by Luis de Lión
—¡Oh, God!
He was nothing but a little bone. A little bone barely covered by a wrinkled skin, with two bulging eyes set very close to each other like they were sewn to the sockets, and a puckered up mouth that looked like it was just healing from having been stitched.
—Don’t you worry about a thing. As he gets bigger he’s gonna get fatter, too—said Señora Chus as she finished drinking what was left of her bottle of cane liquor. —It should be enough that he has escaped death. Who knows what great destiny is waiting for him.
Maybe what Señora Chus said was true.
It was two o’clock in the morning on the second of November, Day of the Dead.
—If only he’d been born yesterday, ¡but today!—said Piedad Baeza—. This little guy’s already given me a bunch to think about. He’s born half dead, he’s nuttin’ but a little bone, and on the Day of the Dead at that. But I can’t name him Deceased Baeza. No one’s ever heard of that; and the little guy sure would feel bad when he grew up and they called him by that name.
—Call him Santos. He was almost born yesterday, on All Saints’ Day—Señora Chus suggested.
—No—Piedad Baeza replied—. I’m gonna name him Pascual, which is the same as calling him deceased, except that it’s a saint’s name, so it means alive.
—What an ugly name you just come up with, vos Piedá. But, in the end, he’s your son, so do what you want.
From that day on, Pascualito started to fight against death for all he was worth: first his mama’s milk dried up on him and he had to survive feeding only on boiled water; then, measles and chicken pox attacked him at virtually the same time, a little after the whooping cough; and, finally, there were the continuous attacks of stomach worms. But it always seemed like, at the very last minute, when he was poised on the very edge of the grave, he’d grab onto anything—a root, a plant, a rock—and hold on for all he was worth to keep himself from slipping into the grave: as if to say that, no, his time wasn’t up yet.
Soon the general state of his health was almost beyond belief: he had such a sickly constitution and was always in terrible pain. And yet he started to grow, though slowly, stretching one millimeter a year, barely able to fill the little hollow places in between his bones with little pieces of flesh; meanwhile he learned to crawl, he learned to pull himself up on the one chair in the little thatched hut, on tree trunks, on stones; he’d fall down and hurt himself and the wound would look like it should be bleeding but his body couldn’t even spare a drop of blood; he learned to walk, stumbling along for years and holding himself up on whatever was around like the limpest scarecrow ever; he learned to talk, babbling through his nose the words that refused to come out of his mouth; he learned to play, but alone, because, even if he were around other kids, they would refuse to let him play with any toys at all; he learned to cry because all the kids would hit him, and all the while his mother was more and more convinced that instead of growing, he seemed to be stuck at the same stage of development—and sometimes she thought it was even like he was on his way back from life—until one day she realized that Pascualito had finally grown, realized that he hadn’t been going backward through time after all, but had been going forward all along and he would indeed live his allotted years.
—Piedá—a woman said to her one day—, I come to complain that that skinny-ass son of yours hit my son. And he drew blood.
—¿Really?—Piedad said to her—. I don’t believe you.
—Looking at that skin and bones son of yours . . . seems as though he wouldn’t hurt a fly. I sure hope you punish him.
Señora Piedad waited anxiously the whole day for her son to get home. The incident had happened in the morning and Pascualito hadn’t come home at all for lunch. Late that night he showed up and came into the house timidly, whistling, with his tail between his legs like someone who, in fact, wouldn’t hurt a fly; and when his mother asked him if it was true what he had done, he said it wasn’t and stared at the floor. But his mother kept on pressing, and when he lifted his gaze and saw that his mother didn’t have a stick of firewood in her hand to beat him with, and that on her face was an anxious smile as if to say that, even if it were a lie, he should tell her that it was true; and so he did.
—That’s what I want to hear, my son. You gotta learn to be a man. If I have to go to jail someday on account of something you do, I don’t mind.
And so Pascualito understood, at least to a certain extent, that he would have to defend himself against the kids that, for the time being, were his enemies; and from that day forward he could be seen going around with his pockets full of rocks and a slingshot around his neck like it was some kind of talisman against evil spirits. And it didn’t take him long to develop a deadly aim practicing on the chickens that would roam into the yard there beside his thatched hut, or firing rocks at the birds just for fun. As long as it was chickens and birds, the people just let him do it and then they would go gripe about it later to his mother, who didn’t pay them any mind at all since she thought of those deaths as her son’s contribution to the upkeep of the household. But when the kid got into slinging rocks at the other kids and at the old people, then they went to the local authorities and asked them to reprimand her son. Even back then, everyone was already saying that he was too much, that he was like the living devil. He would hide behind one wall or another when he saw someone coming; he’d slip the stone into the sleeve of the sling, pull back the bands, and ffffttttt, with this kid’s aim, the rock would hit the exact body part Pascualito wanted it to, even from a half block away.
