Ash in the Fingertips

The clatter of heavy skirts against the steps faded toward the street gateway, drowned out by that dull, greasy squelch expensive boots make when trying to run in the mud. Then, a blow of dry timber against the lower doorframe, a half-swallowed curse, and nothing more. Outside, there were no footsteps left.

Odría's cold rushed in through the gap left by the rickety door, ripped from its bottom hinge by the inspector's shove. It was a thick gust, heavy with the rotten damp of the estuary and the low smoke of the peat bogs, but in a second it pushed away the warm cloud of bitterness that had been clinging to the rafters for hours. The air coming through the broken door bites like salt spray, but at least it no longer smells like a burial. Valerio stood motionless by the kneading trough, the hazel rod still raised to his waist, feeling his eyelids grow cold, irritated by the vapor, and the sweat on the back of his neck turn into a frozen crust beneath the collar of his canvas shirt.

No one came looking for him.

Tadeo was still sprawled across the floorboards, tucked against the pile of frayed hemp like a bale dropped from a cart. He barely moved; he merely flexed the fingers of his left hand against his bony knee, measuring the tremor. His right sleeve was stuck to his forearm by a mixture of wet lime and old grime that was beginning to dry into an ash-gray tone, just like the skin around his nails, where the lifted skin formed tiny pink areolas that slowly oozed.

"A buckle fell off," Tadeo said suddenly, his voice thick like that of someone who had spent half the day breathing vapors without swallowing saliva.

"What?" Valerio asked.

"The fat one's. On the second step. A brass buckle, or a button, what do I know. It sounded like old tin."

Valerio did not look toward the stairs. He rested the rod against the edge of the tub, crouched down with a dry crunch in his hip joint, and picked up from the floor a wedge of rotted wood that used to jam the shortest leg of the butchering table. He cleaned it with the palm of his hand in a mechanical way, without truly looking at it, brushing off the bits of dirty tow before wedging it back beneath the warped log.

The thing about the old riverside houses was just that: there was always something to straighten out so things wouldn't roll toward the drain corner, some nonsense that kept your hands busy while the rest of the world slowly rotted away around you. He remembered, for no particular reason, winter afternoons in his father's workshop over in the Tanneries neighborhood, when his mother sat sewing by the unlit brazier and nobody spoke a single word for two whole hours, save for the clicking of the waxed thread passing through raw leather and the metallic sound of the pewter spoon scraping the bottom of a saucepan to get the remnants of mutton fat. In that kitchen no one spoke because speaking made you hungry, or because you wasted the heat of your mouth saying things that the very next day were still the exact same miseries. In the end, one gets used to silence being just that: not a wait, but a way not to waste what little is left.

Now the low fog licks the cobblestones.

"We'll have to patch that hole," Tadeo muttered, pointing at the door with his chin without lifting his head. "If the river draft sneaks in, the dough is going to chill."

"There is no dough to chill," Valerio said. His voice sounded flat, like a blow against wet leather.

He approached the clay hearth by the entrance, where the holm oak embers barely gave a copper glow buried under two inches of gray ash. With the blunt tip of a notched knife they used for skinning cords, he began to scrape off the burnt grease that had stuck to the iron rim. It was a hard crust, shiny like pitch, that flew off in tiny splinters over the coals. Tadeo watched him out of the corner of his eye, passing his tongue over a split lip that never quite finished healing, guarding every stroke of the blade against the metal as if expecting an order or a reprimand to come from it. If Almansa reached the harbor captaincy before dawn, the constables wouldn't take even half an hour to climb the stairs.

Yet it was useless to think about the constables now.

Valerio left the knife on the bench and turned toward the wicker basket where three shrouds still remained folded: the pieces the inspector had crossed out with charcoal before the vinegar splashed onto his chest. The linen was stiff, starched by the salts of the washing and as rough as dry oak bark. He grabbed them with both hands, without using the willow tongs or putting on protective rags around his wrists, feeling the sour powder of the lime immediately bite into the cracks of his cuticles, that fine, persistent burning that crept beneath raw flesh.

He threw them one by one onto the brazier's embers. The fabric did not catch fire right away; first it released a dull sputtering, a dense white smoke that smelled of rancid bleach and a rotting hospital rag, shrinking into black edges that twisted like dry leaves in autumn.

Valerio slipped his hand into the pocket of his coarse woolen frock and pulled out the rye crust left from his morning ration, black and heavy as a river stone, the crust full of notches of white powder. With his thumbs split open by the brine and his tendons tense, he pressed until the bread broke in two with a dull snap, releasing a few brown crumbs that fell upon the fresh ash of the shrouds. He took three long strides, planted himself in front of Tadeo, and handed him the thicker half with his bare hand, holding his murky gaze without a single word and without seeking the refuge of the vinegar.