rims, piles of tyres; a real cemetery of chassis, axles and twisted bits of metal, immobilised forever under the scorching sun.
After several weeks of touring around Entre Ríos – they had come down from the north along the Río Uruguay to Concordia, then taken Highway 18 right through the middle of the province to Paraná – the Reverend decided to go on to Chaco.
They spent a couple of days in Paraná, the city where he had been born. Although he no longer had relatives or acquaintances there, having left when he was very young, he liked to go back every now and then.
They stayed in a run-down hotel near the old bus terminal: a poky, depressing place with a view of the red-light district. Leni amused herself watching the weary comings and goings of the prostitutes and transvestites, who wore so little they barely had to undress when a client turned up. With his nose in his books and papers as usual, the Reverend was completely oblivious to their surroundings.
Although he couldn’t bring himself to visit his grandparents’ house, where his mother had brought him into the world and raised him on her own (his father, an adventurer from the United States, had vanished before his birth, along with the in-laws’ meagre savings), he took Leni to see an old park on the banks of the river.
They walked among ancient trees and saw the watermarks on their trunks, very high up on the ones near the bank; some still had flood wrack in their top branches. They ate their lunch on a stone table, and the Reverend said that as a child, he’d come to that park several times with his mother.
‘It was very different then,’ he said, and bit into a sandwich. ‘On the weekends it was full of people. Not run down like this.’
As he ate, he looked nostalgically at the broken benches, the long grass and the rubbish left by visitors the previous weekend.
When they finished their lunch, the Reverend wanted to go farther into the park; he said that there used to be two swimming pools and he was curious to see if they were still there. It didn’t take long to find them. Bits of iron were visible in the cracked cement around the edges; the tiles covering the inside walls were smeared with mud, and some were missing here and there, as if the old pools were losing their teeth. The floors were miniature swamps, breeding grounds for mosquitoes and toads, which hid among the plants growing in the slime.
The Reverend sighed. The days were long gone when he and other children his age would bounce off the diving board into the water, planting their feet on the tiled floor and pushing back up to break the bright surface with their heads.
He put his hands in his pockets and started walking slowly along the edge of one of the pools, head hanging and shoulders slumped. Leni watched her father’s bowed back and felt a bit sorry for him. She guessed that he was remembering happier times, the days of his childhood, the summer afternoons he’d spent there.
But her sympathy didn’t last. At least he could go back to places full of memories. He could recognise a tree and reconstruct the day when he and his friends had climbed it right to the top. He could remember his mother spreading a chequered cloth over one of those ruined tables. But Leni had no lost paradise to revisit. Her childhood was very recent, but her memory of it was empty. Thanks to her father, the Reverend Pearson, and his holy mission, all she could remember was the inside of the same old car, crummy rooms in hundreds of indistinguishable hotels, the features of dozens of children she never spent long enough with to miss when the time came to move on, and a mother whose face she could hardly recall.
The Reverend completed his circuit and came back to where his daughter was still standing, as rigid as Lot’s wife, as pitiless as the seven plagues.
Leni saw his eyes glistening and quickly turned her back on him.
‘Let’s go, Father. This place stinks.’
Tapioca came back with a bottle of Coke for Leni and a glass of water for the Reverend. He handed them the drinks and stood there like an over-attentive waiter.
Pearson drank the whole glass down in one gulp. In spite of its warmth and dubious colour, the Reverend received that water as if it had flowed from the purest spring. If God put it on earth, it must be good, he always said.
He gave the empty glass back to the mechanic’s assistant, who gripped it with both hands, unsure what to do with it. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
‘Do you go to church, son?’ asked the Reverend.
Tapioca shook his head and looked down, ashamed.
‘But you’re a Christian.’
The boy stopped shifting his weight and stood there staring at the tips of his sandals.
There was a gleam in the Reverend’s eyes. He got up, walked over to Tapioca, and stood in front of him. He bent down a little, trying to see the boy’s face.
‘Are you baptised?’
Tapioca looked up and the Reverend saw himself reflected in his large, dark eyes, which were moist like the eyes of a fawn. A flicker of curiosity made the boy’s pupils contract.
‘Tapioca,’ Brauer called out. ‘Here. I need you here.’
The boy gave the glass back to the Reverend and ran over to his boss. Pearson raised the greasy vessel and smiled. His mission on earth was to wash dirty souls, to make them sparkling clean again, and fill them with the word of God.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Leni, who had been watching the scene with interest as she sipped her Coke.
‘God puts us exactly where we ought to be, Elena.’
‘We ought to be at Pastor Zack’s place, Father.’
‘And we will be, after.’
‘After what?’
Her father didn’t answer. And she didn’t insist; she didn’t want to get into a quarrel or know anything about his mysterious plans.
She watched as Brauer gave Tapioca some orders and the boy climbed up into the cabin of an old truck. He steered while the Gringo strained to push the vehicle to a tree about two hundred yards away, where he left it in the shade.
When the truck was where he wanted it, he collapsed onto the bare earth with his arms flung out and his mouth hanging open, gulping hot air into his lungs. The way his heart was beating in his chest, it felt like a cat in a bag. He looked up at the fragments of sky visible through the sparse canopy of leaves.
Once, Brauer had been a very strong man. At the age of twenty, he would put a chain over his bare shoulders and tow a tractor, easily, just to amuse his friends.
Now he was three decades older, a mere shadow of the young Hercules who used to enjoy displaying his phenomenal strength.
Tapioca bent down over him.
‘Hey, boss. You okay?’
Brauer lifted an arm to reassure the kid, but still couldn’t say a word; he could barely gather enough strength to smile and give him a thumbs-up.
Tapioca laughed with relief and ran back to the service station to get some water.
Out of the corner of his eye, the Gringo saw his helper’s sandals raising dust, the boy running knock-kneed, awkwardly, as if he were still a child, not almost a man.
He looked up again at the sky, broken into pieces by the tree. His shirt was soaked, and he could feel the sweat gathering in his navel, then overflowing and running down either side of his belly. Little by little his breathing slowed, and his heart stopped jumping around in his rib cage, returning to its normal place within the frame of bones. His body was seized by the first spasm of a cough, which made him sit up suddenly and filled his mouth with phlegm. He spat it all out, as far as he could. Then he felt for a cigarette and lit it.
After walking around the park where he used to go as a child, the Reverend found a telephone booth to call Pastor Zack. It was a comfort to hear his voice. He was a good friend, and it had been almost three years since they had seen