When they disappeared, I entered the nearest house. The door was open. Wisteria blossoms showered the courtyard; the bees no longer grumbled. I walked over to the star on the cupboard in the kitchen and glimpsed a pair of eyes observing me sadly, like an animal’s. I returned to the street. The village seemed dead, like Sunday afternoons when people set out to look at the prisoner. The only sound arose from the river. I headed for the path everyone had taken, the straight path, the path with the dandelions you blow apart with a puff, the path with lizards whose tails grow back. The path beyond the slope that was full of dust in summer and mud in winter. When I reached the Pont de Fusta, I stopped on the bridge to look at the water that was filled with a kind of sky that was not quite a night sky. I scrutinized it with such fascination that I didn’t realize the moon was shining until a cloud hid it.
Beyond the Pont de Fusta, the path descended. When I was little the path would pull me along as if I were suddenly empty. A cliff frightens you, stops you, but a slope is silent and sweeps you away. On a slope, man met shadow and they never parted. They established the village. The man, the shadow by his side, planted the first wisteria. But that’s not exactly how it was. A long time ago when the oldest of the old men in the village was young, he witnessed the birth of everything. The village was born from the earth’s terrible unrest. The mountain was cleaved and it collapsed into the river, scattering the water through the fields. But the river wanted to flow with all of its water gathered together and began burrowing beneath the crumpled mountain, emptying it little by little. The river never rested until all the water could flow happily together again, although at times it grew furious when it hit the rock ceiling. They say that one night, not at the bottom of the slope, but on the ground, on the rocks hurled from the cliff, the moon showed two shadows joined at the mouth. And it rained blood. That is how it all began.
A great storm arose. The thunder, lightning, and rain lasted all night.
VII
After I had left behind the Pont de Fusta and slope, I began to run. I stopped at the edge of the forest, out of breath. No sound issued from the forest, as if it had been swallowed up. I followed the line of trees until I arrived at the seedlings and entered the forest in the same place as before. Everyone was grouped round the tree, the cross bubbling, creating a border. The glowing torches turned the green of the low-hanging leaves a strange green. The butterflies must have been asleep because I could not see them in the high branches.
The blacksmith broke away from the crowd and approached the tree. My stepmother must have gone for the axe, because she handed it to him. His short arms were poised in the air, then he delivered the first blow to the vertical line marked by the cross. No one breathed. A woman, her arms extended, started to shriek like an animal and was led away to the river where she suddenly became quiet. A man stood beside me, on a spot where the torches shed only a faint light. I didn’t know him; I didn’t think I had ever seen him before. He turned his head toward me, and when he turned I could see his eyes, large and shiny. One of the torch bearers had moved, and I glimpsed the eyes of the man who was standing so close to me. The person who moved was at a distance, but the torch had cast the beam in the man’s eyes. The man cupped his hand in front of his lips, speaking to me out of the side of his mouth, so no one would hear—he told me that he enjoyed watching people die. When he wheeled round to see what was happening, I stepped back further into the shadow. As the blacksmith was preparing to swing the axe a second time, the old man who had walked beside him seized him by the arm, and he told the blacksmith that the tree should not be opened with an axe—it had already been breached—and the axe blows could kill whoever was inside, if he was still alive. Then the blacksmith sent for a large branch and, with some help, shoved it as best he could into the tree, through the middle of the cross. Carefully, through the hole made by the branch, he pulled, cut, and unsealed the tree. Four men grasped each end of the bark and yanked furiously. The blacksmith spun round, his face worn and pasty, and announced that the tree was resisting; it didn’t want the dead person that belonged to it removed. His mouth a square hole, his eyes glassy, my father appeared to be watching. The tips of his fingers were embedded in the sides of the trunk, and I am not sure if I saw it . . . his hair drawn upwards by the tree’s colorless blood. The branch that had been wedged inside the tree was pinning him backwards, piercing his stomach.
They started to shout. They shouted at my father who had little remaining breath and was clearly near his end. He was still alive, but only his own death kept him alive. They dragged him from the tree, laid him on the ground, and began beating him. The last blows made no sound. Don’t kill him, shouted the cement man. The mortar trough, filled with rose-colored cement, lay at his feet. Don’t kill him before he has been filled. They pried his mouth partially open, and the cement man began to fill it. First with watery cement so it would slide far down inside him, then with thick cement. When he was well cemented, they stood him up and put him back inside the tree. They replaced the cross and left to prepare the Festa.
I stayed on alone; the tree was barely visible without the torches. I went up to it and placed my ear against the bark. It seemed empty. I looked up because I wanted to see a little starlight. As I gazed upward, I could feel my link with life snapping. I felt detached from everything. I searched for my tree; night was a hand, wrenching me from my father’s tree, leading me to mine. I knelt down and crawled on my knees from one trunk to another, fingering the names of the living and the dead. I could smell the fretted leaves and trampled grass. When I lifted a plaque, the ring sometimes squealed, as if it were tearing something that was deeply hidden, something that thrust blades of grass and leaves on branches upward. A ray of moonlight helped me locate my tree; it was directly in front of my father’s. The plaque smelled of rust. I would end my days locked in that tree, my mouth full of cement that had been mixed with crimson powder, my entire soul within. Because, you see, the blacksmith used to say that with the last breath, without anyone realizing, your soul flees. And no one knows where it goes.
The village was deserted. Only the grieving sound of the hidden river reached me. From time to time a blossom fell from the cluster above, grazing my cheek. This was the hour that roots strained to upwrench houses. When a large crack appeared in a wall, it was filled with cement and the house became safe again. I followed all the villagers, as though I wasn’t following them. I could still hear the voice of the man in the forest. I entered many kitchens where eyes waited behind stars in cupboards, just as mine had waited for the elderly to come and free me. I opened the doors to all the cupboards, and the sleepy children staggered out. I made my way to the blacksmith’s house, where I struck the anvil two or three times with my open hand. I walked further inside. The blacksmith’s son was skeleton-thin, and they always kept him in bed. I went over to gaze at him and touched him, but he didn’t move. I continued on to my house and went upstairs; I could see the glow of the fires on the other side of the stables, on the Festa esplanade. All of a sudden I wanted to go and see them. No one was home, and as I was leaving I ran my hand along the windowsill. No flowerpot stood at the window; my stepmother always had a pot with a flower on the sill. Sometimes the flower was white, sometimes red. But there was no flowerpot that