Nest in the Bones

by Antonio Di Benedetto

  They follow the carriage, just to follow it. Winter’s ending, they like walking in the sun, and it’s good to have an excuse to go somewhere else.

  With the revolution, Romano lost his job. He didn’t make much anyhow. He signed up for the rural school, but it disappeared from all the lists of openings.

  Now someone’s given him a bit of coin to set up a hennery for purebred chickens. The other guy’s put up the land, down the canal from Chacras; he’s bought the initial breed stock, an incubator, wire for the pen, corn, and Romano will do the work, putting all his time into it. He won’t have any helpers. He’ll get a third of the earnings when they sell. In the meantime, he can fatten up his pigs, as long as he doesn’t use the corn or the feed pellets. Some condition.

  The two dimwitted ones follow the carriage, just to follow it, to see where Romano’s going with his empty cages, the bed, and the trunk.

  Then the rumors start flying:

  “He’s going to make a pile of cash.”

  “Big hens, white and red ones.”

  “And belichas,” they say, referring to a native breed.

  “They say he goes armed out into the fields.”

  “With live ammunition.”

  “He knew how to make something of the land.”

  “But us, with the vineyards, well, just take a look around.”

  They don’t look around. They think of what they’ve already seen, and fall quiet. Big graves, between the vine rows, for the half-ripened grapes. They think of what they will see, what it’s said they’ll have to see: vineyards uprooted and the wine running in the ditches.

  “There’s too much of it, they say.”

  They talk about the grapes, the wine, without mentioning them by name. They talk about the government without identifying it. They talk about federal regulations they don’t understand, because they destroy all they’ve built, all their parents or grandparents planted.

  “There’s too much of it, they say.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  Maybe she’s careless, Mrs. Ignacia, and that’s why it’s so easy to step into her life and be in her home, whiling away the endless afternoons.

  Mrs. Ignacia’s husband belongs to one of the conservative factions – which is it, the blue or the white? Amaya isn’t sure. He’s a dynamic man, with slight white streaks in his temples and a penchant for sports coats and silk kerchiefs knotted around his neck. He has tennis rackets, though they always stay in their case. He represents something important in the government. He also does business: he sells tractors and things like that in the Calle Lavalle, in front of La Libertad, but he doesn’t deal with it personally, he has others who work for him. If he wanted, he could be a teacher at the Colegio Nacional. Where did he do his teacher training, in Paraná or Buenos Aires? Teacher training? No. He’s just an accountant. But you know…

  Sitting in canvas chairs beneath a canopy of wisteria, their eyes wander as they recount all the joys of that summer house, lined up beside others like it against the foothills. Mrs. Ignacia recollects frequently: “It wasn’t like this before.” It might seem she was surprised that she got so rich so fast. It might seem she was begging pardon for it. But really, it’s just sincerity: the evocation of other times without whites or blues or tractors.

  Maybe she’s careless, and that’s why she forgives any unpleasant memory Amaya might entrust to her:

  “What else could you have done, my woman…?”

  Amaya can step out with her and visit the Confitería Colón, the pastry shop her husband never took her to, and not on account of the price, she thinks. See a movie – Lluvia de millones, The Unfinished Symphony, The Scarlet Pimpernel – and later pass the time rehashing it.

  There’s no rush, no last bus pulling away. Her friend’s husband has an official car, and they meet back at the hour before dinner.

  That twilit, superfluous time unfurls in coming and going along one sidewalk or the other on the Calle San Martín. They pull away from them, they run ahead, the two girls, Suspiros and Mrs. Ignacia’s daughter.

  The mothers disregard them. Everything is secure for them, they are blessed with security: the nest egg, the home, the husband, the daughter, the broad sidewalk brimming with people who appear to have nothing to do…

  But one time, Amaya sees a flatterer bend down with a greedy face as Suspiros passes. Amaya loses her temper and tries to reach her without hurrying her step, without Mrs. Ignacia knowing what has happened. When she has her daughter in arm’s reach, she turns her around, and Suspiros shows her a face glowing with joy. Amaya looks, looks, what can it be about that thirteen-year-old girl, and then she notices the subtle and delicate beginnings of breasts beneath her nearly transparent blouse.

