III
The glare was so terrible when they removed the bandages from my eyes that I wanted to shut them but couldn’t. I covered them with my arm. An old woman, one of the group who had shouted horrid words at Senyor, told me that fire had consumed my body the first days after swimming under the village; she said I had talked about the prisoner. I put my hand to my forehead; I was missing an eyebrow. The old woman looked at me calmly, her hands clasped together over her stomach, and told me not to touch the wound because the skin was still very tender. She was small, with sunken cheeks, her earth-colored skin furrowed with deep wrinkles that went from her eyes all the way to the bottom of her face. She stared at me with an open mouth. My legs almost gave out when I stood up; instinctively I headed toward the village, and as I walked, my legs again learnt how to walk. I left without saying a word to the old woman who had taken care of me. At the entrance to the village, I turned back and headed to the stables. The enclosure had been rebuilt, reinforced. But the stables were just as they were the night of the fire. I remember stopping at the Festa esplanade. With the glare, everything looked blurred. A man walking in the distance seemed to be a man who lived only in my thoughts, and my thoughts could not bring him into focus. I reached the part of the river where calm water joined it. The canes were still. I sighted the tree of death on Maraldina. To my left, farther away, lay the dark green smudge of the forest of the dead with the higher mountains beyond, rising one behind the other. I sat down on a bench, my head on my arms, my arms on the table. I looked at my feet, moved them, scattered a bit of earth, then suddenly I kicked the ground and struck the table. I stood up, holding my arm in front of my eyes, and edged toward the canes in the water. Dead leaves and brush were floating on the river and a piece of driftwood where the canes started. In the shady spots, the green water looked black. I leaned down to the water, letting half of my body hang over it. I rested on my hands and knees: head over the river, body over the shore, hands in the mud. I remained like that for a while, gazing in front of me at the other side of the river; then I looked down into the water and saw my father’s face.