CHILDREN OF HEROES (EXCERPT)

BY LYONEL TROUILLOT

Place de Héros

(Originally published in 2002)

Translated by Linda Coverdale

It must have been noon when we began to run. We could have put up with the smell for a lot longer, but when Mariéla saw the mailman coming, a guy who never failed to have a drink with Corazón and reminisce about the legendary greats of boxing, she dumped our savings out of their jar and, warning me not to lose them, slipped the coins into my pocket, then told me to run without stopping until I was out of the slum. If we became separated along the way, she would wait for me in front of old Moses’s furniture factory. She led me over to the bed where Joséphine was still sleeping. We looked one last time at that face battered by blows and the passing years. You could see the bones beneath the flesh, and those very bones seemed to be sagging, as if the whole body had cried uncle. With the passing years, she had become a transparent thing. At the last, when Corazón struck her, the blows went right through her. In that image where there had once been a woman, now only a blank remained. Asleep, she seemed even more dead than Corazón, who lay in the middle of the room, his skull split open, his body partly hidden by the chest of drawers and the chairs knocked over when he fell. All the furniture in the house had toppled onto him. The chest. The chairs. The stove and the aluminum plates. The low table where he put his feet while listening to soccer matches on the transistor radio Mam Yvonne gave us, back when she was working in the laundry of that hospital in the Bronx she described to us in her letters as sometimes a paradise and sometimes sheer hell. The kerosene lamp we used when money was tight. The pot of plastic flowers and the big stone ashtray Joséphine had bought as ornamental touches. The four little pink glasses with hearts on them. The décor and all the trimmings. Everything—or almost everything—in the house had been broken over Corazón’s big body. The blue of his overalls disappeared in places beneath the debris of incongruous objects. He had lost one of his sneakers and I could see the sole of his foot, as rough as lizard skin. I preferred to look at his foot. Every time my eyes landed on his face, I felt the prickling that comes before tears, and I tried to reassure myself by behaving like Mariéla. She is the strongest, the most honest with herself. The most alone, perhaps. While we stayed in that room, she never showed one sign of weakness. She sat down in the middle of the mess, just long enough to come to a decision. Then, in a burst of energy, she stuffed our skimpy belongings into the big canvas bag where Joséphine tucked away our dirty laundry. I realized that we were going to leave. Quite far away from Joséphine, who slept on in the bed where she could finally stretch out at her ease, without having to huddle up real small, hugging the wall to leave more space for Corazón’s huge body. The trouble is, Joséphine has never been willing to sleep alone. As long as I’ve known her, she has always needed a man in her bed. A husband or a son. Her favorite is Corazón. Was. He’s dead. And I won’t be around anymore to replace him, now that the future belongs to the authorities. She truly loved him, Corazón. When he came home later than usual, she’d wait for him before she drew the curtain and went to bed. When he was out all night, she sat up in the chair, her mouth full of prayers. Whenever he stayed away for some time, I was his replacement. Joséphine would call me to come get into the bed. She’d hug me close for a while and fall into an uneasy sleep toward dawn, still murmuring complaints and prayers. If you begin at the end, then we are the chief culprits. No one has the right to take life away. But while we never meant to kill it, that life was turning out badly every single day. Whether he really did ever climb into the ring or whether he was just lying to us, Corazón hit everything that moved, except for Mariéla. So he might have expected that someday someone would hit back. And Joséphine, although you couldn’t ever accuse her of loving hatred or violence, is not completely innocent. You might think she lives on nothing because she never asks for anything. The truth is, she rarely uses words to say things. Her expectations take a sideways approach. She has hardly any voice and never shouts “I want,” or “I mean,” or “I demand.” She never raises her voice, but in her eyes there’s a whole vocabulary. To get something, her face freezes and grows pitiful. Her face is a lament that weeps over its hopes in a roundabout way. She also invents stories that often have a hidden meaning. For example, she tells how when I was little I used to run away from the clatter of rainstorms on the sheet-metal roofs. How I’d hide in the latrines shared by the small houses of the neighborhood. She believes that story cross-her-heart and tells it to anyone who’ll listen. At that time, Corazón wasn’t sleeping in the house. He wouldn’t accept the idea of this second child. Joséphine, according to her, used to pry me from my hidey-hole, rub my limbs briskly, and keep me in her bed for the night. I don’t remember escaping to the latrines, and I’ve always loved the sound of rain. Especially after Mariéla taught me how to change the water into music by cupping my palms over my ears. During every downpour, I’d compose songs for myself, merry little melodies. That’s what I remember. Me