Nothing But Dust

by Sandrine Collette

  The old man nods. Yup. And then some.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Are you Joaquin?”

  “No, it’s him.”

  Emiliano’s strange blue eyes shift to the other twin. Gauge him. He clicks his tongue.

  “Son, you’d better pack your bags. Your mother lost you in the game. I’ll come and get you tomorrow at daybreak.”

  The mother has collapsed on the seat of the cart, inert, snoring. Rufian is trotting at a good clip, glad to be on the way home; his breathing gives rhythm to the night. Clouds hide the moon but he knows the way by heart, as if he can smell the familiar house, the stable, his feed. His hooves seem to fly over the ground and the pebbles at a steady pace, clop clop clop. He knows nothing about the abyss that has opened in the belly of the boys sitting next to their sleeping mother.

  Mauro is holding the reins. He doesn’t see the road. Cannot see it. All he can see is his brother.

  “Don’t worry,” murmurs Joaquin.

  But his voice is trembling.

  They have never been apart. They were born twins, just as they were born with dark hair and black eyes: inseparably. Mauro cannot imagine a life without Joaquin. It would be the same if he had lost a hand or a foot. He grunts: “She won’t let you leave.”

  Joaquin casts a scornful look at the mother.

  “Her? So it’s not enough for you, what she did tonight?”

  “She’ll work it out with Emiliano tomorrow.”

  “There’s nothing to work out, Mauro. She gambled me. Gambled. Like money or cattle. You hear me?”

  They fall silent. Joaquin shoves the mother with his foot, and she half slips onto the floor of the cart, twisted in a ridiculous position. He spits on her.

  “Me. You can be sure she knew what she was doing, the old lady, didn’t she. It wasn’t you she gambled, Mauro. She needs you, you’re the strongest, you do the work of two men, she could never manage without you. But I’m nothing to her. Any old seasonal hand can replace me when she needs extra labor, she’ll check her budget and see it’ll cost her less than to feed me year in year out, and she’ll think that luck was on her side after all.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Wait and see.”

  “You’ll be back.”

  “She’ll never have the money to get me back.”

  Mauro opens his mouth to speak, then swallows his words. He tries to put himself in his brother’s position. Of course the mother won’t do anything tomorrow: he stops trying to reassure Joaquin. His brother will leave, like Emiliano said. At the thought of it, he feels the burning in his guts again. He imagines the old man showing up with a new horse for his twin, who will then saddle it with his own tack, and strap on his kit—he has so little, a few items of clothing, a knife, his lasso. He whispers:

  “And Salvaje?”

  In the dark, Joaquin’s hands are twisted so tight that Mauro takes his arm and shakes it.

  “Ma will never let you take him with you, will she.”

  “I know. He’s worth more than I am, that horse, even if she does nothing with him.”

  “If you want, I’ll take him back out to the plains. He’ll be better off out there than ending up a workhorse.”

  Joaquin does not answer right away. His dun criollo. Mauro knows that this upsets Joaquin as much as leaving him, his brother, he can sense the temptation in Joaquin’s eyes, to beg the mother to give him the horse, if he has to he’ll set aside his dignity, his pride, for a horse, for a friend. Who else could remind him of the estancia, who could stay with him other than Salvaje—a warm, vibrant memory of his life up until that evening, the thick mane for consolation, the damp coat to dry his tears, in the early days. And for sure the mother doesn’t give a damn about that horse, and after what she agreed to this evening it would be the least she could do. But she won’t give Joaquin the horse, Mauro is sure of that. She has never given any of them anything. It’s all for her bloody self, for Chrissake, it drives him insane, the fact she could lose his brother at a poker game, you’d think she doesn’t know how to do anything but destroy, she is headed for a place in hell, dragging them with her, to fix things and slave away in silence. And yet he can sense Joaquin next to him, slowly breathing, gathering his momentum, and how can he hold it against him, he would have done the same. Uttering the words in a quiet voice to get used to them, to give himself courage, and the older brother hears them and it hurts: Ma, by the way, about Salvaje . . .

