Nothing But Dust

by Sandrine Collette

  Nivaldo died the moment the doctor leaned over him. Maybe he felt a great rush of hope when he saw him, because his veiled gaze suddenly lit up, maybe he thought he’d be saved, that anything was possible. He had moved one hand, not really his hand but a few fingers, his fingertips, and at that moment the old man had also thought that life would hold on to Nivaldo. A second later he expired. It was better that way, for sure. The old man lit a cigarette.

  That is what he is thinking about, curled up in a ball on his blanket in the cave, and at last he understands what pain feels like, not the pain of a fractured leg or your nose broken by a stubborn animal, no, real pain, the kind that brings tears, the kind that makes you call out to the man outside, whoever he is, good or evil, and his eyes open wide because his cry is stifled by a moan, no one will ever hear him, no one will ever come. To him it is like a howl exploding in his head, lacerating his flesh, and he tries again and again, he’ll pass out, he’ll die if need be, Help, help, and life is slowly seeping away, he’d like to take hold of it, put it back inside, this life pouring out.

  In his youth he was something to see, on his criollo, and when he rode through the town the girls would flash him sidelong glances and laugh among themselves. He didn’t have a penny to his name, but that face, madre. He could have done whatever he liked with it, even though there were some guys who thought his features were too delicate, too Indian—yes, those high cheekbones and aquiline nose were a problem, along with the hair as black as the steppe on a moonless night; but he hadn’t known either mother or father, and you could get lost in conjecture, no one had any idea. All he or anyone else could be sure of was that he was a fine-looking lad and he drove the women crazy.

  For a long time the daughter of a big cattle farmer made eyes at him, and he could have gone no further. He would have gotten used to the life, for sure. They would have gone around calling him señor and he would have learned not to notice the mocking little smiles aimed at his bad manners. He thought about it all through one long winter, trying to get used to sitting properly on a chair, when all he had ever known was a saddle. He really did consider it. But he liked wide open spaces, and the wind stinging his eyes and the depths of his throat, and he left the following spring for the seasonal migration. He took with him the only creature he would not leave for anything on earth: his horse. Already back then he had a bay. But there have been three of them since, three bay horses worn by time and chasing cattle, herding the goats from the cows so they won’t hurt each other, finding every single animal that’s wandered off, not to leave any behind when the herds disperse in September in the upland pastures, or return at the first snow to the lowlands.

  The bays have come and gone, and time, and years. He eventually settled down, not for a woman but a job, a boss who paid a little more decently, and thousands of hectares dotted with brown steers. That was twenty years ago. He never lost his love of the rough life, the freedom of having no possessions, just his horse and saddle. He hasn’t changed. He hasn’t grown old.

  Since his youth he’s always worn his hair long, now it is white, tied at the back. As if it were yesterday.

  Good Lord, the wound is making him twist inside, and the pain has refused to go away, all these days he’s been here in this cave, with his smell infesting even the rock. He doesn’t understand how he can still be alive, the way his heart is pounding, and the pain eating away at him inside, deeper and deeper, burning his flesh as it makes its way, it must be emptying him out, a scrap of skin over almost nothing at all, just bones and nerves, a little blood, still. If someone told him he was in hell, he’d believe it. He doesn’t see what else it could be, because down here on earth he never imagined, never heard tell of so much pain, except Nivaldo of course, but that was a long time ago, and maybe he’s forgotten, maybe he’s got it wrong.

  Thirst. His flask is next to him and he tries to sip whatever drops might remain, but yesterday he did the same, and his lips are cracking as if they were made of old paper. He would like to run his tongue over them to moisten them, but his tongue, too, is rough and swollen, and nothing relieves it, he can’t even swallow, his throat tightens in a spasm over his dry, inflamed membranes. Thirst, or pain. In his confused brain they alternate, mingle, gnaw away at him. Normal life seems far away; he knows he has no more right to it, ever again, until the end.

