It becomes a game. Because in the end all he would have to do is take the rifle and blast the old man’s head to bits. More than once Rafael pictures himself taking aim and firing, observing the carcass lying there before him, pushing it over with his toe to free the bag. His heart beats faster. Something stops him, however. Not affection, no, because they are made of the same stuff, the two of them, they are hard, devoid of emotion, each one with his weaknesses so deeply buried that no one will ever find them, unless they dig through flesh all the way to the bone. The boy feels affection for his horse and his dogs; not for man.
But anyway. In spite of the meat, and in spite of the herbs on his wounds, the old man has stopped getting better. For several days already he has been stagnating, and once again the boy thinks of how an animal will vegetate before it dies, as if it is still hesitating over which side will determine its future, as it stands with its head low, appetite gone. Two or three times as he treated the old man’s wound he removed worms that were nestled in the flesh, white worms, the same kind you see on carrion, and it seemed really strange to him to be removing those wriggling maggots from a living creature, or maybe in the end the old man is transitioning, maybe it’s a sign, the boy keeps an eye out, the worms haven’t come back. But he thinks about it every time he lifts up the poultice, and gets used to the idea that one morning it might be swarming with them, and he mustn’t cry out, mustn’t recoil. Around the wound the skin has turned white, or gray here and there, frayed as if it were about to come to pieces. In the middle the skin isn’t closing or scarring; the ragged flesh overlaps but there is still this hole sucking it inwards, and expelling flows of yellowish pus and those horrid smells that made you want to throw up. The old man’s face has turned black and yellow, too, and his breath when he speaks . . . He sleeps more and more. Frequently the boy has to shake him to change the dressing, it’s a major undertaking, because he has to struggle every time, the poultice has stuck to the flesh, the skin tears, and those hands constantly trying to stop him, as if the wound could heal all on its own, as if all the old man has to do is curl up around it and stop moving.
Rafael no longer knows exactly why he is still taking care of the old man; he does it from routine, from fatigue. He keeps on because the mother taught him never to abandon an injured animal, and that’s how he’s been trained. His intuition orders him to stay there, to help. The only thing that would make him leave the old man is death; but he’s standing there facing it like a rabid dog, driven by an instinct that is beyond reasonable, ready to fight and ward it off because survival is written in his blood. Even if he has to stay there for years.
There are evenings when he thinks about the estancia. He misses Three. He is sorry he didn’t let him come along. With his fingertips he pretends to stroke the dog’s rough coat. He murmurs, Good dog. Opposite him the old man sleeps. Dozes, grumbles, dozes again, you’d think he’s hibernating in the middle of summer, the way he’s decided to sleep so much, only awake to eat and drink a little, nothing else. The boy wishes he’d move more: an animal that lets itself go and won’t get to its feet is done for, otherwise it would struggle to stay upright because deep down it knows that lying down is the posture of death, that is how all dead bodies end up, on your feet you still have a chance. But the old man pushes him away when he tries to take his arm, moans about his wound and begs to be left alone. So he does as he is told, and goes back to sit at the entrance to the cave, where he can see the horses, and the landscape full of light.
But what sort of wound is this that doesn’t get better, that oozes for all it’s worth, as if it had been absorbing evil instead of rejecting it: the boy is beside himself, here he thinks it’s been drying and then he finds that, under the dressing, the wound has opened again. He is mad at the old man for not healing the way he should; he reproaches him for his apathy and his vacant gaze. Without a will, there is no way: and Rafael’s will alone will not suffice, the granddad has to pull his weight, he mustn’t get the impression he has to be forced to produce scar tissue or let himself be disinfected. The problem is that he wastes all his remaining strength wrapping his scrawny arms around his satchel, stroking it, murmuring incomprehensible words to it. When they’re not compressing his belly his feverish fingers flutter over the leather, leaving moist, sticky traces. The boy watches, sitting not far away.
He has no perception of time. One day follows another and he seems to see time passing from inside the cave, in bands of light and color, somewhat later in the morning, somewhat earlier in the evening, particularly on days that are overcast. Inaction weighs heavily upon him, on his shoulders and in his back, which hurts him even though he hasn’t been harvesting or reaping, nothing. A feeling of urgency is burning his heart. To move. Maybe the old man’s growing immobility is the source of this animal reaction in him—to move on, to leave this place of death. For the first time he is aware that he could have gone for help rather than wait here trying to treat a wound that was way beyond him, with methods that were slapdash at best. He tries to come up with excuses: the old man would have died while he was gone. After all, he was the one who didn’t want the boy to leave.
The truth is that Rafael was only too grateful for the diversion, relieved he didn’t have to go back with the horses so soon; really, the idea of going home didn’t even occur to him. Intoxicated with solitude and freedom, and a sense of being all-powerful—hunting to feed himself, lighting fires, finding water—how can he explain the exaltation he feels every time he has found another way to survive? Some primitive reflex buried deep inside him, brought to light by these weeks where his life is in his own hands and nowhere else; he is the sole agent, the only one responsible. In this respect the old man is no more and no less than the crowning glory of the escapade, the accomplishment of his power over another man. Two lives depend on him now, in addition to the horses’. Never has he been so strong.
