Nothing But Dust

by Sandrine Collette

  The next morning when they get up the mother is already in the kitchen. On the table she has placed a wallet that is full of money from the bag, hardly anything, compared to what must be left. The sons eat their breakfast, trying not to look or seem bothered by the money there in front of them, and yet they wouldn’t hesitate to pounce on it if the mother should say, Whoever grabs it first, it’s his. But of course they know she’ll never say that. Mauro pushes back his empty coffee mug until it is level with the wallet, while the others look on, their gazes sharp. He cuts two thick slices of bread, takes the butter, the smoked meat. Concentrates on what he is doing. Not one look at the money: he scorns it. He’s pretending. Deep down he is longing to slap his fat hand onto it, because of what he could do with it. Alcohol and women. He’s been thinking about it all night long.

  There is no trace of the bag. Mauro looks all around, discreetly, in vain. The mother has hidden it, she must have a good reason to do so. She is sitting at the table, too, waiting for them to finish. Then she clears the dishes and the bread, wipes the table with a rag. Usually at this point the sons get up to go out and begin work, but this morning not one of them moves, because of the money, it’s not there by chance, at an equal distance from the three of them, it’s like a bad game. Mauro gazes at the mother, who is watching them, scratching her chin. Either she’s hesitating, or she’s still wondering who to entrust the wallet to—no, of course not, she knows damn well, and she pushes it over to him, the eldest, and his blood begins to simmer deep inside, yes, he’s got it. He pays no attention to Steban and Rafael, who are eyeing him greedily. He puts his hands on the table, close together, and concentrates, not to pounce on the money. He gives the mother a questioning look, and she says:

  “Go and get Joaquin. You’ve got enough there to pay for him twice over.”

  The fox to mind the geese, that’s what the little brother has brought them with that bag, unintentionally, but if he’d known, if he’d just used his head, he would surely have thrown the money out in the middle of the steppe. Mauro bursts out laughing as his horse breaks into a gallop. But there it is, the little brother is such an idiot, it never occurred to him that the first thing the mother would do would be to send for the lost twin, and for sure, it’s hard to believe he didn’t realize, and yet.

  When the tall twin thinks of the expressions on their faces, Steban and Rafael, the moment they understood. How they looked at each other, the mute reproach in the half-wit’s eyes, he got it right away, he must already be trembling in the barn. Maybe he even managed to put three words together to shout at the little brother, something like You . . . you’re just a shit . . . and Mauro can imagine his hesitant voice and he laughs some more, he’ll wet himself from laughing if he’s not careful, what a day, what a magnificent day, move, move it, old nag—and he spurs the horse, it’s not galloping fast enough for him.

  JOAQUIN

  His initial reaction, on seeing his brother waiting outside Emiliano’s house, was to prepare himself for the worst. He immediately thought of the mother. An accident, maybe. Was she dead, or just injured? Out on the plain he urged his horse on. Something crumbled inside him, left him with a sort of guilt, that he wasn’t there, that he couldn’t help; because if Mauro had come all this way it must be serious. But he drew closer and the tall twin there at the end of the road didn’t seem feverish, and Joaquin relaxed, his heart began to beat more calmly, and he looked for another reason. The brothers, must be. And yet that didn’t concern him, he weighed the possibility in his mind, with neither emotion nor dismay. Yes, maybe it was because of them. He even felt a sort of morbid excitement, and he wanted to know which one of them it was, and how. An animal; an implement slipping. A fall.

  He rides up to him. Mauro smiles.

  And a few seconds earlier Joaquin had prepared himself for the worst, he really had. But not for this.

  All three of them sitting around the table. Emiliano, the tall twin, and Joaquin himself. Not a sound. A few seconds ago, Joaquin delicately took the pouch placed before the old man and slid it back over to Mauro. And said, “No.”

  When the older brother had explained it to them—and he didn’t say much, just that the mother had done a deal, and sent him to fetch Joaquin—Emiliano gave him the choice, to stay or to go, and the old man would respect it, either he’d take the money, or he wouldn’t. Nothing obliged him, one way or the other. So now it was up to Joaquin to decide.