  What got into him, the old man, to go see the boss one morning and ram his rifle up against his temple, acting mean enough for the man to realize he would not hesitate to fire, and that his head wasn’t worth much? Impossible to say, a moment’s madness, it made no sense, one morning that was different from the twenty years that had come before, and yet nothing had happened, just that the old man got up that day and knocked on the door. He doesn’t need the money. That wasn’t why he was there. It just came over him, all of a sudden.

  But it’s too late for regrets, and the bag is all he’s got left, he protects it like a treasure. In the semi-obscurity of the cave, his eyes sticky with dried tears, he cannot see it. He just knows it’s there beneath his head, he can feel the leather against his cheek.

  Sometimes he thinks of his bay: he slipped off when he got here, removed the girth just before he lost consciousness, the bay wasn’t there when he woke up and he must be wandering around the mountain if he’s not already dead, both of them dying together in this shithole, all these miles, all these days on the run, for this.

  But now there is this sound, outside.

  His body on fire, the old man calls again, in a murmur.

  At first when the figure moves cautiously toward him, there is a huge wave of disappointment: it’s only a kid. And then immediately afterward, relief. If he doesn’t frighten him, he can do what he wants with him. The boy looks the clever type, with his hard face, not too fierce. The exhausted old man waits for him to come closer, keeps silent to preserve his strength. Something muddled is racking his brain and he recalls how Nivaldo died when the doctor arrived, so he opens his eyes wide all of a sudden, as wide as he can, he doesn’t want to die now, he refuses to kick the bucket and he’s seized by terror, the great void, don’t let go, no. Madre, he can understand the fear—and he reaches out to grab the kid, a living creature who can keep him here, as long as he clings to this warm flesh he’ll be saved. But the boy steps back, eludes him, and his fingers close over air, and the old man sees the boy ready to flee as if he had the devil there before him, for a moment he wonders, am I really in hell this time? He opens his mouth to say something, to prove to himself he’s not dead, not yet, and the pain returns, it had left him for such a brief moment, it courses through him, if he’s suffering like this it means he’s still got a body that can endure, and he murmurs, trembling, “I’m thirsty.”

  Maybe he fell asleep while the boy went to get water, maybe he was within a hair’s breadth of the abyss and didn’t know it, on the edge of the precipice, and wouldn’t that be unfair, now that he has the wherewithal to live like a king for a hundred years, he gropes beneath him, the bag is still there. He smiles and his chapped lips bleed and sting, he touches them, sees the blood on his hand. Moves his tongue and there’s that metallic taste inflaming his throat, and a sense of urgency comes over him again, he feels so avid, breathless, he could lick the earth, he strikes his fist on the ground, almost in tears. When the kid comes back with the flask he wants to tear it from his hands.

  “Not too fast,” says the kid, not daring to touch him.

  But the old man doesn’t care, he’s seen worse, and he can’t stop drinking this water that is pouring through his body like a river swollen with winter rains, if he were a blade of grass he’d sprout at once, rise, climb to the sky, and he blesses this thirst that nothing can quench, and the water flowing into his mouth and spilling out makes him laugh, he chokes. Again the kid says, “Not so fast. Don’t drink too much.”

  And now the old man feels something strange in his stomach, the impression that the same water th
at was restoring him to life is suddenly going straight through him, as if it were trying to find the way to his injuries, pressing to get out again, and the wounded flesh opens without resisting—bastard, treacherous flesh. It no longer belongs to him, this body shaken by convulsions, writhing, the pain moves into every vein, all his viscera, and the old man can see it coming, the moment when everything will rip open inside him, all mixed together, just life escaping, and he would like to suck the water back up, all the way to his throat, his mouth, spit it back into the flask and start over again there, let him rewrite what comes next, his eyes wide with terror, let him have a second chance. His hands open and press wide on his belly so nothing will happen, he cries out when the spasms come, so this is the end, he didn’t think it would be like this, so wretched. God, for a flask of water: what if the kid has poisoned him?

