The Immortal Boy

by Francisco Montaña Ibáñez

  For Amparo, the mommy

  For Matías and Violeta

  This is an Em Querido book

  Published by Levine Querido

  www.levinequerido.com • info@levinequerido.com

  Levine Querido is distributed by Chronicle Books LLC

  Text copyright © 2008 by Francisco Montaña Ibáñez

  Translation copyright © 2021 by David Bowles

  Originally published in Colombia by Babel Libros

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937502

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-64614-044-2

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64614-053-4

  Published March 2021

  At such hours,

  people and things behave

  like those little props and figurines,

  carved from the wood of elder trees

  and kept in a glazed tinfoil box,

  which become electrically charged

  by rubbing against the glass and

  are drawn at every movement

  into the most unusual

  relationships. . . .

  In streams like

  curtains of rain,

  presents fall

  upon the child—

  presents that veil

  the world from him.

  —WALTER BENJAMIN

  On Hashish

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Some Notes on This Book’s Production

  HE DOOR WASN’T LOCKED. David pushed at it, and it swung open easily, like it wanted him inside. He walked into the room, approached the table where the gas stove sat, sniffed at a pot, and turned away wincing. The room was empty except for Hector and Manuela—tucked into her drawer—both of them asleep. Since he needed his older brother Hector, David just stood there, waiting for him to wake up, letting his gaze wander over the handful of objects in the room. The two beds where the older kids slept. The drawer where Manuela, the youngest of the five siblings, hardly fit anymore. The table where they cooked, ate, and did their homework. A few cardboard boxes stuffed with clothes.

  Before he left, their father had rented the rest of the house to Doña Yeni. This room was all they needed, he’d told them.

  David liked to imagine the table was his. Once, there had been a decal in his lollipop wrapper and he’d stuck it to the underside of the table, marking his property. Now he ran his fingers over its edges, upturned by this daily ritual, making sure it was still in place. He shifted his gaze toward Manuela. The little girl had opened her eyes, and she looked at him silently, sucking on the edge of her blanket. He had always loved her special. She was pretty and small, like a miniature mother. He was about to say hi when his stomach twisted with the same pain that had kept him from school the entire last week.

  As soon as the cramp loosened its grip, he decided to start staring at Hector. Oddly enough, though David didn’t know exactly how or why, when he stared at a sleeping person, they always woke up. It was as if by looking at them he touched them, as if he dropped an invisible weight.

  His brother Hector was no exception. He opened sleep-blurred eyes and hissed, recognizing the gaze boring into him.

  “Hector,” David whispered.

  His brother turned away and covered his head with the blankets.

  “Hector,” the boy repeated, shaking him carefully, mindful of what could happen. “Hector.”

  “Oh, what the—! Let me sleep!” Hector growled. He poked his head out of the blankets and turned just enough to look at him. “What’s wrong with you, David?”

  “Don’t be like that, Hector. It’s just . . . my tummy doesn’t hurt so bad anymore.”

  “Well, congratulations,” the older boy muttered, covering his head again.

  “The boarder sent you a message.” David pulled the blanket from Hector’s head.

  Hector sat up on his elbows and shouted at him like a wounded bull.

  “I need to sleep! Can’t it wait?”

  “It’s just that . . . I’m hungry,” the younger boy confessed, sounding embarrassed.

  “Well, eat what’s in the pot!” Hector replied, irritated.

  “But she said I can’t keep eating rotten stuff.”

  Hector surged to his feet and pushed his brother to the floor. “And, what, it’s rotten?” Manuela closed her eyes and covered her head with her blanket.

  “Yes, it is. I get it now,” David continued, undaunted, from the floor. “Doña Yeni taught me to tell what stuff’s rotten by the way it smells. Eating nasty things gives me a tummy ache. . . . What do I do, Hector? I’m hungry, and Maria doesn’t get back until really late.”

  Hector sniffed at the pot and then glared at it, struggling against the desire to smash it over his brother’s head. The boy needed to handle things by himself!

  “Fine, here!” he said through his teeth, throwing a wadded bill at David. “Go on, see what you can buy with that. If you’re lucky, somebody will give you some soup to fix you up, so you can get back to school.”

  David picked the money up from the floor and stood, stepping away from his brother’s fury.

  “And take the girl,” Hector added, submerging himself in the blankets again.

  David took Manuela’s hand, helped her put on her shoes, and gently took the blanket from her, all in silence, taking care not to lose sight of his brother who was breathing heavily in the bed. He smoothed his sister’s dress and saw the look on her face. She was waiting patiently, happy at the idea of going out. When he was about to open the door, he heard one last shout:

  “And give your sister some of whatever they give you! Don’t come back until I’m awake! You hear me, you empty- headed brat?”

  Manuela looked up at David, smiling like his little partner in crime. She knew they were about to do something mischievous, so she dragged him out of the room.

