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Fiction

Hyenas

By Eduardo Plaza
Translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery
Boyhood friends meet again after years apart, sparking a trip through the narrator’s memory that leads to a forgotten—and harrowing—episode. 
Listen to Eduardo Plaza read "Hyenas" in the original Spanish.
 
 
s ·

1

Miguel Rodewald and I were good friends. We knew each other because his family, who lived in Temuco, used to spend their summers in Coquimbo. When they were kids his father used to rent a house a few blocks from ours, in El Llano. We’d meet, five of us in total, behind the church, in a clearing where every afternoon we’d partake in our favorite holiday activity: setting fire to stuff. Full schoolbooks, old clothes, bits of junk, footballs that were coming apart at the seams. Then we’d run inside and steal some water. If later on we didn’t feel like burning junk anymore, we’d let the air out of car tires to kill the time. Or we’d use our sneakers to make marks on the white doors of the nice houses. One of these houses was Rodewald’s, or at least it was his for the first three weeks of every February, over a period of four years.

We saw him sitting at the doorway, watching the cars go by from left to right, and I don’t know why but instead of waiting for him to go back into the house, I asked him if we could kick the door, because it wasn’t theirs anyway, so what did it matter. Not his, and not his father’s. Maybe I wanted to start a fight. Maybe I just did it to mess with this boy who spent the whole day just looking out onto the street and who, far from getting angry or running off, asked us if he could kick the door first.

That was Rodewald; he and I were good friends.

We met again when we were much older. I say “again” because one year February came around again and they weren’t there. They didn’t come back. I never asked for his telephone number, why would I, we didn’t have one, not everyone did back then. Anyway, why would I have thought to call him? Exactly. We, the beach kids, had always lived with this precarious fate of making friends who then disappeared.

I’d been living in Santiago for a year when I saw him again. We bumped into each other because we’d both chosen the same options in college. I was starting a doctorate I’d later end up quitting halfway through, like everything else in my life at the time, while he was finishing off the last credits he needed for a master’s he was meant to be defending that year. I struggled to recognize him: he was thin, tall and a little bald, and the image of him as a chubby, rosy-cheeked boy was stamped on my memory. But he didn’t even hesitate: shouting my name from halfway across the cafeteria in Gómez Millas, he approached me with an enormous smile on his face, gripping me with his powerful arms. “Dude, it’s me, Miguel!” That afternoon we skipped classes to go and drink beer over by the gas station.   

Rodewald had married Beatriz. He showed me a few photos on his mobile: a tall, tall blonde, pale and smiling, embracing him on a beach in Rio. A tall, tall blonde holding her birthday cake up. A tall, tall blonde, posing next to him at a family meal.

In addition, Rodewald had also become a sociologist. 

He’d gone back to Coquimbo a couple of times, but not as a boy: the year we’d last seen each other his mom had died of a heart attack, which completely crushed his dad, and in an attempt to flee from his memories he took refuge in a life dedicated exclusively to work. Rodewald only went back in his twenties. One time he took Beatriz with him, and they walked the same streets the two of us had once walked.

After this initial meeting, we once again started seeing each other every day. That first night we ended up at his flat with his wife, talking and laughing until, to our surprise, we opened the curtains to see the morning light poking through. We talked about our own pasts as if they belonged to other people. Mere witnesses to those boys, we were men, as far away from the stories we told as we were from our homes.

Three weeks later, Rodewald left again.

 

2

Beatriz became a widow at the age of twenty-five. She was also from Temuco. They moved because Miguel was offered a good position and she had decided she would support him in the decision. They had no one in Santiago apart from Bea’s father, who lived between Vitacura and Algarrobo.

After Miguel’s accident, she chose to stay in the capital. A return to Temuco would surely have been the end of her. Santiago gave her the tranquility of anonymity: every day she could discover a new neighborhood, a festival, a square. She walked a lot. When she’d walked enough to be familiar with everything within a fifteen-block radius, she decided it was time to buy a car. Another car, that is. She lost the first one when she lost him.

