Without Blood (3 page)

had
gone back to his nightmare, what could
I
do? I tried to think
how I could take him away, I
looked around for help, I wanted
to take him away from there, I was sure of it, and yet I couldn’t
move, I couldn’t manage to move, I
don’t know how much time
passed, what I remember is that at some point I turned and a
few feet away I saw El Blanco, he was standing beside a bed,
with the machine gun on his shoulder, and what he was doing
was crushing a pillow over the face of a boy, the one lying on
the bed

El Blanco was crying and

crushing the pillow, in the silence of the chapel only his sobs
could
be heard, the boy wasn’t moving, he didn’t make a sound,
he was going silently, but El Blanco was sobbing, like a child,
then he took away the pillow and with
his fingers closed the boy’s
eyes, and then he looked at me, I was looking at him and
he
looked at me, I wanted to say What are you doing?, but nothing
came out of me, and at that moment someone appeared and said
that the army was coming, that we had to get out of there, I felt
lost, I
didn’t want to be found there, I
heard the others running
along the corridors. I took the pillow from under my brother’s
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head, gently, I
looked for a while at those frightened eyes, I
placed the pillow on his face, and
I
began to press it, bending
over my brother, I
pressed my hands down on the pillow, and
I
felt the bones of my brother’s face, there under my hands. One
cannot ask a man to do such a thing, they couldn’t ask
it of me, I
tried to resist but at a certain point I stopped, I
pulled the pillow
away, my brother was still
breathing, but it was like something
digging up air from the depths of hell, it was terrible, the eyes
unmoving, and that rattle. He looked at me and
I realized that I
was screaming, I
heard my voice screaming, but as if from a
distance, like a dim and fading lament, I couldn’t help
it, I was
still screaming when I noticed El Blanco, he was beside me, he
didn’t say anything but he was offering me a gun, while I was
crying, and they were all fleeing, we two were inside, he offered
me the gun, I took
it, and
placed the barrel against my brother’s
forehead and, still screaming, I fired.

Look at me, Roca. I

said
look at me. In the whole war I fired twice, the first time it
was night, and at no one, the second time at close range, and
it
was my brother.

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I want to tell you something. I will shoot one time more, and
that will
be the last.

Then Roca began to shout again.

“I HAD NOTHING
TO DO WITH
IT.”

“You had nothing to do with
it?”

“I HAD NOTHING
TO DO WITH
THE HOSPITAL.”

“WHAT
THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING?”

“I
DID WHAT
THEY TOLD ME TO DO.”

“YOU . . . ”

“I
WASN’T THERE WHEN—”

“WHAT
THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING—”

“I
SWEAR
IT, I—”

“THAT
WAS YOUR HOSPITAL, YOU BASTARD . . . ”

“MY HOSPITAL?”

“THAT
WAS YOUR HOSPITAL, YOU WERE THE DOCTOR
WHO

WAS TAKING
CARE OF THEM, YOU KILLED THEM, YOU BROKE

THEM, THEY
WERE SENT
TO YOU AND YOU BROKE THEM . . . ”

“I NEVER—”

“SHUT
UP!”

“I
SWEAR
TO YOU, SALINAS—”

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“SHUT
UP!”

“I NEVER—”

“SHUT
UP!”

Salinas placed the gun against one of Roca’s knees. Then he
fired. The knee exploded
like a piece of fruit. Roca fell
back and
curled on the ground, shrieking with
pain. Salinas was standing
over him, he aimed the gun at him and went on shouting.

“I’LL KILL YOU, UNDERSTAND? I’LL KILL YOU, I’M GOING
TO

KILL YOU.”

El
Gurre took a step forward. The boy, at the door, stared
in
silence. Salinas was shouting, his cream-colored suit was
spattered with
blood, he was shouting in a strange, harsh voice,
as if he were crying. Or as if he were no longer capable of
breathing. He was shouting that he would murder him. Then
they all
heard an impossible voice say something softly.

“Go away.”

They turned and saw a child, standing on the other side of the
room. He was holding a rifle and
had
it pointed at them. He said
again, softly:

“Go away.”

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Nina heard the hoarse voice of her father, who was groaning
in pain, and then the voice of her brother. She thought that when
she came out of there she would go to her brother and would tell
him that he had a lovely voice, because it truly seemed
lovely to
her, so clean and
infinitely childlike, the voice she had
heard
murmur quietly:

“Go away.”

“WHO THE HELL . . . ”

“It’s the son, Salinas.”

“WHAT
THE HELL DO YOU MEAN?”

“It’s Roca’s son,” El
Gurre said.

Salinas cursed, he began shouting that there wasn’t supposed
to be anyone there, THERE WASN’T
SUPPOSED TO BE ANYONE

HERE, WHAT’S THIS NONSENSE, YOU SAID THERE WASN’T

ANYONE, he was shouting and
didn’t know where to point the
gun, he looked at El
Gurre, and then at Tito, and finally he
looked at the child with the rifle and shouted at him that he was a
stupid fuck, and that he would never get out of there alive if he
didn’t put that damn gun down immediately.

The boy remained silent and
he kept the gun raised.

