A woman came into the room and put her hand on Paolo's hair.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Paolo shook his head.
“Do you want to eat something?”
“No, I want my father.”
The woman crouched in front of him. She sighed. “Your father is dead, you know.”
“Angel.”
“Angel is not your father.”
“He loves me.”
“I don't think so. He has done you a lot of harm.”
The woman believed that Paolo was traumatized because of the years spent with the murderer. She had read papers written by experts in psychiatry that explained how an attachment could develop between victims and their abusers, and how this often formed a binding link. She had read a lot of things, but she knew nothing about the feelings Paolo and Angel shared.
Soon after, the town of Puerto Natales inaugurated its new Court of Justice with much fanfare. It was a very tall, impressive building, with lots of steps leading to a huge entrance guarded on each side by a statue that was half lioness, half woman. The recently elected mayor was dedicating the court to his voters, vowing to uphold his campaign promises of a larger police force and less leniency for criminals.
In an immense marble hall in the center of the building, the mayor was about to unveil a surprise.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he exclaimed as he got ready to pull on a tarpaulin. “You'll understand the meaning of my mission when you see what I am about to reveal. You'll understand how determined I am to make an example of our city as a sanctuary of security for us and our children.”
The mayor felt very sure of himself: what was simpler than setting apart good from evil, good people from bad people, honest people from dishonest ones?
He pulled on the tarpaulin. The cloth fell away like the sail of a boat that sagged for lack of wind. A chorus of ohs erupted from the onlookers.
“This guillotine,” explained the mayor, satisfied with the effect it had produced, “has been built entirely in Puerto Natales, with the trees of our forests, felled by our best lumberjacks. Its wood has been cut in one of the city sawmills. Its parts have been assembled in one of our factories. A guillotine one hundred percent Chilean! It is for you! Let it be the symbol of our intransigence!”
The crowd burst into applause.
Ricardo Murga had died at the right moment after all. He would never know what his last tree had been used for, or the unusual metamorphosis it had gone through.
Inside the jail, Angel was awaiting trial.
His cell smelled of urine and mildew. Once a day, he was entitled to a ten-minute walk. The sadness of the place and of his life as a whole weighed on his mind all the time. He could not think. They had laughed at him when he had asked for access to the library, since his file said he was illiterate. No one guessed that he had learned to read just by listening to Paolo's lessons with Luis. No one knew how much the years spent with the child had changed him; and no one would have believed it anyway.
To keep his hands busy, he engraved his name on the walls of his cell with a tiny piece of wire torn from the box spring of his bed. Angel Allegria. Angel Allegria. Angel Allegria. It was the only thing he could write, the name that life had given him and that sounded so ironic to his ears.
On his birthday, he started to draw a cake and candles. A fine dust of plaster remained suspended in the air like sparkles, and they stuck to his eyes and brought up tears.
His trial took place the following day.
In the courtroom, he looked for Paolo among the crowd. The child was not there. Angel felt both relieved and hurt, but he hid his grief and sat silently in the box for the accused.
A few people spoke. His entire life was stripped apart, fact after fact, offense after offense, crime after crime, until nothing, or almost nothing, was left untold. At the end of the trial, he was just an empty shell.
Only a few hours later, his sentence was read: Angel Allegria was condemned to death.
He was taken back to his cell, where he lay down on the narrow bed. His life was behind him. The only things he had left were the memories of the years of wind, solitude, and happiness with Paolo. But now that he was far from the child, he feared for him, his health, well-being, and future. And no one was willing to give him any news.
Looking at the ceiling, he wished they would execute him as soon as possible and put an end to the worries churning in his head. He called for a corrections officer.
“I want to die,” he said.
The guard laughed. “You're in luck.”
“Kill me, then.”
The guard shook his head. He explained that convicts on death row were not executed that simply. It would take time. The lawyers, the judge, the clerks had to file a lot of paperwork and go through complicated administrative procedures. It would take weeks, perhaps months. Heads were not savagely cut: it was done by state-of-the-art equipment.
Paolo had been put in the care of a family in Puerto Natales. He attended school and was well fed. He did not cause any problems to the decent foster parents in charge of his education. He was calm. Very calm.
Unknown to everyone, he kept a box under his bed in which he had placed the yellow lucky charm. It had become sticky, flat, and dirty after remaining so long in his pocket. The sweet was the only tangible memory he had of his life with Angel. He had lost all the other gifts: the fox; Delia's painting; Luis's money; the record, which he had left at Ricardo's; and even the knife. All these gifts were like little Tom Thumb's bread crumbs: they had been scattered along the way, only to be gathered up by others—especially the money.
At night, questions plagued his mind.
Where was Luis?
What had become of Ricardo's house?
Were the children still coming to dance on the grass?
Was the lovely lamb of Punta Arenas still alive?
And the Belgian alpinist?
And the nice lady at the bank?
There was no one to answer these questions.
One day Paolo inquired whether he could visit Angel in jail. He was told that it was not possible. Children were not allowed to visit prisoners on death row. Besides, he was not to love this man, this murderer, anymore. It was not normal.