  With the tip of his finger, her husband traces out the newspaper insert from the tobacco company Cigarillos 43. “Monthly raffles, certified by a notary public…Prizes from 5 to 5,000 pesos.”

  Inattentively, Amaya observes the photograph at the top of the page: The Aguilar Spanish Lute Quartet…That was what was on last night.

  Mrs. Ignacia and her husband went to hear them. But that lies outside Amaya’s tastes. She doesn’t envy them. She’d like other things.

  “Why don’t we buy a car, Leonardo?”

  Her husband removes his finger from the insert. He looks at her as if that question had upset his composure.

  Amaya, without forcing it, without getting upset, makes her case.

  “We could do it, couldn’t we?”

  “Yes, but I have other ideas.”

  And his fingernail goes on trailing its way down the column dated the nineteenth.

  “It’s for him. He takes it out, he brings it back. Now he’s wondering about those hills, if they’re hiding something…”

  “Water?”

  “No, minerals. If the man shows him signs of them, he’ll buy them up.”

  “The hills are for sale?”

  “Sure. Even a good ways out. Once we went to the goat pens. You’ve been there…?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Farther than that, even, much farther, my husband says.”

  “And with a wand…”

  “With two.”

  Amaya thinks of a stage magician, in his tuxedo and turban.

  He’s not like that. He’s in white pants, a short-sleeved shirt, and sneakers. He’s a well-built man with long, flaxen hair that falls whenever he moves, unless his hand is holding it in place.

  She sees him with Mrs. Ignacia, in front of a tall drink made with grenadine.

  Amaya is shy, because she doesn’t know how to talk to him and her friend at the same time. But he doesn’t make any special impression on her.

  Colorada comes over with her hand closed, shaking it now and then next to her ear.

  “What’ve you got?” Cataldo asks.

  “Two flies.”

  “Oh…”

  “Suspiros is a good girl. She gives me back the flies when I drop them.”

  “Yeah, she’s a good one.”

  Cataldo agrees, without adding anything.

  “Something wrong, Cataldo? You upset with me?”

  Cataldo shakes his head.

  Colorada keeps trying:

  “And your worms…? It’s been forever since you’ve told me about them.”

  “I don’t have any more worms. They all left.”

  “Ah…”

  That’s enough. Colorada doesn’t ask anymore.

  But Cataldo has got to reminiscing:

  “When the doctor saw me…”

  And then he comes out with it:

  “It’s time for me to go into the service…”

  He gestures into the air, as if explaining something. But he doesn’t finish the phrase.

  He’s twenty-four. They called him up four years back. He went to headquarters, but after the physical and psychological exams, they turned him back over to his family. He’ll never have to serve, but from time to time, he revisits that intermediate moment
between the checkup and the possession of a soldier’s uniform and arms.

  “You gonna go, Cataldo?” come the shy words, voiced by Colorada’s grief.

  Cataldo presses his chin into his neck and nods brusquely. He keeps looking down, as if to say there’s nothing to be done, and sees, close to his pants leg, Colorada’s hand weaken and open up. Two flies escape.

  That night, Cataldo dreams his friend proposes:

  “If I have to stay here alone, Cataldo, I want you to help me get married.”

  “I’ll help you, Colorada, you know I will.”

  “You have to tell him, you have to be the one to tell him.”

  Cataldo dreams they are walking behind the carriage loaded with the cages, the bed, and the trunk belonging to Romano, the veterinarian.

  And in his dream, Cataldo is dressed as a soldier, and is telling her yes, he’ll help her marry the veterinarian up ahead of them in the carriage.

  In the morning, Cataldo walks along the canal and reaches his destination. He wanders around Romano’s farm, glimpses the big man between the wires. But he wavers.

  When he sees Colorada, he says:

  “You can rest easy.”

