Mouthful of Birds(40)

Arnol looks at Nabel like he wants to kill her, and finally he lets loose with an exaggerated peal of laughter. I look at Pol again, and he’s not laughing anymore. Arnol shrugs his shoulders resignedly, seeking a complicit look from Pol. Then he mimes taking aim with a shotgun and shoots. Nabel imitates him. They do it one more time aiming at each other, now a little calmer, until they stop laughing.

“Oh . . . goodness . . .” says Arnol, and he passes the dish around to offer more meat. “Finally, people we can share this whole thing with . . . Anyone want more?”

“So, where is he? We want to see him,” Pol finally says.

“You’ll see him soon,” says Arnol.

“He sleeps a lot,” says Nabel.

“All day long.”

“So we’ll just look at him while he’s asleep!” says Pol.

“Oh, no, no,” says Arnol. “First, the dessert Ana baked, then a good coffee, and my Nabel here has prepared some games. Do you like strategy games, Pol?”

“But we’d love to see him asleep.”

“No,” says Arnol. “I mean, it doesn’t make sense to see him like that. You can do that any day.”

Pol looks at me for a second, then says:

“All right, dessert then.”

I help Nabel carry the dishes to the kitchen. I take out the pie that Arnol put in the fridge, I carry it to the table and prepare to serve it. Meanwhile, Nabel is busy in the kitchen with the coffee.

“Where’s the bathroom?” asks Pol.

“Oh, the bathroom . . .” says Arnol as he looks toward the kitchen, maybe looking for Nabel. “It’s just that it’s not working so well, and . . .”

Pol makes a gesture to indicate it doesn’t matter.

“Where is it?”

Maybe without meaning to, Arnol looks toward the hallway. Then Pol gets up and starts to walk and Arnol gets up, too.

“I’ll go with you.”

“That’s okay, it’s not necessary,” says Pol, already in the hallway.

Arnol follows him a few steps.

“To your right,” he says. “The bathroom is the one on the right.”

My eyes follow Pol until he finally enters the bathroom. Arnol stands a few seconds with his back to me, looking toward the hallway.

“Arnol,” I say, and it’s the first time I’ve called him by his name. “Pie?”

“Sure,” he says. He looks at me and then turns back to the hallway.

“Ready,” I say, and I push the first plate toward his chair. “Don’t worry, he’ll be a while.”

I smile at him, but he doesn’t respond. He comes back to the table and sits in his chair with his back to the hall. He seems uncomfortable, but in the end he picks up his fork and cuts off an enormous portion of pie that he puts in his mouth. I look at him, a little surprised, and go on serving. From the kitchen, Nabel asks how we like our coffee. I’m about to answer when I see Pol come silently out of the bathroom and cross the hall into another room. Arnol looks at me, waiting for an answer. I tell Nabel that we love coffee, we like it any which way. The light in the other room goes on and I hear a muffled sound, like something heavy falling on a carpet. Arnol is going to turn toward the hallway, so I say his name:

“Arnol.” He looks at me, but starts to stand up.

I hear another sound, then Pol screams and something falls to the floor—a chair, maybe—then a heavy piece of furniture is moved, things break. Arnol runs toward the hallway and takes down the rifle that’s hanging on the wall. I get up to run after him; Pol comes backing out of the room, keeping his eyes on what’s inside. Arnol goes right for him but Pol reacts, hits the rifle out of his hands, then pushes him aside and runs to me.

I can’t figure out what’s happening, but I let him take me by the arm and we run out. I hear the door slowly closing behind us as we run, and then a crash as it’s slammed back open. Nabel is screaming. Pol gets into the pickup and starts it, and I get in on the passenger side. We back out of the driveway, and for a few seconds the headlights shine onto Arnol as he runs toward us.

Once we’re on the road we drive awhile in silence, trying to calm down. Pol’s shirt is torn—he almost lost the whole right sleeve—and he has some deep scratches on his arm that are oozing blood. Soon we approach our house at top speed, and at top speed we pass it and leave it behind. I touch his arm, about to stop him, but he’s breathing hard, with his tense hands clutching the steering wheel. He scans the black expanse to either side, and behind us in the rearview mirror. We should slow down. We could die if an animal crossed in front of us. Then I think that one of them could also cross—and it could be ours. But Pol speeds up even more, as if, in the terror his frenzied eyes belie, he were counting on precisely that.





A GREAT EFFORT


He and his father were a yellow animal, a single animal looking at itself in the mirror. It was a recurring dream. He woke up anxious, and every time he had it, it was harder to fall back asleep. During the day he felt stiffer than usual, more hunched over. His wife even asked him once if he was all right, though when he tried to explain, she seemed not to want to know too much. Then someone gave him Mrs. Linn’s name. He could go to her or some other woman; there was one in every neighborhood. The important thing, his friend told him while writing the phone number on a piece of paper, was not to let it go on.