I began accompanying her on her trips, initially because I wanted to know more about Rodewald. It was impossible to talk to a dead man, so I talked to her instead. Neither one of us felt like sitting down to memorialize him, which is what happened when Beatriz visited home and had to endure all those conversations, always patiently and politely: how are you doing, I still can’t believe it, twenty-nine years old, how can someone die at twenty-nine, I don’t know how you can keep going. That wasn’t our style.

We tried to find a way of keeping him in our presence without mourning him. She helped me explore the world of the guy she was embracing in those photos. The guy who’d become my friend before death had showed up out of nowhere, right before our eyes. We who would never die, our lives barely having begun, we were so aware of the limits of others’ lives and so oblivious of our own.

Over time her company became revitalizing. On weekends, we’d go out and have lunch. We wanted to find new, different places, that was our project, to traverse the length and breadth of Santiago. Of course, our definition of “the length and breadth of Santiago” only included the space within the outline formed by Los Zapadores to the north, Matucana to the west, Departmental to the south, and Bea’s father’s house to the east. Sometimes, when she felt like driving, we’d go to Mahuida and drive up as high as the car would take us, which wasn’t very high. We’d walk through the reserve for a mile or two, and she’d talk to me about the way her boss exploited her, about the wedding of her older uncle, who’d sworn never to marry again, about the thousand different personalities she had as a teenager: hippie, goth, hip-hop head. I looked at her and tried to imagine her as a goth: blond and milky white, dressed in black and made up for a funeral. A goth at her wedding. A goth panting her way up Mahuida. I told her that ever since I was little I’d been obsessed with the smell of gas. For her it was the smell of the water in the cistern. We both liked the sound of stones as they hit the surface of the water before sinking.

Occasionally she’d turned up unannounced at my flat. “I’m downstairs,”she’d say, the car engine still running. She’d smoke as she waited. She smoked so much! I’d take ten minutes to have a shower and find a T-shirt. I guess she assumed that if she was alone, I’d also be alone. After all, the city was something both of us were merely borrowing. Santiago. And I had gotten used to how new loves and friendships always vanish before long.

Her father, who hated seeing her alone and found himself forced to confide in me, asked me to suggest that we take a trip to the beach together. If I say it, she’ll definitely think I’m doing it to protect her, and Bea has never allowed herself to be protected, he told me. Beatriz is strong, at least on the outside. Inside, it’s hard to know. I’m going on holiday to Panama, and you can stay in my house. Come on, it’ll do her good to get out of that apartment. Contrary to what her father believed, the truth is that Beatriz was never there. She worked all day managing a mid-level department in the Catholic University. In the evenings, after work, she walked home: twelve blocks via Portugal, Diagonal Paraguay, Rancagua, Salvador, and Francisco Bilbao. She’d make coffee, have a shower, drink the coffee when it had cooled down, we’d have a five- or ten-minute text conversation, and then she’d turn on the TV and fall asleep before the commercials.

 

3

We were eleven years old, behind the church: me, Rodewald and two other friends, and night was already beginning to fall. We’d agreed to meet to burn Juampa’s plastic pencil case because his grandfather had given him a new one, much bigger and with the logo of El Indio Mining, where he worked, printed on the side. So Juampa donated his old one. We filled it with dry leaves, paper, and pencils we’d brought from our houses. 

Before setting it alight, Seba sprayed it with his older brother’s deodorant. We’d already seen his brother transform the can into a flamethrower on the square, in front of all his school friends. That’s how we knew it was flammable. We couldn’t do the same thing, but stealing it to use in our pyromaniac games was daring enough in our eyes.

