Eucalyptus

by Mauricio Segura

  “We were in the kitchen, Roberto, Amalia, and me,” continued Noemi. “And Roberto said that when the calf was born, he knew he would do anything for her. At these words, Amalia rose, leaned towards him, and gave him a long kiss.”

  Alberto could easily imagine the scene, but he thought to himself that his father was playing the role of an older man besotted with a young, impetuous woman.

  In front of the stable, Roberto approached Amalia, took her hands in his, and thanked her warmly. He proposed to all that they celebrate the event with a good bottle of red wine. Under a shifting sky, buffeted by a brisk wind, he was agreeably surprised to learn that she had studied agronomy at the same university he had attended decades earlier. After an hour, instead of following his workers into the field, he stayed behind to talk to her about the techniques for inseminating cows. This exchange, rife with technical terms, convinced him, strangely, that they were drawing closer together, that they were part of the same brotherhood.

  “He felt like he’d known her forever,” said Noemi.

  When Amalia left that day, he watched her silhouette disappearing into the distance, and felt his heart pounding. He smiled, because she took him, in all probability, for a likable grampa, while he was building castles in the air. From that point on the green in the corrals was brighter, the blue at the end of the day more incandescent, the murmuring of the stream more musical. He hardly knew her, but he was convinced that she was an exceptional person.

  Without being aware of it, Roberto began to treat his employees with more respect. One morning, when the national football team was playing a game, he put the television set outside on a picnic table.

  “Thank you, Amalia!” exclaimed one of the workers, a smile on his lips.

  She didn’t react, but from the kitchen window where she was drying the dishes, she glared back at the worker.

  Two days later, Roberto sent one of his employees to the village to fetch a newspaper. On the doorstep, as the day inched towards its end, he scanned the film schedule. Then, while driving the tractor in the midst of deafening noise, he rehearsed several times over, in a low voice, the question he would pose to Amalia.

  Night come, as she was making her way towards the path leading away from the house, he whistled in her direction, as one would call a dog. She stopped, and, her brow furrowed, stood watching him for some time. Finally, when she approached, he proposed to drive her home. She accepted, an ambiguous smile playing across her round face. They didn’t talk during the ride. In front of the chief’s house, he cut the engine.

  “It’s ages since I’ve gone to the cinema. How would you like to see a film with me tomorrow?”

  She looked at him sideways.

  “I can’t.”

  He was sure he had made a monumental error in judgment. She found him ridiculous!

  “The day after tomorrow, I can.”

  He looked her in the eyes, as if to be sure that she was not mocking him. Her face was solemn and serene.

  “Excellent.”

  That day, in the half-light of a theatre reeking of cigarette smoke, he was treated to one explosion after another and an endless series of car chases, and he spent two hours glancing at his watch. Later, as they were strolling on the Plaza de Armas, she put her hand to her forehead.

  “That gave me a headache!”

  They looked at each other, sharing the moment. When, a few metres farther on, he confessed that his ears were ringing, and that he felt as if he was getting off a fairground ride, they broke into hysterical laughter.

  “In that moment, he thought: Well, maybe I have a chance after all,” recounted Noemi. “That’s what he said, there, in their kitchen, the day I saw them together for the first time. Amalia just gave him a steady look. And I swear, it was as if she was dying to make a confession.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. She’s not a bad person, but I don’t completely trust her.”

  Roberto saw, after a moment, that people were staring at them as if they were shocked or disapproving. Then she took him by the hand. Roberto, unbelieving, looked at her: her profile was all dignity.

  That night, just a few steps from the chief’s house, in the chill, cramped darkness of the pickup, they exchanged their first kiss. Three days later, when Roberto’s employees had gone, they threw themselves on the bed in his bedroom, and after swiftly undressing, they made love. All through the lovemaking, Amalia’s eyes never left those of Roberto, as if to ensure that he never forget that it was her he was penetrating, as if to tell him that this act would ineluctably lead to others. After a month, not without a certain embarrassment at the beginning, they showed themselves to be lovers in front of the employees, who either avoided meeting their eyes, or hid their discomfort behind awkward smiles. They met Amalia’s family, to be sure from the outset that despite their difference in age, they would be offending no one. Then, one chilly morning, she moved in with him, bringing with her only a brown imitation leather suitcase.

