Yosemite Valley gradually unfolds with the twists and turns in the road, starting with its prow, El Capitan, the majestic granite rock formation that dozens of climbers grapple with every day. As they round the peak, Carmen sniffs the air, convinced as she has been from a very young age that she can detect the unique scent of the stone and of the thousands of hands that have bequeathed their sweat and blood to it, suspended halfway between the sky and death. Marcus rouses, his eyes blinking in the shadow of the cliffs. Carmen parks the car near the perfectly round mouth of a trail wreathed in dense foliage. She shoulders the heaviest knapsack, the one with water and the compressed biscuits that Marcus had her buy “for survival,” and they set out.
The road ascends in tight loops; Marcus keeps up despite his raspy breathing, about which he never complains. From time to time, the splash of falling water and his hard breathing overlap. The forest teems with hidden microcosms. When they reach a promontory with a lookout the old man points to the far side of the valley: a rock shoulder spiked with fragile conifers, its summit like a hat with a massive brim.
“When I was young we would go up there on a small road — it doesn’t exist anymore — that ran along the scarp. When we reached the top we waited until nightfall, then we lit fires. Once there were enough embers, we would pitch the burning chunks of wood into the air and whack them with a baseball bat. The embers would explode into a thousand pieces and tumble all the way to the bottom of the valley. Below, the campers would watch the show. We called it ‘making shooting stars.’”
Carmen peers at the rocky crest and imagines the hot brands plunging a thousand metres, an incandescent snowfall attesting to the mighty strength of boys who still have their whole lives ahead of them. Each time Marcus harks back to his youth she is engulfed by a nostalgia that does not belong to her, a vision of what a man is before life dismantles him, of what remains of him afterwards.
They reach the upper limit of the trail at dusk, and like all mountain climbers who go up to those bald, windswept heights, they sit down and peel off layer by layer the weariness that the climb has deposited on them.
“I’ve always enjoyed getting to the end of a road at nightfall,” Carmen says. “Finding myself in the remotest place just as the shift happens, when one world tips over into the other.”
Biting into one of his energy bars, Marcus agrees. The light sighs among the trees, ready to give birth to all manner of magical creatures, to raise the invisible worlds left behind millions of years ago by the glacier that split the mountain in half. As their vision loses its purchase on things, the sounds that come to relieve the watch are such that neither of them knows for certain which are real and which not. After almost half an hour of hovering like this between their imagination and the landscape, they perceive a stocky silhouette on the flat stretch of granite a dozen paces away from them. Marcus is the first to stand up.
“A bear?” Carmen asks.
“No.”
The animal is small but sturdy looking, its sides and head streaked with white, the rest dark, almost black in colour. It is observing them with its mouth open and partially exposing fangs that illuminate the night. When its odour reaches them, powerful and pungent, Carmen understands.
“A wolverine,” she mutters.
“Creator of the world,” Marcus adds.
Even the most hideous animal becomes magnificent when you realize it can kill you. With a swipe of its paw, a snap of its teeth, the beast could satiate its ravenous hunger with one of them, and there is nothing they can do to stop it. To her own surprise, Carmen feels an urge to retreat behind her companion, but she holds back. Marcus, meanwhile, takes a step forward.
The wolverine shudders, lifts its head to scent the wind’s messages, swings its bushy tail. The night is too thick now for her to be certain, but Carmen could swear the animal has shot them each a cutting grin. Then it turns around and moves off toward the trees, where the forest is unmarked and the trails wield no authority. As soon as it has joined its fellow predators in invisibility, Marcus’s legs buckle and he drops to his knees on the stone. Carmen comes and lays her hand on his shoulder.
“It’s okay, he’s gone. He won’t be coming back.”
With his face screwed up, Marcus continues to peer into the darkness.
“I wish he had eaten my heart.”
Simon has forgotten the most important thing about Mexico: the noise. Amid the Victorian tranquility of San Francisco and its milky winds, the possibility of such a clamour is easily erased, especially when one lives with a woman like Claire. Here, even the most faraway villages are alive with the shouts of vendors, untamed motors, hammers, saws, indignant dogs, and music. The horns of some cars carry on for nearly a minute at a time, blaring out the tunes of popular songs. Even the dozing siesta sleepers raise a hellish racket, as each breath, striving to out-whistle and out-snort the previous one, escapes through the open windows into the street. The other thing Simon has forgotten is how much easier it is to think among this profusion of sounds.
Since Frannie’s death he has followed dozens of trails leading to dozens of Roberto Aurellanos, each of which turned out to be a dead end. He was about to call it quits when his daughter handed him the photograph. This trip is his last chance. Yet as soon as he got to Valle de las Palmas, he was struck by the absurdity of the whole undertaking. He had travelled to a godforsaken pueblo on the sole basis of the picture of someone who could just as well not be his father and of an address that kept him wondering why Roberto would have sent it to Frannie. To start with, he sits down for a meal at a taqueria counter. It’s been a long ride and on account of the hot weather he forgot to eat. As he scoffs his tacos, he puts a few questions to the old woman chopping a heap of tomatoes swarming with flies. She is uncooperative and confines herself to shaking her head at the mention of the name “Roberto Aurellano.”
After his meal, Simon goes out to tour the few streets of Las Palmas. Tijuana is only about ten kilometres away, but nothing about the little town suggests how close it is to the vice-ridden city. Peaceful and populated with half-deaf old folks and agile youngsters, it’s the sort of place a visitor may tell himself he could spend the rest of his life in, and then move on. Possibly the sort of place where runaway fathers put an end to running.
The street marked on the back of the photograph no longer exists, Simon soon learns. There are no more than a dozen avenues in Las Palmas, and Calle Azul is not one of them. He questions four different passersby before finally getting a guarded response: “Calle Mayor.” Without questioning the rationale behind this change of name, Simon sets out in the direction indicated to him. The street is the longest one in the village and he finds this encouraging. The number 15 is scribbled on the back of the picture; Simon puts his hope in this because he would otherwise be put off by the similarity of the little sunbaked houses, all painted more or less the same colour, all surrounded by concrete walls topped with shards of bottles to keep intruders at bay.