After a long detour through open fields, he returns to the main road. He is leaving a trail of blood behind him. He approaches a village. There are several lights. He sees a train station sign: José León Suárez. Someone tries to ask him something, but he keeps going without answering. He is exhausted. He’s going to fall down. Somebody manages to take him in his arms.
It’s a police officer.
At that moment, the thought of an unending nightmare must have occurred to Livraga: the cycle of being arrested, executed, arrested, executed again . . .
Yet, he had finally found himself with a human being.
The officer—whom we have already seen greeting Troxler—did not even ask him why he was wounded. He hurried him onto a jeep, put a guard by his side to look after him and, placing himself in front of the wheel, set out in a mad race to the nearest hospital.
They passed the bodies on the way. The officer stopped the car in its tracks and ordered the guard to step out and investigate.
—They’re dead —the guard announced.
The policeman turned toward Livraga.
—Tell me the truth, man, what happened?
Instead of answering, Livraga vomited up a mouthful of blood. The policeman didn’t hesitate any longer. Leaving the guard standing on the road, he hit the accelerator.
27. An Image in the Night
Mr. Horacio doesn’t know how long he was playing dead. Half an hour? An hour? His sense of time was completely altered. All he knows is that he did not leave the spot where he’d fallen until it started to get bright out. That was probably at around seven-thirty. On June 10, the sun rose at 7:57 a.m.
He lifted his head and saw the field covered in white. Along the horizon, he could make out a solitary tree. Nine months later he was surprised to find out that it was not just one tree; rather, the branches of several trees at the far end of an undulating terrain were creating this optical illusion. Incidentally, the detail proved to this writer—if I still harbored any doubts—that Mr. Horacio had been there. The only place from which that strange mirage can be observed is the site of the execution.25
On one side of the “phantom tree,” at the edge of the town of José León Suárez, he spotted the chapel whose bells he had heard ringing when they were about to deliver the coup de grâce . . .
He stood up and made a great effort to start running in that direction. He was numb. The cold was brutal. At 8:10 a.m. the temperature was -3°C.
Along the way he came to a muddy ditch that was impossible for him to get past. He had to grab a sheet of corrugated metal from a pile of garbage and place it across like a bridge.
Leaving the wasteland behind, he went into town. He walked about eight blocks. He thought it was only two. He saw a bus heading down a cross street. He thought it was red. It was yellow. He thought it was the number 4. It was the number 1.
He got on.
—Where does this go? —he asked, just like Giunta.
—To Liniers.
In a small pocket of his pants he had salvaged a small sum of money from the ravenousness of the police. He was able to pay for his ticket. It sounds like a fairytale: they gave him a ticket with a palindromic number on it . . .
He got off in Liniers. He walked into a bar. He ordered a coffee. They were still warming up the machine so there wasn’t any. He went to another bar. They gave him a double espresso and a double shot of sugar cane spirits there.
Only then did he feel like his soul was returning to his body.
***