Without Blood

One

The old farmhouse of Mato Rujo stood blankly in the countryside, carved in black against the evening light, the only stain in the empty outline of the plain.

The four men arrived in an old Mercedes. The road was pitted and dry—a poor country road. From the farmhouse, Manuel Roca saw them.

He went to the window. First he saw the column of dust rising against the corn. Then he heard the sound of the engine.

No one had a car anymore, around here. Manuel Roca knew it.

He saw the Mercedes emerge in the distance and disappear behind a line of oaks. Then he stopped looking.

He returned to the table and placed a hand on his daughter’s head. Get up, he told her. He took a key from his pocket, put it on the table, and nodded at his son. Yes, the son said. They were children, just two children.

At the crossroads where the stream ran the old Mercedes did not turn off to the farmhouse but continued toward Álvarez instead.

The four men traveled in silence. The one driving had on a sort of uniform. The other sitting in front wore a cream-colored suit. Pressed. He was smoking a French cigarette. Slow down, he said.

Manuel Roca heard the sound fade into the distance toward Álvarez. Who do they think they’re fooling? he thought. He saw his son come back into the room with a gun in his hand and another under his arm. Put them there, he said. Then he turned to his daughter. Come, Nina. Don’t be afraid. Come here.

The well-dressed man put out his cigarette on the dashboard of the Mercedes, then told the one who was driving to stop. This is good, here, he said. And shut off that infernal engine. He heard the slide of the hand brake, like a chain falling into a well. Then nothing. It was as if the countryside had been swallowed up in an unalterable silence.

It would have been better to go straight there, said one of the two sitting in back. Now he’ll have time to run, he said. He had a gun in his hand. He was only a boy. They called him Tito.

He won’t run, said the well-dressed man. He’s had it with running. Let’s go.

Manuel Roca moved aside some baskets of fruit, bent over, raised a hidden trapdoor, and looked inside. It was little more than a big hole dug into the earth, like the den of an animal.

“Listen to me, Nina. Now, some people are coming, and I don’t want them to see you. You have to hide in here, the best thing is for you to hide in here and wait until they go away. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You just have to stay here and be quiet.”

“…”

“Whatever happens, you mustn’t come out, you mustn’t move, just stay here, be quiet, and wait.”

“…”

“Everything will be all right.”

“Yes.”

“Listen to me. It’s possible I may have to go away with these men. Don’t come out until your brother comes to get you, do you understand? Or until you can tell that no one is there and it’s all over.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to wait until there’s no one there.”

“…”

“Don’t be afraid, Nina, nothing’s going to happen to you. All right?”

“Yes.”

“Give me a kiss.”

The girl pressed her lips against her father’s forehead. He caressed her hair.

“Everything will be all right, Nina.”

He remained standing there, as if there were still something he had to say, or do.

“This isn’t what I intended,” he said. “Remember, always, that this is not what I intended.”

The child searched instinctively in her father’s eyes for something that might help her understand. She saw nothing. Her father leaned over and kissed her lips.

“Now go, Nina. Go on.”

The child let herself fall into the hole. The earth was hard and dry. She lay down.

“Wait, take this.”

The father handed her a blanket. She spread it over the dirt and lay down again.

She heard her father say something to her, then she saw the trapdoor lowered. She closed her eyes and opened them. Blades of light filtered through the floorboards. She heard the voice of her father as he went on speaking to her. She heard the sound of the baskets dragged across the floor. It grew darker under there.

Her father asked her something. She answered. She was lying on one side. She had bent her legs, and there she was, curled up, as if in her bed, with nothing to do but go to sleep, and dream. She heard her father say something else, gently, leaning down toward the floor. Then she heard a shot, and the sound of a window breaking into a thousand pieces.

“ROCA!… COME OUT, ROCA… DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID, JUST COME OUT.”

Manuel Roca looked at his son. He crept toward the boy, careful not to move into the open. He reached for the gun on the table.