But the magic is fading, and he is getting weary of ruling, deciding, waiting. When the old man’s health begins to decline on top of it, something snaps inside him, bringing with it anger and discouragement. Try as he might! Sometimes he has to restrain himself from giving the old man a heartfelt kick to wake him and shout in his ear: “On your feet, abuelo, walk, walk! Let’s get going now.”
He pictures himself hoisting the wounded man onto his horse and leading him to the estancia, where he’ll leave him to the mother. He dreams of giving up on the old man, and all the failures and constraints along with him, the questioning and doubt. Deep down he knows he’ll never find the sort of lightness he experienced before, but he would like to cast off this lead weight which is driving him every day a bit deeper into the earth of the cave. He is sure the mother would know how to treat his wound. When he thinks about it, he rubs his eyes and his face, practically stamping his feet. He wishes he could go back to where he was two weeks earlier, to get up after the thrashing Mauro gave him and go and close the doors to the stable. Then he would wake up from this nightmare. But he understood long ago that life doesn’t work like that, you can’t go back. Like when he would jab his fingers on the barbed wire in the fields, and his older brothers said, mocking him: “You shoulda thought about that beforehand.”
Yet again he’s let himself get trapped, the burden is too heavy. He was overambitious. Tears run down his cheeks and he wipes them away with surprise, he didn’t feel them coming. So he surrenders, rushes out of the cave, sobbing. In the beginning it takes his breath away, there seems to be so much pain trying to force its way out, and he kneels at the edge of the cave, sure he’s about to pass out. And what if the old man hears him; but there’s no more time for shame, he doesn’t care about the old man. It takes endless minutes, perhaps an hour, for his weeping to subside, then it comes back, then recedes, not a lot at first, then a bit more. Sniffling. Immense sadness, fragile and weary, just waiting to start up again. Through his moaning can be heard the voice of a little child.
He walks on the mountain f
or a long time, listens to his breathing, which won’t grow calmer, the birds around him fly away when he passes by. He didn’t bring his rifle, it’s as if he were naked in nature, at the mercy of any wandering predator. He feels like a lost animal, too, not knowing what to do or where to go; he pictures the little statue in the corner of the mother’s kitchen, and he murmurs a prayer. Let life come to his aid and choose for him. He’s afraid of freedom, now, he doesn’t want it anymore, he’s eager to get back to the estancia, to chores, to the smell of cows and sheep. Maybe the old man could make it through the journey, wrapped up on a stretcher pulled by one of the horses. He needs branches and rope. The idea takes off in his mind all of a sudden. He’s already working out a diagram, adjusting straps, strengthening the wooden poles to make it all hold. The granddad might get bumped around a bit, but rather than go on festering here . . . He turns around. Breaks into a run.
When he reaches the cave he curbs his urge to wake the old man, and he begins putting twigs on the dying fire. But he can’t help himself. He inches slowly closer, then calls to him. Abuelo. It’s unbelievable, how much the bastard sleeps. The boy can do all the hunting, and fetching water, and keeping the fire going, but it’s the other fellow who lies there snoring. Not even. Because there’s not a sound in the cave. Rafael ends up shaking the old man by the shoulder.
“Abuelo.”
In vain.
In a rage, the boy kicks over the branches where he had put the supply of berries, scatters the fire. Outside, the horses hear him roaring and turn their heads anxiously toward the cave. There’s a tumult in there as if the devil had arrived, and things are getting broken, for sure, to hear the echoing of something banging against the walls of the cave, sounds of wood and metal, flying everywhere, crashing, loudly. And then a duller sound, that of a body being thrown, a soft sound, the same you’d get punching a sack full of sand, or flesh, or guts, the violence in there is ferocious; the boy’s voice piercing the air:
“Fucking piece of shit!”
On his knees in the cave. Not next to the old man, who’s good and dead now, he knew that right away. There’s nothing left to do with him but roll him up tight in a blanket and leave him there, since it’s impossible to dig a hole either in the rock or even further away in this soil of pebbles, with no shovel, no ax, don’t even think about it. The stench won’t bother anyone in this wilderness. But for sure predators will come, intrigued by the smell of dead animal, he’ll have to stop them and the blanket won’t be enough. For now it’s next to the leather satchel that the boy is fulminating and cursing; he doesn’t give a damn about the old man.
It took him a few minutes before he dared to open the bag. First he dragged it away from the granddad, for fear that the dead man would leap up from beyond death and grab him in a furious reflex—you know what happens when a stiff gets hold of your leg, it burns and turns purple then black, and you can see through the flesh to the bone, and then the entire body is attacked, devoured by a terrifying force, sucked down by the Grim Reaper, by the endless darkness. So he prodded the bag with a stick, just in case there were any evil spirits lingering in the leather or something inside ready to burst out to grab him. When he felt safe, almost sure, because he wouldn’t stake his life on it, but he had to try all the same, he unfastened the buckles, trembling. And recoiled. And kicked the flap closed again, quickly, hard, so he wouldn’t get caught.
