‘Don’t you girls slip into a trance now,’ he said as we climbed that never-ending corkscrew.
We couldn’t laugh. With her right hand Paloma was clutching the door handle. Her left one was resting on my shoulder, either to stop herself from toppling sideways, or to stop me from rolling around on the floor. After a dozen or so bends, she couldn’t take any more.
‘Let’s stop for some air,’ she said. ‘I feel sick.’
From the roadside, perfectly still, the valley of Santiago stretched out before us, a sunken basin between the mountain peaks with the odd light dotted around. The road we’d just come from showed not a trace of either the hearse or us; the ash was falling so heavily that it was impossible to leave tracks. Paloma was struggling to breathe and had covered her nose with one hand, holding on to my arm affectionately with the other. Or perhaps it was merely to prevent herself from collapsing. If she’d only taken a few deep breaths she might have been able to calm down. Felipe and I had no trouble breathing that thin air. He wandered off in the direction of a cave that had somehow managed to cling on to some snow, even after the heat of the preceding days. He moved swiftly through the ash, just as he used to dash along the beach when we were children, ripping his clothes off despite my mother’s cries of ‘No, Felipe! Put your clothes back on right this minute. The flag’s red, it’s not safe!’. Felipe would strip off and run bone naked into the waves, hurling himself at the sea the only way he knew how: like a wild animal. He didn’t dive in to swim, but as if to drive his scrawny body into the spray, or rather the waves: to pierce them. I pictured Felipe running – sprinting at lightning speed – across the black pebbly sand of Chinquihue, picking his feet off the ground as he reached the water’s edge, taking off. With his legs still in the air his body gradually disappeared into the water, until the inevitable happened; until, from where I stood waiting (from the dry shore, from the obedient shade of the shore), I could no longer see anything but his hands, his fingers breaking the waves that in turn broke him, tossing him into a whirlpool, swallowing him up for fifteen seconds (fifteen seconds exactly, which I counted, terrified), until he emerged again shaking and spitting. He was soon back again, tumbling into the water, slicing through it until, eventually, he came out, numb, breathless and blue, his eyes sore and his teeth chattering, telling me how wonderful, how refreshing the water was.
Felipe approached the cave where the enduring snow held on, completely impervious to the ash, and from there he shouted back that there was still some left. ‘Come and see! I’ve never touched snow before,’ he said with his back to us. Then he turned to face us and held out his arms, smiling. His hands were cupping a horrible grey mush, slushy droplets of which were dripping through his fingers.
I pleaded with Felipe for us to get back on the road. It was getting dark and the ash was driving me mad, sticking to my skin. I wanted to make a move before I got stuck there, buried in the stuff. Felipe glared at me, challenging me to put up with fifteen minutes of ash on my shoulders. After some time trying to persuade him I managed to get us all back into the hearse: Felipe annoyed, Paloma indifferent, and I calmer, although my sense of relief was short-lived. The road ahead was a black horizon. Most of the street lights had burnt out and the route to Uspallata had become impassable. We had no choice. Felipe came off the main road and, heading deep into the valley, losing himself there in the middle of the mountains, he stopped the car and turned off the lights.
Night fell for the first time.
