A Million Drops

by Victor del Arbol

  Elías lay on the ground, faceup. The sky looked down on him, an outpouring of stars and sparkling lights. And in the radiance, Elías glimpsed the opportunities lost.

  “Coward,” he spat. “Goddamned coward!”

  If he’d been hoping for a reply from the million stars up there twinkling, it was not to come.

  Gonzalo tried to disguise his fear of fireworks with a nervous smile. With each explosion he pressed closer to his sister, and Laura, who was mindful of the panic he felt, decided it was not the time to tease him. So without saying anything that might embarrass him, she put an arm around his shoulders and suggested they head home. This way, Gonzalo could bow out gracefully from the celebration, at which the local kids would spend a good part of the night jumping over bonfires, throwing firecrackers, and running in and out between tables where the adults would sit until daybreak, laughing, gossiping, and listening to music.

  The hill sloped gently downward, so before their descent they had a full view of the valley below and the houses bordering the lake. There weren’t many of them, just a handful within a two-mile radius, and Laura asked Gonzalo if he could tell which one was theirs. He pointed to the southernmost house, set a little farther back from the lake than the others. The lights were on, and from where they stood it looked like a gas lamp, floating in the darkness. Laura nodded, but her attention had refocused on the road hugging the lakeshore. She could see a car’s headlights heading for their house and hear the engine purring in the distance. It was the sound of her father’s old Renault, and she could tell that it was coming from the summerhouse that had been rented by the Russian woman and her daughter, the lady everyone in town talked about.

  Laura had seen her only from a distance and thought she was very pretty, or at least very different from the sort of woman Laura was used to being around. The woman often strolled through town with her daughter, and the town kids followed at a distance like she was a fairground attraction. Everyone was captivated by her flaming red hair and the gleam in her intensely gray eyes. A few days earlier, Laura had come upon mother and daughter near the jetty, watching Elías and Gonzalo fish. She wondered what they were doing there and got the feeling that the woman’s stance—partially hidden behind the black pines—showed that she was up to no good.

  Laura made a sound to announce her presence, and the woman turned and saw her in the distance. She smiled timidly, took her daughter by the hand, and went off in the opposite direction down the path. When Laura reached the place where they’d been spying from, she saw that the girl had been drawing in the dirt, that she’d cleared a spot of pine needles. Laura gazed out from between the branches at the tranquil silhouettes of her father and brother, who hadn’t realized she was there, and for some reason decided to keep the whole event a secret. She had noticed that, since the woman and her daughter came to the valley, her father had become as anxious and unpredictable as he’d ever been, even in his worst periods. And now, in addition to that, her mother, too, seemed upset every time anyone mentioned the woman.

  For her father to be coming from the woman’s house could mean nothing good for Laura. She tugged doubtfully at her faded wool shirt. There was no choice but to climb down the hill, which got steeper toward the bottom, and cross her fingers that he wouldn’t be there waiting for her.

  Laura took Gonzalo by the arm and began the descent, digging in her heels and skipping a bit to keep from losing her balance. Gonzalo imitated her, natural as a mountain goat, laughing, but she put a finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet. Disconcerted by the sudden change in his sister’s demeanor, he complied.

  Before raising the slats on the fence, Laura gave her brother an inspection to make sure there was nothing that might provoke their father’s wrath. Of course, Elías needed no provocation, any excuse would set him off, but she always tried to minimize the opportunities to enrage him. She pulled up her socks, straightened the waistband on her skirt, and used the inside of her sleeve to shine her shoes as well as Gonzalo’s.

  “Listen to me: If I look at you and give you a signal, you go to the well without a word. Got it?”

  Gonzalo flat-out refused. He was scared of the well, and tonight was worse, with all the firecrackers going off, putting his nerves on edge. But Laura wouldn’t relent. She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him urgently.

  “I mean it, Gonzalo. Without a word!”

