The Boys (18 page)

One night, fifteen years earlier, Nil was sitting with his parents in front of the fireplace. They were watching a game show on TV. First they heard a wheeze and then a roar, as if there were a beast stuck in the chimney, roasting. There was no animal. Their chimney had caught fire. Nil's father jumped up from his chair, and his mother ran to move the sofa. His father came out of the kitchen with a bucket of water. He put out the fire in the hearth, then ran upstairs with another bucketful and Nil's mother behind him. Nil was eight years old. He couldn't think of anything better to do than to put his head into the fireplace. He crouched down, leaned against the hot, black water and, burning his cheek against the still-scorching tile, looked upward like he sometimes did when there was no fire blazing. During the day you could see the light all the way at the top, like the reflection in the bottom of a well, and you heard very precise
sounds from outside the house, which traveled through the air from far away—as if the chimney were a small, long shell, an antenna to pick up the barks of dogs from other houses, the occasional shout from a neighboring field, or the engine of a motorcycle—sounds separated from their place, exiled like the dim light you could see all the way at the top; light from the sky separated from the sky. That night he hadn't expected to see the placid light of day, nor even a bit of moonlight, but he also hadn't expected the nest of snakes that he did see. A virulent flaming light, frantic between the black walls, a well in hell that made the whole house tremble. He felt a hot splatter on his arm, a bit of soot had fallen into the puddle of water on the floor. Sparks fell from all the way up the chimney, floating down like incandescent, volatile rain, and he had to move out from under them. Then he ran upstairs to his parents, wanting them to protect him; throughout the whole house the chimney's snoring could be heard, like a flute,
zuuuu, zuuu
, and it seemed the walls were quivering in a sustained, never-ending earthquake, and Nil went up the staircase along the chimney, running his hand along the wall's plaster. And it was hot, it was burning hot, the fire was just on the other side, a few centimeters away from him. He was afraid that the whole house would suddenly burst into flames, and he saw a crack in the plaster that hadn't been there before, long and deep and all the way up to the ceiling, and he went out on the roof, and there he found his father, who'd just thrown a bucket of water into the chimney but stood still, as if hypnotized. The chimney was a small volcano, a fountain of sparks that the wind carried into the night over the fields, into the fresh
air. The fire gradually died out, fewer and fewer sparks falling onto the adobe roof, bouncing, and being carried off by the wind . . .

Now his father left without saying a word, through the fields, disheartened after the fight, cursing and defeated.

Light pricked the hills; the red sky turned violet and increasingly opaque. The clouds made maps of continents with peninsulas, islands, and coastline, a shadow of the earth's continents, black ash that would fall on the fields and make them barren, enslave them, and then the night's water would turn it all to mud.

The moon focused on Serradell; Nil was sitting at the door to the shack, lost in his labyrinths. He had a long glass tube and a jar with a mix of water and flammable paste. He was blowing bubbles and lighting them on fire. His planets of lava and blood floated over Serradell, dying out here and there.

Why did you do all that? Because you're a pyro? For your own pleasure? For the light, for the exorcism of death that the deaths of others brings—since they leave and you stay and make a record of it, you make their deaths material in your videos and make material of death? Because you want to construct a garment of death, wrap yourself in these deaths so when your moment comes you're prepared? Are you searching for the light that will consume you? Exploring art's extreme limits? Do you think there's nowhere further to go—nothing beyond here—and it only makes sense to turn back, to pack it in? Why did you do it? To satisfy your imagination? Because you were lonely? Because it was as if
you were burning yourself up? Did you do it because you couldn't explain it?

Would he be brave enough to pack his bags and leave? He admired so many painters, had seen so many exhibitions in those four years, and beyond each painting and each video there were entire museums of paintings and videos that hadn't been made and were worth more because of that. Walls and blank walls. Artwork without pain. Full stillness. Blameless sin. He could have lived with that emptiness, but wasn't brave enough; he searched until he found a way, and he started to kill animals as a path to return home, to an earthly state, the same state that his father sought with his work each day by turning his body into his land, going into the field like a worm to eat his own flesh; every single day, with the obsession that his son would continue so the flesh and the land could be the same, and in this perpetuation his existence was at stake, the existence of his ancestors, life itself was at stake.

The truck's headlights approached like eyes getting a closer look at him. He heard the engine, the big wheels, sounds that had nothing to do with what the same engine and the same wheels did during the day—there were day sounds and night sounds, and the ones at night were more precise and fine-tuned—two types were needed, one to watch over the other, like the two headlights on the truck, two types in symmetry, just as with the body: hands, feet, brain hemispheres, the same symmetry as with the dead brothers.

Miqui was waiting for him in the cab. He gestured for him to climb in.

“Ready to have some fun?” he asked, when Nil was inside. “Good news—I looked into the Internet thing. There's no problem.”

He had a photo of a naked girl taped next to the steering wheel, with huge, symmetrical tits.

