The Killer's Tears
Page 11
Luis was surprised to see the changes that Paolo had made in the house.
“A new table?” he said.
“The other one was dead,” Paolo answered.
“This one is very beautiful,” Luis admitted.
He was also very impressed by the bookshelves Paolo had built. As a token, he placed a book there, the one that told of storms, of sailors thrown back to shore, the book in which Paolo had heard the voice of poets for the first time.
“Now I know all the words,” Paolo murmured, stroking the cover.
Luis sighed. He went around the room, examining the postcards that hung on the walls. It was as if his life had been preserved in a museum. The memories were fading away, feelings were less acute, everything was taking its real place again; and the world, the countries he had visited, would never be worth the time he had spent in this lonely house, where he had fought the winds and the silent rages of Angel, the fox, the snakes, or the peaceful moments spent smoking at sunset. Paolo was the owner of something invaluable: a spot on this earth where he was truly at home, and where a person feels at one with the universe because of its roughness.
Before he left, Luis unloaded several cases of wine from his car—wine he had inherited from his father. Chilean, French, Spanish, Italian wines, each one more delicious than the last.
“Where are you going next?” Paolo asked him.
Luis smiled. “I've never known where I was going.”
He wanted to add something but changed his mind. Maybe he had wanted to talk about Angel; whatever it was, Paolo was grateful that he kept silent.
“I'm sorry,” Luis whispered nevertheless, before he rushed to his car.
He drove off and disappeared at the end of the path, waving goodbye from the window.
Paolo never went back to Ricardo Murga's house, but each time he had to enter the forest, he thought of Ricardo and remembered when he and Angel had first heard the lumber-jack's ax striking the wood. In the evenings, he got in the habit of lighting a lot of candles on the table in memory of this man and his ghosts.
Some days, he would go for a solitary walk to the spot where the ground breaks and the sea begins. Standing there in silence, he faced the uproar of the icy waters and wondered time and time again about the reasons that pushed him to live. He never found an answer. To be born and alive was the only feeling that persisted, as inescapable and as real as a rock, in spite of everything. And ultimately this feeling satisfied him.
From time to time, a stranger showed up on the rocky path. Most often it was a scientist, a geologist with a box of stones, or an astronomer in quest of a dark night. Sometimes it was a poet trying to decipher the Chilean soul. Other times it was simply an adventurer looking for spots yet undiscovered and far from the beaten path.
Paolo welcomed them, his door wide open. He laughed at their surprise when they discovered the interior of the house. The bookshelves, rugs, candles, postcards, clean curtains… Paolo would pour a glass of wine from the “Secunda Reserve” for his guests, and he enjoyed making them chat. They brought him news of the world. The reports floated up in the room like bubbles, where they burst upon reaching the ceiling. Wars, famines, revolutions, epidemics, woes of the financial market, strikes, accidents, royal weddings, and auto mobile races reached the ceiling of the small house at the end of the earth, and lost a little of their importance there.
At the end of the evening, the guests would listen quietly to the howling of the wind behind the window and drink the wine as their eyes skimmed over the spines of the books on the shelves.
Years went by.
Later, Terusa gave birth to a child, a girl.
Paolo suggested they name her Angelina. Terusa saw only wings and a halo in the name. She accepted it without hesitation.
AUTHOR's NOTE
In Chile, the death penalty was given for the last time in 1985, and was officially abolished in 2001.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anne-Laure Bondoux was born near Paris in 1971. She has written several novels for young people in varied genres and has received numerous literary prizes in her native France. Her previous novels published in the United States are The Destiny of Linus Hoppe and its companion, The Second Life of Linus Hoppe. The Killer's Tears was awarded France's prestigious Prix Sorcières.
Published by Delacorte Press
an imprint of Random House Children's Books
a division of Random House, Inc. New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of
the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Translation copyright © 2006 by Y. Maudet
Map illustration copyright © 2006 by Rick Britton
All rights reserved.
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The killer's tears / Anne-Laure Bondoux; translated from the French by Y. Maudet.
Summary: A young boy, Paolo, and the man who murdered his parents, Angel,
gradually become like father and son as they live and work together on the remote
Chilean farm where Paolo was born.
[1. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 2. Metamorphosis—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—
Fiction. 4. Robbers and outlaws—Fiction. 5. Chile—Fiction.] I. Maudet, Y. II. Title.
PZ7.B63696Ki 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005008845
eISBN: 978-0-307-48673-8
v3.0