Nothing But Dust

  Bury?

  The mother pricks up her ears. That’s Mauro who just spoke. And now he adds:

  “We’ll deal with that later. We’ve got work to do.”

  One by one the sons leave the room and she finds herself alone; she would like to call out, but nothing comes out of her inert mouth, and she turns this way and that, unsure. From up where she’s hiding she can hear them in the kitchen, doling out the morning’s chores, while Steban struggles to light the fire and brew some bad, lukewarm coffee, and it makes her laugh, they’re not used to this. There’ll be a fine scene at noontime. And as no one wants to do the job, Mauro appoints the little brother to make lunch, because at the shearing he won’t be missed as much, and as he swallows the donkey’s piss from his mug the little brother squeals:

  “But I don’t know how to cook!”

  “We have no choice! Carve up the last of the sheep, we’ll grill it, then all you have to do is get some eggs to make a tortilla.”

  “If you know how to cook, you do it!”

  Mauro grabs him by the hair.

  “Listen, snotty nose, who’s gonna shear the sheep, if I start doing the women’s work? You got anything better to suggest?”

  This time Rafael clenches his teeth, not to respond, and the mother realizes he’s in a peculiar state, and she wonders if it has to do with her, and it surprises her how she wishes she could put her hand on his head to reassure him, she’s never done it before, but it’s come over her all of a sudden and she raises her arm, as if, then lets it drop, something stops her.

  Never mind. Don’t worry. This morning, it’s all the same to her.

  And the four of them embark on a strange day, the three sons at the shearing and her in her bed and in the air at the same time never wondering how this could be, maybe once or twice she looks down and thinks, Well, well, and things go on as before. Rafael puts some potatoes on to cook, then joins the others, bringing sheep in, taking them out again. In the meantime he runs to the kitchen to check on things, break the eggs, do more cooking, how long, of course he has no idea, and the mother shakes her head, shouting, Stop, stop, he doesn’t listen and she gives a shrug, after all, it won’t kill them to eat something that’s overcooked, and they’ll add the salt and spices he forgot to use, too. Oh how sorry they must be that she’s not there! She stretches and expands through the universe, feeling snug and peaceful, yawning now and again. She looks at the sons with curiosity. As if she’s never really seen them.

  The little brother is going to pass out if he keeps up at that pace, for sure, trying to do everything, cutting the chops, swatting the flies, going back to the sheep—they’re alive, at least—tossing wool in the bags, dragging them panting over to the wall when they’re full, blowing on the embers, putting the meat on the grill: how did the mother ever manage? Ah ha! she laughs, hearing his murmured thought, well, it took a lot out of me, didn’t it.

  At lunch, Mauro yells at him.

  “It’s disgusting, this food of yours.”

  “Told you so.”

  “You call this a tortilla? We’re gonna choke on this stuff.”

  “Just tell Steban to do the cooking.”

  “Steban’s helping me.”

  “Why should I have to do the cooking?”

  “That’s how it is.”

  And the mother remembers when her own mother said the same thing, That’s how it is, whether you’re a girl or the youngest, your fate is pretty much the same. With the years you get used to it, and you’d better, because among themselves men are no better than animals, don’t go thinking, don’t go hoping they might help those who are weaker than them, they’re just waiting for a chance to hold those weaker heads underwater, the better to drown them for good. How many times, back in the days when there were still savages on the steppe, not that long ago, huh, twenty, twenty-five years, had she seen troops and families who’d abandoned their livestock and their old parents, or one old parent, anyway enough to arouse the Indians’ hunger, while that would give them a few hours to get away, it was like a tacit agreement, one old man or one old woman to save the rest. And sometimes the Indians would kill all of them, when they were angry. Truth is, the sons don’t know how lucky they are to have been born in these plains once Roca had swept them clean, a real warrior he was, expanding their farmland all the way to the edge of Patagonia by wiping out those tribes of barbarian foreigners.

  Now the mother has to focus, because the sons have come back into the bedroom.

