The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,206
I recognized her.”
“Did she say anything?”
“No, but she smiled at me. Engrasi, the sight of those teeth was burned forever into my memory. Little baby teeth, like rat’s teeth.”
The funeral director telephoned at ten o’clock to tell her everyone had left. She waited until half past, using the time to fix herself a thermos of coffee. She wasn’t intending to sleep. Salazar family tradition dictated that the dead mustn’t be left alone on their first night. The custom was ancient, its origins lost in the mists of time. Engrasi considered herself a modern woman, but her mind was large enough to encompass traditions, including the conviction that the soul does not immediately depart from the mortal remains. She viewed dying as a process. At first, the vital force ebbs away and the guiding spirit begins to disengage, proof that death is approaching. After that come hours of bewilderment, difficult and gloom ridden, until the soul at last sheds its receptacle like a butterfly leaving its cocoon.
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. It’s telling that in all religious traditions there exists a prayer or ritual appealing for protection during the process. One isn’t born in an instant, nor does one die in an instant. Arrival and departure are both processes that must be respected. Like the multitudes of women who preceded her, Engrasi would watch over her beloved dead.
“You just have to do what you have to,” she told herself, gathering courage before she left the house.
Juan dead was hardly Juan at all. Dressed in a suit she’d never seen him wear, he looked pensive and terribly serious, not like himself at all. Only in his lips did she catch a hint of that charming, sincere, and childlike smile she’d always loved.
She heard a whishing sound behind her. Like a gathering wind.
Rosario.
Engrasi turned very slowly and there she was. Dressed in deep mourning from head to foot, Rosario was the embodiment of elegance. She’d stopped just inside the swinging doors that were still slightly stirring. Beyond the moving doors, Engrasi caught sight of the dark silhouettes of Rosario’s escorts.
Rosario’s smile, practically a leer, was inappropriate considering they were in a funeral home and her dead husband was lying there in his coffin.
“All right, then,” Rosario said. “Where is she?”
Engrasi took a deep breath of air heavy with the smell of funeral home flowers. “Where’s who?”
Rosario refused to be provoked. “You know who.”
Engrasi forced herself to rise to the occasion. She smiled. “Did you seriously expect to find Amaia here?”
“I know she’s here. That little girl can’t keep from coming to say goodbye to her aitatxo.”
Engrasi remained quiet, trying to evaluate and understand the weight and importance of each move, each act, and each word. “She’s not here, Rosario, and she’s not coming back. And I intend to outlive you to make sure that when she does at last return to this valley for a burial, it’ll be for yours.”
A hateful grimace twisted Rosario’s mouth. Engrasi could have sworn that Rosario gulped and panted like an animal before snarling, “Don’t give me ideas, Engrasi. It wouldn’t be the first time we gutted her guard dog.”
Engrasi felt her knees weaken. She clutched the edge of her brother’s coffin.
“You whore!” she lashed back, trembling with fury. “I’m no dog. If you come after me or the girl, I’ll tear your head off. I make that vow on the sacred memory of my brother, who was kind and good-hearted enough for the both of us. I’m not Juan. I’ve got all the macho brutality he lacked, along with enough psychological resilience to live with a clear conscience after murdering you. I will kill you, Rosario, and I won’t lose a wink of sleep over it.”
She was trembling like a leaf exposed to a blast of wind, and she kept herself upright only by holding on to her brother’s coffin, but her words burst forth with more than enough force and conviction to convey her threat.
Rosario’s sneer vanished. She jerked her hands and head ever so slightly in some kind of nervous tic. She turned and pushed the swinging doors. The shadows awaiting in the gloom closed around her.
A single savage scream echoed in the exterior hall. After that, nothing. A slight draft, a breath of wind; then the exterior door slammed shut, and only emptiness remained.
Engrasi exhaled and inhaled deeply as she tried to control her tremors. She looked at her brother.