Nest in the Bones

by Antonio Di Benedetto

  Cataldo shakes his head, then blurts out:

  “No.”

  That’s enough. He’s started talking. Now he’ll keep going.

  “No. It’s about something else.”

  “And that is…?”

  “The thing with Colorada.”

  “What Colorada? The one who goes around with you?”

  “Yeah. About the marriage.”

  “You’re getting married?”

  “What do you mean, are we getting married?” His tone becomes clouded. “You’re the one that’s getting married!”

  The expression on Romano’s face – half-surprised, half-scornful – does him no good. It is as if Cataldo has already passed into another stage in which Romano has given his word he will marry Colorada. That is why he rushes him:

  “You promised! You promised!”

  The stocky Romano is no longer crouched down, readying his willow rod. He has stood up now, and the rage has risen up into his face.

  “What did I promise, you son of a bitch? Say it, what did I promise?”

  And he hurtles forward, the branch raised high, trembling and thin as a whip.

  Cataldo slips agilely down the ravine. Romano follows him. Cataldo runs up the other side, scurrying over a little trail with his hands and feet, and the veterinarian tries to do the same, but he has trouble, because his weight makes the brittle soil crumble.

  At the top, the dimwit is waiting for him with a stone. When the big man peeks over the edge, Cataldo steps back, leaving him an open path. Romano comes up and brandishes his whip. Cataldo places the stone in front of his right eye and closes his left. He sees his hand with the stone lined up with his enemy’s chest. He cocks back his arm, brings it forward, and hurls the stone. Romano feels the blow to his chest like a wound. It’s not so bad. But he drops the branch and brings his forearm up to protect his face. He thinks something else is coming that will destroy it.

  Cataldo flees.

  As he runs, he says to himself:

  “Now he’s been warned.”

  “She asked me to, right in front of you.”

  Her husband grumbles, but he admits it. Besides, at the time, he himself had assured them they needn’t worry, because he was happy that day, proud even that Mrs. Ignacia’s husband had invited him over and would share his table with them.

  “You’ll have to come around, Amaya. I’m asking you…There’s so much that only a woman can see.”

  Mrs. Ignacia will come around, of course, once in a while on the weekends, and a woman will stop in from time to time to air out the bedrooms. Gaspar will stay a while, too; but you know, a man just isn’t the same…

  You can’t really call the house vacant, with Gaspar inside, even if Gaspar was generally out, with his wicker rods, detecting minerals…It wasn’t a secret: no one was going to refuse to let him dowse with his implements, nor would his master have any competitors out to buy those dry hills, bare and lonesome…He’d also sell machinery to plow the land in Luján and Maipú, where the vineyards were growing scarce. That was the commercial zone assigned to him.

  But this Gaspar, so fruitless with his dowsing, had another mission: to keep his eye on emigration. Vegetable patches of half a hectare, or one, or two, little vineyards that crept out behind a family’s house, were squeezed between the expansion of the villages; but it drove the farmers to despair, as they saw prices and yields stagnate, while their children grew and needed more things; they were little use there, and they began to dream of the city.

  His master, the civil servant, couldn’t be seen there looking into who was leaving, what their needs were, and the effect it all had on prices. Someone else did that for him, and that someone was Gaspar. The purchase was formalized in a notary’s office in the city, through intermediaries. The lands were useless, and the families of the farmers turned them over for a few pesos, thinking that everything was finished there, that it was time to move to the capital, without knowing very well why, maybe to set up a neighborhood store, get the girl and the children to work there…Useless lands, acquired for mere pesos, in bulk, by the hectare; someday they’d be worth something, someday they’d be priced in square feet.

  Amaya catches wind of something. But Mrs. Ignacia doesn’t let her suspect:

  “A handout from my husband, so they can leave, so they don’t protest against the government, which does its work, even if they don’t see it. They’re ignorant.”

  Mrs. Ignacia thinks the land is worthless. That’s what her husband told her.

  “You know, Leonardo. You were there that day.”