  What a strange impression, to be borne away in a wooden box that Mauro has hastily nailed shut, it’s like a coffin, couldn’t they have found a more thoughtful means of conveyance, and with a great deal of curiosity and not the slightest emotion the mother wishes she could ask where they are headed, the four of them, where they are going to launch her on the water, in this strange boat they’ve built for her.

  As they leave the house, she is bathed in light, in her box, sheltered from the wind like this she can smell the sweet air, and even if the sons stumble now and again, she won’t go far in her four planks, she’s almost pleased they’re looking after her like this, so on we go. They’re still thinking of burying her, and the mother raises an eyebrow to peer outside, they’re on their way to the orchard, which surprises her, because the fruit was picked ages ago. It’s annoying, in the end, that none of them will answer her, they don’t even turn toward her, as if she didn’t exist, couldn’t speak, couldn’t question. They can do whatever they like, get up to all sorts of tricks to get her to tell them where she’s hidden the money, she knows damn well how they’ll treat her afterwards, as if she were some trifle, and for Chrissake would Rafael stop drumming his fingers on the box, it’s damn annoying.

  “What the hell is that?”

  In vain does she cry out at the sight of the pit, because they don’t react. And when they slowly lower her into the hole they’ve dug at the edge of the orchard, she begins to worry, they know she hates the dark, at night she always keeps a candle stub lit. Then she calms down, she can still see the daylight, in her shallow ditch. She waits for the next stage. Opens her eyes in astonishment when Steban steps forward and tosses a few long grasses into the pit, and Mauro has his hands on his hips, while Rafael explains apologetically:

  “Normally it should be flowers, but we don’t have any flowers.”

  “It’s dried grass,” says the eldest, his voice full of reproach.

  “We looked but we couldn’t find anything else.”

  “Do you remember what we’re supposed to sing?”

  Steban shakes his head and the little brother spreads his arms. No, groans Mauro, that’s what the priest does.

  So what are we going to do?

  “Sing, dammit.”

  “I’ve never been to a funeral.”

  “Sing any old thing, who cares. It’s so there’s some music.”

  So Rafael hums and the mother wishes she could block her ears, even though he’s singing quietly—some sort of melody with no harmony, she recognizes snatches of the popular songs she used to hum in the kitchen; and as on top of it he doesn’t know the words, he can only enhance the refrain with a few plaintive la la las—and the brothers stand stock-still as they listen. Then Mauro raises his hand.

  “That’s enough.”

  “Is that all?” asks the little brother.

  “It’ll do. And anyway, she can’t hear you.”

  “F-f-fortunately,” adds Steban.

  “What do you mean I can’t hear you?” shouts the mother, trying to sit up, until she realizes there is a lid on the box.

  The sons do not weep, not even Rafael, whose eyes stung briefly then stayed completely dry. The mother is glad of it: no milksops in her house. If she has put up with boys and given them a hard life, it was to turn them into men. Oh, she noticed that the little brother was upset, but she’s not crazy, she could read
his mind with disconcerting ease, he was thinking about the dog just then, not about her, the dog who would die one day and be buried in turn, and then he would cry, for Three, and now he’s turned around and the mastiff has come to lick his hand. Ungrateful brat, thinks the mother.

  But now she’s considerably intrigued by this tiny ceremony, the three sons, and the three dogs as spectators, and she’s still wondering, when Rafael shakes his head.

  “We should’ve let people know.”

  Mauro grunts. “We don’t want them sticking their noses into our business.”

  Who, they? Did someone find the money? Down in her hole the mother feels a tug of panic. And even more so when Mauro jumps down into the ditch and sets about nailing down the lid—how will she manage? Is this the only horrible solution the sons could find, did they really all agree to it?

  “Hey!”

  She can shout her lungs out, they go on acting as if they can’t hear her. Just then she realizes that even if they have completely sealed her in the box, she can still see them, she is floating around them, and she bursts out laughing. She doesn’t understand, but she doesn’t care, and she jiggles her legs contentedly.

  But when the first handfuls of earth hit the coffin lid with a dull thud, she begins to wail.

  “What the hell are you doing!”