“Get away from there! Go and hide in the woodshed. Don’t come out, don’t make a sound, don’t do anything. Take the gun and keep it loaded.”

The child stared at him without moving.

“Go on. Do what I tell you.”

But the child took a step toward him.

Nina heard a hail of shots sweep the house, above her. Dust and bits of glass slid along the cracks in the floor. She didn’t move. She heard a voice calling from outside.

“WELL, ROCA? DO WE HAVE TO COME AND GET YOU? I’M TALKING TO YOU, ROCA. DO I HAVE TO COME AND GET YOU?”

The child was standing there, in the open. He had taken his gun, but was holding it in one hand, pointing it down and swinging it back and forth.

“Go,” said the father. “Did you hear me? Get out of here.”

The child went toward him. What he was thinking was that he would kneel on the floor, and be embraced by his father. He imagined something like that.

The father pointed the other gun at him. He spoke in a low, fierce voice.

“Go, or I’ll kill you myself.”

Nina heard that voice again.

“LAST CHANCE, ROCA.”

Gunfire fanned the house, back and forth like a pendulum, as if it would never end, back and forth like the beam of a lighthouse over a coal-black sea, patiently.

Nina closed her eyes. She flattened herself against the blanket and curled up even tighter, pulling her knees to her chest. She liked being in that position. She felt the earth, cool, under her side, protecting her—it would not betray her. And she felt her own curled-up body, folded around itself like a shell—she liked this—she was shell and animal, her own shelter, she was everything, she was everything for herself, nothing could hurt her as long as she remained in this position. She reopened her eyes, and thought, Don’t move, you’re happy.

Manuel Roca saw his son disappear behind the door. Then he raised himself just enough to glance out the window. All right, he thought. He moved to another window, rose, quickly took aim, and fired.

The man in the cream-colored suit cursed and threw himself to the ground. Look at this bastard, he said. He shook his head.

How about this son of a bitch? He heard two more shots from the farmhouse. Then he heard the voice of Manuel Roca.

“FUCK OFF, SALINAS.”

The man in the cream-colored suit spit. Go fuck yourself, you bastard. He glanced to his right and saw that El Gurre was sneering, flattened behind a stack of wood. He was holding a machine gun in his right hand, and with his left he searched his pocket for a cigarette. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He was small and thin, he wore a dirty hat on his head and on his feet enormous mountain clogs. He looked at Salinas. He found the cigarette. He put it between his lips. Everyone called him El Gurre. He got up and began shooting.

Nina heard the burst of gunfire sweep the house, above her.

Then silence. And immediately afterward another burst, longer.

She kept her eyes open. She looked at the cracks in the floor. She looked at the light, and the dust that came from up there. Every so often she saw a shadow pass, and that was her father.

Salinas crawled over beside El Gurre, behind the woodpile.

“How long would it take Tito to get in?”

El Gurre shrugged his shoulders. He still had the sneer on his face. Salinas glanced at the farmhouse.

“We’ll never get in from here: either he does it or we’re in deep shit.”

El Gurre lighted the cigarette. He said that the kid was quick and could manage it. He said that he knew how to slither like a snake and that they would have to trust him.

“But we’ll need a little distraction.”

Manuel Roca saw El Gurre emerge from behind the woodpile and throw himself to the ground. From that position the machine-gun volley arrived punctually, prolonged. I’ve got to get out of here, Roca thought. Ammunition. First ammunition, then crawl to the kitchen and from there straight for the fields.

Wait. El Gurre isn’t stupid, he must have someone behind the house, too. But no one’s firing from that direction. If someone were there, he would be firing. Maybe El Gurre isn’t in charge.

Maybe it’s that coward Salinas. If it’s Salinas, I can handle it.

He doesn’t have a clue, that Salinas. Stay behind your desk, Salinas, it’s the only thing you know how to do. But first go screw yourself. First the ammunition.