  In that instant, the boy grabs his head and rams his fingers into the corner of his mouth, shoving them in, stifling him. The old man knows he is going to die. He stops fighting. A thought for the bag beneath him, that he’ll do nothing with; another thought for the goats and sheep whose throats he cut his whole life without ever stopping to wonder what it meant to know you are dying. Maybe he tries one more time to bite the kid who’s crushing his jaws.

  And then he feels the fingers all the way down his throat, he can feel the convulsion coming, and the boy steps back all of a sudden. The very next moment the old man throws up what he just swallowed, which was drowning him from inside.

  RAFAEL

  He kneels in the cave and observes the wounded man, who has just lost consciousness again. A scrap of a man, stinking, ragged, so thirsty that Rafael had to ram his fingers down his disgusting throat to make him vomit the water he’d swallowed, otherwise he’d have been done for, his stomach heaving with the rumblings and the bile and blood. Now Rafael stands to one side. He washed his hands with what was left in the flask, clenching his teeth. He looks at the old man. Listens to his wheezing breath. He can’t help it, his nostrils contract, he feels nauseous from the fetid stench of the man’s flesh, the excrement under his body, the sweat, but something else, too, that he can recognize a mile away: the odor of an infected wound, it’s the same with animals that get gangrene when they’re left too long with injuries that are impossible to treat. Outside, the horses are waiting, snorting; reassuring. He goes out to speak to them, to run his hands over them, over the scratches they got during their flight. The bay keeps at a certain distance. Rafael makes sure the scrapes are clean. In the end, put off by the thought of going back to the stench in the cave, he leans against a boulder and closes his eyes.

  He rubs his face. Hesitates. Obviously, he didn’t foresee something like this. Such a deserted place, and now there they are, two of them at the foot of the mountain. Head off and leave the man, that seems to be the best solution. Put a flask full of water by his side with a bit of food, and clear out. Forget what is bound to happen, because it’s none of his business. If he’d gone two hundred yards further to the left, or two hundred yards to the right, he wouldn’t even have known the old man was there.

  But because of the bay, he can’t make up his mind. Whether to leave the horse or take him with him, either way you look at it there are pros and cons. If he abandons them both, the bay and his rider, death will come for them both for sure, for the man because he’s half dead already, for the horse in his wandering; Rafael can’t make up his mind, since he doesn’t know which one of the two is causing him to hesitate. What if he takes the horse with him. Initially he thinks the mother will congratulate him for having found an extra horse. But then, on second thought, she’ll start asking questions. Where he found it, who he took it from. Why did he leave the man, an old man. And what if some day someone recognizes the horse—someone who knows where the bay came from, what past he is hiding—anyway there are too many things, and maybe the mother will order him to go back and get the wounded man with his carrion stench, he doesn’t want to, doesn’t know anymore. So he stays. He’s got a supply of meat, and there’s a river at the foot of the mountain, and berries on the trees, he saw them, he’ll go and pick them. He’ll decide tomorrow, whether to leave or not, alone or not—but of one thing he’s already sure, the man in the cave won’t be able to sit in the saddle; he’ll figure it out, for the time being there are too many questions and his head is aching.

  Squatting down by the injured man again. He has left some food and drink by his side, now he waits for him to open his eyes. But time passes and the old man goes on snoring, trembling and stiff, murmuring incomprehensible words. When he is wracked by pain, he moves an arm or a leg, and gives off a disgusting stink that doesn’t even rouse him.

  When night falls, Rafael makes a fire, at the edge of the cave so as not to suffocate. Patches of cloud fray a path across the sky. Among them, a few stars. The wind is still blowing, but he’s sheltered by the mountain.

