My grandfather used to say that every word has its master and that a well-chosen word can make the earth quake. The word is a lightning bolt, a tiger, a high wind, the old man would say, fixing me with furious eyes as he served himself a glass of surgical spirit, but oh, I pity the fool who uses it lightly. Do you know what happens to liars? he’d ask. I’d try to ignore him and look out the window at the vultures circling in the village’s filthy sky. Or I’d turn up the volume on the TV. The signal was weak, the screen an explosion of white dots. Sometimes that was all we could see on the TV: white dots. Do you know what happens to liars? my skeletal grandfather would ask again, threatening me with his walking stick: the word abandons them, and anyone can kill a person empty of words.
Grandfather would spend all day in his armchair, drinking and bickering with his own drunkenness. At night, Mama and I would pick him up and drag him off to his bedroom: he was so far gone by then he didn’t even know who we were. As a young man, he’d been a violinist, in demand at parties all over Chaco, but I’d only ever known him as a surly shut-in, muttering nonsense to his bottle of booze. Quiet, quiet, quiet, he’d whisper nervously to the bottle, as if there were voices tempting him from inside the glass. Other times, he’d murmur in the language of the Indians. What’s he saying? I’d ask Mama, as she set out rat poison in the many corners of the house. L-l-leave y-y-our g-g-grandpa alone, she’d say. C-c-curiosity is the d-d-d-devil’s spit.
Once, though, Vargas, who was from the Altiplano, announced in front of everyone that as a young man my grandfather had collaborated with the government to expel the Matacos from their lands. A javelina hunter had found oil there while digging a hole to bury his dog, which had died from a snakebite. Government men had driven out the Matacos, riddling them with bullets and setting fire to their houses. Then they’d built the Viborita refinery. Thanks to that oilfield, a road was put down along one side of the village. Some greedy bastards took advantage of the situation to rape Mataco women, Vargas said. Some of them were blonde with blue eyes, children of Swedish missionaries. They were prettier than our own women, those savages, he said. My grandfather didn’t get the money he was promised for running the Matacos off their land, money he needed to pay off a debt. He lost everything. He turned mean, a drunk. So the story went.
Almost nothing ever happened in the village. Toxic clouds from the cement factory hung, bloated and heavy, above our heads, and at sunset gleamed in every colour. Those who didn’t have a skin condition had sick lungs. Mama had asthma and was always carrying an inhaler around with her. Foxes howled on the other side of the road, which is why the village was called Aguarajasë. Every year, the river grew angry and rose up roaring with mosquitoes. The world was far, far away. Mama got pregnant by a salesman who’d passed through the village selling Tramontina pots and pans, and who was never seen or heard of again. Eighteen years later, folk were still talking about how the Stutterer had been so in love that, while the pots-and-pans salesman was passing through, she’d spoken without a single stammer.
Once, on my way back from school, I found a Mataco lying by the roadside. He was drunk and swarming with flies. He was big and tall, and his loincloth barely covered his balls. Filthy, dirty Indian, people said. Truckers drove round him and honked their horns, but no one could wake him. What was he dreaming? Why was he far from his own people? I envied him. I wanted him to notice me, but he didn’t need me to be what he was. One day, I picked up a big rock and threw it as hard as I could from the other side of the road. Bam! Smack on the head. He didn’t budge, but a red stream started snaking its way down the asphalt. The south wind blew fierce those days! Heavy with the hissing of chulupaca beetles. We would listen, anxiously, in the dark. I didn’t tell anyone about what had happened. The next day, two policemen came and carted the Mataco off in a black bag. They didn’t ask many questions, he was only an Indian after all. No one claimed him. I heard them cracking jokes as they threw the body bag in the back of the truck. I picked up the rock, stained with the Mataco’s blood, took it home and hid it in the back of a drawer, next to my underpants.