being so scared, Joséphine invented that to express a wish: that I would fill in for Corazón in her bed whenever he spent the night drinking in one of those crummy dives where the rum’s too cheap to match the label on its bottle. Joséphine, my mother, has always lived in fear that someone else would swipe her spot in her men’s hearts. She wanted me to remain her frail child my whole life long. Joséphine, she’s unhappy, she has no guarantee that she’ll always be needed. That no other woman will ever come along to replace her. She has always been jealous of Mariéla, who asks nothing of anyone. Joséphine’s failing was to worry, to believe that one day Corazón and I would both take off and leave her flat. Corazón liked to frighten her and would run away every now and then. He’d come back after each fake departure, though, and Joséphine, reassured, would give thanks for that godsend. And yet that blessing may perhaps have worked more like a curse. Each time he returned, he hated her a bit more, and beat her a bit more to make up for lost time. Me, I never thought about going away. Except for just long enough to come back, my arms full of little pink glasses decorated with hearts and my pockets stuffed with gourdes and sourballs, since Joséphine never allowed herself any whims or treats save for the tons of sticky candies she gorged on every Sunday afternoon. During the week she lived on prayers and watching others eat. It was only on Sunday that she turned greedy. I would never have left, except to go get her candies. And drinking glasses just like the ones she bought from a hardware stall at the Salomon market. I’m sure she likes them better than all the lovely luxury items in the whole wide world. Joséphine, she’s had a hard life, she’s just suffering itself. I didn’t want to abandon her. Still, she shouldn’t have invented that story about the latrines. It made me feel smaller every time she trotted out that tale for Mam Yvonne or the neighbor ladies. Especially since, really, I never needed any excuse to love her. She comes right after Mariéla. And in life as in school, second place isn’t so bad. Mariéla, she’s in first place: I see her from inside, as if we were walking in step. To the point that sometimes I forget that we’re two people, after all. Whereas Joséphine I’ve always loved from a certain distance. Now that I’ll never see her again, because after what we’ve done we can’t live together anymore, the distance will grow bigger without changing my feelings. You can love someone from very far away. The way it is in history lessons, which teach about the destiny of navigators who look back on their countries from afar, still feeling affection for that tiny image. Distance, that’s something we didn’t know how to talk about, Mariéla and I, the day Corazón died. What’s far away exists without any outlines. You can’t imagine its shape. All you know is, the space isn’t defined. It floats a little, like a boat. It’s a territory like the night, it needs time to become natural. At the moment we left, when the mailman’s footsteps were approaching, Mariéla couldn’t manage to explain it to me. The words weren’t coming to her. Although she usually didn’t have any trouble finding the right words. She has a gift for saying things, but “far away,” where we had to go, she just couldn’t describe it precisely. The only image that came to me was that we’d be abandoning the slum to live the rest of our lives in a kind of wasteland. I was careful not to walk on the broken glass and crockery or bump into Corazón’s long legs, which divided the room almost perfectly in half. His body was still big, too big for a small one-room house with a woman and two children always getting in his way. Only his face had shrunk. He’d fallen on his side and was showing his bad profile. He had chosen, for his death mask, that fake look of a sad child he always wore after some creditor had been by. Before she took the plane to the United States, Mam Yvonne, who knew religion without being devout like Joséphine, often used to tell us that the power of the Evil One lies in guile. And that God’s weapon is compassion. Corazón must have taken after both of them. I realized this on the day he died. Joséphine experienced both those sides of him every day. Why else would she protect her face whenever he approached her with a bottle in his hand? And why did she speak to him at other times as if in supplication? Begging for his presence like a blessing! He was both her demon and her Good Lord. Even in death, he hadn’t changed: Corazón was many men, all of them quite different. He could have written the book on schemes to get drunk whenever he liked and never pay his debts. He could also waver like a reluctant convalescent hesitating between the cure and a relapse. He took the worst of life and talked only about the best. That was my father: a brute who could be as gentle as a sheep. Before leaving for the United States, Mam Yvonne often used to visit us to speak heart-to-heart with Joséphine and shower her with advice. As soon as people start living better than you do, that sort of makes them an authority. Mariéla didn’t much appreciate Mam Yvonne’s way of lecturing us. Mariéla doesn’t like wisdom. Mam Yvonne really needed to say those words to us. She felt a touch guilty about Corazón’s behavior and meant to pass on to her daughter-in-law her expertise as a capable woman. Men, they’re all pigs. A smart woman uses men and doesn’t let