Among the Lost

by Emiliano Monge

  But after only a few metres, Estela stops, rests her hands on her hips, takes a couple of deep breaths and feels an agonising spasm in her chest: the broken ribs are grating against the pleura protecting her lungs. Take shallower breaths, Theblindwomanofthedesert thinks and, careful not to fill her lungs, she sets off again, still gazing, spellbound, at the lights like twin stars that have fallen from the dark heavens: If I can just get as far as that house … I might be able to hide there … There has to be someone there.

  There has to be someone still awake … They haven’t turned off the lights … There’s bound to be someone, and that someone is going to help me … They’d better help me or I’ll have to make them, Estela thinks, shuffling across the stones as fast as she can. They might have a gun there … maybe even a car, she thinks, convincing herself that the pain has now left her body, and, quickening her pace, she crosses the patch of ground where, any moment now, the two soldiers who left Madre Buena plateau will appear. Convinced that nothing now can stop her, Theblindwomanofthedesert begins to run down the slope that grows steeper and darker, and soon she is leaping along: I don’t feel the ache in my leg any more … my hips don’t hurt.

  The pain in my head and my ribs has gone, Estela persuades herself as she takes longer leaps down the slope of La Caída and, urged on by a strength that quickly convinces her that nothing now can stop her, not taking her eyes off the twin lights glittering at the bottom of the chasm, she plunges into the shadows, sucks in the lungful of air and once again feels her broken ribs jabbing at her lungs. ‘Don’t overdo it …’ Theblindwomanofthedesert whispers, and she no longer knows whether she is talking to the stabbing pain inside her, the gathering shadows that are growing more dense or the fear that has suddenly taken possession of her body: just ahead, the gradient becomes vertiginous and the track she is following is impassable.

  Slowing the rhythm at which she inhales and exhales as she massages her aching side, she persuades herself that she has to calm down and hesitates as to whether she should retrace her steps or sit down and shuffle on her buttocks down this increasingly dark, steep and treacherous slope. The moonlight cannot reach the depths of the ravine. Estela turns her head, her neck aching despite her conviction that she is feeling no pain and, on the high plateau where she was some moments ago, she sees the nervous dance of the beams from the flashlights of the soldiers searching for her.

  ‘Fucking bastards … I knew they’d find me eventually … but they’re not going to catch me!’ Estela mutters and, without a moment’s hesitation, she lets herself fall to the ground, raises her heels, throws her head and shoulders back and, using her hands to push against some loose stones, she thrusts herself into the void, into the cold, impenetrable gloom. The clatter of the stones that fall with her, a sound Estela cannot hear or even imagine as she falls into nothingness and darkness, is carried on the wind up the steep slope and, reaching the top, it startles the two soldiers.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ says the second soldier, taking a few steps forward, peering into the abyss, where he trains the beam of the torch in his left hand. ‘It’s that fucking bitch — what else could it be?’ roars the first soldier as he, too, peers over the edge, and as his flashlight picks out the distant figure of a woman letting herself slide down the sheer slope, he feels his heart pound in his chest: ‘We have to go down and get her … We have to reach her before she gets to the bottom!

  ‘If she reaches the bottom, she’s bound to get away,’ the first soldier says, taking a few steps, then coming to a sudden halt as he reaches the chasm: ‘How are we going to get to her? … How are we going to get down?’ The first soldier’s words are interrupted as the second of the soldiers who left Madre Buena plateau pushes him towards La Caída and strides after him: ‘Shut up and get a fucking move on or we’ll lose her … We can’t let her get away!

  ‘Even the torches will be no use to us down there … If she reaches the bottom, we’ll never find her … If she actually makes it,’ the second soldier says, setting off down the slope, but this time it is his companion who interrupts: ‘You go that way … I’ll head back and take the road … I’ll go down the other side, that way we’re bound to catch her,’ he calls, as he stops his descent with the help of the two rocks that earlier saved Estela.

  ‘No one’s taking the fucking road!’

  ‘But that way she can’t escape.’

