The Killer's Tears

by Anne-Laure Bondoux

  “When we're gone, he'll be all alone,” Paolo whispered. “Do you think he's going to die?”

  Angel wiped his mouth with the corner of his cotton napkin. Death, he knew death so well. But he knew only its violence, its way of cutting short the lives of people still very young, due to illness or the blade of his knife. He had never seen anyone die peacefully, slowly, as if going to sleep.

  “We can come back one day,” he said to Paolo. “Ricardo will be waiting for us.”

  A moment later, the old lumberjack walked in, carrying a large box in his arms. Without a word, he put it down on one of the side tables and opened it. Paolo wondered what new treasure he was going to discover. Once the cover had been lifted, he could see a strange apparatus.

  “I hope it still works,” Ricardo muttered. “It belonged to my wife, and I have not used it in years.”

  He removed a large, black, shiny disk from its jacket and laid it flat on the machine. Then he cranked a handle on the side of the box.

  Angel's eyes shrank. He stared intensely at Paolo. And when Ricardo moved the arm of the old phonograph, he held his breath. He guessed that Paolo had never heard music, not even the sound of a flute made from a reed, or even that of a rattle. The child only knew the violent howling of the wind pushing at the sides of the house down on the desolate heath.

  The record gave out some crackling and static sounds. Ricardo stood up, a finger on his lips, his eyes half closed.

  The sound of violins invaded the room, together with that of cellos. It was an elongated sound, reinforced by the slow pulsations of an organ.

  Paolo did not budge.

  The modulation of the strings undulated, going higher, coming lower, swirling, darting and crisscrossing, while the organ kept the somber and slow pace of a funeral march. This music seemed sad and full of hope all at once. Earthly and heavenly, heavy and light; it was summing up all that Paolo had understood from life these past few days.

  He was shaking in his seat; his eyes blurred.

  In the music, he recognized the softness of the fox, the warmth of the lamb, but also Luis's betrayal, and all the stones and pebbles that had made him trip along his journey. He did not see Angel, or Ricardo, or the polished furniture, or the candles. Memories burst before him as if each note were a hook fishing out the feelings buried in his soul. As if he had become an ocean, a river.

  Angel saw the tears running down Paolo's cheeks. He saw the old man standing near his phonograph, absorbing the beauty of the music.

  The murderer put his large hands flat on his knees, as he too fell victim to the spell of the organ, the violins, the solemn rhythm, and the clear, harmonious sounds that seemed to want to pull his heart up to heaven. It was beautiful, so different from what he had known in his life so far. A sigh lifted his chest.

  For a long while they remained silent, letting the music unfurl and embrace them. The warmth of the house felt good. An immense peace filled their hearts, lulling all suffering.Angel wished he could live this way forever, surrounded by beauty and calm, far from the world, the cities, the pubs and their crude lights, the shouts and the crowds. Why was he discovering this happiness only now?

  Suddenly a terrible anxiety clutched his throat. He realized that the music had come too late for him. It would never alleviate the enormity and foolishness of his crimes.

  But what about Paolo?

  He looked at the child, at his confused little face, his delicate hands. For Paolo, it was not too late! And he, Angel, did not have the right to deprive him of all this. He had taken the child away from his solitude; now he had to set him free.

  Angel suppressed a sob. In a few seconds, his decision was made: he was going to entrust Paolo to Ricardo. If he accomplished only one act of love in this world, it had to be now. He would give Paolo the possibility of a better life. That would be his act of love.

  When the music stopped, Ricardo put the record back in its jacket, then pulled the cover of the box down.

  Paolo had not moved from his chair. He looked like a statue. Angel was suffocating. The more the silence lingered, the more the idea of separation took hold in his mind. Paolo would stay with the old man, with the books on the shelves, the phonograph and its music, and the mysteries of the forest.

  Yes, he was going to give Paolo to Ricardo, and Ricardo to Paolo. Together they would find a meaning to life, whereas he, a killer, would continue to wander alone on the rough roads ahead, with remorse his only company.

