“It doesn’t work anymore?”
“For the last few days, it stops and starts. It has to be repaired.”
She gave it back to him, and venturing a smile, she said:
“It’s really you, Albertito?”
He held the watch and got on his knees at her feet. With her rough fingers, she patted Alberto’s hair and cheeks. He looked at her face, which, despite her yellowed eyes, despite the ravages of time, brought back to him a torrent of memories, of when he was Marco’s age and she kept him with her for entire days, before the dictatorship chased them out of the country again.
“You look more and more like Roberto,” she said, mussing his hair. “Do you have his character, too?” she asked, teasingly. “Ay, Dios mío, I hope not!” she added, smiling.
He returned her smile and pushed his face up against her skirts. He felt her own special odour attack his nostrils, one of wool, of tenderness, and of a madness she would not concede. He kept his eyes closed, persuaded that when he opened them he could remove himself from this oppressive climate of mourning.
She gestured to Marco that he should come near. Caressing his hands vigorously, as if she could not believe the softness of his skin, she asked him where his mother was. When the child explained that she had stayed in Canada, she looked at Alberto the way she used to when she was going to scold him.
“I’m not wrong, then?” she said. “You are like Roberto?”
Continuing to pass her hands through his curly hair, she raised her eyes to the ceiling and, in a stronger voice, as if she were addressing a large audience, embarked on a confused tirade against men and the desires that possess them like evil spirits. An evil she traced back to her dead husband, and her husband’s father, and his father before him. She went on with her monologue, digging deeper into the family’s past, and recalling, as she never failed to do, their ancestors’ arrival from Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, from an idyllic village called Monastir, today Bitola, at the heart of Macedonia. And Alberto was treated to the entire narrative of the family’s founding, only now it was timely, because although he knew it was a romanticized version, he needed to hear this story of emigration, of a flight by boat against the backdrop of a great conflagration, of the persecution of the Jewish community, and the decadence of the Ottoman Empire. Then, losing the thread of what she was saying, as if suddenly she had come back to herself and the weighty concerns of the present, she went silent. Her eyes darted this way and that, while at last tears ran down Alberto’s cheeks.
“You know they killed him, don’t you?”
This was less a question than a blunt assertion.
“What?”
“I said they wanted to hurt him and someone killed him.”
Alberto stopped blinking.
“Abuela, you can’t just say things like that, without proof.”
“What do you think? I’ve got proof, a whole lifetime’s proof!”
Alberto sat back on his heels.
“Listen, all the Venturas have iron constitutions. You must know that. Look at your grandfather’s brothers and sisters. They all lived to almost a hundred, no? Your father was not a Magallanes. Like Noemi, for example, with her delicate health. He was a Ventura. Even as a child, he never got sick.”
Marco, seated near her on the wood floor, was all ears.
“What they’re saying makes no sense,” she burst out. “There’s something wrong there.”
“What do you mean?” asked Alberto.
“I mean he didn’t get sick, I mean someone is lying. I know it, I feel it …”
She added:
“Wait, wait a little.”
And she talked about how she and Roberto always spoke on the telephone every Sunday, just after dinner. Alberto then remembered his father pacing up and down the hall, the receiver held to his ear, holding the base in one hand, the wire trailing on the carpet of their Côte-des-Neiges apartment, while Alberto’s mother, lying on the bed, listened in while pretending to leaf through a magazine, jealous, Alberto thought, of the close bond between her husband and her mother-in-law, but never saying a thing. Meanwhile he was living his own life, cloistered in his bedroom, his den, propped against the headboard, with his cassettes, his books, and already his first writings.
“If he’d really been sick, he would have told me. But the last Sunday before he died, he didn’t phone. For the very first time, on that day, we didn’t talk. I sat by the telephone for hours, and when I saw the sun set, I knew something had happened to him.”
Alberto’s heart was speeding up, but still he ventured:
“Maybe he wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to worry you?”
“Didn’t want to worry me,” she repeated, disdainfully, shutting her eyes. “Do you know how far back those Sunday telephone calls go?”
And without waiting for an answer, triumphant:
“Forever! They go back to the morning he left the house from one day to the next. He hadn’t even started to shave.”
Alberto felt a prickling on his face, as if an imaginary hand were having its way with him, sticking him with sewing needles. Meanwhile Marco edged closer to his great-grandmother, the better to hear.
“It was a weekday,” she said. “It was raining cats and dogs. Aside from your grandfather, there was only Roberto and me at the farm.”
Roberto raised his head to see, over the cow’s black back, behind the thick curtain of rain that made the fodder all the more odorous, the old man mounting his horse, surrounded by his men. He pulled at Estrellita’s reins, the horse unusually wild that day, in a filthy mood, as the rain pelted down like bullets onto her straw hat. Roberto stared at his father and saw clearly that his lips were moving. What was he doing? Ordering the animal to calm itself? Was he trying, as was his way, to frighten it a little by speaking rapidly? From time to time the old man turned his head towards Roberto so that he would come and help, or so Roberto thought, but he couldn’t be sure: his eyes were hidden by his hat’s rim.
