The Killer's Tears (14 page)
Read The Killer's Tears Online
Authors: Anne-Laure Bondoux
A long time passed before Paolo was told that he had come of age. He was now eighteen years old. How people determined his age was a mystery, but it meant that from then on he could do whatever he wished, go wherever he wanted to, and dispose of his life as he pleased.
It was a cold, rainy morning. Paolo walked the streets at random and arrived by chance at the jail. He looked up at the high walls. The sky was pouring down on his bare head, onto the sidewalk and the barbed wire. Paolo realized that he was no longer a child. This thought had a strange effect on him, as if the transformation had happened suddenly, without his being aware of it.
He stopped in front of a shop window facing the jail and looked at his reflection. He was not very tall, but his square shoulders and his unshaven cheeks gave him a manly look. He wondered if Angel would recognize him.
He smiled and crossed the street in a steady stride. In a glass cubicle, an old guard was half asleep.
“I've come for a visit,” Paolo said, knocking on the window.
The man opened his eyes slightly.
“What name?” he grumbled.
“Angel Allegria.”
“The murderer?”
“Yes.”
The old guard rubbed his long neck with a wrinkled and yellow hand. Paolo thought he probably had a sore throat.
“You want to see Angel Allegria?” the guard said again, frowning. “Are you a member of his family?”
“Almost,” Paolo said. “I knew him well.”
Slowly the old man got up. He brought his face close to the speakerphone.
“You're lucky to be alive,” he blurted out. “The others who came across Allegria can't say as much.”
Paolo just smiled. He had given up trying to explain that he owed his life to Angel. His life—and much more.
“Can I see him?” he persisted.
“No,” the old guard answered. “He's dead. He was executed last year, didn't you know?”
Paolo remained frozen on the sidewalk, the rain
dripping on his head. No, he hadn't known. No one had deemed it necessary to tell him.
“I'm sorry,” the old man said as he sat down again. “That's the way it is. Justice was served.”
Paolo took a step back. The top of the jail had disappeared under the clouds. He looked again at the old guard, thanked him for the information, and turned on his heels. He did not know what he was going to do with his life, but he had a very definite idea of how to spend his day.
NOTHING HAD CHANGED. It was still the same landscape, stony and hostile. From the gravel on the path, the rocks rising from the ground, the expanse of parched land crushed by the sky, beaten by the winds, and whipped by the rains—this torn fragment of Chile where men struggle to keep standing: this was the birthplace of Paolo.
Having lived in town these many years, Paolo was shocked by the ruggedness, and could not believe he had been born here. He had only a vague memory of his mother: a skinny, bony, and dark woman. She had carried him in her womb, in her narrow and inhospitable belly.
That was her story. Her heart had probably been composed of the same hardness rocks are made of.
He passed by the ruins of the shed that Luis had so poorly built and quickly abandoned when the first rains had come. Then he saw his house, its low decrepit facade, and its only window, darkened by the closed shutter.
He stopped a moment to catch his breath. Gusts of rain lashed his face. He wondered whether coming back had been the right decision, or if keeping only the dream, the memory of the place alive would have been better. A few steps ahead, the mound of dirt under which his parents were resting seemed untouched. Nothing had grown on top of it, not even weeds. Paolo forced himself to go to the fox's grave, also barren of weeds, then made his way to the door of the house.
When he opened it, he felt a bolt of electricity at the back of his neck. It reminded him of his science class at Puerto Natales high school, and of the frogs that had been electrocuted and yet still looked alive in death.
Inside, the house was cold and dark. Paolo groped his way to the window, opened it, and unlocked the shutter. A draft rushed in and he heard a noise. Turning, he saw dozens of small rectangular envelopes on the table. The wind was blowing them around the room. He closed the window and bent down to pick up the scattered mail. He made a pile of the envelopes and thumbed through them as if they were a pack of playing cards. The room was as he remembered it: the bench, the fireplace, the shelf, and, at the back, the
small recess. How had these envelopes arrived here? On each of them was his name, neatly written: Paolo Poloverdo. And his address: The House at the End of Earth, the Last One Before the Sea.
He tore an envelope open at random. Inside was a postcard, a picture of Madrid; on the back had been copied the verses of a poem by Federico García Lorca that Paolo did not take time to read.
The second envelope contained a postcard from Rangoon, Burma. The third a postcard from China. The fourth from Naples. The fifth from Mexico. The sixth from Paris. … On the back of each of them, the same person had copied poems written by Paul Éluard, Keats, Aragon, Quevedo, and Jules Supervielle.
