War, So Much War

XXXVTHE RED EARTH

THE PATH WAS SHORT AND NARROW. IT STARTED AT A BEND IN THE road and was furrowed by ditches and strewn with upturned stones. On the left side, ensconced among cypress and cedar trees, was the garden of an old home. The fence around it — sharp-tipped wooden posts held together by rusty wire — was nearly concealed by a great thicket of honeysuckle, behind which grew a row of lilacs laden with clusters of dry seed. On the right side of the path, beyond a waterless fountain, was the courtyard of a massive farmhouse, lined with thirsty, withering, red and pink geraniums. Under an arbor, near a henless coop, lay a dead cat. The sun fell full on the façade, which was adorned with a sundial of yellow and blue tiles with a motif of branches and leaves. It was exactly noon. The path led to a square with only three houses, adjoined, shingles blackened, doors wide open as if everyone were out in the fields. In front of the houses, by a patch of red earth that was also crisscrossed by ditches, a waterless horse trough served me as a seat. Nearby, a cart full of hay lay on its side in a pool of blood. Standing in front of one of the houses, I cupped my mouth with my hands and shouted. No one answered. I shouted in front of one of the other houses as well: The echo returned my voice. I let out a third cry. Again, no one replied, so I entered, practically on tiptoe. On a round, skirted table was a carafe full of still-tepid coffee and a basket with a few slices of black bread. Just as I had done at the house with the mirror in the foyer, I salted the bread before dousing it with olive oil. Not a sound could be heard, only my chewing and the soughing of the wind, just enough of a breeze to sweep in a few dead leaves, a few motes of dust.

I didn’t see him at first because the bed was blocking my view. In a bedroom on the second floor lay a dead man, his open eyes staring at the ceiling. On one of his hands — short fingers, black nails — a fly was grooming its legs. The man had a wound in the middle of his chest, and the entire front of his shirt was crimson. In the next house, the furniture had been turned upside down, the clothes in the closets flung on the floor and trampled on, as if someone had danced on top of them. I entered the last house: In the fireplace in the bedroom I found some half-burnt papers and, by the balcony, a shotgun with a metal-studded butt. A French door with smashed windowpanes gave onto a courtyard lined with empty flower pots. Lying on one of the flower pots was a bald, eyeless doll with a deflated ball by her hand.

In the distance, endless mountains, the full spectrum of greys and blues. The peace of the earth breathed all around me. From so much looking, I could no longer see. From so much listening, I could no longer hear. Everything — mountains, houses, path, water trough — merged together and with me. I did not want to think of blood: I became one with everything.

At the end of the square the path continued. Half of a snake lay in my way — the tail half. A wheel must have split it in two, flinging the head into the woods. The path was not straight and, toward the middle of it, in front of some pine trees heavy with caterpillar clusters, I heard water flowing. The path then widened, ending in a village square bordered by an iron railing. The valley that extended beyond was a tract of vivid patches of land that died at the foot of a wooded mountain. At the lookout point I leaned over the railing and recoiled in horror. Just beneath me was a large, recently-dug pit filled with bodies — legs, arms, heads, guts — and heaps of red earth piled up on the sides, mixed with picks and shovels. . the whole a tangled mess streaked with blood and blood puddles that glistened in the singularly translucent light of that day. I fled, my head spinning. At the top of the path, by the honeysuckle, I vomited, disgorging all my bile.

The cleft snake again blocked my path. For two days and two nights I did not eat or drink, as I shoveled earth over the dead. Until they were covered. Before leaving them I faced the waning moon and entrusted their souls to God.

XXXVI FEAR

SOMEONE HAD BEEN FOLLOWING ME FOR A WHILE, BUT I COULD not remember when or where this someone had started to trail me. I couldn’t hear anything, not the sound of footsteps, not the rustling of leaves. And yet I was certain that someone was following me and did not want me to notice him. I didn’t dare turn around. I scarcely dared to breathe. I carefully placed my feet where the ground was barest to avoid the sound of crunching leaves. I could feel my pulse pounding. Who could be following me? If the person following me were real I would have heard him behind me and I would have only had to turn around to see him. But I heard nothing. Clouds scurried by overhead. I stopped to listen better. Do not turn around. The woods were at times flooded with light, at times filled with thickening shadows. Had that someone stopped when I stopped? It is asphyxiating to sense oneself being followed through the heart of the forest, where something could be lurking behind every tree. Do not turn around, I warned myself. If you turn around you will see something that is best unseen. If you turn around, whoever is following you will realize that you have noticed him. Do not let on that you have noticed him. Do not turn around! Was that rustling in the branches a voice? I wanted to run but I could not. My legs were frozen and I could not. A drop of cold sweat rolled down my cheek. I had heard chilling tales of horror, the kind that make your hairs stand on end. I had lived through that night in the castle and those nights in the house with the mirror in the foyer. I am past the point of fear, I told myself. But the terror I experienced in that forest was of a different nature; it was as though the dead man my father had killed on the train tracks were about to jump out from behind a tree, determined to harm me.

The resemblance between fathers and sons had, upon occasion, caused me to reflect. If a father dies of a malady of the heart, the son dies of a malady of the heart; if a father dies with a sickened brain, the son dies with a sickened brain. I pinched my arm to make sure I was not delirious. That I was wide awake and crossing a densely wooded forest, and that it was not the first time I had done so. I had always found comfort in the solitude of the woods. I tapped my ears with the palms of my hands. I tried to swallow saliva but had none to swallow. I ran my tongue over lips drier than cardboard. Some time later, very slowly, I dared to turn my head and look back out of one eye. Behind me, the crepuscular gloaming had spawned castles of red and grey beneath a sun as round as a gold medal. Between that sun and myself, a mountain of wilderness. I would have liked to find myself surrounded by people on a street full of lights — a happy street, with women holding children’s hands, with shop windows on either side — and to feel only the slightest of fears at the prospect of dying on that most unforeseeable of days. Why should I be afraid? I needed company. I made an effort to rid myself of fear, so that the evil that lurked behind me would not be the one to come and keep me company. I had become two people: the one sweating with fright and the one who believed there was no reason to be afraid. How could that be? I wanted to shout to drive away my fear but no sound issued from my mouth. The evening sky with its first stars was my enemy; it would come tumbling down on me to punish me for succumbing to fright on a night such as that. I sensed the ever stronger presence of that invisible someone powerful enough to read my thoughts. I suddenly let myself drop to the ground, my body curled into a ball, my eyes so wide they hurt. I must move, walk. Escape whatever it was that was weighing on me like a rock, slowly burying me beneath stones so large that I found myself powerless to dislodge them. I rose, holding on to a tree. . to be a tree to be a cloud to be the wind. I thought I glimpsed a furtive beast in the distance, standing on its hind legs, ready to pounce on me. Beasts did not frighten me. I was unspeakably thirsty. I trudged along, dragging myself until I tripped and fell flat on my stomach. Nothing was real. I had never run away from home. Everything had been a dream. I was still in my bed dreaming, the intoxicating smell of carnations wafting through the open window. And yet, I could feel the beast spying on me and I was on the point of calling to it: come here, come. The shadows spread, effacing the contours of the branches. I could not remember how or when the day had begun; perhaps it had begun in the forest with that fear. Who had sucked the day’s beginning from my consciousness? High above and far away a flock of birds cawed as they flew by. A moonbeam trembled at my feet. It seemed to me it was no longer I who was walking, but the trees, the entire forest. Had I entered the woods or had the woods entered me? I came to a clearing and found myself screaming as I crossed it, arms spread like the wings of the birds that had flown by. The fear was now of another kind: It was myself I feared. I was afraid of never being myself again, for the Great Fear was tightening its grip on me. The moonlight led me to the entrance of a cave. I entered with my arms extended in front of me, treading carefully until I reached the rock wall at the end. I pressed my back against it and let myself slip to the ground. I could glimpse a sliver of sky that was soon covered by a cloud. The blood began to flow through my veins again, my heart grew steadier. A small animal, perhaps a rabbit or a hare, bounded in as though it were being chased; it must have smelled me because it fled just as crazed as it had entered. A storm broke; the thunder and lightning came in quick, unrelenting succession, and the sky discharged water as though it were being emptied. I could not say if the rain lasted but a short moment or hours upon hours. The downpour made me feel safe and I fell into a deep slumber. And a dream entered my slumber: A giant hand approached through the rising waters and blocked the entrance to the cave so that I would never escape.

