Nothing But Dust

by Sandrine Collette

  On the days that follow she keeps looking out at the road, not saying a word. In the morning, and in the evening before nightfall, she stands by the kitchen window and waits with her arms crossed, and truly on her face there are no signs of tenderness or sorrow, because when she stands there she is speaking to fate, mischievous fate which never stops giving her a hard time, well then, let it come. Morning and evening the mother steams up the window with her breath, she has no intention of leaving her post until something happens, she doesn’t know what—the little brother comes back, or a single horse, or bad news. Hardly matters which. Just so the world stops making fun of her, stops ignoring her; she wants an answer. Her mean gaze embraces the plain as far as the eye can see, and if she could set the thickets ablaze with her fury she certainly would, to show them all who she is, and what she has in store for them—show them, the spirits, the clumsy little gods, she defies them to come and stand there before her so she can talk to them about the misfortune they have wrought, since that’s all they know how to do. That is why she raises her eyes to the sky, not in prayer, no, it’s a threat, her teeth grinding fit to bust the eardrums of the almighty, and fulmination steaming from her nose and mouth, she has to keep from blaspheming—you never know—by biting her lips.

  Now and then when they see her, glued to her chair with her faraway gaze, Mauro and Steban think about the father who went away and never came back, along that very road, and Mauro grunts, That bastard. Steban says nothing. He still can never say for certain what happens at night when the mother leads you away on a horse. But she dismisses the two remaining brothers with a wave of her hand.

  “Get going.”

  Get going means, get to work. And there’s no doubt, it’s piling up in every corner of the estancia, and yet even she is forced to admit that they are hard at it, her sons, from dawn to dusk, even Mauro is looking tired. But he doesn’t give up, he goes on repairing a pickaxe or a calving harness in the lamplight in the stable at night, and when he comes in, all he says is, “It’s done.”

  Once or twice he added, It’s not so bad, huh. And the mother knows perfectly well what he’s referring to, the second son to leave after Joaquin, the huge void on the estancia, and Mauro doesn’t want her to weep or regret. He doesn’t give a damn about the little brother, doesn’t give a damn that he’s gone off, too. Maybe he’s lying dead somewhere but that won’t change his life, or the mother’s, that’s what he commands with his silence and his hard face, they don’t need the little brother. And while for her the sorrow is nearly gone, already, because she is so used to these blows of fate, she bows to them already and works out what she has left to keep on going; worry, on the other hand, gnaws away at her, worry about not having enough hands for the job, because Mauro is wrong, of that she is sure, the three of them won’t be enough. She’ll have to take on extra hands for the shearing season, she really didn’t need this, no, she really didn’t. All their efforts going up in smoke.

  Because when she adds it all up, two out of four means half, and for nothing. It’s enough to make you choke with rage. Years of feeding and bringing those kids up by the sweat of her brow, arching her back in order to cope. Because it all takes a huge effort; because they eat vast amounts. Just when they were all four of them getting strong and assuming their share of the labor, giving her a bit of relief from her burden. Yes, just then, when at last they were beginning to earn more than they cost. Rotten luck. One of the twins, already, hasn’t been there for weeks; and now the youngest. Two of them, in a flash. Of course, compared to wild animals it’s nothing, everyone knows that eight young rabbits out of ten die before they reach maturity. But it’s no consolation to the mother. She forgets that she’s the one who lost Joaquin at poker, and that where the little brother is concerned, nothing’s sure yet. In her muddled brain she confuses it all: if you’re absent, you’re dead—that’s her way of seeing things, dead doesn’t necessarily mean death, it just means gone, that’s all. And they sure had something to do with it, too, those two who are gone, thumbing their noses at her, when she’s been slaving away relentlessly to turn them into men, not to see them vanish without a trace or run off to work for someone else. Their desertion enrages her, blindly. She is unjust, she can sense it in the way Mauro looks at her when she talks about them, and he clams up because she’s swearing. But he’s not the one whose efforts are being wiped out one after the other, he’s not the one forfeiting years of patience, living from hand to mouth while waiting for the day she’d get her revenge, four solid sons, tough as they come, and at last she’d be able to find some rest for this body of hers, aching and exhausted by this life that’s no life for any woman, that’s for sure. That’s why she cried out, her first words, when Mauro and Steban came back without Rafael:

  “Where is that little piece of scum?”