  And then she falls silent. Outside, as the sons gradually cover the box, Rafael murmurs: “After this we won’t see it anymore. There won’t be any more hole.”

  “There’ll be a dip in the land,” says Mauro.

  “The grass will grow again.”

  “What do you want, should we put a stone, maybe, to mark the spot.”

  “I don’t know. I was just saying.”

  “With all the shit she gave us.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on. Let’s get it over with.”

  The older brother shoves Steban and Rafael aside and picks up the shovel. He fills in the pit for good, with sweeping gestures, and doesn’t stop until he’s finished. Since they put the mother deep in the hole in her box, there is too much earth now, and it leaves a mound on the surface.

  “There you go, that’ll make you happy. You can see where it is.”

  Steban rakes the surface smooth and wipes the sweat from his brow, leaving a long brown streak. Then they wait in silence, shifting from one foot to the other in awkwardness. The mother is beginning to suffocate down there, and she shouts at them: “Go on, get going now. It’ll be fine.”

  They don’t dare leave her.

  “Go on!” she screams, coughing.

  “Were we sure . . . ?” hesitates the little brother, one last time.

  Mauro, beside himself, shouts, “Of course, fuck it!”

  Of course, echoes the mother from deep in her hole, it’s time to go now, and leave her alone, she’s out of breath. Let them go where they want, it’s no longer up to her to say, let them leave her in peace in her warm, silent earth, she’d have done better to come here a lot sooner, had she known. And for once her prayer does some good, because above her Mauro is moving, she can tell from the vibrations in the earth, and he orders the other two, the way she wanted: “Get going.”

  Slowly, they rouse themselves to follow Mauro. Take a step, then two, then three. It is a strange, almost sweet parting, growing sadder and lighter as they move away, as if the mother’s hands were opening to let them go, and yet how many times have they dreamt of it, and what a disappointment, what a gut-wrenching feeling, not the slightest joy, just fatigue right up to their eyeballs. They turn and look back.

  “It’s not how you thought it would be, huh,” snickers the mother.

  One last look, and Rafael sighs: “Didn’t think it would be like this.”

  “Things’ll be better tomorrow. We’ll have forgotten,” Mauro assures him.

  The little brother makes a skeptical face. Not so sure of that.

  “I know we will.”

  “Well, we’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “That’s right,” says the mother, expiring at last. We’ll find out tomorrow.

  They all nod their heads, at least they agree on one thing, let this day be over with, they’ll go to sleep, wipe it from their minds for a while, until morning, yes, then they’ll see. For no particular reason the little brother raises his shoulders, just to give himself an air of composure. Then he says, “Okay, then.”

  The other two look at him.

  “Then what,” murmurs Mauro.

  “Well. Amen.”

  This time, the mother can no longer hear them.

  RAFAEL

  The following morning he can scarcely believe the sky can be so blue, and for a moment he smiles, because it is going to be a fine day, for a moment, before reality hits him again, painfully, in a heavy silence, and he remembers and unintentionally utters: The mother.

  But it wasn’t a dream, even if he’d like to convince himself it was, as he goes to open the door to the bedroom, where the bed is still unmade, and then to sit at the table where once again nothing is ready. Rafael says nothing, without being asked he stirs the embers in the stove, and puts water on to boil. He won’t replace the mother at the stove, that much is for sure; but for a few days, the time it takes for them to find their places, share out their roles. The time to finish the shearing.

  And to clear the temptation from his thoughts.

  But he is not the only one who has it, they have all succumbed to this feverishness. Mauro taps his fingers on the table, his attention drifting, and Steban eats, looking up at him from under his eyebrows, waiting for him to speak, the hypocrite, the mother still warm three feet under the ground and already they are thinking of nothing else, wondering where to start, dreaming they could read the old lady’s mind for even just a second, hear her whispering from the hole, one word, just one word.

  The little brother places his cheek against his palm and waits. After a while he says, “There are a hundred or so sheep left.”

  Mauro laughs.

  “Go fly a kite, you and your sheep!”

  He suddenly gets to his feet.