  He knows what he’s talking about. She doesn’t, but since there’s no reason for her not to rest easy, she responds:

  “All right.”

  And the two are in agreement.

  He’s a layabout, Mrs. Ignacia thinks, and announces her conviction to Amaya.

  The dowser lives easily in the room that’s been provided for him and no one interrupts his rest. Twice, but only twice, he’s been seen out, on the jagged, shadowless hills.

  The rest of the time he spends looking for water in the fields where the shovel finds it without much effort. But he prefers using his two wicker rods, which he claims to feel vibrating when he finds whatever he’s looking for down under the soil. Then he stops and says: “Dig here.” Infallibly, they find dampness beneath the dry crust, more of it the deeper they dig.

  When he walks through the village in shirtsleeves, the boys follow along, and he’s pleased with his retinue. At night he goes to the movie theater beside the plaza, where the films have no end or beginning, because the reel is always broken, the film goes in or comes out wrong. It doesn’t matter. He enjoys it.

  He’s a layabout. But Mrs. Ignacia’s indifference will put up no resistance to her husband’s enthusiasm for the dowser.

  Now, Amaya feels good, like before, under the trees close to her friend’s home. She wouldn’t mind a bit, she thinks, if he weren’t there. He lacks allure…All she likes is that he’s easy, always ready for a laugh.

  He’s in the deckchair and Suspiros is chatting with him.

  Later, the dowser approaches the yerba mate the two women are drinking from and sits in a chair made of bulrushes. Suspiros sidles up to him on the ground, watching him from below while he speaks with Mrs. Ignacia. Amaya notices her gaze and is pricked by apprehension. She keeps her eyes on Suspiros’s blouse.

  “Gaspar,” the girl says.

  And he turns his head with a jovial smile, as if to say, I’m here. I’m listening.

  But he goes back to talking with the two adults.

  Amaya calms down. She looks at Gaspar good-naturedly. Gaspar, she thinks, it’s so simple. Like saying my name. Like saying José Luis. And in her mind, she utters José Luis’s name, without withdrawing completely from all that surrounds her just then.

  “Why is your name Gaspar?” Suspiros asks, drawing on what childishness is left in her.

  He laughs. There’s something beautiful about his laugh, Amaya thinks; but then she recollects her husband’s steely phrase: What a stupid word, beautiful…! That was how it all began, more or less.

  “Why?” he laughs at her curiosity. “You never heard a Persian name before?”

  “No,” Suspiros says, fascinated by what might follow his question.

  “Yes you have. You’ve heard one and said one, too: Gaspar.”

  Suspiros isn’t satisfied.

  “What does it mean?”

  Amaya interrupts, as if at the behest of a presentiment:

  “It doesn’t mean anything, people’s names are just names, that’s all.”

  Gaspar silences her gently, stretching his arm with his upraised hand toward her, as if plugging a leak:

  “They do, though. They do mean something…Mine means, the one who guards the treasure.”

  Amaya feels engulfed in a déjà vu. Gildas! Does he realize? Does he know what it means? She’s afraid of repetition, of confusion. The possibility inflames her.

  But this is different, she thinks, trying to convince herself. And she forces herself to be there with the rest of them.

  “Can you find gold?” Suspiros goes on interrogating him.

  “If it’s there…” Gaspar says, and with his answer, he rests his eyes on Amaya.

  Amaya doesn’t respond to that stare, which for the first time has lighted on her alone.

  Gaspar goes on explaining:

  “But I don’t look for gold, Suspiros.”

  She can talk to him. She can be alone with a man without him harassing or pouncing on her. Mrs. Ignacia leaves them. She doesn’t pay any mind. She doesn’t care.

  The two of them converse, and sometimes Suspiros comes and posts herself at her mother’s feet and looks at Gaspar’s mobile lips. Amaya pats her child’s head. She thinks, this could have been her family. But she takes it back: Gaspar is some six years younger than her.