XXXVII THE LAKE

THE DOWNPOUR HAD ENDED, BUT RAINDROPS CONTINUED TO FALL from trees and everything was shrouded in fog. Here and there, a tree trunk or shrub emerged from the milky whiteness, like a surprise. I was assailed by the smell of earth, the smell of decay from rains that had fallen on the leaves of countless autumns. The landscape changed; the gorse had been replaced by fern, and the terrain sloped. I heard the fluttering of bird wings. I sat down on a damp, moss-covered rock by a pond with rippling water. Perhaps one day — if I died near this spot where I had paused to sit — a hunter or a wanderer like myself would find, instead of the carcass of a wild animal, my own remains. With the tip of his boot he would unearth a bone, and beneath it would be an ant colony or a centipede’s nest or perhaps a worm that would coil in desperation at being discovered, at having its entire world dismantled. A skittish sun was beginning to pierce through the mantle of fog. I should have been like that patch of sunlight, oblivious to whether young boys gazed at it or not, unconcerned that it might find itself severed from the world by the fog. I ran my hand over my cheek: The fuzz was thick. I would become a man with coarse hair on his face, and the veins that had previously been hidden would show. The patch of sunlight deepened in color, and the fog began to hasten past, unraveling as if it were smoke from an unseen fire.

A flock of black ducks with dark blue patches on their foreheads waddled into the water and hurriedly came out again. Two of them, the ones closest to me, took flight. Soon the entire flock followed. The lake was slowly emerging from the shadows. Kneeling on the rock, I scooped a few handfuls of water, washed my face, and drank. When the ripples had scattered and faded, the water became a mirror. In it I saw reflected my head with cropped hair. That face, with no hair falling across the forehead, did not seem my own. For a long time I looked into those eyes, not because they were eyes, and my own, but because of everything they held within them, because of everything they had seen. My heart gave a start. The fear that had visited me the day before as I traversed the forest had returned. I closed my eyes to hide from myself. If I did not see my reflection, it meant that I was not there, that that fear was not there. . Go home. . I opened my eyes. In the water, beneath my face, I saw another face just like my own, with that same birthmark on the forehead. The lips moved as though uttering words I could not hear. The eyes hardened. I leaned forward trying to make out the words. . and the words that had eluded me and that I wanted to hear became intelligible. . Go home. Everything will be lost if you do not go back. . everything is still the same as you left it. Go back. The corner with the thatched roof to protect the camellias from the winter frost is the same; the reservoir filled with water for irrigation, with its flowering water plants swaying, the same; the spot at the end of the field, with the toolshed and the pile of neatly cut canes ready to be driven into the ground, to make trellises for the carnations that have not stopped flowering all summer — carnations and buds, buds and carnations — is still the same; the rosebush with the yellow climbing roses that will soon reach beyond the rooftop railing, the same; the good earth that is yours. . Come back! Come back! Your mother died calling your name. . Adrià. . Adrià. . come back. . come back. Round pebbles, egg-shaped pebbles, framed the face beneath my face, white, pink, dark, in the shifting sand.

The water in the lake was turning blue. The face beneath my face was slowly sinking, vanishing; only the eyes remained. A sudden ray of the strongest sun whisked them away to who knows what sands, who knows what roots. . go back, go back, go back, said the water. . go back. . go back.

XXXVIII THE FISHERMAN

HEY, KID, COME OVER HERE AND HELP ME. . A HUNDRED METERS away, a man was fishing. He was sitting on a folding stool. A satchel and a can full of worms lay at his side. I sat down next to him just as he leaned backward spinning a reel at the bottom of the rod, until out of the water sprang a small fish with the hook through its gills, wiggling furiously and flapping its tail against its mouth. He carefully removed it from the fishhook and returned it to the lake, just as Eva had said she did when she caught a fish that was too small. The fish became a faint shadow in the water. Hand me a worm. Careful not to squeeze it. He baited the fishhook and with a jerk of his arm cast the line as far as he could. What’s your name? Adrià. Adrià what? Adrià Guinart. He laughed. Like the outlaw? I laughed too, not fully understanding what he meant, and when I was about to tell him that I was lost, he said in a low voice — Quiet! or the fish won’t bite. I was distracted and didn’t realize that he had caught a fish until he hurled it at me. Put it inside the satchel. It was slimy in my hands. It had a round, velvety tongue, slick, short. When he had caught half a dozen more, he stopped. He asked me to take the satchel, disassembled his rod, and headed behind some trees where he had parked a white car that seemed to be made of iron. Get in.

