The Boys (17 page)

When Nil turned on the light, Miqui applauded.

“Amazing,” he said, “I swear, never seen anything like it. They must pay you well.”

Nil shook his head as he stopped the camera and started to sweep up.

“It's a labor of love?” Miqui thought it over for a moment then said, “What a weird hobby. Post it online and you'll get a million hits.”

“There are animal protection laws.”

“For spiders and flies? For butterflies? Are you saying you've done this with bigger animals?”

Nil turned the lights off again. He had his laptop connected to a wide-screen television. He switched it on. It was a film that was shot at night in the field in front of the shack. The camera gradually adapted to the darkness and focused on a shadow that became a lamb, a lamb tied by its neck to the ground, probably to a rock in the middle of the field. The
camera remained in one spot. The elf with the hole in his ear came out with a container on his back connected by a tube to a spray gun. He approached the lamb and soaked it. Then he rubbed the liquid in with his fingers. Before untying the lamb, he kneeled down for a moment on the other side of the animal, where he lit something—a wick—then ran out of the frame.

“Here's where the film will start once it's edited,” Nil said.

Light appeared behind the lamb. The animal turned its head, looked at its thigh, and started to run in circles. The fire spread through its wool. In a matter of seconds the entire lamb was aflame and galloping through the field, streaking it with light. It fell, extended its legs with a tremble, then stopped, immobile. It kept burning until it went out on its own, amid a cloud of smoke.

He had dozens of videos, an encyclopedia; the lamb was the last one he had shot, but there were videos of cats on fire who bristled suddenly like a balls of flame, jumping with panicked yowls; he had dogs, running with just their tails on fire at first, then all of them, packs of dogs fleeing through the woods, always at night, hunting dogs, as if desperately chasing some prey, but all they were chasing was an escape from themselves, from their pain; and birds, thrown off a cliff, that flapped their wings of light four or five times—not to fly but to put out the flames, though only stoking them—until they collapsed suddenly like meteorites toward the depths of the abyss. And a snake that shot across the ground like a gilded arrow; a rabbit that hopped through the dry brush, leaving paths of flame in its wake. He had projects thought up that he wouldn't get a chance to do, fields of flowers with their
corollas on fire, fruit burning up on the branches, palm trees, forests, galloping horses of fire, herds of flaming goats climbing cliffs, bulls, peacocks, roosters, cows burning in green fields, fiery ducks and swans swimming, men and women and children dressed in flames.

“You could make money off all this,” said Miqui. “We could commercialize it; there's no risk, I can tell you that. If you don't need the money, think about other people for a second.”

Nil didn't answer, and in that silence the bitch's wail could be heard through the door.

“More material,” said Miqui.

“That's my dog. It's dinnertime, he's hungry.”

“Why don't we talk about it, the Internet thing? Why don't you let me look into it, and we can give it a try? We can do it from a server in India or the ends of the earth. I don't think it's illegal, at least not with the fleas and a few fucking beetles, that'd be ridiculous, but it's got a morbid appeal, I'm sure it would work, people love sick shit.”

“No. I don't want any problems.”

“What if I buy it off you?”

“You don't need to buy it. You can do it yourself. I'll let you have the idea.”

“I'm no artist, Nil,” said Miqui. “I never would have thought that up. Let me look into it this afternoon. Don't pay me for the trip, man. Let's get together later. I'll come pick you up. I have some girlfriends, I'll introduce you to them, you should unwind a little, you seem worked up, we'll relax and talk business and you'll see things differently. I'll come get you at eleven, OK?”

The bitch on the other side of the door was getting louder and louder. Nil nodded; he'd have a lot to celebrate tonight.

The bitch had been rubbing her snout against the net and had managed to detach some of the packing tape. Even so, Nil stretched out on the sofa and dozed off after lunch. He slept for a couple of hours straight—his dreams squashed deep down inside him—until the bitch woke him up again. When it got dark he would put her down. That was the end of it. He would give the short films to the trucker, and he could do whatever he wanted with them. He would give him the camera and the laptop with the photographs from his second period, and then they would go celebrate with the girls.