  ‘No fucking way!’ the second soldier grunts, looking over his shoulder as he urges his legs to run faster: ‘Now start running, or she will get away!

  ‘Follow me, or everyone will know you’re a fucking coward,’ the second soldier yells, turning back and training his torch on the woman who is now trying to slow her descent.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck …’ the first soldier grumbles and, taking his hands from the two rocks, sets off at a run down the slope.

  ‘I’ll tell everyone that you let her get away … Shift your arse or I’ll tell them you were so scared you allowed her to escape.’

  ‘Shut up and keep the light on her … I’m right behind you,’ yells the first soldier as he, too, begins to lose his balance: with every metre the slope grows a little steeper, meanwhile the woman they are pursuing has just succeeded in breaking her fall.

  ‘She’s stopped … The bitch has stopped and she’s started running again!’ the second soldier yells, trying to plant his feet between the flat stones: they have just reached the point where the wind-swept surface of La Caída makes it impossible to continue on foot.

  ‘Shut up, keep the torch on her and shift yourself, because she’s already reached the bottom,’ the first soldier says as he crashes into the second, who has to dig his heels into the cracks between the stones to stop himself from tumbling into the abyss. ‘Why the fuck did you stop?’

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you stop? … We nearly took a nosedive,’ the second soldier rages and, turning around, adds: ‘Can’t you see it’s impossible for us to continue on foot?’

  ‘So what the hell do we do now?’ the first soldier says, staring at the sheer drop, scanning for the woman now at the bottom of the ravine and spotting the two lights that he has not noticed until now. ‘She’s heading for that house … We have to catch up with her before she gets there … We have to get down any way we can.’

  ‘Shit … I hadn’t noticed the house,’ the second soldier says, and, dropping to the ground, he propels himself with his hands the way Estela did: ‘Come on … get moving … we don’t have time.’

  ‘Don’t take you eyes off her … and don’t move your torch!’ the first soldier commands as he, too, begins to slide down the slope, trying to keep Estela in the circle of light from the torch he is gripping in his left hand, and as he drops he hears the distant barking start up again.

  ‘That’s … those fucking dogs,’ the second soldier shouts excitedly. ‘Maybe they’ve stopped her … There’s no way they’ll let her get near the house.’

  Neither the first nor the second soldier realises that they are about to reach the point where Estela broke her fall and scrabbled to her feet again, that the woman they are chasing cannot hear the barking they can hear. Just as they cannot imagine that this woman who is racing towards the house, whose outline they can finally make out, is also running towards the jungle: the powerful beams now illuminating her have led her back to the clearing known as El Tiradero: ‘Epitafio … Epitafio … I have to call you … I have to tell you what has happened!

  ‘You’re in just as much danger … I’ll call you from this house … warn you that we’ve been betrayed!’ Theblindwomanofthedesert mutters, forcing her legs to run faster and, as she chokes back her pain and a fury made sharper by her love, she begins to sense the spectral presence of the dogs amid the shadows of La Caída that the moonlight cannot reach: ‘There has to be a telephone here … I need to tell you that I saw El Topo clear as day … that El Tampón … What the hell? … What’s that moving in the d
arkness?’

  Running as fast as she is able, while behind her the soldiers urge each other on — ‘Move faster, she’s going to get to the house … Move it, she’ll find a place to hide’ — Estela watches as the spectral forms are transformed into six dogs, and she is about to stop, but the instinct pushing her onwards is much stronger than the fear that the dogs inspire: What do I care? … I have to call Epitafio … If there are dogs here, there must be people … and if there are people, there will be some way to phone you … They’ll lend me a phone or I’ll force them to.

  I’m going to call you, to save you … to let you know that fucking priest is behind this … that I saw El Tampón and El Topo … that Sepelio must have planned the whole thing … Fuck you, Sepelio … How could you do this to Epitafio? Estela’s thoughts are racing as fast as her legs, as fast as the six dogs now careering towards her. The baying hounds and the woman whose broken ribs have once again begun to ache are just about to clash, meanwhile the soldiers who came from Lago Seco are still frantically urging their legs and their tongues to move faster: ‘They’ll stop her … the dogs are going to attack her!’

