Chapters (39)
Of course this is not really Estella’s story because she has no future, and I have only pieced this much together as best as I can, but in some strange way my story starts where hers ends. Our lives have parallels and opposites. Both are governed by roots and destinations, by running away, by the possibility and impossibility of escape, and so I think of Estella in this moment as I have thought of her so many times, as I have imagined every hard-fought step of her journey – I think of her trapped, unable to move as her life melted away in the awful heat of that desert. The summer of 1983. Estella’s flight from south to north ended through lack of water. In 1983, over in my world, a wind was rising across the Orkneys, Scotland, the wettest place imaginable. An island so drowning in water it seems that the earth must be tipped unfairly on its axis. In the summer of 1983 my journey from north to south was only just beginning.
The campesino lies on the scrub, bleeding from his mouth and cheek. Across the track Estella lies dying. Three of her ribs are broken, she has difficulty breathing and her vision has begun to fade. By the time the campesino makes it to her side, she has felt for the letter on the ground and is agitatedly smoothing it against her dress as she calls out the name of her son. For a moment the campesino cannot register what she’s saying. He has forgotten about the existence of the child, but when he screws up his eyes he can replay the last fifteen minutes like a cheap video from the market. El Turrón grabbing her by the hair; Estella calmly placing the child on the ground. The boy’s reproachful cry. Benjamín looks into the glare of the sun, but he can see nothing and when Estella begs him to deliver the child to the address at the top of the letter, he can promise nothing – his broken jaw hangs uselessly. Instead he reaches over and takes her hand and when she stops breathing he lays it over her heart, then he stands up stiffly and looks around. Despite the searing pain in his jaw he feels a knot of something far worse in his stomach. There is no child on the edge of the road – there is no child to be heard a few yards off, howling with indignation, the spike of some cactus sticking out of his finger – there is no child anywhere to be seen. The boy has gone.