The bitch was still and looking intently at the door, exhaling hard through her snout with her ears tensed but not lifted, because of the constraints of the net. Nil went over to look out the window. It was the end of the afternoon, and there was thin fog that would vanish at dusk; it was a prelude that gave way to the thicker fog. He'd learned to watch it as he waited for night to fall, a fake fog that could just as easily have come from the fires of farmers as from steam escaping from the ATO milk processing plant, or from the tanker trucks that constantly came to Vidreres to fill their steel tanks at the plant in the industrial park.

Shit. Someone was coming along the path, and it could only be his father. The shack wasn't anywhere that people just passed by, it was at the end of the path. He couldn't pretend he wasn't there, because his car was parked outside. His father wouldn't be pleased to find out that he'd taken the
dog with him instead of killing it at Can Bou. Nil wouldn't have an easy time explaining it either. He quickly grabbed the packing tape to wrap up the bitch's muzzle again. He still had time to drag her into the workshop. But he took another look out the window. The person approaching was Iona, from Can Bou.

Shit. But better Iona than his father. He grabbed his coat, left the shack, and walked quickly over to her. He stopped her far enough away that she wouldn't hear the bitch.

“I'm looking for a dog,” said Iona, “her name is Seda, she's been missing all day. I thought maybe you'd seen her, maybe she headed this way, she must be really lost. She's got a bad limp, we found her injured on the road . . .”

“If you got her off the road, she must have gone back to her owners. Dogs do that, it seems like they've gotten used to you, but one day they wake up and go back home.”

Iona's hair was shiny, her skin taut and porous; she had bags under her eyes from crying, but the pupils darted around. Nil thought about the pretty young teachers he'd seen that morning and the trucker's friends awaiting him that night. Would he eventually get used to this girl? Would he really like her? When spring came, Iona would have to forget about the bitch and about Jaume. He himself will have changed a lot by then, he won't be like he is now.

“How's it going, life in the shack?” she said.

“Come some other day and I'll show you,” Nil said. “I was just leaving.”

But Iona didn't move. She had to make an effort to say what came next:

“One question, Nil. Why did you show me that video?”

“I made a mistake. You're right, I shouldn't have. It wasn't the right moment. I just wanted to be there for you.”

“Be there for me?”

“I wanted to be there for you in your grief. I'm trying to adapt to being here again, fit in. I don't know anything about anyone. I've been gone a long time.”

Iona took in a deep breath—Nil perfectly heard her take it in—and suddenly took off running toward the shack.

“I just have to see for myself!” she screamed in a cracked voice as she ran. “I can't leave without checking! I have to check, Nil! I have to see it for myself!”

Shortly afterward, as she walked past him with the bitch in her arms, still tangled in the net—“sick fuck!” and the bitch showing him her teeth, Iona having removed the packing tape, “fucking asshole!”—Nil thought that he could have locked the door but he hadn't.

He brooded over whether to take his car and go to the butcher shop, or buy nails and smash up a piece of glass, or get some rat poison, or just ask the trucker to do it with his shotgun, on their way back from seeing the girls, in exchange for the videos.

He didn't have long to think it over. Iona had only just disappeared down the path when he saw another figure approaching, a figure very similar to himself, except for the ear—the last person he wanted to see right then. The gait was identical to his own. Nil walking toward Nil.

His father had his hands in his pockets and planted himself in front of Nil without any greeting.

“I didn't call so your mother wouldn't ask questions. I've
been expecting
you
to call
me
with some excuse. But you haven't said a word all day. And now I see the girl from Can Bou leaving here, crying, carrying a dog trapped in a net. You'd better have a good explanation. Because if this is what I think it is, you really screwed up, Nil. I hope you have an explanation. You had that dog, didn't you? You didn't carry it off in a net! And the dog was injured. Do you mind telling me what that girl was doing here, crying and picking up an injured dog at our shack? Can you explain it, or is there no need? You know what's going to happen, right? They're going to report us. I'll say this in case you don't already understand: it's over. There's no way we can get the land now. Did you hear me, Nil?”

