by Selva Almada
THE WIND THAT LAYS WASTE
THE WIND THAT LAYS WASTE
A Novel
Selva Almada
Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews
Graywolf Press
Copyright © 2012 by Selva Almada
Copyright © 2012 by Mardulce Editora, Buenos Aires, Argentina
English translation copyright © 2019 by Chris Andrews
The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.
Work published within the framework of “Sur” Translation Support Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship of the Argentine Republic. Obra editada en el marco del Programa “Sur” de Apoyo a las Traducciones del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto de la República Argentina.
Published by Graywolf Press
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Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-55597-845-7
Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-890-7
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Graywolf Printing, 2019
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958169
Cover design: Kimberly Glyder
Cover art: Shutterstock
THE WIND THAT LAYS WASTE
The wind brings the thirst of all these years.
The wind brings every winter’s hunger.
The wind brings the clamor of the ravines, the clamor of the fields and the desert.
The wind brings the cries of women and men fed up with the crumbs from the bosses’ table.
The wind comes with the force of a new era.
The wind roars, and twisters go whirling over the earth.
We are the wind and the fire that will lay waste to the world with the love of Christ.
1
The mechanic coughed and spat out a gob of phlegm.
“My lungs are shot,” he said, wiping his mouth with his hand and bending down again under the open hood.
The owner of the car mopped his brow with a handkerchief and bent down too so their heads were side by side. He adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles and contemplated the jumble of hot metal parts. Then he looked at the mechanic inquiringly.
“Can you fix it?”
“I reckon so.”
“How long will it take?”
The mechanic straightened up—he was almost a foot taller—and looked at the sky. It was getting on for midday.
“End of the afternoon, I reckon.”
“We’ll have to wait here.”
“If you like. It’s all pretty basic here, as you can see.”
“We’d rather wait. Maybe you’ll be done early, with God’s help.”
The mechanic shrugged and took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He offered one to the car’s owner.
“No, no, I quit years ago, thank God. If you don’t mind me saying so, you should too …”
“The soda machine isn’t working, but there should be some cans in the fridge, if you’re thirsty.”
“Thanks.”
“Tell the young lady to get out of the car. She’s going to roast in there.”
“What was your name?”
“Brauer. El Gringo Brauer. And that’s Tapioca, my assistant.”
“I’m Reverend Pearson.”
They shook hands.
“I’ve got a few things to do before I can start work on your car.”
“Go ahead, please. Don’t mind us. God bless you.”
The Reverend went around to the back of the car where his daughter, Leni, was sulking in the tiny space left by the boxes full of Bibles and the piles of magazines on the seats and the floor. He tapped on the window. Leni looked at him through the dusty glass. He tried the handle, but she had locked the door. He gestured to tell her to wind the window down. She lowered it an inch or two.
“It’s going to take a while to fix. Get out, Leni. We’ll have a cool drink.”
“I’m fine here.”
“It’s very hot, sweetheart. You’re going to get heatstroke.”
Leni wound up the window again.
The Reverend opened the passenger door, reached in to unlock the back door, and pulled it open.
“Elena, get out.”
He held on to the door until she obeyed. And as soon as she was out of the way, he slammed it shut.
The girl rearranged her skirt, which was sticky with sweat, and looked at the mechanic, who acknowledged her with a nod. A boy who must have been about her age, sixteen, was watching them, wide-eyed.
Her father introduced the older man as Mr. Brauer. He was very tall, with a red mustache like a horseshoe that came down almost to his chin; he was wearing a pair of oily jeans and a shirt that was open, exposing his chest, but tucked in. He would have been over fifty, but there was something youthful about him; it must have been the mustache and the long hair, hanging down to his collar. The boy was wearing old jeans too, patched but clean, and a faded T-shirt and sandals. His straight, jet-black hair had been neatly cut, and he looked like he hadn’t started shaving. Both of them were thin, but they had the sinewy bodies of those accustomed to the use of brute force.
Fifty yards away stood the makeshift building that served as gas station, garage, and home: a single room of bare bricks beyond the old pump, with one door and one window. In front of it, at an angle, a kind of porch, with an awning made of branches and reeds, which shaded a small table, a stack of plastic chairs, and the soda machine. A dog was sleeping in the dirt under the table. When it heard them approach, it opened one yellow eye and swished its tail on the ground without getting up.
“Give them something to drink,” said Brauer to the boy, who took two chairs from the stack and wiped them with a rag so that they could sit down.
“What do you want, sweetheart?”
“A Coke.”
“A glass of water’s fine for me. The biggest one you have, son,” said the Reverend as he sat down.
The boy stepped through the curtain of plastic strips and disappeared inside.