“Roberto wasn’t going to school?” asked Marco.
“He’d repeated his year, and your great-grandfather made him work on the farm. For a whole year. He got up at four in the morning and went to bed at seven at night, dead from fatigue. He went off to pile hay and saw that others were doing their homework or having fun. I said to your great-grandfather: ‘All right, he understands, let him go back to school.’ But your great grandfather barked: ‘Don’t interfere. I want him to beg me, next year, to be sent to school.’”
“It’s curious, he never talked about that,” said Alberto.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Abuela, repressing a smile.
Roberto continued working at the cow’s teats. God in heaven, she seemed truly feverish, with drool flowing from her mouth and an eye bizarrely closed, invaded by pus. She was giving hardly any milk; there was only about a cup in the pail, no more. When Roberto raised his head again to glance towards the old man, he saw Estrellita awkwardly waving her hooves in the air, with the grey sky behind like thick smoke. Her iron horseshoes were making arabesques. It was with such fright, with such horror, that he followed the graceful, almost human arching upwards of the animal, that he didn’t notice that she was landing each time on a sodden light blue sweater. Nor did he see that the men had spread out, knees bent as if ready to pounce, forming a circle around the old man, the mare, and this worker on the ground who was now hiding his face with his forearm.
After a long minute, perhaps two, Roberto finally realized that behind the shafts of rain, the hooves were sinking themselves into the stomach of the man in the light blue sweater, then with time stopped, rising again in slow motion, the better to trample the entrails of the man, who was no longer moving.
“Your grandfather had just told five of his men that he no longer required their services,” said Abuela in a strong voice, as
if the men in question were in the room. “They became mad, desperate. They threatened him. And Estrellita, that magnificent animal that guessed at everything, defended him tooth and nail.”
Paralyzed, Roberto upended the pail with his foot. The little pool of milk spread over the grass, and was instantly diluted by the rain. But Roberto kept his eyes riveted on the scene where, fifty metres away, beside the chicken coop, his father’s life hung by a thread. As the animal reared up again, neighing as though delivering itself of a despairing cry, the old man, still in the saddle, but who had inadvertently dropped the reins, tried to regain control in full flight. Roberto saw him, tenacious, doing everything he could to clutch at something. He saw him in the winds gliding by the heights of Llaima’s snowy peak; as if gravity itself had abdicated, he saw him in an impossible position: his head almost touching his feet, his arms stretched out, still struggling as his straw hat spun away. Then, as if a magic spell had been broken and reality had got the upper hand once more, he saw him, like a sack of potatoes, drop to the ground and not bounce back.
Thick and obstinate, the rain pounded the old man’s body. Estrellita escaped the men, and describing a half moon, took flight. Alberto could easily imagine the old man’s employees with their eyes on the motionless body, glancing furtively around, suddenly exasperated by the never-ending rain pouring down. All at once the old man moved a hand. An arm. Palm on knee, he tried to rise. Blinking his eyes convulsively, he seemed to be looking for his hat. Erect, he pivoted, swayed, oblivious of the men as they tightened the circle around him.
“If I remember well,” said Abuela, “we had just become associated with Araucania Madera. A British company. They supplied us with machinery. We supplied the labour. That’s when we planted our first eucalyptus.”
It’s true, they were among the first to associate, thought Alberto, with the company that now called all the shots in the region. Abuela looked at him sternly, and went on, as though in reply to his censorious and disappointed gaze:
“Then, people didn’t yet know this tree. Those few who had heard about it only knew that it came from Australia and that it grew with phenomenal speed. And that in the old country, in Europe, they paid generously for the paste made from eucalyptus. And in fact,” she continued, a smile crossing her face, “in less than ten years, many fortunes were made thanks to this magical and odorous tree that Yahweh had been kind enough to place in our path. And yes, your grandfather was one of them. And then, what? What did we do that was so bad? The Levys and the Kalderóns, didn’t they do as much? You know, when I hear people today complaining about this tree, it makes me laugh. Some, it’s true, went too far, and they paid the price: the tree ruined their land. And yes, it excited the avarice of others. But you have to remember what’s most important: it pulled us out of poverty. That’s enormous! Really, people have short memories.”
Once the workers encircled the old man, Roberto could no longer see him. It was as if he had disappeared. Then, to his left, he heard a whistling, like the lisping cry of the jote. He saw his mother, in a long creased skirt, hatless, the rain pouring down her cheeks, advancing purposefully, her face grim, her eye flush with the sight of a rifle.
