A Perfect Cemetery Read online

  A Perfect Cemetery

  Federico Falco

  A Perfect Cemetery

  Translated by

  Jennifer Croft

  Contents

  The Hares

  Silvi and Her Dark Night

  A Perfect Cemetery

  Forest Life

  The River

  On Conversation

  For José Adamo

  The Hares

  The king of the hares finished his coffee, put out the fire and set his cup down on a rock that was still hot. Then he picked up the bones left over from last night and headed up the hill.

  Higher, the pine forest opened up onto a meadow of overgrown weeds the wind had made scragglier. With every step the king of the hares had to disentangle leaves that were warped by the dew, his trousers getting soaked through around the ankles, his boots getting coated in a fine spew of flimsy straw and wisps. In the night a mass of clouds had stalled over the mountaintop, and as the king made his way up through the meadow, the air around him got denser, a cold mist in almost invisible gusts making him shiver.

  Halfway there, the king of the hares found an owl feather balanced on a shrub. He took it by its shaft and held it up against the light, spinning it slowly: it was perfect, brown with black bands, without so much as a single little cleft in it. The king tucked the feather in his satchel with the bones and then kept going.

  The altar stood clear at the edge of the meadow, just before you came to the top of the hill. It was a large flat rock, host to a modest heap of offerings. Adornments of honey locust pods and wildflowers, spines and scapulae interwoven to create a pyramid. The sun had bleached the older bones, to the point that they had splintered, but along the upper part, near the apex, the greasy fat of femurs glistened still, and ribs went on oozing, ever so slightly, as they dried.

  The king of the hares bowed for just a moment before the pyramid, and then he groped in his satchel for the bones from his dinner, setting them delicately up towards the top of the pile. At the very top he situated the owl feather in the eye socket of a skull. Then he knelt, and so he remained for some time, in silence, his forehead pressed against the rock, the grey tip of his beard getting tangled in the grass.

  The hares didn’t take long. They arrived and lined up in a half-circle, ears pricked, the slits in their noses probing the air: all the hares from the meadow. At that moment the sun shot up over the mountain, a diagonal ray dyeing their coats orange.

  When the king got back up, he found the leveret crouched before the pyramid. It quivered but kept very still, the fluttering of its heart at its neck as its eyes flitted around. The king took it by its ears and held it up to the others. The row of hares bowed their heads, in silence, and in three hops they had all vanished back into the meadow.

  And then the king twirled the leveret around in the air, dislocating its vertebrae. He popped open his penknife and pressed its tip into the leveret’s white fluff, searching for the vein. Blood poured out onto the rock and the tall blades of grass and the sprigs that sprawled over his path as the king of the hares went back towards the pine forest, walking slowly, carrying the baby hare by its back feet, face down. Its nose, suddenly run dry, dragged along the ground, its head drumming between the scrub and the verbena.

  By the time he’d finished eating, the sun had removed the dew from the grass, and the king of the hares was able to lie down on his back and shut his eyes and let the bright light of morning put him to sleep. The leveret’s hide was airing out next to the mouth of the cave, clean and taut, bisected twice by poplar twigs. Above, in the perfectly celestial sky, a buzzard circled, but very high above.

  Once, a couple of years earlier, the king of the hares had killed a buzzard. He’d only had to fire his shotgun once and the beast had come hurtling down, heavy, flapping. The king of the hares had nailed it up then in the fork of a pine tree, facing the meadow, its wings apart, its guts spilling out of a gash down its belly. He left it there as a lesson to the other buzzards, and the harriers and the caracaras, until all that was left of it was just some desiccated feathers stuck to a carcass. Then, when summer came, a storm ripped off one of its wings, and the skeleton split in two and was from then on at the mercy of the wind, always on the verge of collapse. By that time the other buzzards only ever flew over, never visiting the meadow.

