The Outcast Son Read online

  The Outcast Son

  J. Priegue

  The Outcast Son

  Copyright © 2018 J. Priegue

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781976952050

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Find out more about the author at

  https://jpriegue.wordpress.com/

  DEDICATION

  A Bris. Devólvoche, tarde e mal,

  as palabras que me emprestaches.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Auri, my editor, my partner, my love.

  Thanks to my family for their unconditional support.

  Thanks to Sally Hill for her useful advice.

  Chapter 1

  The encounter

  I found him at the market square. His skin, thin like a plastic cloak stuck to his body, revealed the shape of every bone trying to come through. He couldn’t even cry. Too weak. Too small. A meaningless spot staggering on the dust, forgotten on the outskirts of the city. I couldn’t help staring at his impossible eyes. He was a pitiful creature fading in the abyss. And yet his gaze was powerful and lively, not the faint look you would expect from a toddler in that condition. He could barely stand, although he managed to move towards me. Nobody would help him. Nobody would look at him. He was invisible to the eyes of the crowd.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello,” he answered.

  I was able to see the full shape of his skull as he approached. His cheeks were sunken in the larger expression of his face, and his eyes buried in their sockets as if consumed from within. A drill of hungry flies was feasting on his left ear, and a scab of dry blood hung from it. The way he moved reminded me of a dying animal struggling to find a muddy pool to avoid being dried out. He crawled more than he walked, dragging his feet around the dusty road. A miserable thread of skin scarcely held his bones together on both his arms, and his little, long fingers were just thin needles too weak to move independently. But nothing would prepare me for the vision of his inflated belly. That was hunger made flesh, a slow, starving promise of death waiting for any chance to wipe him away from existence.

  He smiled at me, showing his lazy teeth sticking to his gums. He tried to reach me with his hand. I stepped back instinctively, but then I stood still. He was holding something. A toy, I thought at first. Something rounded and shiny, so small it could be hidden when making a fist.

  “For me?” I asked.

  He looked one year old. There was no way he could understand my question. But he surprised me again.

  “Yes. You,” he answered.

  I came closer to inspect what it was. It didn’t look like a toy. I couldn’t tell what that object was or what it was for, but I knew straight away it was something unusual. It consisted of two pieces of shiny metal, one screwed in the other, forming a golden sphere. It looked valuable, not something to be abandoned or left behind with a rejected child. I hesitated. I didn’t see what good I could do by taking the object. However, he looked upset when he saw I didn’t take it right away, so I finally held his hand and took the sphere.

  “I don’t,” I said. But I couldn’t even finish my sentence, as the poor child turned around and started shuffling away from me. “Wait!” I shouted.

  The boy wouldn’t even look back. I was confused, and many thoughts came to me at once. If I ran after him, he’d probably try to run as well, and in his condition, he would fall and get hurt. If I followed him, other people could think I was up to something, and that wasn’t an idea I felt attracted to in a strange country, particularly in a lawless slum like this where every foreigner was suspiciously scrutinised.

  In fact, when I stopped following the child with my eyes, I realised everyone was staring at me. People had stopped doing their daily activities to scan us with their inquisitive eyes. It was busy at that time of the day, the summer sun shining high and the traders shouting all over the place to make sure everyone knew their offers and deals. But all those people who were pretending we just didn’t exist were now still and quiet.

  I felt embarrassed at the beginning, but I couldn’t let the child go. He wouldn’t live much longer with no food or water or shelter or the warmth of a parent’s hug. What was the point of being there if I didn’t do anything to help him? What was I there for anyway? I took the job not just to escape from my past, but so I could help people in need. I knew it wasn’t all out of altruism, though. I knew I wanted to discover myself too, to know if I’d be able to actually help anyone, as well as explore new countries and peoples. It was sort of a way to prove and improve myself, but what I witnessed that day couldn’t be ignored.

  With the passing of the years, I still believe I did the right thing. Yes, it was the right thing to do. Even though I found myself regretting from time to time having gone to that place at all.

  The streets became narrower as we moved away from the market. After walking for about a hundred metres, the landscape was just a muddy ground with very poorly built shacks at both sides of the road and pools of dirty water here and there. The few people I could see hurried up to get into their houses as the kid passed by, and other children appeared to be running away from him as well. He moved slowly, though, staggering and dragging one leg due to what looked like an infection in his left foot. I was barely able to repress my rage before the situation I was witnessing. The way they were treating the kid. The way their eyes punished him, infected with fear and hatred. They were refusing his very existence.

  It was obvious something was wrong. Not only the fact that a child was alone and starving, but something much worse, much more complicated. Almost twisted. People were scared of him. I must confess that even I started fearing he could have a contagious disease, and I feel embarrassed now at having had such a thought at all. However, I couldn’t look away. Even if I put myself at risk of contracting some sort of virus, I had to do something. And I want to believe any human being would have done the same in my situation.

