Nine
I USED THE SAME SERMON in Los Cielos on Thursday, and on Friday I ate with Aurelio, his wife, and his twenty-year-old daughter. At one point, because Aurelio’s wife asked, I found myself telling them about you and where we’d buried you in Oregon. I tried to describe to Aurelio the design of the garden cemetery: the way the stones lay flat; how the curving drives were bordered by pine trees. He asked me to stop by the Río Roto cemetery when I could, so that he could show me something. I promised him I would visit on Saturday, and without mentioning to him that I would bring her, I asked Xinia to go with me. She agreed to go, thinking, perhaps, that I wanted to show her the progress Aurelio had made.
He’d cleared the central walkways of weeds, and the fountain was running. Xinia sat on the stone lip of the pool while I went in search of Aurelio. I thought I’d seen him as we were approaching, but when we reached the fountain there was no sign of him anywhere. Xinia had pinned her hair back above her ears and I saw her readjust the barrettes as I returned. Under her blouse she wore a silver necklace with a pair of rings, which she fiddled with as she waited. I’d never seen her idle; there was something uneasy about the way she rested, as though she didn’t know what to do with herself. For a moment, when she turned toward me to see who was coming, her expression lacked its usual composure, and I almost felt sorry. But then her face hardened, and I made myself continue. “Xinia,” I said, “is your brother buried here?”
Her cheeks flushed and she looked away. I couldn’t see her face; her arms were tightly crossed. She got up and began walking away from me, toward the gate. I thought she was going to leave without a word. But instead she turned left halfway up the walkway. She didn’t look back and I hurried to follow her through the mausoleums toward the northern edge of the cemetery. We passed a number of tombs whose borders still looked raw from the clearing of weeds. One to my left had just been doused with water. The hose lay coiled beside it and the etched walls were dark with moisture, but Aurelio wasn’t in sight. Xinia stopped in front of a plain headstone and stood with her arms crossed, looking down at it blankly. It read, “Vicente Mora, 1959-1983.” Next to it was another identical stone reading, “Constancia Mora, 1961-1983.”
I looked at Xinia and her eyes stayed on the stones. “I didn’t know you had a sister,” I said.
“His wife,” she said. “She was two years older than me.”
We stood there for some time, and I thought about the things I’d rehearsed, none of which I could get off my tongue. Xinia made no effort to hide her face from me, and I watched her mouth settle wearily. I tried to be watchful, to read some sign in her smaller movements, but I had difficulty noticing anything beyond my own agitation. Instead of exultation I felt a burning on my cheeks, embarrassment for what I’d meant to say; nevertheless I had to say something, and the impulse to provoke from her some unintended declaration faded into the definite necessity of making my curiosity seem the result of a misunderstanding. Finally I just said, “The doctor told me about him.”
“Estrada talks a lot,” she murmured.
“I thought—Someone else said—” I hesitated. “I had the impression he’d died of an illness.”
“He did.”
I paused, felt myself redden again, and said in a rush, “A peculiar illness, then.”
Xinia’s eyes hadn’t moved from the headstones. As I spoke she looked above them to the wall of the cemetery and her expression sharpened. I looked in the same direction and saw a pair of pigeons rustling in the shade. “It came,” she said, “from Naranjo.”
I was silent as I watched her reach under the collar of her blouse for the rings that hung against her breastbone.
“The illness came from Naranjo,” she said again.
I stared at her. “Estrada made it sound like something different.”
“He would.” Her eyes were bright. “Estrada doesn’t understand about some illnesses. It’s not his fault.” She looked up briefly and spoke to the wall. “No one in Río Roto is to blame.” The pigeons on the other side of the wall suddenly shot into the air, hesitated over the wall, and then scattered, flying over our heads toward the cemetery. She turned to me abruptly. “Let’s go back now.”
“All right,” I said. My embarrassment had died away, and I began to wonder how much more she might have said. Her expression was elated, as though she’d gained a point in our conversation. We walked back toward the walkway and headed for the gate.
As we reached it Aurelio came through in the other direction, carrying a hoe. His face flushed as he wished us a good afternoon. “Thank you for coming,” he said. I complimented him on how much had changed.
“Anything else you think of that I might do”—he inclined his head toward Xinia—“anything that occurs to either of you, I’ll see to it.”
“Thank you, Aurelio,” I said.
Xinia nodded. We left him standing at the gate, holding his hoe in one hand and a bundle of weeds in the other.
ON THE SUNDAY of my second sermon in Río Roto I awoke from a dream in which I watched men working below me in the firelight, fortifying the walls with sandbags and smearing the ground around the embattled stone building with sheets of tar. The alarm clock read three o’clock. There were voices coming from just outside the front door, and I struggled for several seconds to distinguish them from the men in my dream, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I stared into the darkness, watching the remaining traces of the dream—the smell of tar, the uncertain light of the fires—recede like condensation on a mirror, and before I could lean back again I heard a knock on the door. It took me only a few seconds to put on my shirt and shoes, but by the time I reached the front room the voices had died away.