  But when the grunting under the blanket she has wrapped herself in reaches their ears, Joaquin suddenly hunches over and decides against it. Look, Mauro, and the tall twin nods his head with a sorrowful smile.

  “I wouldn’t have said anything, but since you got it on your own: you’re right to drop it. No point in humiliating yourself.”

  “She won’t let me, huh.”

  “No.”

  “What’s she going to do with him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Yup. That’s what I think, too. She just wants him to belong to her.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Because I’m a stranger now.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Didn’t you see the way she looked at me, back there, when we left the bar? I’m not part of the family anymore. I could see it in her eyes. Shit, as if I was the one betraying her!”

  “The day she can buy you back, she’ll do it right away, I’m sure. That’s all she’ll be thinking about.”

  “Well, let her think.”

  Mauro hesitates; what’s the point of more lies—he too is aware that the mother has sold them, that in all likelihood she would do so again if she had to. Wipe them off the face of the earth for a game of poker. For a fit of anger that’s of no concern to them. She looked at Joaquin as they headed back to the cart, he saw her turn away from him, and it was the same as when she turns for home again after she’s witnessed the death of an animal—without sadness, just something she saw on her way home. She’ll order the sons to go bury the creature. And that’s it, forgotten. How many days will it take the mother to wipe Joaquin from her memory? Something inside Mauro melts with relief at the thought that, of the two of them, he is the one who will be staying behind. He feels slightly guilty. And murmurs:

  “I’ll see you in San León, don’t you think?”

  Joaquin doesn’t answer. He is already gone.

  RAFAEL

  The first night after Joaquin left, the little brother rides out on Halley. Until the very last moment he didn’t think Emiliano would show up. The story was too appalling, and the mother said nothing, as expressionless as a corpse. And yet, on seeing the twins’ despondent faces, Rafael clenched his fists and waited, suppressing his emotions, so that nothing would show. He went to hide in a corner of the barn. Fell to his knees in a sort of prayer. The estancia was trapped in a heavy silence that seemed doomed to last forever. He gave himself a time beyond which he would lose all hope; and just when he no longer believed it could, it happened.

  Mid-morning, the old man was there at the end of the road. Mauro whistled between his teeth the moment he saw him: Here he is, the vulture. And Rafael watched him come toward them, bathed in light, his handsome, wrinkled face full of promises, he heard something singing in the sky, and he joined his hands. Make it be true.

  Up until that final moment, too, he was afraid that Mauro, livid with anger, would take his rifle and kill Emiliano. That the mother would take out a wad of bills. That Joaquin would run away and swear he’d be back later. But none of that happened, and the old man slapped his hand on the shoulder of the smaller twin.

  “Don’t make such a face! I’m not taking you to the slaughterhouse.”

  Then they were gone. Silence and emptiness left behind like a veil over the estancia, and even Rafael is not as pleased as he’d hoped he’d be. He’d have to wai
t for his nighttime refuge on the steppe and the quiet hoof fall of his horse: only then would he feel his throat relax and his hands open, and the acrid sweat evaporate, how many hours had it been sticking to his temples. The moon is slender but he doesn’t care, he can see well enough. The universe sparkles. He rides across the plain, laughing, locates the spots where he had tried to dig graves in weeks gone by. He leans forward and into his horse’s ear he says:

  “One down.”

  The estancia without Joaquin slowly closes upon itself again. The remaining brothers keep busy. In the beginning they sleep badly at night, disturbed by this strange change to their immutable world. Something is destabilizing them, causing them to cry out. At daybreak, when it’s time to go and saddle the horses, they instinctively wait for Joaquin. And when they circle around the cattle, or see to the calves or the newborn lambs, they look for the absent pair of arms. The dogs are disoriented, and don’t know whether to follow Mauro or the other two; if no one calls them, they keep to themselves, off to one side.

