‘The most probable thing is that they’ll abandon the van,’ Thompson suggested.
‘They can’t,’ Staughton answered.
‘Why not?’ Barnes was curious.
‘Because of the corpses,’ his subaltern explained.
‘True, the corpses.’ Barnes hadn’t remembered them. Everyone exchanged glances, while Barnes thought about plausible solutions. ‘Why the hell do they want the corpses?’
40
Dawn awakened with the crowing of a rooster just as it does in fairy tales. Here in this rural area, favorable to roosters and hens, pigs, rabbits, and other animals, the wake-up call was heard for a radius of hundreds of yards.
The old man slept on the sofa, a blanket protecting him from the cold that was common at night in this region.
The easy chair where the cripple had sat was now occupied by Raul Brandao Monteiro, sleeping poorly, with his eyes closed, in a very light doze, waking with the smallest chirp of a cricket or crowing of a cock, like this one. The cripple must be walking one of his disciplined rounds, since no precaution was too great when one’s enemies were powerful.
Raul got up, half asleep, put on the shoes that had slipped off his feet while he tossed and turned during the night, and faced the dawn of a new day. He’d spent hours watching the phone in hope of news, ignoring the fact that the phone would be heard when it needed to be answered. He’d checked it over and over, the keypad, the receiver, to be sure the phone was working perfectly. Everything was normal. No one had called.
He went to the bedroom where Elizabeth was sleeping, but the closed door kept him from seeing how she was doing. He didn’t need to see her to know she hadn’t closed her eyes all night, and, certainly, she turned over in bed when he tried without success to open the door. It didn’t matter. She’d come out soon to ask him about their daughter and be angry when he had nothing to tell her. Ring, telephone, ring, Raul wished anxiously as he returned to the room where old JC waited for him, sitting on the sofa with the blanket on his lap for security. ‘Already awake?’ the old man said, smiling.
‘I don’t know how you’re able to sleep as if nothing’s going on,’ Raul said indignantly.
‘The body gets used to anything, my dear captain,’ he explained. ‘Where did you see combat?’
‘In Cuanza Norte in ’sixty-three,’ the captain answered, thinking of his induction into the army and the two-year commission he served overseas in the war between Portugal and her colonies.
‘And tell me something. Did you sleep while you were there?’
He knew where JC was going. For him it was one more routine day in his long life. Nothing out of the ordinary. He adapted to periods like this when he had to change his refuge or was the target of forces as great or greater than his own. He lost no sleep over this because he knew no other reality, no other way to live. Calm and serenity, yes, these could make him lose sleep.
‘There’s still no news.’ Raul was worried.
‘There will be,’ the old man declared calmly.
JC got up with the help of his cane and walked over to the table that still had the remains of last night’s dinner on it. He sat down and looked at Raul.
‘What’s for breakfast?’
With a sigh, Raul went out to the kitchen to prepare the meal, normally spiced and hearty to sustain a day in the field. Today he wasn’t hungry, so he’d make only enough to fill up the old man’s stomach.
‘Good morning, my friend. Everything okay?’ JC asked the cripple, who had just come in.
‘Nothing new,’ the younger man replied professionally and sat down at the table.
The old man poured a glass of water from a bottle on the table, took a box of pills from his pocket, selected two to place on his tongue, and helped them down with the water. The cripple watched him without saying anything.
‘It’s not time yet,’ the old man replied to the unasked question. ‘We’re going to stay here.’
The cripple got up, showing neither objection nor agreement. The old man always knew what he was doing.
‘In that case I’m going to take a bath,’ he informed them. ‘This dust is sticking to me.’
‘Go on, go on,’ JC encouraged him with a certain bonhomie. Old age appeared to be having a softening effect on him, not in his combative spirit, but only in these small domestic activities he formerly would have ignored.
The cripple left the room that was now converted into an operational center for the three of them and left JC to take charge of strategy, which wouldn’t change much, since he wasn’t a man who liked to act on an empty stomach, unless necessary, which was not the case.
‘Raul?’ a female voice asked.
JC turned toward this melodious sound and found Elizabeth there. Now in the early light of morning he saw her natural complexion without makeup, and he noticed the hatred emanating from her. A perfectly natural reaction given the circumstances.
‘Your husband’s in the kitchen making breakfast,’ he informed her, emphasizing the relationship that united them to show he’d perceived the strain in the relationship.
Elizabeth made no reply. Instead she began to walk around the room without taking her eyes off him. She finally sat down next to him and looked away.
‘You’re truly your daughter’s mother,’ JC said in praise, although it could be understood differently.
‘Is there news about my child?’ Her anguish was clear.
‘There will be,’ was all he said.
A tear slipped down Elizabeth’s face, carrying all a mother’s sorrow. A parent should never have to bury a child; there was no sorrow like that. JC wiped away the tear without a trace of shame.
‘My father used to say that tears should be saved for the dead.’ He showed no condescension or sorrow for her. ‘You might not think so, but I also had a father at one time in my life.’
Elizabeth looked at him disoriented.
‘No one has died here,’ he said in a clear, firm voice.
‘But someone could die.’ His certainty, for some reason, convinced her.
‘We all can, my dear.’ That was a great truth, undeniable, unchanging.
‘I can’t decide if the fault for all this is her father’s, if she-’
‘No one is guilty,’ he replied decisively, as if it were a subject he’d pondered on his own in search of answers. ‘Is someone guilty for being born poor or with an illness or parents who neglect and exploit him? Or being born in a poor country or bad neighborhood? These are the cards we’re dealt, and we have to accept them and go on playing according to our luck. No one is guilty, or we’re all guilty, and fifty, one hundred years from now someone will blame us for the evil in his life.’ He paused so Elizabeth could take in what he was saying. ‘We can be thankful for being born in Europe, the most civilized part of the world, but even here there are bad things. We’ve inherited some of that evil. We have to shake it off, expel it, but it’s hard. Only our persistence will defeat and bury it. Still, more evil will appear; we have to confront it, sooner or later.’
Elizabeth listened to him closely. He spoke of certainties, not theories or idle speculation. They were intelligent thoughts about the reality of our lives.
‘When will we hear from her?’ Her hope increased the confidence she had in the old man’s replies.
JC was silent for a few seconds without blinking or expressing any sign of doubt.
‘Soon,’ he assured her.
‘I think I’ll go to my mother-in-law’s house in Oporto.’ It was a cry for help, a motion to be approved or denied, in this case by the man in front of her.
‘Don’t leave us, my dear.’ His voice was friendlier. ‘Besides, we can’t let you go. It would weaken our position. You’re better off with us, safer, and soon you’ll be able to talk to your daughter.’
Raul came into the room with a tray in his hands. On top, a steaming teakettle, Alentejano bread, butter, local cheese, milk, and hot coffee.