El Gurre was shooting.

Ammunition. And money. Maybe I can take the money with me, too. I should have run immediately, that’s what I should have done. God damn. Now I’ve got to get out of here, if only he would stop for a second, where did he get a machine gun?

They have a car and a machine gun. Too much, Salinas.

The ammunition. Now the money.

El Gurre fired.

Nina heard the windows pulverize under the machine-gun shots.

Then leaves of silence between one burst and the next. In the silence, the shadow of her father crept between the glass. With one hand she adjusted her skirt. She was like an artisan intent on refining his work. Curled on her side, she began eliminating the imprecisions one by one. She lined up her feet until she felt her legs perfectly coupled, the two thighs softly joined, the knees like two cups one inside the other, the calves barely separated.

She checked the symmetry of her shoes, paired as if in a shop window, but on their sides, you might have said lying down, out of exhaustion. She liked that orderliness. If you are a shell, order is important. If you are shell and animal, everything has to be perfect. Precision will save you.

She heard the pounding of a long volley. And right afterward the voice of a boy.

“Put down the gun, Roca.”

Manuel Roca turned his head. He saw Tito standing a few yards away. He was pointing a pistol at him.

“Put down that gun and don’t move.”

From outside came another burst of gunfire. But the boy didn’t move, he stood there, gun pointed. Under that rain of shots, the two stood motionless, staring at each other, like a single animal that had stopped breathing. Manuel Roca, half lying on the ground, looked the boy in the eyes, as he stood there, in the open. He tried to comprehend if he was a child or a soldier, if it was his thousandth time or his first, and if there was a brain attached to that gun or only blind instinct. He saw the barrel of the gun tremble just perceptibly, as if it were making a tiny scribble in the air.

“Stay calm, kid,” he said.

Slowly he placed the rifle on the floor. With a kick he sent it sliding into the center of the room.

“Everything’s okay, kid,” he said.

Tito didn’t take his eyes off him.

“Quiet, Roca, and don’t move.”

Another blast arrived. El Gurre was working methodically.

The boy waited until he finished, without lowering his gun or his gaze. When silence returned, he glanced toward the window.

“SALINAS! I’VE GOT HIM. STOP IT, I’VE GOT HIM.”

And after a moment:

“It’s Tito. I’ve got him.”

“He’s done it. Shit,” said Salinas.

El Gurre made a kind of smile, without turning. He was observing the barrel of the machine gun as if he had carved it himself, in idle hours, from the branch of an ash tree.

Tito looked for them in the light from the window.

Slowly Manuel Roca got up just enough so that he could lean his back against the wall. He thought of the gun pressing into his side, stuck in his pants. He tried to remember if it was loaded.

He touched it with one hand. The boy didn’t notice anything.

Let’s go, Salinas said. They went around the stack of wood and headed straight for the farmhouse. Salinas walked slightly bent, as he had seen it done in films. He was ridiculous like all men who fight: without realizing it. They were crossing the farmyard when they heard, from inside, a gunshot.

El Gurre ran. He reached the door of the farmhouse and kicked it open. Three years earlier, he had kicked open the door of the stable, had entered and had seen his wife hanging from the ceiling, and his two daughters with their heads shaved, their thighs spattered with blood.

He kicked open the door and went in and saw Tito, pointing the gun toward a corner of the room.

“I had to do it. He has a gun,” the boy said.

El Gurre looked in the corner. Roca was lying on his back.

He was bleeding from one arm.

“I think he has a gun,” the boy said again. “Hidden somewhere,” he added.

El Gurre went over to Manuel Roca.

He looked at the wound in his arm. Then he looked the man in the face.

“Hello, Roca,” he said.

He placed one shoe on Roca’s wounded arm and began to crush it. Roca shrieked and folded over on himself in pain. The gun slid out of his pants. El Gurre leaned down to pick it up.

