Tierra del Fuego (15 page)

“Bye!” he replied, but at the same time, a kind of intense anguish seized his whole being and he saw his victim's body, his clothes, his face, even his horses, enveloped in darkness, like a dizzying abyss toward which he was being inexorably drawn, and without being able to stop himself, almost without moving his hand, which he had been holding on his belt, he took out the revolver he carried between his belt and his stomach and shot the other man at almost point blank range, just as he was swerving.

The impact of the bullet caused the gold merchant's body to tilt to the left, and he fell heavily to the ground. His terrified horses sped away across the pampa.

He reined in his horse. He closed his eyes in order not to see his victim on the ground, and sank into a kind of torpor, emerging from it with a deep sigh of relief, as if he had just jumped across an abyss, or as if he had gotten through the most exhausting day of his life.

He opened his eyes when his horse made a move to rear up at the sight of the corpse. Feeling calmer now, he dismounted.

The gold merchant's eyes had half rolled up in their sockets, as if stopped mid-flight.

The emotion had tired him, and, after that intense dizziness, he now fell into a kind of lassitude, in the midst of which, more susceptible than ever, he slowly became aware of that same chill coming up from inside him. He shivered and looked up at the sky, and it seemed to him that there was a huge blue and white crack in it, like the void in Bevan's dead eyes.

From the sky, he turned back to look at the rigid corpse. Without realizing what he was doing, he went to it, lifted it on his shoulder and carried it to his horse. As he was about to place it on the saddle, his horse jumped and sped off, leaving him with the corpse in his arms.

He stood there, motionless, still carrying the body, but it was so heavy that he had to close his eyes with the effort, and the effort turned to pain, and the pain dissolved into a kind of childish distress, a feeling that he was totally alone in the middle of a dispiriting and hostile world. When he opened his eyes again, the grass of the pampa was glowing red, like a sheet of fire, blinding him. In desperation, he looked around him, and about a hundred yards away he saw a clump of black scrub. He thought to run to it and hide the body. He also thought to run away in the same direction in which the horse had fled. But he couldn't move, he took just a few unsteady steps, and then, to stop himself falling, sat down on the grass. With trembling hands, he opened the canteen and drank the rest of the cane liquor. Feeling better, he stood up, still obsessed with the idea of hiding the corpse, but not finding anywhere suitable, he was seized with a new frenzy, another abyss, more dizziness, and he took his flaying knife from his boot and set about chopping his victim to pieces as if he were an ox.

In the peat bog behind the black scrub, he lifted off sections of the surface and hid the pieces of the corpse under them, wrapped in the man's clothes. It was when the only part still to be buried was the head that a thought suddenly struck him, a thought that drove him crazy. The gold! He'd forgotten all about it!

He looked around. Bevan's head lay on the gray-brown peat, staring at him with his dead eyes. There was no going back now. He had done all he could. The whole peat bog ­started to shake beneath his feet. The black scrub, stirred by the wind, seemed to be fleeing from him in terror, as if it were alive. The pampa blazed with fire, and the blue and white crack in the sky grew wider. He picked up the head to bury it, but could not find a place for it. Everything was fleeing from him, everything was shaking. The void in the eyes of the corpse and the crack in the vault of the sky were creating a void in his own eyes. He blinked, and the cracks grew bigger, and a thousand little needles of light pierced his vision, closing off the horizon, and he ran like a blinded animal after the black scrub as it fled from him and managed to throw the head into the middle of it and then ran on and on until he fell flat on his face on the pampa, torn apart with terror.

“What's the matter?” the young fox trapper asks, seeing his traveling companion shivering, with big beads of sweat on his forehead. “You're shaking all over!”

“Oh!” he cries, startled, and, as if he is recovering from a shock, for the first time a smile appears on his face, a frozen smile, like the smile of someone who has died by impalement, and he says in the same choked voice, “The cane liquor . . . I drank it to warm me, and it's made me feel colder!”

“There's some left, if you want it,” the trapper says, taking out the bottle and handing it to him.

He uncorks it, drinks, and hands it back.

“I can kill this one like a baby guanaco, with my whip!” he thinks, shaking in the saddle as the liquor runs through his body with the same old evil sensation.

“Feeling warmer?” the young man asks, trying to engage him in conversation.

“Yes, now I do.”

“This is my last trapping expedition. After this, I'm going north to get married.”

“Made much money?”

“Can't complain.”

“Like a lamb to the slaughter,” he thinks, already warmed to the bone by the swig of cane liquor. Aloud, he says, “I came this way five years ago on my way north and lost all my money!”

“How did that happen?”

“I don't know. It was all in gold.”

“And you never found it?”

“I didn't look for it! I'd have had to turn back and I couldn't!”

The trapper looks at him, uncomprehending. “That doesn't surprise me. They say Tierra del Fuego has a curse on it! Something always happens to people who try to leave!”