  He wanted to express what was in his heart, but Paolo rose suddenly and approached Ricardo.

  “What was it?” Paolo whispered.

  The old man smiled, crouched in front of him, and handed him the record. Paolo bent his head. There were letters on the jacket.

  “Jo … Johann … Sebastian … Bach,” he deciphered.

  “It's the name of the man who composed this piece,” Ricardo explained. “If you like it, keep it, it's yours.”

  Paolo opened his mouth but did not say anything. He squeezed the record against his chest and, overwhelmed with gratitude, kissed Ricardo's wrinkled cheek.

  Angel was thunderstruck. Paolo had never kissed him, had never shown as much tenderness toward him. Everything was definitely decided now. He had to act right away.

  Angel took out the knife hidden in his pocket and fingered the patina of the handle, a patina acquired during brawls and potato-peeling chores. He approached Paolo.

  Ricardo gave a start when he saw the shining blade. He grabbed Paolo, pulling him back quickly.

  “Watch out!” he shouted.

  Angel froze in front of them. He was so tall that he towered above the old man and the small child. They were at his mercy—two fragile beings whose fate was in his hands. He looked at Paolo.

  “Take it,” he said, “it's for you.”

  The silence was complete. The reflection of the candlelight danced on the blade of the knife. Ricardo trembled as he held the child against him.

  “Take it,” Angel said again, his voice breaking.

  Slowly Paolo let go of the record with one hand and let the knife fall into it.

  “Do whatever you want with it,” Angel whispered. “You can throw it to the bottom of a well or leave it forever in a drawer. I'm going to bed now.”

  He left the room.

  Paolo remained motionless, his fingers gripping the record and the knife so hard that they hurt. His torn heart was bleeding in his chest and he wondered why things had to be so. Why did he always have to make a choice: between Angel and Ricardo, music and Angel, love and poetry, words and actions, leaving and staying, life and dreams, dreams and Angel, when all he hoped for was to bring all of them together?

  “Then it's true,” Ricardo said after a while. “Angel did kill people?”

  Paolo nodded. But he knew that it was over now, that Angel would never hurt anyone again. The knife was heavy in his hand.

  That night, Ricardo realized he had made a mistake. His discerning mind had lost its acuity with age and he had not been able to discern the true nature of Angel Allegria. But the truth had been revealed: there was a dangerous man under his roof who, even without his knife, remained a mur-derer. Before going to bed, he went to fetch his old hunting rifle to keep it with him in his room.

  Very late that night, Angel left the sleepy house. He had lain on the bed of Ricardo's dead son for a long time, his eyes open, before making his decision. When he opened the front door and felt the coolness of the night on his face, he knew he was making the right choice. He had to disappear from Paolo's life.

  He tiptoed across the grass of the yard, passed by the empty woodshed, then took the path to the north. It was the same route Ricardo's wife and children had taken to go to the harvest fest, and he had a strange feeling that he was going to meet them along the way. He was walking to a secret meeting with ghosts.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE POLICE OF Punta Arenas made use of all the means at their disposal. Delia's sketch had been circulated o
n the national police network, and, because of it, Angel Allegria had been identified as a dangerous criminal. He was already wanted in Talcahuano, Temuco, and Puerto Natales. Wasting no time, the commissioner put his most qualified men and their teams on his trail.

  Delia's father had given a deposition that stated that not only was Angel Allegria a criminal, but he had also kidnapped a child, whom he was abusing. Delia's father went on to mention Luis Secundo, describing him as an upstanding citizen of Valparaiso who had been forced to give Angel money. Fortunately, Delia had managed to rescue Luis from the hands of this monster; Mr. Secunda was now free and safe.

  The horse merchants were interrogated: none of them had sold any animals to the murderer.

  Identity checks were conducted at the harbor, the airport, and the railroad station; squads of armed law enforcement officers were sent to inns and pubs. Traffic slowed considerably around the town where roadblocks had been placed.