I opened the door and, after a moment, looked down. The man lying faceup on my doorstep had his right hand on his heart. His eyes were closed, and his left arm lay in the wrong place. Blood that looked black in the silver light covered his face and arms; his clothing was shredded. I stepped over him and looked out into the road. The men I’d heard had gone.
I looked more closely into the face of the wounded man. His nose was broken and pools of blood had gathered in his eye sockets. I didn’t recognize him, but it would have been hard to. I took my flannel shirt off and covered him with it. I stared at him with the sense that if I thought hard enough I would comprehend why he was there. You would have known what to do; I could only stand there.
“Father Amán,” someone said. Xinia came toward me from around the church.
“Xinia,” I said. I watched her come with a certain dizziness, realizing at that moment that I was still half-asleep. I’d dreamt of Xinia, and I couldn’t recall what she was meant to do next.
“I told them to bring him to you,” she said.
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter. Get him inside. I’ll get the doctor.”
I looked down at the man by my feet. “Help me carry him.”
She turned away. “I’ll get the doctor.”
I watched her leave; she walked quickly and disappeared around the church in a moment. I turned to look at Luz’s house. There was no sign of movement there, though I knew she had to be awake. The man on my doorstep groaned. I went inside and pulled the flat sheet off my bed and took it outside and placed it next to the man. I lifted him onto it by moving first his head, then his shoulders, then his waist, and then his legs. They were thin and hard, ropelike. I moved him toward the middle by pulling the sheet under him. Gathering the sheet in two fistfuls over his head to make a limp stretcher, I pulled him over the tile floor into the front room, down the corridor, and into my bedroom. It took me almost ten minutes.
I heard the sound of feet pounding on the dirt road as I was wondering how to get him onto the bed. A moment later the doctor ran in, wearing his pajamas and a coat and carrying a bag in one hand and his glasses in the other. “Turn on the light,” he said, breathing hard. The sheet was already heavy with blood. The doctor jammed his glasses on and held the man’s face and neck, then lifted his arms and opened his shirt. The worst cuts were to his face and arms and back. He’d curled himself up to receive the blows. “Get the shower curtain,” the doctor said. I ripped it off the curtain rod and laid it over the bed. We each took two corners of the sheet and lifted him onto the plastic. The doctor glanced at me. “Does it make you sick?” I shook my head. “Help me get his clothes off, then.” I lifted the man’s head and torso and then his legs as the doctor stripped him. He asked me for a bucket of warm water and a towel. Estrada washed the man quickly, wrapping the shallower wounds with strips of gauze. In places the skin was cut in deep flaps. The lower half of his left ear was missing. His head bled the most, his hairless scalp hardly more than a veil swimming over his skull.
The man hadn’t regained consciousness by the time the doctor finished stitching and wrapping his wounds some two hours later. There was gray sunlight at the window. My arms ached as though I’d carried the man all night. We put the bloody sheets and clothes in a garbage bag and washed the bucket and the floor. The doctor used my shower and then I did the same, adding my bloodied clothes to the garbage bag. When I went to the kitchen to make coffee I saw that my front door was still open. Xinia sat in the chair outside the door, sleeping peacefully, her head resting against the window. Her hands were folded in her lap and her hair was loose, falling over her eyes. She woke up when I came back with coffee and she pressed her eyelids with her fingertips, as if trying to keep her eyes in place. The doctor and I sat on the doorstep.
“Looks like cuts from one machete,” the doctor said.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
The doctor looked at Xinia. “He’s the priest—the mayordomo from Naranjo,” she said.
The doctor said something under his breath to his coffee cup. I thought I heard him chuckle.
“Who brought him?” I asked.
“They found him that way,” she said.
“Who?”
“My cousins were on their way to the Malvinas. He was by the road for Murcia and I told them to bring him here.” She looked at me. “He’ll be safe with you.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. Xinia looked at me and then looked at her coffee. “Though it’s far for Estrada,” I said.
She turned to him. “It’s safest. No one will come close.”
Estrada smiled faintly. “It’s no trouble to come down here.” He paused. “Are you sure, Amán—” He stopped, hearing a noise from inside.
The doctor and I stood up and went to the bedroom. The man’s eyes were barely open. I reached him first and leaned in so that he could see me.
“Diego?” he said uncertainly.
“Nítido. Nítido Amán.” He blinked at me. “This is Dr. Estrada.”
The man ignored the doctor. He gave me a weak smile. “Nítido,” he said, slowly. “Santos. From Naranjo.”