Eucalyptus

by Mauricio Segura

  “You’re not ashamed, chuchetumadre … One day you’ll get what you deserve, you piece of shit …”

  His eyes half closed, the lieutenant pretended not to hear. Only twenty metres later, he said:

  “You saw? Now you know what I’m trying to say? They’re all parasites. That’s what it amounts to, their ancestral philosophy: to get everything for nothing.”

  “Tell me, have you been to my father’s farm, where one of his workers died?”

  The lieutenant nodded yes, following a truck with his eyes, where propane canisters were banging against each other.

  “And the autopsy?”

  The lieutenant greeted a woman on the other side of the street, who was stirring sopaipillas frying in oil that gave off black smoke.

  “What?”

  They looked at each other nervously.

  “Why was there nothing in the report about my father’s scar?”

  The lieutenant first became pensive, and then, as though he’d had enough of this discussion, and as if to get rid of him as quickly as possible, he said all in one breath:

  “Listen, I can’t tell you everything, or I’m finished. Why should all this fall on me? I don’t know you, I have a family to feed … With what they did to your father, we had the goods on them. We go to court, we win. This business, excuse me, was a gift from heaven for us. And then … the mayor of Cunco decided to support Huenchumilla … do I have to say more?”

  A white truck came to a stop in front of the square, its brakes exhaling slowly.

  “Ever since, Huenchumilla and our mayor have been like that,” he said, crossing his index and middle fingers. “As soon as Huenchumilla was told about the affair, he asked for it to be hushed up. You know, a Mapuche politician who is trying to get elected, with a sordid murder in the background involving native people … I can tell you that I’ll never forget those two guys from City Hall who came to the station one afternoon. They asked us to leave, and the next day, when we opened the office, there was no trace of the report on your father … I tell you, this story makes me sick.”

  “Why did you say murder?”

  “Sorry, but that’s all you’re going to get out of me. I’ve already said too much, my friend.”

  For a moment, the lieutenant seemed to feel for him, as if it had just occurred to him that the revelations he’d made might have been hurtful. He turned his back on Alberto and lost himself in the noisy crowd. Ten metres on, he was jogging back to the police station.

  7

  Clouds curled around each other, promiscuous, overhead, as Alberto wandered among beggars holding out creased palms and women with masculine faces who stared at him shamelessly. He was convinced that they all knew he was not from there. Even the youngest, it seemed, turned as he passed to follow him for two, three, four seconds, with disdainful curiosity.

  He crossed the street without looking. A driver honked furiously, but Alberto didn’t react. He wanted to escape the promiscuity, the invasive scrutiny, but wherever he turned he stumbled on someone who followed him avidly with his eyes. He walked on, left the Plaza de Armas behind him, and, passing a group of women sitting cross-legged on the ground, he raised his eyes to the tops of the furry araucarias, behind which rose the Llaima volcano, perpetually snow-topped, serene, as if what went on down below did not concern it.

  Soon he found himself on a quiet street, bordered by small houses with puny gardens. A man with greying temples and carefully combed hair looked at him suspiciously. He was leaning on a cane, and for a good long time he didn’t move a finger.

  “Yes?” asked Alberto, going up to him, “Can I help you?”

  The man spat on the ground, pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his lips, and turned his back on him before slowly heading home.

  Alberto stood there, his arms hanging by his side, his breathing shallow.

  AT THE END OF THIS SAME STREET, he stopped before a white building with horizontal lines, where students in uniform (blue blazers, grey flannel pants, white shirts) sat talking on benches or standing in front of a dirt path. The carefree exuberance of the young people was hard for him to watch. Now that he found himself in the small town where his father grew up, in the place where (at least in his imagination) everything began, he felt like a foreigner, someone from the West who is fleeing his dreary life, and who has lost his bearings.

  But … was this not his father’s school? The asphalt yard was empty, and seemed inordinately large. After a moment, as he was watching, he saw a lone adolescent appear, small, his hair cut short on the sides but curly on top, walking confidently, a blue blazer slung over his shoulder. The boy bent his knees, his face thin, browned by the sun, his body seemingly weightless. He walked but he did not advance, he appeared to levitate, eclipsing everything around him.

  On the other side of the street, there was a crowd. It had converged on what seemed to be a restaurant: La Mesa de los Sueños.

  Inside, voices reverberated, deafening him. From time to time peals of laughter erupted, glasses banged together. They were mostly students, four or five together around square tables.

  When a stool came free at the counter, Alberto sat down. He looked at the menu and finally ordered, like his neighbour, a breaded pork chop, mashed potatoes, and a glass of red wine. Behind the counter, two young men his age came and went, sometimes pulling a beer out of the refrigerator, sometimes plunging dishes into the sink. Alberto ate slowly, not so much to savour the food as to gather his thoughts. He could not believe it, it seemed too absurd, too unreal. His father had been murdered … He looked around him: life went on, sardonic and unchanging.