  Laura squeezed his hand so tightly that he yelped. She was so frightened that she didn’t realize she was holding her brother not to protect him but to be anchored to something herself, something that wouldn’t make her feel as alone as they walked slowly toward the front door. At least the shed light wasn’t on, Laura thought, grasping for any detail that might counter her intuition. To the right of the house she saw her mother’s shadow among the clothes hung out to dry and called out. But it wasn’t her mother who appeared, stumbling and bringing down a sheet as he fell. When her father stood, absurdly tangled in the sheet like a ghost, he cursed. It would have been comical had it not been for the bottle in his right hand, and the bloodstained shirt he wore. The moon was behind him, and it made Elías glow like shimmering liquid.

  “A giant firefly,” Gonzalo said. Laura covered his mouth, but her father had already seen them and stumbled in their direction, swaying precariously.

  “Go to the well,” Laura whispered.

  “I don’t want to.”

  She dug her nails into Gonzalo’s skin to get him to obey, but when he disappeared around the back of the house, her sense of relief was minimal. Turning back to the clothesline, all she saw was her father’s enormous hand, grabbing her by the hair.

  “Shhhh, don’t scream. We don’t want to wake your mother up, do we?”

  Laura shook her head back and forth mechanically.

  “Tonight I feel like writing while you recite Mayakovsky. Let’s review what you’ve learned.” Elías’s breath was sharp and he stumbled over his words, leaving them unfinished.

  Laura knew that if she cried, it would be far worse. Her father could not tolerate weakness; if she begged, he only got angrier. The best thing to do was keep quiet, turn to stone, and wait for the storm to pass. It usually worked: He would simply shout, drink, and write, sometimes hurl himself against the wall or insult her. That was what usually happened, but sometimes keeping still as a statue was not enough. And by the look in her father’s green eye, she saw that this would be one of those nights when nothing could prevent whatever was going to happen from happening.

  She couldn’t remember the first time. Sometimes Laura thought she’d been born with a stigma, believing for years that it was normal for her father to hurt her, until she started to pick up on the silent guilt in her mother’s evasive eyes, and the tortured regret her father showed the next day, when he was cruel and distant with both of them. Once—the only time she’d ever told her mother what happened in the shed—Esperanza had smacked her so hard that drops of blood flew from her nose. Her mother had insulted her, called her a whore, dragged her by the hair. Laura thought she was going to kill her until finally she calmed down and then remained very still, gazing at the handful of hair she’d ripped from Laura’s head. She straightened her shoulders and clenched her jaw.

  “You’re lying. And if I ever hear you repeat that lie to anyone, I will kick you out of this house.”

  Laura was eleven at the time and thought that it was all her fault—because that’s what her parents made her believe. She lived in such fear of the idea that they might not love her, and that her mother would kick her out, that she never again mentioned what went on in the shed.

  But it did keep happening, not every time, and not in the same way, but the nightmare never went away. Months would go by, sometimes even years, but the monster who seized control of her father would always come back looking for her.

  Gonzalo knew that his sister would be furious if she discovered he hadn’t obeyed. But that
night he was so scared and anxious that he simply couldn’t brave waiting alone in the damp, dark well. Instead, he pushed the front door open and walked into the house, trying not to make any noise. His mother got terrible headaches—migraines—and he had to move cautiously, quietly, like a ghost in an abandoned monastery, in the dark.

  “Did you wipe off your shoes?”

  Esperanza’s voice made Gonzalo freeze, halfway down the hall. He tilted his head and saw her sitting before the cold, dark fireplace, contemplating the dried wood and blackened chimney. On her lap was the beautiful Republican bomber jacket, which she was stroking, and in her hand was the locket. She’d been crying; her red nose and puffy eyes gave her away. A lock of hair had escaped her clip and hung like a gray waterfall.

  “Yes, Mother,” Gonzalo said, holding up his two shoes in his hands like a pair of rabbits he’d just shot. Esperanza smiled vacantly and stretched out her arm to beckon him closer. Gonzalo went to her with no fear and let her stroke his shaved head and protruding ears. He loved his mother—though not as much as Laura, of course.

