The Killer's Tears (3 page)

He reached the shack, very angry at Luis. A hinge broke as soon as he gave the first blow on the door. The stranger was startled when he saw Angel. He was alone.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“Paolo is not here?”

“No.”

Angel showed him the hinge. “You work like a pig. This doesn't even hold.”

“I'll fix it.”

Luis took a closer look at Angel's distressed face.

“I can look for him with you, if you like. Together we'll be more efficient.”

Angel shrugged. This man, with his educated way of speaking, and his stupid uncalled-for smiles, annoyed him. But he was right. To look for the child, two people would be better than one. Once Paolo was found, he swore to himself that he would get his knife and rid himself of Luis once and for all.

A strong wind was sweeping the ground, raising dust that stung the skin, eyes, and throat. Clouds were unraveling against the starry sky, letting a large pinkish moon appear at times.

Equipped with lanterns, the two men set out into the wild darkness. Their hearts were pounding madly, their eyes darted like those of wary deer, and their throats became hoarse from shouting.

“Paolo-o-o-o! Paolo-o-o-o!”

After searching for fifteen minutes, Luis stopped and pulled on Angel's sleeve.

“Let's split up. I'll go west; you keep going east.”

Angel put his hand firmly on Luis. What kind of trick was this? He thought he knew what was in the eyes of the
stranger:
he
wanted to find Paolo and brag about it, making himself even more likable to the child.

“You keep going east!” Angel shouted. “
I'm
going west.”

“As you wish …”

Luis went off, pushed by the winds, protecting the light with his free hand. Angel tried hard to understand. He wished he were shrewder and better educated so as to be sure that this man was not going to trick him. He felt as if his small brain were locking thoughts inside, smothering and compressing them, and that his skull would never be large enough to let intelligence bloom. This thought cramped his face with pain.

“Paolo-o-o-o!” he heard Luis shout.

Angel shook himself and turned west, his face whipped by the wind. Intelligent or not, he was determined to find the child. Then he would kill the stranger, and everything would be calm again. He started to walk, mad with rage, his lamp held as high as a lighthouse in the middle of the sea.

“Paolo-o-o-o!”

He hit a rock and his leg started to bleed under his pants. The pain took his breath away. The wind was howling in his ears. The dust blinded him and dried his tears.

He resumed his walk, carefully sidestepping the rocks, which seemed to have grown like trees. And suddenly, as he extended his hand to avoid hurting himself again, another hand gripped his own.

“Angel, is that you?” Paolo said in a quavering voice.

“Yes, I'm here.”

“You found me?”

“Yes.”

Paolo's small hand was icy. He had probably fallen asleep, only to have the nighttime take him by surprise.

Angel gripped the lantern ring with his teeth and, with out effort, lifted the child in his arms. He opened his vest, wrapped Paolo in it close to his warm body, then headed back to the house. The pain was gone. He felt only huge relief and pride to have found the child alive. This feeling radiated so strongly inside him that he decided to delay the murder of the stranger and enjoy this extraordinary moment. A moment when he was walking, a body nestled against his, with the certainty that he was accomplishing something important in the world.

THE OLD GOAT died in spite of the vitamins and tender care.

Angel never showed how upset he was and forced himself to carve up the animal. He would have liked to bury it close to the mound where Paolo's parents were resting, but meat was too scarce to allow for sentimentality. He cooked the best pieces and made a rather good pâté that he gave to Paolo, who, in turn, offered some to Luis. That was the way it was now, and Angel had to accept sharing the pâté, the goat's milk, and the love of the child. In return, Luis always made sure to fill the water tank and to grow a few potatoes, as well as tend to a plant from whose large leaves he made
a grayish tobacco that now and again he brought to Angel in a small silver-clasped box. The two men would smoke together on the doorstep of the house as they watched the last rays of the sun die on the horizon. Peace, at least a kind of peace, had grown between them. Angel's knife remained in the drawer, next to the corkscrew and the nutcracker.

With the first autumnal wind, the roof of the shack was blown away and Luis had no choice but to seek refuge in the house.

“Come in,” Paolo said, opening the door wide.

“Hurry up!” Angel grumbled. “Don't let the dampness in.”

Luis entered and sat on the bench, across from where Angel was plucking a chicken. On the table he put a leather bag that contained the precious things he wanted to save.

“Push that away,” Angel said. “Can't you see the feath ers and the blood everywhere?”

The headless chicken was losing blood. Its feathers were flying about the room and reddened as they landed in the puddles of blood. Paolo was busy with the fire, restocking the twigs that were constantly falling. At the end of sum-mer, he had gone with Angel on an exhausting trip to the edge of the desolate stretch of land, right where the forest began. They had brought back the young firewood, which was now smoking in the fireplace.

Luis sat near the blaze with his bag on his knees and sadly gazed at the flames. Angel glanced at him, fearful that Luis would launch into one of his speeches, which always fascinated Paolo.

“What's in your bag?” the child asked.

Angel grabbed a clump of feathers in one of his large murderous hands and pulled on it briskly.

Luis sighed. “Papers, a book—”

“A book?” Paolo said, surprised.

Paolo had seen books once or twice before, when poets or scientists had visited. One of them had even tried to teach him to read, but Paolo did not remember the lesson.

“Do you want to see it?” asked Luis.

“He doesn't have time,” Angel said. He moved toward the fireplace, holding the plucked chicken as if it were a cudgel. “Here! The chicken is ready for roasting.”

Paolo caught the chicken on the fly and smiled.

“I can cook the chicken and listen to the book at the same time,” he pointed out.

