The Fugitivities, стр. 66

them and kept going. Eventually they sent fewer missives. He still regularly received junk mail, mindless top-ten lists, scam promotions, links to humorous headlines and videos. His father forwarded or copied him on increasingly bizarre and angry letters to gallery owners, accountants, and tax attorneys, or on salacious jokes between old buddies who had washed up like him and were angry at the whole world. He couldn’t help but feel that the voiceless emails and the forwarded flotsam actually made them feel more distant. The concerns of their world, the one that he was really from, sounded trivial and more annoying than ever. The tone of things was increasingly ferocious and tinny, the content derisory and manic. His folks had their faults and contradictions, but they had also come up with these huge revolutionary clashes to fight over and take sides on, and rightly or wrongly they had lived under the sway of a historical dynamic that seemed to matter, that you could understand and take a position on. He had grown up knowing only different things, and they stayed apart, fragmented.

Everyone he knew was like this—busy trying to figure out some way through the web, barely taking the time to know each other. But the real time, the clock of the world, ticked off the hours indifferent to their confusion. Life was what it was, no longer or shorter or richer or sweeter here or anywhere else but made up only of what you had really touched, known, believed, sweated your tiny cup of being into. Francesca and Paolina were each other’s world, and had to be, at least for now. But what a rich life they had. Francesca refused to let mothering stand in the way of her enjoyment of whatever she wanted in her life, whether it was her friends, her art (even if it wasn’t likely to lead to a career), seeking out men and sleeping with them if she pleased. It was impossible to be indifferent to this prowess, her ability to burn with a soft, ribbonlike flame. To find the path that took in more with less.

—

The next day Euclides took Garibaldi out riding and left a note saying that he would return by nightfall. The day was open to them, and they decided to go for a walk in the mountains. They started up the hill behind the house, passing under the cashew trees and winding up a little mountain pass. In places the climb was steep and rocky, and Francesca carried Paolina on her shoulders. She picked her way around loose rocks, hiking uphill with her daughter’s little hands wrapped around her forehead. She moved with serene confidence, talking to her daughter the whole time, pointing out flowers and beetles and bees as they went along. They passed over a ridge. On the far side sugarcane fields extended on a long descending slope as far as the eye could see. The green stalks sashayed under the breeze, rustling like water.

Francesca guided them down along the side of the field. Ahead, they could hear the tack-tack of a machete and the hiss of falling cane leaves. It was Orígenes. They stopped to say hello. Jonah and Octavio still couldn’t understand him when he spoke. Francesca explained that Orígenes was saying again that the two Americans were brothers. Octavio said that perhaps because they had been traveling together for some time, they had acquired that kind of knowing way about each other that siblings have. Orígenes considered this and then spoke.

Francesca said that Orígenes understood this, but that all the same he could see they were brothers. What were the chances, he said, of the two of them being here, and all of them meeting on the mountain, in the scheme of the world made under God’s vast heavens?

Octavio nodded in solemn agreement.

Orígenes continued after a moment, and, for a while, Francesca went on translating haltingly. Jonah tried to follow as best he could. Orígenes was talking about souls, the soul having clothes, or not having them…or souls needing clothes when they got too far from the heat of the creator…souls putting on bodies the way people put on different coats in the winter…going from one body to another…to animals too…everything going back to where it came from. And then Orígenes stopped and looked at them expectantly.

“What was that last thing?” Octavio asked.

Francesca thought for a moment as she translated in her head. “Orígenes says that even the most wayward souls come from God and so even the most wayward souls have to go back to Him, and so there is a confusion—or, how do you say—contradiction, in the idea of Hell…because God is all-powerfulness and infinite love, and so it must be that all souls go back to Him. All souls are eventually saved, he says, even the Devil’s. All souls are brothers, you two and all of us here together share of the same soul. And all of it will be saved, he says, at the end of time.”

Paolina wanted her mother to let her down, but Francesca felt they should move on. Octavio wanted to try cutting a sugarcane stalk. Orígenes showed him how to cut the end of the stalk and chew out the juice.

With that, they thanked Orígenes and he shouted farewells as they moved on deeper into the valley. As they marched Octavio sang in Spanish for Paolina. She squealed with delight when he sang, and as soon as he ran out of steam she demanded more, clapping her hands wildly as Francesca tried to concentrate on walking.

They came to a field of tall grass. Francesca put Paolina down and let her chase Jonah around in a game of tag while she and Octavio held each other and kissed. Suddenly Paolina was wailing. Jonah crouched beside her, awkwardly patting her back. She had a small cut on her forehead, a streak over her eye. It was a fine, superficial cut. Francesca licked the blood away, laughed, and