5
I really don’t like being stuck indoors, no, what I like is to keep moving, on foot, by bus, or, last but not least, in the General, but never stopping, if I wanted to stop I’d be better off crossing the cordillera on the back of a donkey like that poet they just dug up; no sir, I like moving, even more so at night, yeah, cos it’s lovely roving around at night, your thoughts all clear in the cold, because our thoughts come out better at night, everyone knows that, the sad thoughts blend in with the black, that’s why I take my walks so late at night, in the deepest depths of night, ever since the first time I walked out of Iquela’s house, when we were kids and my Gran Elsa left me in Santiago for a few days, just a few days, son, I’ve some important things to do, she said, and I repeated, im-por-tant, because I liked separating words into their syllables, especially words I didn’t understand, or im-por-tant things, yeah, and my gran left, at first for a long time, but in the end for far too long a time, and the house in Santiago began to feel small; in fact I couldn’t breathe in there, that’s it, I had no oxygen, because back then Rodolfo was still in the sickroom and I couldn’t stand his sweet and sour smell, the smell of rotten fruit, of chemicals, which crept right up your nose and down into your belly, and as that smell spread, everything around me began to rot and become sad, that’s what I thought, cos in that house even the ficus plants were weeping, which is why I left, the smell was killing me and I didn’t want to die, no siree, so I grabbed my things and snuck silently down the hall, crossed the front garden and that was that, but even three or four blocks from the house I couldn’t shake that feeling of having sand in my throat, as much as I swallowed and spat it wouldn’t go away, no, and I was scared that the smell had infected me and that it would circulate in my bloodstream forever, and that’s why I began to pull up flowers, roses at first, which I pressed against my nose to snort up all their scent, sniff them dry, yeah, fistfuls of roses that I used and then threw on the ground before going after the acanthus, with their long white tongues and sweet perfume, so delicious I would suck on them like flutes, and so I went about gorging on nectar as I picked the city flowerless, snatching dismembered petals, petals that I tore from the sepals and the stamens and the corollas and the anthers and the receptacles, which I left floating in the gutters, there among the tadpoles I abandoned those shredded flowers, white canoes in the muddy water for the tadpoles to paddle with, pistils floating with their ugly bug captains, and there I was, winding my way through Santiago munching on the stems and pollen and hanging my thoughts out on the electrical cables to see if they’d light up, like those trainers you often find dangling up there, suspended white planets in the dark sky, that’s what I was aiming for, to leave Santiago totally flowerless and to rule over it; I wanted all the pigeons, all the mosquitoes and those long-tailed meadowlarks to be mine, yeah, and I wanted to own the dogs too, to be lord and master of all the stray mutts in Santiago, to be their father and their mother, to open their little mouths, their reeking muzzles offering me their silvery slobber, the thick, bubbling slobber for me to store, the rabies from all the mutts dripping into a plastic bottle, that’s what I wanted, and then to put that bottle against my own wet muzzle, to sniff it and try it and gulp down every last drop and leave Santiago happy, a calm, disease-free capital, and I wanted to be lord and master, king of the mollified mutts, that’s what I was thinking as I strolled along a wide, flowerless street, when suddenly I felt an awful shiver run through me, the prickle of a bad thought, because I thought about Iquela rotting in the smell of Rodolfo, I pictured her sitting alone on the thick woollen Chilota rug my Gran Elsa had given her, telling me not to go back to the countryside, she didn’t like being left alone with her parents, telling me to stay, pretty please, and it was this thought that made me change my mind and go back to her, cos it was no fun being the king of Santiago with Ique rotting alone back there, cos we were going to live together, she and I, that’s what we’d promised each other, let’s live together for ever and ever? let’s be cousins? I proposed, and she told me no, I’m going to be your dad, and she drew a black, revolutionary moustache on her top lip and covered herself in the white sheet that I used to put on, and she handed me the pinkish dress that she hated, and we played at mummies and daddies; I was the mummy and she the daddy, of course, but after a while she stopped liking that game too and I told her I preferred being her pet, or, better still, her plant, I wanted to be the pollen, a part of the whorl, because we were learning the parts of the flower