Paolo stood near the table, feeling feverish as he emptied the envelopes and let them drop to the ground. When he finished, the ripped envelopes covered his shoes up to his ankles, and it seemed that the whole world rested in a jumble atop the table. A world of colors, of sunsets over the Tagus, of snows blanketing Red Square, of shimmering light over rice paddies, of deserts and dunes, of swarming cities, of overcrowded trains, of Chinese people on bicycles, and of dark oceans.
Dizzy, Paolo went to sit on the bench. Luis had accomplished his mission and it was here, on this table, where blood had been spilled and dried, in this lonely house, that he had made all these cities, all these marvelous countries meet. It was as if this house were the crossroads of all roads,
and as if all the words of all the poets of the world had decided to meet under the eyes of a child. Luis had transcribed their songs of love, life, beauty, and rapture, unflinchingly. It was a breathtaking way to ask for forgiveness.
Paolo gathered the cards in his arms and rested his cheek on them. At that moment, the door opened.
Paolo uttered a cry and shot up.
“Who's there?” a voice asked.
“It's me,” Paolo answered cautiously.
He saw a woman walk in. A woman covered by a large rain cape.
“You are … Paolo Poloverdo?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“So you're back?”
Paolo looked at her: she was young, her cheeks were very red, locks of wet hair were glued to her forehead. He wondered what to answer. Was he back for good, or only for a while? He looked at her hands and noticed a small piece of paper showing under the folds of her cape.
“I will light a fire,” he said. “It is cold.”
He got up and went to the recess. Just as he hoped, there was still a good amount of dry wood. When he came back to the room, the young woman had not moved. She watched him get busy in front of the fireplace, and she smiled when the logs started to burn.
“I was wondering whether you really existed,” she said.
“And?”
“It seems that you do.”
Paolo picked up the fire iron and poked at the blaze. Lots of sparks went up the chimney. The young woman came near him.
“Here. This arrived yesterday.”
It was the most recent card from Luis. Paolo opened it. It had come from Valparaiso. And this time, no poem was written on the back. Paolo smiled.
“Good news?” the young woman asked.
“Someone wishing me happy birthday.”
“Is it your birthday?”
“Apparently.”
The young woman sat near Paolo.
“Happy birthday,” she whispered.
She removed her cape. Underneath, she wore the uniform of the Chilean post office.
UNDER THE YOUNG woman's postal uniform, Paolo discovered many wonderful things.
Terusa was twenty-five years old, was very patient, had a marvelous laugh and a rusty bicycle that grated and rang joyously on the stones of the path.
On a sunny morning, Paolo made a decision. He dragged the table over the uneven slabs of the floor and pulled it outside. In the clear spring light, one could still notice
the red stains, the traces of blood in the thick grooves of the wood.
Paolo ran into the house, rummaged feverishly inside the recess, then came out with his father's ax. He was per-spiring a little and was out of breath, but he was determined. He raised the ax above his head.
The blade came tumbling down on the table and drove into it, deeply.
By the fifth blow, the table split in two, like an overripe fruit.
By the seventh blow, the legs flew into pieces.
It was warm. Paolo drank a gulp of water directly from the bucket.
After an hour's work, the table was in bits. Paolo kept the drawer because there was no other place to put the corkscrew and forks. He looked at his work. He felt better.
Around him, the light was changing, subject to the tantrums of the winds and the high clouds. He went inside to put away the ax, and brought out a shovel.
As he approached the mound of dry dirt, he remembered the dark night when he had held the storm lantern to provide Angel with light. It had been the night of the first soup. It seemed to him it had happened a century ago.
He dug a hole next to the fox's grave. Then he put the pieces of the table in a wheelbarrow, pushed the wheelbarrow over the stones, and threw its contents into the hole. His throat was as tight as if he were at a funeral.
Just then, he heard the jingle of Terusa's bicycle coming up the path and turned around. She looked happy and radiant, her empty mailbag flying behind her. Paolo let go of the shovel.
“What are you doing?” Terusa asked as she got off her bicycle near the hole.
“I'm going to make a new table,” Paolo answered.
Terusa leaned down. She looked at the pieces of wood scattered at the bottom of the hole. It seemed strange, but she loved Paolo as he was, quirks and all.
“Good,” she said. “In the meantime, we'll eat on the floor.”
