Nest in the Bones

by Antonio Di Benedetto

  With these few words, the driver made him a gift of the little mule, the pack animal that brought up the rear of the wagon on long journeys or else stayed out front, just past the postboy.

  He joined in their crossing, unmindful of the scorn of the man moving from one side of the country to the other, with his effects and his family of four women pulled along by the slow, stately troupe of oxen.

  Aballay was fine so long as the driver put up with his peculiarities. If he didn’t care to give them up, then he would incur obligations. And so he ended up relieving her, driving the wagon for half a day or more. All he had to do was jump from his horse to the box seat, without the sin of dropping to the ground.

  At night, the shelter of the box seat eased the transit toward sleep, with less shivering. Eating became a surer thing as well.

  Aballay tormented himself with two questions: why is she watching over me? Is this penance?

  To the first, he sought an answer from his benefactor:

  “Why…?”

  “Because you help me,” she said. (She was less stilted with him than he was with her.)

  She didn’t convince him, and he fell silent.

  Then the woman deigned to answer:

  “Because you remind me of a son I had.”

  They spoke as equals, at equal height, in the course of the night. To see eye to eye, he would mount the mule and she would sit in the bottom of the box seat when the wagon was at rest.

  When she passed Aballay a bowl or a spoon, disquiet would overcome him. In his hand, the spoon represented ease, and that was when he asked himself if he was truly doing penance.

  He called it living freely and knew that was like living on handouts, but he also suspected it was living in vain.

  He thought once of going to find the priest or another older, learned man he could depend on for advice.

  As though from the darkness, an answer to his doubts, something like a justification, emerged: living to pay down a debt was not living in vain.

  They might have calmed him down, these thoughts, if the boy’s face hadn’t cut in every time. There was no making peace with the boy!

  Aballay disappears for two days.

  When he returns, there’s a bundle on top of the mule. It might not mean anything; but the woman attributes something, still uncertain, to its presence.

  If Aballay entrusts her with it, as he is doing, it could be seen as compensation for his part of the costs of travel. That’s not what she thinks, even less when she unties the bundle and finds: bacon, gin, salt, biscuit…and besides that a roll of percale, perfume, a kerchief…

  Something in the driver goes weak.

  Now she almost understands…Maybe it’s not a present for them. Aballay is leaving, and he’s paying up; no, not paying, atoning.

  She can almost understand it, seeing it this way, though Aballay has yet to explain anything.

  He won’t tell her he gave up his silver patacón, the one from the slit in his belt, held onto for a special occasion. Or for a moment of great need (to do what he’s done, for example).

  Just as the wagon and the driver vanished, the winter vanished, the years vanish.

  The bronco died, and the sorrel horse and the mule. He always managed to replace them, never with anything better. At best with a stray; at worst, with a tame one. On the lookout for the latter, he would lasso loose animals that didn’t have a brand, looking for the old ones, which were said to be more sedate. He needed a favorite one to ride, and then an alternate. For a while he got along with a donkey for the second. All he needed was an animal he could sit on. He never got hold of a seat, blanket, or packsaddle.

  Suspected of cattle rustling, more than once, he caught an officer’s eye.

  Aballay and his animals were dragged down to the barracks.

  The soldier told him, “Get down, the chief wants to see you.”

  Though Aballay had courage enough not to obey, it didn’t suffice to utter the humble words that formed in his mind: If he wants to see me, he’ll have to come out.

  He bore the man’s tone, with his anger, with the filthy words. He reckoned on receiving a few blows and jerks, but the soldier decided to give him another chance:

  “You’ve got to go in, let’s do it the nice way.”

  “Long as I can go in mounted, I’ll do so.”

  “Oh, it’s you, the crazy one…!” The man in uniforms recognized and mocked him, but without daring to go further.

  He went to get the commissioner to arbitrate in the dispute. He came back out, no less imperious after being thwarted, and acted as though addressing an absent third party:

  “By order of my superior, the accused, Aballay, must appear, no discussion.”

  Though he did feel compelled to add, in a different tone: “Go on in, you’ve got to have it out with the boss. But pass through the yard; you can enter with your horse.”

  The commissioner, to keep from putting himself on a lower footing than the subject under investigation, pretended he was about to leave, and mounted his own horse. Only then, as though graciously deciding to take the matter in hand, called out: “Let’s get it over with! Tell me, Aballay, what kind of nonsense you’ve gotten up to…”

  But he was indulgent. He knew (or thought he knew) who it was he had before him.

  After a period of wandering, he came across a group of horsemen.

  There were three of them, and they looked like trouble. They had a similar suspicion about him (though the crucifix around his neck could throw them off), but something seemed to change their minds.

  “You looking for work?”

  “Depends…”

  They were rounding up laborers. Two were farmhands and one was their overseer. They were setting up a ranch for a landholder and gathering men to clear the terrain.

  Aballay said no, it wasn’t for him.

  “Stuck-up gaucho,” one hissed, aggressively.

  Again? Aballay asked himself, unable to keep the fury from filling his eyes. The one who’d badmouthed him held his stare, and pranced past him on his horse to underscore the provocation.

