by Paul Pen
The yelling reached the living room with another current of air. The man scanned the darkness of the room, guided by the flashes of silvery light that seeped in with every movement of the curtain. When he arrived at the armchair, he found what he expected. The orange glow came from a piece of material that burned on the floor. Near it, a green glass bottle dripped gasoline.
“It’s a Molotov cocktail,” the man explained in a low voice. “But it didn’t smash when it dropped. And the cloth’s come away.”
Before Grandma could react, a second window shattered. Another volley of glass surprised them as a second firebomb fell into the room. It was thrown in too much haste. The flame on the fabric had almost gone out before it fell to the floor, and it burned down even more with every turn of the bottle, which, like the other, remained intact. It was reduced to a band of incandescent pores on the edge of the material.
The second smash made the daughter of the family even more anxious, and she used the key on the mermaid ring to open the gate. Squatting at the top of the stairs that led to the living room, she listened in on what was happening down below. Suddenly the windows on the second floor shattered. In her bedroom and in her brother’s. Both bottles smashed when they hit the floor. The daughter felt heat on the back of her neck. Turning around, she saw a tongue of fire lick from inside her bedroom to the middle of the landing. The fright made her stagger backward to halfway down the stairs.
“Look where she was,” her father said, seeing her appear. “A front-row seat to watch the result of her handiwork.”
His daughter turned around.
“I didn’t want this to happen,” she stammered. “They’re burning the house down!”
“And it’s all your fault,” said the mother.
At that moment Grandpa returned. “I’ve turned the motor on and let the boat go on a course for the mainland.” The darkness, the burning smell, and the cold in the living room made him break off. “What’s happening?”
“They’re trying to set the house on fire,” replied the man.
“Come on,” Grandpa reacted. “Quick.”
“What’re you going to do?” asked the daughter.
Grandpa saw his granddaughter on the stairs, but paid no attention to her. “Come on,” he whispered to the others from the kitchen door. “Come with me.”
“What’re you going to do?”
Nobody answered her question.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Grandpa insisted.
A constant crunch of glass accompanied the family’s movement as they used the glow from the fire to guide them. First Grandpa took his wife’s hand. The man, woman, and boy then reached them. They went into the kitchen.
The daughter remained in the living room, still halfway up the stairs, silhouetted against an increasingly orange background. All your fault. Those were the last words that her mother had said to her. She hoped they would really become her last words. As far as she was concerned, they could all burn to death in there. The lighthouse could fall on top of them.
In the kitchen, Grandma hugged her husband. “I’ll serve you a plate at every meal, every day,” she whispered into his ear. “To imagine you’re with me.”
“You won’t have to imagine,” he said. “Just promise me you’ll be strong. Strong as a—”
“Cactus,” she said, completing the sentence they’d repeated so many times during the toughest periods of their marriage. “Strong as a cactus.”
“Let’s go,” said the man. “We have to do it now.”
The woman positioned herself in front of the boy. Holding hands, they were the first to go down the stairs that led to the basement. The man went up to his parents. He stroked his mother’s lower back.
“Mom,” he whispered.
She nodded. She kissed Grandpa’s cheek, then walked toward the staircase still holding his hand.
“Mom,” her son insisted. His parents’ fingers came apart. The man spoke to his father, barely a shadow in front of him.
“Delay going out as long as possible,” he said to him. “Then tell them what we discussed, and . . .”
A sudden realization took his breath away.
“Dad, what if they come down to the basement? We have to build the false wall, the door’s still visible, they’re going to—”
“Son,” he cut in. “We’ve both seen the fire upstairs. This lighthouse is coming down. They’ll find nothing but rubble. From now on all you have to worry about is what happens in the basement. I’ll take care of everything up here. It will all be fine.”
The two men pressed their foreheads together, Grandpa with his hand on the back of his son’s neck. They breathed in synchrony.
Then the kitchen door opened.
“You say that all this is my fault,” the daughter called out, “but it wasn’t me who hid an innocent girl’s body.”
Her mother heard her from the basement. She handed the boy to Grandma and pointed at the door that led to the main room of their new home. “I’ll be right back,” she said.
She went back up to the kitchen, the timber stairs shaking under her feet.
“But it was you that ended the life of another innocent child,” she screamed at her daughter. “Your own brother!” The stairway creaked again on her way back down to the basement.
A final bottle crashed against the kitchen window. It hit the wall like a missile, then dropped down the stairs, the whole family holding its breath each time it hit a wooden step. Each time the glass clinked on the concrete floor. The bottle withstood the pounding. It remained in one piece when it landed at the bottom of the staircase.
“You’re going to pay for what you’ve done!” the voice yelled outside. It wanted to say more, but a police siren interrupted it from a distance. The missing girl’s father fled from the lighthouse, down the gravel path that crossed the plot.
The man kissed his father’s cheek. Pieces of glass that had rained on them dropped off them onto the floor with the movement. He didn’t look at his daughter before going down.
“No way!” she said when she understood what was happening. Her singsong tone made it clear she was mocking them. She moved Grandpa out of the way so she could see down into the basement. Only the rickety stairs separated her from her parents, who turned away without listening to her.