  Sometimes the sons stare out at the arid plains stretching all the way to the horizon, to the mountains: that’s where Joaquin is living now, where he’s doing the same gaucho work they’re doing, but elsewhere, and without them. Out there, the westerly winds blow harder, cold and damp, and the cordillera of the Andes doesn’t protect those who live in the foothills. Emiliano is a sheep farmer. They picture Joaquin on horseback, herding the animals, or on foot, cutting their thick wool and putting it in sacks. They feel privileged, the fact that with the mother they still have bovines, and they know only too well how nauseating the acrid smell of sheep can be, how it makes you sick, even after years of it, and how the tiny filaments of wool can irritate your throat and eyes, making you spit and cough when it’s shearing season.

  “Rotten luck,” laughs the little brother, but he instantly falls silent when Mauro shoots him a dark look.

  Once again he learns how to pretend: that he misses Joaquin, and his eyes fill with tears when they talk about him. He asks the mother how long she thinks it will take to make enough money to go and get him, this same mother who, from the day she gambled her son, has stopped going to sit at the poker tables. Mauro keeps an eye on her, goes with her to town every time, hoping to see his twin. And when they come back at night he obliges the old lady to put the money she hasn’t lost at cards into a jar. Rafael counts along with them. It doesn’t add up to much. The older brother says the mother is drinking half again as much as before, eating away at the savings he’d hoped they’d accumulate. She says it’s so she won’t succumb to the temptation to gamble. A fine excuse. Now she drinks glass after glass, her eyes glued to the games going on around her, without her, she whines her approval or dissent, waving her fingers which long to caress the cards. But she stands firm. It tears her heart out, and her guts, that’s how, to restore her dignity, she describes it the next morning to the two younger boys, her voice furry with the residue of alcohol. Rafael gives her a sidelong glance, while Mauro glares at her and grumbles, You should stop drinking, too. The little brother nods vigorously, he agrees. And what else do you want, shouts the mother, for there to be nothing left she’s allowed to do, not the least little entertainment in this dull existence, do they want her to croak already, joylessly, and not even forty years old, just to put three extra pesos in the jar, and what else while you’re at it.

  They give up. Make do with her promise she won’t gamble them, too—for Rafael, that’s enough. If he had to, he’d go and steal from the money saved, to delay Joaquin’s return, but there’s so little, they’d notice. He suspects the mother herself dips into the jar now and again, in anticipation of her drinking expenses; Joaquin isn’t about to come back to the estancia any time soon.

  And yet the old lady goes on working, cooking, selling, without flinching. She’s started saying “my three sons”—and that’s about the only thing that’s changed. She has never given an explanation or an apology for that disastrous evening at poker; she’s walled up in a stubborn silence. The little brother would have liked to hear her tell the story, but all he gets is gestures of irritation. He often asks Mauro to tell him about that terrible night. Tormented, the tall twin repeats the story relentlessly, convinced as he is that his brothers are mourning the way he is. In his heart of hearts, Rafael is purring. He says, Tell it again. And once again Mauro sets the stage, the noisy bar, the alcohol, and the cards on the tables.

  “Goddamn,” murmurs the little brother in conclusion, every time.

  The tall twin nods. Yup. It’s rotten.

  Rotten. When he thinks about it in his bed at night, Rafael has to keep from laughing. Before, they went two by two; before, the older brothers dealt out punches, orders, humiliation. So for that reason alone, Joaquin’s departure is beyond Steban and Rafael’s wildest expectations. Even if at times the sudden void he left behind him derails them, that void has put an end to the terrible beatings. Mauro hasn’t once tried to corner them and thrash them; in his twin’s absence he’s lost, paralyzed. In the beginning the little brother can scarcely believe it, and when he’s rubbing down his horse at the end of the day he is still startled if there’s a creaking sound in the barn or he thinks he sees the tall twin’s terrifying silhouette in the doorway. As for Steban, he’s counting the days. Their older brother’s desertion is more alarming than the way he used to beat them: they’re afraid that once Mauro recovers from his twin’s loss he will come down upon them more cruelly than ever. And even though before long he does start shaking them when they’re too slow at what they’re doing, never again does he indulge in the violent episodes he found so entertaining. Little by little, Steban and Rafael are amazed to see they can sleep through the night, their bodies going limp, and they don’t wake up with their hearts pounding at the chilling thought that it’s all going to start up again. It takes weeks, but for the first time in years the little brother is able to luxuriate in sleep, to discover the ecstasy of feeling his body harrowed by nothing more than work. No longer do his eyes shine with the anxious gleam of trapped prey; every evening he is amazed to be able to spread his arms and legs out on the lumpy mattress and wrap himself in a blanket, and a sensation not unlike happiness comes over him while he trembles with joy. In silence he applauds the mother who drinks too much and saves nothing. He works himself into the ground all day long, harder than ever, so she won’t be sorry she’s lost Joaquin. He prays it won’t all turn out to be a dream—and since Joaquin left not a day has gone by without him thanking the Santa María standing on the dresser.