  As if the kid were making her angry on purpose, off hiding somewhere and laughing at his joke. But the mother knew perfectly well when he didn’t come back that it was no joke: something happened, she knows it did, and what good could happen out in that land, nothing, don’t even ask, it’s a place full of sorrow. Even the horses never made it. Can three horses just vanish like that when they know their home, when they’ve always lived there? You’d be bound to find them again, errant, exhausted: but not those ones. It’s as if they’d never existed. As if they’ve been snatched up by the sky or the earth, or by spirits. At night she can hear the sound of hooves, she leaps to her feet. But it’s just her imagination playing tricks on her, even when she thinks she can see the little brother down the road, his thin little shape jogging along to come home at last. She waits until her eyes sting and she has to face facts, there’s no one there, just twisted trees outside and tears inside, she waits and goes back to bed, and doesn’t sleep, he was her youngest, after all.

  After one more week has gone by she stops counting, stops mourning, accepts the fact that he will not come back. The best thing for her to do is to banish him from her mind so he won’t be in the way, so she won’t whine. Still, it doesn’t stop her from catching herself at the window morning and evening, her gaze scorching the landscape around her and murmuring new imprecations like some old woman whose mind is reeling. But she’s stopped thinking about Rafael. If he fell, if he’s been killed and the raptors are already devouring him, there’s no point in hoping. There’s enough evil every day not to go pointlessly creating more. And they have to go on looking after the sheep. Arch your back, woman. Life doesn’t wait until you feel like getting your hands dirty.

  After haymaking, it is harvest season on the estancia. The house and barn smell of earth and apple. Everything is tidy. The trays are full and every day Mauro inspects them and removes the spoiled fruit so they won’t contaminate the rest with mold. The mother peels them, gives the bad bits to the chickens; they pounce on them. With the good bits she makes pies and preserves, stewed fruit she mixes with potatoes so it fills you up, so the grilled meat will enhance the sweetness. When Mauro and Steban dismount at the end of the day, they breathe in the sugary smell, and their mouths water.

  On the sandy plot behind the barn they turned over the potatoes, too, letting them dry all day in the sun and wind. The crop is good and Mauro smiled, even though the mother did no more than grunt, “At least something good.”

  The storeroom is full, a promise for winter. Usually the mother also looks forward to this season of haymaking and gathering, she measures, calculates, tidies, inspects the sons’ work to make sure nothing is going moldy, leans over the reserves, gingerly handles the fruit and the root vegetables, she’s like a rodent laying in supplies, almost humming. But this year she hasn’t left off her dark mood, and she looks without touching, her hands behind her back, she walks around, blasé, frowning. When Mauro is full of enthusiasm she stays silent, and everything could have been better, she seems to whisper, there could have been more, to make up for the worries that fate has given her, yes, at the very least. She gauges, figures
that she hasn’t come out ahead, maybe if she’d had two hundred pounds more or so of potatoes, and even then. So she takes a spade and goes to turn the earth to make sure there’s nothing left behind, she wanders around the apple trees with her head in the air, shows Mauro a shriveled little fruit hidden among the leaves, and Mauro nods to the half-wit who runs to fetch the ladder. Then she shuts herself in the kitchen, slices and cooks, grumpy, and the sons keep busy on their own, mindless of her bitterness, with that wretched temperament she’s always had they hardly notice how it’s gotten worse.

  The mother almost never goes into San León anymore. There, too, something has died inside her, fortunately for her income, because when she goes into town to pay her debts now she is careful to to avoid the bar. She brings back alcohol and drinks it the way she always has, in the evening after dinner, alone in the kitchen. A little glass so she’ll sleep better; she often pours a second one, a glass to lull her, make her sway. Outside, lying up against the door, the dogs hear her inarticulate mumblings. They can sense the acrimony in her voice, it needs no words. They are still waiting for the two absent sons. They wonder. Like the mother, their attention often shifts to the horizon, for a sound or a puff of air, a hope—there they are. After a few moments where nothing moves, they curl and stretch, stifle a whimper. Sometimes they meet the mother’s gaze, and all together they peer out at the road, in vain, as if she could do something. Annoyed, she shakes her head and frowns, and picks up a broom if she has to.