“I don't think anyone ever gets out of here!” he says, looking out of the corner of his eye at his victim's neck, right there within reach of his hand, just like the neck of a baby guanaco.

“This time,” he thinks, “I can't fail! One of us is going to get out of here, and it won't be him! The first time it's hard, afterwards it gets easier. I won't get gooseflesh this time!”

Silence falls between the two men again, and there is no sound except for the monotonous rustle of the horses' hooves in the snow.

“Now,” he thinks, “now's the time to dispatch this poor devil with a blow of my whip on the back of his neck!” The effect of the cane liquor has worn off, and that forgotten chill again wells up inside him—but this time it isn't as strong, just as the sense of dizziness that seizes him is less overwhelming and the abyss he has to jump across is not as wide.

With a sideways glance, he estimates the distance. He furtively turns the whip around so that he is holding it by the leather part, and steadies the handle on the saddle. The young trapper seems to be unaware of anything except the monotonous crunching of the hooves in the snow.

“No need to do anything with this one, the snow will cover him!” he thinks, ready to strike the blow.

He pulls lightly on the reins to slow down his horse and . . .

As he's about to strike, the trapper turns, smiles and blinks, and in that blinking he sees Bevan's eyes, the same pathetic expression in them, the deep crack in the sky, the empty eyes of the severed head lying on the peat, the thousand cracks like little needles blurring his vision, and, in his blindness, instead of striking the back of his victim's neck, he hits his horse's rump and digs his spur into one of its flanks, and the horse jumps to the side and slips on the snow. He spurs it again, and the animal manages to get up and steady itself on its hind legs.

“He's going crazy!” the young trapper cries in surprise. “What's the matter with him?”

“He's not a good horse, and he's too easily scared!” he replies, moving back onto the trail.

The silence falls again, heavy and alive, alone except for the crunch of the hooves in the snow. But, gradually, another noise makes itself heard over the sound of hooves. It is the west wind, which is starting to blow across the Fuegian steppe.

The trapper wraps himself in his white canvas poncho. The other man lifts the collar of his leather coat. In the distance, like a blade that has fallen across the middle of that vastness, they make out a fence. The light is starting to fade. The whistling of the wind grows louder. The trapper shrinks into himself, and Elvira's white apron vanishes from his mind, like the foam of a wave or a seagull's wing blown away by the wind. The other man raises his mast-like face, like an ox from which a yoke has been removed, and sets it against the gusts. And that strong west wind, which rises every evening to clean the face of Tierra del Fuego, this time also cleans that hard face, and wipes from that mind the last traces of alcohol and murder.

They have passed the fence. The paths fork again. The two men look at each other for the last time.

“Goodbye!”

“Goodbye!”

The two riders separate, two black dots again puncturing the solitude and whiteness of the snowy plain.

Beside the fence lies an empty liquor bottle. It is the kind of trace sometimes left behind by men who have passed through that remote region.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A
boat sounded its siren, and Vladimir and his wife both turned their heads toward the desolate promontory on the edge of the stormy Gulf of Penas where the lighthouse of Puerto Refugio was under construction.

“That'll be the cutter with the provisions, thank God!” Ana cried. She left off washing the dishes in the makeshift house that served as accommodation for the lighthouse builder and his men, and went outside, saying in a low voice, “Now maybe the gossip will stop!”

She was referring to the rumor some of the men had been spreading—that she and her husband were hiding stocks of canned food, which would have been better than the beans with seaweed they had been served for nearly a month. That was about the time the cutter should have put in at Puerto Refugio with material and provisions, but for some reason it had not arrived. Ana had had to make do with half a sack of beans, and, in order to avoid monotony, added edible seaweed from time to time. The workers had been pleased at first, but were soon as bored with the seaweed as they were with the beans.

“Why don't you tell them to search the house?” Ana had asked her husband. “Then they'll see we're not hiding anything.”

“I know what I'm doing,” Vladimir had replied, his voice booming like thunder out of his six-foot-three frame. “There's no need for you to get involved . . .”

“One of these days they'll rebel . . .”

“Anyone tries it, I'll tie them to the rock opposite the landing stage and leave them there until they beg to eat what they're given.”

Ana had looked at him nervously—she had already seen him do something like that once. Vladimir was a Yugoslav, a mountain of a man, uncultivated and rather uncouth, but with a core of goodness, and it was in that goodness that Ana had taken refuge like a turtledove that finds a safe nest. In his youth he had been a fisherman on Bracˇ, his native island in the Adriatic. Keeping his connection with the sea when he emigrated to Magallanes he had managed to acquire the expertise the Chilean Navy needed to build the first network of lighthouses in the maze of channels and gulfs that go from the Guaitecas Archipelago to the Straits of Magellan. Ana was also of Yugoslav descent, though born in Punta Arenas.