  He put down a few bills to pay for his meal. He stood up, skirted the counter, and, not knowing quite why, turned his head towards the mirror behind the bar, where there was a multitude of bottles. The black and white photograph was taped to the mirror, a bit crooked, its corners worn. Not believing his eyes, he rested his hands on the counter to lean in closer. Yes, it was the very same photo he had seen in one of the family albums. Four young men, in jacket and tie, arms linked, smiling widely, their eyes half-closed. The third from the left was his father. He was seventeen, eighteen at the most. Bright dots where his eyes should be, his face shining, he smiled, looking tired but tough. It was his father through and through, his father the tightrope walker.

  “Did you recognize someone?” asked one of the young men behind the counter, as he was shining a glass.

  His head shaved, wide-shouldered, he sported a two- or three-day-old beard that covered his face right to the cheekbones.

  “That’s my father,” said Alberto.

  The young man looked at the photograph.

  “You’re Roberto’s son?”

  Radiant, the young man put the glass and towel down on the counter, and stretched out his hand. Then, as if suddenly ashamed of his reserve, he embraced him over the counter, whispering in his ear: “All my sympathies, my friend,” and held him close for a long time. His name was Pablo. In a resonant voice, speaking quickly, he explained that he was the son of Raúl, the owner of the restaurant, second from the left in the photograph, with the frizzy hair and the round face. Was this the same Raúl who, according to Noemi, had found his father’s body?

  “When they were young, they were like brothers. You know this photo, no?”

  They began to talk about the dance that had become legendary with time, and suddenly Alberto felt as if these were characters out of a cult film. They were euphoric, they had finished their years at the lycée, and would soon, for the most part, be going on to university. On the other hand, they had to say goodbye to a whole world with its pranks, its open-hearted companionship, it extravagant dreams, and its at times salutary childishness. Pablo told him that the two others in the photo had also died. One, who had become a member of the Revolutionary Left during the dictatorship, disappeared, probably dropped from a helicopter somew
here off the coast, near Puerto Saavedra. The other died of heart failure ten or so years previously. Nostalgic, and gently ironic, as if looking back on their own youth, they launched into a discussion of idealism and the need to stay rebellious at heart.

  It appeared that since Roberto’s return to the region, since he had taken over his father’s land, which adjoined that of Pablo’s parents, the two friends had connected again, and had begun working together. Roberto rented his friend’s equipment, chainsaws, cranes, tractors, to clear the fields on his land. He then sold the wood to Araucania Madera, the forestry industry giant for the area. When Alberto told Pablo what had led him to Cunco, Pablo said he knew very little about what had happened.

  “You should go to see my father. I think he’d have things to tell you. But, how should I say this? He’s not been right for some years, he’s become bitter with age …”

  He promised to alert his parents to his visit, and told him how to get to the village of Las Violetas. When Alberto got up to go, Pablo embraced him for a long time as if they were old friends, and wished him luck.

  HERE AND THERE, Alberto spotted hares that leaped up, only to disappear in puffy clouds of dust. Along the road, bushes dotted with small flowers hibernated under a coat of dirt. Several times, the pickup’s chassis struck a stone on the ground. Twice, going uphill, he had to shift into second gear.

  As he climbed a steep slope, then skirted a house with a dish antenna, he kept his eyes peeled for the Star of David, and found it hanging from an oak beside the road at the entrance to Las Violetas. The seven or eight houses that made up the village, whose families were mostly Jewish, were all perched over a small valley that provided a matchless view of Llaima and the land around, and were so widely spaced that they seemed not to belong together.

  Jolting along, he passed hectares and hectares of cleared land that made him think of a battlefield. He only saw the white house with tiles once he reached the farm’s gate. He stopped the vehicle, got down without turning off the engine, and as he went to open the gate, was assailed by the odour of eucalyptus. It was pleasant at first, then insistent and dizzying.

  Slowly, avoiding the depressions, he navigated the road leading to the farm, bordered by spindly bushes. All over the property there were pails, gas canisters, fences whose pickets were lying in the tall grass. He parked the vehicle in front of the house, close to a kennel.

  He saw that the door was half open, and that the handle had been forced. A chair was overturned in the middle of the living room, the television stand had been stripped of its TV set, and there were mud prints on the floor. On the right, the kitchen cupboards and drawers were open.

  The other rooms were in the same state of disorder.

  He emerged as the evening drew out its last beams of light. From the porch, the prospect was staggering: a huge swathe of his father’s land had been reduced to an expanse of mud, a jumble of dead branches, zones of dying grass, trunks chopped into shavings. It reminded him of the picture books he’d leafed through as a child, those books that fascinated him so, where one saw soldiers huddled in trenches surrounded by barbed wire, their eyes shining with a dead light, their faces expressionless. But what did it all mean? Had his father done that? He who all his life had shown more respect for nature than for the men and women around him? Countless questions filled his mind, sinister questions with no answers, and he began to experience the same sense of loss, irremediable loss, that he had often felt as an adolescent after an argument with his father.

