The Sulfur in the Cistern

Darío ties the cord of his smock before stepping into the corridor. The air in the gallery doesn't move; it stays pressed flat against the basalt floor, reheated from the lower smithies with that pasty smell of burnt mutton fat that won't wash out even when you rub your clothes with vinegar. Through the crack in the door comes Tarsio's snore: the wet, heavy wheeze of a man who sleeps with his mouth open and his ribs pressed against the planks.

The sentry on the landing doesn't even move. He has his fingers tucked between his thighs and his chin buried in the itchy wool of his cape. The only sound is the creak of the pine stool when he shifts his weight onto his other buttock.

Darío keeps pressed against the wall.

The flagstones scorch the soles of his bare feet while the dawn chill, falling through the shutterless loopholes, leaves his knuckles gray and dry. At the first turn of the passage he scratches his gum with his thumb. The tartar tastes like old iron. He spits a thread of thick saliva toward the side gutter; it takes a while to slide down.

His belly gives a dull lash.

He stops with his back pressed to the basalt until the cramp eases. A heavy drop falls from the vault and hits the corner of his mouth; it tastes of dead lime and saltpeter. In his pocket he carries only two strips of blackened linen and some dry myrtle leaves crumbled to dust. They're useless against the stench of the latrines, but he keeps rubbing them between finger and thumb out of sheer habit, until his fingertips turn green.

The nook by the washing trough sweats cold damp. The boilers snort behind the partition with a low, continuous hiss that drowns out any sound from the upper galleries. The lead spout pours a thin stream into the stone trough and raises a ring of foam and sulfurous vapor. Darío plunges his hands into the freezing water and splashes his eyes. The bite of the cold leaves his skin taut.

"You'll go soft in the head, sticking it in there in the dark," Eusebio says from the corner by the vats.

The old man takes his time showing himself. He comes hunched under a twill cape stiff with grime, dragging his soles, his worn knees crunching. He wipes his nose with the back of his mitten. There's an open scab on the knuckle of his middle finger.

"There's no soap," Darío says.

"It ran out on Tuesday." Eusebio spits onto the ash on the floor. "There's a piece of rancid tallow left in the bucket, but it'll skin you."

"I don't care."

"I brought clean brine for Fabián. His legs were already smelling like rotting meat."

"Could he chew?"

"Soaked crumb. His gums are as black as mulberries."

"Tell him not to go near the coalmen."

"Tell him yourself when it's your turn to carry down the firewood."

Neither says anything for half a minute. The lead spout keeps pounding the trough. Eusebio closes the distance, breathing raw radish through his parted lips. He keeps his left elbow pressed against his ribs, stiff beneath the twill, as if he were holding a live hen under his clothes.

Darío tries to step back half a pace, but the edge of the basin catches his thighs.

"Hold still," Eusebio mutters.

He drives his free hand into Darío's shoulder with a sharp jerk and shoves the other up the sleeve of his smock. Darío feels the smooth, freezing touch of a thick glass vial, barely the size of a thumb, smeared with an oil that reeks of withered henbane and cellar dust. He tries to pull his arm away, but the old man twists his wrist against the lead until his tendons crack.

It weighs little. Less than a walnut.

"Keep it in your sash," the old man hisses in his ear. "Stick it in there or I'll break your two little fingers right now."

"You're mad, Eusebio." Darío can barely draw breath. "If Tarsio notices the smell in the bowl, he won't just kill me. You know what they'll pour down the latrines."

"He won't notice a damn thing. The turnip soup comes out black from the fierce pepper the cook throws in to cover the frost mud. He won't notice until his tongue turns to cork."

"I'm not going to do it."

"You are going to do it."

Eusebio presses his blackened fingers under Darío's jaw, pushing the skin against the bone.

"If tomorrow night you don't empty the vial into his plate," the old man whispers, his eyes locked on Darío's, "the miller's boy wakes up hanged from the truss."

He lets go of the cloth abruptly. He takes two steps back into the darkness of the passage, his boots slipping on the wet ash, and disappears around the bend.

Darío is left alone by the water. The vial burns his palm with a thick cold.