At midday he was in the parking lot of El Capitell restaurant, on the outskirts of Bescanó. The place had been closed for months, but you could see the building better from the highway now than when the restaurant was in business, because over each of the three windows on the ground floor, which was the dining area, they’d hung large independentist flags as curtains. The independentist movement had upended the power balance—Nil’s parents had hung the starred flag at their house, and he would have put one up at the shack, except no one ever passed by in Serradell.
On the door of the closed restaurant hung a sign that said FOR RENT / FOR SALE, with a cell phone number. As he maneuvered into the empty parking lot, Nil saw a flag-curtain lift slightly, and an old man peeked out from behind the glass. Nil got out of the Honda and walked to the door. He found it locked, but since he’d seen the man, he knocked on the glass. Nothing moved inside. He knocked a few more times, then sat down on the entrance steps. The highway was very empty and the few cars raced by. He got tired of waiting. He went back to the door and knocked harder and harder. He could see the keys hanging from the inside lock; he tried to force the door and knocked some more. The blows reverberated in the empty dining room. If he kept knocking like that, he would break the glass.
“What do you want?” the old man finally shouted from behind the door.
“I’m Nil Dalmau, I’ve come for the tables! We have an appointment!”
The old man approached the glass, shaking his head.
“You must have talked to my son-in-law!”
Nil was used to these roles. “The truck’s coming now!” he said.
It seemed that the old man was calming down, but he shook his head again. “Where’s the truck?” he shouted.
“I said it’s on its way! Can you show me the tables?”
“Haven’t you seen the photos?”
“Hey!” shouted Nil. “Do you want to sell the tables or not?”
The old man hesitated for a moment, and then shook his head yet again.
“Are you saying you had me come all the way here for nothing?” asked Nil.
Just then the truck arrived. Miqui stopped in the middle of the parking lot and, without turning off the engine, hopped down from the cab and came over to shake Nil’s hand.
“Should I bring the truck closer?” he said.
“Wait, there’s a problem,” said Nil, pointing with his chin to the old man behind the door. “He doesn’t want to open up.”
“He doesn’t want to open up?” Miqui went over to the door to talk to the old man. “Good morning! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. We just changed our minds.”
“What’s that?”
Nil also approached the door. He had ten fifty-euro bills fanned out in his hand.
“Do you think we’d bring you the money if we were planning anything bad?” he said.
The old man hesitated again. His hand was already on the knob, but he stopped, lowered his head, approached the glass, and said:
“I can’t. We’ve got coffeemakers in here, refrigerators, machinery. . . I can’t risk it, it’s all we have. The faucet factory closed down, we used to get the workers in for lunch every day. But there’s no cash register, no safe. My son-in-law left me here alone. I can’t open up. He would never forgive me. Come back later today, he’ll be here, he’s usually here, but this morning they called and he had to go to the bank . . . The bank calls the shots, it’s not his fault. Come back this afternoon, please, let’s do it that way. I’m sure he’ll give you a discount.”
“Open up,” demanded Miqui. “We’re good people, for fuck’s sake!”
They could have broken the glass door with one kick. The old man was starting to sweat. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.
“Come back this afternoon, please,” he said. “Leave, or I’ll call the police.”
“You know what?” burst out Miqui. “You’re fucking with us. Don’t call the police, because if you call the police, I’m going to come back some day and do something that’ll make you and your son-in-law never want to fuck with anybody again. Who do you think you are? Screw you and your fear! I’ve had it with old people who think they’re the kings of the world! I have a job, I make an honest living, you hear me? Do you know what it costs, just in gas, to get here in my truck? You think I’m loaded or something? You think I have nothing better to do with my time? Have a little respect, goddamn it. No one fucks with me, you got that? Open the fucking door right now, or I’ll break the glass and come in myself to get the tables. Put down that phone!”
The old man started to dial, and Nil grabbed Miqui by the arm. He didn’t know whether his threats were serious or not. He pulled him away from the door, signaling to the old man to calm down.
“Don’t call, please,” said Nil, and he came back over to the door, making sure to turn his face to show his good ear. “We’ll come back later when your son-in-law is here. I’m interested in the tables. We’ll come back this afternoon when your son-in-law is here, no problem.”
The old man looked up from the cell phone and said, yes, they needed the money, but as he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief his eyes widened like saucers and the cell phone dropped to the floor. The trucker was pointing a shotgun at them from the door of his truck.
As Miqui approached the door with the barrel raised, it became clear that he was threatening the old man. But Nil didn’t take that for granted at first. Nearly anyone who had to choose between shooting a frightened old man and a freak like him wouldn’t hesitate. His tunnel was provocative, being different was provocative, and even more so outside of Barcelona. Leaving the herd made you stronger, but it provoked other people: strength is as effective a provocation as weakness. Now that the starred independentist flags were the majority, their presence incited the other flags. But it was misleading—difference, when exposed, lost strength. Any form of expression weakened it. Maybe he would pay the price for wanting to speak with his body—without words or gestures, with physical, permanent, and solitary actions—for having been foolish enough to turn inward. What was he looking for by playing the artist, to turn inward until there was nothing left? And the end would be his disappearance? Ending up flat out with a bullet in his chest at the door of a closed restaurant in Bescanó? And the earring, the fires, what were they? Signs leading to him?
In less than a second he could be lying beside the two boys killed in the accident. In less than a second he could have more in common with the Batlle brothers than with any sucker who was still breathing. The old man in that restaurant, the grasshoppers and worms he collected, the guy with the shotgun, the bitch locked in the shack, the family in the balloon, Iona Sureda, his father, the fucking poplar plantations would have more in common with each other than with him. The land they’d left behind had more life in it than the two boys. Even as he was crushing it, the wingless, legless beetle’s life was worth infinitely more than all the human and nonhuman lives that had been snuffed out since the universe began. Supposedly, he was involved in a gambit to become an heir, to embody a succession—he’d had a stroke of luck. But now that land might be used to bury him. Damn immortal land. What would happen to the fields? Who would inherit them? That desertion, that lack of an owner—that was death.
He wanted some steel tables, and he had needed someone to transport them. On Tuesday, he was at the club with Iona, and this Miqui showed up like a godsend, giving him a business card. Like a godsend. Now he might blow him away by squeezing his finger half a centimeter. His mother had been right. The shack was a bad idea. Without the shack he wouldn’t have come back to Vidreres, without the shack he wouldn’t have thought about setting up a workspace, he wouldn’t have needed the tables, and a nut wouldn’t be aiming a shotgun at him. In the four years away from home, the year and a half surrounded by weirdos, he’d never seen anything like this. Ah, but then he had been among his people! And now, where was he? In no-man’s-land, neither here nor there. There was nothing he could do: death always comes without warning, that’s the only way it can catch you, always by accident; even for the terminally ill death has to be a surprise, it catches you by surprise or it doesn’t get you. Tell that to the animals he collected in the mornings or that he picked up at the pound, tell that to the bitch he had in his shack, or to the Batlle brothers. He was about to enter that world shared by people, animals, and plants, where life was the same for everyone: zero. Where did this Miqui person come from? Why was he carrying a shotgun? Had he been looking for Nil? Was he part of one of the groups of thieves who had the remote homes so frightened, who made their owners check the windows, doors, and blinds, who made the whole family hush if the littlest brother thought he heard some slight sound, maybe some footsteps, something falling to the floor—I heard it perfectly, said the boy, and I’m scared—so the family kept still, waiting in silence, with their eyes wide and their fingers crossed, to see if someone really had broken into the house. . . With that same attention, with that microscopic precision, with his ears pricked up, with the vibration of his metal tunnel in the surrounding flesh he would hear the click of the trigger that would release the hammer and expel the bullet. That’s how death approaches, by surprise, always uncertainly, never sure.
Once he was dead, his parents would lock up the shack. They would let the bitch go. She would run, limping and moaning in pain, back to Can Bou. What good is the land, his father would say, when, without children, it’s worthless? I’m tired of it all! This time for real! Now I know true disgrace! And why? What is this, a punishment? Haven’t I had enough, seeing it happen to my neighbor twice over? Do I have to go through it myself? Me? A truck shows up at the shack, his parents wait by the door, it’s there to take away the furniture, the extractor hoods, the clothes, the shoes, the camera, the computer with his videos . . . What are these bottles, Lluís? Some of them are still alive! Is this what my son spent his time doing? Collecting insects? Where did he learn to do that? And why? Why did he do it, Lluís? And why did he come back so strange and unsociable? What happened to him in Barcelona? Why did he do that to his ear? And the videos? Why can’t I see them? Was our son crazy? Is that why he came back to Vidreres—to get killed?
But the shotgun ignored Nil. The old man opened the door, crying, and the two guys went in. Nil picked up the cell phone off the floor, locked the door behind him, put the key in his pocket with the phone, and asked the old man if the tables were in the kitchen.
They went through the empty dining room and there were the tables, of course, the same wide, heavy tables he had seen in the photograph online before calling the man’s son-in-law. Miqui and Nil carried them to the entrance, and from the entrance to the truck. They put them on the flatbed with the crane and tied them down for the trip.
Nil went back into the restaurant for a moment. The old man was sitting at a table with his head in his hands. Nil placed the money beside him, with the cell phone and keys on top. The man didn’t dare lift his head.
Miqui was waiting for Nil, smoking, beside the truck. He’d leaned the gun against one wheel. Anyone passing on the highway, a police squad car, could have seen the shotgun.
“Artists,” muttered Nil.
The truck followed him to Serradell. They unloaded the tables with the crane just as they had loaded them up and brought them into the workspace. They put them in the empty spot beneath the extractor hood.
“Are you a chef?” asked Miqui. Then he saw the tripod and camera. “You take photos? Photos of food?”
“Videos. Shorts. I’m an artist.”
“I admire artists.”
“They’re more common than you think. Do you want to see the tables get their first run? I owe you a favor.”
He brought Miqui a chair and asked if he wanted a beer. He focused the camera on the table. He turned on the lights, lowered the blinds, and hauled a cardboard box filled with plastic bottles out of the closet. He pulled out two and emptied them onto the middle of the largest table. He tapped the bottom of the bottles so the little black rocks inside would come out. They were beetles of varying sizes, which came to life on the table. Some of them seemed dead but weren’t, they were playing dead, trying to protect themselves that way. Others curled up right where they’d fallen, and still others ran over the edge of the table and fell to the floor.
He spritzed the largest group with a spray bottle and then splashed a rain of alcohol all over the table. The smell spread through the workshop. He turned on the extractor, started recording, and turned off the lights. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket, lit it, and brought it over to the largest beetle. The beetle burst into flame. The fire leaped from one shell to the next. The beetles ran with their fire, crashing into each other, spreading the small blue flame, turning into little rocks of light, then quickly going out.
He ran a brush along the steel, making the black dust fall to the floor, then emptied a couple more bottles out onto the table. The spiders burned faster than the beetles; they made one big flash and disappeared, consumed amid the smoke. They held up a flaming topaz on eight skinny legs. It lasted an instant. Just enough time for it to fix on your retina if you quickly closed your eyes. The image remained there for a few seconds, a luminous sketch of spider tattooed on the inside of your eyelid, until it too vanished.
He dumped out a mix of insects from another bottle, backswimmers, earwigs, ladybugs, praying mantises, and grasshoppers that leaped like sparks when they were set afire. They had parabolas of light over the embers of little legs and segments, jaws, hair, spikes, horns, wings, and antennae. He swept the table again and emptied more bottles. The worms twisted with their tips in the air, little red-hot horseshoes, lengths of live coal and then ash. Nil filmed the cloud of blue sparks from fleas; he lit up the evanescent galaxy of an anthill, ephemeral constellations of mosquitoes, hawker dragonflies on fire, damselflies and horseflies, bees that fell like a meteor shower, blue blowflies . . . He pulled out a box from a pet shop. The lid was green mesh. He spritzed what was inside right through the mesh. He uncovered the box and out flew tropical butterflies with large wings, which he lit up with the lighter like the pages of a book. The colorful glitter made a short flight before scorching and melting into the darkness.
When Nil turned on the light, Miqui applauded.
“Amazing,” he said, “I swear, never seen anything like it. They must pay you well.”
Nil shook his head as he stopped the camera and started to sweep up.
“It’s a labor of love?” Miqui thought it over for a moment then said, “What a weird hobby. Post it online and you’ll get a million hits.”
“There are animal protection laws.”
“For spiders and flies? For butterflies? Are you saying you’ve done this with bigger animals?”
Nil turned the lights off again. He had his laptop connected to a wide-screen television. He switched it on. It was a film that was shot at night in the field in front of the shack. The camera gradually adapted to the darkness and focused on a shadow that became a lamb, a lamb tied by its neck to the ground, probably to a rock in the middle of the field. The camera remained in one spot. The elf with the hole in his ear came out with a container on his back connected by a tube to a spray gun. He approached the lamb and soaked it. Then he rubbed the liquid in with his fingers. Before untying the lamb, he kneeled down for a moment on the other side of the animal, where he lit something—a wick—then ran out of the frame.
“Here’s where the film will start once it’s edited,” Nil said.
Light appeared behind the lamb. The animal turned its head, looked at its thigh, and started to run in circles. The fire spread through its wool. In a matter of seconds the entire lamb was aflame and galloping through the field, streaking it with light. It fell, extended its legs with a tremble, then stopped, immobile. It kept burning until it went out on its own, amid a cloud of smoke.
He had dozens of videos, an encyclopedia; the lamb was the last one he had shot, but there were videos of cats on fire who bristled suddenly like a balls of flame, jumping with panicked yowls; he had dogs, running with just their tails on fire at first, then all of them, packs of dogs fleeing through the woods, always at night, hunting dogs, as if desperately chasing some prey, but all they were chasing was an escape from themselves, from their pain; and birds, thrown off a cliff, that flapped their wings of light four or five times—not to fly but to put out the flames, though only stoking them—until they collapsed suddenly like meteorites toward the depths of the abyss. And a snake that shot across the ground like a gilded arrow; a rabbit that hopped through the dry brush, leaving paths of flame in its wake. He had projects thought up that he wouldn’t get a chance to do, fields of flowers with their corollas on fire, fruit burning up on the branches, palm trees, forests, galloping horses of fire, herds of flaming goats climbing cliffs, bulls, peacocks, roosters, cows burning in green fields, fiery ducks and swans swimming, men and women and children dressed in flames.
“You could make money off all this,” said Miqui. “We could commercialize it; there’s no risk, I can tell you that. If you don’t need the money, think about other people for a second.”
Nil didn’t answer, and in that silence the bitch’s wail could be heard through the door.
“More material,” said Miqui.
“That’s my dog. It’s dinnertime, he’s hungry.”
“Why don’t we talk about it, the Internet thing? Why don’t you let me look into it, and we can give it a try? We can do it from a server in India or the ends of the earth. I don’t think it’s illegal, at least not with the fleas and a few fucking beetles, that’d be ridiculous, but it’s got a morbid appeal, I’m sure it would work, people love sick shit.”
“No. I don’t want any problems.”
“What if I buy it off you?”
“You don’t need to buy it. You can do it yourself. I’ll let you have the idea.”
“I’m no artist, Nil,” said Miqui. “I never would have thought that up. Let me look into it this afternoon. Don’t pay me for the trip, man. Let’s get together later. I’ll come pick you up. I have some girlfriends, I’ll introduce you to them, you should unwind a little, you seem worked up, we’ll relax and talk business and you’ll see things differently. I’ll come get you at eleven, OK?”
The bitch on the other side of the door was getting louder and louder. Nil nodded; he’d have a lot to celebrate tonight.
The bitch had been rubbing her snout against the net and had managed to detach some of the packing tape. Even so, Nil stretched out on the sofa and dozed off after lunch. He slept for a couple of hours straight—his dreams squashed deep down inside him—until the bitch woke him up again. When it got dark he would put her down. That was the end of it. He would give the short films to the trucker, and he could do whatever he wanted with them. He would give him the camera and the laptop with the photographs from his second period, and then they would go celebrate with the girls.
The bitch was still and looking intently at the door, exhaling hard through her snout with her ears tensed but not lifted, because of the constraints of the net. Nil went over to look out the window. It was the end of the afternoon, and there was thin fog that would vanish at dusk; it was a prelude that gave way to the thicker fog. He’d learned to watch it as he waited for night to fall, a fake fog that could just as easily have come from the fires of farmers as from steam escaping from the ATO milk processing plant, or from the tanker trucks that constantly came to Vidreres to fill their steel tanks at the plant in the industrial park.
Shit. Someone was coming along the path, and it could only be his father. The shack wasn’t anywhere that people just passed by, it was at the end of the path. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t there, because his car was parked outside. His father wouldn’t be pleased to find out that he’d taken the dog with him instead of killing it at Can Bou. Nil wouldn’t have an easy time explaining it either. He quickly grabbed the packing tape to wrap up the bitch’s muzzle again. He still had time to drag her into the workshop. But he took another look out the window. The person approaching was Iona, from Can Bou.
Shit. But better Iona than his father. He grabbed his coat, left the shack, and walked quickly over to her. He stopped her far enough away that she wouldn’t hear the bitch.
“I’m looking for a dog,” said Iona, “her name is Seda, she’s been missing all day. I thought maybe you’d seen her, maybe she headed this way, she must be really lost. She’s got a bad limp, we found her injured on the road . . .”
“If you got her off the road, she must have gone back to her owners. Dogs do that, it seems like they’ve gotten used to you, but one day they wake up and go back home.”
Iona’s hair was shiny, her skin taut and porous; she had bags under her eyes from crying, but the pupils darted around. Nil thought about the pretty young teachers he’d seen that morning and the trucker’s friends awaiting him that night. Would he eventually get used to this girl? Would he really like her? When spring came, Iona would have to forget about the bitch and about Jaume. He himself will have changed a lot by then, he won’t be like he is now.
“How’s it going, life in the shack?” she said.
“Come some other day and I’ll show you,” Nil said. “I was just leaving.”
But Iona didn’t move. She had to make an effort to say what came next:
“One question, Nil. Why did you show me that video?”
“I made a mistake. You’re right, I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t the right moment. I just wanted to be there for you.”
“Be there for me?”
“I wanted to be there for you in your grief. I’m trying to adapt to being here again, fit in. I don’t know anything about anyone. I’ve been gone a long time.”
Iona took in a deep breath—Nil perfectly heard her take it in—and suddenly took off running toward the shack.
“I just have to see for myself!” she screamed in a cracked voice as she ran. “I can’t leave without checking! I have to check, Nil! I have to see it for myself!”
Shortly afterward, as she walked past him with the bitch in her arms, still tangled in the net—“sick fuck!” and the bitch showing him her teeth, Iona having removed the packing tape, “fucking asshole!”—Nil thought that he could have locked the door but he hadn’t.
He brooded over whether to take his car and go to the butcher shop, or buy nails and smash up a piece of glass, or get some rat poison, or just ask the trucker to do it with his shotgun, on their way back from seeing the girls, in exchange for the videos.
He didn’t have long to think it over. Iona had only just disappeared down the path when he saw another figure approaching, a figure very similar to himself, except for the ear—the last person he wanted to see right then. The gait was identical to his own. Nil walking toward Nil.
His father had his hands in his pockets and planted himself in front of Nil without any greeting.
“I didn’t call so your mother wouldn’t ask questions. I’ve been expecting you to call me with some excuse. But you haven’t said a word all day. And now I see the girl from Can Bou leaving here, crying, carrying a dog trapped in a net. You’d better have a good explanation. Because if this is what I think it is, you really screwed up, Nil. I hope you have an explanation. You had that dog, didn’t you? You didn’t carry it off in a net! And the dog was injured. Do you mind telling me what that girl was doing here, crying and picking up an injured dog at our shack? Can you explain it, or is there no need? You know what’s going to happen, right? They’re going to report us. I’ll say this in case you don’t already understand: it’s over. There’s no way we can get the land now. Did you hear me, Nil?”
His father grabbed him by the shoulders. He shook him and asked him to explain himself. Nil couldn’t say anything; his father was right. They’d spent four years waiting for him. In four years, they’d only had one bit of good news: when they found out he’d quit art school. When he told them they didn’t hide their happiness—an underwater power cable that connected him and his parents, but didn’t start to work until his father asked him to go kill a dog at Can Bou. For four years, his parents worried that their son would never come back from Barcelona. Every month they paid him the salary that it would take three black men working sun up to sun down to earn, as his father told him one day; they paid so he could devote himself to searching for another world, to betraying them, with the hope that he would grow tired of it. His parents had also acted irresponsibly. They had to have some fault in it, letting him go, letting him get mixed up in a lie. Or was it an experiment? Had they sent him out to explore? Go, see if you find anything better. Go, fail, grow up, you’ll be back. And when his father pushed him, Nil pushed back, and they started to fight. A father and son don’t reach this point so easily. His father was carrying a lot of rage inside, and every blow that Nil took was worth ten, the punches came as if pressurized—his father was strong, a man of the earth, a rock from the field, the wait had turned long and tense, waiting every day while he watched other people’s children living according to God’s plan, taking up the reins, continuing, who was Nil to leave and then fail—and every time Nil received a blow from his father there was a reason behind it, and he just let himself be shook and beat on, he didn’t struggle against it, he’d thought of his father every morning when he saw the Batlle brothers heading out into the fields with theirs . . . And when his father grew tired and stopped, Nil got up in pain and helped his father to stand.
