“What the hell did you do?” he said.
El Gurre was trying to drag Salinas away. He said again that they had to go. Then Tito grabbed him by the neck and began to shout in his face WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?
“Calm down, kid,” said El Gurre.
But Tito wouldn’t stop, he began shouting louder and louder, WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?, shaking El Gurre like a puppet, WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?, until Salinas, too, began shouting, STOP IT, KID, they were like three madmen, abandoned on a dark stage: CUT IT OUT!
The stage of a theater in ruins.
Finally they dragged Tito away by force. The glare of the fire lighted up the night. They crossed a field and went down to the road, following the stream bed. When they came in sight of the old Mercedes, El Gurre put a hand on Tito’s shoulder and said to him softly that he had done a fine job, and that it was all over now. But Tito wouldn’t stop repeating the words over and over.
He didn’t shout. He spoke softly, in a child’s voice. What the hell have we done. What the hell have we done. What the hell have we done.
The old farmhouse of Mato Rujo stood blankly in the countryside, carved in red flame against the dark night. The only stain in the empty outline of the plain.
Three days later a man arrived, on horseback, at the farmhouse of Mato Rujo. He was filthy, dressed in rags. The horse was an old nag, skin and bones. It had something in its eyes, a yellow liquid that dripped down its muzzle, and the flies buzzed around it.
The man saw the walls of the farmhouse standing blackened and useless, coals in the middle of an enormous quenched brazier. They were like the last remaining teeth in the mouth of an old man. The fire had also consumed a large oak that for years had shaded the house. Like a black claw, it stank of calamity.
The man stayed in the saddle. He made a slow half-circle around the farm. He went to the well and without getting off the horse unhooked the bucket and let it fall. He heard the slap of metal on water. He looked over at the farmhouse. He saw that sitting on the ground, leaning against what remained of a wall, there was a child. She was staring at him, two motionless eyes shining in a smoke-grimed face. She was wearing a short red skirt. She had scratches all over. Or wounds.
The man pulled up the bucket from the well. The water was blackish. He stirred it with a tin dipper, but the blackness remained. He refilled the dipper, brought it to his lips, and took a long drink. He looked again into the water in the bucket. He spit into it. Then he set everything on the edge of the well and pressed his heels into the belly of the horse.
He went over to the child. She raised her head to look at him.
She seemed to have nothing to say. The man studied her for a while. Eyes, lips, hair. Then he held out a hand. She stood, grabbed the man’s hand, and lifted herself up to the saddle, behind him. The old nag adjusted its hooves to the new weight. It tossed its head, twice. The man made a strange noise, and the horse calmed down.
As they rode away from the farmhouse, at a slow trot, under a fierce sun, the girl let her head fall forward and, with her forehead against the man’s sweaty back, slept.
Two
The signal changed to green and the woman crossed the street. She looked down as she walked, because it had just stopped raining and in the hollows of the asphalt there were puddles that reminded one of the sudden rain of early spring. She had an elegant gait, confined by the tight black skirt. She saw the puddles and avoided them.
When she reached the opposite sidewalk she stopped.
People passed by, crowding the late afternoon with their steps toward home, or freedom. The woman liked to feel the city trickling around her, so she stood for a while, in the middle of the sidewalk, inexplicable, like a woman who had been left there, abruptly, by her lover.
She decided to turn right, and fell in with the collective promenade. In no hurry, she went along beside the shop windows, holding the shawl over her chest. She walked tall and confident, with a youthful bearing in spite of her age. Her hair was white, gathered at the nape and held by a dark comb, like a girl’s.
She stopped at the window of an appliance shop, and stood staring at a wall of televisions broadcasting pointless multiplications of a single news commentator. Each was tinted a different color, which fascinated her. A film began of some cities at war and she resumed her walk. She crossed Calle Medina and then the little Plaza del Perpetuo Socorro. When she arrived at the Galería Florencia she turned to look at the prospect of the lights extending in a line through the belly of the building and out the other side, into Avenida 24 de Julio. She stopped. She raised her eyes to look for something on the grand iron archway that marked the entrance. But she found nothing. She took a few steps inside the Galería, then stopped a man. She excused herself, and asked him what the place was called. The man told her. Then she thanked him and said that he would have a most beautiful evening. The man smiled.
So she began to walk through the Galería Florencia, and eventually she saw, some twenty yards ahead, a small kiosk that stuck out from the left-hand wall, creasing for a moment the clean profile of the space. It was one of those kiosks where lottery tickets are sold. She continued walking, but when she was a few steps from the kiosk she stopped. She saw that the man who sold the tickets was seated, reading a newspaper. He held it resting on something in front of him, and he was reading it. All the sides of the kiosk were of glass, except the one that was against the wall of the Galería. Within, the ticket man could be seen, and a mass of colored strips hanging down. There was a small window, in front, and that was the opening through which the ticket seller talked to people.
The woman pulled back a lock of hair that had fallen over her eyes. She turned and for an instant stood looking at a girl who came out of a shop pushing a carriage. Then she looked at the kiosk again.
The ticket seller was reading.
The woman approached and leaned toward the window.
“Good evening,” she said.
The man raised his eyes from the newspaper. He was about to say something, but when he saw the woman’s face he stopped, completely. He remained like that, looking at her.
“I would like to buy a ticket.”
The man nodded yes. But then he said something that had nothing at all to do with that.
“Have you been waiting a long time?”
“No, why?”
The man shook his head, continuing to stare at her.
“Nothing, excuse me,” he said.
“I’d like a ticket,” she said.
Then the man turned and stuck his hand up among the strips of tickets hanging behind him.
The woman pointed to a strip that was longer than the others.
“That one there… can you take it from that strip?”
“This one?”
“Yes.”
The man tore off the ticket. He glanced at the number and nodded approval with his head. He placed it on the wooden counter between him and the woman.
“It’s a good number.”
“What did you say?”
The man didn’t answer because he was looking at the woman’s face, as if he were searching for something.
“Did you say it’s a good number?”