Soon after, the Mataco’s voice got inside my head. He mostly sang. He’d no idea what had happened to him and crooned in that mournful, almost swampy way that Indians do. Ay-ay-ay, he cried. I dreamed his dreams: herds of javelinas fleeing through the forest, the warm wound of a deer struck by an arrow, an earthy steam rising up to the sky. Ay-ay-ay … The Mataco’s heart was a red mist. Who are you? What do you want? Why have you come to live inside me? I asked. I am the Ayayay, the Avenger, he who Gives and Takes Away, the Killer, the Furious Rage, said the Mataco, and asked, in turn: Who are you? There’s no you or me any more, I said. From now on, we are only one will.
I was euphoric, I couldn’t believe my luck. I grew chatty. I’d start saying something almost by accident and then, suddenly, there was no going back: the Mataco’s stories and mine became one. Doña María, Tevi says that his Papa was swallowed up by a whirlpool in the forest. Don Arsenio, your grandson says he skinned a jaguar and ate its heart raw, is that true? Mama cried, which was the only thing she knew how to do. My grandfather said I’d caught the lying disease and beat me so hard his stick broke in his hands. I had to go to school with welts on my arms and legs and put up with everyone staring at me. Stares that blinked back laughter. There goes the jaguar-slayer, thrashed by the old drunk, their eyes said. I saw red, I was aflame with anger. The Mataco read my heart: Wait, don’t rush into anything; I’ll tell you when your time has come.
Then the bikers passed through the village. Everyone went to watch since there was going to be a cockfight and Don Clemente had promised to bring out two of his best fighters. D-d-do you want to g-g-go? asked Mama. I didn’t, my head ached from the heat. As soon as Mama left, the Mataco began raising the red mist. The chulupacas hissed inside me. The aching in my head clouded my sight. I went to the kitchen and grabbed a glass of water. Quiet, quiet, the old man whispered to the bottle. A urine stain spreading like a spider web down his trousers. He looked up and stared at me. You weakling, you poofter, you liar, get out of here, he hissed. I held his gaze, the glass of water in my hand. The old man, defiant in his drunkenness. You’re like bamboo, hollow on the inside, whose seed must have spawned you, he said. And he spat on the floor in disgust. My blood rose, my veins crawled with fire ants. The Mataco started jumping about inside me. What are you waiting for to get your revenge, you son of a viper? Are you going to let that old drunk talk to you like that? Or is your blood as cold as a toad’s? I went to grab the rock. I crept up behind my grandfather and hit him hard, just once, on the side of his head. He fell and lay there panting hoarsely, life passing from his lips. I stood watching, in wonder: so old, and yet he still clung to this world?
Mama arrived later to find him on the floor choking on his own vomit. He must have fallen over while he was drunk, the people in the village said. He took several days to die, then, on the seventh day, he finally kicked the bucket. I saw his soul detach itself from his body like a little white puff of smoke before vanishing into the air. We sold the house to pay the hospital bills, and moved into a room in Vargas’s house, behind the warehouse. We couldn’t afford anything else. Vargas’s wife wasn’t at all pleased and would scowl whenever she saw us. The Stutterer’s kid is so strange, I heard her say to her husband. Why did you take them in? Or is something going on between you and that woman? She burst into tears. If Vargas’s wife had seen Mama as I saw her every night, she wouldn’t have been jealous: under her nightgown, Mama’s tits hung down to her waist. We slept in the same bed. Every night, as soon as we lay down, Mama would turn her back to me and pray until she fell asleep. I’d lie there awake, playing with the throbbing rock in my hands and listening to the murmuring of the other who was also me: The cold came to the forest, and the river dried up. Ayayay. The frog jumped onto the branch, the snake ate it up. The girl went to fetch water, and turned up dead. Ayayay. The young man went hunting, and turned up dead. Ayayay. The old man went back home, and turned up dead. Ayayay. The girl who danced with another turned up dead. Ayayay. The boy who laughed like a monkey turned up dead. Ayayay. The girl with the long chin turned up dead. Ayayay. No one wanted to touch the dead. In the middle of the brush, they began to rot. The souls of the dear departed returned in tears. Ayayay. Will we be left to live alone among souls? she asked, and the next day she was gone. Ayayay. The winds are changing for you, son of a poisonous spider. A new cycle is beginning, the sky is splitting open, pay attention. Ayayay.