  “Where is your sister?”

  “In the shed, with Father.”

  Esperanza’s glance was like a crack in the ice, the one caused by the weight of someone’s foot that comes just before the frozen surface gives way. Gonzalo didn’t understand why, but she pulled him to her tightly and then leaned over him, slid his arm through one jacket sleeve, then the other, zipped it up, and smiled.

  She recited something in Russian, but Gonzalo understood only a few words. His mother rarely spoke to him in Russian.

  “Что ета значит?” he asked her.

  “It means, once the first drop falls, water will pour from the stone. It’s from an old poem your father and I used to recite.”

  Gonzalo had no idea what his mother was trying to tell him, and she, seeming suddenly to realize that her son was only a boy, stroked the patch on the jacket and gave him a kiss.

  “It’s late. Go up to your room.”

  “Can I sleep in the jacket?”

  Esperanza nodded.

  That night, the moths hurled themselves in a suicidal frenzy against the small lightbulb by the shed. From his bedroom window, Gonzalo could almost hear their wings catch fire. He wasn’t tired, and though the weight and lining of his mother’s jacket made him sweat, he had no intention of taking it off. For a while he sat on the window ledge, gazing at the locket with the faded image of a woman holding a girl in her arms. His mother had left it in the inside pocket. Gonzalo thought it must be important to her and put it back.

  Watching the last lights from the celebrations in town, he began to recite the long verse his mother had taught him. Gonzalo struggled to memorize anything in the difficult language that she and his father sometimes spoke, mostly when they were angry. Laura had no problem, she learned quickly, and Gonzalo was hoping to surprise her. Yet after just a few minutes he’d forgotten almost all the words.

  He was afraid of what Laura would say when she left the shed, went to the well to find him, and discovered that he wasn’t there. Gonzalo didn’t like being at home alone when Elías locked himself up with Laura. He could hear his father shouting and throwing things against the wall, but in the house it was the opposite: Everything was perfectly still, as if his mother and even the furniture were trying to make themselves invisible, to take up as little space as possible, press up against the walls so that he wouldn’t find them.

  But now Gonzalo had his mother’s jacket, and he was sure that his sister would forget her anger if she saw him wearing it. And his father would stop being angry if he could recite this verse in Russian before forgetting it. His childish heart suddenly told him that it was imperative that he climb out the window and down the big birch tree, then run to the shed. It didn’t matter that his mother had strictly forbidden him to go there when his father was locked inside. Something told him that his sister needed him.

  His hand got tangled in the lowest branch, scratching him badly, but Gonzalo was more concerned that the jacket might have ripped. Seeing that it had not, he was flooded with relief. He walked barefoot to the shed, impervious to the pine needles pricking the soles of his feet. Gonzalo could navigate their entire property with his eyes closed—the house, barn, shed, the land out beyond the well, the creek, and the wooden bridge over the hollow that led to the pine forest. He approached the shed window on tiptoes in order to look inside. Above his head, frantic moths darted back and forth, unable to make up their minds.

  Inside the shed his father was hunched over his typewriter. Gonzalo could hear the clacking of keys and the ping of the carriage return. His eyes sought Laura and found her standing a few feet behind Elías, stiff as a board, hands clasped tightly together. In the dim light, Gonzalo saw part of her face and was petrified, stepping back so quickly that he nearly fell. Laura’s face was bruised and covered in blood.

  The shed door was ajar, the light cast at such an angle that his father’s elongated shadow looked enormous. Gonzalo heard his gruff, drunken voice speaking to Laura in Russian. He asked something, and she responded in a voice that sounded nothing like hers. It was as though she had become a different person, so softly did she speak. Gonzalo got down on all fours, crawled in, and hid in a dark corner of the shed. Suddenly, his father hurled the typewriter against the wall so hard that several ivory keys popped off. A chip of the ñ key bounced and impaled his knee. Then his father turned to Laura, challenging her, an inch from her face, shouting and then ripping her blouse so that the buttons popped off, exposing her small breasts. He lifted her two feet in the air and threw her to the floor.

