The Killer's Tears

by Anne-Laure Bondoux

  “I can read too,” Paolo muttered in his half-sleep.

  “I'll lend you my books,” Ricardo promised.

  Under his heavy eyelids, Paolo wondered about the books piled up on the shelves. There were so many! Would an entire lifetime be enough to decipher those millions of words? He could not believe that this man, even as old as he was, had read almost all of them. Unless he was a magician, which, of course, was quite possible.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE WINE FROM the Valparaiso merchant, the blue tobacco, the exhaustion from the long walks these last days, and the very Dutch comfort of the bed had their effect: Angel slept like a log. He woke up with the impression of being born anew, his head heavy on the softness of the feather pillow, his limbs relaxed, and for a while he listened to the calm rhythm of his heart. He had not felt so young and full of strength in years. Ricardo had put him in his elder son's bedroom. His daughter's, next door, had gone to Paolo. After falling asleep on the couch, the child had not even noticed when Angel tucked him into a bed with white sheets so clean, so delicately perfumed, that they seemed intended for a prince.

  Angel stretched. Daylight was dancing in the folds of the curtains, and he thought he could hear people talking outside. He got up, put his clothes on, and left the room. The whole house smelled of warm bread and coffee. Did he, a murderer, a thief, deserve to spend even one more moment in this enchanted place? Was he not going to sully its purity? While walking through the house, Angel tried to make himself inconspicuous and as light as air.

  Then he stopped in the open doorway, stupefied.

  Dancing on the grass wet with sparkling dew, Paolo was roaring with laughter in the company of three children his own age.

  Farther away, next to the woodshed, Ricardo was standing in the sun, his hands in his pockets. Bewildered, Angel approached the round of dancing children. Who were they? Where had they come from? What means of transp—

  “Don't disturb them,” Ricardo said, putting his hand on Angel's arm. “They're having such a good time!”

  Angel's eyes were riveted to the man's pupils as he tried to find answers to his questions.

  “Come,” Ricardo suggested. “Breakfast is waiting for you inside.”

  Angel followed him back into the house while the children erupted in laughter.

  On the low table near the couch, Ricardo poured coffee into glistening china cups and held one out to Angel.

  “Don't try to understand,” Ricardo advised. “If there is one thing that life has taught me, it's to accept even the most foolish and unthinkable happiness. Welcome this happiness and don't speak. All the questions you're asking your-self are useless. You saw them—the three of them—as well as I did, didn't you? And just as well as your son, who held their hands as they all danced.”

  Angel swallowed a gulp of coffee. He wanted to protest, to shout that it was not possible, that the dead are dead! But he said nothing.

  “For forty years, each morning, my heart fills with joy. Do you understand, sir?” Ricardo asked.

  Angel shook his head.

  “Just before I leave to go into the forest to fell trees, they come to say hello and play under my windows, like in old times. Without their visits, I would not have had the courage to go on. Or to work. Or to live. Sometimes at night, my wife also comes back. It seems to me that her visits coincide with the harvest of the blue tobacco. I see her come in, her cotton cap on her head. It's an extraordinary moment.”

  Ricardo handed Angel a silver basket in which he had arranged slices of toasted bread. Angel took one delicately between his fingers.

  “Joana was only eight years old,” Ricardo went on. “Dimitri had just celebrated his tenth birthday, and Sven, the eldest, whose bedroom you used last night, was going to be thirteen. One day long ago, they went north with their mother. There was to be a feast at the farm of family members to celebrate the last day of harvest, when the wheat is threshed. I had to finish a job in the forest and was going to join them later on. When they left—I remember it so well!—they were blowing kisses at me, and my wife was cracking the whip above the head of the mare hitched to the cart. ‘See you soon, Papa! Try to come quickly!’ the children yelled.”

  He caught his breath, and Angel, who sat motionless on the sofa, noticed tears drowning the old lumberjack's blue eyes.

