Turning up the volume of the aid in her ear, the woman with the incongruous features — it is hard to believe this tiny nose perches above that crude mouth, beneath those deep, amber eyes — looks at Epitafio’s hand and says: ‘Why are you asking me, when you already know what I’ll chose?’
As Epitafio lifts his hand, the woman in whose face one can see three different but equally attractive portraits — her beauty is a riddle — cheers. ‘Next time, I get to choose first. You always get to choose first … I never win a single toss!’ complains Epitafio, as he tosses the coin into the ashtray, sending two cigarette butts flying and spitting ash. Then he pleads, although, even as he does so, he knows he shouldn’t: ‘Just don’t pick the giant.’
‘What giant?’ asks the woman who loves Epitafio, folding down the sun visor and, seeing her reflection in the mirror, opening and closing her mouth several times. Then she brings both hands behind her head and, dividing her hair into three strands, begins to braid them, exposing her shoulders, the nape of her neck and her slender throat, from which her name hangs in letters of gold: Estela.
Meanwhile, Epitafio puts on his cap again and, repeating the words he should not have said, gives form to a warning: ‘Down there, there’s a huge guy … Seriously, you don’t want to choose him … I saw him a while ago.’ ‘If you hadn’t said anything,’ says Estela with a flicker of a smile, ‘but now that you have, of course I want him!’ Epitafio suddenly laughs, too, and asks: ‘Whose fault did you say it was that you’re not sleeping?’ ‘Hijo de puta!’ Estela roars in surprise and, losing her smile, growls: ‘Seriously, don’t make jokes!’
In the silence that descends after Estela’s last words, Epitafio opens the door of the old truck and, saying, ‘Don’t be long,’ heads back to the clearing known as the Eye of Grass to be engulfed by the stifling heat and by every interwoven fibre of the thrumming forest: the howls of the monkeys, the chant of the frogs, the chirrup of the cicadas and the shriek of the bats.
For her part, Estela is thinking: Bloody Cementeria … Why the hell did you have to do what you did? … You’ve even robbed me of my sleep. Her eyes follow Epitafio as he walks to the centre of the vast expanse of waste ground, where he stops, takes off his cap again, mops his temples, tosses back a few stray wisps of hair and whistles once more.
This last whistle brings from the shadows some creatures who had not allowed themselves to be seen and who emerge from the tall grasses brandishing the threat of their weapons. As he divides these boys into groups, Estela relaxes and she finally comes down into the clearing. The first thing she sees, this woman with her slim body that looks as though it is armoured with pieces of other bodies, are the mountains like walls that encircle the great sorrowful terrain in which they find themselves.
Then, having seen the highest treetops framed against the night sky, Estela, as the man she loves did before, silently makes an inventory of her possessions: the three motorbikes, the little vans, the petrol generator, the two ramshackle trucks and the trailer against which a number of dark forms are silhouetted.
Who are those fuckwits? she is about to ask, when suddenly, in spite of the fact she is still half-asleep, she receives a jolt from her memory and clenches her jaw, trapping the words inside. They are putting together my surprise, Estela thinks and, as she does so she looks away from the trailer, its white lettering flaked by time now spells ‘king minos’, where it should read ‘trucking caminos’.
Having stretched, seen the tiny lights of an aeroplane against the darkening sky, and yawned twice more, Estela scans the clearing for Epitafio and, having spotted him, begins to walk across the damp, misty jungle floor.
Two metres from the spot where Epitafio is standing, her shoes clagged with mud, Estela sees the men and women who have come from afar and excitedly thinks … He’s right, there’s more than we’ve ever had before. Taking Lacarote by the shoulder, Estela is about to express her delight, but the man she adores whistles yet again and everything whirrs into motion.
The twenty men who emerged from the shadows grip the barrels of their guns, those pushing small carts step forward, while from those who have come from other lands comes the gnashing of a thousand fearful teeth.