The house was wooden, surrounded by tall, old trees. Inside was a large room with a bed in one corner and, on the right, a hearth embedded in a stone wall. Three or four terra-cotta pots full of tobacco pipes sat on the mantelpiece. There were two doors at the end of the room, one leading to the kitchen, the other to the shower. Light the fire. Here, some newspapers. From the wad of folded newspapers I extracted one, and just as I was about to tear it up to make balls to place under the firewood, I encountered an entire page of photographs and, at the top, in the center, standing in front of a wall covered with half-torn posters, was Eva. She was laughing, but her eyes were sad. The fisherman came out of the kitchen, and I scrambled to hide the page with her picture. Hand me a sheet of the newspaper. I finished building the fire and when I was putting a match to it, the fisherman called me to come and help him. The fish kept slipping through his fingers and he couldn’t cut them open. Grab it by the tail! Grab it with a dishrag! He placed them on a grill and cooked them over the fire. A cat that until then had not made its presence known brushed against my legs. It was dark grey, its eyes as blue as the fisherman’s. I couldn’t eat even one sad bite. The page with Eva’s picture was folded and tucked in my pocket. The fisherman puffed on his pipe, the cat ate the fish scraps. Now, time for a nap. I always sleep after lunch. You, too. He walked me to the kitchen and, through a door next to the one that led outside, we entered a shed filled with tools, sacks of potatoes, all kinds of tins, and apples that were strewn across the floor. You’ll sleep here, he said pointing to a workbench. Unclutter it. Wait, I’ll give you a few pillows for a mattress. When I had the pallet set up, I lay down on the worktop. Eva laughed but her eyes were sad. I heard the fisherman stirring in the living room and I hid the picture. Not an hour had gone by when he called me. Let’s go out, we’ll gather the wood I cut a few days ago. It was a clear afternoon, not a cloud in sight, the sky a wilted blue, a mountain to my right. See that mountain? The sun rises on the other side. A mystery lies at the foot of it. Let’s go.

We got in the car and headed for the mountain; it was quite high, parts of it covered with dark green trees, others studded with rocks. You see the pond at the foot? The car circled around and came to a stop. Get out. See that hole on the other side of the pond? Many years ago, a train was supposed to come through this part of the world, and the idea was to make a hole in the mountain to build a tunnel. The project started with great fanfare, but it didn’t get very far. Everyone started dying: first, the engineer, then the foreman, then another foreman. Then the workers. . they all started dying, not in accidents but from illnesses. They kept bringing in new workers. Until three or four of them, the ones tasked with filling the barricades with gunpowder, just went under, sank. One of them managed to escape with his life and recounted, crossing himself many times, that the earth had given way, plunging deep, deep. Half the mountain, he said, had sunk, swallowing up men and trolleys. The work was halted and the mountain was left as it is today, with the gaping hole at the foot of it, large and wide, as black as an ugly wound. But the curious thing is that the earth in front of the opening slowly began to sink, and the great horseshoe-shaped hollow that hugs the entrance of the cave began to fill with water, the origin of which no one has ever been able to determine. It’s a peculiar kind of water, thick and fetid green, sickening. No one has dared go in it and swim to the hole. If you throw a piece of wood or a branch in it, it doesn’t float, it eddies under. Watch. . we approached and stood two meters from the water; he picked up a piece of wood and flung it as hard as he could; it landed in the middle of the water and was immediately sucked under into a great, green whirlpool. The locals wove a legend: Before the place became a sinkhole, it had been a cave where a girl who was being pursued had once sought refuge. On many nights, they said, she could be heard singing. I have come here many an evening, at different hours, and on all manner of nights — foggy, windy, hot, gelid, moonlit — and I have never heard a girl singing. But legends are beautiful and they help pass the time. Let’s go. We headed to the forest to collect the tree trunk and branches that had already been chopped. We’ll transport the wood at our leisure and tomorrow we’ll stack it inside the shed. There should be enough for a good two months.

We worked well into the night, first loading the wood and then unloading it. At dinnertime again I could hardly swallow a thing. An apple, and that was it. The cat wouldn’t let me. It jumped on my knees, crawled up my back, nibbled at my ears. What’s the matter, not feeling well? The fisherman sucked on his tobacco pipe and stared me in the eye. He had sun-wizened skin, three deep wrinkles that creased his forehead from side to side, kind eyes. He wore high, camel-colored boots, and what little shirt was visible under his sweater appeared to be silk. As the cat dozed on my lap, he started telling me about his life, though I didn’t much care to hear about it: He had two daughters whom he had not seen in years, he liked them better from afar because it allowed him to see them as he would have wished them to be. He had married young, and his bride was beautiful. I never fell out of love. The daughters we had are the spitting image of their mother. A year after our second was born, their mother died. All of my love — so much of it I hardly knew what to do with it — reverted to my daughters. I never took a step without their knowing. A rich man, I was able to provide everything they wanted and more. I strove to anticipate their every wish. They grew up, and I fell in love again. The girl was splendid, a springtime of joy, much younger than me. But the drama began when I introduced her to my daughters. They repudiated her. Our home became a battleground. And for them, I renounced what would have been my link to life. Until they were of an age to marry. You listening? They both married around the same time, to a couple of lowlifes who snatched them away from me. By that I mean they turned my daughters against me. They took them from their father. One day we were all together, and I don’t recall what I was saying, but I lost my train of thought when I realized they weren’t listening, so I stopped short. This happened on several occasions, until I realized they drew great satisfaction from seeing me lose my train of thought. His mind is deteriorating. I could almost hear them. I could just imagine them. And once his faculties become impaired, he will die, and we will be rich for the rest of our lives. I’ve always been one to give without waiting to be asked, and I wanted to put an end to that troubling situation, to that sordid state of affairs. Are you listening? I decided to sell everything I owned, properties, homes, farmhouses, arable lands, apartment buildings in the city. . I converted it all to cash and divided it into four parts: one for my eldest daughter, one for my other daughter, a third for charity, and the fourth for me. And I have shut myself away here, with my forest, my moonlit skies, my rivers and my lakes. . and with this cat that seems to have fallen in love with you. Off to bed now! If the lightbulb doesn’t work (sometimes the filaments burn out), you’ll find a candle and matches in the shed. Good night. The candle and the matches are on the first shelf of the medicine cabinet above the workbench.