  After three days of intense but fruitless searching, the commissioner decided to extend the perimeter of his combing. It seemed likely that the man had gone north, so two motorized teams and their tracking dogs—dogs that had sniffed the bedsheets on which Angel had slept at the inn— were sent on the road. The manhunt had begun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  PAOLO WOKE UP with a red mark on his left cheek because he had fallen asleep on the record. As for the knife, he had put it under the belt of his pants, thinking it might be useful: he could always cut twigs to make small toys.

  In anticipation of this new day, he went out, hoping to meet the children. The first rays of sunlight passed through the dislocated planks of the woodshed, casting golden stripes on the ground and making the dew sparkle. Ricardo and Angel were not up and the children had not yet arrived; Paolo was impatient! The sharp morning air stung his face, but this was not unpleasant. Nothing unpleasant could happen on such a beautiful day! He started to prance noiselessly around the side of the house.

  As he went to the back, he saw a car drive up. He thought it was his new friends. Happily, he ran toward the vehicle.

  The driver stopped the motor and a door opened; but instead of the children he was expecting, two men in uniform rushed out. Without a word, they grabbed Paolo and put their hands over his mouth to keep him from shouting. They pushed him inside the car like a bag of wheat.

  “Everything is all right now,” one of the policemen whispered in his ear. “We're here and you're safe.”

  Another officer noticed the red mark on Paolo's cheek and shook his head. “This child has been through hell. It was time we got here.”

  Two other men got out of the front seat of the car. They drew their guns and silently moved toward the house. Paolo moaned under the hand that crushed his mouth. He heard two shots fired and thought his head was exploding.

  A few minutes passed; then one of the policemen came running back to the car, panic-stricken. The gun was still in his hand. Blood stained his uniform.

  “It wasn't him!” he shouted.

  The man who was gagging Paolo removed his hand and opened the car door. Paolo jumped out, a huge knot in his throat.

  “We hit a snag!” the policeman went on, all out of breath. “Allegria has disappeared, and Lopez is hurt!”

  The men ignored Paolo and rushed over to the house. Alone in the sun, the child could feel the pulsations of the whole universe in his heart. The ground was opening under his feet, the sky was shaking in front of his eyes, and this made everything wobble—everything from the core of the earth to the far end of the immense cosmos.

  He went straight to the window of Ricardo's room. And there, on tiptoe, between the half-drawn curtains, he saw the body of the policeman called Lopez. He leaned farther down. A wrinkled hand that was holding an old hunting rifle could be seen near the policeman, and it was not moving. Paolo looked up: the other three policemen were hustling through the doorway of the small room. They appeared distraught and stupidly alive in front of death, in front of the white curtains, the perfumed sheets, the waxed furniture. Paolo turned. The way in front of him was wide open, like a temporary gap between two worlds. On one side of the gap were the police, death, and Ricardo lying on the ground; on the other side were the unknown, solitude, and north. And, perhaps, Angel?

  Paolo touched the handle of the knife lightly. Without thinking, he started to run.

  He ran faster than he had ever run, as if fear were attached to the soles of his shoes. His temples tensed up, his lower lip trembled.

  He did not want to think about what had happened. Confronting the reality of things made his mind go wild; he could not believe that they had killed Ricardo; he refused to believe that Angel had abandoned him in the middle of the night; and he did not want to believe that life was so painfully unfair.

  In front of him were the open path, sky, grass, pebbles, fallen branches, misshapen trees, Chile, and somewhere in this direction, his house. He stumbled a few times, grazing the palms of his hands on the rough ground. Now and then he also stopped to calm the fire in his lungs and the pain in his ribs. As he groaned, he remembered the music, the poems, the tears, and the peace gone by. He felt so alone that he could have torn his heart out with his bare hands.

  The police car caught up with him half an hour later.