them push her around. All of them, without exception: pigs, and nothing more. My son’s just like the rest of them. And Joséphine, who had a loving heart right out of the movies, would start defending Corazón. Mam Yvonne admitted that he wasn’t bad through and through. But watch out. When he was little, I caught him several times putting burning cigarette butts in the ear of the milkman’s donkey or ripping the pages from a schoolbook to avoid doing his homework. He fought frantically to escape the spankings he’d earned. He would put on the face of an angel and soon you’d forgive him. Mam Yvonne warned Joséphine: even as a child, he was always capable of doing terrible things. And now Corazón would lose his temper, start choking, sucking up all the air in the room, and we’d all feel the tension mount. Before the impassive Mam Yvonne, Corazón would be fuming, almost shouting, but he never dared challenge her openly. Yes, you used to do that, she would insist. Then you’d go bragging to your friends, whose mothers would tell me about it. Mam Yvonne would search her memory for years, dates, witnesses, while Corazón gave way, reduced to telling us that his mother had made up that business about the cigarette butts in the donkey’s ears just to make us think badly of him and to cause trouble in his own home. Joséphine already doesn’t respect me, so if you start sticking your nose in . . . I have to admit that I agreed with him. Mothers, they always come up with stuff that doesn’t exactly reflect reality, it’s more like the idea they have of their sons. Take Joséphine and those latrines. A mother, she’s fine. Except when she sets about telling the story of your life. The more the son grows up, committing his own fresh follies, the more the mother clings to the follies of the past. When there aren’t enough, she invents them. On that point, Joséphine was like Mam Yvonne, constantly claiming the right to meddle by deciding what my favorite meal was, or putting her seal on my childhood memories. With a mother, things get complicated if she decides to know you better than you know yourself. Mam Yvonne was describing her son the way she’d wanted him to be, while he put on his lost-child face and seemed about to burst the seams of his overalls, his muscles swelling with vexation. And knowing that soon Mam Yvonne would no longer be there to protect us from the storm she had a talent for stirring up, Joséphine would ask Mariéla and me to go get some Barbancourt rum on credit at old man Eliphète’s variety store. Softly she’d remind us to make sure Eliphète put it on her tab, since Corazón had long since exhausted his credit in every business in the neighborhood. We’d bring back the rum. At the sight of the bottle, Corazón would simmer down, relax his muscles, and trot out his favorite saying: Life holds only bad surprises, and the last one will be death. When it comes, I won’t put up a fuss. Well, death came. Despite what people say, we didn’t go out looking for it. It wasn’t cooked up in advance. Violence attracts more violence, and Mariéla lifted up that wrench as if she had become a kind of robot handpicked by horror, or Providence. The teacher had explained to us that despite what historians say (they only ever know the outside of events), it wasn’t the lunatic Défilée who gathered up the remains of Emperor Dessalines the evening of his assassination, but a brave spirit passing across the bridge who took over the old madwoman’s body. History, she told us, hides a wealth of mysteries and as many surprises. No one knows beforehand who among us will become a hero or a monster. As for Corazón, although there was nothing historic about his death, he was definitely and forever fresh out of surprises. He still lay there, and Mariéla didn’t spare him even a single glance. Me, I would have liked to speak with him one last time. To talk. Present our case. Argue with his corpse. Find words that would be halfway between a “Sorry” and “Goodbye.” Explain to him. Lecture him. But Mariéla would not have tolerated such a compromise. The mailman’s footsteps were drawing closer, leaving us little time. It must have been noon. I could hear the little kids shouting over at the elementary school. Their shrill tumult drowned out the ringing of the bell announcing the end of classes. I recognized the voices of my friends in the uproar: Roland, Ambroise, and all the others. Marcel. And especially Stammering Jhonny, but his voice you can’t hear because he needs at least an hour to say the slightest thing. So he prefers to keep quiet. Jhonny is my best friend. If Corazón hadn’t drunk up Mam Yvonne’s last check, I would have been out yelling with them, yanking the back hem of the proctor’s jacket, and maybe Mariéla wouldn’t have done what she did. Or she would have done it all by herself. In a way, you might say that it was a blessing in disguise, that habit Corazón had fallen into, of spending my school fee money in the bar. Spending that money, that’s one thing I’ve forgiven him. School I never liked. And I was always a slow learner. Unlike Mariéla. She understands everything right away. My essays, she used to write them for me in no time, while it took me forever to compose the first line. The teacher used to emphasize the importance of an outline, the sequence of ideas, the structure of paragraphs. “You went on a picnic with your parents: tell us about it. Describe a sunset. Draw up the portrait of your favorite animal.” I’d try