After a while, they heard the anchor chains falling, like a cataract of muffled bells, and although the noise was unpleasant and metallic it brought a touch of humanity to that cold, solitary place.

Vladimir went down to the landing stage to greet the commanding officer, who was coming ashore to see how work was progressing on the lighthouse.

“Any news?” the young lieutenant asked, as they climbed the slope to the house.

“No, apart from the lack of provisions.”

“We had to go to the aid of a ship that had run aground, and then tug it all the way north. And how has your wife been?”

“Working hard . . . worrying about the provisions. People have started gossiping, saying we were hiding cans of food . . . all because one day they found an empty sardine can that had been thrown away . . . The truth is, it was the last one left.”

“The empty can might only have been a pretext. There could be something else that's upsetting them.”

“Something else?”

“Your wife . . . I warned you it would be a risk, bringing her here, woman among six or seven men. Abstinence makes men aggressive . . . I often see it on board . . . They explode for the slightest reason . . .”

Vladimir roared with laughter, and the sound echoed through the air almost as loudly as the noise of the anchor chain.

“I settle that kind of thing with my fists, lieutenant!” he said, stretching his arm out as if to take in the whole horizon.

The young officer looked him up and down, and smiled at this massive man with his powerful physique, who, like a child, was unaware how boastful he sounded.

“I'm younger than you are,” he said, “but when you're at sea you see all kinds of things . . . There was the time I had to go to the aid of a cook and his wife, who were with a gold prospecting expedition on Lennox Island . . . The leaders of the expedition had had to give them revolvers to defend themselves, and keep them isolated in a tent a long way from the other men, about fifty of them in all . . . And the woman was an elderly lady without teeth . . .”

“Yes, but they were gold prospectors, and you find all sorts among them, whatever the sea washes up. My men are all hard workers, and I know them . . .”

“All the same, I'd suggest that, if your wife has had problems, it'd be better to send her back with us . . . Someone could replace her . . . We have a young man on board who's come to work for you.”

“Another man? But I haven't hired anyone!”

“Take a look at this letter. I was given it to give to you. The bearer himself would rather stay on board until it's time for the ship to leave.”

Puzzled, Vladimir opened the envelope and read:
The ­bearer of this letter is a young relative of the government official who gave us the contract, and among the things that were agreed on was that we would give this young man a job, or at least pay him a wage. I tried to get out of it but, since the Navy will be keeping an eye on what he does, you have to take him in, let him stay, and give him something to do to justify his wages
.

He barely glanced at the signature of his friend in Santiago who had helped him get the contract to build the lighthouse, and put the letter away.

 

For more than a week, Vladimir tried to involve young Esteban in the construction work, but the results were far from positive. One day, having had enough, he confronted him, but the young man told him that in reality he wasn't here to work on the lighthouse. His father held a top ministerial post, and they had sent him here just so that he could get a wage.

There was nothing else Vladimir could do but leave him in the house, with his wife. The house was little more than a shed, made of wood and zinc and divided into three rooms, one for the workers, another for the builder and his wife, and the third and largest, which was used as a kitchen and dining room.

And so, Esteban, who was about twenty, although his slight physique and fresh face made him seem younger, stayed in the house, bored stiff when he wasn't reading or when the wind or the drizzle, both very common in the area, prevented him from going out for a walk on the cliffs.

The sea had been a consolation at first, but he had soon grown weary of staring at the horizon, which was usually stormy but sometimes gray or calm, with nothing to vary the monotony but the occasional glimpse from that bleak promontory of a passing albatross, seagull, or penguin. Every now and again, some seals would appear, chasing the shoals of sea bass and swordfish, and then a flock of birds would swoop down noisily to join the hunt. The sea would come alive, and he would think how good it must be to be a bird or a seal that could travel to the north, which was where he often turned to gaze longingly.

One day, as he stood on a solitary rock by the sea, a seal that was fishing suddenly stuck half its body out of the water, some fifty to sixty-five feet from him, and, miraculously supporting itself on its flippers, looked at him for a long time with its round black eyes, with a curiosity that was almost human. He shuddered, realizing that the seal had taken him for another seal standing on two big flippers on the rock. How he had ­fallen in the scale of human values by which he had judged himself back in the city!

Human values! . . . He was an only child, dragged from the maternal cocoon by his father's firm insistence that he come south, to this place, where he could “learn to be a man” . . . His mother's mollycoddling and his own incompetence had conspired to prevent him from graduating school, and he had been stuck in a kind of limbo, unable to enter a profession like law or medicine, or to go into business. Now, for the first time, he was going to earn a wage, save some money and feel independent! That was why he had begged his mother not to oppose his father's plan. Besides, ever since he was a child, his imagination had been nourished by the stories he read, adventure stories of intrepid men braving the seas and the jungles. His mother had wept a lot, but in the end had consented. And that was how he had ended up here, in the south.