When all those present have taken up their new positions, Estela whistles for the first time and this is how she communicates new orders to her boys. The first burst of gunfire rings out and those who have spent many days walking fall to the ground, vomiting a few words that spew raw from the mouths.
This was where they first used their
weapons … those who were still standing
crumpled … pushing, scrabbling and
jostling … desperate to be at the bottom of the heap
… No one wanted to be left on top.
‘Why do they always think it belongs to them?’ asks Estela when the metal falls silent, and silently thinks to herself: It’s incredible how well I hear with these things. It was only a few days ago that the woman stroking her ears bought new hearing aids.
When the thrum of the jungle has recovered its rhythm and Estela is enjoying certain sounds she has never heard before, Epitafio moves away from her and declares: ‘Get up! … sons of bitches … What are you all doing on the ground?
‘Move your fucking arses or we really will shoot you,’ says Epitafio, stepping closer to the luminous cage, taking his cap off again and mopping the sweat streaming down his temples. ‘How can it be so fucking hot in the middle of the night?’ he says, turning around, but rather than answer him, Estela spits. ‘Which is the one you don’t want me to choose?’
‘That big bastard on the left there,’ says Thunderhead, turning towards the enclosure again and pointing.
‘The one next to the old man and the little girl?’
‘Exactly.’
‘You take him, I don’t care,’ says Estela, moving closer to Epitafio. ‘Why fight over him when there are … how many exactly?’
‘I was going to count them, but I came to wake you up,’ says Epitafio, then, pointing to a spotlight that is blinking, says, ‘We won’t have much time today … I told you that generator is about to croak.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to count them again.’
‘Sixty-four, total,’ Estela announces after a moment and, moving even closer to the enclosure, is surprised to be able to hear the timid words, the muffled howls, the accents of fear, the sighs and the pleas of the men and women who fled their lands. These new hearing aids are very good, excitedly thinks the woman who adores Thunderhead and once more brings her hands up to her ears.
But in a second Estela’s excitement is transformed and, turning around, she looks at Epitafio and asks, the colour draining from her face, ‘What are we going to do with all of them?’ ‘That’s your business,’ says Epitafio, scornfully waving her away. ‘You’re the one who wanted them … the one who was bitching about how we didn’t have enough … and anyway, in La Carpa you can never have too many.’
The words Thunderhead is speaking crumble as the jungle is desecrated by a noise that quickly becomes a rumble: a helicopter is crossing the night, dragging its clatter of metal. While the men and women who crossed the borders raise their heads, Estela covers her new prostheses, and Epitafio draws his flare gun.
Moments later, as the helicopter hovers over the clearing known as the Eye of Grass, and ignites the powerful spotlight that illuminates the vault of darkness, Epitafio aims at the sky, Estela stares at the ground, and those lying in the pool of light cease trembling for a moment.
Suddenly other vehicles appeared …
… someone screamed: ‘It’s the Border Patrol!’
and it was true … but they don’t care … They
saw what was happening and went on their way.
‘Haven’t seen those fuckers in a while,’ Epitafio mutters, and with a weary shrug he fires into the night. The silver-blue flare shrieks th
rough the darkness and the helicopter switches off its huge spotlights, ceases its hovering, recrosses the waste ground and vanishes into the distance.
When the drone of the aircraft can no longer be heard, Epitafio stows the flare gun and says: ‘Poor deluded fuckers … They think they’re …’ But before he can finish, Estela interrupts: ‘Isn’t this what they wanted? For everything to be different … Now they’ll know what’s really good for them!’
‘Turn them on!’ snarls Epitafio. It is the first order he has not whistled. ‘The rest of them … turn on all the rest.’ At his command, the men pushing the little handcarts turn on the spotlights illuminating the outside of the cage of light, and those who have come from far-off lands can finally see their captors.
‘I thought you came to find another country?’ Epitafio roars, his voice hoarse, and feeling the eyes of these creatures who curse his ancestors and his seed upon him he looks to the men still clutching their carts and orders: ‘Let them feel the heat of our country.’ Obediently, the men who emerged from the shadows march towards the throng, shouldering their rifles.