to plan an outline. But I couldn’t decide on the right trees and animals to invent. Should I begin the description with the roots or the fur or the tail, the moral or the physical portrait, the frame or the color? Mariéla would take the pencil from my hand. In the time it took me to jump a hedge, or pull on a rope, or lob some dumb I-dare-you at Marcel or Stammering Jhonny, or stroll around the neighborhood spying on the pretty girls who went to the Baptist church without obeying the commandments, she’d whipped me up a landscape all my own, a sea just right for a voyage, a dog, a cat, a big house with real windows and a door set straight on its hinges. She’d even written me some wonderful parents: a father who didn’t beat me and a mother with a gift for smiles. At first the teacher had ranked me among the poorest pupils. As Mariéla kept writing for me, my compositions improved along with my grades until I was even held up as an example. Until the day the teacher told Joséphine that I was a born writer. And Joséphine, while she wasn’t a blabbermouth, once she’d drawn the curtain and shut herself in with Corazón at the back of the room, after begging us to go play outside so we wouldn’t hear her sighs, well, she couldn’t keep anything secret from him. Corazón, he soon figured out that Mariéla was the author. He said it was a father’s place to keep an eye on his son’s work and that he would go to the school to talk with the teacher. Joséphine gave him the money. When I was sent home because my fees were late, she didn’t dare ask Corazón about it for fear he’d fly into a rage and beat the hell out of us both. About school, though, it’s not so serious. It’s really something I never regretted. Mariéla stopped going after she got her certificate. And I mean, school is no party. Fortunately, it’s not because of this that Mariéla did what she did. That we did what we did. Together. Corazón’s death, I can’t say that I’m proud of it. It wasn’t worked out ahead of time. You shouldn’t claim credit for actions unless you planned them. And it wasn’t a success, either, like a discovery you make or when you create something new. We fell into it, Corazón’s death. It’s a trap life had set for us a long time before. An event that will live on in the annals of the city. Given that neither time nor other people will allow us to forget it. Don’t ever think I’m proud of it. Ever since that day, though, Mariéla and I, we’re like a community. Even if they separate us, we’ll always be together. A team. I’m the one who held Corazón’s feet to make him slip. Before that, Mariéla had had to do her best for the both of us. When I was really little, she used to take care of me when Joséphine was lost in her prayers. When I was sick with malaria, it was Mariéla who gave me my medicine, checking the instructions to figure out the dosage. If I had the power, there are times when I’d like to bring him back to life, Corazón. Especially at night. He isn’t mean when he’s asleep. No, I’m not proud of what we did. But, on the other hand, it’s good that she didn’t have to do it alone. Mariéla is too all alone. This time, at least she’ll be able to say: My little brother helped me.

* * *

Hearing the mailman’s footsteps, Mariéla grabbed the bag she’d filled with our clothes and pushed me toward the door. Outside, the first thing that struck me was the heat of the sun. Mariéla and I, we prefer the moon. On moonlit nights, shadows are softer than modeling clay, and we used to draw shapes with them. The noonday sun casts a shadow so hard that it follows close on your heels, as if everyone had a personal policeman to drag along underfoot. We always took shelter when the sun beat down too harshly. At school, there was the great oak in the middle of the recreation yard. Mariéla had also shown me other shady places for escaping the sunshine. Sometimes we hid behind the long curtains of sheets hung up by washerwomen. Or we sought out the dampness of the unfinished little houses at the far end of the slum. Out where stubborn folks had begun to build despite warnings from the city inspectors and then reluctantly had to stop work after all, because you cannot lay foundations in a swamp. The two of us had always had our haunts, spots where we could outwit the sun. For the first time, we had to brave the glare without the promise of relief, trying courageously to outrun it, racing for a long time toward the night. After Corazón’s death, the first thing I saw was the sun. The second thing, that was the mailman’s belly. I ran right into it. He let the whole neighborhood’s mail tumble into the stagnant water between our place and the Jean-Baptiste family’s house next door. The letters began to spread out into the muddy water and float like sailboats. The neighbors might have forgiven us for just Corazón. Basically, aside from us, no one liked him. He’d wheedled money from even the poorest of the poor, and since the women liked his looks, all the men loathed him without daring to tell him so, because of his biceps. Our real crime was to have knocked the mail into the muck. No one in the world likes having their hopes flung into a puddle. People were going to shred us. There was surely a letter from Mam Yvonne swimming somewhere in there. Corazón could sense them coming and would get the little table ready to welcome the mailman, who loved to chat with him about boxing. One bottle, two glasses. Corazón had a mongrel’s flair for sniffing out the