“You’re a smart kid,” he said. Tito nodded. He realized that he still had his arm extended in front of him, and the gun in his hand, pointed at Roca. He lowered it. He felt his two fingers relax around the trigger of the pistol. His whole hand hurt, as if he had been punching a wall. Stay calm, he thought.

Nina remembered the song that began: Count the clouds, the time will come. Then something about an eagle. And it ended with the numbers, one after another, from one to ten. But you could also count to a hundred, or a thousand. She had once counted to two hundred and forty-three. She thought that now she would get up and go and see who those men were and what they wanted. If she couldn’t open the trapdoor, she would cry out, and her father would come to get her. But instead she stayed like that, lying on her side, her knees pulled up to her chest, her shoes balanced one on top of the other, her cheek feeling the cool of the earth through the rough wool of the blanket. She began to sing the song, in a thin voice. Count the clouds, the time will come. And then a voice.

“We meet again, Doctor,” Salinas said.

Manuel Roca looked at him without speaking. He pressed a rag against the wound. They had made him sit in the middle of the room, on a wooden chest. El Gurre was behind him, somewhere, gripping his machine gun. They had stationed the boy, Tito, at the door, to see that no one arrived, outside, and every so often he turned, and looked at what was happening in the room. Salinas walked back and forth. A lighted cigarette between his fingers. French.

“I’ve wasted a lot of time on you, you know?” he said.

Manual Roca looked up at him.

“Three hundred kilometers to come down here and get you.

It’s a long way.”

“Tell me what you want and go.”

“What I want?”

“What do you want, Salinas?”

Salinas smiled.

“What did you say?”

“The war is over.”

Salinas stood over Manuel Roca.

“The winner decides when a war is over.”

Manuel Roca shook his head.

“You read too many novels, Salinas. The war is over, that’s it, get it?”

“Not yours. Not mine, Doctor.”

Then Manuel Roca began to shout that they had better not touch him, they would all end up in jail, they would be caught and spend the rest of their lives rotting in prison. He shouted at the boy: did he like the idea of growing old behind bars counting the hours and giving blow jobs to some repellent killer. The boy looked at him without responding. Then Manuel Roca shouted at him that he was an imbecile, they were duping him, screwing up his life. But the boy said nothing. Salinas smiled. He looked at El Gurre and smiled. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Finally he became serious. He placed himself in front of Manuel Roca and told him to be quiet, once and for all. He put a hand inside his jacket and took out a pistol. Then he told Roca that he needn’t worry about them, no one would ever know anything.

“You will disappear into a void, and no one will say a word.

Your friends have abandoned you, Roca. And mine are very busy. To kill you will be a favor to everyone. You’re screwed, Doctor.”

“You’re mad.”

“What are you saying?”

“You’re mad.”

“Say it again, Doctor. I like hearing you talk about madmen.”

“Go fuck yourself, Salinas.”

Salinas released the safety on the pistol.