  “But why, exactly, didn’t you trust her?”

  “I know, it was just a feeling.”

  She stared at the mounds of crumbs on the table.

  “Sometimes she was very affectionate with him. At others, she looked at him as if she felt sorry for him.”

  Over the following weeks, Noemi went on, Roberto spent a lot of time in the chief’s backyard discussing the community’s demands. The chief was cautious, even a bit calculating. But Roberto soon saw that this man was deeply concerned about the future of his people. This devotion, in which the chief sometimes seemed entirely to lose himself, strongly impressed him, and he tried to help him with his initiatives. For hours he held forth on what he knew about different levels of government, realizing at the same time that the country he had known twenty years earlier had changed. And so from meeting to meeting they went over details that each of them explored independently. Very soon, he began to feel that he was part of a large family, of a community that treated him as an equal, that needed him, and that, astonishingly, showed him facets of himself that had lain buried for a long time.

  “But …” said Noemi, “she never wanted to give him a child. Because in the end she didn’t love him? Because she found him too old? Or perhaps because she reproached him for not being a Mapuche? Maybe she just didn’t want a child? Although that’s very rare for a young Mapuche.”

  “And he, did he really want a child?”

  “I saw him begging her to give him this child. I saw him go after her, because she ran off when he brought up the subject. That wasn’t like him, all that.”

  Once more, Albert found it hard to believe his ears. Had his father changed that much?

  “In time,” continued Noemi, “people in the village got used to him. Or at least they pretended to get used to him. They began to greet him, to talk to him. Did he believe that having a child with Amalia would silence people talking about the difference in their ages? In the South, as soon as you stray from the norm, people begin looking at you strangely. And believe me, trying to change people is a waste of time.”

  For a moment Alberto imagined his father walking side by side with a young Mapuche woman, through a street full of housewives, their string bags filled with groceries, turning away as they passed.

  “I have to find this girl,” said Alberto.

  “Fine, but you should know that around the country house no one knows where she is. The girl has disappeared.”

  Alberto looked at her, an uneasy gleam in his eyes.

  4

  Alberto quietly pushed open the bedroom door, and saw his son lying crossways on the bed, the sheets twisted about, half-covering his legs. He took him in his arms, and settled his warm head, full of dreams, on the pillow, before pulling up the bedclothes. He sat at the foot of the bed for a long time, observing his small half-open mouth, his long black eyelashes, and the sl
ow, regular rhythm of his chest rising and falling. His eyes then wandered to the desk against the wall on which a book still sat, and suddenly he felt as though, from one moment to the next, his grandfather was going to sweep into the room and sit down and read, hunched over as was his custom, his eye glued to a magnifying glass. He pricked up his ears and seemed to hear the guttural murmurs issuing from between his thin chapped lips. The room, whose furnishings were more Spartan than in the other rooms in the house (a bed, a desk, and in one corner a checkered canvas suitcase), and whose walls were bare, was an expression, still, of his grandfather’s asceticism.

  Alberto lay down beside his son, and his stomach against his back, took him in his arms. That made him feel better, much better, but certain as he was that he would be unable to sleep, he didn’t notice that his eyes were becoming heavy and that he was slowly slipping into a dark and unstable world. As often happened, in his first dream, he fell into a deep hole, like Alice and the rabbit with the watch. Soon, after a transition that escaped him, he saw himself walking in a deserted street, between old low buildings that formed a narrow corridor. He advanced in the grey half-light, but did not hear his footsteps. From time to time he met passersby he didn’t know, who behaved like sleepwalkers. After a while he had the strange feeling that he kept passing the same buildings. He stopped in front of a wrought iron fence, which hid an interior courtyard where two silhouettes came together and pushed apart. He heard long sighs, murmurs, moans. The man’s movements were abrupt and cruelly familiar. When a ray of moonlight revealed his profile for an instant, Alberto shut his eyes too late: he’d seen his father’s face. He wanted to turn his head away, but he stayed glued to the spot, mesmerized. With avid eyes he watched his father’s hand moving slowly upwards along the woman’s black panty hose, and heard her increasingly rapid breathing. Then, seeing her moist lips and her face distorted by desire, he recognized his mother as she passed from sexual ecstasy to stifled sobs.