arrival of Mam Yvonne’s letters and arranged to intercept them so he could spend the money himself. On those days, Corazón, who no longer allowed Joséphine to leave the house, encouraged her instead to go out, reminding her of this or that promise to visit an old friend. He’d set the glasses on the table, roll up his sleeves to admire his biceps, and wait for the mailman. He was rarely off in his calculations, and then only by a day or two. Except for those six months when we went without any news, which was how long it took Mam Yvonne to get the backlog of her Social Security checks from the state of Florida. Floating among the letters was one from Mam Yvonne with a number to be presented at the window of the foreign exchange office and precise instructions as to the usage of the sum in question. But now Corazón would not be there to intercept it. And anyway, the mail for the whole slum was soaking in the puddle between our house and the Jean-Baptiste place. The mailman had gotten to his feet and was shouting at us to come back. We were long gone when he decided to enter our house to get help from someone with authority. We had already run down half the main alley, passed the entrance to the elementary school, and were climbing over the dilapidated little wall around the property of the pastor of the Baptist church to take the shortcut that came out in front of the furniture factory. Grown-ups avoid that path, especially those with jobs, because they risk stepping on broken glass or cow-pats: the smell of dung is unmistakable, and grown-ups don’t always like people to know where they’ve been. For us, though, it’s so simple to jump over the low wall. And since no boss preaches to us on payday about the need for cleanliness, we prefer the shortcut to the adults’ long ways around. At the end of the path, only a hop, skip, and a jump from the asphalt where the big city began, Fat Mayard tried to stop us, just for fun. Actually, I didn’t interest him. I don’t interest many people. To them—aside from Stammering Jhonny, Marcel, and a few others—I’m Mariéla’s brother. Fat Mayard felt honor bound to feel up girls’ breasts, and he often lay in wait for Mariéla. She had let him do it once, probably because it was a new experience. Mariéla likes trying new things. And he, foolishly convinced he’d acquired some rights, had gone all around the slum crowing victory to make guys jealous. On the day of Corazón’s death, he tried to grab her and hold her close. At first it was only a game. When he heard the uproar of the neighborhood shouting our names, he realized something serious had happened. Like everyone who dreams of being in the spotlight, he tried to join in, by grabbing Mariéla for real. And she dodged him. Exactly like Corazón when he worked out at daybreak while the neighborhood still slept, except for the women on their way home from the bakery with bread to sell. That threw Fat Mayard for a loop, but he wouldn’t give up. An unarmed girl was supposed to be easy prey. He pounced again. And Mariéla treated him to the shock of his life. She popped him one right in the breadbasket. Just the way Corazón shadowboxed with the morning breeze to keep in shape. In a last reflex of pride, Fat Mayard took the precaution of glancing around. No one was watching. Relieved to have no witnesses, he dropped to his knees, eyes glazed, breathless, gagging as if giving up the ghost. We didn’t have time to scold him, to tell him he was going to live and get himself clobbered plenty more times. Flesh isn’t as weak as people think. Mariéla and I know that death doesn’t kill with a single punch, it’s the accumulation of damage that wears the body down from inside, till only the skin is left. Those last weeks, Corazón hit Joséphine almost every day. She didn’t even bleed anymore, didn’t cry, didn’t react in any way. But her battered skin kept breathing. Death hadn’t yet risen to the surface. Blows take a long time to kill. Fat Mayard could wait. Mariéla burst out laughing at his look of despair. Some people come into this world with the gift of tears. Mariéla’s natural-born talent is laughter. She’d found that out all by herself, no help needed. I don’t know if there are places where laughing is taught, but around here you just pick it up on your own. And sometimes life goes by so fast or stays in one spot so long that somehow you run out of time or energy and never get around to learning. Me, for example, I don’t like to laugh. In elementary school they teach you the ABCs. The different churches of God teach the fear of the Lord. For wisdom and rules to live by, we take inspiration from proverbs. In our neighborhood, when things go wrong, life leans on proverbs. Everyone has a supply of them. Even the poorest souls. And they’re the only possession we share without waiting to be asked. Those times when we have nothing to say to one another, we toss out a proverb at random, and that can start up who knows what conversation. We’ve got tons of proverbs to fill empty spaces and provide commentary for any occasion. Even those unexpected once-in-a-lifetime events. When the rainy season lasted so long that the water topped the highest roofs of the houses clinging down in the ravines, people were racking their brains to come up with a saying that would explain the deluge. The oldsters invent a proverb every time misfortune trips life up. And children collect them to grow in wisdom. Mariéla’s laughter isn’t some local custom, it’s