“Now listen to me, Doctor. Do you know how many times I fired a shot in four years of war? Twice. I don’t like to shoot, I don’t like weapons, I’ve never wanted to carry one, I don’t enjoy killing, I fought my war sitting at a desk, Salinas the Rat, you remember? That’s what your friends called me, I screwed them one by one, I deciphered their coded messages and put my spies on them, they despised me and I screwed them, it went like that for four years, but the truth is that I fired only twice. Once was at night, I shot into the darkness at no one, the other was the last day of the war, I shot my brother listen carefully, we went into that hospital before the army arrived, we wanted to go in and kill all of you, but we didn’t find you, you had fled, right? You saw which way the wind was blowing, so you took off your jailers’ shirts and ran, leaving everything behind, just as it was, beds all over the place, sick people everywhere, even in the corridors, but what I remember most was that you couldn’t hear a complaint, not a sound, nothing. I will never forget it, there was an absolute silence. Every night of my life I will hear it, an absolute silence, those were our friends in the beds, and we were going to free them, we were saving them, but when we arrived they welcomed us in silence, because they didn’t even have the strength to cry, and, to tell the truth, they no longer had the desire to live. They didn’t want to be saved, this is the truth, you had reduced them to a state where they wanted only to die, as soon as possible, they didn’t want to be saved, they wanted to be killed I found my brother in a bed among the others, down in the chapel, he looked at me as if I were a distant mirage. I tried to speak to him but he didn’t answer, I couldn’t tell if he recognized me, I bent over him, I begged him to answer me, I asked him to say something. His eyes were wide open, his breath was very slow, it was like a long death agony, I was leaning over him when I heard his voice say Please, very slowly, with a superhuman effort, a voice that seemed to come from Hell, it had nothing to do with his voice, my brother had a ringing voice, when he spoke it was like laughter, but this was something entirely different, he said slowly Please and then after a while he said Kill me, his eyes had no expression, none, they were like the eyes of someone else, his body was motionless, there was only that very slow breath going up and down I said that I would take him away from there, that it was all over and I would take care of everything, but he seemed to have sunk back into his inferno, returning to where he’d come from, he had said what he wanted to say and then had gone back to his nightmare, what could I do? I tried to think how I could take him away, I looked around for help, I wanted to take him away from there, I was sure of it, and yet I couldn’t move, I couldn’t manage to move, I don’t know how much time passed, what I remember is that at some point I turned and a few feet away I saw El Blanco, he was standing beside a bed, with the machine gun on his shoulder, and what he was doing was crushing a pillow over the face of a boy, the one lying on the bed El Blanco was crying and crushing the pillow, in the silence of the chapel only his sobs could be heard, the boy wasn’t moving, he didn’t make a sound, he was going silently, but El Blanco was sobbing, like a child, then he took away the pillow and with his fingers closed the boy’s eyes, and then he looked at me, I was looking at him and he looked at me, I wanted to say What are you doing?, but nothing came out of me, and at that moment someone appeared and said that the army was coming, that we had to get out of there, I felt lost, I didn’t want to be found there, I heard the others running along the corridors. I took the pillow from under my brother’s head, gently, I looked for a while at those frightened eyes, I placed the pillow on his face, and I began to press it, bending over my brother, I pressed my hands down on the pillow, and I felt the bones of my brother’s face, there under my hands. One cannot ask a man to do such a thing, they couldn’t ask it of me, I tried to resist but at a certain point I stopped, I pulled the pillow away, my brother was still breathing, but it was like something digging up air from the depths of hell, it was terrible, the eyes unmoving, and that rattle. He looked at me and I realized that I was screaming, I heard my voice screaming, but as if from a distance, like a dim and fading lament, I couldn’t help it, I was still screaming when I noticed El Blanco, he was beside me, he didn’t say anything but he was offering me a gun, while I was crying, and they were all fleeing, we two were inside, he offered me the gun, I took it, and placed the barrel against my brother’s forehead and, still screaming, I fired.

Look at me, Roca. I said look at me. In the whole war I fired twice, the first time it was night, and at no one, the second time at close range, and it was my brother.

I want to tell you something. I will shoot one time more, and that will be the last.

Then Roca began to shout again.

“I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.”

“You had nothing to do with it?”

“I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HOSPITAL.”

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING?”

“I DID WHAT THEY TOLD ME TO DO.”

“YOU…”

“I WASN’T THERE WHEN—”

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING—”

“I SWEAR IT, I—”

“THAT WAS YOUR HOSPITAL, YOU BASTARD…”

“MY HOSPITAL?”

“THAT WAS YOUR HOSPITAL, YOU WERE THE DOCTOR WHO WAS TAKING CARE OF THEM, YOU KILLED THEM, YOU BROKE THEM, THEY WERE SENT TO YOU AND YOU BROKE THEM…”

“I NEVER—”

“SHUT UP!”