XXXIX THE FALL

ALTHOUGH THE LIGHT WORKED, I TOOK THE CANDLE AND MATCH-BOX and placed them on a crate next to the workbench. The cat had followed me and now sat by a heap of sawdust. My head was filled with thoughts, sullied by thoughts. It felt as though my brain had been turned inside out. I studied Eva’s picture for a long time, then tucked it under the pillow, neatly folded. I usually liked the smell of apples, but that day it was making me dizzy, and I cracked the door to let the smell escape. I stretched out on the bench with the light off. The pillows were soft, but I had the same problem I had encountered when I was napping: If I moved, the pillows separated. I was forced to lie as still as a corpse. I dozed off and then woke again. I couldn’t fall into a sound sleep. I had visions of the hearth, the red-winged flames curling up the chimney, licking the blackened bricks, the logs changing shapes, with the grill above them, and on the grill, smoking and weeping as they emptied themselves of lake water, the fish, all neatly lined up. I stretched out my arm and, grasping the box of matches, I sat up on the makeshift bed with my legs dangling. The flame from the first match rose high above the tiny stick and then inched downward in fits and starts, trembling, growing shorter, as the slender piece of wood turned black and started to coil, assuming the shape of a ringlet. I lit ten matches, and as the flame fluttered — white at the bottom, orange at the top — it occurred to me that one tiny flame such as that would suffice to set fire to an entire forest. The air would fan the flames, allowing them to spread their wings, lighting new flames, turning the whole forest into a resin-tinged scream which, after every speck of life had been set ablaze, would come to rest as quiet embers. But it was not the match or the flame that was foremost in my mind, it was Eva. The cat was no longer by the sawdust. A bird was pecking on wood. Pecking and pecking. The smell of apples escaped out the door and in poured the starlight and the scent of night. A beak was pecking on a piece of wood. Pecking and pecking. A beak pecked on a piece of wood. . I climbed down from the workbench and tripped on the crate. The night was glassy, littered with dead stars; the moon was high, bluer than the icy snow of the celestial cemetery. The grass was damp. The mountain — a black silhouette against the black gleam of night — beckoned. I started toward it down a path so smooth and even that I could not hear my own footsteps. I stopped by the pond to listen: The voice, coming from afar as though rising from the depths of the water, was so sweet that it made me want to drop to my knees. Who was I? I had no bones, no nerves, no will. The song was lulling me to sleep, quelling every thought. A beak was pecking on wood. Pecking and pecking. Standing by the shore, I looked into the water and saw the stars yearning to flee their own death and leap to some unknown part in their urge to streak the vault of the sky with tangled moonthreads, shrieking, frenzied. I knelt and was searching for a twig to toss into the water, when suddenly someone shoved me into the pond, and I was swallowed up like an olive. I coursed through the whirlpool as if I were in a gurgling sink that was being emptied, swallowing everything it could. I was spinning as I was being sucked under; I felt a drunken sort of dizziness, and yet I still had my senses about me. Then the downward spin seemed to stop and the water, rather than pull me down, was pushing me forward. I was dying. I opened and closed my hands as I tried to cling to something, but I found only slimy water that reeked of blood. A beak was pecking on wood. When I thought that everything had come to an end, my feet lodged somewhere and I found myself lying on a beach rocked by silent waves. I could not feel a thing, but I knew I had to rise, I could not lie there forever; if I wanted to save myself, I had to keep going. Someone seized me by the nape like a cat and set me down on my feet with the water up to my belly. I swayed a little to avoid losing my balance. It was as if I had just been born, I hardly knew how to walk. One step after the other. . one step after the other. . A tenuous voice embraced me. I found myself sinking only to rise again. . The water came up to my chest now. I finally reached a lacerated stone wall: I was edging closer to the song. The roof of the cave sang, the water sang. The song came from below, from above, from everywhere. I was enveloped by a cobweb voice that was like a thread spun by the Virgin Mary, showing me the path to follow. I stretched out an arm and felt a stone ridge. And in that instant there was a great commotion, as though a glass mountain had crumbled nearby. I glimpsed a distant light and that light drew me toward it. I felt, time and again, that it was almost at hand, and yet it stayed forever beyond my reach. I wanted to scream but could not, I wanted to run but could not. And then my nose caught, stronger than ever, the familiar scent of yellow roses, the kind that do not smell like red roses, but have the simple fragrance of dawn-fresh roses that have bloomed with great effort, earning their scent by their patience and finally able to share it: the scent from the rosebush at home that climbed all the way to the rooftop. The song, the rose. . none of it was real! Not the murmur of the water cascading down a horsetail-shaped waterfall, not the sharp ridges of the crumbling rock wall. But the light was drawing nearer, I was almost to it. . deep in the entrails of the earth, lost, never to find my way out. The walls gleamed, the rocks going up and the rocks going down gleamed. A moonbeam filtered through a crack near the ceiling and spilled onto a slab, upon which lay a girl. The most dream-like dream of all dreams! I approached the slab. The girl — I could see her clearly — naked as a lily, with violet eyes dappled with specks of gold, was Eva. Lying on the stone that was her bed, neither seeing nor breathing, she seemed to be made of ice. A hand of the palest white fell limply from the stone slab. I wanted to hold it, but as I tried to move closer I found that my feet were tied, and the more I strained, the tighter my ankles were griped by whatever it was that bound me. Until I jerked so furiously that everything shook and glass powder rained down on me. Someone was laughing at me. Someone I could not see was playing with my feelings, with my life, so that I would know that it was not my life, but had simply been loaned to me and was at that person’s disposal. If ever a boy had yearned to love a girl, that boy was I. To hold her hand in mine. . but I could not reach it. . A beast leapt from the ceiling and fell upon me. I lay half dead. When I came to, the shaft of moonlight fell far from the stone. I was holding a handful of bones — bones that had once been a hand. I released my grip, fearing they might break into tiny bits, and I heard myself muttering, poor bones, poor bones, as though trying to appease them, lest they attacked me. I had become deranged. I wished I were not me, I wished I were above rather than below, a tree hugging the earth, deeply rooted, with branches aloft, the sun overhead, blue skies overhead, the furious aliveness of the stars overhead. Snow rain frost. For the birds not to nest in my branches but to come and sing in them. My tresses of leaves tousled by the winds. . Who was licking my face? Someone was running a tongue over my cheek, again and again. I found it difficult to open my eyes. The cat’s face was next to mine. I was lying at the entrance to the toolshed, half in, half out, my feet caught in a rope that led to a tangled pile of ropes by one of the legs of the workbench.

XL LATER

WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON THE FLOOR? THE FISHERMAN WAS standing at the kitchen door looking at me. The cat had jumped on top of me. Come have some breakfast and then we’ll tidy up this mess. . What on earth? You need to disentangle your leg from that rope. I understood without fully understanding. The workbench was no longer against the wall; the medicine cabinet, its doors wide open, was bare. The empty bottles that I recalled seeing neatly lined up in rows by the door were now scattered about. The pillows that had been on the bench lay on the floor. It could not be. I had not dreamed that I slipped out during the night and a bird was pecking and pecking on a tree as I headed to the pond. I had lived all of that. I did not dream that the moon was blue, the grass damp. . The bottoms of my trousers had been wet. They were now dry, but I had felt them sodden against my legs. I had seen the sky reflected in the water. . and I still held in my hand. . what was I holding in my hand? Nothing. It was empty. And what had those stones and the shower of broken glass been? And the fall? Had the real and the imagined merged so that I was no longer able to discern what was true and what a product of my dreams?

The fire was lit, the pitcher of milk was steaming, the entire room smelled of coffee. The honey in the pot — flower juice in a glass prison, the fisherman called it — awaited a spoon, and, skewered with an iron prong, two slices of bread were toasting. The cut I had on my right thumb throbbed. I ate nothing. Did you wrestle with a wolf last night? Don’t tell me your dream if you don’t want to, but I’d like to hear it. I’d like to know why you fell off the bench, and most of all why you slept on the floor, and why you didn’t get up from there. Go on, tell me. I never dream, I lied.

