‘Are you going to hang up on me?’ Estela asks, looking through the window at the dying day.
‘…’
‘Did you hang up on me?’
Taking the cordless phone from her ear, the woman who so loves Epitafio takes two paces back, brings her gaze back into the room and shouts: ‘Fucking bastard! … You hung up on me!’ she stares up at the roof beams and amuses herself, gazing at the shadows that hang there like water-filled balloons.
A shriek of bats that have just emerged from their refuge, the decommissioned water tank and the cellar that can no longer be used because the air is toxic and unbreathable, rouses Estela, and ShewhoadoresEpitafio tears her eyes from the ceiling, tosses the telephone on to the bed and, smiling at the silence, announces: ‘You’ll be desperate to know later, and I won’t fucking tell you.’
For his part, having stumbled once or twice crossing the courtyard of El Teronaque, Epitafio bursts, shouting, into the rickety building where his men and the nameless who have come from other lands are sleeping. One after another, as the sons of the jungle are doing in their house, the men obedient to HewhosolovesEstela open their eyes, just as those who will soon be unable to put an end to their weeping begin to stir.
In the minutes that follow, in the house perched on the summit of El Teronaque, and in the house buried deep within the jungle, everything will happen at breakneck speed: the boys will prepare to set out again; Epitafio’s men will enter the room that Mausoleo has not been guarding; the two boys will bid farewell to their wives and their children; Epitafio’s men will once again lash out at the soulless creatures born beyond the borders; the two boys will creep into the jungle, while those loyal to Epitafio will dress the godless come from other lands in white waterproofs.
In the orphanage of El Paraíso, meanwhile, everything is happening at a leisurely pace: sitting on her bed, looking around for her stockings, as the calm brought on by sleep drains from her face and her features harden, Estela warns: You’ll ask me … You’ll beg me to tell you and I won’t tell you a damn thing.
Stretching out her leg and trying to hook her stocking with her left foot, Estela studies her nails for a moment and her face hardens until it is almost stone: she is angrier than ever for giving in to Epitafio’s whims, for painting the nails the colour he wanted. Swallowing a thick clot of saliva, never imagining that what she is about to say is a prophecy, Estela announces: ‘I’ll never give in to you again and you’ll never know what’s going on with us.
‘I won’t tell you a thing, not even if you beg … not even if it means leaving you for ever,’ Estela continues with this prophecy she does not realise is a prophecy and her features relax. Then, she puts on her stocking, pulls on her boots and, as she ties the laces, thinks about Cementeria: ShewhoadoresEpitafio cannot know that the death of her friend is the crux of her prophecy.
Getting up from the bed again, Estela walks over to the window, opens it and hops up on to the sill: before her eyes the day is dying and memories flood back as they did when she arrived here. Shaking her head ShewhoadoresEpitafio once again reads the names carved so long ago: but this time, she tries to scratch out the words with her fingernails.
When the green of her nails has flaked away and her ten fingertips have spilled her red blood, Estela stops scratching the ancient stones and turns her attention back to the daylight guttering out and in doing so sees, between her room and the mountains that rise like the charred bodies of animals, her men bustling away: this is what she asked of Father Nicho when she went down to the living room for the cordless telephone: ‘Tell them they need to be ready … that we’ll be heading off soon.’
Quickly irritated by the commotion among her men and the failing light. Estela spits on the spilled blood, jumps down on to the floor and walks away from the window. In front of the bed, ShewhoadoresEpitafio turns off her telephone, winds the charger cable and reaches over to the pillow to take the bands she uses to tie back her curly hair. Then she surveys the room for a moment and hurries towards the door.
As she negotiates the corridors and the stairwells of the orphanage, Estela plaits her hair, accidentally squashing the antennae on her right hearing aid, which generates a blast of interference, reminding her of the cordless phone back in her room. But it is not forgetting the telephone that worries ShewhoadoresEpitafio, but Epitafio’s voice asking: ‘How is Father Nicho?’
