Eucalyptus

by Mauricio Segura

  Noemi rubbed her forearm, as if to ward off any chills to come. With the remote, she lowered the volume of the television set. Her big green eyes shifted from the small screen to the crumbs scattered over the table, which she began to form into a little pile. You wouldn’t think she was papa’s sister, thought Alberto. And as with every time he saw her after a long absence, he thought again of her three fiancés who died suddenly before the marriage ceremony could take place. As you might expect on Latin American soil, the gossips were quick to spread sordid rumours on her account, and to brand her as a woman condemned to solitude, a dire destiny, and the punishment of God. Fortunately, as someone of strong character, his aunt never paid much attention to what went on behind her back. In any case, when he thought of her, he always saw the same sepia photograph of her in profile, smiling at the little Italian coffeepot steaming on the kitchen stove, with her French cut and the bangs that offset her sad and lively gaze, while in the background a bearded Roberto in a striped and wrinkled shirt read the newspaper, eyes half open as if surprised by the flash. That photo dated from when they were university students sharing a tiny apartment. In a way, it was a faithful reflection of their relationship: Noemi, with her boundless devotion to her favourite brother, would campaign by his side when he ran for the presidency of the Young Socialists at the University of Temuco, and then, many years later, she would become his principal advisor when he was elected to Congress under Salvador Allende. And you, Papa, what did you do for her in return? Even with her, were you an egotist?

  “You know who that is, don’t you?” said Noemi, nodding towards a chubby, bespectacled face on the television screen.

  “Huenchumilla. I saw the posters on the Plaza de Armas.”

  “He’s way ahead in the polls. I’ll only celebrate once he’s elected, though. Because they could easily assassinate him …”

  On the small screen, Huenchumilla waved to the crowd as he walked away from the microphone. Around him, his supporters, dark-skinned for the most part, applauded wildly. When they raised his arm he smiled, a bit ill at ease. The report then turned to a Mapuche leader with an angular and solemn face: “Be careful, it’s not because the Concertación candidate is native that he’s going to win the vote of all the native people. Fine, Huenchumilla has promised to help the Mapuche people to regain their dignity, but he has to go further. To commit himself, for instance, to negotiations that would give them back their ancestral lands. Because the voters are not fools, they’re watching the Concertación very closely. While it claims to be the great defender of this country’s underprivileged, just a few weeks ago, near Bío Bío, it inaugurated an open-air dump right in the middle of a Mapuche cemetery. The Alliance? Don’t even talk about them, a Pinochetist party, people whose hands are still dripping with blood.” Demonstrators now filled the small screen, brandishing banners on which you could read: Autonomia del pueblo mapuche, and Respeto y dignidad. All of a sudden police on motorcycles appeared, people scrambled, there was a confused ballet of fleeing demonstrators in the midst of tear gas and rubber bullets. When a journalist from the capital, thin with pale eyes, called the demonstrators “terrorists,” Noemi grabbed the remote and pressed “Mute.”

  “‘Terrorists.’ Did you hear that? Have they fallen on their heads, or what?”

  Alberto asserted that Santiago was out of touch with realities in the South, but clearly the discussion did not interest his aunt.

  “What a day!” she sighed. “And I think I’m catching a cold, to boot.”

  As though to make the point, she started telling him about her day in a light, almost cheerful voice, punctuating her sentences with nervous smiles as if to let him know that, despite the circumstances, she was strong and would not be beaten down. She’d first gone to the village of Las Violetas, to the country house, but without Roberto it seemed unbearably sad. Wherever she looked, the trees, the stable, the pasture, the river, she saw only desolation. What is more, and that was strange, none of the neighbours were at home. She tried to find a will, a document, something, but she left empty-handed. She went to Cunco, to the police station. There, after having been made to cool her heels, they finally let her read the report, but not to make a copy, which also seemed strange. The report, two pages that mainly contained information such as Roberto’s age and civil status, concluded that there had been “death preceded by a trauma.” In short, he hurt himself at the farm and did not go to the hospital, as he had been urged to do. The body was discovered by a certain Raúl, one of his old friends, and he seemed to have died of an internal hemorrhage.