We worked the whole day without pause, tidying up the toolshed and bringing in the wood from the forest. Why don’t you stay? I shrugged my shoulders. You’ve seen for yourself that it’s comfortable enough around here. I could fix up the shed for you and build another one to house all these oddments. You seem lost and I sense you could use a guiding hand. You’re very young. I was inclined to tell him that I enjoyed nothing more than wandering through the world lost. Doing as I pleased no matter how things turned out, with no one giving me any advice. Seeing the sky, the forests, experiencing fear, contemplating the night and having it for a roof.

Toward evening, sitting in front of the house, a strawberry and saffron sunset before us, he again asked me to stay. I like you. It would please me if you would be my son. I like you because you sometimes appear older than your age and at other times you seem like a child. When I didn’t respond, he asked me to tell him about my life. Won’t you? I took a while to reply, my whole being enthralled by the saffron and strawberry hues. I did not want to say anything that did not come from my very core. I closed my eyes for a moment to disentangle myself from the twilight sky; I had to think before speaking. My life is my own, I began, placing my hand on my chest. A few months ago, I don’t know how many, I still had a pocket knife with a fork, spoon, corkscrew, and screwdriver that my father had given me, but I gave it away. And now the only thing I have is my own life. If I speak about it, it escapes, I lose it. He gave me a pat on the back, almost laughing as he did so. I know, I added, that all lives are more or less the same in the essentials. He thrust his head back and closed his eyes, leaving just a slit open to spy on whatever it was he wanted to see. Don’t make me laugh. What will you do, restlessly drifting from place to place? Do you want to end up sleeping on the street or in a church portico when you are an old man? I don’t care. I want to roam the world. Be from everywhere and nowhere. I’ve only just begun to see things, and it makes my head spin to think of what there is still to be seen. So many towns, so many paths. . He again patted me on the back. And, if in the end you have seen all the villages in the world, what then? Like the lives you spoke of, they too are more or less the same: with straight or winding streets and houses piled one on top of the other. What is important, I responded, is the eye we cast on these villages. Yes, of course, and the same goes for how we look at people, but the moment will come when you will have a false life on your hands. You, what do you have inside? A garden or an inferno? A bit of both. It depends on how the wind blows. And, without knowing exactly why, I asked him: What does it mean to be like Cain? Until then he had spoken without looking at me, but the question made him turn his head. What do you mean? Just that: What does being like Cain mean? Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know the story? I know God first punished him and then protected him. When I made my mother cross she would say I reminded her of Cain. And this mark here on my forehead. . What a question to ask. Everyone knows that Cain killed. . but some people regard him as someone who seeks knowledge, who never relents, who lets nothing stop him, who wants to know everything there is to be known. What a question to ask, he added, shaking his head. I left home so that I could encounter new villages, meet people, and because I was tired of my mother. . and nothing could have stopped me. And also so I could go off to war. Although I’ve had the war close-at-hand, I can’t say I have experienced it, because I fled from it as often as I could. The fisherman rose. Well, I’m afraid you’re late. You better hurry if you still want to find it. Let’s have dinner. I followed him. He turned around before entering the house. Oh, and whenever you want to go, just go. Don’t say anything. I don’t like goodbyes. You’ll find everything you need — clothes and food — in the shed.

XLITHE RIVER

I WALKED FOR A LONG TIME. I TRAIPSED FROM ONE VILLAGE TO the next, from one path to another. Every road was deserted, every house destroyed. Early one morning I tripped over a dead dog; it had a piece of cardboard around its neck with some words that had been smudged by the rain: “Follow this dog. He will lead you to me. I’m wounded.” Occasionally, I would encounter men coming toward me, emaciated, with famished faces, holding each other up, their feet and legs wrapped in rags bound with rope, and I would take a different route. On one occasion, an aircraft flew by overhead three or four times, so low that the pilot must have seen me even though I ducked. But I wasn’t worth a bullet, much less a bomb. A bell tower in what was left of a village gave me shelter. That arrow that surged skyward accompanied me for a while, and after leaving it behind I turned around to look at it. A clutch of deranged creatures leapt out of the bushes, brandishing guns, and fled in the direction of a hill shouting “Kill ’em! Kill ’em all!” Until I found myself standing by a wide river I had never seen before, its banks bombed and strewn with bodies, as though the dead had been assembled there and piled on top of each other, ready to be moved somewhere else. Dead men who seemed to be asleep, on their sides, their legs drawn up; dead men with eyes open to the sky, dead men without legs, without arms. . skeletons of soldiers with bones picked clean by the birds. And, scattered among the dead, charred upturned trucks, destroyed machinery, tanks with the dead driver still inside the gun turret. A burned hand with curled fingers next to a rifle. Tents — and bits of tarpaulin from tents — being winnowed this way and that by the wind. Bombed bridges swept downstream by the river, pieces of wood still gripping the shore, ravaged fields of thyme. In a trench (there were so many of them, deep, like the tracks of giant snakes), three dogs scurried away on hearing me, their tails low, but a skinny, grungy one stood its ground. And above so much death, the flight of large birds with long, featherless necks. A line of crows were preening their wings and chests on an airplane wing that was lodged in the ground, surrounded by rowboats and charred wood. I raised an arm to drive them away. Some lazily took flight, but three remained, perched on the half-buried airplane that rested between the bank and the shallows of that smooth-flowing river, whose course was only occasionally disturbed by wooden planks from bridges. And, pervading everything, the stench of death.

They will bury them soon; they come in their trucks every two or three days. At first they had to flee because they were being shot at. Not anymore. . I turned around when I heard that voice. What a relief to see someone alive, a young woman, though haggard, her eyes still moist. She was holding a dead baby in her arms; I could tell immediately that it was dead by the waxen color of the legs and the hand that hung limply. She spoke to the child as if it were alive, my love, my baby. . With a strange look on her face, she stared directly into the eyes of a dead man lying by the edge of the water — not far enough in for the current to carry him away — as if the poor man, with his crushed head and chest, were to blame for the war. They dump them in mass graves farther up, sometimes they burn them, but not always. They can’t handle all the bodies, they’re overwhelmed. And meanwhile the vultures are getting fatter. Thank God the war is over. I witnessed the end of it; it ended right here in this river, and the river carried it out to sea. My house was up there. Only the four walls are still standing. We had a vegetable garden that was glorious. . just think about it, with the river right here to draw water from. I sleep a long way from here now, but I come every now and then to see if I can find a soldier who’s still breathing and can tell me where my husband died. . Everyone says I shouldn’t expect him to return. . I listen, without saying anything, but I don’t believe he’s dead. Did you fight in the war, too? You have the dry skin that comes with starvation, and your eyes seem to be set deep in a cave, but your sunken eyes wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for the fact that they’re filled with apprehension, no, that’s not it. . with horror. . If you knew the screams I have heard, screams of wounded men crying out for help, sobbing and shouting their unspeakable grief. . and then suddenly I would spot a hand rising in search of some kind of mercy, only to drop to the ground again because it was all over. Come with me. . you’re so young, I wish I could help you. . My husband’s name was Pere; he was taller than me and had black eyes, same as his hair. . perhaps you met him. . She looked me straight in the eyes and I felt an unbearable rush of shame. Shame at having run away from the war the way some flee the plague, alone, always alone with myself; shame at not having defended something, without knowing exactly what that thing was, which I should have defended as countless others had. . all of me imprisoned inside my own sad skin, withered from hunger, just as the woman with the dead baby with his head against her breast had said. She straightened the child and turned him to face me; his eyes were open, his mouth tightly closed. . I helped them fill sacks with earth; all the women in the village, not far from here, filled sacks with earth. We needed more hands. If you had heard the cannons and machine guns going off, if you had seen the airplanes dropping rosary upon rosary of bombs. If you had seen the light of the burning fires in the dead of night. . an inferno lasting months and months. Years and years. . years will have to pass before anything can be sowed by the river, because when they start digging they’ll find bones, not earth. The only thing left: bones. The bones of the nameless dead. That mountain range — see it? — the top was blown off by the shrapnel that pounded it repeatedly, in a never-ending punishment. I still don’t know how my son and I survived, but the terror he experienced has left him unable to shut his eyes, not even to sleep. We should be dead, he and I, and you wouldn’t have found anyone to tell you all this. . She fell silent, facing the river that flowed wide, her eyes fixed on the turbid waters that seemed to soothe her and carry her thoughts downstream. She left a while later, without glancing at me, without a word.