  “Go on, scram!”

  Sprawled in the old armchair before it’s time for bed, she takes stock, makes a list, plans how they’ll get on without the two missing sons; but fatigue overwhelms her too soon, and she drops off, chin on her blouse. She just has time to curse the banker once again, who has the misfortune he deserves, time to tense her fingers on her dishrag as she thinks of the poker games she almost won, back then, and which would be such a boon to her nowadays. So many pesos she wouldn’t have known what to do with them. It made her tremble; they were there within reach. She could have told everything to go hang. Even the estancia, she wouldn’t have needed it anymore, neither the cows nor the ewes. Nor her sons, not four, or two, no. Not a one. She could have spent her life with her elbows on the table, a drink at hand and a game in progress, because she misses it, terribly. She would have wasted a fortune, lost, started over, and still she would have had enough. Every day Gomez would have bowed down to her, and she would have hired herself a maid so she’d never have to clean the house or fix a meal again. That old dream, so close, within a hair’s breadth she was. Just one card.

  Always just one fucking card.

  Basically, she’s spent her life losing. And lately in the evening it’s been driving her crazy, because she can feel the money within reach, if only someone would give her a hand, she’d have luck on her side this time, she’s sure she would, and she turns up her palms that are gleaming with such a particular shine, come on, help me, she thinks, but she does not really see those hands. The world is hers. She doesn’t know how to explain it, it’s something that happens inside, a bright light, a great heat, something telling her that her time has come, for Christ’s sake, her fingers fidgeting as she walks round and round the kitchen table, feverishly. She can almost see those goddamn chips, those bills, that treasure.

  But that’s the problem, in the evening she’s at the estancia. She worked all day, yes, she fed the sons, the tall one and the half-wit, she cleaned up after them, tidied, put mugs out for the morning’s coffee. Because of them she stayed there hoeing, weeding, cooking, cleaning. If only she’d listened to herself. Right now she’d be winning heaps and heaps. But instead she’s there ruminating about all the money she’s been losing since she stopped gambling, spreading her hands, the sensation is that strong, making gestures as if she were tossing the cards down, in vain, she’s still sitting at the table in the estancia, alone and poor and oh, the anger.

  All because of the sons.

  RAFAEL

  How many days have they been alone in that place, the old man, the boy, and the horses, no one has thought to keep track, and Rafael, trying to work it out, muddles up the mornings and loses count. If it were just up to him, he’d say seven or eight days, but the old abuelo, as he calls him now, shakes his head. More than twenty. The boy laughs.

  “You’ve been raving so much you can’t keep track of anything anymore,” he protests. “Even in the middle of the night you thought it was daytime, and you counted two days for one, for sure.”

  “Because of the light from the fire. But I corrected it.”

  “I know how many times I changed your dressing, and how many times you yelled at me ’cause it hurts.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I can repeat the words you said.”

  “Shut up, then. Is there any meat left?”

  The boy cuts a smoked slice and hands it to him.

  “I have to go hunting. In two or three days there’ll be nothing left.”

  “I’ll be able to sit in a saddle, soon. We’ll go back to your place.”

  “Yes, abuelo. My place.”

  He doesn’t tell him what it’s like, at his place: a life of poverty crushed by work and arid land, and the mother who’ll have his head if he comes back with this old man who can’t walk, one more mouth to feed and nothing in exchange, she’ll never agree to it. And so the old man can consider himself lucky that Rafael puts up with his silences and grunts, whenever he asks how he came by his wounds, because that would never be enough for the mother, no way, he’d have to provide an explanation, a wound like that is not something you get sharpening your knife. The boy has his own theory about it—a fight that went wrong, or a settling of scores, maybe even the result of some crime, otherwise the old man wouldn’t be so reticent to speak, there’s bound to be something fishy about what happened. But from there on it’s all conjecture, and no matter how often he brings the matter up, he never gets an answer, just two mean eyes staring at him, sometimes suspicion.