  In the afternoon it clouded over again, and a dark storm overtook the peaks with its bilious blue belly. It thundered twice, there was a bolt of lightning, and the hares ran into their burrows and huddled in tight, piling on top of one another and waiting for it to clear. It rained and rained, and the king had to cover his shoulders with a nylon bag. The moisture puffed up the landscape and softened the pine branches, their bark getting porous and tender. Sitting in the mouth of the cave, the king of the hares nibbled on some grass. He had no way to make a fire or heat up water. In the fissure he used as a shelf he’d lined up his pack of candles, his plastic box of matches, his salt, his pills for tooth pain, a Bible in a plastic bag and a few tins of peaches. His shotgun rested up against the rock at the back. Even deeper, where the water didn’t usually get, the king had piled up the hides he used as a bed.

  It got dark and kept raining, a peaceful drizzle, but from time to time it picked up, became torrential. The king of the hares could hear it making its way in waves over the meadow, until the deluge breached the awning of branches and clattered against his nylon bag. Then, in the darkness, the softer rain returned.

  The water seeped down through the rock, and later in the night the ceiling of the cave started to release big drops of it. And so it rained on the container of matches and the little aluminium stove and the hides and the tinned peaches, and the king swore under his breath and tried to cover everything with old plastic bags from the supermarket.

  By dawn it was no longer raining. A skinny fox made its way into the grassy scrubland and stalked its paths. Cantering, its tail taut, it went from one end to the other, its nose gauging the ground, its ears erect. It paused a few times, retraced its steps, sniffing between the shrubs. The king watched it from his cave, shotgun in hand. The water slid off the fox’s back, but its chest and its feet were covered in mud. When it found one of their burrows, the hares hopped up and ran. The fox bounded after them, its tail waving now, tossing water everywhere. The king sat the shotgun on his shoulder and got the fox in his sights. The shot felled the fox, blew back its body onto the grass. Shaken, the hares stopped where they were, off in the distance, and stood staring as, slowly but surely, their chests all calmed.

  A little bit of wind picked up and parted the clouds as though layer by layer. At the mouth of the cave the last drops slid over the plastic. The king of the hares was drenched. His fingertips were no more than white wrinkles. As soon as the sun came out a little, the king undressed and hung his clothes on a rope between the trees. His bulky, smelly sweater, his socks, his undershirt, his trousers. He brought the pile of hides out from the cave and spread them out on the grass to dry. When he had finished, he sat down on a rock, held his breath and wrapped both his arms around himself and held on. He let his teeth chatter until they didn’t. His hair was a cold curtain over his face, and it untacked in grizzled locks. After a while, the wind got round to drying off his back.

  Early that evening the king of the hares dragged the fox by its tail to the edge of the meadow. He nailed it midway up the stump of a pine that a different storm had taken down with a bolt of lightning. For the next couple of days he went to look at it, watching its thorax swell up and its black tongue be covered in worms.

  Over the summer, the lowlands under the peak grew thick with thistle, stiff, with leaves in crucifixes on either side of the stem. Wasps and bumblebees buzzed over them, and when the wind swayed them, their leaves grazed together and made a noise like paper being torn. On hot nights everything slowed, ecstatic. There was no bats’ flapping, no owls’ singing, and the hares never emerged from their warren. The king slept atop a bed of watercress, at the edge of the dry slope in a swamped hollow that smelled foetid but stayed cool. Here and there a sound from the town made it into the meadow: mostly barking dogs, but gusts of music, too, when there were weddings, and, on New Year’s Eve, the thunderflashes, then the dazzle of the fireworks.

  Early in the morning the heat would wane, the crickets chirp. The pines would creak, relieved, stretching as the wood cracked up and down its veins, all along the length of them. Then the sun would rise, and the cicadas would buzz like saws. Things stilled as the air seemed to inflate. By noon the hares were thirsty, and the king would take his clothes off and lie down in the middle of the meadow. He’d close his eyes and let the sunshine penetrate his eyelids. White dots would form and squirm over his pupils and make S’s in that rosy dark.

