The Killer's Tears

by Anne-Laure Bondoux

  Several trawlers had just docked. It was time to unload the cases. Paolo and Angel did not stay there long. They crossed the congested piers, keeping as low a profile as possible, until they finally reached the marina. There, at the very end, Angel saw what he was looking for.

  “Do you see that large red ship?” he asked Paolo.

  “Yes.”

  “We're in luck.”

  “Are we going aboard?”

  “No, they check the passenger list.”

  Without trying to understand, Paolo continued to trot alongside Angel, who was taking long strides as he headed toward the ship. The child could see the red cuirass of the boat against the white cliff behind it. B-o-t-e. Luis had forgotten to tell him how to spell this word correctly and he thought he might never find out. Why was it that people did not finish what they started? Only Angel, it seemed to him, was able to finish the task he set his mind on: killing someone was a way to finish things. And right now he could feel the power of the murderer, his determination and obstinance. Paolo trusted him: if Angel had promised not to abandon him ever, he would keep his word. And maybe he would even manage to buy the lamb, though with the posters of Angel plastered over every fence in the cattle market, it was unlikely.

  Close to the red ship were travelers, piles of bags, stacks of heavy trunks, as well as employees of the shipping line, who were checking tickets.

  “Wait for me here,” Angel said. “Don't move.”

  Paolo stayed near the trunks. He couldn't see what Angel was up to, and his heart beat madly.

  Angel rushed toward the line of passengers. Just as he had thought, Delia and Luis were there. From the moment he had seen them at the bank, Angel had grasped their plan.

  Their backs were turned to him. They looked like newlyweds going off on their honeymoon. Angel's hand went under his vest. The knife was in the same spot in his pocket. He placed the blade directly between Luis's shoulder blades, stinging him.

  “Not a word,” Angel whispered in Luis's ear. “Come with me. And Delia too, or else I'll kill you.”

  Quick, discreet, that was Angel's way. He was used to the reaction of his victims. Their bodies went limp and they broke into a sweat; then he could do whatever he wanted with them.

  Delia and Luis left the passenger line. Angel pushed them toward the big metallic trunks, where Paolo was waiting quietly. There Angel pushed a little more on the knife handle until Luis's face contorted in pain. With his other hand, the murderer held the back of Delia's neck, his fingers clenched in her thick hair.

  “Why don't you tell Paolo?” Angel said. “He'll be very surprised to learn what you were about to do.”

  Paolo looked at Luis and did not need words to understand.

  “Are you going around the world with Delia?” he asked, just for confirmation.

  Breathless and shaking, Luis could do nothing but nod.

  “But … the weird vegetables?” Paolo said. “And the water that makes you sick? And the heat that gives you headaches?”

  “There comes a time when you have to confront your fears,” Luis answered, his eyes filled with sorrow.

  He could not explain to this young and naive child that he had at last gathered the strength to pull away from his own childhood, and that he could never become a man unless he went away now. That was the way it was: cruel and necessary.

  Paolo turned to Delia. He wanted to know how she had managed to convince Luis to go. But he didn't ask her, guessing that there must be secrets only adults knew.

  Angel pushed on the knife handle again, and the blade went through Luis's shirt. Luis winced.

  “You forgot to give Paolo money to buy the sheep,” Angel went on. “That's not nice.”

  “The sheep and the lamb,” Paolo specified.

  Delia had started to cry. Angel shook her.

  “You draw nice portraits,” he blurted out. “But I prefer your landscapes.”

  “Don't kill us!” Delia begged.

  “If Luis gives me half of his money, I'll let you board the ship.”

  Angel had said all he had to say. No negotiation was possible. Luis collapsed a little more. In addition to fear, he could feel shame knotting his stomach. Paolo's eyes, honest and full of hope, hurt him much more than the knife between his shoulder blades. Angel gave him time to recover and open his bag. Inside was a huge pile of bills. Luis's whole inheritance. He took half of it out and gave it to Paolo without uttering a word.

  “Thank you,” Paolo said.

  At that very moment, the horn of the big red ship blew. Boarding time was coming to an end.