s and I wanted to be a pistil or a stem or, OK fine, we can be related, but distant relatives, OK? like great-great-great-grandparents, that’s it, let’s be great-great-great-grandparents!, I cried, because each of us had four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents and thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents! let’s be great-great-great-grandparents!, and she explained that to be great-great-great grandparents we had to have children, and those children had to have children, and they too and then the next lot, but she and I didn’t want children, absolutely not, over our dead bodies, how were we supposed to have children when we were the children? great-great-great-grandparents, no chance! Ique said, and thank God she did, cos popping out babies would only further complicate things, complicate the maths with more and more tots hell-bent on being born, insisting on being added to the count when what we need is to take people away; babies, no sir!, and so we agreed we wouldn’t be relatives, why would you want more family, more blood, anyway? and then she asked me to promise that we’d live together forever, that’s what she said, that we’d swear on all the atoms, on my parents and the swallows that we would stick together, and I’d tell her, no, Ique, I can’t swear on those things, because those things don’t exist, and besides, I had a job to do, I had to look after all the animals and plants in Santiago, that’s why I couldn’t live at Consuelo and Rodolfo’s place, so I told her no, Ique, it’s best if we live together-apart, like me and my gran, together but not tied at the hip, and she moaned at me for a while but eventually gave in and swore that there’d always be a place for me at hers, even when we were grown up she’d keep a sofa bed for me; but how could Iquela have me stay with her insides poisoned? that’s what I thought as I tried, in vain, to make my way back to the house, because the night was black and my thoughts had got lost, had flown off somewhere far away and were nowhere to be seen, and I was thinking I needed a convertible car, not like the General, no, more like the Popemobile, to let a bit of air in, yeah, that’s what I wanted, Pope but never Pop, that’s me! because I wanted to be a lamb of God, to wander around grazing, wrapped in my woolly cloud, and to lie down on the grass there in Chinquihue and drink from the river, that’s what I wanted when I was a boy, that was until I saw that bleeding lamb hanging upside down, cos after I saw that I no longer wanted to be a lamb, oh no, but I did want a Popemobile to go and pick up Ique so we could steal flowers together, nibble on parsley roots and loquat shells, but I didn’t know how to get back, because my thoughts run away from me at night and I can never seem to steer them back, cos they’re as dark as night and they act like those frogs in the jungle, or like stones and ash, camouflaging themselves, that’s what dark thoughts in the black night are like, and that’s why I couldn’t find my way back and I got lost, yeah, cos Santiago was big, like big big, and there was no coast to get my bearings, and at that point I did get a little afraid, but just a little, because next thing I came across a stray dog, a pup with a black and white and brown coat, and I could see that he had ringworm and rabies and I thought maybe he could be my brother-pup, cos that mutt with his rabid face walked alongside me, loyal as anything, while I munched on acanthus, and we walked a lot of blocks together he and I, a lot, and we peed on street corners and my mutt licked my pee and then day broke and I still hadn’t gathered my thoughts, they were still lost in the night and everybody knows that the daytime thoughts and the night-time thoughts never find each other again, no, and I don’t know how much time passed, a week maybe, when one day the pigs stopped me while I was drinking from a fountain at La Moneda, the little pup sticking his tongue in the spring and me copying him, just bending over for a sip of water, but the pigs didn’t like that and the chubby one said they would lock me up, and I said, lock me up, never! I like to roam free!, but he grabbed me by the arm and threw me into the police van, and there was dried blood on the floor, thick and dark blood in a puddle that my mutt lapped right up, and the station was packed with people and even the cells stank, but not a Rodolfo kind of stench, no, it was more tangy, the smell of armpits and captives, that’s what I thought, and I looked at the faces through the bars, eyes brimming with vengeance and pity that made me bow my head, and there, on the ground, was my pup, literally shitting himself with fear, his tail tucked between his legs, his cold little muzzle pressed against my ankles, and the pig asked me what’s your dog called, kid?, and I replied, Augusto José Ramón and he’s got rabies, and the pig looked shocked and said, you might want to rename him, kid, and I shrugged my shoulders and he launched into an inventory of questions like what was my surname, my ID number, my date of birth and address, and I told him I lived in the gutters with the mutilated petals and the tadpoles, in the corollas of flowers, between the sweet yellow suns of the acacia, and he stared at me and asked, when was the last time you ate, you stupid prick?, and I thought, who does this guy think he is? I’m the king of Santiago and the acanthus, but I didn’t say any of that, I just replied with my name, Felipe Arrabal, and he wrote it down really slowly, as if he were learning the alphabet, all in big letters, big like the German, and I really don’t like capital letters, or capital cities or capital punishments, but I didn’t tell him that because he picked up the phone and rang the sergeant and repeated my name down the line, affirmative, Sergeant, Arrabal with Bravo, and I just sat there while he thumbed through files and forms with a clueless look on his face, scrunching up his forehead like a bulldog, the spitting image of Don Francisco, and then he hung up and said, impossible, and then in a gruff, angry voice, I wasn’t born yesterday, sunshine, don’t mess me about, what’s your name? to which I replied, Arrabal with B for Bear, for Beast, for Bigmouth, with B for Brute, I said, Arrrrrrrabal, and he looked me up and down with a big frown drawn across his brow, his face deformed and his mouth moving like a dog’s but without the drool, well that’s just not possible, so tell me your real name or I’ll knock it out of you, you little shit, I’ll bang you up in that cell where no one’s getting you out, and I repeated, Felipe Arrabal, my name is Felipe Arrabal, and there was Augusto José Ramón slobbering all over my shoes, and the smell of lonely people, and the pig’s booming voice, his red voice coming from his red face, which was bursting as he said, Felipe Arrabal is presumed dead, and I said nothing, and there were the pistils and the petals and the calyx and the drool bubbling away in the bottle of rabies, and there I was swallowing down the sand in my throat, eking out my quiet reply, whispering the words so I didn’t lose them there in that prison, so they didn’t turn grey and blend into all that metal; there I was, speaking slowly, looking him in the eyes, feeling the rabies-sodden muzzle against my ankles, and I said, to myself, which is how I used to say all the really important things, I said, pre-sum-ed-dead, and I shot out of there so fast they didn’t see me for dust.
( )
We decided to park up and try to get some sleep down in a valley, where the night had engulfed every last trace of ash. I could only make out a few sounds: the whistle of the wind, Felipe’s fitful breathing and the crackle of the crisp packet he’d bought at the petrol station, the contents of which Paloma was shovelling casually into her mouth. I waited, convinced I’d soon adjust to the darkness, but after a while I rubbed my eyes to force them into focus: there was the photo of Ortega Junior hanging from the rear-view mirror, and that day’s newspaper crumpled at my feet (ONCE AGAIN, it read, ONCE AGAIN). Paloma was now holding the map, drawing it in towards her nose and then back out again. Getting nowhere, she finally took out her lighter to shine over the page.
‘Los Penitentes,’ she said, before letting the flame go out. ‘I think we’re in Los Penitentes.’ (The penitent, the mournful, the grief-stricken.)
I explained that Los Penitentes was a valley beyond Cristo Redentor, crossing the Paso Los Libertadores, whereas we were on an unknown high plain, stuck in the middle of nowhere. Paloma unfolded the map and passed it to me, determined to prove we’d chosen to spend the night in Los Penitentes, that this was some kind of omen, but she
could no longer find the valley on the map. Felipe was sitting silently in his seat, steeling himself for the long night ahead, the mere thought of which was probably driving him crazy. I realised that it was my turn to convince them. It made no sense for us to spend hours cooped up in the front compartment, wide awake, staring out at the nothingness, so I suggested we all climb into the back.
‘We’ll be way more comfortable,’ I said, ‘don’t be so superstitious.’
Ortega’s ominous caution didn’t bother me; not after the ash, the lost corpse, and now Felipe’s increasingly agonised sighs.
So we clambered into the back compartment, Paloma acquiescent and Felipe bordering on autistic. For my part, I was quite enjoying myself. We settled down in a sort of semicircle, trying out different positions and doing our best to avoid the two parallel rails running across the floor (a coffin-gliding device). I found it roomy back there, and I was pleasantly surprised by the silky soft floor: a velveteen or even velvet lining. In the middle of the ceiling I could just make out a small light fitting (the strange urge to illuminate coffins). Just as my eyes were beginning to make sense of the interior layout, Felipe switched on the light to reveal a rear window, a dark sheet of glass separating us from the front compartment and the telling absence of windows down the sides of the hearse.
There were barely a few centimetres separating us from one another, and the solitary landscape, the isolation and the darkness supplied the perfect conditions for a kind of forced intimacy, a confessional intimacy. Paloma couldn’t contain herself any longer.
The Remainder Page 9