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Then Salinas stopped shouting. His voice came out calm and
fierce. He said to the boy that now he knew what sort of a man
his father was, now he knew that he was an assassin, that he had
murdered
dozens of people, sometimes he poisoned them little by
little, with
his medicine, but others he killed
by cutting open their
chests and then leaving them to die. He said to the child that with
his own eyes he had seen boys come from that hospital with their
brains blown out. They could
hardly walk, they couldn’t
speak—they were like idiots. He said that his father was called
the Hyena, and that it was his friends who called
him the
Hyena, and they laughed when they said
it. Roca was gasping on
the floor. He began to murmur quietly, “Help,” as if from far
away—help, help, help—a litany. He felt death approaching.

Salinas didn’t even look at him. He went on talking to the child.

The child was listening, not moving. At the end Salinas said to
him that things were like that, and that it was too late to do anything, even with a gun in your hand. He looked
him in the eyes,
with an infinite weariness, and asked
if he understood who that
man was, if he truly understood. With one hand
he indicated
Roca. He wanted to know if the boy understood who he was.

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The boy put together everything he knew, and what he
understood of life. He answered:

“He’s my father.”

Then he fired. A single shot. Into emptiness.

El
Gurre responded
instinctively. The machine-gun burst
lifted the child up off the floor and
hurled
him at the wall, in a
mess of lead, bone, and
blood. Like a bird shot in mid-flight,
Tito thought.

Salinas threw himself to the floor. He ended up
beside Roca.

For a moment the two men looked at each other. From Roca’s
throat came a dull, horrible howl. Salinas pulled away, sliding
along the floor. He rolled onto his back to get Roca’s eyes off
him. He began to tremble all over. There was a heavy silence.

Only that horrible howl. Salinas raised
himself up on his elbows
and
looked at the far end of the room. The child’s body was
leaning against the wall, tattered
by the machine-gun volley,
ripped open with wounds. His gun had flown into a corner.

Salinas saw that the child’s head was upside down, and
in his
open mouth
he saw the little white teeth, a neat white row. Then
Salinas let go, falling onto his back. His eyes stared at the
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ceiling, with
its line of beams. Dark wood. Old. He was
trembling all over. He couldn’t keep
his hands still, his legs,
anything.

Tito took two steps toward
him.

El
Gurre restrained
him with a nod.

Roca gave a grim cry, a death cry.

Salinas said softly: “Make him stop.”

His teeth were chattering madly, and as he spoke he was
trying to stop them.

El
Gurre searched
his eyes to understand what he wanted.

Salinas’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling. A
line of dark wood
beams. Old.

“Make him stop,” he repeated.

El
Gurre took a step forward.

Roca howled, lying in his own blood, his mouth
hideously
wide.

El
Gurre stuck the barrel of the gun in his throat.

Roca kept on howling, against the warm metal of the barrel.

El
Gurre fired. A short burst. Dry. The last of his war.

“Make him stop,” Salinas said again.

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Nina heard a silence that frightened
her. Then she joined
her
hands and stuck them between her legs. She curled up even
tighter, bringing her knees toward
her head. She thought that
now it would all
be over. Her father would come to get her and
they would go and
have supper. She thought that they would not
speak again of that night, and that soon they would forget about
it: she thought this because she was a child and couldn’t know.

“The girl,” said El
Gurre.

He held Salinas by the arm, to make him stand up. He said to
him softly:

“The girl.”

Salinas’s gaze was blank.

“What girl?”

“Roca’s daughter. If the boy was here she probably is, too.”

Salinas muttered something. Then he shoved El
Gurre away.

He pulled
himself up, holding on to the table. His shoes were
soaked
in Roca’s blood.

El
Gurre nodded at Tito, then directed
him toward the
kitchen. When Tito passed the boy on the floor he bent down for
an instant and closed
his eyes. Not like a father. Like someone
who turns off the light as he is leaving a room.

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Tito thought of his own father’s eyes. One day some men had
knocked on the door of his house. Tito had never seen them
before. But they said they had a message for him. Then they
handed
him a canvas sack. He opened
it and
inside were the eyes
of his father. Take care which side you stand on, kid, they said.

And they went away.

Tito saw a drawn curtain on the other side of the room. He
released the safety of his pistol and advanced. He parted the
curtain. Behind
it was a small room. Everything was in disarray.

Chairs overturned, trunks, tools, and some baskets of half-rotted fruit. There was a strong smell of food gone bad. And of
dampness. On the floor the dust was strange: it looked as if
someone had
dragged
his feet through
it. Or something else.

He heard El
Gurre on the other side of the house beating the
walls with
his machine gun, looking for hidden doors. Salinas
must have still
been there, holding on to the table, shaking. Tito
moved one of the fruit baskets. He made out on the floor the line
of a trapdoor. He hit the floor hard with one boot, to hear what
noise it made. He moved two more baskets. It was a small
trapdoor, carefully cut out. Tito looked up. Through a small
window he saw the darkness outside. He hadn’t even realized
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that it was night. He thought it was time to go, get away from
there. Then he knelt on the floor, and
lifted the trapdoor. There
was a girl
inside, curled up on her side, her hands hidden
between her thighs, her head
bent forward slightly, toward
her
knees. Her eyes were open.

Tito pointed
his gun at her.

“Salinas!” he shouted.