He might have told me, the man in the orange overalls, because it’s one thing to find a dead body and another to be met by a mountain of stiffs, all in little oblong houses, cos they don’t come in graves in the ground any more, they don’t store them in cold, clinical boxes, oh no, gone are the dead slung out on pavements and in parks, now they’re well and truly bourgeois, and that’s better, of course; far better for the dead to be in order, all set to cross the cordillera in their troops and have me take them away in handfuls, minus three, minus six, minus nine dead, first to subtract them and then to count each of their bones, yeah, though this number of bones is enough to make my head spin, there are just too many, and it’s annoying how many dead have come from Lisbon and Catalonia, and even from Leningrad and Stalingrad, cos they’ve travelled all the way from the past, but they didn’t make it to Chile, no, that’s why I’d better slow down and take a deep breath, inhale and hold in the smell and the stillness, embalm the stillness in formaldehyde and only then return over the cordillera, with the Grim Reaper himself in tow, that’s it, and then, once back in Santiago, in the heart of the ash, I’ll pause for a moment, arch my back and exhale all that embalmed stillness, and with each exhalation I’ll sink my hands into a hole, a pit that I’m going to dig with my hard nails, cos I’m going to dig till the black earth hides the half-moons on my lunulae, my cuticles, my dog-claw nails, yeah, and with my four hairy paws and my pointy muzzle I’m going to dig, with my filthy claws I’m going to scrape away the ash until I’ve drawn a horizontal line, a long line that reads ‘minus’, yeah, and there, in that minus, I’m going to bury them, inter them, lower them carefully down into that bone-dry earth, my bone-dry earth, plant those bones and throw earth over them, cover them in dust and then watch them with my eyes, my hundreds of eyes rapt on seeing that mound of fertile earth, and then, when each one of my dead is in the ground, I’m going to re-dig the same hole and remove the earth to disinter them, exhume them one by one, lick them and hold a vigil for them again, every day and every night for the rest of my life, until there’s no ground left unstirred, until even the deserts, the ghost towns, the dirty beaches and apple groves have been ploughed, until I’ve made up for each one of those missing funerals, that’s what I should do, take all those bodies and bury them so at last the figures add up, the bodies and the tombs, the births and the burials, yeah, that’s my plan, but then I get distracted, Iquela’s talking to me, Iquela’s shouting that she’s found her, that’s what she says, I’ve found her, and I go over and I can’t believe it, cos no one ever finds anything unless they’re really looking and Iquela never actually wanted to find dead Ingrid, but all the same she’s shouting that she’s found her, and only then do I see her; there’s a coffin with a little sheet of paper with her name on it, and I close my eyes in horror and touch the wood with my sweaty palm, cos it was meant to be me who found her, Iquela, me, bloody hell, stop sticking your nose in where it’s not wanted, because dead Ingrid is mine, mine to subtract, for fuck’s sake, and her wood is smoother than all the rest, so smooth it makes me sick, yeah, because smooth things make me sick and the nausea knocks me for six and I back away and hide to hack up my disgust, I have to get rid of that rancid smell, that revolting smell of death, so I shrink behind the other coffins, I slip away to hide from the German and take out the secret sock, cos I kept this liquid for me, yeah, to erase me, to dissolve me, and so I shake it, raise a solitary toast and drink from the little bottle, I take two wet sips and the liquid slowly kills me, it kills the smell and the smoothness, it kills the fear and the numbers, the hate and the envy, and I take another swig and I feel myself levitating over my body and the German nabs me, though I can’t quite be sure if she’s seen me, because I’m disappearing piece by piece, slipping away and I go back to Iquela, standing with the famous Ingrid, I walk towards her, invisible, and I see her pushing the coffin, help me, Felipe, and I can’t understand a word of what she’s saying and I’m dizzy and cold and I don’t want warm vomit in my throat and that’s why I stop and hold it in, Felipe I’m talking to you, help me pull it over to the hearse, and I go over and rest my hands on the wood and the wood is smooth and I push it, that’s it, with all my animal might I push it but it doesn’t move, no, fuck she’s heavy that Ingrid, but I’m strong, yeah, I push the pain and the wood and the disgust too, I push it and the coffin at last starts to shift, yeah, and we pull and I use all my animal strength and I’m grunting and sweating and hundreds of eyes are watching me, thousands of them watching me through their wooden boxes, yeah, and you have your father’s eyes, my Gran Elsa says, just like your father, and it takes all I have to say, no, that’s a lie, and it’s my voice speaking and I don’t want to hear my damned voice any more, not one more bloody word from my mouth and that’s why I go quiet, cos I’ve got cow eyes, for fuck’s sake, I’ve got salty squidgy eyes and I don’t have the eyes of any father, my eyes are mine, mine, mine, I’m the son of the petals and of my great-great-great-grandmother, and of me, that’s what I am, my own son, and with my canine strength at last I drag her along, as if I were trying to cut through the earth, to plough a trench, yeah, and then the coffin falls to the ground with a bang and I catch my breath and push, further and further, and I push her up the ramp on the back of the hearse, all the way onto the rails, the General’s rails which should be cold, cos I’m cold and dead Ingrid must be cold though she’s now snug in the General, this hearse which has been filled as last, yeah, and I catch my breath and then I watch everything split in two, the whole warehouse splits down the middle, all thanks to the magical curing potion, and Iquela also splits in two, I see her in two pieces and I kiss my hand and blow her a loud, broken kiss, a great-great-great-grandson kiss, that’s it, ciao great-great-great-grandma, I call out silently, ciao, I tell her, I love you so much, so so much, and I dash into the hearse and start her up, and the General splutters and shudders, and I can see the German taking photos of all the dead, all these dead I leave behind without a second glance, cos the engine’s running and I step on it, I put my foot down because this body, dead Ingrid, she’s mine, and they can’t take that away from me, no, oh no, they can’t take that body away from me.