Shaking her head, Estela drives from her mind the names she read a second earlier and allows her gaze to leave the orphanage: through the window, beneath the pitiless sun that reached its zenith some time ago, IhearonlywhatIwant watches the comings and goings of her men and utterly forgets her past, brooding on something that Epitafio once said: ‘The past is closer in memory than it is in time.’
As she watches the six nuns marshalling her men, Estela feels that she is finally safe and, trusting her eyes, allows her guard to slip: immediately, the glassy distance is transformed by the sunlight into reverie and she witnesses something long past: her mother’s friends walk away from El Paraíso after leaving her here, cursing her for what she did at the funeral of the woman who gave birth to her.
The pain is all in her mind, not in her body, Estela thinks, paraphrasing Epitafio, and, without realising, rubs those parts of her body bruised by her mother’s two partners that day. The same parts where IhearonlywhatIwant now bears the mark of Father Nicho’s branding iron: the tiny squares tattooed onto every girl as soon as she is brought here.
The nuns who burned her flesh and those now marshalling her men in the courtyard of El Paraíso meld into a single image, Estela returns to the present day and takes two steps back. Then she crosses the room and slumps onto the bed, recognising the creak of the springs that were already worn out when she was a little girl, and says aloud: ‘I’ll get some sleep and then I’ll call you.’
But the words that Estela has uttered are shattered by four sharp raps at the door. Without waiting for her to answer, Father Nicho pushes it open and his eyes lock on to those of IhearonlywhatIwant: ‘I see that they’ve already been unloaded … I imagine you’ve taken the children … are you going to mark them now, or later? I’d like to help with the branding when I wake up.’
Father Nicho approaches the bed where Estela is sitting and, setting down a tray with water and food, says: ‘I have told you often enough … those who leave cannot take part in the branding.’ ‘But are you going to mark them now or later?’ IhearonlywhatIwant asks again, not turning to look at the water or the food, then she asks: ‘How many do you have here, including the six I just brought?’
‘Including the six you brought, nineteen,’ the priest says, pushing the tray towards Estela. ‘But not all of them serve me … There are some whose hands have grown too big … Maybe you could take them away with you?’
‘I didn’t come to take anything away.’
‘Well, give them a weapon … Go on, you know that they know the ways of the world.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Your hands grew, too … You too were forced to leave,’ says Father Nicho, ‘and you cannot say that you left here unprepared.’
‘I don’t want to argue about it any more … Besides, the trucks are already full,’ says IhearonlywhatIwant. ‘I’m tired … yes, I’m really starting to feel tired.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘I haven’t slept since she … that bitch, Cementeria.’
‘Do not mention her name … As though she lacked for anything here … I am serious, do not mention her name.’
‘Why the hell did she do it … and why do it the way she did?’
‘Because she was ungrateful … She always wanted more than she had,’ says the priest. ‘But don’t think about her … better to get some rest … sleep a while.’
Before Estela can lie back on the rickety mattress, Father Nicho has left the room and is hurrying along the corridors and down the stairs: he does not want the branding of the children in the cellar to begin unless he is there to do it, unless he is holding the iron, and so he quickens his pace.
Meanwhile, Estela lies back on the bed, staring up at the six beams that she has seen so often, and that have so often seen her slip off her restless wakefulness. Closing her eyes, almost without realising, the woman who so loves Epitafio slips into unconsciousness, leaving the world just as Thunderhead has done in El Teronaque, and just as, much earlier, the two sons of the jungle did in their house.
Three floors below, Father Nicho takes out his telephone: he will call Sepelio and the men he has hired on the Madre Buena plateau: the men, who, with the help of Ausencia, first tortured and then drove poor Cementeria mad, forcing her to wonder and to question what happened to Osamenta, why she committed suicide … and why she did it the way she did.
FIRST INTERLUDE
So Crumbled the Horizon
I
On the walls of the room in which Mausoleo and the men and women who have come from other lands are confined, the monotony of brickwork is broken only by the door slammed shut by Epitafio, a few stains on the concrete, and the window that allows the sun to pour in like a penance.
Leaning against the door, his eyes bloodshot, his nose congested and his face flushed from the tiredness he cannot allow to overcome him, Mausoleo watches over the men and women now sleeping, huddled together and pressed against the walls.
‘If I hear a sound, you’re responsible,’ Epitafio threatens Mausoleo moments before pushing him into the place that reeks of captive creatures: though there is no glass in the window, those who are sleeping because only in sleep can they mock their suffering suppurate with sweat and fear.
‘I don’t want to hear a sound from them … I don’t want them moving around,’ Mausoleo remembers Epitafio’s order as he witnesses a woman shaking and letting out a wail that might be heard in the main room, or even outside where the sentries are patrolling and where the sun has passed its zenith three hours since.
Leaping to his feet, Mausoleo strides across the room, but before he can reach the corner where she lies, the woman who woke a moment ago has curled up and fallen asleep again.
Peering out into the courtyard of El Teronaque, Mausoleo watches the guards move away and listens as their voices and their laughter also fade.
When all is silent once again, the giant gazes out at the horizon and what he sees transports him back to the place where he was born: not that what he can see looks anything like the places that he remembers, but Mausoleo wishes that it did.