  Joaquin thinks back on these recent weeks he’s spent with Eduardo, Fabricio, and Arcangel. How can he explain it to Mauro, why the wound of missing the estancia healed so quickly, he doesn’t know. Whatever he says he’ll sound like a traitor, he doesn’t dare look at his twin’s face, he avoids his gaze, and yet they’ll have to talk about it, he’ll have to justify himself, make Mauro understand. The world back there is no longer his world, the mother yelling, her expression telling them she’s never satisfied, the way she makes them bear a burden that isn’t theirs, the routine of tension and violence. All these new mornings he has woken up without bitterness, no caustic remarks greeting him, to tell him that he’s too late, too slow, that there’s too much work. In the beginning he was expecting it, thought it was just a matter of time until the men would grab him and swear at him because he wasn’t working hard enough, or to their liking, but the days went by and nothing changed. Only now has he understood. That cramped little life the mother imposes on him and his brothers: they don’t know a thing, don’t have any rights. In a few weeks he has learned more than in what will soon be nineteen years, and it has been a shock to his slow, heavy brain, his lazy reason, he recalls the sparks in his head when he discovered all these new things, and he had to understand, register, adapt as quick as he could, it was enough to make him cry like a baby—that wasn’t how they tended the sheep, back at the mother’s. At the time, it’s true, it gave him a fright, he began to wonder if he wasn’t a half-wit, too, all these years making fun of Steban and never imagining that he, too—but no, no, he managed, he forced himself, and nowadays he is just like anyone else, no one would notice any difference. And now Mauro has come to try and tear this boy away from his brand new life, has come with only one promise, to take him back and start over same as always, and he, Joaquin, would have to be out of his mind, so he said it very softly, not to offend him, he gave the wallet back to his brother and that was when he murmured, “No.”

  Emiliano coughs and pats him on the shoulder. Joaquin knows he has to get up and go out, and Mauro, too, because that’s all there is to it. The presence of the old man reassures him, without him there it is quite possible the tall twin would try and persuade him or even force him, tie him to the end of a rope and take him trotting behind his horse back to the mother whether he likes it or not, turning a deaf ear to his protests, dragging him through the dust if he has to, even if Joaquin falls to his knees begging not to go. So he takes his time, hesitates as he walks through the door, does not want to get Mauro’s back up, does not want to have to change his mind if he sees his pale face, and Emiliano can sense how uneasy and afraid he is, this young man he calls the kid, and he nods his head and orders him, so it will all be clear and he won’t change his mind:

  “Ride back with him.”

  First he had to convince Mauro not to chase him away, because when he got back on his horse, the tall twin put his hand on his whip and growled, sounding like an animal for a few seconds, until the words finally came out:

  “Don’t come near me! Go away!”

  For a while they ride together in a disorderly way, cutting each other off with their criollos, and one time Joaquin just barely misses the leather strap, which cracks on his horse’s neck, and then he shouts out because he wants this to stop, his horse is bad-tempered and now it is rolling its eyes and snapping its powerful jaws, beside itself, too, springing forward, steady, steady, Joaquin cries again. When the next crack of the whip comes he holds out his arm and it encircles his muscles with
a hissing sound, but at least he’s got it, and he yanks hard on it to try and unsettle Mauro, who is immovable and begins to laugh, a deep, ferocious laugh, the two brothers stare at each other, waiting for the other to speak. After a moment Joaquin unwinds the leather, it has stung his skin in long spirals, he drops it, watches the tall twin roll it up and fasten it to the saddle. There is still this silence between them, but it gradually changes in substance, there is something sad about it, something irrevocable. Joaquin knows he has won, not in the way of a fight, but Mauro understands that his brother will not be going home, so he frowns, thoughtful, then spreads his arms and shouts, “And what am I going to tell the mother?”

  Joaquin sighs, looks in the direction of the town. Why don’t we go for a drink?