a personal conquest. Mariéla is her very own creation. Her tears, her ideas, her peals of laughter. And now her destiny. If you can call the trackless life ahead of us a destiny. She was still laughing when we reached a real street. With a name. And cars. A different territory under different rules. In our neighborhood, aside from those who work and always slog home exhausted, we have lots of spare time. So people are available. Our pursuers weren’t about to give up the chase, but it would be hard for them to find us in the crowd. We’d become a girl and boy among others. Anonymous in the real city. The one on the map. Once we’d reached the outskirts of the city, we slowed down. I was coughing. Pedestrians were turning around and seemed to study me with a suspicious eye. I can’t help coughing after the slightest effort. In the slum, my cough is no big deal. Everybody knows it’s part of my nature, a constitutional defect, and no one pays any attention. But strangers always seem a little startled by it. Our headlong run had worn me out, so Mariéla suggested we go on to the Champ de Mars, to rest there on a bench. We walked slowly and my cough calmed down. I had no idea what would happen next, but I felt fine. The anxiety came later, on the bench. And again that evening, when we had to improvise to find a place to sleep. And yet again the next day, when we went to meet Stammering Jhonny and found out the press had gotten involved. Black thoughts, they’re like trees. They can take time to grow, budding in your head, and wind up taking root there. During those first hours after Corazón had died for real, after our race to escape the slum, we walked quietly around the Champ de Mars, where the statues of heroes look down indifferently from on high. Mariéla was carrying the sack and thinking for the two of us. We walked side by side, and I advanced calmly, as if I were hidden behind her. She has always been kind to me. She’s done heaps of favors for me, a thousand little things you don’t think about at the time. Big things too. Like doing my homework or taking care of my health. Plus, since she was Corazón’s favorite child, whenever I misbehaved she’d say we, to soften him up. If it isn’t against the law, I hope we’ll be able to write to each other. She and I, we were a real pair. Mariéla is more than a sister. Brother and sister, they’re not words we use. In the slum we call everyone by name and we more or less love whomever we like. We can’t afford to love from obligation. I had chosen Mariéla. It was already like that before. And for as long as our escape lasted—three days, two moons, and a few hours—until they spotted us on the third day on that same Champ de Mars, watched over by those same statues, me sitting at the bandstand, dreaming about music, and she returning from her bike ride, the two of us formed a real pair.

* * *

When we reached the Champ de Mars, we slowed down and looked for an empty bench. To take a rest. Every seat was taken. The only free space was the corner of a marble bench already occupied by a gentleman dressed the old way. In a three-piece suit and tie. And although he didn’t say a word, we understood that he spoke a different language from ours. A library language with difficult words. He did not answer our hello. At any other time, Mariéla would have insisted, pressuring the man into politeness. The man did not see us, refusing the accidental company of such offspring from another world. Hands lying flat upon his thighs, he looked into the distance, indifferent to everything, not just our presence. But still. You’re supposed to reply when spoken to. Although Mariéla was the sort to make him eat his own tie, we weren’t in a position to stand up for good manners. We were rather like him, staring solitarily at our horizon line. Except that ours was behind us. Or maybe off to the side. The man was one of those lucky people who know where to look. A scholar or a man of faith. He was at peace in his world. Still keeping an eye on our strange neighbor, Mariéla asked me to dig the money out of my pocket so we could count up our fortune. Then she wanted to know if I was hungry, and I answered no. I’d been thinking too. After what we’d done, I’d lost the right to be frail. I’d decided to be grown-up. To summon some strength. So I’d promised myself to control my cough. And not to be hungry or thirsty. Ever again. To live without anything. Without daring to feel the slightest need. Not in front of Mariéla, in any case. You’re sure you’re not hungry? I said no, and besides, it was true. The first day, I didn’t want anything. To make things equal between us, I asked her if she wanted me to take charge of the bag. In the future. No, it’s not very heavy. Mariéla never speaks with the voice of a victim. There were bloodstains on her dress. More real than the gentleman with the well-cut clothes who continued to stare straight ahead of him without moving his head or his hands, seeing only the portent of that imaginary line he had chosen to target. So I copied him. I gazed at an empty point to avoid seeing the bloodstains on the dress, and all that had happened. Sitting on that bench made me vulnerable. (Before Corazón’s death, I lived on silence and would stay motionless for long periods. Now I need movement. And floods of words. Silence awakens the dead.) Corazón was already taking advantage of our stay on the bench to become a kind of ghost. He was there, before my eyes. I