His father grabbed him by the shoulders. He shook him and asked him to explain himself. Nil couldn't say anything; his father was right. They'd spent four years waiting for him. In four years, they'd only had one bit of good news: when they found out he'd quit art school. When he told them they didn't hide their happiness—an underwater power cable that connected him and his parents, but didn't start to work until his father asked him to go kill a dog at Can Bou. For four years, his parents worried that their son would never come back from Barcelona. Every month they paid him the salary that it would take three black men working sun up to sun down to earn, as his father told him one day; they paid so he could devote himself to searching for another world, to betraying them, with the hope that he would grow tired of it. His parents had also acted irresponsibly. They had to have some fault in it, letting him go, letting him get mixed up in a lie. Or was it an experiment? Had they sent him out to
explore? Go, see if you find anything better. Go, fail, grow up, you'll be back. And when his father pushed him, Nil pushed back, and they started to fight. A father and son don't reach this point so easily. His father was carrying a lot of rage inside, and every blow that Nil took was worth ten, the punches came as if pressurized—his father was strong, a man of the earth, a rock from the field, the wait had turned long and tense, waiting every day while he watched other people's children living according to God's plan, taking up the reins, continuing, who was Nil to leave and then fail—and every time Nil received a blow from his father there was a reason behind it, and he just let himself be shook and beat on, he didn't struggle against it, he'd thought of his father every morning when he saw the Batlle brothers heading out into the fields with theirs . . . And when his father grew tired and stopped, Nil got up in pain and helped his father to stand.

“You're all the same, Nil,” his father said, “everybody your age is the same. You scammed us. You played us for fools. You took advantage of us. You know what hurts us the most, Nil? We were afraid that one day we'd open the newspaper and see that they were talking about you, about the things you were doing. That we'd find out that you were even further into the lie, that you believed it completely. We helped you because you're our only child, and there was no other option—your teachers said you were intelligent and that your mother and I had to have a lot of patience—and we didn't lose hope even though we saw it coming for a long time. Parents always have to think the worst; we need to see it coming. Look at the Batlles. We knew you wanted to go to college, so we let you do it because it wasn't a question of
four years or even eight . . . but to work here you don't need a degree, you need effort and know-how, real know-how, not that flighty left-wing crap they fill your head with, the ideas they started giving you really young. . . What kind of artist could come out of Vidreres?. . . Before books and before artists there was the land, and someone was working it, and when there are no books left, or artists, or paintings, or any of that shit, because one day all of that will be history, like everything else . . . do you know what will still be here? The land will still be here. Scratch at it all you like, throw a bomb at it and you'll make a hole, and underneath there'll be more. Your grandfather always said, when he was little, in the war, they took land to build an aviation field. You see what's left of that field. You can scratch at it all you like, you can throw a bomb, but under the dirt there's more dirt. You kids think you're so smart. You're so full of yourselves. You lasted a year, Nil, you dropped out and we thought: well, he'll be back here soon. But then it only got worse: you didn't come back right away, and then one day you show up with that ear. I'm still not used to it. That's our flesh, goddamn it! And then you asked me for the shack. Your mother didn't want to—women know more about these things—she'd given you up for lost, not like me. I'm just a poor man, and when the boys from Can Batlle got themselves killed, the only thing I could think of was to ask you to do a job that I should've done myself. I thought I could treat you like a grown-up. I don't know why you wanted the shack, I don't know and I don't care what you've been doing in there, I haven't stuck my nose into it, I haven't asked any questions. All I asked was for you to look out for the family and the land and . . . How could you
have blown this bit of luck, luck that could help our family survive for a hundred more years? A hundred more years, Nil. Does that not seem like much to you? Or you think it's too much? You didn't have to do it for yourself; it was about those that'll come after you, you hear me, all the dead are in these fields . . . You really screwed up, Nil. Now the land will go to the Suredas, and Can Bou will grow. Goddamn it. At least those two killed themselves. It shouldn't have been them that died. But what do you know, you, who left the land? You live in a world that's about to explode—we've sold you kids out, let you do what you want. Now I understand why you didn't say anything, now I see why the earring, why you wanted to lock yourself away here . . . just to escape, because that's all you know how to do!”