  “They never reached the farm where the party was to be held. What happened? I don't really know. They probably came across someone on their way. This person, whose name I'll never know, robbed them. And then killed them. The four of them. Like that. I'm the one who discovered them, the next day, on my way to the harvest fest, as I was spurring my horse to speed up.”

  Silence fell again. Angel was shaking. The coffee in his china cup was about to spill. With effort, he put it down on the table.

  “Now, if you will excuse me,” Ricardo whispered, getting up.

  He went to the door. On his way out, he removed his hat from the stand and put it on his head. “I have to take care of my last order,” he said.

  Angel remained immobile for a long while, his head ringing with the most violent, most painful, and strangest thoughts one would expect from a murderer. Then he too got up and went out.

  Ricardo's children had gone. They had left when their father had started his tractor, and Paolo was now killing time by dragging his feet in the dust. Angel approached him very slowly. He wondered if Paolo was going to disappear too. Was he going to evaporate before Angel's eyes? Was he somehow going to be a victim of the mysterious powers of this place? At that instant, Angel fully appreciated the meaning of the word bewitching.

  “My friends went home,” Paolo complained when he saw Angel. “It's unfair! Why didn't they stay with me? I was having a lot of fun.”

  Angel crouched and sat the child on his knees. He could feel Paolo's skin, warm and damp with perspiration, and the roundness of his arms. The child was a tangible reality, and yes, Paolo seemed less skinny than before.

  “Your friends will come back tomorrow morning,” he whispered.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure!”

  Paolo smiled. “So does that mean that we're going to stay a little longer at Ricardo's?”

  “A little. I believe he needs us today.”

  “In the forest?”

  “Yes. We should help him cut his last tree and bring it here. Don't you agree?”

  Cheered up, Paolo jumped from Angel's knees. He ran into the house and came back with a large slice of bread and jam.

  “I have to build up strength to cut wood,” he said very seriously.

  Together they set out into the forest, the child skipping joyously in front, the man walking behind, prey to an inner anguish that was extracting secret tears from him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ANGEL GAVE ALL his strength, all his energy, all his fervor to Ricardo's last order. He spent the whole day running along the felled tree, cutting the biggest limbs with the chain saw, and chopping the smaller ones with the ax. He bounced around, pulling, tearing, knocking; he was perspiring and exhausting himself; he was smiling.

  Ricardo came and sat down on the stump next to Paolo.

  “What debt do you think your father wants to repay?” the old lumberjack asked, amused.

  Paolo, who was watching Angel strive so hard, and who was waiting for someone to give him permission to bundle the twigs, answered what was evident to him.

  “He would like to undo the harm he has done.”

  “I don't think Angel could have done any harm,” Ricardo answered.

  “Oh, he has,” Paolo said.

  He turned toward the lumberjack and smiled. He was delighted that he could surprise a man as old and as well-read as this one.

  “Angel has killed people,” he said. “But don't tell him that you know. He would be angry with me.”

  Confused, Ricardo gave his promise, not entirely sure of what he had just heard. Was the child joking? Was he crazy? Or, if what he said was tru
e, could the ax and the chain saw become dangerous tools?

  No, really, Ricardo could not believe that Angel was a murderer. Since the death of his family, he thought he had developed an extra sense that enabled him to detect the presence of evil. He thought he could guess the bad intentions of any passerby at first sight. This was how he had chased away a few peddlers from the limits of his property, and some merchants with treacherous eyes, just because of the way they walked or rode their horses. So if he had given shelter to a murderer, he would know it!

  Nevertheless, he got up and went back prudently toward the tree. Angel, astride the trunk, was beginning to cut it up. Sheaves of sawdust rose around him like frightened bee swarms. Sensing Ricardo's presence, he stopped working and cut the motor of the chain saw.

  “You must be worn out,” Ricardo said. “Come and drink some water and have a bite to eat.”

  Angel shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said, taking off the goggles that Ricardo had lent him.

  “It's going to be a long day.”