  “How does the rest of the poem go? I’ve taught it to you a thousand times!”

  She couldn’t remember. Laura couldn’t remember and she was trying desperately but it was no use. Elías was berating her, and fear clouded her brain. Her face was on fire and she could see the blood dripping from it, forming a pattern on the floor. She tried not to hear her father, not to think about what would happen next, when he forced her to sit as though riding a horse, legs apart. Focusing on the sound of her own blood dripping onto the stone floor, she caught sight of Gonzalo. And the blood that had not yet spilled from her body suddenly froze.

  He watched her panic, not understanding what was happening. Laura tried to reach out a hand to calm him, but her father dragged her off by the feet and forced her to turn over.

  “Once the first drop falls…”

  Elías stared into the darkness from which the voice had just emerged. His demented, manic eye narrowed and he caught sight of the trembling shadow of his young son. Letting go of Laura, he approached the dark corner.

  “Leave him be, don’t touch him!” Laura begged, but Elías paid no attention. He snatched Gonzalo’s hand and yanked him into the light.

  The boy began crying disconsolately, eyes darting back and forth between his father and sister without recognizing either one. He wanted to break free of his father, but Elías held him tighter and tighter.

  “What did you say? Repeat yourself!”

  But he was terrified now and couldn’t get out a single word, and the harder he cried, the sharper the pain searing through Elías’s head, making everything boil like an oven.

  “Where did you learn that? That verse?”

  Elías tried to calm down but couldn’t. His empty eye was throbbing like the heart of a Venus flytrap, blinded by rage, engorged with fury.

  “Stop crying, damn it. I can’t stand tears!”

  But Gonzalo couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop, and Elías’s head was going to explode. Gonzalo shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t see him like this. Neither of them should. He turned to Laura, who had stood up and was now fighting to wrest away Gonzalo’s hand. Why would she do that? Gonzalo was his son, he wouldn’t hurt him, he wasn’t going to…

  For a moment he gazed at his son like the last glimmer of ligh
t before his green eye closed forever. Then his hand reached behind him to touch his back, and his fingers hit the handle of a wooden knife. Fuck, a knife in his back. He turned slowly and saw Laura standing there frozen, saw the way she looked at him with hatred as cold and unequivocal as Anna’s. They were so alike, the two of them, without even knowing each other, and both reminded him so much of Irina. They could both have been his and Irina’s daughters.

  He struggled to breathe. He wasn’t dying, not yet. The knife was not sharp and his daughter hadn’t been strong enough to plunge it in to the hilt. But if he didn’t get to a hospital, he’d bleed out.

  “Don’t touch him. Not Gonzalo.”

  Elías blinked, let out a wheeze, and fell to his knees between his son and daughter. Laura skirted him nervously, as though he was an injured bear that might reach out and swipe at her. She clasped Gonzalo tightly against her, attempting to calm him.

  How does a man start out human and become an abomination? When did he lose his bearings, his way, and finally himself? It must have been on Nazino, on the train taking him from Moscow to Tomsk; or it could have been in Spain during the Civil War; or in France; or maybe on the battlefield, fighting the Germans. Or perhaps the monster had always been there, lurking inside him, waiting patiently for the moment to cast off the disguise that hid him from the rest of the world. Because only an abomination, a monster, could so brutally hurt those he loved most.

  If only he’d had a compass, something to guide him so he could stay on course and not rely on the whims of destiny, which had taken its rage out on him and left him disfigured. But he hadn’t, and his thinking had become blinded by obfuscation and guilt. He could no longer recall the faces and voices of his friends, almost never dreamed anymore of making love to Irina, of her voice and the touch of her skin. He could hardly even recognize the deranged, bitter man looking out at him in the mirror year after year. And so this seemed a fine way to end things. He would erase himself from his son’s memory, so that the boy remembered him not like this but as he wanted to be.