But Pascualito soon got bored with the slingshot. He started to feel that it really wasn’t offensive enough anymore. And so he chose a machete as his new companion. After that, it wasn’t unusual to find the stalks of the trees that made up part of the fences in the town completely destroyed; unripe fruit, flayed into pieces; the branches he didn’t like turned into firewood, even though they had done absolutely nothing to him; and little by little it became rather common around town to see that, from one day to the next, dogs and cats—and even some horses—would show up without tails all of the sudden. But the last straw happened when, with one vicious swipe of his machete, he separated two dogs that were innocently making love in the middle of the street. The male writhed around on the street from the pain and died not too long after; and they ended up having to extract the mutilated penis from the female, who, nonetheless, managed to have a litter of puppies. Now this alarmed the people. Since the incident happened right outside the front gate to his hut, right away the people came running over with sticks, with machetes, their minds already made up to lynch him right then and there. But when they saw him come out of the house, not with his tail between his legs, but with the bloody machete still in his hands and with his eyes burning with hate, even the manliest men didn’t dare to do anything to him; and the mayor sent word that he couldn’t be there because he was sick.
Maybe they would have forgotten about the incident with the dogs if what happened next hadn’t happened. One afternoon everyone came to the realization of what lay ahead for the town if this kid kept growing. He was thirteen and, although he looked younger, everyone already knew that he had the wickedness of all men in him. Just seeing him made the kids his age tremble because they knew how skillful he was at handling the machete. His eternal, bulging eyes were terrible. Around that
time he got into harassing the girls, the teenagers, the young and old mothers; he would grab their asses and sometimes lift up their skirts; the teens who hung out with him celebrated his daring feats—it didn’t matter as much to them that the victims were their girlfriends, their sisters, their mothers as it did that they needed to keep him on their side.
But one afternoon when the sky was perfectly clear, everyone was hanging out on the corner of little Cuchilla Park and one of them was trying to point out the flight of a far-off buzzard that was barely visible to the rest of them. The buzzard was moving along in the sky, real small like a funereal plane and he said to them:
—There, guys.
—¿Where, vos?
—There, where I’m pointing.
His finger was stretched out, outlined against the table of the sky when, suddenly, chvring, something bright lifted off the ground and, chvring, the finger flew off into the air and the guy threw himself to the ground, rolling around in pain, his hand covered in blood. Pascualito just laughed and told him:
—See. You shouldn’t point at buzzards because those animals are always on the lookout for flesh.
But this time things didn’t simply blow over.
A bit later, when the bell from the municipal building began urgently calling the people, Pascualito said to his friend:
—Careful that none of you go saying that I was to blame and that goes for you too, vos. Say that it was a total accident.
And he picked up the finger, put it in his pocket, and ran off. When he heard the knocking on the front door of the house, he didn’t think it was any big deal; and still feeling pretty defiant he went out to look over the fence. But when he realized that it wasn’t only the authorities outside, but also lots of people armed with sticks, with machetes, with hate, he felt fear for the first time; still he went to dig up the finger from where he had it buried, went over to the fence, and threw it out at them.
—There, I’ll give it to you—he told them—. Go give it to the buzzard because the poor guy is hungry.
And sprinting across the empty lots behind his house, he ran down into the canyon and went to hide in the hills.
But the people didn’t feel like letting him make fools of them this time, and for days they set out to search for him, prepared to look for him anywhere, in the canyons, in the forests, the hills, the houses, until at last Piedad Baeza said to them:
—Leave my boy alone. Go ahead and take me to the big house, but don’t do anything to him. —Her eyes were the eyes of a mother, and the people took pity on her.
During the time that his mother was in the jail, Pascualito tried to get someone to give him something to eat so that he wouldn’t starve. The people said that there wasn’t any corn or beans, but that he could take as many chickens as he wanted or pick whatever fruit he wanted, whatever. So, to him, the town kept getting smaller and smaller on account of his hunger; but bigger and bigger on account of his feet.
That’s why, one Sunday, when they set up a big fence in town and went through the streets and houses capturing the young men—rousting them from their leafy hiding places in the trees, chasing them down in the fields, in the forests; pulling them out from where they were hiding under the big tamale pots used for fiesta days, from the arms of their mothers, their women, their sisters, from up under their skirts, from inside the big nets of cornhusks; and they were taken, sobbing and crying, to the municipal building to be bundled off to the military barracks in the city—Pascualito, like a man who eats chile peppers like candy, strolled up to municipal hall without his machete, looking completely calm, and he started to pace back and forth in front of the authorities. The militia captain had had his eye on him for a while, but when he saw that he had him there in his hands he changed his mind and said to him:
—Don’t worry. We’re not gonna take you off to the army.