  I struggled to suppress my tears when the boy reached his destination: a wreck of an old wooden cabin demolished by time and neglect. Most of the roof had gone. You could only tell it used to be a home because one of the walls was still holding several planks, projecting a fresh shadow the child had been using as a shelter for a while. A strong smell engulfed the air. A brief nausea made me quiver, and I covered my mouth and my nose with my hand. There was something there.

  I hesitated, but I came close to have a look. I was able to distinguish a concealed, strange shape at my feet. A tail. I bent my knees to remove the board covering it. My legs shook. It was awful. I felt sick. An amorphous, dead dog lying in a pool of dry and putrid blood. Its throat had been slit by a cutting object right there, and next to it several symbols and letters had been written on the dust. It was clear that some sort of ritual had taken place, and the thought that it could have been done in front of the boy’s eyes was outrageous. There also was a golden object, similar to a small cube with a hole on one of its sides. I took the sphere the boy had given to me earlier and tried to put it in. It fitted perfectly. I put both pieces in my backpack to have a look at them later.

  He was standing at the corner. Fixed. Immovable as a twenty-ton statue. He stared at me with those deep black eyes. He wasn’t smiling anymore, his face distressed and a shadow in his eyes.


  “It’s okay,” I told him, but he wouldn’t react. “I want to help you.”

  I approached very slowly. Step by step. Making as smooth movements as I could. He wouldn’t respond. Waiting. Eyes wide open. A few more inches to reach him. The thick silence disturbed only by my feet stepping on the floor and the unbearable smell of dead animal contaminating the air. I was just about to gently caress his head. Millimetres away. Then the kid shuddered and screamed out loud, unbelievably loud for such a small boy. A pitiful sound, barely human, which distressed the land and the air and the peace of the slum. I tried to calm him down, but his broken cry went on and on. I was confused. Confused and afraid. I was sure many people could hear him. They would come. I feared they would come to protect the child, thinking something was happening to him. But no one showed up. He was alone. And after hesitating for a while, confused by his reaction and not knowing very well what to do or how to react, I finally hugged him, and only then he stopped screaming and burst into tears.

  It looked like we were the only people there. The only human beings. Not even dogs would come near. He was a ghost child in a ghost town, a mourning spectre left behind to die from starvation. I didn’t realise I was clenching my teeth until I heard their sound.

  I held his hand and walked with him through the putrefied streets. We needed to go to the hospital as soon as possible. I didn’t have a plan, but we needed to get to a doctor. They would know what to do with the infection in the foot and how to feed him properly with no harm to his weakened body.

  I couldn’t believe what I was experiencing. I couldn’t even understand it. It was a nightmare, something one wants to believe doesn’t happen in real life. But I was there, watching with my own eyes, walking the streets with that pitiful creature who could barely walk or breathe or live.

  As we moved through the suburbs, I pictured how the boy ended up like that in my mind. Perhaps his parents had died from a disease and their neighbours were afraid the boy could be carrying the same infection. People usually fear what they don’t understand. This is a very natural feeling. Natural and cruel like nature itself. I could imagine other scenarios. I felt miserable even to think it possible, but there are many reasons a parent can abandon their children in a poor borough. The boy could be the fruit of adultery or even rape. The boy could be a prostitute’s son, left behind by a mother who cannot possibly maintain him and must choose between her son’s life and both his and her own. For those of us who cannot even imagine being in this situation, this is impossible to understand and much easier to say that she’d have found a way. I hoped I didn’t have to ever make such a decision.

  We reached the market square, only to have one more slice of that unusual and distressing day. Everyone was looking at me. At us. All those people who were blind to the boy’s suffering were now staring at us. Very quiet. Trying not to make any movement as if a little weak noise could unleash a god’s fury. But it wasn’t their silence that troubled me the most: it was their fear. They feared the boy. They were scared of him.

  All of a sudden, a woman who was standing still just a couple of metres from us suffered an attack. She moaned, then shouted, and when I tried to approach her, she got even worse, so I backed off. All the people kept staring at us as if that poor lady didn’t exist at all. After several groans, she fainted and fell to the ground. I panicked. Was she dead? I picked the boy up and ran. As I passed by, everybody yelled. Most of them were calling me names in Spanish I won’t repeat here, but some shouted something in the local Quechua language which I couldn’t possibly understand at that moment:

  “Layqa! Layqa!” Over and over again.

  I felt cold with fear. All I could do was run. I ran more than a mile while holding the boy until my legs hurt too much to continue. I put him back down to rest. We were still in the slum, but I couldn’t see anyone around. Nobody had followed us, after all. However, I had a strong feeling that we shouldn’t stay much longer. It had turned up being a rather hostile area, and I wanted to get out.

  I picked the boy up again and headed for my Jeep on the outskirts. I had asked Mark to wait for me while I was in the market buying some things and having a look. When I saw his face, I remembered his words before I left: “Not sure I like you going alone.” I had to swear it was a safe place, and indeed it was, but anything can happen anywhere at any time, or at least that was my belief after having witnessed that episode. I had to leave the explanations for later, though, as I was hoping we could take the boy to a hospital back in Cusco right away.