  “They could have left behind a caretaker!”

  Amaya has an answer for him: Gaspar’s there. But that’s exactly what she shouldn’t say, even if her husband knows.

  Amaya adopts a new affectation without noticing it: on those evenings, she wears flats and flared skirts. If he is there, she always imagines, they will walk a lot, on the path that extends from the villa and flanks the foothills. In fact, they never go further than the eucalyptus stands that form the vast backdrop of the property.

  She doesn’t always find him there. Sometimes, he’s asleep by four in the afternoon, face down, with the stove lit, one leg hanging out of bed, dressed, uncovered. Amaya has seen him from the hallway.

  “They’ll come in August. I’ll be gone by then.”

  “Really? What about the girl’s school?” What she means is they can’t leave the city, where her friend’s daughter will have classes until the summer starts. What she means, almost, is there’s no need for Gaspar to go. Besides, why should he?

  Gaspar laughs at her confusion:

  “No, it’s not them who are coming. Laborers are coming, to make the pool.” They will install a swimming pool. They have four hundred square meters set aside, overgrown in summer with short, spongy grasses, muddy now, because the ditch running past it has overflowed.

  “And you, do you have to go?”

  “I have to sometime.”

  “Does that mean your work’s done?” Amaya keeps on. “There’s no advantage to being here?”

  “Yeah, but…I need to keep going.”

  “Keep going just to keep going?”

  “Yeah,” Gaspar confesses in a low tone.

  Amaya doesn’t understand; but she begins to open herself to him:

  “Everyone who makes me feel good leaves…” They are standing under the eucalyptuses. Amaya leans on a silvery white trunk. The water roars tumultuously in the ditch. Without knowing, Amaya has been staring at the soil strewn with slender withered leaves gone brown, soon to rot.

  “I had a lover…”

  “Let’s walk,” Gaspar offers delicately.

  And they walk between the smooth trunks of the trees.

  “I had a lover. He was thirty-one years old. He killed himself.”

  He falls quiet. Amaya thinks it’s more and more certain that she could have had José Luis.

  “Give me matches.”

  His dear brother gives them to him.

  “What about money? You want a twenty?”

  “Not now.”

  Cataldo wants matches, that’s all.

  He makes a little fire and waits amid the budding vines or in the bottoms or behind a half-destroyed house of mud brick…He’s studied the man’s habits. When the veterinarian goes to the village to see his parents, to have a home-cooked meal, or to bring back something or other, the rain of rubble comes down on him. Sometimes Romano manages to spot the imbecile, peeking over a wall, running off into a stand of poplars…Other times he doesn’t. But he knows it’s always him.

  A pebble, two, three, swiftly. They hit him in the face, on the back, they make his legs dance when he turns and tries to stop and face off against Cataldo where he grabbed him before. The veterinarian’s pockets are stuffed with rocks, but he almost never gets the chance to use them. He knows who it is. He could go to their house and tell them, It’s that half-wit of yours. I’ll kill him…But he prefers to stalk him. Not o
n the street, not in the fields. He can’t use the shotgun there. He’s done it before, though, and he was within his rights. Eventually, the dimwit will go back to the chicken coops, maybe even go in. And then…

  Cataldo, with his little fire, just embers, so it won’t smoke, is waiting behind the bulrush awning over the tomatoes. When he has the man in his sights, he hurls two, three, six stones, direct, thudding, and he sucks up his snot and tears, lamenting to himself alone:

  “She’s yours and you won’t take her, moron.”

  Another rock, another sniffle:

  “And I love her more than you do…”

  Amaya sees he is washing clothes. She sees them hanging on the line.

  “Give me the sheets. I’ll wash them.”

  “I have lots. They left me a drawer full of them. Embroidered. You want to see?”

  “Give me something else, then. Whatever needs doing. Just say.”

  “Find me a woman who will wash clothes. I can pay her.”

  “I’ll bet!”

  It’s a blow to Amaya’s good mood.