“Our Lady of Safe Travels,” said Miqui. “Wait till you see Cloe and Marga.”

“You have to take me to Lake Sils,” said Nil.

“You want to go to the lake now? Wait until we come back . . . if you still want to then!”

“Take me there.”

“There's two of them, Nil . . . it's gonna take some time!”

They were passing the tree. In the truck's headlights, the bouquet looked like a bride's bouquet.

“What assholes,” said Miqui.

“A lot of accidents are suicides and no one realizes,” said Nil. “We don't know anything about other people's pain.”

Miqui gave him a puzzled look. “Is something going on with you?”

Nothing is more closely guarded than the pain we cause ourselves. We don't talk about it, and we try not to think about it, but the pain accrues. The worst pain is what we do to ourselves. We know where it'll hurt. And the dead turn over in their graves and don't forgive the living for not taking advantage of what they've lost forever. They don't forgive us for living in hell; they don't forgive the zoo of animals that the living burn inside themselves, that madness.

“I don't want to go see the girls,” said Nil. “Just drop me off at the lake, and I'll walk back on my own. I'll give you the videos. You can do whatever you want with them.”

Miqui exited the national highway and took the Sils road.

“You didn't understand me,” said Miqui. “I want you to come with me. What could you possibly have to do at the lake at this time of night? We have a date with the girls, we're late, you can't be rude with chicks. What's wrong with you?”

They turned off onto an unpaved road before reaching the center of Sils.

“You want me to leave you here?” said Miqui. “At this time of night? You are really fucking weird, Nil. You want me to go with you? You want me to wait for you?”

“Piss off,” said Nil, and he got out of the cab.

But Miqui turned off the engine.

“You can leave,” said Nil. “Go.”

The truck lit up the road. Nil lifted his arm, nodded good-bye, and began walking. He heard the road in the distance, and the freeway, and the jet engines of a plane. He heard croaks and animal noises from the water. And then a honk made Nil turn around. Miqui had lowered the window and was aiming at him from the cab.

“Get back in the truck,” said Miqui.

“Piss off,” Nil said again.

And he saw the flare leave the mouth of the barrel, and there was a very brief silence, then a deafening thunderclap immediately followed by dirt and a laugh that skated over the lake's water.

“Nobody tells me to piss off!” shouted Miqui, and he turned on the engine. “Got that? Nobody! You're out of your mind, Nil! You're nutty as a fruitcake, a fucking fruitcake! Look at this shotgun! I'd never shoot anybody! I'm not like
you, with your fucking freak ear! You're mental! You're out of your fucking mind!”

Nil remained motionless until the truck was far away, and then took the path he always did around the lake. The cold compressed reality: there was an effervescence of stars around the moon, the black glass of the sky was filled with little holes so you could see through to the other side; with one kick he'd shatter it to pieces. He took the same path as always, his place was here, at night—the darkness, the cold, the solitude. He heard a train coming and went into one of the observatories and sat down, surrounded by aquatic sounds, unexpected splashing, no one would come in that night, he could've stretched out on a bench and slept until the next day if it wasn't so cold. He felt the tremble of the tracks and watched a light-laden train pass, reflected in the lake's dark water.

The train passed by, all lit up. In the sky was the balloon from that morning, with the two rays of helium stuck into its belly, like a big incandescent bulb illuminating the lake and filling the ground with shadows. There were also airplanes in flames. The lake was a burning pool. The fire had taken over the center of Sils, and the houses were aflame, the chimneys, the church tower with its red-hot bell. The isolated farmhouses in the woods and in the fields, and Miqui in his truck, and the cars passing by on the road and freeway. Infernos in the Guilleries and Montseny mountains, Vidreres ablaze, the streets, the homes, his parents, Iona; the limping bitch ran like a shadow between the flames with another dog, a dog whose fur was all burned, named Ringo. Nil hadn't heard anything from him since Saturday night when he lit him
on fire and let him go, and the dog set off running like they all did, fleeing from himself through the fields. But something went wrong, because the flames went out, or it had only seemed they were going out, because that same fire was burning everything now, and Ringo was running, hairless, through it all, fleeing like he'd fled Saturday night, looking back every once in a while, farther and farther from Nil, until he crossed the road at the worst moment. Nil saw the lights, the
S
the car made, he heard the sudden braking, the shattering glass, he ran back to the shack to hide the fuel and the camera.

He touches his ear to make sure he's awake. Hell is here and he is the devil, but not everything can be destruction. He keeps walking and finds the Peugeot with Jaume and Xavi inside, two boys a bit younger than him, whom he'd met at some party in town.

“What are you two doing here?” he asks.

“Us?” says Jaume. “We're where we're supposed to be. And you, evil notary?”

He doesn't want to be that reincarnation. The water of the lake has to rise again, it has to drown the two boys, snuff out all the fires; or else it will all be hell.