Alessandro Baricco - Without Blood

“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?”

“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 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 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, 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 had gone back to his nightmare, what could I do? I tried to think how I could take him away, I looked around for help, I wanted to take him away from there, I was sure of it, and yet I couldn’t move, I couldn’t manage to move, I don’t know how much time passed, what I remember is that at some point I turned and a few feet away I saw El Blanco, he was standing beside a bed, with the machine gun on his shoulder, and what he was doing was crushing a pillow over the face of a boy, the one lying on the bed El Blanco was crying and crushing the pillow, in the silence of the chapel only his sobs could be heard, the boy wasn’t moving, he didn’t make a sound, he was going silently, but El Blanco was sobbing, like a child, then he took away the pillow and with his fingers closed the boy’s eyes, and then he looked at me, I was looking at him and he looked at me, I wanted to say What are you doing?, but nothing came out of me, and at that moment someone appeared and said that the army was coming, that we had to get out of there, I felt lost, I didn’t want to be found there, I heard the others running along the corridors. I took the pillow from under my brother’s head, gently, I looked for a while at those frightened eyes, I placed the pillow on his face, and I began to press it, bending over my brother, I pressed my hands down on the pillow, and I felt the bones of my brother’s face, there under my hands. One cannot ask a man to do such a thing, they couldn’t ask it of me, I tried to resist but at a certain point I stopped, I pulled the pillow away, my brother was still breathing, but it was like something digging up air from the depths of hell, it was terrible, the eyes unmoving, and that rattle. He looked at me and I realized that I was screaming, I heard my voice screaming, but as if from a distance, like a dim and fading lament, I couldn’t help it, I was still screaming when I noticed El Blanco, he was beside me, he didn’t say anything but he was offering me a gun, while I was crying, and they were all fleeing, we two were inside, he offered me the gun, I took it, and placed the barrel against my brother’s forehead and, still screaming, I fired.

Look at me, Roca. I said look at me. In the whole war I fired twice, the first time it was night, and at no one, the second time at close range, and it was my brother.