“The car will be ready by the end of the afternoon, God willing,” said the Reverend, mopping his brow again.
“And if he’s not willing?” Leni replied, putting on the earphones of the Walkman that was permanently attached to her belt. She hit Play, and her head filled with music.
A big heap of scrap reared beside the house, extending almost to the shoulder of the road: panels, bits of agricultural machinery, wheel rims, piles of tires; a real cemetery of chassis, axles, and twisted bits of metal, immobilized forever under the scorching sun.
2
After several weeks of touring around Entre Ríos—they had come down from the north along the Río Uruguay to Concordia, then taken Highway 18 right through the middle of the province to Paraná—the Reverend decided to go on to Chaco.
They spent a couple of days in Paraná, the city where he had been born. Although
he no longer had relatives or acquaintances there, having left when he was very young, he liked to go back every now and then.
They stayed in a run-down hotel near the old bus terminal: a poky, depressing place with a view of the red-light district. Leni amused herself watching the weary comings and goings of the prostitutes and transvestites, who wore so little they barely had to undress when a client turned up. With his nose in his books and papers as usual, the Reverend was completely oblivious to their surroundings.
Although he couldn’t bring himself to visit his grandparents’ house, where his mother had brought him into the world and raised him on her own (his father, a North American adventurer, had vanished before his birth, along with the in-laws’ meager savings), he took Leni to see an old park on the banks of the river.
They walked among ancient trees and saw the watermarks on their trunks, very high up on the ones near the bank; some still had flood wrack in their top branches. They ate their lunch on a stone table, and the Reverend said that as a child he’d come to that park several times with his mother.
“It was very different then,” he said, and bit into a sandwich. “On the weekends it was full of people. Not run-down like this.”
As he ate, he looked nostalgically at the broken benches, the long grass, and the trash left by visitors the previous weekend.
When they finished their lunch, the Reverend wanted to go farther into the park; he said that there used to be two swimming pools and he was curious to see if they were still there. It didn’t take long to find them. Bits of iron were visible in the cracked cement around the edges; the tiles covering the inside walls were smeared with mud, and some were missing here and there, as if the old pools were losing their teeth. The floors were miniature swamps, breeding grounds for mosquitoes and toads, which hid among the plants growing in the slime.
The Reverend sighed. The days were long gone when he and other children his age would bounce off the diving board into the water, planting their feet on the tiled floor and pushing back up to break the bright surface with their heads.
He put his hands in his pockets and started walking slowly along the edge of one of the pools, head hanging and shoulders slumped. Leni watched her father’s bowed back and felt a bit sorry for him. She guessed that he was remembering happier times, the days of his childhood, the summer afternoons he’d spent there.
But her compassion didn’t last. He could at least go back to places full of memories. He could recognize a tree and reconstruct the day when he and his friends had climbed it right to the top. He could remember his mother spreading a checkered cloth over one of those ruined tables. But Leni had no lost paradise to revisit. Her childhood was very recent, but her memory of it was empty. Thanks to her father, the Reverend Pearson, and his holy mission, all she could remember was the inside of the same old car, crummy rooms in hundreds of indistinguishable hotels, the features of dozens of children she never spent long enough with to miss when the time came to move on, and a mother whose face she could hardly recall.
The Reverend completed his circuit and came back to where his daughter was still standing, as rigid as Lot’s wife, as pitiless as the seven plagues.
Leni saw his eyes glistening and quickly turned her back on him.
“Let’s go, Father. This place stinks.”
3
Tapioca came back with a bottle of Coke for Leni and a glass of water for the Reverend. He handed them the drinks and stood there like an overattentive waiter.
Pearson drank the whole glass down in one gulp. In spite of its warmth and dubious color, the Reverend received that water as if it had flowed from the purest spring. If God put it on earth, it must be good, he always said.
He gave the empty glass back to the mechanic’s assistant, who gripped it with both hands, unsure what to do with it. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“Do you go to church, son?” asked the Reverend.
Tapioca shook his head and looked down, ashamed.
“But you’re a Christian.”
The boy stopped shifting his weight and stood there staring at the tips of his sandals.
There was a gleam in the Reverend’s eyes. He got up, walked over to Tapioca, and stood in front of him. He bent down a little, trying to see the boy’s face.
“Are you baptized?”
Tapioca looked up and the Reverend saw himself reflected in his large, dark eyes, which were moist like the eyes of a fawn. A flicker of curiosity made the boy’s pupils contract.
“Tapioca,” Brauer called out. “Here. I need you here.”
The boy gave the glass back to the Reverend and ran over to his boss. Pearson raised the greasy vessel and smiled. His mission on earth was to wash dirty souls, to make them sparkling clean again, and fill them with the word of God.