  They ride, side by side, and Mauro slumps beneath his tainted joy, his features set, perhaps it’s the same melancholy his brother is feeling on this strange day, the last they’ll spend together, that’s for sure, that’s what Joaquin decided just now at Emiliano’s house, there was no discussing it. The criollos trot in time. The muffled sound of their hooves on the dirt road, of stones resonating when rock breaks through the surface: this distracts them and they don’t speak, they keep an eye out on the road, the way they always do, for holes or cracks or traps. The summer drought has brought out the snakes, when they sense the riders coming they wriggle across the steppe in search of thickets and rocks for refuge, and the gray and yellow earth vibrates to the horses’ hooves, quivers with scurrying reptiles; sometimes one of them stands upright, caught in flight, turns to face the riders because there is no time left, the horses are upon it. The criollos try to sidestep, lift their hooves, crush the creature out of awkwardness. They’re not afraid of bites, they are native sons, used to enduring and surviving.

  When they enter San León, Joaquin leads his brother through the streets. It’s easy for him, now. He points things out, comments. That’s where you get the best empanadas; here they have terrific beer, and serve it with meatballs made with grilled mutton fat. And over there, that’s where they hanged the Negroes three weeks ago, and he’s almost disappointed that they’ve been removed, he wanted to show them to Mauro. They probably stank too much, and the residents complained. To act important, he tells Mauro the story. He laughs when he tells him that Gomez and his wife decided it was better to leave town, filled with shame, taking the little black baby with them—or abandoning it after a few hours by the side of the road, no one will ever know. No one gives a damn. They’re gone, that’s it. Mauro listens, looks, silently, taking everything in. Joaquin feels strong.

  “I’ll buy you a drink,” he says, as if the town belonged to him.

  At the bar, Mauro takes out the wallet the mother gave him.

  “This is a gift from her. It’s all her fault.”

  They look at the money and laugh. It would take them weeks to drink up that amount, and Joaquin peels off a few bills, puts the rest back inside, pockets the bills, then says with a laugh, while Mauro stares at him, puzzled:

  “Trust me. You won’t regret it.”

  He’s already thinking about the brunette from last time, he’s elated at the thought of going back to that street lit by two pale lanterns, and he gulps his first beers down all in one, joyful, agitated. Mauro imitates him and before long he has surpassed him, emptying his glasses as if he had a hole inside him, and nothing can quench his thirst. Joaquin teases him, rolls cigarettes, drinks some more. When they’re good and drunk, the tall twin asks, almost cheerfully:

  “Why don’t you want to come back?”

  “To have to live without this?”

  “You come often?”

  “We come down every Sunday.”

  “To go to mass, huh?”

  Joaquin bursts out laughing. Yeah. To go to mass. Mauro blows on his cigarette smoke.

  “Good lord.”

  “You could leave, too.”

  The tall twin opens one eye a bit wider and frowns.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Just stay here. I’m sure Emiliano could find you some work.”

  Mauro’s reply is an inaudible grunt, then he laughs to himself, and Joaquin is not sure he’s understood, so he says again:

  “You don’t have to go back to the estancia.”

  “Come off it.”

  “No, I’m serious. Don’t you like the idea of all this?”

  He helps himself to some of the parillada, wipes his hands on his trousers. The taste of braised beef fills his mouth, and the spices, and the delicious tortillas. It’s true, why should life be anything other than working six days, and on the seventh, eating all the grilled and marinated meat and fat you want, guzzling beers while you listen to music, touching a girl. He explains this to Mauro, his voice slurring, and Mauro laughs too loudly, calls for more beer, and slowly shakes his head.

  “I can’t leave the mother.”

  “She’ll manage.”

  “With those two idiots?”

  “It’s not your problem.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Pass your glass.”

  As the hours go by they are reeling, swaying on their chairs, chattering senselessly and aimlessly, they don’t even know why they are talking anymore, nor what they hope to convince themselves of. The night chill falls upon their shoulders, they don’t care, they’re burning up with booze. There is a pile of empty plates on the table, of overturned glasses they lift to their lips to make sure they’re empty. All around them there is conversation, laughter, exclamations. Hands raised, calling for drink. Joaquin looks at all these people, they’re no better than Mauro and him, drunk and tired, and tomorrow he’ll have to be in the saddle at dawn, but dawn has already come, like a dark night, it’s already tomorrow and he staggers, shakes the tall twin, who has collapsed facedown on the table.