  “What?” said Alberto. “How did he hurt himself?”

  “The report said nothing about a wound. And the lieutenant just repeated what he’d written in the report. According to him, if Roberto had seen a doctor, he’d still be alive.”

  Alberto was dumbfounded.

  “I couldn’t believe my ears,” Noemi went on. “But I also said to myself: that rings true, what he says. Remember, Roberto hated going to the doctor.”

  And in fact, Alberto had absolutely no memory of his father setting foot in a clinic or in a hospital. On the contrary, thinking he knew enough medicine, he treated himself, like the time he hurt his leg while camping, and Alberto, astonished, surprised him in the woods giving himself stitches, hiding so his wife, a trained nurse, would not see.

  “Really,” said Noemi, “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  Señora Miriam was standing in the kitchen doorway, her purse over her shoulder. “The child is sleeping, I’m finished for today, Madame.”

  “Thank you, Miriam. See you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow, and a good wake, señor, señora.” She crossed herself before disappearing from sight in the dark corridor. When Alberto asked her who she was expecting that evening, Noemi replied that she had invited all her brothers and sisters, but she didn’t know who would come.

  “Listen, did anyone have a grudge against him recently? You know how he was, he broke with everyone for no reason at all.”

  Without batting an eye, she gave it some thought.

  “I don’t know, because he never told me anything any more. I don’t think he trusted me like before. He came to pick up his mail, we talked about this and that, but we didn’t talk really. It was as if, for some mysterious reason, he’d decided to put up a barrier between us. Sometimes we had elevenses together, but I left him alone, I pretended everything was normal. You’ve been talking to Abuela, right?”

  Alberto didn’t react.

  “Be careful,” she went on. “You have to take everything she says with a grain of salt.”

  “I know, but all the same. He didn’t phone her. And that was the first time in half a century.”

  Noemi swept her eyes over the garish yellow walls.

  “This last year, he completely changed. He became very suspicious. Even with me. Many times I tried to make him listen to reason. But it was as if he no longer needed me, as if he wanted to drop me …”

  “Don’t say that. You know it’s not true.”

  “In fact, when I think, he began to drift away when he met her.”

  “Met who?”

  “Amalia.”

  “Amalia?”

  Their eyes met, and for a long moment, they were silent.

  “He never talked to you about her? Damn,” she said softly, as if just to herself. “I was sure you knew, because your mother did.”

  Alberto didn’t move a muscle.

  She lowered her eyes, while rubbing her hands together.

  “He met her at a fiesta. A fiesta in a Mapuche village, very near the house.”

  While Roberto and the men, bent over, were gathering eucalyptus branches, a boy dressed in a striped wool vest came running towards them, raising a cloud of dust. He asked one of the workers which one was the boss, then he came to a stop in front of Roberto, his mouth half open as he caught
his breath. He had almond eyes, a flat nose, and was already thickset, despite his age. He looked down, stammering, and in that Spanish that sounds as if every sentence is a question, he told him that the chief was inviting them to a fiesta that very night. He recited it all in one breath, as if he had been repeating the words all along the way, and before Roberto had a chance to ask him what exactly was being celebrated, the boy vanished behind a long row of eucalyptus.

  That night, Roberto had only one idea in his head, to rest his feet on a chair and watch the sun as it set, while sipping a beer. But how would the Indians react if he did not turn up at the fiesta? Reluctantly, he shaved, showered; he would put in an appearance.

  In the yard of a single-storey yellow house, men of all ages were drinking around a picnic table. Near the door leading to the kitchen, where several barrels were turned upside down, women were gossiping. Not far off, children were playing football. At the other end of the yard, some old men, seated on a rock or leaning against a post, looked at him with their tired eyes, while a few mentally handicapped individuals wandered about, their eyes to the ground.