So Paolo shut himself in his room. He did not understand the meaning of all this. He took his head in his hands and waited. By dint of waiting, he hoped his heart would wear out and stop beating. What other way was there to stop loving someone?
A long time passed before Paolo was told that he had come of age. He was now eighteen years old. How people determined his age was a mystery, but it meant that from then on he could do whatever he wished, go wherever he wanted to, and dispose of his life as he pleased.
It was a cold, rainy morning. Paolo walked the streets at random and arrived by chance at the jail. He looked up at the high walls. The sky was pouring down on his bare head, onto the sidewalk and the barbed wire. Paolo realized that he was no longer a child. This thought had a strange effect on him, as if the transformation had happened suddenly, without his being aware of it.
He stopped in front of a shop window facing the jail and looked at his reflection. He was not very tall, but his square shoulders and his unshaven cheeks gave him a manly look. He wondered if Angel would recognize him.
He smiled and crossed the street in a steady stride. In a glass cubicle, an old guard was half asleep.
“I've come for a visit,” Paolo said, knocking on the window.
The man opened his eyes slightly.
“What name?” he grumbled.
“Angel Allegria.”
“The murderer?”
“Yes.”
The old guard rubbed his long neck with a wrinkled and yellow hand. Paolo thought he probably had a sore throat.
“You want to see Angel Allegria?” the guard said again, frowning. “Are you a member of his family?”
“Almost,” Paolo said. “I knew him well.”
; Slowly the old man got up. He brought his face close to the speakerphone.
“You're lucky to be alive,” he blurted out. “The others who came across Allegria can't say as much.”
Paolo just smiled. He had given up trying to explain that he owed his life to Angel. His life—and much more.
“Can I see him?” he persisted.
“No,” the old guard answered. “He's dead. He was executed last year, didn't you know?”
Paolo remained frozen on the sidewalk, the rain dripping on his head. No, he hadn't known. No one had deemed it necessary to tell him.
“I'm sorry,” the old man said as he sat down again. “That's the way it is. Justice was served.”
Paolo took a step back. The top of the jail had disappeared under the clouds. He looked again at the old guard, thanked him for the information, and turned on his heels. He did not know what he was going to do with his life, but he had a very definite idea of how to spend his day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
NOTHING HAD CHANGED. It was still the same landscape, stony and hostile. From the gravel on the path, the rocks rising from the ground, the expanse of parched land crushed by the sky, beaten by the winds, and whipped by the rains—this torn fragment of Chile where men struggle to keep standing: this was the birthplace of Paolo.
Having lived in town these many years, Paolo was shocked by the ruggedness, and could not believe he had been born here. He had only a vague memory of his mother: a skinny, bony, and dark woman. She had carried him in her womb, in her narrow and inhospitable belly. That was her story. Her heart had probably been composed of the same hardness rocks are made of.
He passed by the ruins of the shed that Luis had so poorly built and quickly abandoned when the first rains had come. Then he saw his house, its low decrepit facade, and its only window, darkened by the closed shutter.
He stopped a moment to catch his breath. Gusts of rain lashed his face. He wondered whether coming back had been the right decision, or if keeping only the dream, the memory of the place alive would have been better. A few steps ahead, the mound of dirt under which his parents were resting seemed untouched. Nothing had grown on top of it, not even weeds. Paolo forced himself to go to the fox's grave, also barren of weeds, then made his way to the door of the house.
When he opened it, he felt a bolt of electricity at the back of his neck. It reminded him of his science class at Puerto Natales high school, and of the frogs that had been electrocuted and yet still looked alive in death.
Inside, the house was cold and dark. Paolo groped his way to the window, opened it, and unlocked the shutter. A draft rushed in and he heard a noise. Turning, he saw dozens of small rectangular envelopes on the table. The wind was blowing them around the room. He closed the window and bent down to pick up the scattered mail. He made a pile of the envelopes and thumbed through them as if they were a pack of playing cards. The room was as he remembered it: the bench, the fireplace, the shelf, and, at the back, the small recess. How had these envelopes arrived here? On each of them was his name, neatly written: Paolo Poloverdo. And his address: The House at the End of Earth, the Last One Before the Sea.
He tore an envelope open at random. Inside was a postcard, a picture of Madrid; on the back had been copied the verses of a poem by Federico García Lorca that Paolo did not take time to read.
The second envelope contained a postcard from Rangoon, Burma. The third a postcard from China. The fourth from Naples. The fifth from Mexico. The sixth from Paris. … On the back of each of them, the same person had copied poems written by Paul Éluard, Keats, Aragon, Quevedo, and Jules Supervielle.
Paolo stood near the table, feeling feverish as he emptied the envelopes and let them drop to the ground. When he finished, the ripped envelopes covered his shoes up to his ankles, and it seemed that the whole world rested in a jumble atop the table. A world of colors, of sunsets over the Tagus, of snows blanketing Red Square, of shimmering light over rice paddies, of deserts and dunes, of swarming cities, of overcrowded trains, of Chinese people on bicycles, and of dark oceans.