“I SWEAR TO YOU, SALINAS—”

“SHUT UP!”

“I NEVER—”

“SHUT UP!”

Salinas placed the gun against one of Roca’s knees. Then he fired. The knee exploded like a piece of fruit. Roca fell back and curled on the ground, shrieking with pain. Salinas was standing over him, he aimed the gun at him and went on shouting.

“I’LL KILL YOU, UNDERSTAND? I’LL KILL YOU, I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.”

El Gurre took a step forward. The boy, at the door, stared in silence. Salinas was shouting, his cream-colored suit was spattered with blood, he was shouting in a strange, harsh voice, as if he were crying. Or as if he were no longer capable of breathing. He was shouting that he would murder him. Then they all heard an impossible voice say something softly.

“Go away.”

They turned and saw a child, standing on the other side of the room. He was holding a rifle and had it pointed at them. He said again, softly:

“Go away.”

Nina heard the hoarse voice of her father, who was groaning in pain, and then the voice of her brother. She thought that when she came out of there she would go to her brother and would tell him that he had a lovely voice, because it truly seemed lovely to her, so clean and infinitely childlike, the voice she had heard murmur quietly:

“Go away.”

“WHO THE HELL…”

“It’s the son, Salinas.”

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN?”

“It’s Roca’s son,” El Gurre said.

Salinas cursed, he began shouting that there wasn’t supposed to be anyone there, THERE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE ANYONE HERE, WHAT’S THIS NONSENSE, YOU SAID THERE WASN’T ANYONE, he was shouting and didn’t know where to point the gun, he looked at El Gurre, and then at Tito, and finally he looked at the child with the rifle and shouted at him that he was a stupid fuck, and that he would never get out of there alive if he didn’t put that damn gun down immediately.

The boy remained silent and he kept the gun raised.

Then Salinas stopped shouting. His voice came out calm and fierce. He said to the boy that now he knew what sort of a man his father was, now he knew that he was an assassin, that he had murdered dozens of people, sometimes he poisoned them little by little, with his medicine, but others he killed by cutting open their chests and then leaving them to die. He said to the child that with his own eyes he had seen boys come from that hospital with their brains blown out. They could hardly walk, they couldn’t speak—they were like idiots. He said that his father was called the Hyena, and that it was his friends who called him the Hyena, and they laughed when they said it. Roca was gasping on the floor. He began to murmur quietly, “Help,” as if from far away—help, help, help—a litany. He felt death approaching.

Salinas didn’t even look at him. He went on talking to the child.

The child was listening, not moving. At the end Salinas said to him that things were like that, and that it was too late to do anything, even with a gun in your hand. He looked him in the eyes, with an infinite weariness, and asked if he understood who that man was, if he truly understood. With one hand he indicated Roca. He wanted to know if the boy understood who he was.

The boy put together everything he knew, and what he understood of life. He answered:

“He’s my father.”

Then he fired. A single shot. Into emptiness.

El Gurre responded instinctively. The machine-gun burst lifted the child up off the floor and hurled him at the wall, in a mess of lead, bone, and blood. Like a bird shot in mid-flight, Tito thought.

Salinas threw himself to the floor. He ended up beside Roca.

For a moment the two men looked at each other. From Roca’s throat came a dull, horrible howl. Salinas pulled away, sliding along the floor. He rolled onto his back to get Roca’s eyes off him. He began to tremble all over. There was a heavy silence.

Only that horrible howl. Salinas raised himself up on his elbows and looked at the far end of the room. The child’s body was leaning against the wall, tattered by the machine-gun volley, ripped open with wounds. His gun had flown into a corner.

Salinas saw that the child’s head was upside down, and in his open mouth he saw the little white teeth, a neat white row. Then Salinas let go, falling onto his back. His eyes stared at the ceiling, with its line of beams. Dark wood. Old. He was trembling all over. He couldn’t keep his hands still, his legs, anything.