“Leave him alone,” said Leni, who had been watching the scene with interest as she sipped her Coke.
“God puts us exactly where we ought to be, Elena.”
“We ought to be at Pastor Zack’s place, Father.”
“And we will be, after.”
“After what?”
Her father didn’t answer. And she didn’t insist; she didn’t want to get into a quarrel or know anything about his mysterious plans.
She watched as Brauer gave Tapioca some orders and the boy climbed up into the cabin of an old truck. He steered while the Gringo strained to push the vehicle to a tree about two hundred yards away, where he left it in the shade.
When the truck was where he wanted it, he collapsed onto the bare earth with his arms flung out and his mouth hanging open, gasping hot air into his lungs. The way his heart was beating in his chest, it felt like a cat in a bag. He looked up at the fragments of sky visible through the sparse canopy of leaves.
Once, Brauer had been a very strong man. At the age of twenty, he would put a chain over his bare shoulders and tow a tractor, easily, just to amuse his friends.
Now he was three decades older, a mere shadow of the young Hercules who used to enjoy displaying his phenomenal strength.
Tapioca bent down over him.
“Hey, boss. You okay?”
Brauer lifted an arm to reassure the kid but still couldn’t say a word; he could barely gather enough strength to smile and give him a thumbs-up.
Tapioca laughed with relief and ran back to the service station to get some water.
Out of the corner of his eye, the Gringo saw his helper’s sandals raising dust, the boy running knock-kneed, awkwardly, as if he were still a child, not almost a man.
He looked up again at the sky, broken into pieces by the tree. His shirt was soaked, and he could feel the sweat gathering in his navel, then overflowing and running down either side of his belly. Little by little his breathing slowed, and his heart stopped jumping around in his rib cage, returning to its normal place within the frame of bones. His body was seized by the first spasm of a cough, which made him sit up suddenly and filled his mouth with phlegm. He spat it all out, as far as he could. Then he felt for a cigarette and lit it.
4
After walking around the park where he used to go as a child, the Reverend found a telephone booth to call Pastor Zack. It was a comfort to hear his voice. He was a good friend, and it had been almost three years since they had seen each other.
“My dear friend, the Lord be praised,” thundered Zack at the other end of the line.
Zack was a cheerful, ebullient man; it was always good to have him near.
“The good Lord smiles when he hears you laugh,” the Reverend always said to him, and Zack would erupt into one of his Cossack guffaws, the only relic of his drinking days, for the Pastor had known how to drink like the good Cossack he was. But he had left all that behind him, with the help of Christ. Sometimes he would look at his big, square hands, strong as a pair of power shovels. They were raising the beams of a temple now, but those hands had once beaten women. When Zack remembered that, he would break down and cry like a child, lettin
g his hands hang limp at his sides, not daring to lift them to his face, for fear their past might taint his remorse.
“I’d cut them off if I could,” he had once told the Reverend, “but they’d be poison, even for a dog.”
The Reverend had taken those hands in his and kissed them.
“These hands are fit to wash the feet of Christ,” he had said.
They spoke for a while on the telephone, exchanging their latest news. Pastor Zack and his wife, Ofelia, had a new child, their fourth: a boy named Jonás. But what the Pastor was really excited about was the completion of the temple. Another beacon for Christ, deep in the forest, near Río Bermejito, in an indigenous community.
Zack chattered on without pause. Sitting on the little bench in the booth, the Reverend nodded and smiled, as if visible to his interlocutor. At one point, when the Pastor cried out and struck the table, the sound of it was so clear that Zack seemed to be right there beside him.
“But of course,” he said, “you have to come. It will be a great honor. My temple, our temple, won’t be properly finished until you step into the pulpit. When you start to preach, even the forest birds will be quiet. And I tell you, they never shut up here, blessed little creatures, even when they’re sleeping. I won’t let you say no. Ah, Reverend, my heart is pounding. You’ll come, won’t you? Say you will. Ofelia, Ofelia,” called the Pastor.
“Yes, of course I’ll come, but I have to sort a few things out,” stammered the Reverend.
“The Lord be praised! What wonderful news! Ofelia, Pearson is coming to visit, isn’t that great?” Zack burst out laughing. “Ofelia’s so happy she’s dancing; if only you could see her. She’s teaching the children here to sing; wait till you hear them, it’s such a sweet choir. Leni could sing too. You’ll bring her, won’t you? Ofelia, Leni’s coming too, bless her. Ofelia adores her. Is she there? I’d like to say hello.”
“No, no, Leni’s not here now, but I’ll tell her you said hello. She’ll be happy to see you both too.”
