The Killer's Tears (10 page)

Yet as they went deeper into the forest, they noticed some changes. On the ground, moss was replaced by short ferns, then by taller and larger ones. They looked up and saw that the canopy of trees was becoming thicker, trapping the humidity under its uneven cover. The light was also dipping because they were reaching the buttress of the mountains.

To pluck up his courage, Paolo hurried to catch up with
Angel and put his small hand in the murderer's. Straight ahead the forest looked forebodingly dark. The child remembered what Luis had told him about confronting fears. Paolo thought that if he came out of the forest alive, maybe then he would be a man.

“Do you hear that?” Angel whispered suddenly.

Paolo became attentive. “Yes.”

Different faraway sounds reached their ears: the echo of an ax splitting wood; the humming of an engine; then silence, followed again by the hacking of wood. Somewhere deep in the forest, a lumberjack was working, and these human sounds reassured Paolo. He followed Angel, his face grazed by the ferns, his eyes wide open in the half-light. A few birds could be seen high in the trees. He could hardly see the sky any longer.

They reached the spot where the lumberjack had been working. A tree that had been recently felled lay across the way. They saw the ax, the chain saw, and a coat that hung on a low branch, as well as a bottle of water and some provisions, which they looked at with hunger but did not touch. The lumberjack was nowhere in sight.

“What do we do?” Paolo asked.

“We sit down,” Angel suggested.

They sat on a stump, pressed against each other. Paolo was so tired that even his fear had diminished. He lay down across Angel's knees, his eyes turned upward to the canopy of trees. It seemed to him then that there was no better hiding place in the world than this one. The Punta Arenas
police, the farmer, the alpinist, no one could hunt them out here. It was like being at the bottom of a deep hole. He could feel Angel's warmth under his back, and under his legs the thickness of the wood, which connected him to some powerful and indestructible force deep in the ground. And so he fell asleep and dreamed he was a tree.

Angel heard a rustle of leaves. He did not move a muscle. It was the lumberjack. He emerged from the ferns and nearly screamed, but Angel put a finger across his lips to signal that a child was sleeping. The man looked surprised, but came closer. He was an old man, his skin tanned and wrinkled. His beard was like a frozen lake around his mouth, and his eyes were as blue as forget-me-nots. He was a summary of the seasons here, winter and summer intermingled.

“We walked a long time,” Angel told him softly.

“Would you like some water?” the man asked. He went to fetch his bottle and handed it to Angel. “My name is Ricardo Murga. Do you have shelter for the night?”

Angel shook his head, but he already knew that this man would take them in. And he knew he would not have to kill him.

RICARDO MURGA WAS seventy-five years old and lived alone on the north edge of the forest. He had built his house himself when his wife was expecting their first child, more than fifty years before. A lumberjack and carpenter by trade, he had chosen this isolated spot where he could work without ever having to go too far from his family.

“We had three children: two sons and a daughter. Each time a child was born, I added a room to the house. Now they are no longer here. You'll see, there is plenty of space for you.”

It was twilight when they got out of the forest. Paolo followed
the two men absentmindedly. He was so hungry that his stomach hurt, and he could taste the acidity of his saliva.

Ricardo opened the door to his home. He stepped back to let his guests enter. The warmth and comfort of the house were surprising: rugs, velvet-covered armchairs, a couch with a small stand on each side, windows with curtains, knickknacks… and, even more unexpected, a huge library where books crowded the shelves. It was not at all what anyone would have thought the house of an old, lonely lumberjack would look like.

Ricardo lit two oil lamps as well as a multitude of small candles, which he put on the table.

“My wife was from Holland,” he said with a smile. “The interior of the house is hers. By lighting the candles, I feel I'm perpetuating her memory.”

He disappeared into a room and brought back a loaf of bread and glasses, as well as a dish containing a leftover leg of lamb. This was going to be a real feast! Paolo attacked the food without saying a word. His cheeks took on some color, his eyes glistened again like fresh chestnuts, and his whole body shook with pleasure.