  Farther on still, yesterday’s patchwork of cultivated land had given way to an ocean of eucalyptus, extending from Las Violetas to the Cunco steeple. He thought about his father, who, as a child, covered the ground on bare feet between the family house and school, his shoes tied around his neck so as not to wear them out. Today, he thought, it would be impossible to cut through that dense forest. And then, in the distance, unchanging and unreal in the orange light, Llaima. A bit to the side, between two hills, a cluster of straw huts and small houses poorly aligned. That’s where they live, he thought, scanning the village.

  He decided to put some order into the house.

  When he had finished, he stretched out on the couch.

  He turned over and over for a long time, wondering what he should do. When night fell he could not shut his eyes, anxious as he was: what did he want to know, finally? Was he not wasting his time? What good would it do to prove that his father had been murdered? Was he putting his own life in danger by staying in his father’s house? How would the murderers react when they learned that he was roaming about trying to shed light on what happened, to shed light on it all? And damn, he should have been more open with his mother and his son …

  WHEN HE OPENED HIS EYES, he was blinded by the sun.

  He got up. There was water he could drink, but no electricity. He found coffee, eggs, kosher salted crackers. In Montreal, as these crackers were found everywhere, his father began to buy them; it was as if they were the only link he allowed himself to maintain with the Jewish religion. But then right away he remembered the story his father told to his brother and himself, around a campfire, in a car, or the rare times he put them to bed. As his father changed the names of the characters, it was only years later that he learned that it was all about the prophet Jeremiah.

  He ate fried eggs standing up in front of the kitchen counter, then he sipped his coffee on the porch while looking out on the dew, which, like an enormous silk cloak fallen from the sky, covered the grass, the hillocks of earth, the flowers, the pickup, Diego’s kennel (but what had happened to the stray dog that had won his father’s approval?).

  In Egypt, trying to allay the discontent of his people in exile, Jeremiah counselled resignation. One could, said the prophet, be perfectly happy outside holy ground, if one saw to one’s relationship with Yahweh. Jeremiah was an idealist, and most Jews of his time saw him as a traitor. What was it that drew his father to this story, he who advocated the exact opposite? Who never missed an opportunity to contend that one could not be happy outside one’s native land? Being an immigrant was an abomination, it forced you to abide by your status as a second-class citizen. Perhaps, deep down, his father was unsure of his convictions, and Jeremiah’s argument held more sway with him than he wanted to admit.

  Going through the closet in his father’s bedroom, he found a shotgun. He examined it; it was not loaded. He found the cartridges in a kitchen drawer. Outside, behind the house, he aimed at the trunk of a eucalyptus tree. The gun went off, but as his arm cushioned the shock poorly, the bullet lost itself in the greenery. The report, exaggerated, dramatic, set his left ear to ringing. He reloaded the shotgun and balanced an empty gas can on a fence post. As he was holding his breath and aiming, he heard a man’s voice:

  “Hey, what are you up to? We thought you’d be here …”

  He turned towards the man without noticing that he was pointing his gun at him. His Uncle Pedro bent down, raising his hand.

  “Hey! What’s going on?”

  Alberto didn’t move, just looked at him.

  “Don’t point that at me, I tell you!”

  Alberto lowered the weapon.

  “What’s got into you? Have you gone crazy, or what?”

  His uncle looked him up and down.

  “Go on, get your stuff. This farce has gone on long enough.”

  Gun in hand, Alberto stared back, impassive.

  “Go on, I said,” repeated his uncle, gesturing with his head. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “You’re wasting your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “What? Look, I promised your mother that I’d bring you back, and I’m going to keep my word, believe me.”

  With his gun, Alberto indicated that he should leave.

  “Where do you think you are? In a Western? This is real life here, mocoso! You see those houses down there,” he said, turning around
. “You see those rucas down there? That’s where they live, the Mapus. When they find out that you’re here all by yourself, what do you think they’re going to do? Bring you a welcome present, maybe?”

  He had a little forced laugh that Alberto found familiar.

  “For the last time, I’m asking you to leave, tio.”

  His uncle stood there, open-mouthed.

  “I promised your mother. And you know me, I’m a man of my word.”

  Alberto went towards him, slowly. They were about the same build, but his uncle had aged terribly. His seventy years weighed on him. Before, he had been a tough customer, who didn’t hesitate to use his fists when he thought he had to. But the menial jobs he had to do all his life, in the lumber industry, in Chile and in Canada, had bent his back, whitened his hair, shrunk his features. It was his parents who had sponsored his aunt and uncle so they could immigrate to Quebec. Not long after they arrived in Montreal, it was inevitable, Pedro and his father fell out over something trivial on Christmas Day. The picture of his father, one knee on his uncle’s chest, his fist in the air, ready to disfigure him, against a background of twinkling, multicoloured Christmas tree lights, was imprinted on his memory. As of then, his father had become persona non grata on the maternal side of Alberto’s family.

  “But what’s happened to you?” asked Pedro. “What did we do to you? Okay, your father’s left us, but you don’t have to lose your mind because of that. Alberto, Albertito, escúchame. It’s good to want to know the truth. There, you’re right. But there are people for that. And can we talk frankly for two seconds? All that for your father?”

  Pedro hinted at a nervous smile.