  The king of the hares would breathe deeply, and the sun would send a golden ray to rest upon his forehead, undulating gently in his brain, licking the insides of his skull. The sunlight filled the cavity of his mouth, came down along his neck, took his shoulders, his arms, his hands. It came around his every vertebra, every bone, and made them glow and raised them. The king would stay this way, suspended, feeling the wisps of straw come unstuck from his back. The light parted him from the meadow, from the stems, from the crushed leaves. Then the king of the hares would rise, fingertips barely grazing the grass. Moisture would slide over his body, rivulets rushing down his temples, down his legs, down his back. Sweat would unspool onto the ground, and
then the hares would slowly venture closer, crouching in among the flowers, sticking their heads out to lap up what they could.

  Around the beginning of autumn the king ran out of matches. For a few days he kept the fire ongoing, tending to its embers. As soon as there was a moonless night with a clear sky, the king slung his satchel over his shoulder, tied his bootlaces tight and went down through the pine forest to the crossing, following a path that only he knew.

  It took him nearly four hours to get to the old road. From there he kept going down, down and down, till he could glimpse the town at the bottom of the valley, obscure and dormant, nestled in the lap of the land. In the black of the night, the lanterns of the houses formed a network of pale dots that reproduced the curves of the river, climbed the hillsides and seemed to alight atop the mountains. The king watched for a while and waited for the last lights to go out. Then he continued on the sheep’s path that zigzagged down the hill.

  He took his shoes off when he came to the ford and hid his boots in the roots of a eucalyptus that a rise in the river had long since torn up. All around him the sound of the river on the rocks scattered in among the trees, and the sparse glimmers of the stars brought out only little gleams upon the water. The cold current encircled his ankles as he crossed. As he passed them, Turello’s goats swirled together in their pen. The king was barefoot, and he took careful steps. In the darkness he could hear a goat releasing its urine at length.

  The streets of the town were empty. There was only Camilito Jara’s truck, resting peacefully under a carob tree, ready to start up again first thing and make deliveries. On the main street a drunk was lurching along on his bicycle. With every rotation of the pedal, the chain stay pulsed with a pop, and as the drunk zigzagged on into the distance, he murmured something, but his voice was so low it seemed directed inward. He never saw the king in his crouching place behind the tree.

  Still sitting out in front of Betone’s bar were two old guys leaning back in their chairs, their gazes adrift among the cypresses on the plaza. So as not to walk right by them, the king of the hares went around the block, treading in the shadows, flattening himself against the buildings. Finally, he ran across the street and entered the alley that skirted around the Electric Co-op. Old Smutt’s dog recognized his gait and put his head out to catch mid-air the haunch of hare the king tossed him like always.

  Beyond the vines that covered the fence, the king could see all the way inside of Wesner’s house, the light on in the bedroom, the eldest daughter in her nightgown, spreading sheets over her bed. A hen clucked on a stick. The bases of the bottles in Calzolari’s widow’s rammed earth wall were gleaming. The king continued down the alley until he could smell the pungent urine of the bats from the abandoned pigeon loft. In just one leap he was over the earth wall and on the other side. Two streaks of his torch sufficed to remind him of this terrain. Nothing had changed in Baruk’s yard. The king made his way between the boxes of sodas and old batteries and the twisted scraps of iron that had once belonged to a bicycle. All he had to do to get up through the louvre window was climb on top of one of the chairs from the patio and grab onto the window frame. He stood for a while on the rim of the seatless toilet until he could be certain that all inside was still and silent.

