Those bastards came out with a pack of lies. Only a real ratbag would say I killed the cats to make my little bundles. Carmen told me all about it, after she saw it on the TV. Only a crawling heartless toad would say that, given how I keep those kitties, fur gleaming and looking like royalty. I never used to vaccinate them because that just wasn’t done around here, but my granddaughter suggested it and now the vet comes by when we’ve got two cents to rub together and gives them the jab. He takes them off to be sterilized, too. That hasn’t caught on here, either. Here people still stuff the newborn kittens in a sack and bash them to death like they always have.
If it wasn’t for Carmen, I’d have stormed over to the grocer’s and dragged that bigmouth across town by the last few greasy hairs on his head. What do you want, for the police to come and take you away like they did the girl? Carmen said. So I kept quiet to avoid making matters worse. I didn’t drag the grocer across town but I did give him his just deserts. I prayed to the saint till my knees were red raw. Then the walk-in freezer stopped working over the weekend and all his fruit went bad. When he opened up on the Monday everything had gone moldy, only the potatoes and onions could be salvaged.
My granddaughter thought that after her arrest no one would come to me for favors anymore, that they wouldn’t want me doing their bundles or telling them if their dead relatives were lost or had been taken by the angels. But I know that band of fakes and two-faced creeps better than that. They’re afraid of us now and yet they come knocking more than ever. Sometimes two or three will be hanging around by the door when night falls and I won’t get to bed till well into the early hours. At the first whiff of their fear, the house starts creaking and shrieking. The shadows have come back so thick that sometimes one of our guests even sees them, just like you all do. They glimpse a dark form slinking over into a corner and look away without saying a word, even more scared than when they arrived. They also feel the cool air my daughter leaves behind when she passes them on the staircase or by the front door. It’s always saddened me, my daughter leaving a chill like that.
After a few weeks the journalists disappeared and the pair of us wrapped up our unfinished business. For too long that other bastard had gotten away with what he did to my daughter. I could have dealt with him sooner, but the thought of not seeing her anymore also made me sad. I felt sure that the moment we handed him over to the shadows in the wardrobe, what remained of my daughter would leave and I’d never see her again, not even when I died, because I know that when I go I’ll be staying right here within these four walls. Much as they come and hover in the kitchen now, the saints won’t want to take me. A visit is one thing, but all eternity is quite another.
Eventually the police stopped coming back around here about the boy. And as for Emilia’s husband, the bricklayer, they didn’t find a single lead, and he was soon forgotten. The child’s case remained open, but after a while not even the father’s calls could prevent him from falling into oblivion as well. At first the father had intimidated the police, then they’d felt sorry for him, and by the end he was a real thorn in their side. Carmen told me all this, she’d hear it around town and then come and relay it to me because she knew I’d lap it up. She also told me the mother rarely left the house. Gone were the visiting friends who admired their winery, gone were the trips to Madrid to spend on a handbag what my granddaughter earned in three months for putting up with that snot-nosed brat. Carmen used to say that when the mother went out she looked like a lost soul, skinny as a rake and head bowed.
Look, we may not have gotten their land off them, but we did bring them down a peg or two. Now, instead of respecting or fearing them, the locals pity them. They still have money because my saints can’t do everything but where once people ran around after them like an idiot altar boy tailing the priest, now they snub them and give them a wide berth. Everyone knows that tragedy’s catching and nobody wants it close. It digs in its claws and once it does I’d like to see anyone get them out.
In the end Carmen stopped coming and telling me things because she broke her hip and her nieces and nephews put her in a home, the same one as María, one of the cheapos because Carmen worked her entire life but had barely scraped together any savings. The Jarabos had never paid into a pot for her, at first because it wasn’t the done thing, and later on because they couldn’t be bothered. They told her they’d fire her if she kept insisting because, after all, she was getting on in years and they knew some Peruvian or Colombian girl would do the same job but for less, and without complaining. These days we speak on the phone but it’s not the same because in the home she’s turned all meek and musty and barely opens her mouth. When you think what she used to be like, you couldn’t shut her up, and now getting three words out of her is like getting blood from a stone. I know she’ll die of a broken heart. These days they call it depression but around here we’ve always called it dying of a broken heart. You notice a person stop going out, stop eating, basically lose the will to live, and before long they croak, and that’s what’s happening to Carmen. I hope she comes to see me when she dies. I know the saints will take her because she never hurt a soul, and she was always helping others out. The only anger inside her was strictly reserved for the Jarabos and the police. I just hope she has time to pop over and say goodbye before they carry her away. I don’t know if she guessed what happened to the boy because she never asked and I never told her. It would have been too heavy a burden to put on her when she’d had nothing to do with it. I’d like to tell her before she goes, but I’m afraid she’ll end up trapped in this house if I do, if it stirs up her anger toward that family and then she no longer wants to leave.