Tito took two steps toward him.

El Gurre restrained him with a nod.

Roca gave a grim cry, a death cry.

Salinas said softly: “Make him stop.”

His teeth were chattering madly, and as he spoke he was trying to stop them.

El Gurre searched his eyes to understand what he wanted.

Salinas’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling. A line of dark wood beams. Old.

“Make him stop,” he repeated.

El Gurre took a step forward.

Roca howled, lying in his own blood, his mouth hideously wide.

El Gurre stuck the barrel of the gun in his throat.

Roca kept on howling, against the warm metal of the barrel.

El Gurre fired. A short burst. Dry. The last of his war.

“Make him stop,” Salinas said again.

Nina heard a silence that frightened her. Then she joined her hands and stuck them between her legs. She curled up even tighter, bringing her knees toward her head. She thought that now it would all be over. Her father would come to get her and they would go and have supper. She thought that they would not speak again of that night, and that soon they would forget about it: she thought this because she was a child and couldn’t know.

“The girl,” said El Gurre.

He held Salinas by the arm, to make him stand up. He said to him softly:

“The girl.”

Salinas’s gaze was blank.

“What girl?”

“Roca’s daughter. If the boy was here she probably is, too.”

Salinas muttered something. Then he shoved El Gurre away.

He pulled himself up, holding on to the table. His shoes were soaked in Roca’s blood.

El Gurre nodded at Tito, then directed him toward the kitchen. When Tito passed the boy on the floor he bent down for an instant and closed his eyes. Not like a father. Like someone who turns off the light as he is leaving a room.

Tito thought of his own father’s eyes. One day some men had knocked on the door of his house. Tito had never seen them before. But they said they had a message for him. Then they handed him a canvas sack. He opened it and inside were the eyes of his father. Take care which side you stand on, kid, they said.

And they went away.

Tito saw a drawn curtain on the other side of the room. He released the safety of his pistol and advanced. He parted the curtain. Behind it was a small room. Everything was in disarray.

Chairs overturned, trunks, tools, and some baskets of half-rotted fruit. There was a strong smell of food gone bad. And of dampness. On the floor the dust was strange: it looked as if someone had dragged his feet through it. Or something else.

He heard El Gurre on the other side of the house beating the walls with his machine gun, looking for hidden doors. Salinas must have still been there, holding on to the table, shaking. Tito moved one of the fruit baskets. He made out on the floor the line of a trapdoor. He hit the floor hard with one boot, to hear what noise it made. He moved two more baskets. It was a small trapdoor, carefully cut out. Tito looked up. Through a small window he saw the darkness outside. He hadn’t even realized that it was night. He thought it was time to go, get away from there. Then he knelt on the floor, and lifted the trapdoor. There was a girl inside, curled up on her side, her hands hidden between her thighs, her head bent forward slightly, toward her knees. Her eyes were open.

Tito pointed his gun at her.

“Salinas!” he shouted.

The child turned her head and looked at him. She had dark eyes, oddly shaped. She looked at him without expression. Her lips were half closed and she was breathing calmly. She was an animal in its den. Tito felt returning to him a sensation he had felt a thousand times, finding that exact position, between the warmth of sheets or under the afternoon sun of childhood. Knees folded, hands between the legs, feet balanced. Head bent forward slightly, closing the circle. How lovely it was, he thought. The child’s skin was white, and the outline of her lips perfect. Her legs stuck out from under a short red skirt, as if in a drawing. It was all so orderly. It was all so complete.

Exact.

The girl turned her head back, to its former position. She bent it forward slightly, closing the circle. Tito realized that no one had answered, beyond the curtain. Time had surely passed, and yet no one had answered. He could hear El Gurre banging with his gun against the walls of the house. A muted meticulous sound. Outside it was dark. He lowered the trapdoor. Slowly.

He remained there, on his knees, to see if through the cracks in the floor he could see the child. He would have liked to think.