  “What are you doing?” asks Rafael.

  “I’m gonna find the money. It’s here, I know it is. What do you say?”

  “Fine, but, well, what about the sheep?”

  “We don’t need them anymore, damn it! Never again am I going to stuff myself with wool the way we’ve been doing, you hear me? There is a fortune somewhere in this house, and that’s the only thing I care about.”

  He leans forward, blowing his acrid breath on the little brother, who pulls away.

  “Where is it, do you think?”

  “No idea. Uh, if it were me, I’d start in her room.”

  “I already looked there.”

  “You didn’t have time to do it properly. You know what she’s like, she won’t have hidden it just like that. She could have dug in the earth with her fingernails to hide it, she could have stuffed it one bill at a time in some mouse hole, just to be sure we won’t find it.”

  “And if it’s not there?”

  “We’ll look elsewhere.”

  “Yeah. That’s what we’ll do. If we have to we’ll take this house apart board by board, but I swear we’ll find that money.”

  Steban holds his head in his hands.

  “What if . . . what if we . . . I mean, n-never—”

  “If we don’t find it?”

  “Y-yeah.”

  Mauro interrupts them with a thump of his fist on the table.

  “Impossible. It’s bound to be here somewhere.”

  But the little brother doesn’t see it that way.

  “What if she found some unimaginable hiding place.”

  “Stop bringing us bad luck, are you on our side or not?”

  “Of course I am! But she wouldn
’t tell us a thing and we never found out a thing, so I figure that if she didn’t want us to find it . . . ”

  “We’ll find it all the same. We’re not that stupid.”

  “How should we go about it?”

  “I suggest we search one room at a time, all of us together. That way, if one of us finds it, he won’t be tempted to keep it all to himself.”

  “Oh-k-kay,” says Steban.

  The little brother nods.

  “Fine by me.”

  Then adds:

  “So what do we do about the sheep?”

  The dogs circle the huge herd, panicked at the sight of so many animals, and Rafael feels strange to be on his own leading the bleating herd, both exalted and uneasy. But he doesn’t have far to go: he’ll let them loose on the first plains they come to. When they herded them there a few weeks ago, they left the gates open all the way to the far reaches of the estate, ready for the return. The old ewes will know how to find their way through. He orders the dogs next to them, slightly to the rear, aware that as soon as they start to move, One, Two, and Three will hurry to the rear to contain the majority of the animals, the way they always do. Rafael hesitates to push the way the dogs do, or hem in the right-hand side, where the sheep could most easily scatter because of the crops. If only they would keep to the path without wandering here and there. If only they could reach the pastures the way they always do; but normally there are three of them to control two thousand head, one man for seven hundred sheep, and today, alone with the dogs, he’s thinking through the way they must go, trying to predict the spots where the youngest will try and get away. Finally he opens the gate, shouts to get the herd moving. The dogs bark. Halley moves into the white tide.

  For two long hours he drives them onto the steppe, whistling to the dogs a hundred times over, setting off at a gallop and snapping his whip to keep the sheep from running off. He’s had his fill of hunting, and he won’t chase them out on the plateaus; if they get lost, he’ll give up on them. Tracking lost animals for days on end, walking all the way to the cold forests, he’s done his bit. And made his way home: and what good came of it? If he ever finds an injured man in a cave again, he’s almost certain he’d go the long way around not to see him again. And he’s absolutely sure he would bury the bag of money and not take it home with him, that it was a poison that drove the mother and brothers crazy, the mother now dead and stone cold under the earth, and the brothers he has left behind at the estancia, hammers and pliers in hand, singing like enraged soldiers about to attack the room and shouting at him to get lost, him and his sheep and his wool and his bags. That’s when he decided to take the animals back out onto the plains, just keeping the hundred and two unshorn ewes, despite Mauro’s exhortations, swearing that he personally would never shear them, that Rafael would do better to take them out, too, and let them go with the others. But Rafael refused: he could not leave the creatures sticky with sweat under all that wool. While the older brothers take the house apart, he’ll learn how to use the shears.