The Outcast Son Read online

  “Patrick!” Jaime exclaimed. “We’re going to see my house!”

  “I know, mate! That’s brilliant, isn’t it?” He played the cool adult in front of Jaime, and that’s why he loved him.

  “We’ll go in an off-road car! Dad’s got an off-road car, and he’s going to take us there!”

  “Wow! An off-road car? That’s awesome!”

  “Yeah! And it’s going to go really fast, and he’s going to crash into the bad people!”

  The air jammed my lungs. I coughed. I had to consciously breathe in and out to digest what Jaime had just said. The three of us looked at him at the same time, but the prick spoke first.

  “I’m sure he will.”

  “Quiet!” I said. And then turned my head to Jaime. “Who are those bad people, sweetheart?” But he didn’t answer.

  We entered the car. It was black and had tinted glass. All but discreet. The type of vehicle everybody imagines the mafia would use. Certainly not regular people. I didn’t want to have the public’s eyes fixed on us, however convenient the car was to drive through the muddy and dusty slum roads, but I must confess, I felt safe in it. I could inspect each face, each car and each street protected by the darkened glass. I could hug Jaime and hold his hand and rest assured nobody could hurt us. It was our little fortress, and when we parked on the limits of the district, very close to the market, I was scared of abandoning it.

  Jaime looked ignorant of the danger, though. It wasn’t natural. He remembered, but he was being dragged by a force stronger than his fear. He wanted to know. He felt a thirst nobody could quench. He felt the need to go back to the beginning, to the place where everything started. I thought I understood his excitement, even though he was holding it. Only a big smile too shiny to erase from his face told me about the fire burning inside him. However, his furore was much greater than I realised.

  He got off the car as soon as it stopped, and before we had time to even open our doors, he ran away. The three of us rushed to go after him, but by when we were out of the car, Jaime was already many metres ahead. I ran without looking back. I heard Mark’s voice through the hot air: “Stop! We have to go together!”

  But it was useless. I ran on the dirt like a desert lizard, leaving a cloud of yellow dust behind me. The adrenaline released in my brain made me feel no fear for my safety. A slick drop of sweat cooled down my nape. The sun was punishing the land with its fire blades, and my feet crushed mud and rock and clay. I felt no pain. Only one target in my head. I was focused. Jaime was three hundred feet away. So close.

  I could hear my own shouts, but they didn’t feel like mine: “Jaime! Stop!” Once and again. He wouldn’t look back. I was powerless. Impotent. Nothing I could do would stop my boy. The thought of him being hurt or taken by somebody or finding himself in a dangerous situation terrified me.

  My eyes would follow him no matter what. But when he reached a line of shacks, he turned left. I ran faster than ever. I reached the corner where I last saw him and looked left. Nothing. He wasn’t in sight. He disappeared, and the place didn’t look familiar. My legs were failing me. I had to stop. Take a deep breath. Analyse the situation.

  It took Mark and Patrick two minutes to get to me, and I used that time to have a thorough look at the place. It didn’t seem to be anywhere near the market, but it was hard to tell. Shacks piled up, following what looked like a perfectly chaotic pattern. There was order in that mayhem, though, as every home respected the width of the main road, leaving space for a cart or a bike to go through. Some cabins were well cared of and used proper wood and firm columns as building materials. Others were quite poorly made, with recycled doors as walls and old filthy planks as roofs. There were proper houses as well, made of bricks and tiles and raising up to three storeys in some cases. It didn’t seem the worst place in the slum, although a grimy thread of waste was running down the road and immersed the whole place with its stench.

  “Where did he go?” Mark asked, panting.

  “I don’t know. I saw him turn left, but when I reached this street, he was gone.”

  “He might’ve gone through one of those narrower streets,” Patrick said, pointing at our left.

  “We need to find him, Mark! He’s in danger!”

  “It’s okay, Laura. We’ll find him. I promise.” He couldn’t promise anything, but his words somehow comforted me.