  The foreman had no time for this pointless squabble. He called the man over: “Pereira!” and chided Aballay:

  “Who are you anyway?”

  Aballay responded: “A poor man,” as if his words were faintly crumbling. He looked straight at him, and there was no longer ire or pride in his face.

  Then the storied wooden cross and the features of the itinerant rider made sense to him. Respectfully, he brought his hand to his hat and uncovered his head.

  And Aballay knew, at long last, that he’d returned to the hospitable territory the wagon led him away from.

  There were other times when he ran into people on foot. Poorer than I…he concluded.

  A day could pass without him seeing a single person, and maybe the same was true for the stranger; but when they passed, it was rare they’d say anything beyond:

  “Hello…”

  “…take care, my friend.”

  And each would proceed on his way, lost in himself, closed off in that wide-open (and lonesome) world.

  He could tell you about the exodus – who knows where they thought they could earn their bread – of families that had nothing but their children. Dusty troupes, with the father at the head, and the kids bringing up the rear; one, maybe still nursing, under cover of the ample shawl of the mother, who was usually dressed in black. The most sprightly, if he wasn’t weary from starvation, was the dog.

  “Hello…”

  “…take care, Sir.”

  What stood out was their respectfulness, and not just because they called Aballay sir. One man saw him on horseback, and got up from the ledge where he’d been resting. He took his hat in his hand and knocked off the dust against his leg.

  “You know me?”

  “I’ve heard mention, Sir.”

  Aballay left him standing there and thought. The rambler was the type who’d gone downhill till he had nothing
left, not even his faith in himself. It occurred to Aballay they could make the journey together, and that a man condemned to the ground and a man who couldn’t touch the earth could do a lot for one another. Aballay told himself that traveling with a partner would entail chitchat, and he wasn’t much of a talker. And he proved this later when he left, without revealing these notions of companionship.

  In the distance was the outline of what looked like a man in a black soutane, with a poncho that hung down to his feet. He was gesturing, calling for him to hurry over, but Aballay didn’t feel pressed.

  He waved a long stick to prove his point, and was brash about commandeering the other horse, which to his eyes was going to waste.

  Aballay endured his parley, noted his envy, guessed at his dexterity with the stick. He told him he had no interest in an ally, and this exasperated the man, and when Aballay saw this, he decided to leave without adding another word.

  The rogue swung his weapon, trying to knock off the horseman’s head, but he ducked down and saved himself, and drove his horses nimbly onward.

  “God be with you then!” the feeble bandit fumed, in the purest of language. “Go on then, God be with you!”

  “That’s what I’m hoping for,” Aballay consoled himself.

  At a later stage, his health deteriorates. He doesn’t hide it, nor does he make it known.

  The smallholders, the women, do what they can for him: an herbal tea, some chicken broth, warm goat’s milk…They don’t dare give him medicine: a man in his state should be in bed, they think, but this man, no.

  Nor do they dare say a prayer for him. They take it for granted that Aballay’s departures are filled with supplication.

  But it’s not so, not the way those women imagine it. Aballay does pray, in his own way, and not for the restoration of his health. He’s always done it the same way. His prayer is like a thought, which continues after the doctrinal phrases are uttered. He has never used prayer as an occasion for complaint.

  Today, racked with fever, when he’s huddled in a gulley, shivering from cold, he notices, as night draws close, the majestic painting in the sky. It fills his spirit and inspires the urge to do what has never occurred to him before: to pray on his knees, without breaking his vow, without crouching down on the earth; kneeling on his horse.

  He tries, with devotion, with vehemence, with tenacity, but he can’t do it; he’s risking a nasty fall.

  He presses his legs desperately into the animal’s body, trying to keep from slipping, to confront the infinity of shadows swallowing him.

  He dreams of the petals of peach blossoms.

  He dreams he is interpreting his dream: that must be my succor, time in the sun, for the flower opens in spring.

  One day, seeing a peach tree with blossoms bursting on all its branches, he remembers that dream with relish, and sees the certainty of his prophecy.

  A woman asks him to save her son.

  Aballay doesn’t understand. Should he help her take him to a place where there are doctors?

  No. He should bless him, and the boy will get better.

  Aballay is startled by this reputed power; they are confusing him with a saint.

  It hurts him then, when he says: “If I could…”

  The old man, draped in a white poncho, vexed him.

  From among all the pillars of the roofless temples, he had climbed the broken column nearest to his own.

  He brought with him an odious silence, very different from the one practiced by Aballay, because for Aballay, keeping quiet was a custom and not ostentation.

  The old man showed up with a combative silence, as though determined to make Aballay leave.

  Aballay felt watched, and though he didn’t affect to be better than anyone else, he didn’t give in, and he watched over his neighbor.

  He noticed if the old man descended more than was allowed, and he noticed as though nourishing his spite.

  If he suffered from the rain or cold, he resisted, and looked to see if his rival was weakening.

  If the hail fell, he counted not how much struck his own head, but how much pounded the other.