  When he opened his eyes, Noemi was leaning over him, shaking him by the shoulder. She asked him to get up, and while in his mind he still saw his mother’s face, he heard the tonadas being played downstairs. Once more, he glanced towards the still sleeping Marco, and rose to follow Noemi.

  SEATED ON THE SOFA leaning against the wall in the backyard, Alberto watched the shadows passing over the high cedars. How many glasses of wine had he drunk? In the midst of the enveloping darkness, pierced here and there by searing shafts of light, he felt as if the guests were moving in slow motion, like goldfish in a bowl. At one end, behind the ghostly smoke from the grill, Araya was turning over pieces of meat, and his shadow, when he bent down, assumed gigantic proportions. From time to time Alberto embraced the family members he knew. Of the twelve brothers and sisters, only three had come: Noemi, Araya, and Hannah.

  He told himself that he had to play the game, a bit like his father, who did not dislike these parties. He took care of the grill, was affable, and drank in moderation. Yes, most of the time he behaved like a gentleman, gallant with the ladies, and a joker with the men. He pretended to be impervious to the sidelong glances, envious or disapproving, of some of his brothers and sisters, and the offended silence behind which Abuelo walled himself off. But always, at some unexpected moment, after an inappropriate remark or an ambiguous gesture on the part of one family member, his eyes began to shine with an opaque, pitiless light, his viper’s tongue came alive, and all froze. Some became fearful and moved off, others stared at him with increasing animosity. But he, sovereign in his anger, confident that his fit of rage was just, went straight to the weak point of each one. Even physically you changed, Papa, thought Alberto. You became possessed.

  He didn’t know how it began (perhaps to avoid reminiscing about his father?), but a political discussion was taking place. The years of dictatorship, the Concertación, President Lagos, whom all praised for his diplomatic and conciliatory gifts. But then Araya cut in, clearly not part of the consensus, to say that like all the Concertación politicians, Lagos was a hypocrite. The socialists good managers? Really! Why not let the Alliance run the country? At least their leaders know something about business. Try to make people think you can be both a socialist and a capitalist? What a laugh! What a lie! In the end, Concertación governs the country badly and redistributes the wealth just as badly. So we were better off during the dictatorship? put in Noemi. You’re saying we were happier then? Open your eyes, for God’s sake! Look at what Pinochet’s lackeys did to the country! They sold it out to the Spaniards, the Germans, the English, the Americans … But seeing Araya’s indifference, Alberto assumed that this was a scene the brother and sister had enacted often.

  The arrival of Nelly, his father’s elder sister, and her husband Gabriel, shifted the focus of the discussion. Alberto got up to greet them. Everything about Nelly, a swarthy little woman with her hair knotted behind her head, spoke of restraint and repression. Her face, deeply wrinkled, was stamped with unhappiness. Forty years earlier she had lost her daughter in a car accident, and she had never got over it. Her husband, whom Alberto always saw with a skullcap, was a big oafish redhead with sparkly green eyes, and a smile permanently affixed to his face. Like his wife he was deeply pious, but by turning to Yahweh he had been able to reconcile himself with the ordeal that had been visited upon them.