XLII IRE

AN OLD, DILAPIDATED BOAT, PAINTED AND REPAINTED, RESTED against the wing of the airplane. The river was placid and the afternoon subdued, a lone afternoon in the middle of the world, animated only by the flight of birds that soared and soared before swooping down on the dead. The other riverbank was the same as the one I had just left behind, with its dead devoured by carrion birds. I pushed the boat far onto the bank so it wouldn’t be washed away. At dusk I came to the edge of a forest. I was again overtaken by the smell of trees; it was a relief to have branches and leaves for a roof. I started down a path that entered the woods amid tall grasses. From afar, I glimpsed a window with a light on inside. It was a deceptive light: When you thought you had almost reached it, it was still far away. I walked for a long time before I arrived at the clearing where a half-brick, half-wooden shack stood next to a well. The light from the window fell in front of the well. Beside it something gleamed. Before peeking through the window to see who lived in that shack in the woods, I leaned down. . I picked up the object and could hardly believe it: In my hand I held a knife just like the one I had given Eva the day I met her so she wouldn’t forget me, the one that was good for so many things. The screwdriver was missing the tip. Who could she have given it to, or who could have taken it from her, and how had it reached that corner of the woods? Had the person who had taken it from her lost it while drawing water from the well? Or on the day after a battle? I was so preoccupied with the knife in my hand that it wasn’t until a good while later that I walked over to the window and peered inside the house.

At the far end of the room hung a yellow-and-blue flowered curtain, and in front of it sat an old woman with a dark scarf around her head, a black shawl draped over her shoulders, and large eyeglasses. Her hand rose and fell rhythmically, pulling a thread. On one side of the curtain was an armoire with two doors, and on top of it a green jug and a bottle holding a candle. The old woman rose and approached the window. I quickly ducked. I circled the house on all fours. At the back of the house, by a window with closed shutters, stood the tallest, broadest tree I had ever seen. The fluttering of birds could be heard coming from deep within the branches. Firewood was stacked next to a cage, blocking my way, and beyond it was a henhouse. I couldn’t spot any windows on the wall where the flowered curtain hung on the inside of the shack, but I did see a pile of wood reaching almost to the roof, covering the entire wall. That, and a few bundles of heather. Just as I turned the corner and was about to walk by the entrance, the door swung open and a voice shouted: Who’s out there? The old woman emerged from the house with an axe in her hand, a dark silhouette against the light inside, tiny and rotund, her voice powerful. Why don’t you answer? What are you staring at? Answer me! If you heard she was beautiful, you’re a bit late! Three weeks late. I moved closer. When she saw me clearly in the light of the house, she lowered the axe. What are you doing here? Answer me! I said I was crossing the forest and was thirsty; the water in the river was disgusting, but I hadn’t dared draw water from the well for fear that the pulley would creak and betray my presence. Why didn’t you want to be discovered? I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: To avoid frightening the people who might be inside the house. She burst out laughing, tossing her head back. Come in, she ordered when she finally stopped laughing. You got money on you? No, I said. Come in! I don’t want it to be said that I haven’t been charitable at least once in my lifetime. Who told you there was a house so deep in the forest? I wanted to say that my feet had led me there but I was wary of angering her. I followed the path, I was fleeing from the river. . the axe gleamed, it looked sharp.

