Three Fingers of Tallow

Eusebio clears his throat in the landing every two minutes. It is a cavernous cough, carrying a whistle of sulfurous phlegm that Darío already knows when it will break before it even starts.

Beneath the pressed straw of the mattress, the iron tip remains warm from having been between his fingers. Darío slowly withdraws his hand, careful not to brush his nails against the coarse canvas so as not to provoke that dry hiss which the bare stone multiplies. Heat rises from the lower flagstones like an invisible, stubborn vapor that bakes the soles of his feet; at the nape of his neck, however, the glassless loophole spits a frigid air that shrinks the tendons in his neck. The body doesn't know what to do: rot from below or freeze from above. He presses his back against the wall. The basalt oozes a cold saltpeter slime that soaks his hemp shirt. He runs his tongue over his molars; ash floats in microscopic filaments and crunches between his teeth with the exact roughness of sand chewed by mistake on a beach.

The door is not locked. It never is.

Scarcely three fingers of clearance, just enough for the greasy light of the hallway to draw a yellow rod across the floor and for the dragging of Eusebio Alvareda's soles to be heard.

Tarsio unbuckles the hardened leather straps of his greaves without looking at him, letting the sour smell of tallow and rancid sweat fill the space between them.

There is no hurry in his fingers. They are stubby fingers, with split nails stained a mineral black that no longer washes out with water or beaten ash. Tarsio loosens the top buckle first, the one that bites into his swollen calf, and the leather makes a viscous snap as it pulls away from the sweaty wool of his hose. There is something humiliating about the calm with which a man strips off his armor in the very bedroom where his enemy sleeps. He does not draw his sword. He does not check the corners. He does not look for the piece of iron Darío has just hidden four hand-spans from his knees. He simply breathes through his mouth, with that hoarse wheeze of men who have spent ten winters inhaling the smoke from the boilers. Hatred loses its edge when the man who slit your cousins' throats has bunions and wheezes when he bends his back.

A dull thud. The iron of the first greave drops onto the living stone with a muffled crash that makes the pewter plate left on the table vibrate.

"Eusebio," says Tarsio without raising his head, in the pasty voice of someone who has spent half a shift swallowing coal in the upper embrasures.

The crack of the door darkens. The stooped silhouette of the warden plants itself in the gap, casting a deformed stain over the bed.

"Speak, sir."

"Tell the ones downstairs not to dump any more pomace into the lanterns. It smells like a burned dog."

"There's no clean oil left, sir. The pack train from the valley won't come up until Thursday."

Tarsio wipes the back of his hand across his forehead, dragging a streak of soot that cuts across his graying eyebrow to his temple. He looks at the half-open door, then at his hands, then at the floor.

"Well, then don't light anything," mutters the old man, yanking the second strap with an awkward pull that makes his lower back arch. "Just stay in the dark. Lord knows there's nothing to see anyway."

Eusebio hesitates. His eyes, two sunken sockets surrounded by the ocre mask of the vapor, slide over Darío, who remains motionless on the mattress with his palms pressed against his thighs. There is a silent calculation in that gaze: the tally of a serf measuring the days until boiling pitch falls onto the trench where his own kin sleep if the boy does something stupid. Eusebio nods with an almost imperceptible tilt and withdraws, restoring the strip of buttery light to the floor.

Silence.

The hiss of the steam pipes runs through the mortar between the basalt ashlar blocks, as regular as the bellows of a buried forge. Darío's elbow crease itches with a vengeance, but he does not scratch. He does not move a finger. He keeps his eyes fixed on the broken buckle of Tarsio's boot. If he blinks, he fears time will be forced backward to that August afternoon when the wagons of Val-Solana burned on the riverbank with that sweet stench of charred grain and mule meat.

Saltpeter, ash, waiting. Not out of caution. Out of sheer bone exhaustion.

"Today's bread had dirt in it," Tarsio says suddenly. Without anger; with the monotonous complaint of a laborer looking at a dry cloud.

"It always has dirt in it," Darío replies. His own voice sounds harsh to him, scraped by the haze, as if his vocal cords had the same rust that stains the bolts.

"It didn't use to have this much."

"They used to grind with river stone. Now they use loose basalt from the slag heaps."

Tarsio lets out a snort that could be a laugh or simply the expulsion of hot air from his battered lungs. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his bare knees, covered in grayish hair and white scabs that pull at the flesh. The linen shirt hangs over his flabby belly, stained with yellow rings of old sweat under the armpits. He smells like a man who hasn't washed in three weeks because fresh water is reserved for the boilers.

"Is the water in the washbasin still warm?" Tarsio asks, pulling on the left boot until an ingrown toenail wrings a growl from between his teeth.

Darío looks at the bottom of the fired-clay bowl on the bench. There is a greasy film of ash floating on the stagnant surface.

"It's cold."

Tarsio rubs his inflamed instep with two blackened fingers.

"Bring it anyway."