After bathing the pencil case in deodorant until it reeked of Atkinson English Lavender, Seba lit four matches at once and tossed them on: suddenly the whole thing was transformed into a short-lived but beautiful blue and orange flame. It only lasted a couple of seconds, then the flame began to go out and we had to strike more matches, lighting the old pencil case at its edges. The flames burnt bright, setting on their victim with no remorse. At times the pencil case seemed to be leaping about, twisting with pain.

We were four boys, eyes wide open, watching it all burn.

That night, as we walked back toward his house, Rodewald told me he’d seen a video in which a group of hyenas hunted down a wounded buffalo and ate it while it was still alive. The animal howled like it was really suffering, he said: a hoarse, drawn-out sound. As if, hanging between life and death, it had chosen to become a ghost. He told me the pencil case had reminded him of it, and that he didn’t like it. He didn’t like remembering.

 

4

We left late. Beatriz picked me up. We loaded up the car with a box full of food, beer, and tequila, and left for Algarrobo. It was cold and the rain was blowing about in the wind. Neither of us were planning to swim in the sea, so we didn’t really mind if it poured over the weekend. The idea was to bring books and fill up the days with pounds and pounds of backlogged reading, as well as the material for the PhD I’d abandon soon after. We also planned to hunt hares and doves on the outskirts of Casablanca. Actually, that was Beatriz’s idea: I was a total wimp when it came to this kind of thing, and I could barely operate a stapler. Rodewald had also had to endure his wife’s hobby, which she’d learned from her father, who in his turn had inherited it from his father.

The house was on top of a hill, a few yards away from a small wood. It looked on to the mountains, far from the hubbub of tourists and beaches. We’d hardly arrived before it began to rain and there was a power cut, so we decided to cancel the few activities we’d planned and jumped onto her father’s bed to watch films on my laptop. We opened a 40 of beer. Tell me what you want to watch, I asked. We decided on the new Batman films, all three of them. We opened another beer. We’d managed to start The Dark Knight when the battery ran out and we had to move on to Beatriz’s computer. We put some music on and kept drinking. Is the rain still bad? she asked with a smile a few minutes later, as she moved toward the window. I’ve got a joint in the car. Do you mind getting a bit wet? It’s in the little box we use as an ashtray. There was no dilemma as far as I was concerned: I put my jacket on, tied my shoelaces, and went out through the muddy entrance, circling round until I got to the car and the joint.

The wind was splattering the rain into my eyes, and I’d forgotten to bring a flashlight. It was already pretty dark. When I got back inside, I headed to the room and saw Beatriz sitting totally still before the light of the computer screen, covering part of her face with both hands. Her entire aspect had transformed. I stayed there watching her: she was in the same position for twenty seconds, as if she was praying with her face covered. Suddenly she let her head fall forward by ninety degrees, without taking her hands away, and her breathing quickened. You could see it in her shoulders. At the same time, each bone in my fingers throbbed with cold.

I took a cigarette from my wet jacket pocket and lit it, letting out a mixture of smoke and condensation, and looked into the room at that pale, limestone statue, the way she seemed to fear the storm might shatter her into pieces. I felt that only Miguel could embrace her, enter into the pit of all that hurt. Seconds later she took her hands from her face, wiped her eyes and came out to find me. Hey, did you find it, she said, smiling by the doorway. 

 