  “You’re trying to get me into trouble, aren’t you.”

  “No, abuelo, I’m just curious, I’d like to know.”

  Inevitably, at that point the old man has a fit of coughing and clutches his belly, and it goes on, impossible to stop, neither water nor maté nor the boy fanning him, you’d think the old man is about to suffocate there and then, his face turning all purple and gray like that. Eventually he calms down and says, breathlessly, That time I was nearly done for, God’s sake. He catches his breath, his eyes full of tears. You see, huh, you see.

  The boy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But one thing’s for sure, the old man forgot his question. And time passes.

  Time passes and the old man is not regaining his strength. In the beginning there was visibly some progress, but then again in the state he was in, getting any worse would have meant bowing out altogether. Regaining consciousness, eating a little, conversing now and again, he was able to do all that normally. But then he stopped improving, despite the food and the treatment, and Rafael was puzzled. When he saw that the old man was beginning to recuperate, he thought, Great, he’s out of the woods, the way he would for the cows or the sheep, either they die, or they get better and that’s it. He felt pretty proud of himself at the time, because he was the one who’d made the poultice, even if he did hesitate about the plants, so in the end they must have been the right ones, to make his patient perk up to that degree. And then the wound opened again, the old man began complaining again, and everything went wrong. He doesn’t want to get up. He doesn’t want to eat. Except to holler when things aren’t going his way, to ask for some beer or give the kid a hard time because the wounds are hurting so bad and never stop. He curls up in his corner of the cave, clings to the ground if Rafael tries to sit him in the sun over by the entrance, just for a little while. It will do you good, abuelo.

  “Shut up. Give me something to drink.”
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br />   The way he treats him. On that score, the old man’s no better than the mother, as soon as he got a bit of life back in him he started barking orders. Worse than that: he never talked about happiness again. And yet twenty times a day he checks to see if the bag is still there under his head—and how could it be otherwise—and he gives a nervous laugh when he touches it, rubs it, moves it to better support his head. It’s not for Rafael’s lack of trying that he doesn’t talk about it: but the minute Rafael says something, the old man puts his arms around the leather and casts a suspicious look at the boy.

  “You’re not trying to steal it from me, are you?”

  “Of course not. I just want to know what it is.”

  “Not good to be too curious.”

  “You promised to tell me.”

  “If I show you, you’ll take it from me.”

  “If I were going to take it I would have already.”

  So now in addition to sleeping on the bag, the old man has tied the bag’s strap to his wrist. The slightest movement and he’ll wake up. Impossible to think of a way to open the bag during the night, and yet it nags away at the boy, this desire to see the thing the old man’s so afraid of losing. So as not to alarm him, he stops talking about it. He does what he knows how to do so well: wait. Like every great predator he carries within him the conviction that haste yields nothing positive. During the hunt, this can mean stepping on a twig, its cracking sound resonating in the silence; a warning smell, because you’ve forgotten to stay upwind, and the steppe, with its infinite horizon, is unforgiving, a few leaps and the guanacos get away, retreat, disappear. There are blunders, out of inadvertence, fatigue, or stupidity. The only rule is patience. Hours, days. Weeks, if need be.

  But the thought won’t leave him alone. At night, or during the day when the wounded man is dozing, he goes closer. He always has a ready excuse: a branch to put on the fire, a nightmare, the blanket to adjust. He is deliberately noisy so the old man will pay him no mind, to get him used to things falling over, to his footsteps right behind his head. When he’s sure he’s asleep, he kneels down next to him. Now he could pull the bag out from under the old man’s head, an inch or two, without waking him up; but two inches is too little to open the bag, not enough to see inside. And he doesn’t dare slip his hand in. So he explores from the outside, tries to make out the shape, sniffs the air. The leather’s too thick, and the moment there’s a warning grunt he gives up. He turns hastily, crouching by the fire as if he’d always been there. Sometimes the old man opens an eye and looks at him. Rafael does not turn his head. Not me, abuelo. Must be a draft.