I’ll return to her house with a weapon on my belt and that’s the day I’ll know the truth. I’ll know why she and her father act like there are no men in black on our land. I’ll go all out, even if it means losing her, or death. I prefer losing her and dying on top of it than to have to doubt her…
My mother’s getting drunk. I saw her staggering upstairs. She looked at me with her dying eyes and then began to laugh miserably. A bloody throat clearing itself of crushed glass. A great open mouth rattling in agony. She’s going to cough up her heart. Rose, who was coming in just then, ran past us and shut her door behind her. My mother pointed at her, bent in two by the awful laughter that contorted her mouth. Then she suddenly fell silent, went to the window on the landing and leaned over as if she were about to fall. I looked past her: a shadow was slowly moving through the yard, accompanied by a completely white crawling, jumping thing. The shadow bent down to the ground and then stood up with the thing in its arms and walked over to the stakes. I heard my mother laugh. She wasn’t the one laughing, someone else was laughing in her. She turned around and said: “Paul, son, nothing and nobody can stop destiny.” She opened the cupboard and took out a bottle of rum that was three- quarters empty. Someone else laughed in her again, and after pointing her finger at the land, she staggered into her room. My father wasn’t there. I heard him come home an hour later. I stood up and went out on the landing. I saw light coming from Rose’s room and pushed open the door without knocking. She was on her knees beside her bed, head sinking into the pillow, breasts flat against the mattress.
“You might as well come in and close the door,” she whispered.
She remained on her knees on the floor, and I looked at her profile, not daring to move. Gaunt and beautiful, eyes swollen with tears.
“You’ll get to leave, I promise you that much.”
I grabbed her and struck her in the face.
“I never asked you to help me.”
“You have to get out of here, you have to.”
“I don’t want you to worry about me, you hear me?”
She threw herself on the bed and curled up under the sheets with her back to me.
“It’s not that much trouble, believe me,” she said again.
When I heard these words I left her and went to my room, sat at my desk staring into the darkness. And the sweat from my forehead drenched my eyes and burned like tears.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The lawyer had me come in right away and was very considerate. That’s because I was with the uniformed man I had met in his office, toward whom he had seemed so respectful and attentive. The lawyer reached for the five hundred dollars, but the uniformed man gave him such a savage look that he very quickly dropped the money on a corner of his desk as though he’d made a mistake.
“We have a deal?” said the man in uniform.
“We have a deal,” the lawyer replied.
Then he turned to me:
“You may begin by taking off your clothes,” he ordered me as if he were requesting a simple secretarial task.
After that, he left the room and closed the door. The lawyer had spoken to me beforehand and I knew what to expect. I began taking off my clothes and once I was half-naked, the man in the uniform pulled me sharply by the arm to drag me behind the screen.
“You’re not going to struggle, you’re not going to cry out,” he instructed me. “Because if you do, you’ll be sorry.”
He pounced on me with his long hirsute hands, tearing off whatever garments I had left.
“Lie down,” he said, “lie down, spread your legs and put your arms out like a cross.”
I refused to obey, so he threw me on the sofa.
“You’re going to ruin everything,” he hissed, “if you resist, I won’t be able to do anything. You have to do what I say, without hesitation, otherwise it’s no go, you understand? I can only be a man with pretty saint’s faces like yours, a defeated martyr with a pretty little face. Do what I say, do it or get out of here. But remember that no one else will ever be able to do anything for you and you will lose your land. On the other hand, if you are cooperative and do what I ask, then I promise, I swear to you on all that is most holy to me that you will have my protection and will have restitution of your property.”
As he was talking, he slowly opened my legs and splayed out my arms in a cross. He leaned over me for a moment, moaning slowly, his breath short, oppressed. He stared at me like this for some time, and then I saw his horrible hand approach my body and touch it ever so lightly with a kind of unbearable, sick curiosity.
“That’s it, don’t move, stay like that.”
Leaning over me, he caressed me, sniffing me like an animal, and a little later, popped the buttons off his uniform and stood naked before me.
“You’re a virgin, right? You didn’t lie to me, did you? This is going to hurt, hurt a lot, but I don’t want to hear a word, got it? Not one word.”
He was dripping with sweat and I felt defiled.
He rammed himself into me in one rough terrible thrust, and immediately groaned with pleasure. I bit my fist in pain and disgust. He got back up.
“You have the prettiest martyr’s face I have ever had. I have a feeling I’m going to like you. If you let me have it my way, we’re going to become good friends, great friends.”
He gave me my clothes without another word. Then he showed me the door, saying:
“I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll see you every night for a month. If you’re faithful, I will personally give you back the papers your father signed.”
It hurt so much I could barely walk. I took a car and went home. I saw him again the next day, but not at the lawyer’s. He drove me out of town to a grotesquely and richly furnished house where the only bedroom had wall- to-wall mirrors. Once I was naked, he threw himself on me so brutally that I cried out. He immediately let me go.
“I’ll open you up until my entire fist goes in,” he shouted.
I could see his reflection in every mirror, unsightly and frightening.
What’s it to me? I would have brought dishonor on myself only if I enjoyed it as he did, but he slept with a corpse. A corpse, and he has no idea. That’s my revenge. “Feels good, no?” he asked me anxiously. And with my closed eyes I seemed to acquiesce. What’s it to me! A month will go by quickly. I won’t tell a soul, I’ll do whatever he wants. He’s made me bleed five times and I haven’t cried out. My cooperation knows no bounds. I have come to tolerate the horrible things without which he can’t feel like a man. “I’ve killed ten men point-blank,” he confessed to me, “and here I am trembling with desire before your little saint’s face. But women who turn me on are hard to come by.” His awful hands on my body! Inside my body, shamelessly probing my flesh. What do I care! I am dead. I could laugh, watching him moan over a dead body. “Your idiotic father,” he informed me, “came to beg me to spare you. He was crying and crying. You get your martyr’s face from him. And your brother? What’s he waiting for before signing up? He’s not against us, is he? No, no, calm down, I know very well he wouldn’t dare. Do you know what I was before I became this figure of authority protecting you with his powerful hand? No, I won’t tell you. You might run out of here and you mean a great deal to me. Wait. I’m going to lock the door… A flea-ridden beggar, that’s what I was. Yes, my beauty, a beggar, despised, shunned by haughty little saint’s faces like yours. And now, spread your legs. Wait, I’ll undo your hair. It makes you look even more like a saint. I love the saints. A long time ago, when I was little, I would go sit in church for long hours and gaze at them. Put out your arms in a cross. You’re pale. You look like you’re suffering. You’re perfect. That’s it, suffer in silence.”
You’re going to get out of here, Paul. My brother, my friend, so proud, so studious, so noble! The smell of death is upon me. Our baby brother knows it. I am dead. Has my mother realized it? It must be awful to bury your child, but even more awful to see your child die little by little without being able to do a thing to save her. We’re caught in a vicious circle. Everything’s changed, everything’s suddenly upside down since they took over our land. They are a blight upon us. Cursed, we’re cursed and Grandfather knows it. That’s why he prays, that’s why he steps out at
