The Tuner of Silences (13 page)

One particular Sunday, things can't have gone according to plan. Silvestre returned from his love tryst in a rage. He carried his fury on the tip of his foot and his curses on the tip of his tongue. Head bowed, he kept saying:

—
It's never happened to me before, never, never! Really never.

He strode round the room, kicking the few bits of furniture. His impotent, repressed anger caused his voice to tremble:

—
It's a curse put on me by that bitch!

We almost took him literally: the bitch, by association, must be Jezebel. But no. The bitch was his late wife. My mother. My ex-mother. The disruption to Vitalício's manly functions had been caused by Dona Dordalma's spell.

Having lowered himself into his chair on the veranda, my father sought my services as a tuner of silences. It was the end of the afternoon, and shadows darted around taking over the world. Silvestre was like one of these shadows: fleetingly still. But it wasn't long before he jumped up suddenly and ordered:

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Come with me to the corral!

—
What are we going to do?

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I'm going to do
— he corrected. —
I'm going to apologize to Jezebel. So the poor girl isn't sad, thinking it was her fault.

I remained at the entrance to the corral, saw my father hug the jenny's neck, and then the surrounding darkness enveloped me. An inner rage prevented me from watching. I was aflame with jealousy for Jezebel. On our way back, a flash lit up the savannah and a huge crash of thunder deafened us. The November rains were beginning. It wouldn't be long before Zachary emerged to insult the gods.

That same night, father ordered us to go and guard the corral. What about Zachary? We asked. Why not send for the person whose job it was to undertake this duty?

—
That fellow's useless when there's thunder. You two go, and take the torch.

Jezebel was agitated, whinnying and kicking. And it wasn't because of Zachary's foul-mouthing, for he was quiet and keeping to himself inside his hut. It must be for some other reason and it was our mission to find out why she was so agitated. Ntunzi and I walked out under the intense thunder. The jenny looked at me with an almost human appeal, her ears pointing down in fear. There was an intermittent gleam in her velvet eyes, like flashes of lightning from within her soul.

Ntunzi sat down sleepily while I tried to soothe the animal. She began to calm down, her flank nestling up to my body, seeking comfort and support. I heard my brother's malicious comment:

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She's getting all come-hither, Mwanito.

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Come off it, Ntunzi.

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Go on, mount the broad.

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I didn't hear you.

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You heard me only too well. Go on, undo your fly, the broad fancies you.

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Come on, brother, Jezebel's scared, that's all.

—
You're the one that's scared. Go on, Mwanito, take your trousers off, nobody would think you're the son of Silvestre Vitalício.

Ntunzi came over and pushed me, forcing me to lean over the jenny's back, while I begged him:

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Stop it, stop it.

Suddenly, in amongst the trees, I glimpsed a moving shadow, creeping along, cat-like. Terrified, I pointed to it:

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A lioness! It's a lioness!

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Let's get out of here, quick, give me your torch . . .

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And Jezebel? Are we going to leave her here?

—
To hell with the bloody donkey.

Then suddenly, we heard a shot. It seemed more like a flash of lightning, but a second shot left us in no doubt. Our soldier was right: faced with a shot, whether it hits or misses, we all die. Occasionally, some lucky ones return amid the dust raised by fright. That's what happened to us. In the confusion, Ntunzi tripped over me and both of us, covered in mud and flat on the ground, peered through the grass. Zachary had hit the prowling lioness.

The feline creature managed to stagger drunkenly a few steps, as if death were a fit of giddiness that caused you to end up on the ground. Then, it collapsed, with a fragility that didn't match its regal stature. The moment the lioness fell to the ground, it stopped raining. Zachary made sure it was really dead, and then fell to his knees and addressed the heavens, praying the wound caused in him by his shot might be healed.

My father appeared, all in a hurry, and he didn't stop with us. He walked along the fence looking for Jezebel, and when he found her, he stopped to comfort her.

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Poor thing, she's trembling all over. Tonight, she's going to sleep in the house.

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In the house?
—Ntunzi asked, astonished.

—
She'll sleep there tonight and as many nights as are necessary.

She only slept there that night. That was enough for Ntunzi to vent all his jealous feelings when he addressed me:

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He never let you, his own son, in there, but the donkey's allowed to sleep inside . . .