Sometimes, Mama would look at me hard, as if she were about to say something. One day, she announced that she was leaving to live with a widowed aunt on the other side of the river and that I was free to do as I wanted.
When? I asked.
A-a-any d-d-day now, she said. Her upper lip quivered. She took a breath from her inhaler, which was something she did when she was nervous. For the first time, I knew what it felt like to know someone was afraid of me. I liked it. Wh-what’s that r-r-rock you’ve always g-g-got in your h-h-hand?
I picked it up on the road, I said.
Wh-what were you d-d-doing the d-d-day G-g-grandpa f-f-fell?
I was watching TV, I said.
Y-y-you d-d-didn’t h-hear anything? she asked.
The volume was up real loud, I said.
The Stutterer pressed her lips together and, with one look, disowned me as her son.
I c-c-can’t s-s-stand it any more, she said and shut herself in the room, slamming the door.
I went for a walk. By the time I got back, the Stutterer had left with all her things. Now what do we do? Go out on the road. Don’t hang around, don’t say goodbye, don’t look back. Someone will be waiting for you there. I put the rock in my backpack, along with a couple of changes of clothing, and left the village without a word to Vargas or his wife. The clouds were high and laden with poison. Five minutes later, a tanker taking fuel to Santa Cruz stopped to pick me up. The trucker was on his own and didn’t hesitate to give me a lift. I didn’t turn around and didn’t take one last look at the village. We sat around chewing coca and now and then tuned into a Guaraní radio station. We saw miles and miles of scorched trees scraping at the sky. We saw a sloth, its back burnt, dragging itself along the highway. We saw a sign that said Christ is coming and another further ahead that said We’ve got bread and gas.
The trucker was one of those men who’s old enough to have a family somewhere, but not too old to want a good sucking off. Soon enough, he parked beneath some trees, pushed his seat back as far as it would go, and unzipped his fly.
Go on then, mate, he said.
It wasn’t easy at first, what with the smell of old man and of piss. But I got hard, too, after a while. The slimy old geezer wheezed and jerked me off while I blew him. We came almost at the same time. He zipped his fly back up, took out a fag he kept behind his ear and smoked it, passing it to me now and then without looking my way.
Just so you know, you’re only a queer if you give head, he said.
The trucker seemed light, happy, satisfied. Should I kill him? If you kill him now you’ll never make it to the place where they’re waiting for you. Or is the white man brother to the scorpion, eager to stab himself with his own stinger? Ayayay. You pig-headed Indian, why don’t you shut up already. I’m sick of your ayayay. I fell asleep to the truck’s rattling and the wind pummelling the window, and dreamed I’d died and that on the other side of death, a boy as beautiful as the sun was waiting for me. I cut out my tongue and handed it to him and in doing so I became mute, though my heart called him by name: My Saviour. I woke up to the shuddering of the engine as it turned off.
We’re going to stop here for a bit, the trucker said. It was a house on the side of the road with busted-up windows covered in cardboard. A dark-skinned woman leaned against the doorway smoking a cigarette, carved into that position. She was older, about twenty-eight. Around her the wind dragged up coils of dust that dissolved in the air. The trucker handed her a bag of supplies, which she took without thanking him. On the kitchen floor, two kids played table football with bottle caps. Neither of them looked up at us when we walked in. The woman drank maté and the man sat in a plastic chair. They didn’t speak and barely looked at one another, but kept sniffing at the other’s movements.
