A few glorious months of order and progress, yeah, and all thanks to me knowing how to spot the patterns and make my subtractions, cos even if the mathematicians insist the order doesn’t alter the product, everybody knows that just isn’t true, cos when I talk about ‘the dead’, I don’t mean any old stiff, there seems to be some kind of order: they find this dead body in Quinta Normal Park, the guy must be about forty, and the next one thirty-nine, then thirty-eight, thirty-seven, like a rocket launch countdown, thirty-six, thirty-five, and on they go dying till they start getting closer to my age, thirty-four, thirty-three, and I’ve been thinking that any minute now they’ll stop, but the corpse this week is thirty-one which means it’s really close, too close, and I’ve still not got a clue what to do about the living dead, what am I supposed to do with them? add or subtract? and when I get down to zero, what then? will some balance be restored? will I be able to start all over again? there’s a fault in the formula, yes sir, it’s not just a matter of turning up and subtracting them, first you have to work out what to do with the living dead, the ones who are neither here nor there; it’s not for nothing that the papers insist on talking about dead bodies: dead BODY DISCOVERED ON THE CORNER OF VICUÑA MACKENNA AND AVENIDA PORTUGAL, THE CORPSE HAD ALL ITS FINGERS, they write, as if we cared about the fingers, bah! although, now I come to think of it, it’s not such a small detail, because the fragments, the parts, they matter; we need teeth, nails, hairs and fingerprints, but just fingerprints, mind you, no toes, because the feet are useless, though you never know, I’m going to add my toeprints to my file just in case, yeah, but none of that’s important, not as important as the papers printing a story about a dead body, which I might have written off as a slip, but now I think they are trying to make some kind of clarification, to emphasise that there are also living bodies, living corpses, the living dead, and that’s why the maths gets messed up, because who knows if you’re meant to add or subtract, to aggregate or take these ones away, to inter or exhume, man, not even basic arithmetic works properly in the fertile and chosen province! but I didn’t know that back when I was a kid, when, all of my own accord, I discovered that there was such a thing as the living dead, and I ran to share the news with Iquela, and I told her that I’d seen her dad in the buff and that he was well and truly dead: Rodolfo’s dead, I told her, because I saw the bullet still inside him, two in fact, one in the heart and the other behind, right in the back, I swear, I said, because Iquela didn’t believe me, she thought I was jealous; she thought I didn’t want anyone else to have a dad and that’s why she made me swear, so I swore on my dad and on my mum and on electricity and on God and on all the atoms and on the Virgin Mary and on Mary Magdalene and on my marble collection and on my World Cup trading card doubles, cross my heart and hope to die, but I can’t really remember if I swore on all of those things, cos those things didn’t exist; the living dead, on the other hand, do, and it was Rodolfo who taught me as much, Rodolfo was in the shower and I needed to pee so I went in anyway, and no sooner had I walked in than I shot back out again, scared witless, and peed all over the door, cos it’s not every day you discover someone you know is a living dead, no, but at least I finally understood why Rodolfo seemed sort of gone in the head, like my Gran Elsa, who was also gone in the head, or at least she was going, that’s right, she was always going, my sweet gran, until she went; she died and I subtracted her, yes sir, take away one, I wrote in my notebook, or take away half, I should say, cos she was already well on her way, a little part of her had already disappeared, that’s what my Gran Elsa would say, that a little chunk of her had died after what happened to my dad, my poor Pipecito, she would say, the only thing they returned to me was his name on a list, and it’s true, I saw the list and his name and my surname and then an ID number and the sum of his years, thirty, a number made to be taken away, even though I didn’t, I couldn’t, because you can’t take away what doesn’t exist; I subtract bodies, not surnames, though who knows really, maybe someone else subtracted him and I don’t remember, me and my damn memory, not like my Gran Elsa the encyclopaedia, it’s our duty to remember, she would say before heading off for one of her walks in the countryside, I’m going to clear my head, son, I’ll be right back, and each time she would go further and further, so far that it made more sense for me to spend the weekend at Iquela’s, because Consuelo can look after you better, it’s not my fault, any of this, my gran would say, and one weekend would turn into two, then three, then four and then the whole summer, and all the while she just kept on going, only ever coming back for a night or two, when we would stay just she and I in Chinquihue, she’d come back to warm my milk before bedtime, to remove the creamy skin that I so hated, because I don’t like things in layers, no, I like things that are whole, in one part, the full picture, and I can’t stand weird consistencies either, which is why she’d remove the skin from my milk with a spoon, winding it like pasta before eating it, yeah, and I’d want to heave and I’d close my eyes to block it out, to avoid looking at that slimy, snotty gloop, but I could never close all my eyes, no, the eyes on my skin were wide open, which is why I’d