Dizzy, Paolo went to sit on the bench. Luis had accomplished his mission and it was here, on this table, where blood had been spilled and dried, in this lonely house, that he had made all these cities, all these marvelous countries meet. It was as if this house were the crossroads of all roads, and as if all the words of all the poets of the world had decided to meet under the eyes of a child. Luis had transcribed their songs of love, life, beauty, and rapture, unflinchingly. It was a breathtaking way to ask for forgiveness.
Paolo gathered the cards in his arms and rested his cheek on them. At that moment, the door opened.
Paolo uttered a cry and shot up.
“Who's there?” a voice asked.
“It's me,” Paolo answered cautiously.
He saw a woman walk in. A woman covered by a large rain cape.
“You are … Paolo Poloverdo?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“So you're back?”
Paolo looked at her: she was young, her cheeks were very red, locks of wet hair were glued to her forehead. He wondered what to answer. Was he back for good, or only for a while? He looked at her hands and noticed a small piece of paper showing under the folds of her cape.
“I will light a fire,” he said. “It is cold.”
He got up and went to the recess. Just as he hoped, there was still a good amount of dry wood. When he came back to the room, the young woman had not moved. She watched him get busy in front of the fireplace, and she smiled when the logs started to burn.
“I was wondering whether you really existed,” she said.
“And?”
“It seems that you do.”
Paolo picked up the fire iron and poked at the blaze. Lots of sparks went up the chimney. The young woman came near him.
“Here. This arrived yesterday.”
It was the most recent card from Luis. Paolo opened it. It had come from Valparaiso. And this time, no poem was written on the back. Paolo smiled.
“Good news?” the young woman asked.
“Someone wishing me happy birthday.”
“Is it your birthday?”
“Apparently.”
The young woman sat near Paolo.
“Happy birthday,” she whispered.
She removed her cape. Underneath, she wore the uniform of the Chilean post office.
EPILOGUE
UNDER THE YOUNG woman's postal uniform, Paolo discovered many wonderful things.
Terusa was twenty-five years old, was very patient, had a marvelous laugh and a rusty bicycle that grated and rang joyously on the stones of the path.
On a sunny morning, Paolo made a decision. He dragged the table over the uneven slabs of the floor and pulled it outside. In the clear spring light, one could still notice the red stains, the traces of blood in the thick grooves of the wood.
Paolo ran into the house, rummaged feverishly inside the recess, then came out with his father's ax. He was per-spiring a little and was out of breath, but he was determined. He raised the ax above his head.
The blade came tumbling down on the table and drove into it, deeply.
By the fifth blow, the table split in two, like an overripe fruit.
By the seventh blow, the legs flew into pieces.
It was warm. Paolo drank a gulp of water directly from the bucket.
After an hour's work, the table was in bits. Paolo kept the drawer because there was no other place to put the corkscrew and forks. He looked at his work. He felt better.
Around him, the light was changing, subject to the tantrums of the winds and the high clouds. He went inside to put away the ax, and brought out a shovel.
As he approached the mound of dry dirt, he remembered the dark night when he had held the storm lantern to provide Angel with light. It had been the night of the first soup. It seemed to him it had happened a century ago.
He dug a hole next to the fox's grave. Then he put the piec
es of the table in a wheelbarrow, pushed the wheelbarrow over the stones, and threw its contents into the hole. His throat was as tight as if he were at a funeral.
Just then, he heard the jingle of Terusa's bicycle coming up the path and turned around. She looked happy and radiant, her empty mailbag flying behind her. Paolo let go of the shovel.
“What are you doing?” Terusa asked as she got off her bicycle near the hole.
“I'm going to make a new table,” Paolo answered.
Terusa leaned down. She looked at the pieces of wood scattered at the bottom of the hole. It seemed strange, but she loved Paolo as he was, quirks and all.
“Good,” she said. “In the meantime, we'll eat on the floor.”
She went to park her bicycle. Paolo took his shovel again and filled the hole. When he finished, he packed the dirt down a bit. He was thinking of Angel, and of Angel's large hands. Then Terusa called to him.
Lunch was ready.
Some time later, Luis came to visit. He had just buried his father in Valparaiso, on one of the slopes overlooking the bay. It was the reason he had come back to Chile, for the father whom he had not seen for so many years, and who had died alone after having dispersed children, wives, and bottles of wine all around the globe.
He told Paolo how much he had missed the love of his father and how big a void this was in his life, even today.Delia, then other women, had fallen into this void, this emptiness. They had passed through it; nothing had stopped their fall. This was why he had come back to Chile alone.
“The day of the funeral, I saw my brother and sisters again,” he told Paolo and Terusa. “My sisters have put on weight. They have had children and I think that they are bored to death. As for my brother, the one who dreamed of becoming an actor, well…” Luis concealed a smile behind his hand. “… well, he has really become an actor! I did not know it because I don't watch TV, but there was a good number of fans waiting for him at the gate of the cemetery to get his autograph.”
“Come in,” Paolo said. “You must be thirsty.”
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