Rubbing his eyes because he knows they are trying to deceive him, Mausoleo see a solitary cloud, then a pair of giant birds, and then, for a brief moment, he stares at the sun, blazing so fiercely that the giant can feel his retinas burning.
In the distance, beyond the wall of trees masking the dense forest, he hears again the murmur of the sentries’ voices and the twisted echoes of their laughter.
But beneath the closed eyelids of the giant, these voices, this laughter are the voices and the laughter he used to hear on the wharf, just as the stench all around is the stench of piles of fish. Mausoleo is back on the barra — the spit of land where he was born — staring at his house, at the village beyond, and farther off the boxing gym where he trained.
I should never have left! the giant thinks as he opens his eyes, retreating a few steps, then turning and, with a heavy heart, going back to the door. More than all the things he left behind on that spit of land, Mausoleo is thinking about the one thing he brought with him and, as he leans back against the door, he brings his hand up to his throat and feels the space left by his medal.
Sinking to the floor, Mausoleo throws two, three, four punches at the empty air and, forcing a smile, he talks to the medal: ‘It’s not as though you brought me much luck. It’s not as though you brought me much of anything,’ says the giant and in saying this, comes back to himself, to the one who watches over everyone. Rubbing his eyes, where the sand of sleep has formed a crystalline crust, the giant surveys the men and women left in his charge.
But a new sound forces him to his feet again: though still asleep, the little girl with the outsized head mutters something unintelligible, a growl that sounds like a clap of thunder and sets Mausoleo’s heart beating faster: ‘You’ll watch over them … Make sure they don’t make an
y noise … I don’t want to hear a peep out of them.’
Hurrying across the room, the giant comes to the place just as the little girl growls again and is about to hunker down when some strange new impulse stops him. Then he kicks the girl a couple of times and the fear that he sees as her eyes snap open excites him: Maybe this really is my lucky day?
This excitement, as new to him as the impulse that caused him to lash out at the little girl, and the voice he heard speak to him earlier, are transformed into conviction when, leaning back on the door again, Mausoleo feels his fears transformed into pride: he is the one chosen to keep watch over the men and women who, in addition to the fact that they no longer expect anything of heaven, should not expect much here on earth.
II
Staring wearily at a pipe from the mouth of which two timid wires protrude, Mausoleo continues to shadow box, silently hoping that one of the men will wake and make some noise, although aloud he says: ‘Just let any of them dare make a sound … Hijos de puta!
‘Let them dare open their mouths!’ says the giant staring up at the ceiling, at a piece of cardboard the builders forgot to remove when it was plastered. When the building was a slaughterhouse, this room did not exist. People are always leaving shit like that behind, Mausoleo thinks, rubbing his glassy eyes and remembering similar pieces of cardboard back at home and, surprised at his thought, he wonders: Why the hell did I ever leave?
Alarmed by the sudden void that has opened up inside him, the giant closes his glassy eyes and, pressing his finger against his eyelids, tries to drive out the past. But the sounds that inhabit his memory drag him back to the spit of land and the giant listens to a crackle of flames, the whispering of a radio, the barking of dogs, the beating wings of a hundred seagulls, the slapping of gloves and a strange rattling.
But this strange rattling is not a sound he ever heard on the barra, and so Mausoleo opens his eyes again and recognises the commotion that has brought him back to earth: on the other side of the door, several of the men clutching their rifles have burst out laughing.
At the sound of this commotion among those loyal to Epitafio, the giant gets to his feet, startling two boys who have come from afar; they glance at each other, hug each other hard and exchange a few prayers. As though on springs, Mausoleo bounds over to the boys: Don’t let them make any noise … Don’t let these two ruin your lucky day.
Before the boys who have crossed so many borders realise what is happening, Mausoleo jumps on them and, ordering them to be silent, turns his glassy stare on these boys who can no longer expect anything of a man.
When the eyes of the boys he is subduing are finally subdued, the giant gets up and returns to his post by the door. Here, thinking of the words that Epitafio said to him earlier: ‘I’m doing you the biggest fucking favour anyone has ever done you,’ he watches as those who came from other lands drift off to sleep once more.
But shortly afterwards, while he is throwing a few punches, the giant’s fists fall to the ground like wounded birds: his glassy eyes have met those of a man who is also awake and who is staring at him with an inexcusable air of dignity and pure hatred.
For a second that could easily be an hour, Mausoleo and the young man defying him weigh up their silences, their angers and their fears. Then, he who cannot bear to suffer the scorn of justice and mercy, smiles at the giant, sits up, throws his arms wide and takes a deep, dramatic breath.
Convinced that he knows what the boy still staring at him is about to do, Mausoleo gets to his feet and, in a trice, crosses this cell that he embodies, and growls: ‘Don’t even think about it … fucker … Don’t you dare fucking scream!’
Half a metre from the young man about to scream, Mausoleo leaps and the two bodies roll across the floor, waking those still sleeping, who watch in terror as Mausoleo’s arms and legs close around the young man who dared defy him.