  But Gaspar reconciles with her effortlessly:

  “Don’t get mad.” He gives her a friendly smile.

  Later, because they’ve fallen silent, despite everything:

  “I wish I was that kid that killed himself.”

  “You do…?”

  “Yeah.”

  At that moment, Amaya could cry. She can, so she lets herself.

  “For you, I wish I was like him. Obviously, as far as other things go, I’m happy how I am,” he says with easygoing modesty.

  Amaya thanks him, in her heart, for moving her one moment and then giving her this soothing joy.

  “I could be a nice memory, Amaya,” he says when he sees she’s recovered, and it is impossible to say precisely whether his tone is naive or premeditated.

  Amaya doesn’t want to know. She is just thankful that he is as he is and that he says things that flow through her.

  She feels soft, docile before a voice that seems still not resolved to say everything.

  “The girl’s got a fever, don’t you see?”

  “Fever?” Amaya gets scared, and puts a hand on her forehead. “No she doesn’t.”

  “There’s measles going around.”

  “Measles…? She already had it.”

  “Look at her eyes.”

  “What about them?”

  “You can’t see a thing! You’re as dumb as Colorada!”

  Amaya seethes, and feels sorry for her sister.

  Colorada curls up on her side, as though expecting a blow, but it has already struck her. She’s understood.

  Everyone harbors a private bitterness, and from that moment no one eats comfortably.

  Her husband has something else, a fury of suspicions.

  “And don’t you go anymore!”

  “To where?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “What is it, Leonardo? What’s going on?” She begins undoing the knot in Suspiros’s napkin. “María, help her to bed, now please.”

  Colorada feels useful, being called by her real name, María; she livens up and takes Suspiros away. She doesn’t know Amaya only remembers her name when she feels a wretched compassion for her.

  “In front of the girls, Leonardo, why?” she asks, desperate after his ultimatum.

  “Because whoever it is, you’re not going anymore!”

  “That’s impossible,” she says, almost imploring. “We promised…” She implicates him in the promise.

  “I didn’t promise anything, and you’re nobody’s servant, I don’t care if he’s the president.”

  “But I’m not serving anyone, I’m just watching, that’s all.”

  “So…?” he says, and gets up.

  Amaya scoots back, pushes away her chair. A sign that she won’t argue any further.

  The man bites his tongue. He goes to the bedroom. He lies down and rolls on his side, so his back will be turned to her when she comes in.

  Cataldo is filthy, filthier than in the summer, and that’s something, because the filth is harder to see in winter. Filthy from so much hiding and waiting, sprawled out on the ground, stomping in the mud, crawling under bridges…

  These are things Colorada doesn’t notice. Amaya tells her:

  “Say something to Cataldo. Otherwise, I won’t let you keep seeing him.”

  A surface precaution: don’t get her sister too dirty. For the rest, no other warnings are needed. Cataldo can’t have children. They’ve known that for years.

  After the warning, Colorada notices something, it’s true: his nose isn’t the way Amaya says noses ought to look, or his hands, or his heel, coming out of the back of his espadrille…But she won’t say anything. And that’s what their harmony is based on: never pointing out their shortcomings, never throwing their clumsiness in each other’s faces, never hurting each other…

  But:

  “You’re going, Cataldo.”

  “Yeah, you know that. My uniform’ll be here soon.”

  And since he sees she’s sad:

  “But I’ll get it taken care of before I do. I’ll make him come round, one rock at a time…”

  He smiles, content.

  Colorada doesn’t react, she doesn’t know what Cataldo is talking about. She’s still leaning over.

  Cataldo understands: it’s because he’s going. He should prove to her it’s not his fault:

  “It’s because of the war. They need me. The war in Abyssinia. The gringos are there to kill, that’s all they care about. And they’ll make it here soon. This Mussolini’s in charge of them, you know?”

  Colorada is frightened by this there to kill, and that look from his poor friend recalls to Cataldo the responsibility his dreams have laid on him:

  “You won’t be left alone, because I’m going to handle the thing, you know? You want me to?”

  The imbecile would like to know how it can be that he’ll leave and she won’t be left alone; but she’s too defeated, too crestfallen, and she doesn’t try.

  Gaspar passed by in the agent’s hardtop Chevrolet. He usually comes back in it after driving around for days. It was eleven. He’ll eat something, maybe, he’ll sleep. Or he’ll stay there, under the eucalyptuses, waiting for her to arrive.

  Amaya hurries through lunch in the kitchen. On the bed, she sets out Suspiros’s pleated smock for school.

  She calls them to eat, and urges on her husband, who’s dawdling. But she regrets it. He looks at her with renewed distrust. Amaya is drained, she’s frightened. She’s always afraid in certain situations, she knows well why.

  She dresses Suspiros, gathers her notebooks, takes her to the door, and watches her go.

  Her husband is in the corridor, his wool vest buttoned up the front. He glances at the newspaper, so quickly it’s clear he’s already read it cover to cover.

  “Where are you going?” And he looks at her as if he saw every part of her, but he only notices two things: the flared skirt, the flat shoes. Also, though he ignores this, the eager face and the longing to flee.

  “Around here. I’ll be there and back in no time.”

  One step.

  Her husband has abandoned the newspaper.

  He doesn’t hurry. She won’t move. Not even when he hits her. She won’t shout, she won’t put up resistance. Not even when she’s fallen onto the tiles and he’s kicking her.

  She won’t move. He has time to step forward slowly and let the memory burn him: the troops beneath the spring shower, taking the main street into the village; the nighttime shooting drills in the neighboring hills, flashing like lightning through the murk; Amaya, deranged with joy, stumbling the whole day long, and those escapades, Where are you going?, To the camp, to see the tents, the machine guns; the departure, in trucks that pass without cease, crunching and crunching those tenacious nocturnal beetles that fall down from the streetlamps…And that whimpering of hers, beside him on the sidewalk, which seemed like nothing, at f
irst…

  She won’t move. He knows. Not when his hand reaches her, nor when the hand falls on her.

  And in turn, Amaya knows he will beat her and beat her. It will be the same.

  Pummeled, but dry; livid, but dry, dry she has taken cover in her daughter’s little bed, curling up on the mattress, with the door closed.

  The servant brings her lips to the keyhole and whispers her merciful accord:

  “Ma’am, Ma’am…Do you need anything?” she asks, waiting for an answer that doesn’t come. “Do you hear me? Do you need anything, ma’am? A tea…?”

  Then there are little raps calling her:

  “Mama, it’s me. Let me in, Mama.”

  It’s a serious voice, concentrated this time, Suspiros.

  Amaya goes over to the door.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  She opens.

  “How?” she asks, astonished.

  “There’s no class. Papa said it’s in the paper.”

  And she explains, but testily, as if she were very tired:

  “The epidemic, Mama. Measles.”

  And she asks:

  “Can I lie down, Mama? Can I? Will you let me…?”

  Then Amaya notices the thing her husband mentioned: the febrile glimmer in her eyes.

  TEN DAYS OF SCHOOL CLOSINGS. FLU AND MEASLES EPIDEMIC, the papers say, to keep from alarming anyone. But they themselves hint to the contrary: Congress has approved obligatory diphtheria vaccination for the entire province.

  “Diphtheria,” the doctor says, despotically. “Your daughter’s not the only one, ma’am.”

  Amaya lets him leave, with his rash indifference. When he’s out the door, she says to her husband:

  “Let’s call a different one.”

  He accepts and goes out to find one.

  Amaya hears the truck motor: her husband will take a while.

  She goes back and contemplates the girl in her fevered sleep. She remembers that she has the prescription in hand, and calls to the servant.

  “Go to the pharmacy. Have them fill this.”

  She’s alone. Sucked in by the silence.

  Suddenly, the tears come, a silent sob that doesn’t bow her over.

  “My fault,” she blubbers, associating the idea of punishment with what she and Gaspar have done.