“You’re all the same, Nil,” his father said, “everybody your age is the same. You scammed us. You played us for fools. You took advantage of us. You know what hurts us the most, Nil? We were afraid that one day we’d open the newspaper and see that they were talking about you, about the things you were doing. That we’d find out that you were even further into the lie, that you believed it completely. We helped you because you’re our only child, and there was no other option—your teachers said you were intelligent and that your mother and I had to have a lot of patience—and we didn’t lose hope even though we saw it coming for a long time. Parents always have to think the worst; we need to see it coming. Look at the Batlles. We knew you wanted to go to college, so we let you do it because it wasn’t a question of four years or even eight . . . but to work here you don’t need a degree, you need effort and know-how, real know-how, not that flighty left-wing crap they fill your head with, the ideas they started giving you really young. . . What kind of artist could come out of Vidreres?. . . Before books and before artists there was the land, and someone was working it, and when there are no books left, or artists, or paintings, or any of that shit, because one day all of that will be history, like everything else . . . do you know what will still be here? The land will still be here. Scratch at it all you like, throw a bomb at it and you’ll make a hole, and underneath there’ll be more. Your grandfather always said, when he was little, in the war, they took land to build an aviation field. You see what’s left of that field. You can scratch at it all you like, you can throw a bomb, but under the dirt there’s more dirt. You kids think you’re so smart. You’re so full of yourselves. You lasted a year, Nil, you dropped out and we thought: well, he’ll be back here soon. But then it only got worse: you didn’t come back right away, and then one day you show up with that ear. I’m still not used to it. That’s our flesh, goddamn it! And then you asked me for the shack. Your mother didn’t want to—women know more about these things—she’d given you up for lost, not like me. I’m just a poor man, and when the boys from Can Batlle got themselves killed, the only thing I could think of was to ask you to do a job that I should’ve done myself. I thought I could treat you like a grown-up. I don’t know why you wanted the shack, I don’t know and I don’t care what you’ve been doing in there, I haven’t stuck my nose into it, I haven’t asked any questions. All I asked was for you to look out for the family and the land and . . . How could you have blown this bit of luck, luck that could help our family survive for a hundred more years? A hundred more years, Nil. Does that not seem like much to you? Or you think it’s too much? You didn’t have to do it for yourself; it was about those that’ll come after you, you hear me, all the dead are in these fields . . . You really screwed up, Nil. Now the land will go to the Suredas, and Can Bou will grow. Goddamn it. At least those two killed themselves. It shouldn’t have been them that died. But what do you know, you, who left the land? You live in a world that’s about to explode—we’ve sold you kids out, let you do what you want. Now I understand why you didn’t say anything, now I see why the earring, why you wanted to lock yourself away here . . . just to escape, because that’s all you know how to do!”
One night, fifteen years earlier, Nil was sitting with his parents in front of the fireplace. They were watching a game show on TV. First they heard a wheeze and then a roar, as if there were a beast stuck in the chimney, roasting. There was no animal. Their chimney had caught fire. Nil’s father jumped up from his chair, and his mother ran to move the sofa. His father came out of the kitchen with a bucket of water. He put out the fire in the hearth, then ran upstairs with another bucketful and Nil’s mother behind him. Nil was eight years old. He couldn’t think of anything better to do than to put his head into the fireplace. He crouched down, leaned against the hot, black water and, burning his cheek against the still-scorching tile, looked upward like he sometimes did when there was no fire blazing. During the day you could see the light all the way at the top, like the reflection in the bottom of a well, and you heard very precise sounds from outside the house, which traveled through the air from far away—as if the chimney were a small, long shell, an antenna to pick up the barks of dogs from other houses, the occasional shout from a neighboring field, or the engine of a motorcycle—sounds separated from their place, exiled like the dim light you could see all the way at the top; light from the sky separated from the sky. That night he hadn’t expected to see the placid light of day, nor even a bit of moonlight, but he also hadn’t expected the nest of snakes that he did see. A virulent flaming light, frantic between the black walls, a well in hell that made the whole house tremble. He felt a hot splatter on his arm, a bit of soot had fallen into the puddle of water on the floor. Sparks fell from all the way up the chimney, floating down like incandescent, volatile rain, and he had to move out from under them. Then he ran upstairs to his parents, wanting them to protect him; throughout the whole house the chimney’s snoring could be heard, like a flute, zuuuu, zuuu, and it seemed the walls were quivering in a sustained, never-ending earthquake, and Nil went up the staircase along the chimney, running his hand along the wall’s plaster. And it was hot, it was burning hot, the fire was just on the other side, a few centimeters away from him. He was afraid that the whole house would suddenly burst into flames, and he saw a crack in the plaster that hadn’t been there before, long and deep and all the way up to the ceiling, and he went out on the roof, and there he found his father, who’d just thrown a bucket of water into the chimney but stood still, as if hypnotized. The chimney was a small volcano, a fountain of sparks that the wind carried into the night over the fields, into the fresh air. The fire gradually died out, fewer and fewer sparks falling onto the adobe roof, bouncing, and being carried off by the wind . . .