  “Hurry!” Angel said as he put his knife back in his pocket. “You wouldn't want to miss your trip around the world!”

  Luis picked up his belongings. Delia took his arm. And together they ran to the gangway. Paolo saw them climb over it, then disappear into the belly of the boat. In his small hand, the bills were shaking like the leaves of a willow.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  IT'S NOT EASY to be alive, Paolo was thinking as he walked alongside Angel. It's complicated, twisted and kinked, just like the dead trees of the Pampas.

  He touched the yellow sweet in his pocket with the tips of his fingers. He believed that the talisman had brought him luck, since he and Angel were leaving Punta Arenas free and rich. But, at the same time, he doubted its power. Happiness wasn't fleeing town in the dark of a cold night, or balancing on the edge of a crumbling cliff where one could tumble at any moment. If it existed, happiness more likely resembled the plush carpeting at the bank, the comfort of heat, and the lamb with its dense fleece. It was a father, a mother who knew how to hug her child, friends who didn't leave to travel around the world, women who were content to paint fishing villages and who didn't give sketches to the police. …

  But, for now, Paolo had to be satisfied with what he had: the stolen banknotes and Angel. Angel with his knife.

  “I'm hungry,” Paolo said.

  “So am I.”

  “My legs hurt.”

  “Do you want me to carry you?”

  “You won't be able to for long. I'm heavy.”

  “To me, you're light.”

  Angel stopped, lifted Paolo over his head, and sat him on his shoulders. It was a clear night. A huge moon was following them, providing light. At the bottom of the cliff, the waves were crashing without respite. A long while ago they had passed the spot where Paolo had wanted to jump.

  “I wonder if the alpinist is dead,” Paolo said.

  Angel smiled a smile that Paolo did not see but that he heard. Very little time had elapsed since their encounter with the Belgian man, and yet they had the impression of talking about a very distant moment, a moment as old as the Flood.

  “Luis and Delia—” Paolo started to say.

  “Leave those two where they belong. We'll never see them again, and that's for the best.”

  Angel was focusing on the stones and potholes along the path. On his shoulders, the child was slowly swaying; they looked like a two-headed animal.

  “Have you already been in love?” Paolo asked suddenly.

  “I believe so. … I don't know.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not at the beginning, but after, it does.”

  “Can it hurt other people?”

  Angel sighed deeply. He did not mind walking all night long with the load on his shoulders, but he had to think hard about the child's serious questions before he could give any answers.

  “Are you asking because Luis hurt you?” he inquired.

  “A little.”

  “He betrayed us,” Angel declared.

  “And you, will you betray me too?”

  “Never, Paolo. Never.”

  Paolo kept to himself the many other questions that were troubling him. He guessed that he would have to live a long time before finding the answers.

  They went on silently. After a while, Angel noticed that Paolo was drifting to sleep and was about to topple. There was no shelter: on
ly the path, the stones, the cliff, and the heath. It was hard to believe that with all their money, they could not afford a little rest and some heat!

  Angel brought the child down and took him in his arms. Paolo's head nestled against the crook of Angel's shoulder. His body went limp and he fell asleep.

  All night Angel walked, his eyes protruding and muscles stiffening from the effort. At dawn, he reached the ruins of a sheep pen. He went in, put Paolo down on a heap of straw, and sighed in relief.

  When they woke up, the sun was already high in the sky. The wind had subsided, the weather was mild. Without uttering a word, the man and the child started to walk again, leaving the shore and the cliffs behind to go deeper inland, each of them preoccupied by somber thoughts.

  After two hours, they caught sight of the first trees of a forest in the northeast and, far behind it, of the jagged mountaintops hanging in the sky above the clouds. A feeling of death, rather than life, emanated from this forest, whose trees were bent and ruffled by the violent winds.

  Angel walked in front, telling Paolo when to lift his feet high to avoid tripping on the roots and branches that had fallen to the ground. At the same time, Angel listened for noises and kept an eye out for a rodent, a mole, any small animal that could be hunted as game. But life was not taking hold in the sparse, dry undergrowth.

  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.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  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 ord
er 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.”