But reality proved unexpectedly harsh. He tried to learn to cut trees in the woods, but with every blow of the ax he sank further into the peat . . . The peat was soaked with water like a sponge, and the ax barely dented the bark of the oak and sometimes slipped and came dangerously close to his legs . . . Then he tried to help the men to carry the material used in mixing concrete, but he was incapable of carrying a sack of cement for even a short distance without his shoulder dislocating. The cold and the blizzards often made him weep with an unknown pain, a pain that penetrated his flesh, his bones, even his soul. Was it the pain of physical labor, which he had never before had to confront? He did not know whether to admire or despise these men who weathered the storm like animals as they struggled together to build the lighthouse.

They had put a camp bed in a corner of the kitchen for him to sleep on, which meant that he had to get up before Vladimir and his team of workers came in for breakfast. If it hadn't been for that, he might have spent all day in bed, reading or watching Ana as she went about her work—he thought of her as one of the maids from his house transplanted to the south.

Ana was kind to him, and often sent him like a child to fetch water from the spring that ran into the sea. At other times he helped her to dry the dishes or bring in the firewood. Everyone ate meals together, and the workers frequently teased him, though always with a certain deference, as if he were the son of a distant landlord who had suddenly showed up for a meal at the house of some of his tenants.

Among these men was one named Ricardo, who had once been a boatswain on a seal-hunting schooner, but after the fur seals had been exterminated he was forced to stay on land, where he learned bricklaying and plastering. A strong, sturdy man of medium height, he was the best worker in the team. Whenever he had plastering to do, he got through the work more quickly than any of the others. That was why he had a certain amount of free time, and he often went down to the rocks to gather sea urchins with a trident-shaped fish spear.

Esteban would join him on these adventures and they became quite friendly, although Esteban did not dare go as far out as his companion, whereas Ricardo ignored the danger of falling in the sea in order to spear sea urchins with his wooden trident. One day Esteban saw Ricardo slip and fall. But, instead of going to his aid, he ran to the house to fetch help. In the meantime, Ricardo got back on his feet and took off his clothes to dry in the sun. When Esteban and Ana arrived, they were confronted with a bearded sea god, a naked Neptune. Ana covered her eyes and ran back to the house. Ricardo let go of the spear and dived, coming up with both hands full of sea urchins. Over the next half-hour, until it was impossible to stand the cold anymore, he collected more than two hundred of the creatures.

“The lady saw me in the buff . . .” Ricardo said, laughing, as they were walking back to the house to look for a basket for the sea urchins.

“You startled her,” Esteban said in a low voice.

“But how is she? Is she any good?”

“I don't know.”

“Haven't you tried her yet?”

“In what way?”

“The way you're meant to! Aren't you alone with her in the house all day?”

“I don't do anything like that.”

“Dammit, man, are you completely useless? Run away from a drowning man, all right, but not from a woman . . . Haven't you seen her legs?”

“They're nice.”

“How about higher up?”

“I don't know.”

“Dammit, man, when she bends down you must see her thighs! Okay, maybe I'm talking nonsense, and you've already tasted the fruit! Look, I'll tell you this frankly, I wouldn't mind her myself, just to put one over on the guy for bringing his wife here to dangle in front of our faces.”

“She feeds us all.”

“And he eats the best of the food, whereas none of us will even see a potato until we get home . . . Do you think it's right that a man can't sleep at night knowing that guy's on the other side of the wall with a woman?”

“She's his wife.”

“Why did he bring her here, then? And tell me this, what the hell are
you
doing here?”

“I was sent here. My father thought I could work.”

“Are you kidding? What kind of work could someone like you do in a place like this?”

“I had no choice.”

They carried the sea urchins to the house in two baskets, and that night there was a kind of party, where the only thing missing, to savor to the full those little pieces of sunshine torn from the seabed, was a bottle of wine.

“Dammit, man, when she bends down you must see her thighs! . . .” The voice of the sea god, climbing the cliff with his trident in his hand, seemed to echo in Esteban's ears when he woke up the following morning. That dinner of sea urchins, served as they were or cooked in tortillas, had been sumptuous, and Vladimir and his men had only just left for the construction site. He had been half-awake when he had heard them having breakfast, but he had turned to the corner and dozed off again—but only dozed, because, even wrapped in the warm blankets, as if in a soft cave lined with cotton wool, he could hear Ana's footsteps as she came in and out of the house, busy with her household chores . . . and the footsteps evoked the image of her legs and “Dammit, those thighs!”

“What time are you planning to get up and help with lunch?”

“Right away,” he replied, getting out of bed and putting on his clothes.

The woman trusted him by now, but, in her shyness, tried to avoid being in the room when he got up. He was no less shy than she was, but that morning . . .