Cos I’m a chump, cos I’m a soft-hearted schmuck, girls always get their way with me, that blue-eyed German says jump and I say how high and end up in a hearse in the middle of an ash storm, cos that’s all I needed, and with Iquela being all bolshie, telling me that I’m being a pain, me!, now that’s rich considering I’m the one giving up my precious time, time that could have been spent on numbers, yeah, cos the dead keep coming and I’ve got more work to do than ever, and it’s impossible to do my subtractions in this darkness, and yet they must be done, the bodies have to be found and they have to be taken away, but with everything so black it’s not easy, I can only just make out the line of the mountains, the cordillera that looks like a body reclining on its side, stretching all the way down Chile, from north to south, that’s the cordillera, its big head up there in Arica and its bum down here, and they wonder why Santiago stinks of shit, but, well, you do the best with the hand you’re dealt and I was dealt what they call the Intermediate Depression, there’s just no escaping it in the fertile and chosen province! and I’ve got no choice but to walk around and plan dead Ingrid’s rescue mission, cos it looks like I’m the only one who gives a damn, the German seems happy enough fluttering her eyelashes, and look at where it’s led me, coming here to play chaperone to those two, though thinking about it, this trip is the most patriotic thing I’ve ever done, I mean, what could be nobler than a mother-daughter reunion? only a father-son reunion, cos it’s a national tradition, yeah, going missing! and the mysterious case of Lieutenant Bello was a historical milestone: viva the family reunion!, which is why, come Saturday, people like to settle down in front of the telly for the show; my Gran Elsa was always first in line, every Saturday she’d have tea watching the host, Don Francisco, and I would sit spying on her for hours, till six o’clock when the talent show was over and the sad music would begin, that melodramatic theme tune getting louder and louder, and Don Francisco’s voice would grow very deep, and he would speak slowly, pulling a face like a depressed bulldog and say: ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to tell you a sad story … the story of a mother who has been looking for her son for fifteen years, and Don Francisco would look straight into the camera and a lady in a floral skirt with an apron around her waist would appear, with a head of corkscrew curls and lips on the verge of a weepy pout, and her hands would be buried deep in her apron as she looked at Don Francisco and at the camera, not knowing what to do, where to put her eyes, and Don Francisco would say, Señora Juanita, tell us, when was the last time you saw your son Andrés? and Señora Juanita would mutter her story gingerly and my Gran Elsa would listen, weeping, and the whole of Chile would be weeping too, cos anyone who tells you he didn’t watch the family reunions is a liar, that show was the reason I started going out looking for other people’s dead, cos I was brought up on Don Francisco telling Señora Juanita, we’ve got good news for you, my dear, your son … your son … and ta-da! there would be none other than Andrés, right there in the Channel 13 studio, and everyone would get very excited and the old girl wouldn’t be able to take any more, and her pout would now be firmly imprinted on my gran’s face as she wept and wept, and it’s these kinds of things that turned me so soppy, cos we all like to see families reunited, yeah, and right now no two people could be happier to be reunited than Iquela and the German, that’s one seriously good reunion, Jesus! hands all over each other, both well up for it, easing their pain with kisses, and of course, the blue-eyed German knew exactly what she was up to, she was no fool, she didn’t hang around, there are ways and there are ways of working through grief! shame you can only make out their silhouettes on the other side of the glass, cos I’d recognise Iquela’s silhouette anywhere, and there was a time she didn’t find me such a drag: I was on the pavement playing chase the hose with Consuelo, though, come to think of it, Consuelo was just watering the plants and I was running through the water, running till she said something, running under that steady stream, but she never said anything to me, only that one time when I’d just showed up at their house from the south, just one instruction she gave me while she set up the pull-out bed in the guest room, you’ll sleep here, she said, and I got into that bed she never put away, cos the guest in the guest room was always me and I would sleep each night on my pull-out bed imagining I was a parrot like Evaristo, a little green parrot sleeping in his little house, and I’d still be wide awake come night and that’s when I’d hear their voices, Consuelo fighting with Rodolfo, how long’s he staying?, he would ask, I remember it all, every last detail, he’s the spitting image of Felipe Senior, Rodolfo would say, the only thing missing is the moustache, but that only happened some nights, and the rest of the time they’d watch TV till dawn, or fuck, yeah, some high-pitched squeals coming from Consuelo followed by the living-dead man’s death rattle, but the point is that one day back then I was out on the pavement playing with the hose when Ique showed up and we started messing about, she took the hose off Consuelo and began spraying jets of water at me, and I loved it, of course, because it hurt and I imagined I was a weeping willow, she watered me and I crouched down and Iquela came beside me and told me to get on my knees, and then she came right up close and flung her hair over my head and her long locks fell like curtains, and for me it was nice to have long hair and I imagined it was mine and I closed my eyes thinking how, together, we formed a single weeping willow, and we were messing around like this, playing at botanists, at standing in the rain, at hairdressers, when she pulled away from me, came over all sad and said, look what happened to me, Felipe, look at this, and she raised her arms high in the air and showed me some little black hairs in her armpit and then she said, look, look down here, and she took down her pants and with my own eyes I saw hairs there, and I pulled my shorts down and I showed her my downstairs and we touched each other for a while, and Consuelo watched us from the house, and in fact I don’t really know what happened next, I guess we just got bored, but that night, when I went to bed, Consuelo came into the spare room and she said, Ique’s room is off limits, kid; as if I’d even want to sleep with Ique when she and I had agreed we’d be great-great-great-grandparents, or that she would be my dad and I her daughter, but boyfriend and girlfriend never, no way! we hadn’t even wanted to carry on touching each other, cos as kids we weren’t even curious about physiology, we were born with the wonder lobe missing, not even the ash took us by surprise … well, maybe a little, the point is I know Ique so well I’d recognise her silhouette anywhere, but not the German’s, and that German is trouble, because she’s climbing on top with no top or bra on, and her breasts are white, that’s what I imagine though I can’t see a thing, because my breath misting up the window is black and I can’t see any more than their outlines, the contours of those enveloping bodies, a pair of orphan kittens who recognise each other, come in for a mutual lick, and their skin is smooth and it’s nice all silky smooth, yeah, and what’s smoother than their skin coming together and Ique putting her hands in her mouth, her wet fingers touching the German’s breasts, moving down and taking her by the hips, moving down and slipping them inside, yeah, and you can tell that the German likes it, and I do too, cos it’s turning me on even though Iquela is like my sister, my great-great-great-grandmother, like my dad, I’m turned on cos they’re animal bodies, bodies passing each other heat because they’re lonely, that’s what I think, and then in my head I see my little brother-pup and the weeping willows and the water lashing my back, and I think about the living-dead man’s death rattle and the green feathers on my desk, so silky smooth, yeah, and then I feel a burning between my legs, the fire climbs up and feels tight, the heat intensifies and I push it away and the ash is falling and I push it away and the memories come flooding back and I push them away too, and I think that I could just let go, let it all out and then leave, but no, I don’t, cos if I did that I’d get lost and I’ve already got enough missing people on my hands; I’m never going missing, never ever.