After the accident, the corral was moved nearer. The moment night fell, bonfires were lit all around it to protect the jenny from the covetousness of any predators.

Weeks passed until one day Silvestre decided to call another meeting. Hurriedly, we gathered in silence in the square with the crucifix. Uncle Aproximado, who happened to have spent the night with us, also lined up next to me. With a stern frown, the old man looked each one of us in the face, peering unhurriedly into our eyes. Finally, he growled:

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Jezebel's pregnant.

I just wanted to laugh. The only female among us had fulfilled her natural function. But my old man's icy look killed off any desire in me to make light of it. A sacred rule had been violated: a seed of humanity had come through victorious and threatened to bear fruit in one of Jezoosalem's creatures.

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This is how all the whorishness of the world will begin again.

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But with respect, Brother-in-law
— said Aproximado, —
couldn't it be that you are the father?

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I take precautions, you know that very well.

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Who knows, maybe once, by accident, in the height of passion . . .

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I've already told you it wasn't me
—bellowed my old man.

His anger was upsetting him so much that his mouth wasn't big enough for all his saliva and his spittle was like a shower of meteorites:

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There's only one truth: she's pregnant. And the bastard who did it is here, among us.

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I swear, Silvestre, I've never even looked at Jezebel
—the soldier, Zachary, declared forcefully.

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Who knows whether it's not just some swelling she's got from an illness?
—Aproximado queried, timidly.

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It's an illness caused by some son-of-a-bitch who's got three dangly bits between his legs
—my old man snarled.

I kept my eyes to the ground, incapable of facing my father's passion for the jenny. His repeated threats followed us as we went back to our rooms:

—
Whoever it was, I'll twist his nuts off!

A month later, Zachary raised the alarm: since the early hours, Jezebel had been bleeding and twisting about, whimpering and kicking. At first light, she gave a last shudder. She seemed to have died. But she had just squeezed out the foetus. Zachary held the new claimant to life, and lifted it up in his arms, covered in blood and mucus. The soldier proclaimed in a restrained tone:

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This is a son of Jezoosalem!

The moment we got the news, we all met at the corral, crowding round the still breathless jenny. We wanted to see the newborn creature, concealed among its mother's thick fur. We never got as far as entering the corral: our father's tempestuous arrival put an end to our eager expectation. Silvestre ordered us to keep away, he wanted to be the first to face the intruder. Zachary presented himself with military punctiliousness at the gate to the corral:

—T
ake a look at the baby, Silvestre, and you'll see who the father is straight away.

Silvestre penetrated the gloom and vanished for a while. When he re-emerged, he looked perturbed, his quick step betraying his turbulent mind. Barely had our father disappeared than we burst in on the jenny's resting place and knelt down by her side. The moment our eyes got used to the darkness, we saw the furry creature lying next to Jezebel.

The black and white stripes, though not clearly defined, gave the game away: the father was a zebra. Some fierce stallion had paid our place a visit and courted his distant relative. Ntunzi took hold of the newborn animal and caressed it as if it were human. He gave it affectionate names and walked up and down, cradling it like a mother. I never thought my brother capable of such tenderness: the little
creature settled in his arms and Ntunzi smiled as he murmured:

—
Well, let me tell you something my little baby: your dad has left my old man with a broken heart.

Nor did Ntunzi realize how right he was. For not long afterwards, Silvestre returned to the corral, seized the baby from the arms that were holding him and issued his order, to be carried out immediately and decisively:

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I want you to bring me that old zebra, balls and all, do you hear, Zaca?

That night, my father went to the corral and took the baby donkey-zebra in his hands. Jezebel followed his movements with tears in her eyes, while Silvestre kept repeating, as if intoning some chant:

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Oh, Jezi, why did you do this to me? Why?

He seemed to be caressing the newborn babe. But in fact what his hands were doing was smothering the fragile creature, the tiny zebra mulatto. He took the now lifeless little animal in his arms and set off far from the corral. He buried it himself, down by the river. I watched him carry out this act, incapable of intervening, incapable of understanding. That awful deed would forever be a sticking point in any thoughts I might have about our father's generosity. Ntunzi never came to know what had happened on that night. He always believed that the babe had died of natural causes. Nature in its ferocity had reclaimed the stripes on an ass not born in the wild.