Fifty short steps make a block, but the blocks don’t repeat themselves, no, only my steps do: two, four, six recurring steps, and the heat and clouds, and my long drunken strolls, my ambles from Avenida Irarrázaval to Pío Nono Bridge under the starless sky, with only white clouds and a hovering heat, and I let myself be carried by that heat and the pisco, and then, before I know it, I come to the bridge, or it comes to me, the bridge with its dozens of dead, although today it’s just one, a thirty-three-year-old corpse, which means I’m up, the arithmetic has to work out because we’re heading into extra time, even the newspapers know it, like the culture section today with the headline EXHUMATIONS, yeah, just like that the paper announced Neruda’s exhumation, and I would have been none the wiser if it weren’t for the newsvendor on the corner, who said good morning and then, well, look who’s back from the dead, and for a second I thought about who this living dead man could be, but it was just one of Don José’s little jokes because I hadn’t been to see him in ages, too busy sorting, repairing, taking away, but Don José saved all the big scoops for me, what is this obsession with digging up the dead? he asked, and I froze and stared at him with all my eyes; disinter, no! surrender, never! I said, but Don José insisted, saying they were planning to order the … the … and I cried exhumation! thaaat’s the one, Felipe, the exhumation of Don Neftalí Reyes, put that in your pipe and smoke it, and I didn’t put anything in any pipe but I did buy the paper off him to see for myself, and it’s true, they’re going around disinterring bodies, bloody hell! isn’t that a bit much? first it was the living dead, then came the bodiless dead, and now this, so how’s anyone supposed to match the number of dead to the number of graves? how do we make all the bones tally with the lists? how can certain people be born and simply never die? mortuary anarchy in the fertile and chosen province! what we need around here is a maths whizz, a numerical mind that knows all about the maths of our end times, because we can’t be having all this whereby you die and they give you a real funeral, then a symbolic funeral, then a change of tomb and now what, an anti-interment? it just doesn’t work like that! time for some fresh air, Felipe, that’s it, take a deep breath, think about the cold and expel all those thoughts, black like petroleum, like grunge, like Mapocho water, cos it’s night-time in the river and on the Pío Nono Bridge, two twenty-two says the Law School clock, replace the goddamn battery, arseholes! that clock’s always stopped, though who knows, maybe the minute hand isn’t the problem, maybe it’s me who’s stopped, and everything’s so dark and the darkness has always made me feel with my skin, this skin that’s bristling now cos someone’s coming, a pair of pupils in the pitch dark, cos it’s night-time on the roof of my mouth and inside my eyelids, just like it’s night-time at the bottom of the river, and then I listen carefully and I’ve not a shadow of a doubt; a voice scrapes its way up a throat to ask me, got a smoke, kid? and I jump back scared because the voice has no body, you can’t see bodies in the depths of the night, and despite my fear I reply, sure, but it’s not my voice that says it, my head just nods up and down and then I pull a smoke from my pocket and look out east and realise you can’t see the mountains, can’t see the bodies, no, just some huge storm clouds, white, low-lying clouds carved out of cement, out of marble, out of bone, but I block out all that crap about the clouds and hand him the cigarette, and he asks me if it’s my last one and I tell him it is but that it doesn’t matter, have it, I say, holding out my hand, which brushes against his fingers, letting me know that this voice does have a body, I mean, it has hands, and they’re long and cold and bony, and I hold the lighter up to his mouth and I light it and a new expression emerges, his shining face, his well-defined jet-black eyes, shining puma eyes, a wolf’s muzzle and then poof! the night draws its curtain back over his face and the guy thanks me and his voice floats disembodied again, but at least I can see the tip of his cigarette, which he passes to me, and I pop it between my lips only to feel a soggy, squashed filter, but I don’t care and I smoke it anyway, and then the guy starts speaking, or his mouth does, and he says Sundays are slow, that’s what he says, it’s a tough sell but I go out all the same, and I wonder if he means he goes out because he’s sad, because it’s a sad, shaky voice that’s speaking to me now, asking me something I don’t quite catch, no, I’m on another planet now because the Mapocho is distracting me, hypnotising me, carrying me away, carrying me far enough to spot a drum, there on one of its banks, a dustbin on fire sinking down to the bottom of the river, and it occurs to me then that those guys must be round there somewhere, the ones the locals talk about, down-and-outs, skeletons dancing on the shore of the blackest of rivers, the dead finding more and more dead floating there, and it’s not even Sunday any more on the Mapocho, because two twenty-two means it’s Monday, you shitty clock! and as I shout, an icy gust of wind whips my bones and I do up another button on my shirt and wonder if it’s those night-time thoughts sending chills through my ribs, that’s what I’m thinking when the guy starts talking to me again, he touches me, says I have a nice chest, you wax, kid?, and I shake my head but I don’t say anything, I don’t want to hear my voice, my voice is starting to grate on me, that’s right, I don’t want