  The way he looks at the world has changed. He celebrates his fourteenth birthday without fear. He realizes that for as long as he can remember he has always been flanked by anxiety. The apprehension of the next blow, the insults. And everything else. Maybe if he had not grown up in this savage environment he would not savor so deeply the strange freedom Joaquin’s departure has given him. But he measures his luck, their luck, and standing in his stirrups as he looks out at the landscape, he spreads his arms out in front of Steban and bellows:

  “Didn’t I tell you he’d leave?”

  His brother smiles crookedly, revealing his ruined teeth, and grunts, Yup, hoarsely, motioning to him to keep his voice down.

  “You mean Mauro might hear us from here?”

  The little brother bursts out laughing.

  “Mauro is at Las Pointas. Two hours south of here. No danger. You’re still scared, aren’t you.”

  “Nah.”

  “Yes, you are, you idiot.”

  “Nah, I said.”

  “Watch out, that was three words in a row.”

  “Asshole.”

  A flock of birds rises up before them, frightened by Rafael’s shout. He watches them soaring into the sky in a noisy cloud, finding their places and gradually aligning themselves in a V formation, a few birds in the lead then the rest of the flock following, hundreds of vibrant black dots, and they’re p
eeping their hearts out, a noise, a song—the little brother closes his eyes. No sound of a rifle being fired to startle him. Mauro stopped that, too: when the passerines land in the thickets, he observes them while finishing his cigarette, and no spark lights up his tired face, he doesn’t reach for his rifle or hurl insults at these creatures he’s always hated. He simply turns away so he doesn’t see them. He is sick of the world; the wound of Joaquin’s departure is not healing. In the evening when he comes home from work he sits down on the front stoop and waits for supper, not saying a word. He eats quickly, leaves the table, and shuts himself in his room. In the beginning the mother pestered him. And then she stopped. Steban and Rafael watch him leave, dragging his feet, and to see how stooped he’s become in the space of a few weeks they wonder if he hasn’t shrunk. To each other they call him Sad-Mauro.

  Sad-Mauro doesn’t speak. He learns to gaze at the sky, expecting nothing. How can the little brothers possibly understand the twin’s deep, burning wound? What do they know of the extreme feelings of brotherhood—the affection they show that is like a young puppy’s: unconscious, volatile, they are no more attached to each other than they are to their livestock, and even less than to their horses. The older boy observes them, full of scorn, and Rafael often notes a gleam in his eye that makes him tremble for fear of seeing the anger and violence return. But now he realizes the gleam vanishes too quickly for Mauro to come at them every time, he’d have to be consumed by anger, bolt upright in a flourish of rage, but fortunately for Steban and him something has snapped, because the only thing that makes the older brother feel good is to set off at gallop and round up the heifers or ewes, in a physical struggle he knows he will win. Or to plunge his head in the river to ease the torment. Or strike out at them, his little brothers, naturally, never imagining for an instant how they will laugh to themselves afterward at how insignificant it feels compared to before—and this despite the fact that he hits hard, deliberately.

  The mother and Mauro go at each other too, not often, but from time to time, when he reproaches her for forgetting about Joaquin—and even Rafael is surprised to find he forgets how there used to be four of them, as if he’d erased the second twin from his life, the way he forgets the rain the morning after, as soon as his clothes are dry. Mauro is no fool when he lets fly at them too, and not just the mother, although with her he reminds her that she gave birth to twins, and raised both of them, not just Mauro the firstborn, as he shouts: