Among the Lost

by Emiliano Monge

  Laying both hands flat on the floor, struggling to make sure he does not slip on his own drool and vomit, Mausoleo gasps for breath like a man who has almost drowned, tenses his jaw even harder than before and, with a brutal headbutt, pushes aside the gun barrel threatening his existence. Then he looks around him, listens as the wails of those who no longer expect anything of fate take over the space, and gradually gets to his feet.

  Shaking off the last crumbs of his fear, Mausoleo recovers from his collapse, feels as though his legs belong to him again and, balling his hands into fists, takes two steps forward. ‘I ate something that didn’t agree with me,’ he mumbles to Epitafio, who smiles and orders: ‘Clean up that shit … Clean it up or get one of them to do it!’

  The giant does not think twice, but strides through the house overlooking El Teronaque and, as his eyes survey the creatures suffering the torments of this Fatherland that has swallowed their hopes and entombed their memories, he hears an unfamiliar voice from deep within his belly: ‘Who do you want to clean up your shit?’ Exhilarated, Epitafio watches Mausoleo and, fumbling in his pocket for his cigarettes, says to his men: ‘See? I told you so.’

  I left them in the truck, Thunderhead remembers a moment later and is about to turn back towards the door: if he does not do so it is simply because he feels as though the energy radiating from the giant is his, the almost electrical force that gives voice to the new language that Mausoleo is muttering to himself, a language that startles the men clutching their weapons and terrifies those who were captured in the clearing known as El Ojo de Hierba.

  Feeling his bravura heal the wounds opened up by his fears, the blind newcomer in the kingdom of the blind reaches the mass of tortured and humiliated men and women, and, for the first time today, his face relaxes. He grabs an old man by the throat, drags him several metres, throws him to the ground and, pointing at the consequences of his nausea, orders: ‘Clean up that shit right now!’

  ‘You heard him … clean up that mess!’ Epitafio excitedly echoes and, slumping into a chair, he replaces and removes his cap: ‘Leave him to it and come and sit next to me … The dumb fuck knows what he has to do.’ Obediently, Mausoleo lets go of the old man and walks over to Epitafio: ‘I told you today was your lucky day!

  ‘I am the lord of luck and I am offering it to you,’ says Epitafio. ‘I’m doing you the biggest fucking favour anyone has ever done you.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I am Fortune and I am the Fatherland,’ says Thunderhead as Mausoleo draws alongside, then, nodding to a chair, he adds, ‘Sit down and watch what happens next … This is something else you will have to do.’

  ‘What are they going to do?’

  ‘You mean, what are we going to do to them!’ Epitafio corrects the giant. ‘We have to shut them up once and for all … lambast their head … turn them into nobody.’

  They were constantly screaming at us, beating us, pissing on us … They did not let us speak to each other, look at each other … Anyone who spoke was whipped with a wet rag … Anyone who looked around was burned with matches … then they’d say … ‘You’re dead now’ … We stayed there until they assigned us to the rooms.

  ‘We have to make sure they don’t remember … that they don’t know who they are, who anyone is,’ Thunderhead explains after a long silence. ‘Then we have to divide them up … the ones that are ours … the ones that will be taken away.’

  ‘The ones that will be taken away?’

  ‘That fucker, Señor Hoyo, will come and collect some of them …’ Epitafio explains. ‘He’ll come and take away his own.’

  ‘…’

  ‘The rest are ours,’ says Thunderhead, ‘we’ll move them out tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘That’s why we need to get some sleep … to get some rest, once we put them in their rooms.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You’ll go in there,’ Epitafio interrupts Mausoleo, pointing to one of the rooms in which his men are imprisoning those who have come from other lands. ‘You’ll watch over them … make sure they don’t make any noise … I don’t want to hear a peep out of them.’

  Once Mausoleo is in the room crammed with half of those from the far side of the border, Epitafio orders his men back out into the courtyard to burn the clothes worn by those who no longer expect anything of heaven now their God has forsaken them, torch the body of the one who did not survive the journey, decide on a rota of sentries for the coming hours so that the others can sleep a while.

  Then, when all the men loyal to him have left the building, Epitafio remembers his cigarettes, gets up from his chair, yawns once or twice, and, addressing the absence of the woman he so loves, says: ‘Better to smoke and not think about your tantrums,’ he goes out into the yard and silently adds: I could sleep in the truck today.

  Gazing at the mountains that are a mirror image of the sierra that Estela and her men are still descending, Epitafio reaches his battered truck, clambers in and searches for his cigarettes, still talking to IhearonlywhatIwant: ‘I’ll phone you as soon as I wake up … Right now, I have to get some shut-eye, even if only for a while … Tonight promises to be long and tedious.’

  Coughing and spluttering from the cigarette he is holding between his fingers, Epitafio lays a cushion between his seat and the passenger seat to make up a bed, and thinks: The night will be long, but I’m going to be rid of that fucking idiot … I won’t have to look after Sepelio any more. Then, he tosses aside Estela’s CDs, takes off his cap, finishes his cigarette and lies down: You could have tidied away the CDs … You didn’t have to leave them lying around.

  You’re always leaving things lying around: still thinking about Estela, Epitafio feels sleep invading his body and, reaching out, manages to heed one last order dictated by his caution: he grabs the door handle and tugs it hard. The sound made by the door slamming is indistinguishable from that produced, moments earlier up in the sierra, by the car door slammed by Estela, who has reached El Paraíso.

  VIII

  Without explaining anything to the captain travelling with her, Estela slams the door of the Ford Lobo and walks towards the huge dilapidated stone building in the distance: El Paraíso rises and is camouflaged in the only hanging valley in the sierra, a mirror image of the sierra in whose foothills Epitafio is now sleeping.

  Looking at the fountain, the stone benches, the sentry plants and the nopal cacti as one might look at a relative one would prefer not to see again, Estela quickens her pace, but is stopped by the sound of footsteps. Looking over her shoulder, IhearonlywhatIwant glares at her men: ‘Get back in the trucks … Don’t move until I get back!’

  Swallowing their anger, the men loyal to Estela climb into the trucks. Hearing their executioners return, those who lost their faith in God call on Him again, all except the women who no longer have the strength to rip even a single word from their silence.

  They got back in the trucks … I thought it will all start up again … I didn’t even beg … Why bother? … Sooner or later they would climb on top of me again … I thought … I no longer had the strength or the will to live … Why bother? I thought … They had already left their mark … deep inside … those marks that go on hurting forever … hadn’t they?

  The only man who remained silent, like the women whose voices are broken, is the oldest of all the creatures who have come so far: a little while ago he suceeded in freeing his hands and, staring at the patch of sky through the hole in the tarpaulin, has managed to dismiss the thoughts of the little girl with the oversized head he could not keep with him.

  Reading the lines that mark his palms, the oldest of all the creatures to whom God has turned a deaf ear now smiles and accepts that this is the first of the last moments left to him: Perhaps they will come and let us out now. Why don’t they just fucking come and kill us?! he silently rails, convinced that he has screamed the words: but no o
ne hears him, not the creatures trussed up beside him, nor the men clutching their weapons, nor the woman in the distance hurrying towards El Paraíso.

  Circling the fake well and gazing at the pepper trees shading the façade of the ancient workhouse, built as a monastery almost two centuries ago by an order that has since disappeared, Estela forces her legs to walk faster and, as her eyes adjust to the shadows cast by the pepper trees, she exclaims with feigned irritation: ‘What kind of welcome is this … is no one here happy to see me?’

  A few metres from the flowerbeds teeming with jasmine, Estela unthinkingly slows her pace and says in a low voice: ‘I shouldn’t have come … I should have followed my instinct … There’s something strange going on here … I said to Epitafio that they’re plotting something,’ IhearonlywhatIwant mutters to herself as her heart beats faster in her chest: so many things, so many memories, and, suddenly, so many fears.

  Slowing until she all but comes to a halt, Estela silently complains to the absent Epitafio: I told you something was going on, something you and I don’t know about, while at the same time calling out: ‘Is no one going to come out … does no one come out to welcome a daughter of El Paraíso when she comes home?’ But the only response is the cackle of a few hens and a solitary bark that might not have been a bark.

  Fretfully circling the wishing well, at the bottom of which the tiles spell out ‘Welcome to El Paraíso’, IhearonlywhatIwant admires the main entrance to the monastery built with stones quarried in these mountains, tightens her stomach and steels herself: Stop being afraid … Why would anyone here want to hurt you? The solitary bark turns out to be a bark; it is followed by the baying of a pack of hounds reacting to the call of their master.

  The chorus of howls drowns out the cackle of the chickens and swallows the whistle of the wind eroding the sierra. More irritated than anxious, Estela is about to turn towards the dogs when Father Nicho finally appears, dragging his ancient body through the gates of El Paraíso: he is pocketing a cordless phone he has just finished speaking into.

  Picking up her pace again, Estela regrets her misgivings. How could he harm me? … I’m not the little girl I once was … and besides, why would he, when he has always been fond of me … when he and Epitafio are so close … so reliant on each other? IhearonlywhatIwant adds silently, even as she loudly apologises for her lateness: ‘One of the trucks broke down in the forest … and they’ve moved the checkpoints … but here we are, at last.’

  ‘A truck, a checkpoint … always some excuse, huh?’ says Father Nicho, taking several steps towards her, then he turns back to his hounds and whistles for the pack to be silent. ‘What are you thinking of, being out at this hour? What would Epitafio say if he knew you were breaking his rules?’ grumbles the priest, throwing his arms up to indicate that he is not interested in the excuses of this woman who has just arrived: ‘I didn’t want to be out and about … they really have moved the checkpoints.’

  ‘What do you mean they’ve moved the checkpoints?’ Father Nicho asks, pretending to be surprised by what he is hearing, as he takes another step forward and surrenders to Estela’s embrace and the sun’s rays as they filter through the leaves of the two ancient pepper trees. ‘We don’t know what happened … Why the hell they moved them … but I forced El Chorrito to come with me,’ IhearonlywhatIwant gestures to the Ford Lobo as she releases the old man.

  ‘El Chorrito? What were you thinking bringing that jerk here?’ Father Nicho says, genuinely surprised this time. ‘You had no business bringing that moron here …,’ he growls, peering at the huge truck and thinking to himself: I’ll have to go and tell him … I’ll have to remind that idiot not to open his mouth! ‘I had no choice … I need him to do the talking at La Cañada,’ Estela apologises, and is about to continue but the priest cuts her off: ‘He can stay where he is … I’m not having him in my orphanage.’

  ‘If it was up to me, he’d wait in the well,’ says Estela, following Father Nicho as he hurries back into the shade cast by the building: ‘The stupid bastard didn’t even phone Epitafio … Epitafio, that’s it … I have to call Epitafio.’

  ‘There’s no hurry … He knows you’re here,’ says Father Nicho, now two steps from the main door of El Paraíso. ‘I was speaking to him a minute ago … when you were getting out of the truck … I saw you from the window.’

  ‘So Epitafio called you … just now?’ IhearonlywhatIwant splutters in surprise.

  ‘Well, not just now … A little while ago … but we had a long chat, the two of us,’ Father Nicho explains as he pushes open the heavy door. ‘Then I saw you coming and I said to him … Here she is now.’

  ‘And he didn’t ask to talk to me?’ says Estela, closing the huge door behind her.

  ‘Tell her I need to get some sleep … that I’ll talk to her this afternoon … That’s what he told me to say,’ explains the priest. ‘Tell her I’m too tired … I know I’ve got another long night ahead of me.’

  ‘The bastard … so now he wants to sleep … he’d rather sleep than talk to me!’

  ‘That’s what he told me … but don’t think of it like that,’ says the priest, crossing the space that was once the monastery tithe-barn. ‘Better to think that you’re tired too … that you’ll talk to him in a little while … You should go upstairs and rest awhile.’

  ‘You’re right … no point getting upset,’ says IhearonlywhatIwant, and not realising she is muttering aloud, thinks, ‘Fucking bastard fucker … stupid of me to even worry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m worried about my men.’

  ‘Well, don’t fret. I’ll send someone to fetch them right now,’ says Father Nico and then, crossing what was once the refectory, asks, ‘Why do you have two trailers today?’

  ‘There were more than usual.’

  ‘So you’re not going to go without leaving a few here with me.’

  ‘There are five or six that you could use,’ Estela says, and then, betraying her worries once again, adds, ‘Maybe I should call him.’

  ‘Leave six of them with me and leave him to get some rest … You should be asleep yourself … Aren’t you tired?’

  ‘All I feel right now is hungry,’ says Estela to avoid saying that she is angry, that her anxiety is making her furious.

  ‘Well, you go up to your room and I’ll bring up some breakfast … though at this hour, it might be more accurate to say lunch,’ says Father Nicho, nodding towards the corridor that leads to the stairs.

  ‘Is it empty?’

  ‘They came for her a few days ago … They wanted a boy, but as soon as they set eyes on her, their decision was made,’ says the priest, ‘so your room is empty … Now go up there and I’ll be up in a minute.’

  As the priest walks away, Estela turns, crosses the main hallway of El Paraíso and climbs the stairs, trying to calm herself: Maybe it’s because I was angry … Maybe that’s why you called here and said: Tell her it’s better if we talk later.

  The ancient wooden stairs creak beneath the weight of Estela’s body, which is heavier than she admits and heavier than it appears, while in her gut hunger begins to rumble: I’ll get something to eat soon, thinks IhearonlywhatIwant, but her mind continues to rail: You didn’t want to talk to me because of my outbursts.

  On the second floor of the orphanage, as the woman who so loves Epitafio negotiates the labyrinth of corridors she knows by heart, as hunger begins to cramp her belly, her mind insists: You decided to get some sleep because you’re angry with me.

  IhearonlywhatIwant is so self-absorbed she does not even hear the sounds leaching from beneath the doors she passes: the mutterings and whisperings of children who finished the day’s work an hour since, cursing their lives.

  Only when she comes to the end of the corridor, to another staircase she is about to climb, does Estela notice the drone of voices and, clicking her tongue, she says, ‘You’ll see
, you’ll get used to it … It will make you stronger.’ Hearing her own words, she remembers Cementeria, Hipogeo, Ausencia, Osamenta, Osaria and Sepelio: but of all of them, the only one that will stay in her mind is the one who was already there.

  IhearonlywhatIwant no longer cares about the suicide of Cementeria, the murder of Hipogeo, the sale of Osamenta, the life of Sepelio: she cares only about the fact that Epitafio did not want to talk to her: I always end up doing something that pisses you off.

  Turning into a new corridor, Estela moves away from the whispered voices, passes several rooms, one of which was once Epitafio’s, and arrives at the wooden door that once kept her prisoner.

  With an empty gesture. IhearonlywhatIwant reaches out, grabs the rusted doorknob, thinking: Still as cold as ever here, then, turning the handle, she decides: I’m not going to think about you any more, pushes the door open and says: It doesn’t matter … I’ll make you happy later.

  The squeal of the hinges, the whispered voices she can no longer hear, but which still echo inside her head, and a sudden, precarious sense of calm transport Estela back to her past and, as she steps into the room, she steps into a different era: one when she was first brought to this orphanage, clutching the hand of her mother’s partners. Her mother, a woman whose twin legacies were the constant refrain, I made you with no help from anyone, and jokes about her father’s identity.

  ‘What a bitch you were … Mamá,’ Estela says, caressing the walls, approaching the window and reading the names scratched into the bare stone years ago: Mario, Sixto, Valentín, Abelardo, Juan, Esteban and Ramiro.

  ‘You always were a bitch … Just look at all the names you gave me … telling me over and over: that one there … that was the name of your papá.’