Now his father left without saying a word, through the fields, disheartened after the fight, cursing and defeated.
Light pricked the hills; the red sky turned violet and increasingly opaque. The clouds made maps of continents with peninsulas, islands, and coastline, a shadow of the earth’s continents, black ash that would fall on the fields and make them barren, enslave them, and then the night’s water would turn it all to mud.
The moon focused on Serradell; Nil was sitting at the door to the shack, lost in his labyrinths. He had a long glass tube and a jar with a mix of water and flammable paste. He was blowing bubbles and lighting them on fire. His planets of lava and blood floated over Serradell, dying out here and there.
Why did you do all that? Because you’re a pyro? For your own pleasure? For the light, for the exorcism of death that the deaths of others brings—since they leave and you stay and make a record of it, you make their deaths material in your videos and make material of death? Because you want to construct a garment of death, wrap yourself in these deaths so when your moment comes you’re prepared? Are you searching for the light that will consume you? Exploring art’s extreme limits? Do you think there’s nowhere further to go—nothing beyond here—and it only makes sense to turn back, to pack it in? Why did you do it? To satisfy your imagination? Because you were lonely? Because it was as if you were burning yourself up? Did you do it because you couldn’t explain it?
Would he be brave enough to pack his bags and leave? He admired so many painters, had seen so many exhibitions in those four years, and beyond each painting and each video there were entire museums of paintings and videos that hadn’t been made and were worth more because of that. Walls and blank walls. Artwork without pain. Full stillness. Blameless sin. He could have lived with that emptiness, but wasn’t brave enough; he searched until he found a way, and he started to kill animals as a path to return home, to an earthly state, the same state that his father sought with his work each day by turning his body into his land, going into the field like a worm to eat his own flesh; every single day, with the obsession that his son would continue so the flesh and the land could be the same, and in this perpetuation his existence was at stake, the existence of his ancestors, life itself was at stake.
The truck’s headlights approached like eyes getting a closer look at him. He heard the engine, the big wheels, sounds that had nothing to do with what the same engine and the same wheels did during the day—there were day sounds and night sounds, and the ones at night were more precise and fine-tuned—two types were needed, one to watch over the other, like the two headlights on the truck, two types in symmetry, just as with the body: hands, feet, brain hemispheres, the same symmetry as with the dead brothers.
Miqui was waiting for him in the cab. He gestured for him to climb in.
“Ready to have some fun?” he asked, when Nil was inside. “Good news—I looked into the Internet thing. There’s no problem.”
He had a photo of a naked girl taped next to the steering wheel, with huge, symmetrical tits.
“Our Lady of Safe Travels,” said Miqui. “Wait till you see Cloe and Marga.”
“You have to take me to Lake Sils,” said Nil.
“You want to go to the lake now? Wait until we come back . . . if you still want to then!”
“Take me there.”
“There’s two of them, Nil . . . it’s gonna take some time!”
They were passing the tree. In the truck’s headlights, the bouquet looked like a bride’s bouquet.
“What assholes,” said Miqui.
“A lot of accidents are suicides and no one realizes,” said Nil. “We don’t know anything about other people’s pain.”
Miqui gave him a puzzled look. “Is something going on with you?”