  The light from the street seeped in through the windowpanes and cast the pantry into murky shadow. The only sound inside the shop was the refrigerator motor, a low purr. The king didn’t even need to turn on his torch: he loaded up on matches, flour, salt, took a tin of chopped tomatoes, two bags of lentils. His secret so that Baruk wouldn’t notice what was missing was to steal the minimum: if there were seven matchboxes, to only take one. Of the fifteen tins of peaches, to grab the two from the very back. From the box of aspirin, to remove a single tablet. A car passed by on the road and the king of the hares crouched down behind the counter, but the headlights didn’t make it to the shelves, and soon the car was down the hill and gone. Before he left, the king took a fistful of sweets from a jar, three lollipops, one big bar of chocolate. Outside he was greeted by the chirp chirp of the crickets and the air drifting cool over the weeds on the patio. The king retraced his steps with his satchel heavy now, the town’s dry leaves crunching under his bare feet.

  As he passed by Biglia’s house, he stopped to snap off a pair of roses that had climbed up over the little earth wall and were shining under the streetlight. The king of the hares was already picturing how nice they’d look the next day, posed among the bones, at the very top of the pyramid, when suddenly he heard a voice from behind him.

  Who are you? What do you think you’re doing? A torchlight fell on him.

  The king raised his arm to cover his face. The light streaked across his beard.

  What have you got there in that bag?

  The king hesitated for a second. Then he scurried off.

  Stop! Stay right where you are or I shoot! the king could hear the other man shouting.

  The lights in some of the houses came on. All the dogs in the town started barking. The king ceased to be aware of where his feet were landing, and he injured himself on the kerb, on a piece of iron or tin. It was a mighty gash, deep. With every step he could feel the throbbing wound, and he kept slipping on his own blood. When he couldn’t go on any longer, he hopped over an earth wall and hid among some plants.

  The voices, meanwhile, were getting louder in the street.

  Down here, this way, they were saying. A guy with a thick beard, down to here.

  The king heard them racing up, heard their footsteps, heard people calling to one another.

  It’s OK, it’s OK, he whispered to himself.

  Please don’t let them find me, he murmured with his eyes shut.

  Over there, head for the plaza, the voices yelled, and then they seemed to fade away.

  The king had landed at the Tánteras. The windows of the house were all shut, and no lights shone from inside, so they hadn’t heard him entering their yard. Squatting, the king advanced between the lettuce beds and the tomato plants, bleeding. He tripped on something, fell onto the ground, heard a boom of bins. Old Tántera himself raised the blinds.

  What’s going on, Bautista? What’s that noise? the king heard Doña Amanda ask.

  Hush, said Tántera. Go get in the bathroom.

  Hidden in the arrowroot, the king could see the glint of a shotgun pointing out the window.

  I’ll get you, said Tántara, and the shot that followed sounded all across the town and echoed up and down the mountain slopes.

  Pigeons took off as though in a mass of applause, followed by the panicked clucking of a thousand hens. The few dogs that had stopped barking started up again now. Doña Amanda shouted from inside the bathroom. The king did what he could to run, dragging with him some bundles of wire.

  That way! He went that way! the people in the plaza yelled.

  Now in the town not a single light was still exting-

  uished.

  The king of the hares jumped over fences, over rammed earth walls. Something scratched his legs, something jammed into his hand. He got up onto the shed of Broilo’s funeral parlour. Leaving behind a trail of blood, he made his way across it. A dog was barking up a storm below, in outrage. The king of the hares climbed up onto the roof of Visnovsky’s carpenter’s shop, his steps echoing all along its tin sheets. The back part of the storeroom gave onto the river. The king lowered himself down by the drainpipe and hid his satchel in the grass. Before leaping in, he tried to find the current’s centre in the reflections on the water’s surface. His body sank into the cold water, and he pulled his knees up, praying that there weren’t any rocks in this part. When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see a thing. He was surrounded by black bubbles, and it felt like they were caressing his face. The murmur of the riverbed and the sand pressed against his ears. In a whirlpool, all the air escaped his chest. The king no longer knew which way was up or down. He stretched out his arms, his legs gave him up to the rapids, and the water pushed his body up again. The king of the hares emerged into the dark night and gasped. The lights of the town, smaller and smaller, behind him now. And gradually the river calmed, and the king of the hares let it sweep him along.