Trembling even more than they did when the first spotlights ripped through the darkness, the men and women who have fled their lands, countries that had long since become wastelands, feeling the imminent terror and the pain, open their bowels, and as they watch the approaching men who hearken to the orders of Estela and Epitafio, they hear the ultimate threat of this woman, screaming: ‘They will know what the Fatherland is … They will know who the Fatherland is!
‘Who is the Fatherland?’ Estela roars, turning around.
‘I am the Fatherland!’ Epitafio responds, dramatically flinging his arms wide.
‘And what does the Fatherland require?’
‘The Fatherland wants them to kneel.’
‘You heard him, on your knees, all of you, right now!’
‘The Fatherland says: Lay flat on the ground,’ Epitafio adds, shouting and waving his arms in feigned politeness.
‘Everyone, face down!’ roars Estela, ‘And don’t move … I don’t even want to see you tremble!’
When all the men and women from the ravaged lands are no more than prostrate creatures, Epitafio slowly approaches Estela, embraces her and whispers into the hearing aid in her left ear: ‘The Fatherland wants them searched.’ ‘Search them!’ Estela barks. Those still in shackles shuffle forward, bend over the creatures who have lost all hope, frisking and manhandling each of them.
There are some who still long to resist, to say something, anything, but the words of these creatures who all too soon will lose their very names perish before they can be thought.
‘The Fatherland does not want the giant searched,’ Epitafio whispers into Estela’s ear and, pointing to her left, she shouts, ‘No one is to touch the giant.’
Thinking that no one is coming for him, one boy crawls away, jumps to his feet and runs towards the jungle. Out of the corner of his eye Epitafio sees he who cannot flee for having tried too often, moves away from Estela and shouts: ‘Grab that one, he’s trying to escape!’ Two men quicken their stride and chase the boy, they beat him with their rifle butts and drag him back to the heaving mass.
Just as Epitafio is about to tell his men to finish the boy off, Estela grabs the flare gun from his belt and, raising her arm, opens fire: the silver-blue flare hurtles through the air and busts the eye of the fugitive, who falls writhing in the mud, while the gunpowder still spews its fiery rage.
Gradually the flare gutters and, with a last shower of sparks, falls silent, prompting Estela to say: ‘Perhaps this is not what the Fatherland wished.’ But before Epitafio can answer, two of the huge spotlights flicker and in the distance the generator belches: ‘I told you we had to move quickly … We have to divide them up before the lights go out.’
‘But I get first pick … What do you think, should I take the giant …?’ Estela taunts Epitafio with a wink.
‘I already said: you can have him,’ says Epitafio, not seeming particularly surprised. ‘What do you want in return?’
‘There are a lot of them … I’ll let you have him if you help me with the others.’
‘All right, then,’ Epitafio sighs, ‘but no children.’
‘…’
‘And don’t give me that look — what difference does it make if we leave them here?’
‘That makes things difficult … I’m not planning on going back to El Paraíso,’ Estela says, tensing her jaw. ‘I was going to tell you later.’
‘On my mother’s life, you’ll go to El Paraíso!’ Epitafio thunders, suddenly furious. ‘You’ll go, and you’ll spend the night there.’
‘You take half of them and I promise I’ll go.’
‘Half of them, my arse!’ Epitafio screams at the woman he so loves, ‘and don’t even think about arguing … We have to get a move on!’
When the spoils have been divided and the followers of Estela and Epitafio have taken the creatures who crossed the border away in the trailer and the battered trucks, Estela allows her eyes to stray to the clearing for a moment and takes Epitafio in her arms: ‘Does the Fatherland have nothing to say to me?’ ‘What do you want me to say?’ Epitafio replies, bring his forefinger up to her ear and running his fingertip gently over the antenna of the tiny hearing aid. ‘Fucking hell!’ says the woman who loves Epitafio, but before he can get angry, she wraps her arms around him.