Jesus Christ, when he saw what was in there; he knows what that is. And it’s not happiness.
That’s why he’s yelling his head off.
Hours later, just as he’s about to leave the cave for good, he falters from weariness. It’s true that these last few days have not been easy. Looking after the old man, putting up with the stench, touching his wound. And seeing to the water, the fire, the food, the horses outside, making sure nothing happens. Being patient, looking at the bag. Sometimes he had such pins and needles in his legs that he had to go for a walk around the mountain. His head was pounding, a constant refrain of wondering whether he should leave, yes he should leave, but he stayed, knowing he was wrong, incapable of finding the solution that would take care of everything, leave for a while, stay for a while—he couldn’t split in two, after all. In a way, he’s glad it’s over. But who’s to say that what lies ahead will be any better?
To protect the granddad as best he could he spent the afternoon burying him under dozens, hundreds, of stones. Big ones, little ones; the ones that were willing, either inside the cave or out, and slowly they pile up, initially it seems the old man is as big as the universe, impossible to bury. But gradually his hands disappear, then his arms, and his feet. When the boy can see nothing but rock, and the granddad’s face and chest have collapsed beneath the weight, become invisible, impossible to reach for any creature that does not have hands and fingers, he sits on him. Not in the middle, of course. At the edge, where there is nothing but stones. To catch his breath. To listen. There is not a sound, he’s sure of that, but checks again, it comes from deep inside him, and yet he knows the old man has stopped breathing, there’s not a sigh trying to seep out through the rocks. It’s like a last wariness—a last fear. What if he’d got it all wrong, all along. Preparing the plants, the treatment, and even death. What if the granddad is asleep.
How many stories has he heard about corpses waking up after a day or even two. How many of them were buried alive by people who, like him, believed that . . . So he listens for a long time. And when his ears begin to buzz with concentration, and he’s sure nothing is ever going to move again, he stands up. Because the old man could never remove the stones, there are too many, they’re too heavy. Dios mio, he is dead and dead once and for all. Yes, provided he is. The boy picks up the leather bag and leaves, says nothing, neither goodbye nor sorry, since there is no one to hear him. If the old man waved to him as he was on his way out, he would turn back, but he’s buried him and he knows perfectly well that he wasn’t moving, and there’s already a smell of death, even if he can’t be sure since with the wound the place has been stinking for days, anyway it’s done, all that’s left in the cave is dead, there’s no need to go back. He leaves.
THE OLD MAN
He can’t say he saw it coming and yet something had been warning him for days, and he figured it would end this way, even if for a time he believed the boy could get him out of there, in the early days, when things were improving, with the kid’s stinging plants. But since then his body has given up, and he can’t take it anymore, can’t stand this pile of stinking flesh, and he wishes he could thump it to get it going again, but has to make do with squeezing it in his arms to contain it, so that the little life remaining, hidden inside, won’t sneak out some hole and escape.
He didn’t believe, either, that he’d cling to his rag of skin with so much spite and determination: he has thumbed his nose at death any number of times, and so what if it came for him, back then he didn’t give a damn, he didn’t know it could hurt so much. Or because he’d seen Nivaldo, he suspected it might, up to a point; but it would still hurt less than Lorenza being gone, Lorenza who had given him her life, then taken it back again, and maybe that’s what made him decide to go on keeping cattle for others, since his own dream was finished, a farm with Lorenza, that was the past, he had to blot it out of his mind.
And yet she was the first one who understood how he loved the animals and the steppe more than his own life, and she went along with it, she said she would wait for him from one season to the next, between the calving and the migration, it’s just they would have to work it out, she didn’t want the child to be born in winter, the country was tough enough as it was. And he had laughed, a child, for a man like him who’d only ever held a calf or a lamb in his arms, he couldn’t get over the fact that Lorenza expected this of him, but she had stood firm. He’ll keep me company when you’re gone. It was the following fall, just as he was getting ready for the seasonal migration, that Lorenza came to tell him: when he
returned there would be three of them. She was sure she was expecting a son, he was already kicking her ribs; and the old man, who wasn’t old in those days, was overcome with confusion, because he hadn’t suspected a thing, but she kissed him and wished him a good journey.
He had led the herds away, singing. The men made fun of him: all the women say that, in the beginning, they say they won’t expect anything of them, won’t change anything. And the men, stupid idiots that they are, believe they’ll be able to have a family and stay in the plains, all at the same time, never imagining they’ll have to choose, and that the pampas wins, every time. You’ll see, they asserted—and laughed some more. He remained convinced.
They had spent the season in the invernadas, the winter pastures, he’d almost forgotten he had a wife and would soon have a son; the thought came to him when it was time to go back down to the plain, and something strange welled inside him, a sort of impatience, and pride, and anxiety, too. There were days when his urgency made him fidget on his horse, and he rounded up the stray steers relentlessly, and this delayed his return, as if deliberately. Other times he was not even sure he wanted to go back, he was already thinking about the moment he would climb back in the saddle to herd the cattle to the far reaches of the plain. To curb his ruminating, in the evening he drank beer after beer until late at night, then got back on his horse the next morning, his head creaking with a sharp pain.
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