  “It’d be better if we split,” Patrick said.

  “You’re right,” Mark said. “I’ll go with Laura up that street, and you check the other one. Call us if you find him.”

  Time was squeezing us. I was in a hostile place, surrounded by hostile people. A cold, thin layer of sweat wrapped around my body when the face of the four people came to my mind. It made me want to run, to shout, to cry, to punch the ground I was stepping on until my bloody fists reddened the dust. But Mark held my waist and calmed me down. The last thing we wanted was to despair. Angst wouldn’t help us find our son, and we needed all the strength we could gather.

  We had very little. Just the direction Jaime had taken. I knew where he was heading. The market, the serpentine path amongst the houses and cabins and shacks, the ruined building my skinny little boy used to call home, traumatised by neglect and helplessness and abandonment. But I didn’t know the way, and I didn’t have any references. Only the place where we had parked our car five years ago and the market, but where was it? How could I find it?

  And so we wandered. We walked the streets for more than twenty minutes with very little success. There were no people. There were no signs of life. The loud voices of sellers and locals I had once heard seemed to be ages ago, on a different timeline, on a different dimension. But then Mark sensed something.

  At the beginning, it was just a hum in the distance, mixed up with the howl of a faint breeze. Then I heard it, too. It sounded like a hive of insects in the wind, beating all their wings at once and spreading through the air. I ran, and Mark ran after me. The echo made me hesitate a few times, but we found the source of that sound. As we approached, the buzz became clear and I perceived different people’s voices. They were unintelligible at first, but then I heard several announcing prices, others bargaining and some arguing about the quality of tomatoes and rocotos and ollucos over a background of quieter locals minding these and other businesses. Sellers and buyers guided us to the square like improvised lighthouses as we reached their misty shores. We had found it. An anarchic photograph of stalls expanded in front of us amidst a throng of women and men and children in search of groceries and other goods.

  “Over there!” I told Mark among gasps. I was all wet. My T-shirt was heavy with sweat, and my ponytail had been drying the dew of my neck as I ran. “That’s the street.” One more pause to recover my breath. “Jaime went up there when I met him.”

  Nothing appeared to have changed. It was the same dusty road, now perhaps drier than back then due to a tireless sun. Same shacks here and there. Same dirt. Same smell. Same pools of putrid grime by the stands, remains of food fallen to the floor and left there to rot.

  Nobody noticed us, but I had a quick look at each and every face I could see from my position. Jaime wasn’t among the kids, and I didn’t know any of the adults either. They all seemed to be local people. So we went up the street following the path I thought my son had taken.

  At the entrance of some of the shacks, there were children playing and teenagers mingling and men and women talking about daily matters and life prospects and gossips. “Hola, buenos días!” Some of them said to us as we passed by. Their mood was very different from the day I had followed Jaime up that road. They wouldn’t run and hide. They’d smile at us and greet us instead.

  “Buenos días,” I said. “Han visto a un niño por aquí?”

  “Sí, sí,” a woman in her thirties answered, “se fue corriendo calle arriba. Iba muy apurado.”

  “Muchas gracias, señora!”

  “We’re close,” I told Mark. I couldn’t run anymore. I was exhausted and on
the verge of despair.

  “Look!” he said. “Over there!”

  I could barely distinguish the shape of a man standing on the way and staring at his right, both hands in his pockets. I realised it was Patrick straight away. He looked petrified. No! I told myself. No, please, no, no, no, no! The worst nightmares flooded my mind. I couldn’t think with clarity. I ran again, spending energy I didn’t have. My feet weren’t mine. I didn’t feel the cramps and the injuries in my lower body. The moisture of my sweat had dissolved the blood of my burning blisters and was dripping in pinkish beads, but that wasn’t on my mind either. I fell on to the ground. A dry bruising burned my skin. My shoulder popped its joint, and the awareness of my damaged body clouded my vision for a moment. “Stand up, you bitch!” I mumbled. I used pure willpower to get back on my feet again, helping myself with my left and only unharmed limb. Then I dragged my legs on the dust over the last few yards.