Nothing is more closely guarded than the pain we cause ourselves. We don’t talk about it, and we try not to think about it, but the pain accrues. The worst pain is what we do to ourselves. We know where it’ll hurt. And the dead turn over in their graves and don’t forgive the living for not taking advantage of what they’ve lost forever. They don’t forgive us for living in hell; they don’t forgive the zoo of animals that the living burn inside themselves, that madness.
“I don’t want to go see the girls,” said Nil. “Just drop me off at the lake, and I’ll walk back on my own. I’ll give you the videos. You can do whatever you want with them.”
Miqui exited the national highway and took the Sils road.
“You didn’t understand me,” said Miqui. “I want you to come with me. What could you possibly have to do at the lake at this time of night? We have a date with the girls, we’re late, you can’t be rude with chicks. What’s wrong with you?”
They turned off onto an unpaved road before reaching the center of Sils.
“You want me to leave you here?” said Miqui. “At this time of night? You are really fucking weird, Nil. You want me to go with you? You want me to wait for you?”
“Piss off,” said Nil, and he got out of the cab.
But Miqui turned off the engine.
“You can leave,” said Nil. “Go.”
The truck lit up the road. Nil lifted his arm, nodded good-bye, and began walking. He heard the road in the distance, and the freeway, and the jet engines of a plane. He heard croaks and animal noises from the water. And then a honk made Nil turn around. Miqui had lowered the window and was aiming at him from the cab.
“Get back in the truck,” said Miqui.
“Piss off,” Nil said again.
And he saw the flare leave the mouth of the barrel, and there was a very brief silence, then a deafening thunderclap immediately followed by dirt and a laugh that skated over the lake’s water.
“Nobody tells me to piss off!” shouted Miqui, and he turned on the engine. “Got that? Nobody! You’re out of your mind, Nil! You’re nutty as a fruitcake, a fucking fruitcake! Look at this shotgun! I’d never shoot anybody! I’m not like you, with your fucking freak ear! You’re mental! You’re out of your fucking mind!”
Nil remained motionless until the truck was far away, and then took the path he always did around the lake. The cold compressed reality: there was an effervescence of stars around the moon, the black glass of the sky was filled with little holes so you could see through to the other side; with one kick he’d shatter it to pieces. He took the same path as always, his place was here, at night—the darkness, the cold, the solitude. He heard a train coming and went into one of the observatories and sat down, surrounded by aquatic sounds, unexpected splashing, no one would come in that night, he could’ve stretched out on a bench and slept until the next day if it wasn’t so cold. He felt the tremble of the tracks and watched a light-laden train pass, reflected in the lake’s dark water.
The train passed by, all lit up. In the sky was the balloon from that morning, with the two rays of helium stuck into its belly, like a big incandescent bulb illuminating the lake and filling the ground with shadows. There were also airplanes in flames. The lake was a burning pool. The fire had taken over the center of Sils, and the houses were aflame, the chimneys, the church tower with its red-hot bell. The isolated farmhouses in the woods and in the fields, and Miqui in his truck, and the cars passing by on the road and freeway. Infernos in the Guilleries and Montseny mountains, Vidreres ablaze, the streets, the homes, his parents, Iona; the limping bitch ran like a shadow between the flames with another dog, a dog whose fur was all burned, named Ringo. Nil hadn’t heard anything from him since Saturday night when he lit him on fire and let him go, and the dog set off running like they all did, fleeing from himself through the fields. But something went wrong, because the flames went out, or it had only seemed they were going out, because that same fire was burning everything now, and Ringo was running, hairless, through it all, fleeing like he’d fled Saturday night, looking back every once in a while, farther and farther from Nil, until he crossed the road at the worst moment. Nil saw the lights, the S the car made, he heard the sudden braking, the shattering glass, he ran back to the shack to hide the fuel and the camera.
He touches his ear to make sure he’s awake. Hell is here and he is the devil, but not everything can be destruction. He keeps walking and finds the Peugeot with Jaume and Xavi inside, two boys a bit younger than him, whom he’d met at some party in town.
“What are you two doing here?” he asks.
“Us?” says Jaume. “We’re where we’re supposed to be. And you, evil notary?”
He doesn’t want to be that reincarnation. The water of the lake has to rise again, it has to drown the two boys, snuff out all the fires; or else it will all be hell.