  In the morning he sees that while he was sleeping the man ate, soundlessly, without waking him. He could kick himself. Just the thought he could have been caught unawares, robbed, had his throat cut. His knife has vanished. He stares into the feverish eyes of the man lying nearby, and he crouches down, ready to spring up again. No. This thing here can’t get up, can’t hurt him. So he says, “You gotta give me back my knife.”

  The man shoots him an exhausted look. He follows his gaze. The blade is where he left it for the old man the night before, by the smoked meat that he must have cut into smaller pieces. With his injuries he probably can’t swallow easily, and in spite of the gloom Rafael can make out the bits of food he spat out on the ground, and he shudders when he hears the murmuring voice.

  “Chrissake I was nearly done for.”

  Silence, then the old man goes on speaking, breathless.

  “I thought you wanted to suffocate me. But without you I’d be dead twice over by now.”

  Then: “I’m thirsty.”

  Rafael slides a half-empty flask over to him, and says quickly,

  “That’s all there is. I’ll go get more at the river.”

  The old man’s croaking stops him in his tracks. Don’t go running away.

  “No. I’ll come back.”

  “Can’t leave a poor old guy like me.”

  “No, I told you I’ll be back.”

  “You have a good reason not to leave me, y’know.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You see this bag?”

  The old man rolls his head on the leather bag he’s used as a pillow, and pats it with the palm of his hand.

  “Got any idea what’s in there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No, sir.”

  The injured man smiles, feels how his lips pull taut, so he rounds them so they won’t bleed, opens his mouth wide, and Rafael observes his grimace, wrinkling his nose, waiting for what’s next.

  “Well, let me tell you, huh,” continues the old man. “In that bag, there is . . . happiness.”

  Rafael says nothing, and the man waits, raises his eyebrows.

  “Aren’t you gonna ask what it is, happiness?”

  “What is it?”

  “Something you can’t even imagine. Only if you see it, then you’ll realize. But I’m not gonna show you. You gotta deserve it. First you have to make me better, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “So go find some water. And come back.”

  The boy leaps to his feet and runs out of the cave. He could make neither head nor tail out of what the old man was saying, and the ruined leather bag, splattered with the blood of his wounds, inspires little more than disgust. But he saw the gleam of joy in the face below him, and a man with wounds like his, his beard full of clots and so much blood everywhere you don’t know where he’s been hurt, doesn’t go smiling as if he had the Virgin there before him without good reason, and he mulls the question over as he rides Halley down to the river. To be honest,
he doesn’t even wonder what there might be in the bag: he’s not used to inventing or supposing, he lacks imagination. It’s the word that has caught his attention, a word he has never heard. Happiness.

  Often, to curse her fate, when faced with a dead animal or a harvest spoiled by bad weather or too many bills to pay all at once, the mother would cry out, Rotten luck. That’s something he does know about. A broken paw, rotten luck. Carrion in the water reservoir, rotten luck. And more rotten luck, the sons finishing work late, or the wind knocking over the fences so the cattle get out. His entire life has been bathed in this mixture of resignation and a fist raised to the sky, a life choking with fear when the elements are unleashed, rage against a world that is neither fair nor beautiful. Not one day begins without recrimination or a sigh; the mother has never gotten up with a smile, with gentle or joyful words. As for the sons on their own, they display a cautious neutrality when they are not at each other’s throats, yet they’re always ready to fly off the handle over a biting remark, or because they have a bellyache, in other words over a trifle, something of no importance, sometimes not even identifiable, just a desire to contribute to the ambient evil, to the tension and conflict.

  Since that is all they know.

  So, happiness, then, on what extraordinary occasion might Rafael have heard that word? From the lips of an old man rotten in body and mind—because for sure his mind must be a wreck, too—in the stench of a cave where the worms are congregating, and yet that is where he discovers the word, instantly, because of the expression on the injured man’s face, Rafael makes it his business, makes it into something. God, what is happiness, fuck all if he knows. Except that it fits into a leather bag.