—Don’t be an idiot—he answered him—. I didn’t come down here for you to drag me off; I’m here to volunteer.
—¿And your mama?
—Don’t be an idiot. Take me with you or fuck off.
—¿But why do you want to go off to the army, vos?
—I’m hungry.
—Alright, over there then, vos. But don’t worry. As much of a motherfucker as you are, you’ll move up through the ranks right away. Who’s to say that you won’t make general right off the bat. Nah, don’t you worry. To rise that high in the ranks you don’t need to know how to read or write. Just how to be mean, how to be a real motherfucker, how to treat everyone like pure shit. Let me be the first to congratulate you on the fitting career path you’re about to embark on.
Nonetheless, some time later a warrant for the arrest of one Pascual Baeza was delivered to the town on account of his having deserted from the army. But the warrant was lost to indifference, not because he hadn’t come back to town, but because even if he had, nobody was willing to serve the warrant and cart him off, even if it meant they would go to jail for refusing to.
When Pascual came back to town he brought with him—in addition to the years that had taken him from boyhood to manhood—a strange face, as if he were from somewhere different; he had pieces of gold in place of some of his teeth, which he made an effort to show with pride every time he laughed or talked; in his mouth he brought strange words, unknown, like a man who has learned other languages; on his feet he had shoes in place of the sandals made from strips of discarded rubber tires; on his head he had a hat made of vicuña leather in place of the simple grace of the woven straw hat; and on his body clothes that were different from those that people wore in the village. He wasn’t from here anymore. Or so it seemed.
Those who saw him when he first arrived asked themselves: ¿Where have I seen this joker before?, and then they’d look at him again and try to find him underneath all of their memories and they would try to pin down the exact moment when he had first entered their consciousness. But they couldn’t place him. Something told them, however, that despite his clothes and his years he was a man who had been born in this town, and who was a child of townspeople, and who, after a long absence, had come home. ¿What for? His body was thin but strong, you could see the veins pulsing full of blood in his arms, his walk was proud and his mustache was shaped like those you’d see on the faces of men whose pictures were in the kinds of magazines folks keep for years. However, one guy did have the feeling that this was Pascualito from long ago because the shadow that flickered over his face—like when you walk on a road overhung with trees—gave him something to anchor his memories to. But that guy was afraid to admit that it was true, even to himself, because he thought that shadow, the wickedness that he carried, was now more visible than when he had left.
As far as Pascual was concerned, when he got to the entrance to town and put his foot on that first cobblestone, on that first piece of dirt, when he saw that first street full of holes and rocks and little fences and little thatched huts with smoke drifting up from them, when he saw that none of the big rocks at the entrance to the village had been moved an inch, when he saw, there at the little Cuchilla Park in the entrance, the kids around the pila—tiny, barefoot, bloated-bellied idiots—when he saw the women there doing their washing exactly as he remembered them, when he lifted his gaze a little further and was able to see, there a
mong the trees and the little fences and the thatched huts, the top of the church with its same dirtywhite color, and inside, surely the same saints who would go out on procession on the fiesta days, accompanied by the same cofradías* who would be praying the same prayers; and when he finally saw, there on the edge of town, some men who were coming from or going to the fields with their hoes over their shoulders, their daily food rations on their backs, and their machetes in their hands, or with a load of firewood, or a net bundle of fruit on their backs, held on by that leather strap plastered across their foreheads, struggling, sweating, their calves stiff and grimy from the dust; he—who had deserted the army with his weapon and everything, who had spent time in jail, but for robbery not for deserting, who had led a gang of warehouse thieves, who had joined another gang of cattle rustlers on the coast, who had gone back to jail several times, who had crossed the border and had lived for a time in another country that none of the people from this little town would ever go to, even in their dreams, who had been in a revolution—as a mercenary, yes, but had been in it—who had lived with a prostitute who never bore him a child because she didn’t want it to be an Indian like its father, but who he loved anyway because of her color—he felt devastated as though just by being there he was recovering something that he had lost; but now that same something was useless to him—useless, but necessary nonetheless, because that’s why he’d come back. And he didn’t even ask where his house was or even think about his mother.
That very morning the people also found out that he was as thirsty as if he’d had a dry brick in his throat—and they found out that he had a big wad of bills in his pocket.
After asking where the cantina was, he found his way there, stood at the display case, made a fist, and banged on the counter briskly to let them know he needed service. Then he sat down on the only chair there was at a little table and waited. After a minute, Señora María, the wife of the bar owner Chilo, appeared with her baby on her back and asked him what he wanted.