Ash? again? now that’s in poor taste! though, with the city all grimy like this, there’ll probably be more bodies, a day of remains, and of remainders of course, our German expatriate, for instance, our lady of Mendoza, what am I meant to do with her? stay focused and subtract her, that’s right, a drop of weird rain won’t distract me from the task at hand, no sir, I have to work out why the births and burials don’t match up; why so many empty niches while the land brims with bodies like one giant cemetery? that’s what I’m thinking as I stroll down the Alameda and watch everyone around me in a daze, crazy over a bit of powder, and you never know, maybe it’s good shit, maybe if I snort some I’ll stop coming out with all this crap, just a pinch, that’s all, a bit of ground rock never did hurt anyone, a little line off the back of my hand, yeah, delicious, no wonder everyone’s walking round like statues, their thoughts like stone, like the German, who didn’t so much as say hello before she started prattling on about Mendoza, as if there weren’t enough stiffs here in Santiago, now we’re importing them! what a fucking mess, it’s anyone’s guess if her mum was included on the death register, and if she’s included then I should certainly subtract her, but if she’s not it means she’s been subtracted already so if I do it again, I’ll get a negative number, and how am I meant to reach zero then? by knocking off more people? exhuming her? and what do I do with the ones who came back to Chile, after all that time, came back for good? I could never have imagined so many problems, the maths is flawed, I knew it, and that’s why I was always so bad in class, always something not quite right about those examples with apples and pears, let’s subtract bodies, sir! let’s see how you solve this little conundrum! but the German isn’t interested in my problems and that’s why, when she spotted me, she fixed those eyes of hers on me, sky-blue eyes like no other pair in the whole of Santiago, her pupils asking, how far to Mendoza? and at first I didn’t get it, but then I realised the power in those eyes, as if they’d been born to see beautiful things and everything ugly faded in her presence, that’s why I thought I’d melt on the spot, because I’m no Adonis, but she stared at me and I knew why that German was going to go, because her mum would have wanted to be buried here, that’s what she said, bah, what do I care where people want to be buried? at least in this respect my mum was considerate, didn’t even trouble us with a funeral, just dropped dead one day; a cancer of the heart, of woe, and then, see you later, alligator! and I couldn’t even subtract her because I was a kid and I didn’t notice them plant all that sadness in her heart, all those woes that did away with my mum, that’s what they say happened, and the German wanting to cross the sierra today, today!, what would a pair of eyes like those want to cross the Andes chasing a corpse for? when all she’ll see along the way is ash, ash instead of tulips and candyfloss stalls, but then, light people tend to see the lighter things in life and Paloma weighs less than a pack of popcorn, not for nothing did they name her Paloma, the dove of peace, though really she could just as well have been Victoria or Liberty or Fraternity, ‘Frate’ for short, so creative! it’s alright for some, I inherited my name and my surname, like the joke that dies on a second telling, but Felipe isn’t so bad when you consider that I could have come down the line of Vladimirs, Ernestos or Fidels; the point is that the German floats above things, even now, walking through the powdered city, her grief floats above her, yeah, like the pigeons and the condors and the moths soaring over the ash, that’s what I’m thinking when our German giant suddenly gets all het up and fixated on the idea of finding Ingrid, dead Ingrid, and before I know it, it’s a done deal! even Iquela agrees! and I suppose it’s true that another dead person without a body is the last thing I need, and a few days away never did hurt anyone, what the heck, Fräulein, I’m in, but you’re paying, and don’t forget that I’m only coming out of mathematical curiosity, and the German seems happy, albeit with a wicked glint in her eye, because the truth is she’s enjoying all this fugitive business, like people who’ve never had anything happen to them their whole lives and then boom!, something incredible happens, it rains ash on them and they feel like the star of their own movie, not realising that they’re not the star of anything, we’re extras, Fräulein, every one of us, not even bit parts, just look around you at those faces staring at the ground, look at them, look at me, but I didn’t say that to her, I chose to keep schtum and let her have her little fantasies, the stories she’d tell her German friends, about, say, the arse end of nowhere covered in ash and how her mother was on some rickety old plane and that’s why it couldn’t land in Chile and why she set off for Mendoza, what a Saviour! our heroine! and all those other German giants will stare at her, their eyes like plates, and she’ll nod along solemnly, with the solemnness of an orphan she’ll nod and lap up the attention, yeah, she’ll revel in it as if she were someone important, though who knows, maybe the poor German really is feeling down, her mother has died, after all, and maybe underneath she’s upset and she’s frightened, cos why play mister tough guy? it is a little frightening, the ash falling so hard, hammering down, thick and fast, over the city.