  A small man, frail, with an olive complexion, came towards him. He introduced himself; he was the chief. There was something feline about his eyes, his gestures were slow and calculated. The first thing he did was to share with Robert a Mapadungun proverb foretelling thunderclouds for anyone threatening a son of Ngenechen. A warning? A witticism? He held out a glass so they could drink together. The cider was hot and bitter: had it turned to vinegar? Robert took small swallows, wanting only one thing: to leave.

  “No, I’ve never met him,” said Noemi. “It seems he’s a sly fox. In any case, he knows how to command respect. In his village, the people do everything he wants, without complaining.”

  Soon, the men’s faces took on a haggard, vaguely demented air. In the midst of this assembly, more and more fantastical as the night drew on, the chief stood apart: he drank moderately, his eyes sharp, despite his sickly demeanour. Roberto spent most of the evening talking to him. The chief listened, his head tilted to the side, his hands resting on one knee. When Roberto declared that he was born and had grown up in the area, the chief told him he was aware of it, and that he knew perfectly well who he was.

  “And what are you going to do with your land?” asked the chief.

  Roberto explained that three-quarters of the land was reserved for the growing of eucalyptus, wood that he sold to the Araucania Madera Company. Business was good, so why change anything? The rest of his land fed forty or so cows that gave milk. “To be honest,” said Roberto, leaning into his companion with a smile on his lips, “that’s what gives me the most pleasure. I’ve always wanted to have a dairy farm. Eventually, I’d like to produce cheese.”

  Perfectly still, the chief studied him with his piercing eyes, as if waiting for him to add something, as if Roberto’s words had left him unsatisfied or indifferent, then finally he spat on the ground before whistling in the direction of a burly man who instantly brought them two more plastic glasses filled with cider. Roberto thought to himself that he had perhaps judged these people too quickly. Like everybody else, they amused themselves on weekends, that’s all.

  Later, as the cider was making his limbs feel heavy and slow, some women launched into a datún, a ritual that seeks to cure chronic illnesses. He had witnessed it once as an adolescent along with the old man. The women danced around the machi, the healer, who was stroking the hair of an old man in poor health, lying on the grass. When the machi began to tap on a kultrún, the women brought branches of canelo together over the heads of the invalid and the healer. It was then that Roberto spotted a young woman, not unlike the others (she was small, plump, and her black hair fell gracefully to her lower back), but who executed the dance steps with a mirthful air, the flames of the campfire licking at her round face.

  “Her age?” Noemi said. “I don’t know. Twenty-four, twenty-five.”

  As Roberto was opening the door of the pickup, he felt someone pulling at his sleeve. The chief told him that he could not leave without meeting his daughter Amalia. When she emerged out of the shadows, Roberto smiled: it was the young woman he’d observed earlier. When she held out her hand, he told himself that he must be confusing desire with reality, because he could have sworn that she was devouring him with her eyes.

  “Amalia,” repeated Alberto. “And you say she’d been living with him for a year? I can’t imagine him with a woman that age. It’s as if you were talking about someone else.”

  “That’s how I felt at first,” replied Noemi. “I said to myself: what is she looking for, that one? What does she want? But when I saw them together for the first time, I changed my mind. She teased him, taunted him: ‘You have a yen for me, eh, viejito?’ And he looked at her like a child caught in the act. She took his face in both hands and kissed him tenderly on the mouth. You’d think she pitied him. And you know, in a way, that reassured me … Roberto always needed a woman’s company. First, it was me. After, it was your mother. And then it was this girl’s turn.”

  Back home, Roberto lay down on his bed and watched the walls spinning around him. He might very well never see any of those people again. He could forget about the puffed up faces, the desperate smiles. But the truth was, he had enjoyed himself.

  The next week, Roberto moved the silo, and sowed oats (“The new manna apparently,” said Noemi) on three hectares, just as an experiment. He bought twenty cows and more up-to-date dairy equipment, and adopted a bright stray dog that he baptized Diego.