5

It was already evening when we came back with Rodewald, running breathlessly in an attempt to win the race against time and avoid a telling-off from his dad, who wouldn’t let him come out with us after seven. The time on his digital watch said nine forty. When we got back to his house we found his father smoking underneath the lintel. Rodewald came to a sudden halt. Cross the road, he said, pulling me by my T-shirt, get on the pavement, and he pushed me away. I could see from looking at the pores on his face how grave the situation was, and so I took his advice. Rodewald’s dad’s eyes followed me. I think the only thing we could hear was the sound of the earth and pebbles beneath Miguel’s feet as he approached the door to his house, dragging his feet in trepidation. I’m certain his dad could hear it too. Cars floated through the space between us, erecting a wall between one side of the street and the other. I stopped, waiting for what was about to come. When Miguel was sufficiently close, his dad told him to stay still. “Stay still”, he repeated, more firmly this time. “Lift your head up. Look at me.” He noticed the ash stains on his arms and shorts. Show me your hands. Miguel didn’t want to. “Your hands!” he shouted. He showed him the black palms that gave us away. “Now put your hands in your pockets. I said look at me, raise your head, and put your hands in your pockets.” He might as well have asked him to look directly into the sun without blinking. Everything stopped after that. Often we beach kids didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to each other. We’d wake up one morning to find that the houses were empty again, awaiting new guests, perhaps people without children our age. Other times there’d be hugs and farewells. And on other occasions, such as this one, sudden departure was the punishment laid down for disobeying the rules. That’s how it started. The slap went down in history. The sound of his dad’s arm cutting through the air and breaking like a wave upon the cheek of my friend, Miguel Rodewald. There was no going back. “Stand up straight. Move your hands from your face. I told you to put your hands in your pockets. Stand up straight and look at me!” His face had turned a dusky red. He didn’t wait for Miguel to open his eyes before landing the second blow. There was the short, sharp sound of the palm striking the boy’s tear-sodden skin, before this time he let out a yell and fell to the floor. Just as I was starting to think that the man would keep on hitting him until he died, he stopped and entered the house. I couldn’t move, I just wanted Miguel to look at me so I could ask him to forgive me for leaving him alone, at the mercy of the hyenas. But then, suddenly, instead of tidying himself up and going inside, he turned around and ran off. He refused to accept the fate that awaited him in the house. I wanted to shout and tell him not to do it, but instead I followed him. Go back or they’ll kill you, I was thinking. They’ll kill you, they really will.

After one block I saw him stop in a small, dark square with wooden swings. Seba’s older brother’s friends had broken all the streetlamp bulbs and no one ever came to replace them. When I got to him he was hiding behind a bench and crying inconsolably. I sat down with him and begged him to go back home so they’d stop hitting him, believing that this was the only punishment a boy could possibly receive from his dad. Still crying, Miguel Rodewald hugged me tightly and between the sobs he let out a single phrase, faltering and disjointed, like a leaking tap: burn him. Burn him, burn him. I took his miserable face in my hands, wiped away his mucky tears, and gave him a long, suffocating kiss. Don’t worry, we will, we’ll burn him. We’ll burn him, I repeated, and then I burst into tears.


“Hyenas” © Eduardo Plaza. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2019 by Rahul Bery. All rights reserved.

English Spanish (Original)

1

Miguel Rodewald and I were good friends. We knew each other because his family, who lived in Temuco, used to spend their summers in Coquimbo. When they were kids his father used to rent a house a few blocks from ours, in El Llano. We’d meet, five of us in total, behind the church, in a clearing where every afternoon we’d partake in our favorite holiday activity: setting fire to stuff. Full schoolbooks, old clothes, bits of junk, footballs that were coming apart at the seams. Then we’d run inside and steal some water. If later on we didn’t feel like burning junk anymore, we’d let the air out of car tires to kill the time. Or we’d use our sneakers to make marks on the white doors of the nice houses. One of these houses was Rodewald’s, or at least it was his for the first three weeks of every February, over a period of four years.

We saw him sitting at the doorway, watching the cars go by from left to right, and I don’t know why but instead of waiting for him to go back into the house, I asked him if we could kick the door, because it wasn’t theirs anyway, so what did it matter. Not his, and not his father’s. Maybe I wanted to start a fight. Maybe I just did it to mess with this boy who spent the whole day just looking out onto the street and who, far from getting angry or running off, asked us if he could kick the door first.

That was Rodewald; he and I were good friends.