She went to park her bicycle. Paolo took his shovel again and filled the hole. When he finished, he packed the dirt down a bit. He was thinking of Angel, and of Angel's large hands. Then Terusa called to him.
Lunch was ready.
Some time later, Luis came to visit. He had just buried his father in Valparaiso, on one of the slopes overlooking the bay. It was the reason he had come back to Chile, for the father whom he had not seen for so many years, and who had died alone after having dispersed children, wives, and bottles of wine all around the globe.
He told Paolo how much he had missed the love of his father and how big a void this was in his life, even today.
Delia, then other women, had fallen into this void, this emptiness. They had passed through it; nothing had stopped their fall. This was why he had come back to Chile alone.
“The day of the funeral, I saw my brother and sisters again,” he told Paolo and Terusa. “My sisters have put on weight. They have had children and I think that they are bored to death. As for my brother, the one who dreamed of becoming an actor, well…” Luis concealed a smile behind his hand. “… well, he has really become an actor! I did not know it because I don't watch TV, but there was a good number of fans waiting for him at the gate of the cemetery to get his autograph.”
“Come in,” Paolo said. “You must be thirsty.”
Luis was surprised to see the changes that Paolo had made in the house.
“A new table?” he said.
“The other one was dead,” Paolo answered.
“This one is very beautiful,” Luis admitted.
He was also very impressed by the bookshelves Paolo had built. As a token, he placed a book there, the one that told of storms, of sailors thrown back to shore, the book in which Paolo had heard the voice of poets for the first time.
“Now I know all the words,” Paolo murmured, stroking the cover.
Luis sighed. He went around the room, examining the postcards that hung on the walls. It was as if his life had been preserved in a museum. The memories were fading
away, feelings were less acute, everything was taking its real place again; and the world, the countries he had visited, would never be worth the time he had spent in this lonely house, where he had fought the winds and the silent rages of Angel, the fox, the snakes, or the peaceful moments spent smoking at sunset. Paolo was the owner of something invaluable: a spot on this earth where he was truly at home, and where a person feels at one with the universe because of its roughness.
Before he left, Luis unloaded several cases of wine from his car—wine he had inherited from his father. Chilean, French, Spanish, Italian wines, each one more delicious than the last.
“Where are you going next?” Paolo asked him.
Luis smiled. “I've never known where I was going.”
He wanted to add something but changed his mind. Maybe he had wanted to talk about Angel; whatever it was, Paolo was grateful that he kept silent.
“I'm sorry,” Luis whispered nevertheless, before he rushed to his car.
He drove off and disappeared at the end of the path, waving goodbye from the window.
Paolo never went back to Ricardo Murga's house, but each time he had to enter the forest, he thought of Ricardo and remembered when he and Angel had first heard the lumber-
jack's ax striking the wood. In the evenings, he got in the habit of lighting a lot of candles on the table in memory of this man and his ghosts.
Some days, he would go for a solitary walk to the spot where the ground breaks and the sea begins. Standing there in silence, he faced the uproar of the icy waters and wondered time and time again about the reasons that pushed him to live. He never found an answer. To be born and alive was the only feeling that persisted, as inescapable and as real as a rock, in spite of everything. And ultimately this feeling satisfied him.
From time to time, a stranger showed up on the rocky path. Most often it was a scientist, a geologist with a box of stones, or an astronomer in quest of a dark night. Sometimes it was a poet trying to decipher the Chilean soul. Other times it was simply an adventurer looking for spots yet undiscovered and far from the beaten path.
Paolo welcomed them, his door wide open. He laughed at their surprise when they discovered the interior of the house. The bookshelves, rugs, candles, postcards, clean curtains… Paolo would pour a glass of wine from the “Secunda Reserve” for his guests, and he enjoyed making them chat. They brought him news of the world. The reports floated up in the room like bubbles, where they burst upon reaching the ceiling. Wars, famines, revolutions, epidemics, woes of the
financial market, strikes, accidents, royal weddings, and auto mobile races reached the ceiling of the small house at the end of the earth, and lost a little of their importance there.
At the end of the evening, the guests would listen quietly to the howling of the wind behind the window and drink the wine as their eyes skimmed over the spines of the books on the shelves.
Years went by.
Later, Terusa gave birth to a child, a girl.
Paolo suggested they name her Angelina. Terusa saw only wings and a halo in the name. She accepted it without hesitation.