“This is what you’re plotting? For all of you to go down into the basement? To hide forever?” She feigned a contained guffaw. “You’ve got to be kidding, right?”
“We have no choice.”
“You and your choices,” she answered. “Just one thing.” The daughter gestured for silence. “Hear that?”
The police siren was now taking the last bend before reaching the lighthouse.
“Do you really think I won’t say anything?”
“Please,” Grandpa said behind her, “you don’t have to—”
“Shut up,” his granddaughter interrupted. Then she addressed her parents. “Ask me not to say anything.”
“Don’t do it,” her father pleaded from the darkness underground.
“Please . . .” her mother begged, unable to say another word because fear took her breath away.
The daughter laughed at them. “Poor things,” she said.
And that was when, without having made a decision to do so, Grandpa pushed his granddaughter, who rolled down the stairs. A deep grunt emerged from her stomach when an eyebrow was cut open on the splintered edge of a step. Not even when he heard his granddaughter’s moans did Grandpa consider himself responsible for that shove. Which was why he closed the door at the top of the stairs with no remorse whatsoever, and left the kitchen through the swing door. A wave of heat welcomed him in the living room. Discovering the intense glow at the top of the stairs, he smiled. It was what they needed. “They’ll find nothing but rubble,” he said again.
Sweat pearled his face. He heard the police siren approach and the timber split on the floor above. He felt the rise in temperature in every part of his body. Sweat so
aked his back. It moistened his eyebrows. The wind from outside lifted the curtains as if they were the veil of a bride’s ghost trying to flee through the window. The draft fanned the fire on the floor above. A bluish light tinted the floor. The siren was on the other side of the door. A policeman banged on it. He shouted something.
Grandpa took a deep breath to relax his body.
He thought of the warmth of Grandma’s face on his chest. He thought of her frantic prayers, which had woken him each morning since the night they’d hidden the body in the septic tank. And of the thousands of sighs that had consumed much of both of their lives. He thought of her fingers separating from his. And he thought of the fact that the lighthouse was coming down. The lighthouse where he’d worked for years, the home where he’d brought up his only son, and where his two grandchildren had grown up. He thought of all of that, and a profound sadness was set off inside him.
Then he advanced toward the front door. Feeling the wave of sorrow wash through his body. He gripped the key his wife had turned not long ago. He waited for the tide to bring a new current of pure sadness with the memory. He turned it when it was about to surface. The emotion inflated his stomach. He let it sit there. His chin began to tremble. He didn’t stop it. He sobbed. He opened the door just before the fiercest waves rushed over him.
In front of the officer, he let it all out in a heartbroken crying fit.
Like a storm breaking at sea.
And he used that state to tell his story.
The man fought with his daughter on the floor, in front of the basement door. The fall down the stairs had disoriented her, but she was still aware of what was happening. What they intended to do with her. A fingernail separated from the flesh when she tried to cling to the concrete floor. She screamed. Her father’s hands closed around her ankles. He remembered lifting the missing girl’s body in the same way. He pulled hard on his daughter’s legs. She kicked. She tried to grip the floor with sweaty palms that squeaked when they slipped. Another tug from her father took her even closer to the basement’s threshold. She let out a desperate scream. The adrenaline that ran through her body in that final surge of rage allowed her to reach the bottle that had fallen down the same stairs before her. She held the hot glass while her father pulled her so hard that resistance became impossible. Some sparks still fought to survive on the dry part of the piece of material. They consumed it in nibbles of ash. The concrete floor scraped her face on the final stretch. She smelled gasoline when her nose slid over one of the splashes that had come from the bottle when it fell. With her free hand she tried to grab the doorframe, but her strength failed.
And the door closed with her inside.
The man turned the key, knowing that he might never use it again. Not if Grandpa put up the false wall that he had to build. Then he deposited his daughter’s body beside the table at the basement’s entrance. She felt the curved form of the hot glass with satisfaction. Praying that her father wouldn’t discover it on her.
Grandma wandered around the room. “So, this is the basement,” she said.
Her son put an arm over her shoulders.
“It’s our house,” he said.
He lifted his other arm, inviting his wife to position herself under it. The boy ran up to his father and hugged him from the front, resting his face against the man’s chest. The four of them made a perfect family portrait.
Then they heard the glass scraping along the floor. And the grunt the daughter let out from the effort of the throw.
The boy turned to look in the direction of his sister.
Which was why the thick edge of the bottom of the bottle hit him on the mouth. His bottom lip split in half. Blood and saliva streamed down his chin. Pieces of glass opened unnatural mouths on his face.
Then he felt the liquid. The same liquid his parents and grandmother felt. Grandma swallowed some of the gasoline, her mouth open in shock.
That was when the strip of fire and ash turned the liquid into heat.
Then the heat became pain.
The daughter moved away from them, away from the fire. She sat on the floor, her back resting against the door, watching her family beat themselves to put out the flames.
