Alessandro Baricco - Without Blood

I want to tell you something. I will shoot one time more, and that will be the last.

Then Roca began to shout again.

“I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.”

“You had nothing to do with it?”

“I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HOSPITAL.”

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING?”

“I DID WHAT THEY TOLD ME TO DO.”

“YOU…”

“I WASN’T THERE WHEN—”

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING—”

“I SWEAR IT, I—”

“THAT WAS YOUR HOSPITAL, YOU BASTARD…”

“MY HOSPITAL?”

“THAT WAS YOUR HOSPITAL, YOU WERE THE DOCTOR WHO WAS TAKING CARE OF THEM, YOU KILLED THEM, YOU BROKE THEM, THEY WERE SENT TO YOU AND YOU BROKE THEM…”

“I NEVER—”

“SHUT UP!”

“I SWEAR TO YOU, SALINAS—”

“SHUT UP!”

“I NEVER—”

“SHUT UP!”

Salinas placed the gun against one of Roca’s knees. Then he fired. The knee exploded like a piece of fruit. Roca fell back and curled on the ground, shrieking with pain. Salinas was standing over him, he aimed the gun at him and went on shouting.

“I’LL KILL YOU, UNDERSTAND? I’LL KILL YOU, I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.”

El Gurre took a step forward. The boy, at the door, stared in silence. Salinas was shouting, his cream-colored suit was spattered with blood, he was shouting in a strange, harsh voice, as if he were crying. Or as if he were no longer capable of breathing. He was shouting that he would murder him. Then they all heard an impossible voice say something softly.

“Go away.”

They turned and saw a child, standing on the other side of the room. He was holding a rifle and had it pointed at them. He said again, softly:

“Go away.”

Nina heard the hoarse voice of her father, who was groaning in pain, and then the voice of her brother. She thought that when she came out of there she would go to her brother and would tell him that he had a lovely voice, because it truly seemed lovely to her, so clean and infinitely childlike, the voice she had heard murmur quietly:

“Go away.”

“WHO THE HELL…”

“It’s the son, Salinas.”

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN?”

“It’s Roca’s son,” El Gurre said.

Salinas cursed, he began shouting that there wasn’t supposed to be anyone there, THERE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE ANYONE HERE, WHAT’S THIS NONSENSE, YOU SAID THERE WASN’T ANYONE, he was shouting and didn’t know where to point the gun, he looked at El Gurre, and then at Tito, and finally he looked at the child with the rifle and shouted at him that he was a stupid fuck, and that he would never get out of there alive if he didn’t put that damn gun down immediately.

The boy remained silent and he kept the gun raised.

Then Salinas stopped shouting. His voice came out calm and fierce. He said to the boy that now he knew what sort of a man his father was, now he knew that he was an assassin, that he had murdered dozens of people, sometimes he poisoned them little by little, with his medicine, but others he killed by cutting open their chests and then leaving them to die. He said to the child that with his own eyes he had seen boys come from that hospital with their brains blown out. They could hardly walk, they couldn’t speak—they were like idiots. He said that his father was called the Hyena, and that it was his friends who called him the Hyena, and they laughed when they said it. Roca was gasping on the floor. He began to murmur quietly, “Help,” as if from far away—help, help, help—a litany. He felt death approaching.

Salinas didn’t even look at him. He went on talking to the child.

The child was listening, not moving. At the end Salinas said to him that things were like that, and that it was too late to do anything, even with a gun in your hand. He looked him in the eyes, with an infinite weariness, and asked if he understood who that man was, if he truly understood. With one hand he indicated Roca. He wanted to know if the boy understood who he was.

The boy put together everything he knew, and what he understood of life. He answered:

“He’s my father.”

Then he fired. A single shot. Into emptiness.

El Gurre responded instinctively. The machine-gun burst lifted the child up off the floor and hurled him at the wall, in a mess of lead, bone, and blood. Like a bird shot in mid-flight, Tito thought.

Salinas threw himself to the floor. He ended up beside Roca.

For a moment the two men looked at each other. From Roca’s throat came a dull, horrible howl. Salinas pulled away, sliding along the floor. He rolled onto his back to get Roca’s eyes off him. He began to tremble all over. There was a heavy silence.

Only that horrible howl. Salinas raised himself up on his elbows and looked at the far end of the room. The child’s body was leaning against the wall, tattered by the machine-gun volley, ripped open with wounds. His gun had flown into a corner.

Salinas saw that the child’s head was upside down, and in his open mouth he saw the little white teeth, a neat white row. Then Salinas let go, falling onto his back. His eyes stared at the ceiling, with its line of beams. Dark wood. Old. He was trembling all over. He couldn’t keep his hands still, his legs, anything.

Tito took two steps toward him.

El Gurre restrained him with a nod.

Roca gave a grim cry, a death cry.

Salinas said softly: “Make him stop.”

His teeth were chattering madly, and as he spoke he was trying to stop them.

El Gurre searched his eyes to understand what he wanted.

Salinas’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling. A line of dark wood beams. Old.

“Make him stop,” he repeated.

El Gurre took a step forward.

Roca howled, lying in his own blood, his mouth hideously wide.

El Gurre stuck the barrel of the gun in his throat.

Roca kept on howling, against the warm metal of the barrel.

El Gurre fired. A short burst. Dry. The last of his war.

“Make him stop,” Salinas said again.

Nina heard a silence that frightened her. Then she joined her hands and stuck them between her legs. She curled up even tighter, bringing her knees toward her head. She thought that now it would all be over. Her father would come to get her and they would go and have supper. She thought that they would not speak again of that night, and that soon they would forget about it: she thought this because she was a child and couldn’t know.

“The girl,” said El Gurre.

He held Salinas by the arm, to make him stand up. He said to him softly:

“The girl.”

Salinas’s gaze was blank.

“What girl?”

“Roca’s daughter. If the boy was here she probably is, too.”

Salinas muttered something. Then he shoved El Gurre away.

He pulled himself up, holding on to the table. His shoes were soaked in Roca’s blood.

El Gurre nodded at Tito, then directed him toward the kitchen. When Tito passed the boy on the floor he bent down for an instant and closed his eyes. Not like a father. Like someone who turns off the light as he is leaving a room.

Tito thought of his own father’s eyes. One day some men had knocked on the door of his house. Tito had never seen them before. But they said they had a message for him. Then they handed him a canvas sack. He opened it and inside were the eyes of his father. Take care which side you stand on, kid, they said.