‘I want the Fatherland to tell me that he loves me … to hear that you are tired and that all you want is to be with me,’ blurts the woman whose men called her IhearonlywhatIwant, and, pressing her body against Epitafio, she adds, ‘I wanted to hear you say you have the courage … that you are really going to give it all up. That we’re not going to start all over again,’ pleads Estela as another explosion rumbles in the distance.
The generator finally dies and the spotlights surrounding Estela and Epitafio flicker and are sightless. Darkness invades the clearing, which the men and women of the neighbouring village have recently come to call El Tiradero — the Shooting Range — and plunges the world into blindness. ‘Best we go,’ says Epitafio, as Estela slips from his arms and says, ‘I don’t want to stay here in the dark.’
Urged on by the screams of the howler monkeys, by the shrill chirrup of the cicadas hiding in the grass, by the screech of the bats that will soon be heading home, by the croak of the frogs and toads resting on the banks of the creek that flows on the far side of the curtain of liana, past leprous tree trunks and tangled roots like ruins, Epitafio and Estela cross the vast wasteland.
Not looking back, nor even looking at each other, IhearonlywhatIwant and Thunderhead give the final orders to the men and go their separate ways without returning to the subject that torments Epitafio: when will he have the courage to give it all up? In the distance, farther off than before, the beast of these latitudes roars again and, for an instant, the jungle falls silent.
While the men busy themselves with their final tasks in the clearing, Epitafio goes to the battered old truck, jumps in, tosses his cap on to the empty passenger seat and, picturing the woman he so loves sleeping there, wonders: What was the thing you wanted to say to me earlier? … You said, ‘When I wake up, remind me to tell you something.’ Estela climbs into her Ford Lobo, rolls down the window and, seeing the headlights of Epitafio’s Cheyenne blaze into life, wonders: Why didn’t I say anything? Why did I chicken out again?
The growl of the engines drowns out the single thought that unwittingly unites Epitafio and Estela: It’s high time we talked … told each other what’s happening. As one, they accelerate, this man and this woman who have loved each other so much for so long, each taking the lead of a convoy to leave the vast wasteland by different roads.
When the clouds of dust from Epitafio and Estela’s trucks have settled, the two sons of the jungle who had only pretended to run away, emerge from the liana and the aerial r
oots of the ceiba trees. Behind them, on the distant mountaintops, daybreak lights up the horizon, and in their lairs and dens and burrows, the jungle animals shake themselves awake in dapple-grey dawn.
III
Neither uttering a word, the two sons of the jungle cross El Tiradero, indifferent to the abrupt metamorphosis of the jungle: the shrill sobs of the bats has been replaced by the song of waking birds, the screeching of the howler monkeys gives way to the hoarse wheezing of wild boar, the cicadas are lulled to sleep by the drone of crickets, and the mosquitoes depart, leaving the space to the bees.
When they reach the centre of the waste ground once more, the elder of the two boys switches off his flashlight and orders the younger to do likewise. Like the sounds, the very space is mutating: this is the hour when dusk shrinks.
Having stowed the torch in his pocket, the elder boy scans the horizon and, pointing to the mountains, says: ‘How did it get to be so early?’ And yet before the elder boy looks towards the hills, there comes a scream from above and both boys look up: up in the sky, which is also transforming at a dizzying pace, an eagle announces its presence.
‘Soon it will be daylight,’ says the elder and turns his eyes back to the earth. Then, unfolding the hessian sacks he carries in his belt, he adds: ‘Stuff everything you can find into these.’ Obediently, the younger boy begins to search the bundles and the bags strewn across the waste ground, only to immediately stop.
‘Fucking hell!’ says the younger, taking two steps back.
‘Fucking one-eyed freak! Don’t frighten him!’ says the elder, looking down at the corpse, then, turning to the younger boy he says, ‘How can the flare still be burning?’
‘…’
‘…’
‘You think it’s gone out?’ the younger boy says after a few seconds, advancing the two paces he just retreated. ‘It looks like it’s just smoke.’
Among the Lost Page 2