‘How is Father Nicho?’ Estela says aloud and, hears the words, wonders, Why did he ask me that? Then, feeling a new and unfamiliar warmth in her belly, ShewhoadoresEpitafio hurries on and as she reaches the great hall of El Paraíso she hears the faint, feeble whisperings of the priest she is thinking about, a few metres away, saying his goodbyes: ‘Take care, my dear Sepelio.’
Turning to face Father Nicho, Estela understands that the fire in her belly is a warning and she longs to feel again the terrifying suspicion she earlier drove out: Something strange is going on here … Why the fuck did I dismiss it … when I already sensed it? Stopping in her tracks as Nicho hangs up the telephone and realises that he is no longer alone, Estela clenches her jaw again and silently says to herself: I shouldn’t have come … I didn’t need to stop here.
For his part, as he walks with Estela towards the door that frames the ultimate spectacle of every day — in the distance, the sun is dropping behind the mountains — Father Nicho feels his heart pounding in his chest, and, as he wonders whether she overheard what he was saying to Sepelio, he forces a smile, stretches his arms out and presents Estela with his two fists.
‘Which one will your surprise be in today?’ Father Nicho asks, hurrying to catch up with Estela.
‘You seriously want me to play this game?’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio says, moving away from the priest. ‘Or is this another trick?’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Father Nicho says, catching up with Estela on the threshold of the main door to El Paraíso. ‘What have you got into your head this time?’
‘As if you didn’t know.’
‘As if I didn’t know what, for God’s sake?’
‘Best that I leave now … That’s all I want you to know,’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio says, walking faster and feeling the fire in her belly suddenly blaze white-hot.
‘Without even giving me a kiss … You’re going to leave without so much as a hug?’ The priest takes Estela by the shoulder and, feeling the pounding in his chest grow faster, he forces his smile into a laugh. ‘Who knows, it might be your last kiss?’
‘What did you say?’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio snaps, jerking her shoulder away from his hand. ‘What the fuck did you say?’
‘What the fuck did I say when?’
‘Don’t take me for a fool,’ Estela shouts, hurrying even faster, then turning her head, she adds: ‘Or maybe that’s another trap?’
‘First you talk about tricks, and now this … What is this trap you’re talking about?’ the priest says, still laughing. ‘I just wanted one last …’
‘You really want to know?’ Estela roars, cutting Father Nicho short and, stopping a few metres from the huge truck, says: ‘I’m talking about the fact that I talked to Epitafio.’
‘Epitafio … you talked to him?’
‘And he said … “Give him my regards,”’ Estela announces, and as she does so, feels the swelling in the belly ease, ‘“Maybe I’ll get to talk to him one of these days … I haven’t heard from him in ages …” That’s something else he told me to tell you.’
‘He was half-asleep,’ the priest says, quickly trying to get out of this fix. ‘You know as well as I do that he never remembers things when he’s half-asleep.’
‘He was wide awake when I talked to him,’ Estela says as she opens the Ford Lobo, and it is her turn now to force a smile as she says: ‘So, now, I pick the left.’
‘What?’
‘I thought you had a surprise for me?’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio
revels in Father Nicho’s embarrassment, then, keying the ignition of the Ford Lobo, she puts an end to the conversation: ‘Just joking … You’ve got nothing that interests me!’
As the huge truck pulls out of the esplanade of El Paraíso, followed by the two battered trailer trucks in which those who have come from beyond the borders are once again jolted and jostled, out of the corner of her eye Estela watches the captain, who has turned back to look at Father Nicho. ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio demands as she silently says to herself: Why didn’t I ask Epitafio?
But there comes no response, either to the question she posed herself or the one she asked the soldier, and Estela floors the accelerator of the Ford Lobo, eager to get away from the place where she has just left the six children she was carrying in the red trailer truck where the nameless who have come from other countries have found hope back within their reach. In the pale blue truck, on the other hand, everything is as it was before they arrived at El Paraíso: the broken bodies of women strew the floor.