  He was standing still, facing what looked like emptiness. The policemen approached him as slowly as pigeon hunters so as not to frighten him. They could see only his back, shaking with spasms. They did not understand. They did not see that Paolo was laughing as he stood there. The policemen did not see the three children who played barefoot in the moss, capering and leapfrogging to amuse their friend. And yet the children were having such fun! It was wonderful to see them, with their Dutch blond hair and their lace clothing swirling in the fresh air.

  “No!” Paolo shouted when he felt the hands of the policemen grab him.

  Right away, the three children stopped playing. They waved goodbye to Paolo and vanished instantly.

  Paolo tried to fight. He brandished Angel's knife above his head, but one of the policemen grabbed his arm. Paolo was not strong enough. His fingers let go of the smooth handle, and the knife fell on a stone, where the blade broke.

  “We don't want to harm you,” the chief officer declared before ordering his men to take Paolo away.

  In the car, the three surviving policemen shifted the body of Officer Lopez to make room for Paolo near the window at the back. The dead man was losing blood on the seat and his head kept falling onto the side of the child, terrifying him.

  The policemen never uttered a word.

  They did not apologize.

  Their small dark eyes were fixed on the bumpy road.

  They did not notice that next to them the child was drowning in his sorrow. After all, they considered themselves knights of law and order, fighting evil in the world. It never occurred to them that things were not so simple.

  A voice full of static came through the dashboard speaker: Angel Allegria had just been arrested by another squad, twenty kilometers north.

  And so it was that the four men mandated by the authorities destroyed the shaky happiness that a child thought was his. They had shown that they were powerful, more powerful than the yellow sweet.

  For them, the day was an achievement.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  PAOLO SAW ANGEL for the last time a few weeks later at the Puerto Natales jail. The windowless room was painted light green and oozed fear, solitude, and boredom.

  At first, they were unable to speak. Neither one of them knew words strong enough to express what was in his heart.

  The corrections officer finally touched Angel's shoulder. “You don't have much time. Speak up.”

  Angel gave a start, looking fearfully at the guard from the corner of his eye. In just a few weeks, jail had done its work: the fear of blows had made him obedient; and because his mind was no longer in control of his body, he had given up the fight. Paolo did not recognize the man, once so strong
and unwavering, who had carried him for hours along the cliffs.

  They looked at each other again, a long time, their throats tight.

  “Come on, time's up,” said the officer.

  Angel leaned slightly toward Paolo as a mother would lean above a crib. It was all over and yet he felt he had not begun.

  “Do you remember?” he whispered at last. “When we lived in your house, I asked you to remember what day you were born?”

  Paolo nodded. He remembered everything, each moment, each word, each leg of their journey, vividly.

  “You answered me it was the day I arrived,” Angel went on.

  “Time's up!” the guard said again, grabbing Angel's arm firmly.

  Angel's hands were handcuffed behind his back and already the guard was pulling him away.

  “Do you remember, Paolo?” Angel shouted, his feet slipping on the tiles.

  “Yes!” Paolo shouted.

  Angel was crying.

  “Well, me too!” the murderer yelled. “Me too, I was born that day! I was born the day I saw you! Do you understand, Paolo?”

  The guard pulled on the handcuffs and Angel disappeared behind a reinforced door, which closed like a jaw on its prey. Paolo knew that he would never see Angel again. He jumped up, knocking over his chair, and ran to the door.

  “I understand!” he shouted behind the door. “Angel! I understand!”

  A voice answered, muffled by the thickness of the walls. Were these words expressing sentiments of love? Just in case, Paolo shouted as loudly as he could.

  “Me too! Me too!”

  And then there was only the clatter of keys, the locking of bolts, the awful grating of jail iron. His hands glued to the door, Paolo did not move. He thought that if he did he would turn to dust, that he would disintegrate like a piece of chalk. He could visualize the walls separating him from Angel. How many of them were there? Dozens, no doubt, each one thicker than the last, green and cold like snakes.