Without Blood (2 page)

Nina heard the burst of gunfire sweep the house, above her.

Then silence. And
immediately afterward another burst, longer.

She kept her eyes open. She looked at the cracks in the floor. She
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looked at the light, and the dust that came from up there. Every
so often she saw a shadow pass, and that was her father.

Salinas crawled over beside El
Gurre, behind the woodpile.

“How long would
it take Tito to get in?”

El
Gurre shrugged
his shoulders. He still
had the sneer on his
face. Salinas glanced at the farmhouse.

“We’ll never get in from here: either he does it or we’re in
deep shit.”

El
Gurre lighted the cigarette. He said that the kid was quick
and could manage it. He said that he knew how to slither like a
snake and that they would
have to trust him.

“But we’ll need a little distraction.”

Manuel
Roca saw El
Gurre emerge from behind the woodpile and throw himself to the ground. From that position the
machine-gun volley arrived
punctually, prolonged. I’ve got to get
out of here, Roca thought. Ammunition. First ammunition,
then crawl to the kitchen and from there straight for the fields.

Wait. El
Gurre isn’t stupid, he must have someone behind the
house, too. But no one’s firing from that direction. If someone
were there, he would
be firing. Maybe El
Gurre isn’t in charge.

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Maybe it’s that coward Salinas. If it’s Salinas, I can handle it.

He doesn’t have a clue, that Salinas. Stay behind your desk,
Salinas, it’s the only thing you know how to do. But first go
screw yourself. First the ammunition.

El
Gurre was shooting.

Ammunition. And money. Maybe I can take the money with
me, too. I should
have run immediately, that’s what I should
have done. God
damn. Now I’ve got to get out of here, if only
he would stop for a second, where did
he get a machine gun?

They have a car and a machine gun. Too much, Salinas.

The ammunition. Now the money.

El
Gurre fired.

Nina heard the windows pulverize under the machine-gun shots.

Then leaves of silence between one burst and the next. In the
silence, the shadow of her father crept between the glass. With
one hand she adjusted
her skirt. She was like an artisan intent on
refining his work. Curled on her side, she began eliminating the
imprecisions one by one. She lined up
her feet until she felt her
legs perfectly coupled, the two thighs softly joined, the knees like
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two cups one inside the other, the calves barely separated.

She checked the symmetry of her shoes, paired as if in a shop
window, but on their sides, you might have said
lying down, out
of exhaustion. She liked that orderliness. If you are a shell, order
is important. If you are shell and animal, everything has to be
perfect. Precision will save you.

She heard the pounding of a long volley. And right afterward
the voice of a boy.

“Put down the gun, Roca.”

Manuel
Roca turned
his head. He saw Tito standing a few yards
away. He was pointing a pistol at him.

“Put down that gun and
don’t move.”

From outside came another burst of gunfire. But the boy
didn’t move, he stood there, gun pointed. Under that rain of
shots, the two stood motionless, staring at each other, like a
single animal that had stopped
breathing. Manuel
Roca, half
lying on the ground, looked the boy in the eyes, as he stood there,
in the open. He tried to comprehend
if he was a child or a soldier,
if it was his thousandth time or his first, and
if there was a brain
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attached to that gun or only blind
instinct. He saw the barrel of
the gun tremble just perceptibly, as if it were making a tiny
scribble in the air.

“Stay calm, kid,” he said.

Slowly he placed the rifle on the floor. With a kick
he sent it
sliding into the center of the room.

“Everything’s okay, kid,” he said.

Tito didn’t take his eyes off him.

“Quiet, Roca, and
don’t move.”

Another blast arrived. El
Gurre was working methodically.

The boy waited until
he finished, without lowering his gun
or his gaze. When silence returned, he glanced toward the
window.

“SALINAS! I’VE GOT HIM. STOP IT, I’VE GOT HIM.”

And after a moment:

“It’s Tito. I’ve got him.”

“He’s done it. Shit,” said Salinas.

El
Gurre made a kind of smile, without turning. He was
observing the barrel of the machine gun as if he had carved
it
himself, in idle hours, from the branch of an ash tree.

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Tito looked for them in the light from the window.

Slowly Manuel
Roca got up just enough so that he could
lean
his back against the wall. He thought of the gun pressing into his
side, stuck
in his pants. He tried to remember if it was loaded.

He touched
it with one hand. The boy didn’t notice anything.

Let’s go, Salinas said. They went around the stack of wood
and
headed straight for the farmhouse. Salinas walked slightly
bent, as he had seen it done in films. He was ridiculous like all
men who fight: without realizing it. They were crossing the
farmyard when they heard, from inside, a gunshot.

El
Gurre ran. He reached the door of the farmhouse and
kicked
it open. Three years earlier, he had
kicked open the door
of the stable, had entered and
had seen his wife hanging from the
ceiling, and
his two daughters with their heads shaved, their
thighs spattered with
blood.

He kicked open the door and went in and saw Tito, pointing
the gun toward a corner of the room.

“I
had to do it. He has a gun,” the boy said.

El
Gurre looked
in the corner. Roca was lying on his back.

He was bleeding from one arm.

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“I think
he has a gun,” the boy said again. “Hidden somewhere,” he added.

El
Gurre went over to Manuel
Roca.

He looked at the wound
in his arm. Then he looked the man
in the face.

“Hello, Roca,” he said.

He placed one shoe on Roca’s wounded arm and
began to
crush
it. Roca shrieked and folded over on himself in pain. The
gun slid out of his pants. El
Gurre leaned
down to pick
it up.