Seated in an armchair, Ricardo observed his guests silently and with curiosity. He had learned to keep quiet and to accept the surprises that life brought him. A man and an exhausted child had appeared in the forest. Well, they must have had their reasons to wander this far.

“I would like to drink some wine with you,” he said to
Angel. “I've a few rare bottles that I don't allow myself to open when I'm alone.”

As he got up, Paolo smiled and said a heartfelt “Thank you,” but not before a big burp escaped from his lips. Ricardo bowed slightly and tried to hide his amusement by closing the door behind him.

“You should have restrained yourself,” Angel whispered. “We're not among savages here!”

Angel was very impressed by the old man and his simple and comfortable surroundings. His hospitality deeply baffled the murderer, who for the first time in a long while did not feel any animosity against one of his fellow men.

Paolo did not care about being reprimanded. He curled himself like a cat on the cushions of the sofa; he could feel the sweet in his pocket when he brought his knees up to his chin. Once more, the talisman had worked: how else to explain their encounter with such a good man?

Ricardo came back and poured a very dark wine into the glasses.

“I bought this bottle years ago from a Valparaiso wine merchant,” he said.

“We know someone who lived in Valparaiso too!” Paolo said.

Ricardo smiled and lifted his glass. In the trembling light of the candles, the wine took on a deep and silky purple color.

“Then let's drink to Valparaiso.”

“To Valparaiso,” Angel repeated.

More drinks, more words… Little by little Paolo became sleepy. He had the feeling he was in a boat, on a nasty sea; but that nothing bad could happen to him while on board.

Ricardo explained to Angel that the felled tree in the forest was the very last one he would chop down before his definite retirement. The next day he would cut it up and bring it back piece by piece.

“I sell my wood to merchants. They come with their trucks, load it, and then go. This is the last order I will accept.”

“To your last order,” Angel said, lifting his glass.

“And to lumber!” Ricardo added. “I have lived all my life thanks to lumber. I have fed myself. I have taken shelter from the rain. I have heated the house. And I have read nearly all my books, which are made from wood fibers.”

Ricardo's voice was warm and appeasing. He spoke softly, like someone who has nothing to prove, and yet each of his words seemed to hide a secret.

“I like metamorphosis,” he said. He sighed and swirled the wine in his glass. “Wood that becomes books. Winter that becomes spring. Grapes that become wine.” He turned to Paolo. “And the child who becomes a man.”

Paolo, at the edge of sleepiness, smiled. “It's true, I went through the forest. I'm no longer afraid,” he said.

“Some changes are very subtle,” the lumberjack went on. “Those which happen in our soul, for example, are not always noticeable.”

Angel moved in his chair, suddenly feeling uneasy.

“Do you mean …,” he began, intimidated; “do you mean that men can change their nature?”

“I believe so,” Ricardo answered. “And you?”

“I don't know,” Angel whispered.

Ricardo got up and opened a drawer at the bottom of his bookshelves. He took out a tiny box and pushed the cover open with his thumb. The box contained tobacco, which he silently rolled into a cigarette.

“The forest produces millions of plant species,” he said, leaning toward the flame of a candle. “We know almost nothing of the forest.”

He took a puff of the cigarette and blew a very fragrant bluish smoke through his nose.

“I transformed one of these plants into a special tobacco. It is one achievable metamorphosis. One of the mysteries surrounding us.”

He offered a smoke to Angel. Silence descended on the house. Paolo was slowly drifting to sleep, among the blue exhalations of the strange plant.

“Poets also know how to transform things,” Ricardo Murga added. “They look at the world and they absorb it like a drink. And then when they start talking, nothing is the same. It is like magic. Each day I try to look at the world with such eyes. This is what keeps me going.”

“I can read too,” Paolo muttered in his half-sleep.

“I'll lend you my books,” Ricardo promised.

Under his heavy eyelids, Paolo wondered about the books piled up on the shelves. There were so many! Would an entire lifetime be enough to decipher those millions of words? He could not believe that this man, even as old as he was, had read almost all of them. Unless he was a magician, which, of course, was quite possible.