Inside it reeked of smoke and boiled cabbage. A fire was blazing in the small hearth; a box beside the chair where I had seen the old woman sitting held balls of yarn of different colors. Hanging above the hood over the hearth was a painting in a black frame, the glass more dirty than clean and, inside it, an embroidered Virgin Mary: the same that graced my religious medallions. I put my hand in the back pocket of my trousers: They weren’t there. I checked my neck: I wasn’t wearing them. Then I took a good look at the old woman; she was ugly as the devil, with a short, flat nose, small, wide-set eyes, a low forehead, puffy cheeks, and a large mouth. She removed some knickknacks from a round table, and once the table had been cleared she brought out a bottle and two glasses. You’ll see how pleasant this will be. . sit here, I’ll sit facing you. Speak! I glanced at the fireplace hood and then at her; I couldn’t help but compare the embroidered face with the real one. She guessed what I was thinking and started to laugh in that manner of hers, with her head tilted back, the skin of her neck taut and her Adam’s apple trembling. You’re seeing visions. Take a good look at me. Are you mute, or did the cat get your tongue? I’m telling you, you’re seeing visions. She was better at lying than the most deceitful of liars. The Virgin Mary was her, just like that man had said. The Virgin Mary on my religions medallions, all the faces of every Virgin Mary, were her face. She must have really loved herself. Ugly as sin, she loved herself. How could she love herself, so fat and ugly?. . I certainly couldn’t imagine embroidering my own face, with so many faces to choose from in this world. When I was a little girl the nuns taught me to embroider. You can’t imagine how often I have blessed them. But don’t think embroidery is my only talent. She rose and drew back the flowered curtain; behind it was a cot covered with a red bedspread and an armchair with ropes attached to the armrests and the legs. Newish ropes, still white, not very thick. She brought an ashtray and placed it on the table, sat down, and lit a cigarette. You smoke? I shook my head. Well, I do. The soldiers got me in the habit. They always bring me some. Smoke, old woman, smoke. . that’ll keep you entertained. . and in my old age, I smoke and admire the smoke coming out of my mouth and the smoke I expel through my nostrils. Leaning forward, she held the cigarette up to my face, you got to ginger up. How can you go around with those helpless-creature eyes of yours? Aren’t you a man? Lift up your heart then! And hurrah for war and death! She left the cigarette in the ashtray, uncorked the bottle, and filled the glasses to the top. This will loosen up your tongue, liven up your blood. Drink up! She lifted her glass, I lifted mine and emptied it in one swallow, as she did. To the religious medallions! The wine was like fire. I like you, even if you’ve gone mute. I suppose you could be given communion without having to confess. I wasn’t expecting to have such good company tonight. Throw a log on the fire. Drink! Peaceful night, it is. . the rumblings of war reached this far, in case you’re wondering. I admit I don’t know the meaning of the word fear. Never did! She eyed her cigarette and I the ropes on the armchair. Look at me! You’ve never seen anyone like me. Never, never! She filled her glass again. Drink up! And she filled mine again, too. That armchair, she said, stretching out her arm with the glass in her hand, has quite a story. The girl who used to sit in it is buried by the tree in the back, under the rabbit cage. The oldest tree of them all. It was full of birds and she liked looking at it. I turned the armchair around so she couldn’t see it. I covered up the window: shutters closed and a pile of wood over them. So she couldn’t see a thing. Some of them birds have white and black feathers, some have red chests — red from eating so many cherries — some have plumage as green as stagnant water, others grey with blue bellies, all of them chirping and flitting about, and she with her back to them so she’d see only me. Me! I had her for a long time. She was beautiful. There’s no explaining how beautiful she was. When they took me to her. . she was unconscious by the vegetable garden, next to the cabbage patch. A bullet had perforated her thigh. Not gone through it, mind you, it was lodged inside. And with the kitchen knife. . No, with a knife she had in her pocket, which had some other tools that were just a nuisance, I dug out the bullet. . and with these two fingers. The wound got infected. Every day I had to squeeze out the pus and dress it with rags soaked in thyme water. As I nursed her I kept thinking she was mine. . Drink up! She poured me more wine, too much, and it spilled over. Drink up! I’m pouring you wine so you’ll drink it, not so you’ll let it go bad. It burned. It burned my throat. After I’d nursed her back to health I decided to keep her forever. Those cords you’ve been looking at were for tying her up; otherwise she would have escaped. Tied up. Nice and tight, to keep the old woman in the woods company. Drink! Don’t you think she’d have run away if she could, scampering into the forest like a hare? She’d have flown out the window if she’d had wings. . The first to have her was a middle-aged man who was running away from the bullets and was hungry for. . I stepped outside so he wouldn’t feel self-conscious and I heard her scream. How crude of her. And then, what a cry! What a cry the little bird let out. It must have reached the depths of hell. When the man came out he thanked me. I didn’t hold out my hand, but he slipped some coins into my pocket. Thank you. And after that first one, others started coming. Sometimes they had to line up. . had more lice than a hens’ nest filled with old straw.

I couldn’t breathe. What was her name? She downed another glass and dried her lips on her sleeve. A funny name. What would you guess it was? She had the same name as the mother of men. Funny, isn’t it? I gulped down the wine that was left in the glass and choked. Stifling a laugh, huh? Like the mother of all men. Eva, Eva, Eva. . I used to say to her: Eva, lucky day when I found you more dead than alive by the cabbage patch. What a stroke of luck! And she thought only of running away. I bound her tighter every day. Soon she had red marks, a girdle of raw flesh around her wrists and ankles. I had to put the food in her mouth; sometimes she’d swallow it, sometimes she’d spit it out. Until one night, when I had already closed the shutters and was bolting the door, seven men the color of chestnuts showed up, all of them the color of chestnuts, and I lent her to them for the night. Here, take her. They hauled her off into the woods; she was as still as death and didn’t let out a cry. They took her away, holding her aloft like a goat. . all the while I had her here she never shed a tear. She struggled to get loose, and the harder she struggled the deeper the ropes cut into her skin. . but I never saw her cry. I would have liked to see a tear, at least one, in those eyes the color of violets. But no. Never. She didn’t come back. They didn’t bring her back. I found her the following morning at daybreak, naked under the trees, with a branch stuck up her, thrust where life is born. She drank again and clicked her tongue. She went to fetch another bottle. Fixing her eyes on me as she uncorked it, she filled her glass and, without taking her eyes off me, filled mine and then emptied her own with one gulp. Drink! With violet eyes. . you’ll sleep outside. You’re young, the night won’t do you no harm. I’ll lend you a blanket. No, two: one to place under you, the other on top. You’ll see how pleasant it is to sleep under the trees. Tomorrow, in exchange for food, you will help me clean the rabbit cage.

I jumped up, nearly out of my mind, grabbed a log from the fireplace and, without stopping to think what I was doing, I struck her. She was left with one eye open. I don’t know where I got the strength, but I dragged her to the armchair, sat her in it, and bound her wrists and ankles to the legs and armrests. I walked outside with a burning log, panting, my eyes bulging, and went around to the back of the house, to the pile of wood by the wall. Tongues of fire immediately rose from the bundles of heather, everything crackled. The shack quickly turned into a furnace, and the nearest leaves and branches screamed as they caught fire. Clutching Eva’s penknife in one hand and the burning log in the other, I went about wildly setting fire to all the grasses, the bushes, the low-lying branches.

I stopped at the edge of the forest, my hands and feet frozen, all of me a feverish knot, and hurled the burning log into the woods.

At first I couldn’t find the rowboat, but when I finally stumbled upon it, I let myself fall inside. I felt like the boat was sinking and I was rising, that nothing separated me from the boat, that the river was standing up. I still don’t know how I managed to drag it to the water, but somehow I found myself floating on the river with the oars in my hands. I rowed mechanically, lost in that nightmare, beneath a sky of hastening clouds, without knowing what to do, whether to let the current carry me downstream or to forge ahead. . if, in the end, one shore was the same as the next and nothing made any difference. Only the river and myself. No war. No evil. I grasped Eva’s knife, held it under the water, and then slowly opened my hand. The boat floated along on its own. . until, with some effort, I reached the shore. A gleam of moonlight fell on me like a sword and was mirrored by the river. The fog — a low, sulphurous-yellow fog — was spreading, slowly shrouding the dead.

XLIII NIGHT’S END

I’VE LOOKED FOR YOU. I’VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR YOU SINCE YESTERDAY. As soon as you left I started looking. Where were you? I knew you would come back. The baby died, my son died. I was looking for you so you would help me bury him. The woman with the dead baby was carrying a lantern, which she handed to me. I was able to close his eyes. He doesn’t look, he doesn’t see, so beautiful. . the child was wearing a lace-trimmed garment, like a Christening gown, with a white ribbon just below his chest. A lace bonnet tied with a silk ribbon framed his face. Look how beautiful. The woman with the dead baby had a shovel at her feet. Pick it up. We’ll bury him farther down, where the ground is not so thick with the dead, in a hole made by a howitzer. The earth isn’t as hard there because it’s been turned. Close to the river, so it will lull him to sleep if he hears it. The woman’s face was as pale as the child’s: two faces as white as a sheet of paper against the sulphurous fog. I put the shovel inside the boat. You row, I don’t know how to. The boat glided along the water, cutting through the wisps of fog that drifted by, though the evening was airless. Last night I realized that my son had died and I started looking for you. He’d be alive if he had been able to eat, but the food is all gone. A neighbor gave me this gown — see? — and with tears in her eyes she said, bury him all beautiful. . She took my hand, your hand is as icy as my son’s. Only the whisper of the oars and the water could be heard. This is it. I recognize it from the flag, from the flagpole planted in the ground that the flash of moonlight just illuminated. I took the lantern and the shovel and helped her out of the boat, her child still in her arms. Can you feel how the earth slopes a bit under your feet?

