— I’m a tree—he explained.
A tree, yes, but without its natural roots. He was anchored in alien soil, in that fluid country he had invented for himself. His fear of apparitions worsened as time progressed. From trees, it spread to night’s dark corners and to the earth’s womb. At one stage, my father ordered the well to be covered over when the sun went down. Fearsome and malevolent creatures might emerge from such a gaping hole. This vision of monsters bursting from the ground filled me with fear.
— But Father, what things can come out of the well?
There were certain reptiles I didn’t know about, that scratch around in tombs and bring back bits of Death itself under their nails and between their teeth. These lizards climb up the dank sides of wells, invade one’s sleep and moisten the bed sheets of grown-ups.
— That’s why you can’t sleep next to me.
— But I’m scared, Father. I just wanted you to let me sleep in your room.
My brother never commented on my wish to sleep close to my father. In the dead of night, he would watch me creep furtively along the hall and stake out my place near the forbidden entrance to my father’s quarters. Many times Ntunzi came and fetched me, lying like a rag on the floor and fast asleep.
— Come back to your bed. Father mustn’t find you here.
I would follow him, too dazed to be grateful. Ntunzi would lead me back to bed and once, he even took my hand and said:
— Do you think you’re scared? Well you may as well know that Father is much more scared.
— Father?
— Do you know why Father doesn’t want you there in his room? Because he’s scared to death that you’ll catch him talking in his sleep.
— Talking about what?
— Inadmissible things.
Once again, it was Dona Dordalma, our absent mother, who was the cause of such strange behaviour. Instead of fading away into the distant past, she invaded the fissures of silence within night’s recesses. And there was no way of putting the ghost to rest. Her mysterious death, without cause or visibility, had not stolen her from the world of the living.
— Father, has mother died?
— Four hundred times.
— What?
— I’ve told you, four hundred times: your mother died, every little bit of her, it’s as if she was never alive.
— So where’s she buried?
— She’s buried everywhere, of course.
So maybe that was it: my father had emptied the world so as to be able to fill it with his inventions. At first, we were bewitched by the flighty birds that emerged from his speech and curled upwards like smoke.
— The world: do you want to know what it’s like?
Our eyes answered by themselves. Yes of course, we yearned to know about it, as if the ground on which we stood depended on it.
— Well, the world, children. .
And he would pause, his head swaying as if his ideas were being weighed, now this way, now that. Then, he would get to his feet, repeating with a cavernous voice:
— The world, my children. .
In the beginning, I was afraid of these ruminations. Maybe my father just didn’t know how to answer, and I found such weakness difficult to bear. Silvestre Vitalício knew everything and his absolute knowledge was the home that gave me protection. It was he who conferred names on things, it was he who baptized trees and snakes, it was he who foresaw winds and floods. My father was the only God we’d been given.
— All right, you deserve to know, I’m going to tell you about the world. .
He began to sigh, and I began to sigh. Words had returned to him after all, and the light he cast brought me back once more to the firm ground of certainty.
— Well it’s all perfectly simple, children: the world has died, and all that’s left is Jezoosalem.
— Don’t you think there might be a woman survivor out there? — My brother once suggested.
Silvestre raised an eyebrow. Ntunzi backed off, knowing his question was provocative: without women, we would have no seeds left. Father raised his arms and covered his head with them in an almost childlike response. Ntunzi repeated his theme, as if he were scraping a fingernail across glass.
— Without women, there’s no seed left. .
Silvestre’s abruptness re-affirmed the old, but never openly stated prohibition: women were a forbidden subject, more so even than prayer, more sinful than tears or song.
— I won’t have this talk. Women are forbidden to come here, and I don’t even want to hear the word spoken. .
— Calm down, Father, I just wanted to know. .
— We don’t talk about these things in Jezoosalem. Women are all. . they’re all whores.
We’d never heard him utter such a word. But it was as if a knot had been untied. From then on, for us, the term “whore” became another word to mean “woman.” And on occasions when Aproximado forgot himself and launched forth on the subject of women, my old man would stumble through the house shouting:
— They’re all whores!
For Ntunzi, such strange behaviour was proof of Silvestre Vitalício’s growing insanity. As far as I was concerned, my father was suffering, at the most, from a passing illness. It was this infirmity that had us digging the rock-hard soil to make dry, lifeless wells, right in the middle of winter, precisely when the clouds were at their most barren.
At the end of the day, our father would inspect these skeletal pits, scratched out amid clods of earth and grit. To check the effectiveness of our toil, he would begin his inspection like this: A long rope was attached to Ntunzi’s feet and he was lowered down into the rocky opening. We watched apprehensively, as he was gobbled up by the depths, barely connected to the world of the living. In Silvestre’s hands, the taut rope was the opposite of an umbilical cord. My brother was hoisted back up to the surface, only for us to then go and open up another hole. We would end the day exhausted, covered in sand, our hair matted with dust. Occasionally, I would venture to ask:
— Why are we digging, Father?
— It’s just for God to see. Just for Him to see.
God never did see, for where we were was too remote. Heavenly manna was never going to be poured into the burning pan of those holes. Silvestre wanted to render the Creator’s work ugly, like that jealous husband who deformed his wife’s face so that no one else could enjoy her beauty. His explanation, however, was completely different: the wells were nothing less than traps.
— Traps? To catch which animals?
— They’re other animals, ones that have come from afar. I can already hear them on the prowl near here.
No matter how doubtful we were, we knew we wouldn’t get any further explanations. A vague feeling that something inevitable was imminent came to dominate old Vitalício. The orders we began to get became more and more erratic. For example, under orders from Silvestre, I, my brother and Zachary Kalash began to sweep the footpaths. The verb “to sweep” was only correct in our father’s language. For it was a kind of reverse sweeping: instead of clearing the paths, we spread dirt, twigs, stones and seeds over them. What, in fact, were we doing? In those nascent paths, we were killing any propensity they might have to grow and become roads. And in this way, we stifled any possible destination at birth.