  “Workdays go faster than one thinks,” Angel declared.

  “You're clever,” Ricardo went on. “You must have done this kind of work before. Am I wrong?”

  “I've done a little bit of everything.”

  “And the child? He follows you like that, from place to place?”

  “Yes. He has nobody else.”

  As a rule, Ricardo never asked personal questions, and one of his principles was to respect the privacy of others. But this time, he felt a tremendous desire to know everything about this man and child. Questions were crowding his lips, burning his tongue. But Angel put his goggles back on and started the chain saw. That cut the conversation short.

  The day went on like this, in the changing shade of the undergrowth and over the clamor of the chain saw. Paolo trotted around the large broken trunk, collecting twigs, carrying full loads of them near the stump, and then sorted them according to size before bundling them up.

  “You'll have a good supply for your fireplace,” he said to Ricardo, proudly showing the bundles.

  The old woodcutter smiled. “If I survive the winter!”

  “Are you that old?”

  “I don't have many more books to read,” he answered.

  With wonder, the child imagined Ricardo's books as a supply of oxygen. If a life span was so tightly linked to the number of books one possessed, then this helped to explain the sudden death of his parents. In their home, there had not been one single book! Paolo promised himself to buy a lot of them with his money.

  “Where do you buy books?” he asked.

  “In town. In bookstores. Sometimes the peddlers have one or two, but they are not very good.”

  “I would like to go to a bookstore. Do you think there's one in Puerto Natales?”

  “Are you going that way?”

  “No, but I could buy a horse to go there. I have a lot of money now that Luis gave me half of his inheritance.”

  “Luis?”

  “He's a friend. Well, he was. He's gone to travel around the world because he's in love.”

  Ricardo nodded. “That's right, love can take you far away!”

  He thought about his wife. He had met her in Holland, when he was a student there. At the time he dreamed of living like a European, far from the wilds of Chile, in towns with paved roads, in tall, clean houses, like those he had seen in Vermeer's paintings. But after a while, he had grown homesick and his wife had followed him here because she loved him.

  “Do you think there's a bookstore in Puerto Natales?” Paolo asked again.

  “Probably.”

  Paolo was piling up his bundles joyously. The future seemed radiant: He and Angel were going to spend a few more nights at Ricardo's, and he would be able to play again with the children in the wet grass. Then he and Angel would go north. They would go back home, to the lonely house, and once well rested, they would go up to Puerto Natales. After all, not having a lamb was not so terrible. Instead, Paolo would have the books. And, if Paolo asked him, Angel would build bookshelves that they could prop up with stones against the crooked wall of the house. How pleasant it would be! He forgot all about the problems at Punta Arenas: Delia's deceitful hugs, Luis's betrayal, the red ship, Angel's knife—even his desire to die at the edge of the cliff. From now on, he was going to live a different life, a beautiful and comfortable life.

  At twilight, Angel and Ricardo loaded the lumber onto the trailer behind the tractor. Only a few heaps of sawdust, a clean stump, and some wood chips, where the tree had broken some branches of neighboring pines when falling, were left on the ground. Paolo sighed with pleasure and looked up at the pinkish sky between the mountaintops. He felt tired, as well as grateful toward the two men. Thanks to them, he would never again be afraid to enter a forest. He was glad to have conquered his fear. One small victory after another, wasn't that the way to grow up?

  “What will happen to your tree?” he asked Ricardo.

  “Someone will pick it up tonight. Someone from the sawmill.”

  “And then?”

  “Then it will be cut up. It will provide dozens of nice planks for carpentry or cabinetmaking.”

  Paolo smiled. “It'll be metamorphosed!” he concluded cheerfully.

  He contemplated the large, freshly cut round logs. Drops of resin were forming at their ends, little ocher or brown stalactites that looked like tears. Ricardo started the tractor. It was the last time he would be bringing a load home. He wished he could bestow a solemn touch on this final trip by driving slowly enough to enjoy every spot of soil, each centimeter of the road, but he feared that it would awaken his melancholy. So, instead, he recited the verses of a poem.