looked at Mariéla. Even in the heart of death, Mariéla is like life. But he was coming between us. Enormous. Bleeding from open wounds. Working hard at dying. If you don’t want to think about anything, you must take life like an athlete, run all the time, hide behind speed. Once the body is at rest, misery swarms into your head. I stared straight ahead. I looked up at the statues, and I still saw the blood. I closed my eyes to concentrate better. But it’s inside your head that you see. The images come from within. That’s where everything happens and then happens all over again, real fast. Corazón was dead, and he was alive. Ready to die anew. And now here in the afternoon it’s morning once more. It’s like a play or a movie. I close my eyes to stay in the afternoon. But the morning is stubborn. Eternal. Unstoppable. Despite all my efforts to stay where we are, Mariéla and I are walking past the garage again. We’re returning from the market. A long walk for not much: a pepper and some laundry detergent. The pepper is for Corazón. So’s the detergent, for his overalls. The garage isn’t too far from the slum. We usually avoid that street. Corazón doesn’t like to be bothered at work. And to see him is to bother him. Or not to see him: same thing. Because he doesn’t go there every day. The toolbox, the tools, the overalls, all that, it’s for show. He doesn’t really work at the garage. He’s used more like an automobile jack there. He has no claims on the machinery. Or dignity. Or words. Corazón, he’s a pair of arms. But we don’t know that. Mariéla, who wanted to take that street, she doesn’t know that. There’s an unbelievable scene going on at the garage. An end-of-the-world. One voice is raised, dominating the others. It isn’t Corazón’s. On the contrary: the louder that voice grows, the weaker Corazón’s gets. We watch what’s going on. Mariéla is very upset. On her face I can see astonishment, then disappointment. The scene is hard to describe because what we see is way more humiliating than a kid driven by fear into the shit of the public latrines. This job? The only reason you’ve got it is because of a promise to your father! Corazón is dying. And don’t you dare have any more opinions or touch one single thing without being asked! It’s as if one of the grand statues on the Place des Héros had fallen from its pedestal. Physically he’s still very much alive and is lifting a section of an engine, those are the boss’s orders. But he’s a man without an image. And Mariéla, who has always respected him even when she disapproved of him, now realizes she’s an orphan. She takes my hand and we leave. We drop the detergent we were to bring back to Joséphine. And the pepper. Mariéla stomps on the pepper and picks up the detergent. She doesn’t want to go home right away. We walk. We’re looking for an image, a reason to tell ourselves that it’s not serious. But the walk doesn’t erase the scene. We’ve already seen everything that’s in the street. It’s all ugly, all the same: the beggars, the dust, the shop signs, the drunks. And us. There’s nothing that could protect us from Corazón’s fall. I hear the boss’s voice. Lousy good-for-nothing! And lots of adjectives for Corazón run through our minds. None of them positive. He’s a man without quality who has no rights or privileges. And Mariéla says to me, He’ll never hit you again. She thought of me, and I of Joséphine. Between Mariéla and Joséphine, there’s no love lost. Joséphine adores being pitied and Mariéla despises weaklings. The sun’s broiling our skin and we decide to go home. But we still dawdle. We need time to accept Corazón in his new version. We’re hoping not to see him again right away. It’s like when Jhonny’s older brother had his crazy fit. I saw him. On all fours, like a dog. Wagging, like a dog, his imaginary tail. Lapping dirty water from a ditch, like a dog. When Jhonny told me that the fit had passed and that his brother thought he was human again, I waited weeks before seeing him. So as not to see the dog. It takes time to get used to the new reality of a father who gets himself told off and walked all over like a rag. Unfortunately, when we get home he’s already there. He has set up the table, with the bottle and the glasses. The dead hero acts as though he were alive. He’s waiting for the mailman. He can’t forgive Joséphine for bustling around the house. For being there. For wearing such a sad look that you can’t miss it. She’s busy. And always sad. When she’s not cooking, she cleans house or mends old clothing. Housework is her passion. It’s kind of amazing. If you look around, you won’t find that many objects to put away. We don’t live in a big house, and when she insists on straightening up the place, moving things around and dusting the glasses, everyone feels uncomfortable. Especially Corazón, who has no more room to stretch out his legs. He usually chases her out when he’s expecting the mailman. They’re alone in the house, and he’s starting to get cross. That part, I don’t see that, it’s something I imagine. He can’t bear Joséphine looking at him even though she’s as meek as can be. But he knows perfectly well that he’s a worthless man, and he believes she knows that too. Even though she has always found reasons to admire him. She’s the only one who can forgive him. Even Mam Yvonne has lost all hope. She went away to wait until he can’t make decisions for us anymore. So that she can salvage us. Mam Yvonne is figuring that we’ll find a