Free Lovers on All Saints' Day by Juan Gabriel Vásquez Page B

them for some reason.”
    The line of cars was stuck. There was no way to move a single one of the four-by-fours, not even a meter, without Georges moving his first. And his was locked and the hunter who wasn’t there had the keys.
    Jean’s hands flew to his head. He looked at the beaters. He was about to order them to go and look for his father and bring him there as quickly as possible, when Respin and Cambronne emerged beside the wire fence.
    “Monsieur Moré,” said Respin, “can you come with us?”
    “You blew the horn? Which one of you was it?”
    There was no answer.
    “Really, my friends, men with your years of experience . . .”
    But the beaters didn’t say anything.
    Jean felt for a cigar, felt for his lighter. Georges, although from a distance, managed to see that his thumb was clumsy as it sparked the lighter, and that the tall flame trembled in the hand that trembled. Jean’s hand had trembled. Georges gathered up the sympathy he was unable to feel at that moment and offered:
    “Go with them. I’ll come with you, I’m right behind you.”
    Jean’s eyes shone. His feet had turned to stone and did not want to move.
    “Please, Monsieur Moré,” said Cambronne, “come with us.”
    Jean and Georges followed them in the direction of the forest, trying to keep up. Georges felt in his chest and thighs the effort that pace was costing him. From behind he could see the two beaters, the line of their shoulders that rose and fell in a terrible cadence, the color rising in their cheeks. Still from behind he saw them stop and look at each other (not with a look of someone questioning or conversing, but with a vacant expression that only wants to avoid the present urgency), and then look at Jean, who arrived alongside them. In the center of that incomplete picture, framed by three pairs of rubber boots—one gray, another tobacco-brown and filthy, the third pair green and tied up with fine laces over long woolen socks—was Stalky, shot several times. A wide gash in his side stained his coat; some fur stuck to the viscous flesh. His still-palpitating guts steamed in the cold air, and the blood was an intense red against the green of the grass. Two steps from the animal, fallen in the undergrowth, Xavier’s lifeless body came into view.
    Georges saw Jean lose his self-control. He saw him throw himself on his father’s body and open his shirt without really knowing what he was doing, as if the impulse to do something, anything, was moving his hands with memories of imagery picked up from films. The chest was pale, and the hairs that outlined a snowy forest formed, as they reached the neck, a tangle of stiff, dry clots. Jean spat on his hands and tried to clean his father’s shoulders off with the saliva on his palms. Then he began to pummel the body. “Get up, Papa,” he said. “The hunt’s not over, it’s just that the novice blew the horn too early.” When Georges put a hand under his arm to lift, Jean had a tuft of wool between his fingers. Just like when he was a child, thought Georges, just like when the three of them went fishing and Georges would be shocked at how much patience Xavier had with that spoiled little boy who was always wanting piggyback rides and digging things out of his father’s belly button with his baby finger.
    —
    “E VERYONE LEFT SO SOON, ” said Catherine quietly. “I never thought I’d feel so lonely in my own house.”
    Georges looked around: indeed, the hunters had slipped away without a word, little by little, like the tide going out. At our age, he thought, nobody likes to think of someone else’s death. He was wearing his leather shoes, and the feeling on his feet was agreeable, fresh and firmer, because in old age his ankles had started to ache after wearing rubber boots. In the reading chair that no one in this house used for reading, Charlotte was sitting in an oblivious position, as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. She crossed her legs, and her