  “Jaime!” My vision got clouded when I saw him. “Jaime!”

  “Mum!” he answered as he hugged me.

  I noticed Mark’s arms holding me from behind. He kept me standing. I kissed Jaime and caressed his hair and rubbed his face against my right cheek. All the pain had gone for a moment at the sight of my boy, safe and smiling and running to my care.

  “Look!” He showed me what he was holding, and I had to repress the scream my lungs had already prepared when I saw the two parts of the golden sphere, perfectly fitting together. That wasn’t possible. We had gotten rid of it.

  “Jaime!” The expression on my face must’ve been scary. I was scared. Or confused, to say the least. “Where have you found that?”

  He lowered his eyes. Then looked at Patrick. Then back at me.

  “There,” he finally answered, pointing at the place where I had first found one of the pieces of the object.

  I inspected the spot from the distance. Mark let me go. I moved on my own. Hesitant. Curious. Inquisitive. Expecting anything. And I saw the skull.

  “He’s my dog,” Jaime said, and my eyes shut down.

  Chapter 17

  Our son

  The instructions of the test said clearly what two lines meant. However, what wasn’t so clear was the second line. Was it just a stain? Apparently, even if the line is dim, the result is positive, but in my case, it didn’t even look like a line at all. It was more a coloured shadow filling half the little box. I pictured my face with a straight, emoji-like smile, the type you are left with when you want to greet somebody but they wouldn’t look at you. Never mind. It was too soon, anyway.

  The following day, I tried again. Same result. But after a couple of minutes, a thin line started appearing in the second box, and it grew neat. Yes, there definitely was a line. Pretty dim, but a line. So it was true, after all. I had a proper smile this time, so wide that I could feel my face muscles clenching and wrinkling my expression.

  It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it took me by surprise it happened so quickly. For a few seconds, I didn’t know how to react. Should I call somebody? Should I stand up, prepare some breakfast and carry on with my daily routine as if nothing happened? Or rather run down the stairs and go to the street and shout to the world I was pregnant? One thing was crystal clear: this time, I couldn’t screw it up.

  I had to cool down and take it easy. No alcohol from day one. No junk food. No rubbish. I followed a strict diet of healthy food, rich in proteins and vitamins. Eggs, cheese, meat, fish, legumes and a variety of vegetables of all sorts. I ate a lot, and I mean a lot, but I seemed to lose weight at first. I started worrying a little, although I didn’t change my habits. It was just the beginning, and I was doing great.

  As a prize for my patience, my volume increased very soon, and by the eighteenth week, I had gained nearly one stone. But however enthusiastic I was, I felt reluctant to speak about it. Even to Mark. Pregnancy is scary. Scarier if you had had a miscarriage once. The uncertainty, the changes in your body, the hormones messing with you and your mind and your mood and everybody else’s mood. I could go from ecstasy to depression in a few seconds, and then back again to hysteria and happiness. I needed to be loved and feel safe, and I needed to feel able and empowered too. Summing up: things had to be done my way, and I wouldn’t take any rubbish from anybody.

  “I’m pregnant.” I wouldn’t play any guessing games this time. I had had enough of my husband’s capacity to grasp the untold facet of language.

  “What?” Mark’s face illuminated as a smile spread along his face. “I mean, that’s great!” He ran towards me and lifted me up with his arms, making me spin like a merry-go-round.

  “Mark, please!” I shouted. “Put me down!”

  “Sorry, I just…” He couldn’t even speak. His eyes fixed on mine, shining as if he were a kid on his first visit to a theme park. “That’s really, really great! You’ll see! It’s gonna be all right this time! This time we’ll do things properly, and I will look after you, and I won’t let anything happen to you or our baby!”

  “We did things right the first time,” I said, frowning and closing my mouth.

  “Of course we did! I didn’t mean otherwise. But this time, we’ll be one hundred percent focused.”