  “GIVE HIM THAT BAG OF POTATOES,” said the big man who never stooped, even under the weight of two heavy bundles. He gestured for the dirt-covered Hector to approach the truck and grab one.

  “Way to go, kid,” the dockworker congratulated him as he dropped the bag on his shoulder and made sure he could handle it. “Now, take that inside,” he challenged the teen.

  Hector took a breath and carried the bundle into the warehouse, step by step. Once inside, the big man showed him where to lay it down.

  “Still got the carrots to go. Come on.”

  Hector followed him to the truck and hefted another bag onto his shoulder. He no longer noticed the ache in his back. Streams of sweat made furrows in the dirt that covered his face and neck. He tried to wipe his forehead with a sleeve, but it was already soaked, so all he ended up doing was smear the liquid that poured from his body.

  He carried ten more bundles into the warehouse. When the truck was finally empty, he sat on one of the last ones. As he caught his breath, Hector dug a hole into the side of the bag. His fingers fumbled with the organic threads. He squeezed one in first, then two, and then he felt the cabuya fiber give way, letting his whole hand through. He reached around till he found one of the potatoes.

  He
wrapped his fingers around it for a moment, but then he just pulled out his hand, leaving the spud where it was. Instead, he sipped water from a plastic bag the big man had thrown at him.

  From an aisle in the warehouse, two women who were organizing goods on the shelves looked his way.

  “Why do you keep staring at him?” the older asked the younger.

  “Look at him. He’s only been here for a month, and he already seems older,” the younger answered.

  “Whatever. He’s still a boy.”

  The women fell silent. They kept pulling bags of rice and beans from cardboard boxes, arranging them on shelves, until the older one stopped, sighed, and whispered as she pointed at Hector.

  “Do you like him?”

  The girl smiled, blushing, and ran a sleeve over her forehead.

  “You’re right. He’s pretty young,” she said.

  “Well, so are you! How old do you think he is?” the woman asked.

  “Seventeen?”

  “Not even close,” she said, resuming her work. “Thirteen. Maybe. He just looks older.”

  “I guess it’s because he had to start working so young . . .”

  “Yeah, like we all did. How old are you, anyway?”

  The girl blushed again and stared at a row of bags full of red seeds.

  “What difference does it make to you?”

  Hector, who had caught his breath, noticed the blush on the girl’s cheeks and felt her gaze search out his own, for the briefest of moments, when no one but the two of them could see.

  T HURTS TO HAVE your face smooshed against a wall. But I’m not sure what hurts more: the anger you feel when you can’t defend yourself, or the pain of your bones getting pressed against the bricks. And this time, I couldn’t have moved even if I’d tried. Three of them had ahold of me. One had my arms twisted at my back, the other was grabbing my legs, almost lifting me off the ground, and the other was pushing my face against the wall. They threatened me so I wouldn’t scream. To be honest, I would’ve anyway, but I literally couldn’t. I could barely breathe my face was so smooshed against those bricks. I don’t know how long I was like that, crying in anger, while the three bullies insulted and shook me. But that boy showed up and scared them good. Who knows how he did it. He looks younger than them. Maybe he’s like me, small for his age. But I think they’re already afraid of him, so all it took was a couple of kicks and a yell from him and they left me alone.

  When they let go of me and I could breathe again, I felt so dizzy that I fell down right there in the corridor. I didn’t faint, I just couldn’t move. It was like someone yanked out my bones. The boy stared and then made a gun with his hand, pointing at me like he was going to shoot. But when the director showed and found me lying on the floor, he disappeared. They picked me up on a stretcher and took me to the infirmary. The nurse told me that I was fine. She cleaned the scratches they’d left on my forehead and my legs and asked me if I knew who’d hit me. I didn’t have any idea who the jerks were, so I came off as tough because I wouldn’t snitch. The lady calmed me down and explained that kids do that sort of thing to newbies. Later they all become friends.

  After a while the nurse let me go. As soon as I got outside, I started looking for the boy. But this place is huge. I think it used to be a plantation, and now the big house is all the offices and a small dining room. The girls’ dorm is a building attached to the house. The school is on the other side, past the football field, the library, the laboratories, and the cafeteria. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I headed behind the girls’ dorm, along the path through the orchard. I’d never gone that way, but I discovered that at the far edge of the orchard, the path ends in a wall. Maybe it used to go right past the ditch that’s in front of the wall, heading into the fields on the other side. I’m guessing there didn’t used to be a wall around this whole place. But now the path ends a few steps before it. And there I saw him, huddled under a willow, next to the ditch. I didn’t mean to bother him, but when I walked up and touched his shoulder, he leapt up like a wild animal, shouting insults and running off. All I wanted to do was find out his name and thank him.

  When he was far enough away, he turned toward me and fired a bunch of times with his hand. I wasn’t sure what to do, but since he kept shooting, I figured the best thing was to play dead, so I dropped to the ground. He holstered his hand in one pocket and walked away.