way to replace him. She gives us presents and is secretly preparing our departure for abroad. Even his mother has abandoned Corazón. His only absolution is Joséphine. Mariéla loved him when she thought he was her equal. They communicated over our heads. Now Mariéla is all alone. Only she has the strength to face up, to decide. She’s ready to pay the price. While he lays low like a lizard in front of his boss, to save a lie. You do what I tell you, or you get out. And don’t come sniveling back around here. Corazón, he gave in, so he could keep his overalls. And now he wants to play the big guy. Joséphine’s presence enrages him. When we walk in, he’s hitting her. With each blow he lands, he’s trying to hide the truth. He doesn’t care that we’re there. He has no idea that we saw him die not an hour before. He hits her. To recreate the image he lost. But he’s not our champion anymore. Nothing but some poor jerk and our father. We arrive just when his huge fist lands in Joséphine’s face and destroys it, propelling her to the back of the room, toward the bed. And he’s not finished. He goes after her, defending his imaginary titles. He keeps his guard up, he’s Joe Louis again: Joe hoists up Joséphine, who’s already knocked out from the first blows. Joe is boxing. And the old skin bag is taking a beating. For Mam Yvonne, whom he never dared to challenge. For the garage owner, who treats him like less than zero. For El Negro, the Dominican boxer against whom he lasted only a single round that one time he ever stepped into a real ring. For the referee, who stopped the fight too early, before I got my second wind. That ref, he fucked up my whole life. And suddenly, he’s punching her for Mariéla, who’s ordering him to stop. Up yours! Here, I’m the boss! He pummels his punching bag exultantly. But he’s been dead ever since the incident at the garage. He’s been dead ever since we heard him stammer helplessly. That’s why Mariéla goes rummaging through the box where he keeps his tools. She hefts the wrenches, selects the heaviest one. Corazón, basking in his glory, still thinks he holds his audience in the palm of his hand. Mariéla goes up to him, then up on tiptoe to take better aim at his skull, and sweeps her arms in an arc to bring that wrench down in both hands as hard as she can. He’s astonished to be attacked by an adversary he hasn’t picked out himself. He thinks it’s not fair, given that she’s the one he loves the most. He moves toward her, perhaps to demand an explanation. He wants to understand. But Mariéla doesn’t feel like having a conversation. She strikes him a second time. Head on. Right on the forehead. I hear the sound the bone makes. Now he’s furious. He advances in spite of the blows, fist raised, to defend himself. That’s when I intervene. I don’t want him to touch Mariéla. Joséphine, she’s a consenting adult. The only thing you can do for her is help her suffer, and that’s all she asks. If anyone told her to leave she’d simply say mind your own business. But Mariéla, she was born to have wings. I crawl toward Corazón. I’m not afraid of him anymore. I’m only afraid of Joséphine, who will accuse Mariéla. I’m afraid because I love Joséphine and hope she will forgive us. Anyway, I crawl toward Corazón. I cling to his feet. The only thing I want is to hold him back. I forbid him to touch her. I try to bite him. My teeth aren’t strong enough to get through his mechanic’s overalls. He drags me along as he closes in on Mariéla. What’s happening is between them; what I’m doing doesn’t count. He stopped taking me seriously the day he realized that I had no talent for boxing. He moves forward as if I didn’t exist. But because he’s already staggering and I tighten my grip, he ends up falling. Mariéla has stopped hitting him. It’s the first time I watch someone die, but I know that he’s dead. I can’t tell if it’s the blow or the fall that killed him. Joséphine is sleeping, curled up on the bed. Her husband is lying on the floor, and the blood pools like the rain that sometimes leaks through the roof. At the time, I don’t pay attention to a whole bunch of details. I didn’t see the blood spurt onto Mariéla’s dress. It’s only on this bench in the Champ de Mars, next to this apathetic gentleman, that I notice the blood on the dress and realize the permanent nature of what has happened. Violence, that’s something we’ve always lived with: in our neighborhood, the strongest beat up the weakest, and life goes on. This act went beyond anything that came before. Everything we’d ever been or said simply didn’t matter anymore. Corazón’s death would begin us: Joséphine, Mariéla, and me. I understood that when I saw the blood on the dress. I told myself that it was important for Joséphine not to grow old with the idea that it was a real crime. Mariéla and I, in all our predictions, had never had anything but happy endings. No child in the neighborhood is rich enough to believe in Father Christmas, but sometimes I let myself think that I could stand in for him. Then I would buy a garage for Corazón, and hundreds of glasses and loads of hard candies for Joséphine. Clothes, too, because the mother of Father Christmas deserves a wardrobe, after all. I thought about that on our bench. I saw that Mariéla was shaking, that doubts or worries had made her fragile, and I looked away, toward the gentleman. I felt tears on my cheeks and said, It’s nothing, it’s my cough. Mariéla pretended not to notice that I was crying.