end up seeing her eat that skin, and I could never hide my disgust, and she’d tell me not to be such a fusspot, feral child, she’d say under her breath, and then she’d ask me if she’d taken her pill, and I always told her no, you haven’t taken it, Gran, because it was her happy pill and better to be happy than sad, take it, Gran, take two or three or four, and she would stand up and look for her pillbox on top of the sink and take a little pill muttering something about the only problem being that they made her gain weight, but she was as skinny as a rake, Granny Elsa; and, in fact, it was one of those times she mentioned putting on weight that I had the idea for the hens, cos something was up with the chickens in Chinquihue, the poor things were anorexic, clucking around in the fields refusing to eat any corn or crumbs, and my gran didn’t know what to do, because, what with the wasted dog, the depressed chickens and me, cos I wasn’t exactly an angel, and that’s putting it lightly, she was sick to the back teeth, the poor thing, and it’s true that it wasn’t her fault she’d wound up living alone with me, that was that grass’s fault, that snitch who they’d barely had to squeeze before he spilled the lot, but Iquela doesn’t know I know this, and my lips are sealed, yes sir; the point is, I assumed that the pills that made you gain weight would a thousand per cent work on the chickens, so one day I woke up and I knew what I had to do, and I stole a big handful of pills, I don’t know how many exactly, and I crushed them between two spoons until they became a powder, and since from dust we were made and to dust we will return I went out into the yard and called them, chick, chick chickies, I cried, chick, chick chickies, until they all came over, and I sprinkled that magic fattening dust on the dry cobs, that’s right, and they seemed to like it cos they strutted over inquisitively and gobbled it up, and I went back inside feeling pretty pleased with myself because now the chickens were going to be plump and happy, but it didn’t work out like that, cos soon they were all falling over each other as if they were drunk, those poor hens and roosters were dying of thirst, guzzling water like no one’s business with their yellow peckers, and I was inside, watching from the window, waiting for them to get fat and happy, but I soon lost interest and went to my room to play with the barbies Iquela had given me, Doctor Barbie and Guerrilla Barbie, pretty, but pretty filthy too, covered in soil, when I heard a booming cry from my gran, Felipe!, and because, thankfully, it was rare for her to shout, I shot up and bolted to the window to see her waiting for me in the yard, tearing her hair out with both hands, staring at the chickens all stiff on the ground, dead, really dead-dead, that’s what I thought, though I kept schtum, and she asked, cat got your tongue?, and it wasn’t that, no, because the cats and I were friends and they’d never try to get my tongue, the issue was that the pills were meant to make them fat and happy, but instead we found them conked out on the ground, and I thought the same was going to happen to my gran and that I was going to be left alone, more alone than the Lone Ranger, because she was going to drop dead any day now and that thought shocked me, it scared me to think she might kick the bucket and that I’d have to go and look for her like those stiffs on TV, a missing persons list in one hand and a doleful look on my face, and that’s where we were, both of us silent, when she stepped forward, crouched down beside Marmaduke the cock and murmured, he’s dead, you’ve killed him, and I felt a dagger drive right into my heart, a blade that was black and hard and cold like those night-time thoughts, and I sat down on the ground and together we held a vigil for those stone-dead chickens, as scrawny as ever, the poor things, and we stayed like that for a good while, neither of us howling, until something extraordinary happened; at first I thought I was seeing things, but they really were moving, in spasms, and after four or five jerks they began to get up, I’m not sure if any fatter or happier, but definitely alive, or perhaps alive and dead, living-dead chicks, one by one getting up as if waking from a nap, and I was ecstatic but my gran was still fuming and she dragged me by one arm into the white truck and told me she’d had enough, she couldn’t cope with me any more, feral child, she said, and she drove for a long time and wouldn’t stop to buy me crunchy nalcas in Osorno or blackberry jam from Frutillar, or to let me have a pee in the Laja Falls, she just drove and drove all the way to Iquela’s, and when we got there she told Consuelo she needed a break, it was the least she could do, and Consuelo said nothing and then OK, sure, Elsa should go home, no problem, she’d promised Rodolfo, she’d promised that grass she would look after me if anything happened to my gran, and so I stayed in Santiago for who knows how long until my gran came back for me, and luckily she wasn’t pissed off any more, though she did look pinched and haggard and she had this doleful look on her face, and she told me that the hens were broody as hell, but not fat or happy, and she was even less so, she was growing scrawnier by the day, you’ll fade away, the neighbours in Chinquihue would tell her, and that’s exactly what happened, and nobody seemed to care, nobody put a notice in the paper, she disappeared in a flash, the whole and its parts, no stages and no warning, that’s how my Gran Elsa died, without a fuss, without a peep, just like my milk these days, thick-skinned.