  “My heart goes on cutting wood,

  singing with the sawmills in the rain,

  milling together cold, sawdust, wood smell.”

  Paolo was seated on the hood at the front of the tractor. With each jolt along the path, he laughed. Behind him, Angel and Ricardo were silent, like all men who are exhausted and satisfied with their work. The fatigue had pushed the questions back. Ricardo no longer felt their fire on his tongue. Whoever this man next to him was, and whatever he had done in his life, he had proved his honesty and his courage here, on the trunk of the tree. That was enough, and Ricardo felt at peace.

  When they were close enough to see the house, they saw a truck parked in the yard. A large blond man in blue overalls got out.

  “Hello!” he shouted.

  Ricardo waved to him, while Angel lowered his head to hide his face.

  When they reached the man, Ricardo stopped the tractor.

  “The sawmill sent me,” the man explained.

  “Couldn't Alfredo come himself?” Ricardo asked.

  “This timber has to be taken to Puerto Natales without delay,” the man answered. “It's not going to be treated at the usual sawmill. Do you want to see the order slip?”

  Ricardo went with the man to the truck; Angel took advantage of this to jump out of the tractor. He grabbed Paolo in his arms.

  “Come, let them take care of business.”

  He took the child to the shelter of the house. Obviously, Ricardo had been expecting someone else; Angel was suspicious; surprises were seldom good news for murderers. He stood near the window, behind the half-drawn curtains, to observe the blond giant. He saw Ricardo look at the papers, sign at the bottom of a sheet, then help the man remove the straps holding the timber to the trailer.

  Paolo asked whether he could go out to watch the action, but Angel stopped him with a commanding look. The child noticed Angel's hands touching his chest nervously, moving like insects around a bright light. He knew what it meant.

  Paolo shrugged and went to curl up on the soft couch. After a while, the truck left; he could hear it going down the path, carrying the last tree, along with Angel's suspicions.

  Ricardo looked worried when he came back to the house. He was holding the order slip in his hand. But when he saw the child nestled on the
couch, and Angel standing near the window, he smiled and left the piece of paper on the corner of a table. He realized how fast he had become attached to his guests. Especially to Paolo.

  “Thank you,” he said, “for helping me with my work. Tonight we will drink to bygone days and to my retirement.”

  He noticed that Angel was looking at the slip of paper.

  “Don't worry,” Ricardo added, “everything is in order. I'm just getting old and things are changing. The sawmill of my friend Alfredo subcontracts part of its orders. You see, I'm glad I'm retiring. Before, Alfredo would come himself and we would have a drink and talk for a while before settling our business. But this man did not inspire me, so I did not invite him in.”

  “You did the right thing,” Angel said.

  “Did he take your tree to Puerto Natales?” Paolo asked.

  “Well, yes. I'm told it's a special order for a town institution. But I couldn't care less about it now.” Ricardo removed his hat and his leather jacket, then turned to Angel. “You can stay as long as you want. You're not disturbing me.”

  “Tomorrow, we shall go home,” Angel answered.

  “What is calling you to your house? Are there animals to tend to?”

  “No,” said Paolo. “Our goats are dead. They were old. My fox too is dead. And my par—”

  “We have things to do,” Angel interrupted. “That's all.”

  Paolo was sad. He wanted to stay longer in this house on the outskirts of the forest, and he noticed that Ricardo looked sorry as well. But Paolo did not want to upset Angel by asking the reasons for his decision.

  Silently they dined on a piece of deer that Ricardo had kept for a special occasion. In the trembling light of the candles, their eyes seemed animated by a strange and autonomous life, as if the agitation of their souls were reflected in their pupils.

  “It's a very special day,” Ricardo said. He put his fork down. “If you leave tomorrow, I would like …”

  He got up, his face as pink as a summer dawn. He motioned to Paolo and Angel to wait for him, then disappeared into a nearby room.