  But when Estela and the dogs finally meet, Theblindwomanofthedesert bends down, pretends to pick up a couple of stones and, feeling a sharp pain below her armpit forcing the air from her lungs, lets out a scream that rises to a guttural howl. She does not even have to throw the stones she did not pick up: when they hear her howl and realise she is wounded, the six hounds — who all share the same defective gene: each has one blue and one brown eye — stop in their tracks, tuck back their ears and their tails and, now friendly and intrigued, approach the woman who begins to stroke them.

  ‘Take me to your house … take me inside,’ Estela implores, her voice weak and faint, and begins to run again, though her leg has begun to ache again. ‘Show me the way,’ she begs, looking at the dogs that escaped El Infierno. Then, looking at the windows of the shack and thinking she has seen a door opening, she says: ‘Take me there … I need to call him … I have to say: “I told you he was up to something … I didn’t suspect Sepelio … I don’t know how he could do this to us … after all the time we’ve lived together!”’

  Surrounded by the dogs, now howling in turn, leaping and turning in circles, begging to be petted, Estela comes to a cactus hedge, goes through a narrow gate into a small yard where her presence sets a few listless hens aflutter and a rooster crows in defence of what is his. The black-and-red cockerel stretches its neck, pointing its head towards the darkness and crows again, a sound that goes unheard by Theblindwomanofthedesert, but rolls across the plain and encounters the two soldiers, who have stopped running, turned off their flashlights and are now standing idle and anxious.

  ‘What the fuck do we do now? … How are we supposed to catch her? … We can’t just walk in there!’ the second soldier says, kicking at the shadows, then turns back to the first soldier who has set off towards the house, saying: ‘Why the hell not …? Let’s go in there and finish this … We won’t leave a single dog alive!’ ‘Stop, wait up … and don’t talk such shit … use your brain for once in your life … What if she knows them? … What if she’s setting a trap?’ the second soldier says, stopping the first and looking towards the shack, where two more lights have just been turned on.

  As the lights flicker on, the cockerel falls silent, the six dogs cease their barking, leaving Estela standing nervously in the middle of the yard, from where she sees the door swing open and a silhouette framed in the doorway and hears, or believes that she hears: Pain is all in the mind, not in the body. Theblindwomanofthedesert does not hear the greeting offered by the shadow, who quickly reveals himself to be an old man: the creature now hurrying towards her is the triplet who abandoned El Infierno.

  ‘I need you … to lend me … need you …’ Theblindwomanofthedesert stammers as the triplet who came to the mountains arrives at her side. ‘What’s going on? … What the hell has happened to you? Who did this to you?’ the old man says, while Estela tries to get her lips to form words: ‘Tell me that … you have … there is … a.’ But her words disintegrate beneath the weight of the effort that has brought her to this place.

  Once more, in the silence of her mind, Theblindwomanofthedesert hears: Pain is all in the mind, not in the body. ‘A telephone … I need … lend me …’ Estela once more tries to say, but seeing the triplet’s mouth repeat: ‘What happened …? Who did this …?’ her efforts turn to ashes in her mouth as her resolve drains from her body: I need … tele … Theblindwomanofthedesert does not realise that she is only thinking these words as she passes out and the triplet catches her as she falls.

  Dragging the woman who appeared in his yard a moment earlier, the triplet who left Tres Hermanos heads back towards the house, escorted by his six dogs, where he once again transforms into a silhouette: the silhouette the two soldiers are gazing at as the shadows of the house envelop the triplet and Estela. The soldiers are still wondering: How do we … when she’s got someone with her? … We should never have come here … What if they’re lying in wait? … What if this is a trap?

  The two soldiers left behind at La Caída by El Topo and El Tampón spend some time trying to decide what to do, how to assail this house whose lights are still twinkling in the darkness. This house in which the old man will spend a long time trying to resuscitate the woman who is now lying on his living-room floor, struggling to return to the present, to break free of her past that beckons her only to abandon her on the worst of all the days she spent living in El Paraíso: the day when Father Nicho said to her and to the man she so loves: ‘Epitafio will marry Osaria … They will go to live up in the mountains … I need them to be somewhere else.’