  His behavior was churlish, he had to admit it, but he ascribed it to the other’s ill-spirited vigilance.

  In any case, each passed his time eager to see who would fall first.

  They remained attentive to the signs: if one slumped to the side when sleeping, if the sun made the other woozy, or if he had an attack of chills.

  Maybe that white poncho is bringing him favor, making him look like a saint…Aballay adduced reasons to scorn the old man’s advantage in the offerings piled up at the base of the column.

  A hundred years’ rivalry passed before they reached their deaths. The power of expression left them both in the same instant, and little by little, they dried out. Then they crumbled like two old loaves of bread.

  This nocturnal fantasy left its mark on the rider: it carved deep furrows of acrimony and melancholy inside him.

  He always thinks of the mestizo boy who pinned him with his gaze.

  Years pass. One day, he catches sight of that gaze.

  He knows that the boy, now a man, has come to collect.

  He has followed him, the boy. He catches him in the canebrakes.

  He could be a young saint on his stately horse. His eyes are impassive, but decided. Like Aballay, he is dressed in rags.

  He tells him:

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “A long time…?”

  “My whole life, since I grew up.”

  He doesn’t ask, he tells him:

  “You knew my father.”

  It would be pointless to ask him who he is, and who his father was.

  He tells him:

  “Get down on the ground, Sir.”

  Aballay decides that this isn’t reason enough either. And it seems to him he shouldn’t reveal why: it would look like he was dissembling his fear.

  As his reflections make him waver, the other goads him:

  “Sir, I’ve come here to fight you.”

  Aballay makes a serene gesture, showing his agreement, and the young man continues:

  “I know you’re said to never come down from your horse. I’ll have to knock you off. I was just offering you the chance to face me man-to-man on solid ground. If you don’t want that, we’ll do it your way.”

  Slowly the man unsheathes his facón, the knife draped across his back, as long as the quest he’s just brought to an end.

  Agile and rapid, Aballay lurches forward and sharp-eyed, energetic, determined, he cuts a stiff, thick stalk of cane more than a yard in length. He takes his position, holding it cocked like a lance, his triangular knife blade tucked back in his belt.

  His opponent is startled:

  “You don’t have a decent knife…? You’re not even going to use the one you’ve got?”

  But Aballay utters no more words, he waits.

  He doesn’t wish to kill, but he’ll defend himself.

  They fight. He whips the man with the cane; the wounds are superficial. He tries to strike the hand that holds the weapon, so he’ll drop it. His contender rushes past him, swiping in arcs that hit and sting. He turns and swings with two hands, trying to split his face open. Aballay sidesteps him and his facón hits the cane, cutting it into a perfect point. Aballay instinctively holds still and doesn’t buckle. When the boy stumbles, the unintentionally sharpened tip plunges into his mouth, ruining it. The man slips, gasping futilely at the reins for support.

  From above, Aballay studies him for a second. He has failed and done the thing he hoped to avoid: killing a second time. The profuse blood, drowning the man’s wails and muffling his bellows, provokes his compassion and nausea.

  He dismounts to help him, and makes it over to the vanquished man, but then, his law makes him stop short: he is not to set foot on the ground, and he has done so.

  In anguish, he looks up, and resolves on his own that this time, he may stay down as long as necess
ary.

  This moment of vacillation lasts long enough for the avenger, from below, to raise the tip of his knife and slit Aballay’s belly.

  Aballay falls, his forces drain quickly, and the first thing to abandon him is the suffering from the wound.

  He sees that his body will remain bound to the earth forever now. His thoughts blurred, he babbles excuses: “Under the duress of a greater force, it has…”

  Aballay is dying, stretched out in the dust, with a pained smile on his lips.

  Fish

  For Lumila, the whispers of the night recoil, then disappear. They make a hollow in her mind, and she falls asleep. No matter how tenaciously they catch on the underbrush, exhale like sighs, or screech, or mimic lamentations or danger.

  She sleeps beneath the night, Lumila, a slight and fragile rest. It breaks, and her eyes open wide at the behest of what comes from within her: a presentiment. Her man won’t come back. So long an absence is suspect.

  She won’t sleep more until she sees him; she is dying to see him, even if he shows up unwell…or in pieces. She shrinks from this last thought, and huddles: let him return, from that faraway roadhouse in the country, even with a few cuts on his face or body.

  All the silence – which is not silence, but murmurs clotting in her consciousness, because the sounds she longs to hear don’t come – gathers together into a ball that lodges in her stomach.

  She wants to cry, now more than ever, but she stops, careful to listen, because any sound of horsemen, even in the distance, consoles her. She doesn’t need to guess at the nature of the sounds, she deciphers them effortlessly, those of the birds and the pests and the air. She tries to sweep them away, to let through only what she longs to hear. She tries to recover pleasing memories, ones they have in common, to distract herself, and remembers that other horror from her childhood: the enormous bird with the fish’s body.

  “With no legs,” her husband likes to add, and he assures her he’s seen it.

  “So how does it perch?” she’s always asked, hoping the monster is a lie.