It weighed heavily on my granddaughter, too, at first. She kept thinking the police would come for her at any moment and take her away again. At night in her dreams, she’d go over what she’d told them during the questioning. She’d also mutter something about the wardrobe, repeat what that rotten bastard had said while she’d led him by the arm up the stairs. I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about, I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about. I’d hear her repeat the same thing over and over as I lay in bed. She’d get up with a dry mouth and purple bags under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept a wink. When awake she wouldn’t mention it, but I could see from her face that it was preying on her mind. She didn’t leave the house and she barely ate. She’d spend all day lying on the wooden bench and her eyes would glaze over and I’d know she was back to brooding again. The unease had burrowed deep down into her guts and now it wouldn’t budge. I was afraid it’d stay inside her and she’d let herself fade away like Carmen.
One night I woke her up when she was talking in her sleep and made her get out of bed. I couldn’t stand it any longer. Every night she’d keep me up, drive me half mad with those lines she muttered nonstop through gritted teeth. She’d be asleep but I’d be wide awake since there was no way I was getting any shuteye with her yammering on like that. That night I woke her up and it was more like I was pulling her from the bottom of a well than from a dream. She was sweating and trembling feverishly and when she opened her eyes she looked at me as if she’d never seen me before and had no idea where she was. Her mouth was full of thick white spittle that had formed crusts at the corners of her mouth and the bags under her eyes were deeper and darker than ever.
I grabbed her hand and pulled her over to the wardrobe on the other side of the room. I couldn’t stand it any longer, we were both going to lose our minds. The wood creaked and the door opened slightly. I could feel how hungry it was. I asked my granddaughter to help me push the wardrobe away from the wall. It was heavy as hell, as if full of rocks. It didn’t want to be moved. Then I crouched down by the wall and counted the bricks, running my finger over them. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done this, but it must have been many years ago, before my granddaughter was born. For a long time I checked every week to see if my father had moved, until I realized he was never getting out of there. We women couldn’t get out of the trap he’d laid for us, but neither could he.
I pushed the brick gently at one end, then carefully teased it out. The old plaster crumbled and some of it fell to the floor. My granddaughter watched me, her eyes glassy with sleep, not really understanding what I was doing. After taking a quick look inside I stood up and leaned against the wall because my knees were aching like sin. I handed her the flashlight I keep in the drawer of my nightstand in case of power cuts, because in this house it’s not a good idea to be left completely in the dark.
She took the flashlight and kneeled down without saying a word. I don’t know if by that point she’d come back from the hole she’d sunk into while she slept but the expression on her face had changed. She was still sweating but now her jaw was clenched. She brushed aside the hair stuck to her brow and switched on the flashlight. A tremor ran through the house. Downstairs the doors clattered open and shut and the pots and pans crashed against the kitchen floor. It had been a while since there’d been a racket quite like that. Sometimes they might dare throw a knife or fork left lying on the table or open a cupboard a little way, but they hadn’t made that kind of scene in a long time.
She poked the flashlight through the hole in the brickwork and moved her face closer, shining the light from side to side till she spotted him. I knew she’d seen him because she jumped slightly, but then she moved her face even closer. Her damp hair had bits of loose plaster sticking to it. She ran the beam of the flashlight across the three figures. The biggest was still propped in the same place as always, his mouth hanging open and his eye sockets empty. Beside him was another, also a man. It was clear he’d been there for much less time, the house hadn’t yet totally consumed him. The third figure was barely a meter tall. He was leaning against the wall with his legs stretched out in front and his hands flopped by his sides. His eyes were closed.
My granddaughter moved away from the wall and put the brick back where it had been. She turned off the flashlight, got up from the floor, brushed the dust from her pajama bottoms and the plaster from her hair. The house had fallen silent. The only sound came from the cats out in the yard. They never slept inside when it was hot. We pushed the wardrobe back into place. Then we each climbed into our separate beds and I switched off the bedside lamp.