  The day when, for the last time, Estela and Epitafio went to hide among the rocks and where, for the last time in many years, they gave themselves to each other. The day on which they swore their undying love, while Estela, resting her head on Epitafio’s chest, took a pen and traced lines between the dots she herself had burned into her lover’s skin with Father Nicho’s branding iron: suddenly, as in a children’s book, Estela saw beneath her hesitant, faltering lines, a wind rose appear, transforming Epitafio into a map before her eyes; on that day he became a map of her entire existence.

  ‘How can I …? Without my map …?’ Theblindwomanofthedesert murmurs over and over as she lies on the floor of the house, while the old man who lives there continues to try to bring her round, to understand the words of this woman who is being hunted by the men still planning their assault. ‘I can’t ho … how … without you … my side,’ Estela tells the triplet, who does not know that the delirious woman is not addressing him, but the image of Epitafio. The same man who floors the accelerator of his trailer truck and, seeing the distance they have yet to cover, announces: ‘There’s the fucking village!’ while silently thinking to himself: Why haven’t you been in touch? … Why are you ignoring me?

  Why are you casting me aside when I’ve finally made my decision … when I’m finally ready to face up to that bastard priest … to face anyone and anything! Epitafio mutters soundlessly as he opens another beer, fires up his mind with three more bumps of cocaine, and says in a hoarse voice: ‘We’ve finally reached the village … I hope you’re ready, because we’re going to have to get out.’ And as he accelerates the Minos, he hastens the events that will ensue: they will arrive at the outskirts of the village, they will stop the truck, step out of the cab, climb into the back of the container, unhook one of the nameless ones, negotiate a sale, climb back into the cab and they will head off again in the trailer.

  Later, as the landscape and the darkness begin to merge in the windows of the Minos, the three men in the cab will once again be plunged into their greatest fears, in a rush of cocaine and beer, going over and over the doubts that have been plaguing them for hours: If you keep playing his game, sooner or later Epitafio is going to realise, Mausoleo will think, glancing at Sepelio, who, in turn,
is thinking: I need to convince this fucker that Estela is one of the bullet-ridden corpses … that it’s her mangled body in the photograph.

  Meanwhile, Hewhoisdeafofmind will continue to torture himself: I could call you back … no … that’s the one thing I can’t do … I’ve already told you that I love you … I can’t call you again … I’ve told you how I feel … to say it again would be humiliating. And from time to time he will continue to blurt out something causing the two men next to him to laugh: ‘Shit … not even a word and I’ve told you I love you!’ And it is the scornful laugh of Mausoleo and of Sepelio (who, when he hears Epitafio mutter, thinks: That’s it … you just keep driving yourself round the twist!) that will force Epitafio to regain his composure: Try to think about something else.

  And each time he does so, each time he thinks about something else, Epitafio will see the faces of the boys from the jungle: the same two boys who, to herd the men and women from other desolate lands towards the caves where they must wait until daybreak, have been forced to abandon the front line for the past forty-five minutes and walk behind these creatures who still have a God, a name, a soul and a shadow.

  IV

  ‘Get a move on, the caves are just up ahead,’ shouts the elder of the two boys, using the beam of his flashlight to whip the backs of the men and women who crossed the border only recently and who, stooped and bowed by exhaustion, by the incessant, lashing rain, by the sounds that in the dying hours of night burnished the gathering dawn, filling the space of threats, shamble forward ever slower and more scattered. ‘He said get a move on!’ roars the younger boy, using his beam of the torch in his left hand to herd the men and women still trailing their hopes like shadows: ‘Round up, we’re nearly there … Once we get there we can rest up for a while … Shift it! We’re nearly there!’ says the boy who serves as lieutenant here, the beam of his torch pointing through the rising mist that hangs in the air towards the caves that the people of the forest call El Purgatorio.