  One very hot day, as he was transporting a load of milk, he turned off the pickup’s engine when he saw appear out of nowhere, in the middle of the dry reddish road, the chief escorted by two sturdy men. The window open, Roberto rested his elbow on the doorframe. The old Mapuche stopped level with the front tire, on the driver’s side. His eyes on the triangle carved out of the horizon by two hills, a shimmering panorama in the heat, the chief talked of one thing and another, without conviction, almost flippantly. After a while he remarked, as if commenting the weather:

  “You made a good impression on my daughter.”

  Roberto felt a drop of sweat run down his torso. At first he wondered why the chief was talking to him yet again about his daughter. Was he mistaking his own desire for something real, and was this man truly offering him his daughter? When the chief said, softly, as if pronouncing holy words, that in these times when it’s so hard to find work, life is difficult, very difficult, especially for young people who can’t pay for their education, it seemed as if he were saying that the young girl was looking for employment. Roberto stared at the charred insects on the windshield, pushed up the back of his leather hat, and murmured:

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The chief gave the door a tap, turned his back, and walked away from the road.

  Ten days later, on a morning when the rain was easing up, he again ran into the chief, but alone (what was he doing there?) at about the same spot. This time Roberto was on foot, along with four of his men. The old Mapuche’s face was wet with rain, his smooth, greying hair stuck to his temples. He looked ten years younger. Roberto told him, on impulse, that his daughter, if she was still interested, could clean for him twice a week. The chief’s only response was an impenetrable smile.

  From Amalia’s first day Roberto was taken with her bold gait, her vigorous application of the cleaning cloth, her constant humming. The house began to smell good, its former disorder gone. At noon one day, without anyone asking, she prepared a cazuela from what was left of an asado, and the men greedily gobbled it up. One of the workers exclaimed, a teasing smile on his lips:

  “No doubt about it, when a woman runs the house, it’s not the same!”

  He burped happily; the others followed suit, their eyes puffy from the punishing heat and a red wine that had their heads spinning.

  Each week, on the steps of the house, Roberto b
rought out a roll of bills to pay the employees standing in line. He didn’t know quite why, but it pleased him to see them eyeing the thick wad of bills, whether with greed, feigned indifference, or resignation. It was as if tacitly, he was asking them if they were worthy of the confidence he had invested in them.

  “The last time I was here,” said Alberto, “I saw how he was treating his employees. I was appalled. It seemed as if he was behaving that way just to tell me, ‘Here’s what I think of your idealism. You knew that, didn’t you?’ He always regarded me as someone who didn’t understand that life is a struggle, a constant competition. I had the feeling that he was harking back, without saying so, to our former differences.”

  During his brief exchanges with Amalia, Noemi went on, Roberto tried desperately to find subjects of conversation. Do you need soap? Detergent? No, she had all she needed, thank you. Any questions on what you have to do? No, everything’s clear, and she turned her back. Even as one of his workers was waiting to be paid, he followed her with his eyes as she moved about briskly between two rows of bushes dotted with small blue fruit, her bound hair, with each quick step, oscillating like a pendulum.

  One morning, in the half-light of the stable smelling of hay, Roberto and his men were huddled around a cow collapsed in a corner. The animal, whose eyes were veering rapidly between exhaustion and panic, mooed less and less, as if she sensed that her little one would not see the light of day, or that she herself would not survive. Amalia’s head appeared at the doorway in silhouette. She entered and propped the broom handle against the wall, but remained there, hesitant, her body streaked with light and shadow from the sun’s angling through gaps in the boards. She moved towards them, knelt, and probed the animal’s belly with such precision that everyone turned to her. She positioned herself behind the animal, and inserted her arm, up to the biceps, into the uterus. She ordered the men to help push the animal onto its side, then spent a good half hour trying to unwind the umbilical cord from the calf’s foot, sometimes changing the position of the mother, sometimes that of the little one. Once the rear hooves of the calf came into sight, she stood up. The men pulled, grunting. When the calf fell out onto the straw, the sweat-covered men just stared at it, half astonished, half incredulous.