  “Gotta go, gotta go to the girls, or it’ll be too late.”

  But Mauro doesn’t react, he’s snoring away, and Joaquin drags him along until he falls; it’s pointless.

  “Shit.”

  After several fruitless attempts, he lays him down against the wall. Slaps his face. Asks for a glass of water, splashes it in his face, but Mauro goes on sleeping and slumps further down, his arms around his head to be left alone, cut off from the world, from the noise, an enormous, soft mass, spread there on the floor, refusing to be budged with all his strength, and Joaquin can tell that soon enough there’ll be no time left for the girls, he gets annoyed, stamps his feet. Starts shouting, until the proprietor stops him because he’s pissing off the men at the tables nearby, they’d like to finish drinking in peace, and that big guy on the floor can just stay there, the joint isn’t about to close.

  So from the wallet Joaquin takes what he’ll need to pay the girl, and shoves the rest of the money into Mauro’s pocket, deep inside so it won’t get stolen, he hopes, so he’ll take something back to the mother, the price for Joaquin, minus one night of drinking, and he runs through the streets, unsteady, supporting himself against the walls of the houses, his mouth open, he’s barely less drunk but just enough to know where he’s headed, he laughs, his heart pounding, and his legs carry him like a giant, famished, like a man, anyway, and never mind if he’s on his own.

  RAFAEL

  When Mauro returns the following morning without Joaquin, a blast of cold air blows over the estancia. Already the mother was worried when her eldest son didn’t show up the night before—a curse upon her if he has disappeared now too, and that’s what she screams as she goes out of the house, just as he’s dismounting from his horse, a stream of acrimony flowing from her mouth, her nose, until the moment when she stares at Mauro and suddenly realizes he is alone. She falls silent. They are all silent. The little brother can tell that the twin is not in his normal state, his eyes are watering, he’s dragging his leg, and this strange way he has of walking knock-kneed as he comes toward them and
collapses on the stoop. Head down, his voice toneless.

  “Didn’t want to come back.”

  The mother freezes. Cannot believe what her ears are telling her.

  “You didn’t find him?”

  “I found him. But he doesn’t want to.”

  “Doesn’t want to come back.”

  “Right. He said no.”

  “You’ve been drinking.”

  “So what? I know what I’m saying.”

  The mother turns to him; Rafael and Steban stand behind her, stunned, she waves to them to go. But they don’t move and she gets annoyed: Get out of here! The little brother crosses his arms over his chest; he has the right to know. They aren’t children anymore, either of them, nor are they flies you brush away with the back of your hand when they bother you, and besides, it’s his money, his bills that were supposed to buy back Joaquin, so he stays there, and he’s the one who says, “Where’s the money?”

  Mauro tosses the wallet onto the ground; Rafael picks it up. And says, once he’s had a quick look: “There’s some missing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You gonna tell me what you did with it?”

  “Don’t get on my nerves.”

  “It’s not your money.”

  “You want me to show you how it’s not my money?”

  The mother steps in, her tone abrupt. Mauro. In the silence that follows, everyone turns to look at her, even Steban, who hasn’t moved, they look at her as if it were her treasure, and she decides everything. The little brother raises an eyebrow, makes an effort not to react. In the end, he simply shouldn’t have given it to her when he got home. And maybe she will mutter that it’s true, they have to take him into account too, Mauro has to give back the money, because in a way it belongs to Rafael, the money, in a way it’s thanks to him, we can’t ignore the fact, can’t just spit on him like that, shouldn’t he be entitled to a special cut, after all—but she doesn’t say anything like that, nothing at all, and truth is the money isn’t his anymore, he can tell, when she grunts that she’s going to think about it, and orders Mauro to follow her.