I felt this in the air and went out for a walk along the trail behind the house. The forest grew thick with thorny cacti covered in those prickly pears that cowbirds will swoop down to peck at. In a clearing, a hot spring bubbled open like boiling soup. The sun was in my eyes and, at first, I was blinded by the rising steam and the reflection on the surface of the water. Then I saw it. Splayed on a rock, an octopus curled its tentacles – fat, pink boas with suckers the size of billiard balls. Its arms were wrapped around a quivering fox pup too terrified even to flee. The creature was like an enormous mound of jelly melting in the sun. The place reeked of fish, of woman. Sensing me come closer, the octopus crossed its arms like a fat lady gathering up her skirts to cross a river and, swift and leery, dragged itself to the water, leaving behind its prey. Its final tentacle vanished into the water with a lash: hot bubbles burst on the surface. The little fox leaped into the forest, free. Soon everything was quiet again and it was as if the creature had never existed. Translucent fish, the kind whose intestines show through their skin, nibbled at the water’s edge. But the enormous creature must be sleeping, or waiting, below, at the bottom of the spring. The murmuring in my head grew loud again. The river was poison, the fish were dead. The hunger was great, the food all gone. Three men were sent hunting, none returned. Sucking on pig bones, they were found. Ayayay. They were brought back, their hands bound up. By every child, with a stick they were struck. The head of the youngest popped like a squash. To the dogs they went, their meat slurped up. We stabbed them with skewers, the fire burned them up. We ate our fill, our bellies swelled up. Ayayay. I listened to us and threw stones into the spring until I grew bored.
By the time we returned, the trucker and the woman had shut themselves up in the bedroom. The sounds of their panting cascaded out of the room. The kids kept playing on the floor, paying no mind to the noise. One of them, the smallest, was clumsy and his head was shaped like a balloon twice the size of a normal head. We were surprised we hadn’t seen him earlier: the little boy was a mongoloid. He played with his mouth half-open, bottle caps slipping through his fingers. The mongoloid head beckoned to us in invitation. We took the rock out of our bag and felt its weight with both our hands. The rock throbbed with life. Ayayay. The wind galloped around the house making the trees creak. We slinked towards the kid like a jaguar, calculating the force needed to make his head burst. His brother looked up at us and our eyes met with a spark. He knew at once and gazed up at us with interest. We stayed like that, suspended, for a moment. Then, the bedroom door opened and the trucker came out, wiping off his sweat with the edge of his shirt.
Time to go, mate, he said.
We walked back to the truck. The setback had put us in a mood. Our blood had risen and refused to settle. We didn’t want to talk. Luckily, emptied of his seed, the vile old dog had lost interest in us and kept his eyes on the road. But we weren’t satisfied. Should I kill him? Didn’t I say no? Aren’t you the Avenger, the Killer? Oh, brainless white man of the restless race, what are you talking about? Your heart is like a blind ant that can only sting. I’m running out of patience. Where’s my task? Once you have eyes for it, you will see.
We arrived in Santa Cruz at nightfall. The trucker let us out at a stop light and signalled that we’d reach the square if we kept on walking. And there we were, alone, standing in the middle of cars that came and went in every direction. We didn’t have a dime, didn’t know where we’d be sleeping that night. But we were the man of the house. We let ourselves be dragged along by crowds of hurried people, let ourselves be stunned by loud street noises, all the while carrying with us our rock and our voice. The buildings sprang up around us every which way, the city glowing as if just polished.
Then, we heard the screeching of brakes. Car tyres skidded on the asphalt and we shot up into the sky. We spat out all the air in our lungs, and the spirit split from the body. A woman’s shrieking came bouncing towards us. Before we fell, our soul floated up above the cars. A pigeon eyed us in shock, and we saw people behind the glass windows of one of those tall buildings. As we fell, our eyes met the trucker’s: he was the most beautiful boy we’d ever known in all our life. He watched us, his mouth ajar, a look of pure wonder dancing in his eyes. He is the Beautiful, the one of your dreams. My Saviour, we thought, recognizing him, here, take our tongue, yours is our voice. One last sound, and we embraced the darkness.