  ECTOR WAS, IN FACT, thirteen years old. He stared at the ceiling with his hands under his head, not blinking. He did not see what was before his eyes. He was simply elsewhere. His legs pedaled hard, he lifted the back tire of his bike, spinning it like a top. In front of him, the young woman from the warehouse lifted her gaze from the floor. Her eyes met his so subtly that only he could perceive the slight blush he brought to her cheeks.

  “Leave her alone, already!” demanded Maria. She was the older sister. She was speaking to Robert, the third youngest of the siblings, and to David, the second youngest. They were chasing Manuela through the room, pinching her butt to make her scream and jump. All that noise and commotion were keeping her from finishing what she was cooking on the stove.

  “I said leave her alone! You’re going to make her cry!” Maria shouted, stopping them with the intensity of her voice and the fierceness of her eyes. She held a knife in one hand, and she glared at her brothers as if she might hurl herself at them.

  “Enough, Maria!” Hector warned in a low voice, emerging from his daydreams.

  “She’s always shouting at us,” David complained. Manuela nodded.

  “She’s nuts,” Robert clarified. He dropped to the ground dramatically, throwing himself onto his back.

  “Just stop shouting at them. I can’t even think.”

  “And she won’t let us play,” said Manuela, pushing her tummy out.

  “What is it you’re thinking about, huh, Hector?” Maria cut back. “You never help, you don’t even notice I’m exhausted. After school, Mrs. Carmen had me handle all the sales at the store.”

  “Did she pay you?” He was suddenly interested.

  “She gave me two pounds of rice and beans. What do you think we’re eating tonight?”

  Maria began shrieking again at the children, who had restarted their horseplay, this time throwing themselves on top of Robert, who was still lying on the floor, worn out. The little ones fell silent when Maria slammed the pots and growled words that nobody understood. Manuela stared at her and mocked her in silence. Robert and David covered their mouths to stop from bursting with laughter. Hector kept making his invisible bicycle fly in the empty space in front of his eyes.

  HEY PUT US IN GROUPS BY AGE, not grade level or ability. In my group, there were fifteen of us. Some couldn’t even read or write, and others had totally forgotten how. The only sure thing was that none of us had anywhere else to go. Some kids prayed that their parents would show up one day to claim them. Others had already given up on that idea. Many figured that even though they were getting older, some couple would come by and adopt them. As for me, I hoped my parents would get out of jail. There were some kids who liked being on the streets. Not me. I preferred my own house, but between this place and the street? This was better. I think lots of the kids I spoke with felt the same.

  But none of them knew anything about the boy who saved me from the three bullies.

  “He’s a newbie, almost as new as you. He’s nine years old,” one said.

  “He don’t speak to nobody. Just shoots,” said another. But I already knew that.

  “They call him the Immortal Boy,” said the first kid, very quietly, like he was revealing a dangerous secret. “Bullets can’t kill him.”

  I stared at him without getting what he meant. What I needed was to know the boy’s name. I’d been trying to get close enough to ask, but he always ran from me like I had cooties. Sometimes, when we passed each other in the dining room, or in one of the classrooms in the library, he would look at me and shoot with his hand.

  “He sees the shrin
k every day,” said an older girl, rolling her eyes at the boy who’d mentioned the whole immortality thing. She visited the woman just as often; she was not the kind of girl to babble about stuff she didn’t know.

  Me? I did not pay regular visits the psychologist. Instead, I went to music class, dance class, theater class. I also worked in the garden and in the kitchen. So I asked what you had to do to go see the shrink. If I could set up a visit, maybe she would tell me things about my little savior and explain the best way to get to know him. That’s what psychologists are for, right?

  “You’ve got to have some problem, a glitch. Something wrong with your head. Like, it’s hard for me to stop digging this hole in my thigh,” the girl explained, lifting her skirt and showing me an open wound.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I pinch myself, without even noticing.”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?” I asked, a little freaked out.

  “Not when I’m doing it, no. Later? Yeah, it burns. Sometimes it starts to stink.”

  I gave her thigh another glance before she covered it again with her skirt. There was no way I was going to pinch a hole in any part of my body.

  Nobody knew anything else. I learned that almost everyone feared him, even if he was sort of a protector, because he defended kids with so much violence that even those he saved were afraid. Apparently one time he smashed up the face of some bully. Lots of kids kept repeating that he was the Immortal Boy, that bullets couldn’t kill him. Several said he was crazy. Others claimed that he was just weird. And some swore he was from another planet. They were joking, of course. When I saw him, he was always alone, playing with imaginary things and shooting. Several times I followed him as he walked down the short path that ended at the ditch, but as soon as he realized I was following him, he would run back to the building, shooting.

  Whether he was immortal, a bully, or just plain weird, I was sure of one thing.

  No matter how often he got away from me, one day I was going to catch him and make him my friend.