  After having refused the glass of wine that Noemi offered him, Gabriel sat down beside Alberto. He reached his arm along the back of the sofa, and crossed his legs to put himself at ease. He questioned him about his mother, his brother, his son. He held forth on a number of subjects relating to reports he had seen on television. He asked him, lowering his voice and speaking confidentially, how he was taking his father’s death. Alberto replied, still feeling as though he were in a strange dream, that he was surprised to be so affected by the death of this man who had spent his life avoiding his mother, his brother and himself. And the more he found out, the more he realized that he knew him hardly at all. But can one ever know anyone, however close he may be? Gabriel leaned towards Alberto, passed a hand behind his neck, and stroked his curly hair. Suddenly uneasy, his face up against Alberto’s, he said they had to talk. And with a jerk of his head, he urged him to follow.

  They passed in front of a loudspeaker, then left behind them the noisy darkness of the backyard to find guests in the kitchen, glasses of wine in hand, who moved aside to let them pass.

  Upstairs, Alberto saw dim light leaking from under his grandmother’s door. They went into the room lit only by a seven-branched candelabra on a chest of drawers. Their shadows on the wall over the bed made it look as if they were watching a film of their own lives. His father’s tunic had a golden cast. In front of the window, Abuela, deeply bent over, slept, clutching a pillow against her breast like a little girl with her teddy bear.

  He began to see why Gabriel was asking him to place himself at his side, close to the bed. He obeyed. Gabriel took his hand, raised their arms, and while gazing down on Roberto’s motionless face: Night comes on, it’s time to sleep my child, come, you are tired, stretch out at last in the comforting arms of nature and eternal rest, sleep well, day is behind you, the stars twinkle in the firmament …

  Over Gabriel’s voice, Alberto distinctly heard the coming and going of his own breath. It seemed to him that every expiration lost itself prematurely in the inhalation that followed. Gabriel then gave him a ribbon. Albert followed his lead: slowly he tore it, fully cognizant of the ritual’s pointlessness, of the pointlessness of any ritual.

  “Now look,” whispered Gabriel.

  And he stretched out his hand and pulled back the tail of the tunic, revealing his father’s legs and his limp sex, shrivelled as a dry fruit. Gabriel, as clinical as a doctor, turned his father on his side, and with a dramatic gesture, his hand spread wide and his fingers extended, displayed a deep scar, like a snake, zigzagging from waist to chest. At first Alberto didn’t comprehend what was being shown to him, nor Gabriel’s emphati
c gestures. His face contorted at the horror of it all, he leaned down to examine more closely the enormous stitches that reminded him of a zipper. He could barely breathe.

  When he finally pulled himself together (after how many seconds, how many minutes?), as Gabriel was watching to see how would react, it came to him that the scar was too crude for it to be the work of a surgeon.

  “No one knows,” said Gabriel. “Only Nelly. We saw it when we were getting ready to dress him in the tunic.”

  Alberto felt as if the floor was going to open at his feet and swallow him up.

  5

  Alberto sat in the cramped and rubbery cold of the pickup. A line of vehicles stretched out before him in the darkness. His anger of a few minutes earlier had left him, and he was paralyzed by indecision. He had found himself in the humid half-light of the entranceway, facing a massive door with a spy hole in its centre, Marco over his shoulder still in his pyjamas, and his way being blocked. With pleading eyes, Noemi kept repeating that the funeral was taking place the next morning, at the cemetery. She asked him to be careful on the road, and urged him to go to bed as soon as he got back. They would both get to the bottom of this story, all right? Gabriel took him by the shoulders, a limp, coppery lock of hair falling over his forehead: he hadn’t shown him the scar to drive him crazy, niño, he’d shown it to him so he would find out what happened. Who better than he could shed light on this story? Winking at him, Gabriel hugged him, slapping him hard on the back, and Alberto felt his rough beard against his cheeks.

  Seeing that a woman he couldn’t identify was watching him from the kitchen window, he started the engine. At first, he drove slowly. At each intersection, automatically, he glanced back through the rear-view mirror at Marco’s sleeping face. Once on the highway he sped up so as to be alone on the road, but the streets and parks, lit by the raw light of the car headlights, looked like nothing so much as a dreary theatre set peopled by thugs with bony faces, and itinerant sellers making their way home on foot.