Angel had no answer. The child was beginning to think like a city person; that was what came of socializing with the stranger! This man was definitely a bad influence, and Angel regretted not having killed him the very day he had showed up. It was too late now. Paolo had grown attached to Luis. Angel knew that he would lose the confidence of the child if he were to kill the man now. Just like meat, the child's confidence was precious to him: in fact, Angel had
discovered that it was far more nourishing than any pâté. Who else had trusted him these past thirty-five years? No one. He had never before felt a human being cling to him without reservation, as he had on the unforgettable night that he had saved the child from the darkness and the biting cold.

Luis opened his bag. He took the book out. It was old, its pages turned yellow; his wine merchant father had given it to him, together with a purse filled with gold coins. The gift had surprised Luis. Even more so since the book was a collection of poetry.

“Did your father love poems?” Paolo asked.

“No. But poets like wine. One of them bought a bottle with this book. My father never opened it.”

As the chicken roasted on the spit and filled the house with a savory aroma, Luis began to read. Angel stationed himself in front of the window, hands deep in his pockets, as he listened to the crackling of the words, the fire, and the chicken fat dripping onto the wood. The poem spoke of ancient mariners who were thrown back to shore like sea-weed, and who looked gaunt after witnessing so many men perish in the storms. It spoke of nature and feelings of the heart with simplicity and courage. As he listened and watched the rain batter against the window, Angel was soothed by the words and surprised that he understood them easily. These words were finding a way into his narrow mind; it was as if the rain were nourishing his body while clearing away the grit and clods of dirt.

From that day on, the two men and the child lived together in the house. Each night, Luis opened the book and read aloud while the soup steamed. Each night, Angel stood in front of the window so that the others would not notice his tears, the tears that wetted his killer's eyes.

IN HIS BAG, Luis also had some paper and some pens. The white sheets of paper were arranged neatly in a folder, and the pens were of various colors. These material things made it possible to express the immaterial, and both paper and pens patiently waited to be used by Luis in his travels around the world.

“Why don't you try?” Paolo asked as he stroked the paper with the back of his hand.

“To go around the world, you mean?” said Luis. “I don't have the will to. You see, I'm like the vine that can grow only in a certain type of soil, on the slopes of such and such
a hillside, and has to be exposed to a certain angle of the sun's rays. If you move me, I die.”

Paolo thought Luis was exaggerating. He had come from Valparaiso to this place and he had not died. For Paolo, who had never boarded a train, or a boat, Valparaiso was as far away as Madrid or the Marquesas Islands.

“In faraway countries,” Luis said, trying to convince him, “people speak foreign languages that I don't under-stand. They eat strange-looking and weird-tasting vegeta-bles; the water they drink would make me sick; the climate would make me perspire and give me headaches. Travel can bring lots of inconveniences and unpleasant surprises.”

“Here, too, there are unpleasant surprises,” Paolo objected. “The goat died, and then the roof of your shack blew away.”

“My roof was very fragile, and the goat was old,” Luis answered.

Paolo was about to mention his parents, whose lives had also been taken away, but he changed his mind. What good would it do to talk about them now? He could hardly remember the sounds of their voices, or their smell; and besides, Angel wouldn't want him to linger on the past. Only the present was important.

It was raining outside. Angel had gone out, wearing a waterproof poncho that had belonged to Paolo's father. He had announced that he was going for some “fresh air.”

Luis was watching the cloudbursts knock on the window
and wondered how Angel could stay out so long under this deluge. He couldn't have guessed that it would have been more painful for Angel to watch him teach the child how to write; that this deluge of knowledge would have been worse than the cloudbursts coming down from the skies. As soon as he had seen the sheets of paper and the pens, he had fetched the poncho.

“And what if you wrote, anyway?” Paolo asked Luis.

Luis saw the child's shining eyes. They were like two gleaming chestnuts freshly out of their burrs. Paolo had never seen anyone write. His illiterate parents had been unable to hold a pen, and Angel was not much better.

“Let's write together,” Luis suggested. “A word each.”

Words were like snakes. They slipped between Paolo's fingers, escaped and teased him. He thought he could catch one, but the smooth curves of the letters required so much skill that after a fifteen-minute chase, Paolo's sheet of paper was covered with strange signs, erasures, and blotches.

“It's difficult,” he said.

“True,” Luis muttered. “It requires a lot of effort at the beginning.”

He was thinking that he would not send any letters as long as Paolo was unable to write, and so his friends would not know of his cowardice. The ignorance of the child would protect him a while longer; but a time would come when it would not be possible to escape. He put the pens away.

“Don't you want to teach me anymore?” Paolo asked.

“Of course I do, but you have to go slowly.”

Paolo was hesitant in his desire. He guessed that his power would be great once he mastered the snake-words. At the same time, he knew he would lose something precious. It would be the same as when he had gained Angel's friend ship and protection: in exchange he had lost his parents. Nothing, he understood, came free.

Luis put the sheets of paper back in his bag. Just then, Angel opened the door. He walked in, his poncho dripping, and soon steam rose up around him as it did from the tops of the volcanoes that one could see far in the west. From the folds of the poncho, he took out a ball of wet fur, which he displayed in the dying light of the fire. He had just found a lost fox cub. The animal had a head wound and some dam-age on one of its legs, but it was alive. Angel had walked far from the house, toward the trees of the forest, where he had heard plaintive cries through the whistling of the winds and the drumming of the rain on his cap.

He came near Paolo, whose eyes were wide open with wonder.

“It's for you,” said Angel. “Do whatever you want with it.”

Paolo took the cub in his arms. A delicate fur covered the animal's head. The fox was so light that Paolo suddenly felt as strong as a giant. As he carried the wounded fox against his chest, he felt a much greater strength than if he had been able to write all the words in the world. He looked at Angel grate-fully and crouched in front of the hearth to warm the cub.