But he couldn’t. Every so often he was too tired to think. He got up. He put the baskets back. He felt his heart banging against his temples.

They went out into the night like drunks. El Gurre supported Salinas, pushing him forward. Tito walked behind them.

Somewhere, the old Mercedes was waiting for them. They went a dozen yards or so, without exchanging a word. Then Salinas said something to El Gurre and El Gurre went back, toward the farmhouse. He didn’t seem very certain, but he went back.

Salinas leaned on Tito and told him to keep walking. They skirted the woodpile and left the road to take a path that led through the fields. There was a deep silence, and for that reason Tito was unable to say the sentence that he had in mind and had decided to say: There is still a child in there. He was tired, and there was too much silence. Salinas stopped. He was shaking and it was an enormous effort to walk. Tito said something softly, then he turned and looked back. He saw El Gurre running toward them. Behind him he saw the farmhouse rip the darkness, ablaze with the fire that was devouring it. The flames shot up and a cloud of black smoke rose slowly in the night. Tito moved away from Salinas and stood petrified, watching. El Gurre joined them and without stopping said Let’s go, kid. But Tito didn’t move.

“What the hell did you do?” he said.

El Gurre was trying to drag Salinas away. He said again that they had to go. Then Tito grabbed him by the neck and began to shout in his face WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?

“Calm down, kid,” said El Gurre.

But Tito wouldn’t stop, he began shouting louder and louder, WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?, shaking El Gurre like a puppet, WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?, until Salinas, too, began shouting, STOP IT, KID, they were like three madmen, abandoned on a dark stage: CUT IT OUT!

The stage of a theater in ruins.

Finally they dragged Tito away by force. The glare of the fire lighted up the night. They crossed a field and went down to the road, following the stream bed. When they came in sight of the old Mercedes, El Gurre put a hand on Tito’s shoulder and said to him softly that he had done a fine job, and that it was all over now. But Tito wouldn’t stop repeating the words over and over.

He didn’t shout. He spoke softly, in a child’s voice. What the hell have we done. What the hell have we done. What the hell have we done.

The old farmhouse of Mato Rujo stood blankly in the countryside, carved in red flame against the dark night. The only stain in the empty outline of the plain.

Three days later a man arrived, on horseback, at the farmhouse of Mato Rujo. He was filthy, dressed in rags. The horse was an old nag, skin and bones. It had something in its eyes, a yellow liquid that dripped down its muzzle, and the flies buzzed around it.

The man saw the walls of the farmhouse standing blackened and useless, coals in the middle of an enormous quenched brazier. They were like the last remaining teeth in the mouth of an old man. The fire had also consumed a large oak that for years had shaded the house. Like a black claw, it stank of calamity.

The man stayed in the saddle. He made a slow half-circle around the farm. He went to the well and without getting off the horse unhooked the bucket and let it fall. He heard the slap of metal on water. He looked over at the farmhouse. He saw that sitting on the ground, leaning against what remained of a wall, there was a child. She was staring at him, two motionless eyes shining in a smoke-grimed face. She was wearing a short red skirt. She had scratches all over. Or wounds.

The man pulled up the bucket from the well. The water was blackish. He stirred it with a tin dipper, but the blackness remained. He refilled the dipper, brought it to his lips, and took a long drink. He looked again into the water in the bucket. He spit into it. Then he set everything on the edge of the well and pressed his heels into the belly of the horse.

He went over to the child. She raised her head to look at him.

She seemed to have nothing to say. The man studied her for a while. Eyes, lips, hair. Then he held out a hand. She stood, grabbed the man’s hand, and lifted herself up to the saddle, behind him. The old nag adjusted its hooves to the new weight. It tossed its head, twice. The man made a strange noise, and the horse calmed down.

As they rode away from the farmhouse, at a slow trot, under a fierce sun, the girl let her head fall forward and, with her forehead against the man’s sweaty back, slept.