As he squeezes the body he is subduing tighter, Mausoleo covers the boy’s face with his hands and whispers: ‘Stupid fucker … You didn’t have to do that! No one gets to do that to me!’ The giant’s voice begins to rise as, out of the corner of his eye, he looks at those who have crossed so many borders and are now huddled even closer to the walls.
When he has finally subdued his rival, Mausoleo feels all tension drain from the body and, listening to the voices that have begun to whisper all around, he pinches the nose of the man fast losing his foolhardy strength.
One after another, as the defeated boy’s lungs grow weaker and the giant’s anger is transformed into pure hatred, those who have come from afar fall silent, turn their faces away, cover their ears with their hands, and turn their howls into hushed sighs.
Feeling the panic of the chest that can no longer breathe in his own chest, Mausoleo realises what he is doing and, without quite knowing why, releases his fingers: the choked lungs greedily gulp in the stale air of the cell and, for a brief instant, the boy the giant is subduing begins to struggle again.
But before the lungs of the young man being reborn can expand completely, Mausoleo pinches the nose again, feels panic take hold of the creature he is crushing and, smiling, releases his forefinger and thumb: he repeats the exercise two, three, four times.
When the young man he is asphyxiating finally succumbs, Mausoleo’s arms and legs feel the life draining from the body that they will not, that they cannot let go.
Without relaxing his grip, Mausoleo turns his attention to the window and stares at the deep blue sky: there is no sign now of the solitary cloud. But the birds that crossed the space earlier now fly back in the other direction. The last breath of life leaves the body of the young man and in that moment Mausoleo is looking at the horizon, which seems to quiver.
Thinking about the seagulls on his spit of land, Mausoleo returns his gaze to the inside of the cell and hugs the body of the boy ever harder: he will not let him go until his own body begs him to stop, until his legs, his arms plead with him to give up, for the love of God.
When it is all over, Mausoleo lays the body of the boy on the floor and feels a shudder run through him: he cannot understand while he still feels as though he were clasping something. Why he feels as though something is clasping him.
Shrinking back, the giant looks at what he has done; then, he looks out the window as the horizon comes crashing down, seems to collapse, and then he tries to look at his hands: in that moment his glassy eyes explode as though someone, the someone who is clasping him, were pummelling them from inside.
The liquid trapped inside his head streams out in torrents, transforming the face of he who has been re-baptised, while this man, Mausoleo, repeats the words that Epitafio said to him: ‘Take that look off your face, stick out your chest … I’ve freed you from having to be one of them!’
Getting up off the floor, Mausoleo jumps across the corpse and paces his cell, while the creatures who crossed the borders continue to stare at the walls and cover their ears.
Leaning against the door, the giant closes his eyes and runs his fingertips over his face. But he cannot manage to work out whether these are his cheeks, his cheekbones, whether these are his features.
The Book of Estela
I
‘Like the dead,’ Epitafio says again, breaking the sudden silence that has come between him and the woman he so loves.
‘You were very tired,’ says Estela, pushing away the plate of food she has hardly touched, simply toying with the food while they talked.
‘But I slept longer than I should have … Now I’m running late.’
‘I tried to wake you … I called twice, maybe three times.’
‘I didn’t even hear the phone,’ says Epitafio, sitting up and looking out at the courtyard of El Teronaque. ‘I wish I had, that way I’d have had more time.’
‘I wanted to tell you about the checkpoints and to ask how things are going with that giant of yours.’
‘They’ll show up here and we won’t be ready … I bet they’re all still asleep inside.’
‘No … you don’t know that,’ Estela says, finally deciding to take the plunge and, half-closing her eyes she adds, ‘Aside from what I said about El Chorrito, there’s something important I wanted to tell you.’
‘Now … you want to tell me now?’
‘What?’ Estela yelps in surprise, clenching her jaw.
‘Do you … do you really have to tell me right now?’ Epitafio says, prepared to accept the consequences of these words.
‘No, fine … whenever you like.’ Estela mutters through gritted teeth, ‘It’s not going to change anything anyway.’
‘I’m looking out at the courtyard and they haven’t brought any of them out yet,’ Epitafio says, by way of apology. ‘So it’s not fair, you saying that.’
‘It’s not fair …? Not fair … Well, fuck you!’ Estela explodes. ‘You always get to decide.’
‘Calm down a second … Please … Don’t start now,’ Epitafio pleads, clambering out of the Cheyenne and racing towards the building that overlooks El Teronaque. ‘I swear, I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got things sorted.’
‘When you’ve got things sorted … Bastard!’ Estela screams, jumping to her feet. ‘Fuck all the things I need to get done … I’m such a pushover.’
‘Please, I’m begging.’
‘A pushover, and a fool for worrying … for thinking you might actually give a shit.’
‘Seriously … Estela,’ Epitafio pleads, coming to a sudden halt as he sees a convoy approaching El Teronaque. ‘Fucking hell … He’s arriving right now!’
‘Just let me fucking tell you what the fuck is going on with us,’ Estela snarls, pacing her room furiously.
‘I can’t … Señor Hoyo … It’s a clusterfuck here,’ Epitafio splutters, breaking into a run again. ‘We’ll talk later.’
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