“You’re a smart kid,” he said. Tito nodded. He realized that
he still
had
his arm extended
in front of him, and the gun in his
hand, pointed at Roca. He lowered
it. He felt his two fingers
relax around the trigger of the pistol. His whole hand
hurt, as if
he had
been punching a wall. Stay calm, he thought.

Nina remembered the song that began: Count the clouds, the
time will come. Then something about an eagle. And
it ended
with the numbers, one after another, from one to ten. But you
could also count to a hundred, or a thousand. She had once
counted to two hundred and forty-three. She thought that now
she would get up and go and see who those men were and what
they wanted. If she couldn’t open the trapdoor, she would cry
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out, and
her father would come to get her. But instead she stayed
like that, lying on her side, her knees pulled up to her chest, her
shoes balanced one on top of the other, her cheek feeling the cool
of the earth through the rough wool of the blanket. She began to
sing the song, in a thin voice. Count the clouds, the time will
come. And then a voice.

“We meet again, Doctor,” Salinas said.

Manuel
Roca looked at him without speaking. He pressed a
rag against the wound. They had made him sit in the middle
of the room, on a wooden chest. El
Gurre was behind
him,
somewhere, gripping his machine gun. They had stationed the
boy, Tito, at the door, to see that no one arrived, outside, and
every so often he turned, and
looked at what was happening in
the room. Salinas walked
back and forth. A
lighted cigarette
between his fingers. French.

“I’ve wasted a lot of time on you, you know?” he said.

Manual
Roca looked up at him.

“Three hundred
kilometers to come down here and get you.

It’s a long way.”

“Tell me what you want and go.”

“What I want?”

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“What do you want, Salinas?”

Salinas smiled.

“What did you say?”

“The war is over.”

Salinas stood over Manuel
Roca.

“The winner decides when a war is over.”

Manuel
Roca shook
his head.

“You read too many novels, Salinas. The war is over, that’s
it, get it?”

“Not yours. Not mine, Doctor.”

Then Manuel
Roca began to shout that they had
better not
touch
him, they would all end up
in jail, they would
be caught
and spend the rest of their lives rotting in prison. He shouted at
the boy: did
he like the idea of growing old
behind
bars counting
the hours and giving blow jobs to some repellent killer. The boy
looked at him without responding. Then Manuel
Roca shouted
at him that he was an imbecile, they were duping him, screwing
up
his life. But the boy said nothing. Salinas smiled. He looked
at El
Gurre and smiled. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Finally he became serious. He placed
himself in front of
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Manuel Roca and told
him to be quiet, once and for all. He
put a hand
inside his jacket and took out a pistol. Then he told
Roca that he needn’t worry about them, no one would ever
know anything.

“You will
disappear into a void, and no one will say a word.

Your friends have abandoned you, Roca. And mine are very
busy. To kill you will
be a favor to everyone. You’re screwed,
Doctor.”

“You’re mad.”

“What are you saying?”

“You’re mad.”

“Say it again, Doctor. I
like hearing you talk about
madmen.”

“Go fuck yourself, Salinas.”

Salinas released the safety on the pistol.

“Now listen to me, Doctor. Do you know how many times I
fired a shot in four years of war? Twice. I
don’t like to shoot, I
don’t like weapons, I’ve never wanted to carry one, I
don’t enjoy
killing, I fought my war sitting at a desk, Salinas the Rat, you
remember? That’s what your friends called me, I screwed them
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one by one, I
deciphered their coded messages and
put my spies
on them, they despised me and
I screwed them, it went like that
for four years, but the truth
is that I fired only twice. Once was
at night, I shot into the darkness at no one, the other was the last
day of the war, I shot my brother

listen carefully, we went into that hospital
before the army arrived, we wanted to go in and
kill all of you,
but we didn’t find you, you had fled, right? You saw which
way the wind was blowing, so you took off your jailers’ shirts
and ran, leaving everything behind, just as it was, beds all over
the place, sick
people everywhere, even in the corridors, but
what I remember most was that you couldn’t hear a complaint,
not a sound, nothing. I will never forget it, there was an
absolute silence. Every night of my life I will
hear it, an absolute
silence, those were our friends in the beds, and we were going
to free them, we were saving them, but when we arrived they
welcomed us in silence, because they didn’t even have the
strength to cry, and, to tell the truth, they no longer had the
desire to live. They didn’t want to be saved, this is the truth,
you had reduced them to a state where they wanted only to die,
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as soon as possible, they didn’t want to be saved, they wanted to
be killed

I found my brother in a bed among the

others, down in the chapel, he looked at me as if I were a distant
mirage. I tried to speak to him but he didn’t answer, I couldn’t
tell
if he recognized me, I
bent over him, I
begged
him to answer
me, I asked
him to say something. His eyes were wide open, his
breath was very slow, it was like a long death agony, I was
leaning over him when I
heard
his voice say Please, very slowly,
with a superhuman effort, a voice that seemed to come from
Hell, it had nothing to do with
his voice, my brother had a
ringing voice, when he spoke it was like laughter, but this was
something entirely different, he said slowly Please and then after
a while he said Kill me, his eyes had no expression, none, they
were like the eyes of someone else, his body was motionless,
there was only that very slow breath going up and
down
I said that I would take him away from there,
that it was all over and
I would take care of everything, but he
seemed to have sunk
back
into his inferno, returning to where
he’d come from, he had said what he wanted to say and then
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