THE WINE FROM the Valparaiso merchant, the blue tobacco, the exhaustion from the long walks these last days, and the very Dutch comfort of the bed had their effect: Angel slept like a log. He woke up with the impression of being born anew, his head heavy on the softness of the feather pillow, his limbs relaxed, and for a while he listened to the calm rhythm of his heart. He had not felt so young and full of strength in years. Ricardo had put him in his elder son's bedroom. His daughter's, next door, had gone to Paolo. After falling asleep on the couch, the child had not even noticed when Angel tucked him into a bed with white sheets so clean, so delicately perfumed, that they seemed intended for a prince.

Angel stretched. Daylight was dancing in the folds of the curtains, and he thought he could hear people talking outside. He got up, put his clothes on, and left the room. The whole house smelled of warm bread and coffee. Did he, a murderer, a thief, deserve to spend even one more moment in this enchanted place? Was he not going to sully its purity? While walking through the house, Angel tried to make himself inconspicuous and as light as air.

Then he stopped in the open doorway, stupefied.

Dancing on the grass wet with sparkling dew, Paolo was roaring with laughter in the company of three children his own age.

Farther away, next to the woodshed, Ricardo was standing in the sun, his hands in his pockets. Bewildered, Angel approached the round of dancing children. Who were they? Where had they come from? What means of transp—

“Don't disturb them,” Ricardo said, putting his hand on Angel's arm. “They're having such a good time!”

Angel's eyes were riveted to the man's pupils as he tried to find answers to his questions.

“Come,” Ricardo suggested. “Breakfast is waiting for you inside.”

Angel followed him back into the house while the children erupted in laughter.

On the low table near the couch, Ricardo poured coffee into glistening china cups and held one out to Angel.

“Don't try to understand,” Ricardo advised. “If there is one thing that life has taught me, it's to accept even the
most foolish and unthinkable happiness. Welcome this happiness and don't speak. All the questions you're asking your-self are useless. You saw them—the three of them—as well as I did, didn't you? And just as well as your son, who held their hands as they all danced.”

Angel swallowed a gulp of coffee. He wanted to protest, to shout that it was not possible, that the dead are dead! But he said nothing.

“For forty years, each morning, my heart fills with joy. Do you understand, sir?” Ricardo asked.

Angel shook his head.

“Just before I leave to go into the forest to fell trees, they come to say hello and play under my windows, like in old times. Without their visits, I would not have had the courage to go on. Or to work. Or to live. Sometimes at night, my wife also comes back. It seems to me that her visits coincide with the harvest of the blue tobacco. I see her come in, her cotton cap on her head. It's an extraordinary moment.”

Ricardo handed Angel a silver basket in which he had arranged slices of toasted bread. Angel took one delicately between his fingers.

“Joana was only eight years old,” Ricardo went on. “Dimitri had just celebrated his tenth birthday, and Sven, the eldest, whose bedroom you used last night, was going to be thirteen. One day long ago, they went north with their mother. There was to be a feast at the farm of family members to celebrate the last day of harvest, when the wheat is
threshed. I had to finish a job in the forest and was going to join them later on. When they left—I remember it so well!—they were blowing kisses at me, and my wife was cracking the whip above the head of the mare hitched to the cart. ‘See you soon, Papa! Try to come quickly!’ the children yelled.”

He caught his breath, and Angel, who sat motionless on the sofa, noticed tears drowning the old lumberjack's blue eyes.

“They never reached the farm where the party was to be held. What happened? I don't really know. They probably came across someone on their way. This person, whose name I'll never know, robbed them. And then killed them. The four of them. Like that. I'm the one who discovered them, the next day, on my way to the harvest fest, as I was spurring my horse to speed up.”

Silence fell again. Angel was shaking. The coffee in his china cup was about to spill. With effort, he put it down on the table.

“Now, if you will excuse me,” Ricardo whispered, getting up.

He went to the door. On his way out, he removed his hat from the stand and put it on his head. “I have to take care of my last order,” he said.

Angel remained immobile for a long while, his head ringing with the most violent, most painful, and strangest thoughts one would expect from a murderer. Then he too got up and went out.