  When Gaspar tries to interpret what happens to others…

  “It’s the passing of the days that destroys beauty. The passing of the days obscures what’s good, because there’s little good and life is made up mostly of vileness, blundering, monotony.”

  Amaya would like to tell him that with him, the days are never tarnished, they never grow ugly. That it moves her to see a man unashamed to use the word beauty, without feeling less of a man. She says nothing. She listens.

  “Failed marriages…No. The failure is general. The person who gets married feels chosen, but at the same time, feels the pleasure and the responsibility of choosing. And then so many things get turned around…It turns out that the opportunity to choose and being chosen doesn’t end there.”

  “Yes. There’s something to that,” Amaya avers. And all at once, she feels depressed.

  To choose forever? And what if the election had brought the two of them, José Luis and her, together…

  It almost seems as if Gaspar is offering his answer:

  “There are marriages that are sweet…”

  Sweet marriages: the notion sticks with Amaya.

  “…in old age, in some of those marriages that have survived, that sweetness flourishes. Have you ever seen that, Amaya?”

  She nods, and yet it strikes her that a great distance separates the harsh conception of life Gaspar espoused at first and that measured final observation. Why? For her? She doesn’t like him recanting his thoughts out of courtesy. But an inexplicable exuberance takes hold of her: as if he had divined her spiritual communion with José Luis and lavished it with respect.

  “Tomorrow I’m going to the city. You’ll have to mind the store.”

  The task disconcerts Amaya.

  “The whole day?”

  “No. In the morning is all.” And he adds, suggestively: “I’ll drive back.”

  “What…You bought a…?” She doesn’t get out the word “car.”

  “A truck,” he informs her. “It’ll haul three tons. Six thousand, nine hundred pesos. In two years we can pay it off, if we get enough work hauling.”

  Amaya looks at her husband, calculating. She turns to the window and sees the rarefied blue of the sky. On the trellis in the yard, the cereza grapes are ripe. Some of the leaves have gone yellow. She had noticed them before; she thought they were burned by the sun. Now she sees it’s autumn, that autumn’s on its way. Her friends will be returning to the city.

  Rocks and weeds surround Romano
’s hennery. Fewer on the canal side, where the border is cool from the shade of the willows.

  Cataldo looks out, sometimes from the field of rocks, holding onto the wire, sometimes from the ravine, sitting in the fork of a tree.

  A manservant comes at dawn and leaves with the fading of day. But the veterinarian moves about as if he’s the only one working, furiously active, energetic, and efficient. Cataldo watches him from the distance. Sometimes he sees him with a shotgun.

  That shotgun has a story. Cataldo doesn’t know it, others do. The police know it.

  A man who had gone into the chicken coops one night took some shot to the leg. He ran off and hid in his farm. He didn’t want help, but his wife brought a nurse over without telling him. The nurse healed him, but wanted to know: “What happened, you got into a tussle…?” The wounded man looked down. “I have to inform the police. That’s the law.” That was worse, and the man clammed up. The nurse gave word of what had happened. The police got the man to talk. At the station, seeing up close the little crestfallen man he’d emptied his shotgun at that night, Romano’s memory went blank. Later, counting the New Hampshire hens in the third corral, it hit him: the little country boy in espadrilles, the little country boy who hadn’t eaten, Cardona’s sculpture.

  Romano prods the two four-hundred-pound pigs and the smaller one. All three are yellow. On the shore, the rubbish brought up by the water gathers against the roots, and the breeder lets them loose a few times a week so they can eat the rubbish and save him money on fodder.

  Cataldo sees him coming and steps away from the tree to take off. But he turns brave and stays there waving his arms, as if in defense. Really he is just steeling his spirit for what’s to come.

  Romano drives the pigs downward and cuts a willow branch, stripping it patiently into a switch for the way back. But his eyes are focused on Cataldo, who is twenty feet away, vacillating, ready to escape, anxious about something.

  He addresses him:

  “Any chance of knowing what you’re up to? I’ve seen you around here all the time, lately.”

  He needles him:

  “You want to eat some chicken? A little hen…?”