The turned earth was soft in places, hard in others. Dig deep. She kept saying. Dig deeper. If you don’t make it deep enough the dogs will get to him and the birds will gouge his eyes out. If you tire, take a break, we have the whole night. Deeper. As deep as you are tall. I don’t want the dogs to find him. . she grabbed me by the arm and squeezed it tightly. You hear that? Don’t you hear a dog howling? They howl with their heads up and necks taut. They howl so they will be heard in the heavens, to frighten death away. Hurry, hurry. . she tugged at my hair and laughed. . she pinched my earlobe. . Here, leave the shovel, take him. She handed me the baby. With the child in my arms I didn’t dare breathe. She jumped into the hole to measure it. Drops of sweat blinded me, rolling down my cheeks, down my back. Ice cold. That’s enough. I set the baby on the ground and helped her climb out of the hole. She gave me a shove. You shouldn’t have put him down. I could have got out on my own. Enough, she said. Are you listening? Enough. Here, she handed me the baby. Don’t drop him. Lay him face up, arrange his legs, adjust the ribbons, smooth out his gown. Put the shovel over his face with the blade down and the handle toward his feet, to protect it, to keep the earth out of his eyes. Wait a moment, don’t start throwing earth on him. I heard her praying in a low voice nearly muffled by the water that was flowing near the child’s final bed. Get out. Help me cover him with earth. Kneeling on either side of the hole, we started pushing earth inside with our hands, kicking earth on the ribbons, on the lace, on what had been her son. Stamp on it. Make it hard. We should mark it with a stone, so I will always know where he rests. I found one not far away, large and white. I wedged it into the earth and we both stood there for a moment looking at it. Let’s go. It’s done. I will come every day, at nightfall, at daybreak. . We climbed into the rowboat. The mother of the dead baby sat facing me, holding the lantern. Suddenly she stood up, the boat tilted to the side, and she dropped the lantern. She pointed in front of her, her arm outstretched. I asked her what she had seen. Without replying, she sat down again. Don’t you see the airplane wing? We’re here. When the spring arrives. .

I heard them before I saw them: a dull murmur upon the earth. Little by little they began to rise, dark and still. A breeze tousled their hair. They rose from the mass graves, from the middle of the river, gliding over the water as they crossed to the other shore. They dragged their feet, unfaltering, tall, blind. They were headed for the bombed mountain. Thousands of them. Suddenly a cloud was rent and, against the glassy sky, in front of that breach, a dark figure with arms extended began to take shape. Standing beside the figure was the angel from Mass, with folded wings, and he began to form the blue and crimson squares that would become the floor of the church, while the battalions of the dead grew in number as they marched toward the mountain. I climbed out of the boat followed by the mother of the dead baby. What do you see? I asked her. Do you see something? No. We stood in silence for a moment. Don’t you hear the treading of countless feet? No. Can’t you see an angel laying the floor of the church with dark blue and crimson squares, extending it toward us? He colors the squares slowly, as though from within. Some take longer to pigment. The squares on one side of the church absorb color faster and more intensely than the ones on the other side, they color so deeply it hurts your eyes. Now he’s resting. He is spreading his wings, can’t you see the shadows they cast? He is starting to blow the bubble that will become the Church of this world. . he is blowing it up, broadening it, so it will shelter the dead, so they can be buried beneath its glass dome, which is so fine that a wisp of air could blow it away, a drop of rain would suffice to pierce it. Look, now he’s forming the petals, and the petals will come together at the top of the bubble, and then. . a lightless sun, transparent and golden in the dead of night, was slowly rising before the shadowy figure, and the shadowy figure accompanied it with its arms, as though ushering it toward the sky. Look. . the angel is starting on the bell tower. Can you hear it? Don’t you hear the breathing? I hear breathing, yes, it is the river’s breath. Nothing more. The breath of the river and of the night. No, I said, it is the breath of the angel, and of the dead. And more are on their way. A river of angels has traversed the sky; they are descending fast. They are the helpers. They move from place to place pulling the petals up, up, to harden the bubble’s shell. They are pushing the bell tower toward the sky, fast, fast. Don’t you see them? My eyes are open and I see only the passing clouds embroidered with moonlight. Can’t you see the smaller angels, each with one black wing and one white wing? They are making a crown. Listen! In this temple, built by the angels, built upon the faith of those who are coming toward me, I will fill the calix of my hand with dew and bless this night’s sun, which is Jesus Christ the Innocent, giver of all things. From atop this ancient mountain, with no church, with no wooden altar, beyond the seas, beyond the rivers, from this summit with its crest of clouds and foundations of fog, I will bless the murderers and the murdered, the decaying flesh, the bones that fall apart, the veins that have flooded the earth with blood. I will bless the throngs of approaching souls, attracted by my piety, searching for my forgiveness. And the shadowy figure held out his arms and from the tips of his fingers issued lightning-colored filaments that descended upon the dead on both sides of the river, bringing them repose. . and a white horse splattered with blood. . and. .

A blinding light coursing above the fog forced me to close my eyes. When I opened them, everything had faded: There were no angels, no shadows of marching soldiers. The mother of the dead baby turned around to face me, it’s the trucks with the men who are coming to burn the dead, goodbye, she said, briefly touching my arm. Adéu.

It was difficult to set out again: I was leaving behind, inside the burning forest, so much charred life. I would return home to tend the carnation field, with the water flowing through the ditches, the sound of trains passing in the night, the rosebush with its yellow roses climbing to the rooftop. A different me would return. I had seen death up close. And evil. A great sadness like an iron hand clutched my heart. Where was home? Did I still have a home? I would return bearing mountains of memories of all the people I had met, people who had been born and had lived so that I might know them, and they would accompany me for the rest of my journey. . so many sweet eyes, so many sad eyes, so many surprised eyes, so many desperate eyes. . Would the remembrance of evil dissipate or would I carry it with me always, like a malady of the soul? The road was wide, I would have to find the path home. I did not know where it was. I felt as ancient as the world. I pondered everything that I had just seen but did not exist. No angels, no dead men drawing nearer, searching for peace at night’s end. Only me and that fever. As the sun began its ascent in the sky, as every day, as always. .