shorts. I'm an artist.”

“I admire artists.”

“They're more common than you think. Do you want to see the tables get their first run? I owe you a favor.”

He brought Miqui a chair and asked if he wanted a beer. He focused the camera on the table. He turned on the lights, lowered the blinds, and hauled a cardboard box filled with
plastic bottles out of the closet. He pulled out two and emptied them onto the middle of the largest table. He tapped the bottom of the bottles so the little black rocks inside would come out. They were beetles of varying sizes, which came to life on the table. Some of them seemed dead but weren't, they were playing dead, trying to protect themselves that way. Others curled up right where they'd fallen, and still others ran over the edge of the table and fell to the floor.

He spritzed the largest group with a spray bottle and then splashed a rain of alcohol all over the table. The smell spread through the workshop. He turned on the extractor, started recording, and turned off the lights. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket, lit it, and brought it over to the largest beetle. The beetle burst into flame. The fire leaped from one shell to the next. The beetles ran with their fire, crashing into each other, spreading the small blue flame, turning into little rocks of light, then quickly going out.

He ran a brush along the steel, making the black dust fall to the floor, then emptied a couple more bottles out onto the table. The spiders burned faster than the beetles; they made one big flash and disappeared, consumed amid the smoke. They held up a flaming topaz on eight skinny legs. It lasted an instant. Just enough time for it to fix on your retina if you quickly closed your eyes. The image remained there for a few seconds, a luminous sketch of spider tattooed on the inside of your eyelid, until it too vanished.

He dumped out a mix of insects from another bottle, backswimmers, earwigs, ladybugs, praying mantises, and grasshoppers that leaped like sparks when they were set afire. They had parabolas of light over the embers of little legs and
segments, jaws, hair, spikes, horns, wings, and antennae. He swept the table again and emptied more bottles. The worms twisted with their tips in the air, little red-hot horseshoes, lengths of live coal and then ash. Nil filmed the cloud of blue sparks from fleas; he lit up the evanescent galaxy of an anthill, ephemeral constellations of mosquitoes, hawker dragonflies on fire, damselflies and horseflies, bees that fell like a meteor shower, blue blowflies . . . He pulled out a box from a pet shop. The lid was green mesh. He spritzed what was inside right through the mesh. He uncovered the box and out flew tropical butterflies with large wings, which he lit up with the lighter like the pages of a book. The colorful glitter made a short flight before scorching and melting into the darkness.