As Estela rolls down the window, in rushes the dust of the sierra, the shadows falling now like a cloudburst and the screech of bats blotting out the sky. Why didn’t I ask you whether you’d called? Estela silently mutters as she flicks on headlights of the hulking truck illuminating the road dappled with the last flashes of dusk: I never ask the questions I need to ask and never say the things I need to say.
How come I can never manage to tell you what I feel sure I am definitely going to tell you this time? ShewhoadoresEpitafio protests, then, shifting gears, she unwittingly accelerates the speed of her thoughts and of the moment in which she finds herself, with her men, with the men and women who have come from other lands, who right now, in the red trailer truck, are clustered around the oldest of the soulless creatures abducted in the clearing known as El Tiradero: he is the unexpected glimmer of hope.
This line here tells me … before you die, eleven years will pass … You will have enjoyed a new, rich life … You will have lived through days of light and warmth … You will have left behind this terrible, painful period … All this grief will be little more than a memory … a turning point between one life and the next.
Meanwhile, as he watches the convoy move away, Father Nicho takes out his phone and calls the number that will carry his voice to the heart of the Madre Buena plateau and, when he is sure that the message is being recorded, he says: ‘They set off early … She is heading for La Carpa … You need to move now … They won’t be able to hold her at La Cañada for long … I’m not even sure I want them to … It’s better if they don’t try to hold her up … She has more men with her today.’
No sooner has he hung up than Father Nicho begins to have doubts about the telephone that he is holding, and the lines connecting it to the telephone that has just recorded his message: it is something that happens every time technology intervenes in his life. And so, shaking his head, the priest redials and spits out the same message: ‘I don’t give a shit that we agreed it would happen later … I want you to be waiting for her as soon as she arrives!’
Despite having recorded his message twice, Father Nicho cannot convince himself that it has reached the men who will soon pile into their fake security van and leave Lago Seco, heading for the mountain range that Estela’s Ford Lobo and the two battered trailer trucks are scaling once again. And so Father Nicho taps in the ten digits that connect his unease to the heart of the forest surrounding El Teronaque.
But Sepelio will not answer the ringing telephone, because at that very moment he is in the courtyard of El Teronaque, lining up the nameless creatures that Señor Hoyo is about to buy.
II
Bloody lucky we made it in time, Epitafio thinks, staring into the distance at Señor Hoyo’s approaching vehicles, then, heaving a sigh, he turns and heads back to the spot where his men have just finished lining up the godless and orders: ‘Everyone to their posts!
‘You too, Sepelio!’ Epitafio barks, removing and replacing his cap as the sun dips below the mountains and the sounds that daylight keeps at bay begin to stir. Then, hurrying his legs, grabbing Mausoleo and thinking: Thank fuck you called, HewhosolovesEstela sees the man he has just shouted at slip something into his pocket and says: ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘What the fuck … am I … doing?’ Sepelio mumbles, and says the first thing that comes into his head: ‘I couldn’t find my pencil!’ as he silently complains to Father Nicho. How many times do I have to tell you not to call me when I’m with Epitafio? It’s a fucking miracle he didn’t hear the phone ring just now! Sepelio says to himself and, taking his hand from the pocket in which he has just slipped his phone, he heads over towards those who are waiting, newly bewildered, pale as death and paralysed with fear.
‘You better hope you brought them with you!’ says Epitafio, standing where the tezontle meets the withered grass, watching as the bats from the forest and those from the jungle come together in the sky above El Teronaque. ‘How could you forget your …’ growls HewhosolovesEstela, but before he can finish his threat, he hears Sepelio shout: ‘I’ve got them here! I’ve got the pencil and the piece of paper!’
‘Just the sort of thing I’d expect from that fuckwit,’ Epitafio mutters to Mausoleo, turning his head and nodding to the vehicles that have just parked up in the distance: ‘Señor Hoyo always insists that we give him the numbers.’ Then, turning again and thinking: If you hadn’t called I’d still be sound asleep, HewhosolovesEstela looks over at Sepelio, who is thinking: I need to call him before he calls me back, as he draws alongside the voiceless who have crossed so many borders.