  “I’m not comfortable talking about it. I mean, I really appreciate you caring about me and the baby, but I’m not ready to…I don’t know…do you know what I mean?”

  “Absolutely. Wait.” It looked as if a lightning bolt crossed his brain. Then his smile faded away. “For how long have you known?”

  “Long enough to be ready to tell you.”

  “I see.” He didn’t recover his smile. He wouldn’t look me in the eyes either.

  “You need to understand. It’s not that I don’t trust you. Do you understand?”

  “Absolutely. I understand.”

  “It wasn’t easy to talk about it. I thought I’d lose this one too. I wanted to be sure, I wanted to be sure he or she survived the first few weeks before telling…before telling you.”

  “Weeks? Never mind,” he said, and he tried to smile again. “Laura.” The warm touch of his hand comforted me. He pulled me out of my hesitation and my fears and brought me back home. He had tears flooding his eyes. Both of them. “I do understand.”

  “We need to tell Jaime.” Like a blow, all his empathy, sensitivity and understanding dissipated. For an instant, I thought he’d lose his mind.

  “Jaime?” I stood quiet. Still waiting for his reaction to unfold. “He…does he need to know?”

  “Of course he does!”

  “I mean, does he need to know now? So soon?”

  “I see what you’re implying, and I don’t like it, Mark. I don’t like it at all.”

  “Jaime doesn’t want to have siblings.”

  “Well, it’s not his decision, is it? He will learn to accept it.”

  “He won’t. He will project his frustration and jealousy on you.”

  “Dammit, Mark, not again!”

  “It’s true! Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember what happened? Do you want it to happen again?”

  “Mark!”

  “You know I’m right! Bad things happen when Jaime is not happy! I’m not saying it’s his fault, but it’s the truth!”

  “It’s not! I told you many times, goddammit! They’re bloody coincidences!”

  “Coincidences! Coincidences! How can you say that?”

  “You’re losing your nerve.”

  “Losing my nerve? And what about Happy? Was that a coincidence?”

  “Okay, now you’re being a jerk.”

  “Insult me if you want.”

  “He was traumatised, Mark! He wasn’t himself! He was abandoned, chased down, rejected! He was about to die! He almost died, Mark! He was left behind by his family! In a slum! To starve to death!”

  “I know! He was…they were…they were scared of him! They were scared of what he is!”

  “Listen to yourself! Seriously! Stop for a second and listen to your bloody voice! ‘What he is’! Th
at’s very typical of an educated, grown-up man!”

  “Screw my education! I believe in what I see! And I saw what happened to you! And to me! And that stupid ball. How do you explain it was in Peru?! In Peru, Laura! You almost passed out when you saw it! Don’t you remember? And it was the same bloody ball we brought with us the first time! The same ball we’d thrown away when we found it next to…”

  “He must’ve found it among the rubbish. It’s the only explanation.”

  “You keep looking for explanations. The more complicated, the better. Everything but accepting the truth. The truth is simple, Laura. Very simple.”

  “Good, then say it! Say it, you superstitious moron!”

  “He’s a jinx.”

  “Get out of my house!”

  “What? It’s my house too!”

  “Get – out!”

  He did as I said. I knew this conversation would happen sooner or later. I knew how he felt about Jaime. Everything had been piling up since the day Mark fainted and I found him on the floor. He had been accumulating a huge amount of venom behind his gentleman’s face, barely suggesting what he thought about Jaime, saying he loved him, saying he was his child as much as mine, saying he’d give his life for him, and I wanted to believe it was true. I still believe it was, somehow. He loved him. He loved him his way. He loved him and feared him and wanted him to be a normal boy.

  Soon after my conversation with my husband, I told Jaime I was carrying a baby. He half-closed his eyes and tilted his head in amazement. His pupils swung, revealing the rhythm of his thoughts. I saw doubt at the beginning, but I was sure he knew what that meant. He was almost eight. He must know. At some point, his face changed. He smiled. He had decided he liked the idea.