“I’d been following what was going on from the kitchen window. When I saw that these no-goods wanted to finish off your grandfather, it was as if I were no longer myself. Still, today, I don’t exactly remember having taken the rifle from the rack where he stored his guns, nor having gone out under the rain. All I remember is that they turned as one man and froze when they saw me with a weapon.”
“They thought that Abuelo had trampled the man on purpose, is that it?” asked Alberto.
Abuela nodded, solemnly.
“They never wanted to admit that it was an accident. That if anyone was responsible, it was them. Because they were the ones who attacked your grandfather and excited the animal. It’s true, your grandfather was a stubborn man, often hard with his men. But never,” she said in a ringing voice, “would he have intentionally ridden over one of them with a horse. That was not his way of dealing with conflicts. What happened was unfortunate. Really. The man never walked again. Your grandfather suffered from that. But the truth, the real truth, is that these men hated us, they were jealous of what we owned. It’s easy to hate the boss, you know, especially when he’s Jewish.”
In the midst of the deluge, once the men had come to the aid of the wounded worker, Roberto staggered towards the old man. He saw, thought Alberto, the old man’s face washed by rain, his hair now straight and shiny. When he went to take him in his arms, the icy gaze of the old man stopped him in his tracks. In that instant, Roberto found his bony face beautiful, with its fine features and the prominent veins zigzagging down his cheeks.
“Your grandfather told him to leave,” said Abuela. “He never forgave Roberto for having done nothing to help him. That moment was seared into his memory. Right to the end.”
“But what could papa have done?”
“That’s what I kept saying to your grandfather. But he always had the same answer: it was his son he wanted to save him. Not me, his wife. Besides, Roberto was good with the rifle. Anyway, much better than me.”
She closed her eyes, as though to indicate that what she was going to say was painful for her.
“Your father too, he never forgave him for throwing him out. Every time your grandfather tried to patch things up over the phone, your father hung up on him. And God only knows how many times I tried to reconcile them. I tried everything.”
“But despite that,” said Alberto, “or perhaps because of it all, Abuelo left him all he had.”
Abuela smiled, staring into space. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out, as if she had suddenly changed her mind, as if she was tired of reviving old demons.
“After that,” she said finally, “Roberto settled in Temuco. He was never angry with me. He knew I would never put up with any bickering.”
With this radical shift in tone, with these brusque words, Alberto understood she was telling him that the discussion was over.
3
Alberto swallowed his glass of beer, sitting in front of a dessert plate on which was resting a small spoon. Marco was bent over a colouring book whose pages were crumpled and stained. A few steps away, the round and placid face of Señora Miriam came and went behind the steam over the sink. She wore a white apron, from time to time turned her head towards Alberto, and, in her musical accent, told him that of late Roberto hardly ever came any more to Temuco, that in fact the family rarely had news of him. When they learned he was sick, ten days before he died, God take his soul and may he rest in peace, it was a real surprise, Señor.
She was silent for a moment, and then, as if to change the subject, while filling a pot with water, she spoke of the day when Roberto, here in this same kitchen, during Alberto’s last visit four years earlier, had asked Señorita Anne-Marie to prepare calzones rotos. Did he remember? Marco was just a baby, still at the breast.
Of course he remembered.
“Ah, I tell you,” she sighed, “people always disappear too fast.”
Without being too obvious, Alberto searched her face to see if she were sincere.
“And how is Señora Anne-Marie?”
She asked the question without turning her head his way, while scrubbing the pot with steel wool. “Very well, thank you,” he replied, assuming that other questions would follow, but they did not. “And Señora your mother?”
“She’s coming tonight, she’ll stay with her sister.”
When the bright red Nissan parked behind the truck, Alberto raised his eyes to see, over the little television set and behind the window frame, his aunt Noemi coming up the drive in the transient grey-blue twilight. As soon as she came into the kitchen, her face brightened on seeing them. She kissed them on their cheeks, fussing over Marco for a long time. When she sat down, Alberto noted that she looked tired and t
hat her eyes were red and slightly swollen.
Did Señora want something to eat? It was all right, Miriam, she had a snack on the way. A little coffee? Good idea. And you, Señor?
“Fine.”
Señora Miriam dried her hands on her apron, and came towards them with two cups. After a moment, she placed her hand on the back of Noemi’s chair, and bent her head towards Marco.
“And the two of us are going to go up and read a beautiful story?”
Marco raised his head.
“I don’t want to sleep, Papa.”
“Don’t worry,” replied Señora Miriam. “We’re not going to sleep, we’re just going to rest our legs, that’s all.”
Alberto agreed. And so Marco sighed, and reluctantly made his way around the table. He gave a kiss to his father and Noemi, and held out his hand to Señora Miriam. Alberto heard them as they climbed the stairs. “It’s true? You don’t know the story of little Lucho?”
Eucalyptus Page 3