He won’t give up until he’s talked to me, Sepelio says to himself as he reaches the trembling figures wrapped in baggy white raincoats of those whose souls have been ripped from them. Then, staring at the nameless and with the ghost of a smile, Sepelio clears his throat and bellows: ‘What does the Fatherland want right now?’
‘The Fatherland wants to hear their names!’ Epitafio replies, setting his legs in motion once more, trailing in his wake the giant Mausoleo, who, to avoid witnessing what is happening in the courtyard, turns away and looks at the woodland that surrounds El Teronaque: this is the hour when the day is not yet gone and the night is not yet come.
‘You heard the Fatherland!’ Sepelio bellows, scanning the faces of the soulless, who have been walking for days, while on a piece of paper he is holding he notes down the names that they utter, which stir not a single echo. The space echoes only with the swift transformation of the hours: the cawing of crows is supplanted by the hooting of owls, the chirrup of cicadas drowns out that of the grasshoppers; meanwhile tapirs, ocelots and peccaries fall silent, giving way to the voices of coyotes, peacocks and foxes.
‘You, there! What’s your name?’ Sepelio barks as he meets a wall of silence. ‘You understand what I’m saying or what?’ he taunts the man, who, much as he wants to, cannot manage to open his lips: ‘Why won’t you tell me your name? … Fucking hell … Why is there always one fuckwit who wants to play the hero?’ As though they understand what is happening, the hum of twilight is momentarily hushed, so that everyone can hear the silence of he who will not open his mouth.
Taking a step towards the young man betrayed by the chorus of tongues that wrong and dishonour themselves, Sepelio furiously yells: ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, refusing to give your name? … The Fatherland itself is talking to you!’ When his words serve only to magnify the mutism of the young man who was kidnapped thirteen hours since, Sepelio feels a new hatred kindled in his soul and, gripping his pencil as though it were a knife, forcefully turns the man’s face towards Epitafio.
‘The Fatherland demands that you say you name right now … Say it now or it’s all over!’ roars HewhosolovesEstela, resuming his walk and trailing Mausoleo in his wake. In spite of this threat issued by the Fatherland, the young man clenches his jaw, holds to his stubbornness and fi
xes his eyes on those of Sepelio, whose fingers unintentionally snap his makeshift weapon: fragments of the pencil lie scattered on the ground.
‘Say your name right now … Say it or the Fatherland will say: Enough!’ roars Epitafio, as Sepelio picks up a thick piece of wood and the young man closes his eyes and resigns himself to being no more than the silence of his passing through the world. ‘The Fatherland says: Finish him now!’ yells HewhosolovesEstela and the nameless one heard his vertebrae crack: I shall not say my name nor show them my soul, however much they beat me.
At six o’clock or seven … they dragged us outside again … They asked us whether we had family back there … They demanded their phone numbers … so they could demand a ransom for us … One man refused to speak … They broke him with a stick … but still he would not give them his name … The name given him by his parents.
Picking up the scattered pieces of the pencil from the tezontle and jumping over the body of the man who has just expired there, Sepelio comes face to face with another of the soulless and, more loudly than before, says: ‘You know what the Fatherland requires … and you’ve seen what will happen if you say nothing!’ The anguish of the godless who fled their lands rings out again, and with it the twilight hum of the forest.
Suddenly aware of a sound he has not heard here before, a sound that stands out from all the others, Epitafio looks over his shoulder and sees Señor Hoyo approaching moments before he shouts: ‘I’ve come up with a new business arrangement.’ Let’s see what he’ll come out with this time, HewhosolovesEstela thinks and, trailing Mausoleo behind him, he walks towards the figure surrounded by his right-hand men: ‘I bet he’s going to try and beat me down on price,’ Epitafio whispers to his giant, ‘but I’m not going to let myself be beaten.
‘We’ve already agreed terms,’ Epitafio says, forestalling any greetings.
‘How can you be so short-sighted?’
Among the Lost Page 9