  Chapter 2

  Escaping from the past

  “So, tell us, Laura, why would you like to join us?”

  The small talk had ended, and only then I realised I was fidgeting with my fingers and scratching my face. That wasn’t the best way to look confident.

  I knew they’d ask this question, they always do, and I had a whole set of answers to give depending on the sort of people who’d be sitting at the other side of the table, but when I heard that man saying the words, I froze. My eyes fleeted around the room, trying to taste every detail of the decoration, the old-fashioned furniture and office equipment, looking for something to take me out of that block.

  “Laura?” the man on the right said.

  “Yes, sorry.” But nothing I could say now would feel authentic. “I would like to make a difference. I know there is much I can do to help others, to give them the opportunity to find their path in life.” I needed to calm myself down. There wasn’t any chance they knew. Those people, in that city. They didn’t know anything about me at all. Even if they Googled me, the only thing they could find was probably my profile on a couple of social media websites. Everything was clean now. Nothing I should be worried about. It didn’t matter anyway, it wasn’t even a proper job, but my body wouldn’t stop sweating and making me feel awkward. I needed to get out of here.

  “That’s great, Laura. We do need people like you. Can I ask why you have chosen to come to us?” He frowned, a clear sign I had screwed it up. Now I could relax and be myself and finish that crap and walk away.

  “Look, to be honest, I just want to help. I had a look at your website, along with several other organisations, and what you do in Peru looks like something I could help with. I am not a doctor, or a teacher, or a builder, but I do care about others, and I’m willing to do my best to make a difference here.”

  It really sounded like a sincere answer. And it was. Somehow. Both men smiled at me, and I understood they liked it.

  However, the one on the left, who had been playing with a pen since I got in the room, stopped to stare at me with a grave face. He gazed at me to the point that it felt uncomfortable. He knew, I thought. He knew the truth. It’s hard to describe, but it was like he could see through me. Was it my imagination? After a few seconds, which felt like hours, he smiled and carried on playing with the pen again. I was sure he was suspicious. He must have interviewed thousands of people. He knew people. But he probably only knew I was hiding something.

  “We aren’t here to judge anyone’s past, Laura,” he spoke for the first time. He wasn’t even looking at me anymore. His eyes were fixed down on the table, and his fingers playing again with the pen. Then I was sure. He knew something wasn’t adding up. He knew it was unusual to be that nervous in an interview like this. But it looked like he was okay with it.

  Although I guess I should’ve experienced some sort of relief, I felt quite the opposite. The room appeared to be smaller and smaller, and all my ghosts were there to haunt me once again, reminding me who I was, what I was doing there and what I was escaping from.

  My past, I thought, as if it were something one could just leave behind and forget forever. I was hoping my past would disappear if I stopped thinking about it, if I just moved on and had new dreams and hopes, far away from the country where it all happened. But there it was. That man only had to say the word to fill me again with fear and hesitation, to bring all my sins back. They wouldn’t go away. They would stay there, wi
thin me, deep inside my mind. That guilt, or rage, or hatred or whatever that emotion was.

  I nodded. Not daring look those men in the eyes any longer. Afraid of their thoughts and glances. Shaking like a thin willow branch on a windy sunrise. I moved away a lock of my long, curly hair from my face with one finger and then put both my hands between my thighs, trying to take up as little space as possible.

  Even though it was the most awkward interview I’ve ever had, I got the job. I left the building with mixed feelings. I did want to work for them. It was the opportunity I was looking for to run away. It was perfect. New colleagues, new continent, new culture. Everything would be very different. Just what I needed. Just what I sought. But I felt the guy at the interview would be somehow troublesome.

  He was an attractive young man, probably in his early thirties, but he showed a confidence I’d never seen before. His tanned, tough skin reminded me of an ancient Roman warrior experienced in many battles. I didn’t see him standing, but I knew he was tall right away, probably over six feet. The look in his eyes impressed me the most. Those dark, cheeky eyes which appeared to know every hidden secret. I’d be a goddess if only I were half as confident as him, I told myself. The way he looked at me made me feel at the same time excited and uncomfortable. He wanted to know more about me. He wanted to see inside me. Was it fascination? Was that the reason I’d been hired?

  I received a call later on that week from HECH International. I’d start working soon in a slum of Cusco, in Peru. It seemed the company had received funds from the government to build schools in several towns and districts and start an education program with teachers from the UK. It was a sort of literacy and numeracy campaign to help local children and adults improve their opportunities and career expectations. I’d also have the opportunity to help build a school in a village in the middle of nowhere, or rather in the middle of the Andes. The strange thing was that they had counted on me even though I didn’t have any experience as a teacher, English wasn’t my first language and I wasn’t particularly good at numbers either. Anyway, I’d leave within eight days.