to hear another peep from me so I say nothing, and he carries on talking, saying something about how he depilates all his hair, it’s nice all silky smooth, that’s what he says, it’s nice all silky smooth, kid, and I try to look at him but I can’t cos it’s pitch black, and he offers me a joint and I say no, I’m alright, that’s what I say, despite not saying anything, cos I just nod when my voice goes into hiding, when my voice goes red and burrows down inside me, and the guy lights his joint and his lighter’s also red, and for a second I can see the piercing in his left eyebrow and his hair tied in a tight bun, and then the darkness swallows him again, yeah, and I guess I could imagine him with a different face, but the truth is I don’t imagine any face at all, because now he’s putting the filter to my mouth and telling me to suck, and his fingers brush my lips and he tells me they’re nice, you’ve got nice smooth lips, kid, he says into my ear, his breath all close and warm, and I take a slow deep drag, so deep it hurts, I inhale the smoke into my mouth and I think smoke, fog, blindness, and then I think about the clouds, strangely low, too low, yeah, but I lose my train of thought again when the guy starts talking: I want to give you a kiss, is what he says, and I don’t respond and he laughs, and the fire on the shore of the river flickers and the man’s voice gets louder then fades and the bridge stops vibrating and falls still, frozen, and I feel a sudden urge to make a noise, to explode, to crunch leaves and crush shells between my fingertips, but I start speaking to him, I’ve got no other option and the silence is suffocating me, I ask him about dead people, if he knows any or has seen any lying around, and I think I can see the guy staring at me, sizing me up before replying, I don’t know that you and I have the same ghosts, kiddo, and then he goes and changes the subject, the idiot, says I’ve got a silky smooth chest and velvety lips, and I don’t care about that, no, cos I want to talk about the dead, not about silky, superficial things, so I ask him if he’s ever seen a dead person and he says just once, once he saw a man here, standing on this very railing, just flung himself off and bam! he fell right here, and I ask the man what he did and he says he didn’t do anything, and I push for more details about how he feels about it and whether he feels a bit bad, and the guy says, why would I feel bad? and I can hear from his tone of voice that he’s shrugging his shoulders, because the voice directs the body, everyone knows that, the body surrenders unquestioningly, and then it occurs to me that the man is right, why should he feel guilty if it wasn’t his fault, and his fingers are back, pressed against my lips, and the filter is squashed and soggy and I inhale deeply and the guy follows suit and we cough together and the bridge shakes and I think it’s shaking cos there’s a seagull on the railing and the seagull is contemplating the riverbed below and that bed is totally still, the Mapocho is silent and without its voice it too disappears, and the guy says it’s unusual to see a seagull at night, and I say it’s unusual to see a seagull at all, and he asks, how’d you figure that, kid?, and I tell him there’s no sea or coast in Santiago and he says it’s not unusual, anyone can lose their way; it’s normal to feel confused, that’s what he says, it’s normal to feel confused, kid, and then he moves in closer, yeah, I can feel his breath inside my mouth, you never felt confused?, and I don’t answer and the seagull doesn’t move and the guy’s breath is sour and lingering, and then comes another question altogether, want me to suck you off, kid?, and I’m not sure if I do, but I answer no, cos when I’m not sure about something I say no, that way I can be sure, and he laughs and asks if I’m scared, it doesn’t make you a fag, you precious thing, though I am a queen, a twink, a bona fide nancy boy, and he laughs louder and comes right up to me, and I’m surprised by the force of his hand between my legs, a slim bony hand that slips down inside my pants and I feel him take my dick out of my trousers, that’s right, he takes it out and starts tugging on it and in a second it’s gone hard, and I grab hold of the railing thinking that way I can focus on cold things like ice and metal and the river, and his hand keeps moving and my trousers fall down, right down to my knees, and my mouth is dry and my eyes are dry, the river is dry too, and the fire in his hand goes out and the embers rain down on the Mapocho, I watch as they vanish, and I notice that his feet are bare and covered in blood, but I can’t be sure cos the hand is moving fast now, touching me, and I can’t be sure if there are shards of glass encrusted in his feet, or if those feet are even feet or are they paws, are they toenails or paws? the queen with bloody paws, yeah, and the hand carries on, ah, and I’m not sure, I’m not sure what’s at the bottom of the river, I’m not sure why his hand is moving so fast or why it’s damp, and I’m confused, I think I see a shadow up there in the clouds, a flock of birds opening and closing like a fist punching the sky, yeah, beating and beating, yeah, don’t stop, ah, and the hand moves fast and doesn’t stop, ah, and the hand goes on and feels good, yeah, and I come, I die, and the sky caves in and the pieces crash down on top of me, grazing my shoulders, my chest, my hands, and then I lift up those hands and see they’re covered in snow, but no, cos snow is white, snow is cold and it melts and this isn’t melting, no, this stuff raining down is something else, this is ash, goddamn ash, once again it’s raining ash.