“Why are you hitting yourselves?” she even asked. She was hypnotized by the dancing flicker that set alight her father’s clothes. Her mother’s braid. Her brother’s hands. And all of their faces. She also saw her grandmother direct a final look of hatred toward her, just before the fire turned her eyes into gigantic black pupils.
She lay on the ground, curled up in the fetal position while her family screamed, rolled on the floor, turned on faucets, ran into rooms. Her irises flashed orange as she stared at the floor.
She heard her father ask her for help.
“Leave me in peace,” she whispered, while her family burned in front of her. “Leave me in peace.”
28
Supporting her by the elbow, the man guided Grandma to the dining table. His daughter was there reading, sprawled out across three chairs.
“Get up,” her father ordered. He spat a large quantity of saliva. He still struggled to control the lips sculpted by fire.
“There’re three others free.” She gestured at them with the book.
“Get up,” he said again.
The daughter obeyed the instruction with heavy movements, purposely making the chairs she was vacating screech. She rounded the table and sat in the same way on the free ones. The man pushed a chair in for Grandma from behind her.
“Sit down.” His mother felt for the seat before letting herself drop. He sat in front of her.
“We’re going to take the bandage off,” he said, inserting his legs between his mother’s. “But we’re going to be OK whatever happens. We’re ready for anything. Right?”
There was silence.
The daughter looked up from her book.
“Right,” Grandma whispered.
The man undid the knot that kept the gauze in place. Pulling one of the ends, he unwound the five layers of material that covered Grandma’s eyes, five turns of the bandage all the way around her head. Before completing the last, the dressing came away by itself. It was left hanging from her nose. He discarded it on the table.
He had to hold back his tears when he saw his mother’s hairless eyebrows. And the wrinkled eyelids forming unnatural folds. In six weeks he still hadn’t gotten used to the burns that the mirror showed him on his own face, but seeing them on his mother’s was even worse. He covered her eyes with his cupped hands, protecting them from the bulb’s light.
“Don’t open them yet,” he said. “Give them time.”
The daughter closed her book. She gathered up her legs and rested her elbows on the table, brushing the hair from her face and watching like a spectator as her father took away his hands.
“Now,” he said. “Open them.”
Her eyelids trembled, struggling to unstick from each other.
“Open them,” he repeated. The smile forced on his lips to receive his mother’s gaze disintegrated as soon as she’d blinked a few times.
“Are they open?” she asked.
He swallowed. He spoke to his daughter first. “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” he said to her. Then he answered Grandma. “Yes, Mom, you’ve opened them.”
They both knew what his reply meant. Grandma tried to dry the single tear that she shed, but it took her a while to find the side of the burn that felt wet. She still hadn’t gotten used to the topography of her uneven skin. Then she kissed her crucifix.
“We were ready for anything,” she reminded her son. She felt for his face with her fingers. She stroked the line of stiff hair that he struggled to shave. “Right?”
He nodded.
“And anyway, I’ve already spent six weeks not being able to see,” she went on. “I wasn’t even sure I could be bothered to learn again.” Between her fingers she felt her son’s lips form into the misshapen layout of his new smile.
The woman, wh
o’d watched the scene in silence, leaning against the archway that led to the hall, took a deep breath, moved by her mother-in-law’s strength of mind. She thought about keeping what she’d come to say to herself, but her tongue was burning too much for her not to say anything.
“Bad news,” she announced.
Her husband slumped back into his chair. He wanted to bury his face in his hands. As soon as he felt the confusing surface of his skin, he took them away. “Worse news?”
“It’s as I thought,” his wife replied, annoyed by the peculiar whistling that came from her burned nose. As if it were a murder weapon, she held up the plastic cylinder that had arrived a few days earlier in one of Grandpa’s deliveries.
“We’re going to need the second bunk, after all.”
The man immediately recalled the afternoon in the mattress store where they’d bought the bunk bed, thinking of a third child who never arrived.
“But not now,” he said to himself. He’d covered his face with his hands again, ignoring the strange feel of his unknown features. “Not now.”
“Wow, look what things you two find time for down here,” the daughter said.
“It wasn’t here,” her mother cut in. “You know it wasn’t in the basement.” She held her hand to her belly, her eyes searching for her husband’s. Wordlessly they both remembered the only night it could’ve happened.
“So what does this mean?” the daughter continued. She looked at her father with her eyes wide open. Finding in the baby a reason to finally bring an end to the imprisonment that had gone on too long. Six weeks. The man snatched at her jaw, trapping it like a fly.
“Wipe that smile off your face.” He squeezed the healthy skin of her cheeks with loathing. “Don’t you see what you’ve done to Grandma? To all of us?”
“You can’t have a baby here,” she replied, fighting against the pincers that gripped her.
“You don’t get to decide what happens in this basement.” He squeezed until he felt his daughter’s teeth digging into her skin. Then he let go of her in disgust. She rubbed her cheek.
“You’re already holding me prisoner,” she said. “Don’t do it to a child as well.” She dodged her father’s hand before he could catch her again. The chair fell backward when she escaped. The draft generated when she slammed her bedroom door behind her made the bulb hanging from the living room ceiling swing.