We met again when we were much older. I say “again” because one year February came around again and they weren’t there. They didn’t come back. I never asked for his telephone number, why would I, we didn’t have one, not everyone did back then. Anyway, why would I have thought to call him? Exactly. We, the beach kids, had always lived with this precarious fate of making friends who then disappeared.

I’d been living in Santiago for a year when I saw him again. We bumped into each other because we’d both chosen the same options in college. I was starting a doctorate I’d later end up quitting halfway through, like everything else in my life at the time, while he was finishing off the last credits he needed for a master’s he was meant to be defending that year. I struggled to recognize him: he was thin, tall and a little bald, and the image of him as a chubby, rosy-cheeked boy was stamped on my memory. But he didn’t even hesitate: shouting my name from halfway across the cafeteria in Gómez Millas, he approached me with an enormous smile on his face, gripping me with his powerful arms. “Dude, it’s me, Miguel!” That afternoon we skipped classes to go and drink beer over by the gas station.   

Rodewald had married Beatriz. He showed me a few photos on his mobile: a tall, tall blonde, pale and smiling, embracing him on a beach in Rio. A tall, tall blonde holding her birthday cake up. A tall, tall blonde, posing next to him at a family meal.

In addition, Rodewald had also become a sociologist. 

He’d gone back to Coquimbo a couple of times, but not as a boy: the year we’d last seen each other his mom had died of a heart attack, which completely crushed his dad, and in an attempt to flee from his memories he took refuge in a life dedicated exclusively to work. Rodewald only went back in his twenties. One time he took Beatriz with him, and they walked the same streets the two of us had once walked.

After this initial meeting, we once again started seeing each other every day. That first night we ended up at his flat with his wife, talking and laughing until, to our surprise, we opened the curtains to see the morning light poking through. We talked about our own pasts as if they belonged to other people. Mere witnesses to those boys, we were men, as far away from the stories we told as we were from our homes.

Three weeks later, Rodewald left again.

 

2

Beatriz became a widow at the age of twenty-five. She was also from Temuco. They moved because Miguel was offered a good position and she had decided she would support him in the decision. They had no one in Santiago apart from Bea’s father, who lived between Vitacura and Algarrobo.

After Miguel’s accident, she chose to stay in the capital. A return to Temuco would surely have been the end of her. Santiago gave her the tranquility of anonymity: every day she could discover a new neighborhood, a festival, a square. She walked a lot. When she’d walked enough to be familiar with everything within a fifteen-block radius, she decided it was time to buy a car. Another car, that is. She lost the first one when she lost him.

I began accompanying her on her trips, initially because I wanted to know more about Rodewald. It was impossible to talk to a dead man, so I talked to her instead. Neither one of us felt like sitting down to memorialize him, which is what happened when Beatriz visited home and had to endure all those conversations, always patiently and politely: how are you doing, I still can’t believe it, twenty-nine years old, how can someone die at twenty-nine, I don’t know how you can keep going. That wasn’t our style.

We tried to find a way of keeping him in our presence without mourning him. She helped me explore the world of the guy she was embracing in those photos. The guy who’d become my friend before death had showed up out of nowhere, right before our eyes. We who would never die, our lives barely having begun, we were so aware of the limits of others’ lives and so oblivious of our own.

Over time her company became revitalizing. On weekends, we’d go out and have lunch. We wanted to find new, different places, that was our project, to traverse the length and breadth of Santiago. Of course, our definition of “the length and breadth of Santiago” only included the space within the outline formed by Los Zapadores to the north, Matucana to the west, Departmental to the south, and Bea’s father’s house to the east. Sometimes, when she felt like driving, we’d go to Mahuida and drive up as high as the car would take us, which wasn’t very high. We’d walk through the reserve for a mile or two, and she’d talk to me about the way her boss exploited her, about the wedding of her older uncle, who’d sworn never to marry again, about the thousand different personalities she had as a teenager: hippie, goth, hip-hop head. I looked at her and tried to imagine her as a goth: blond and milky white, dressed in black and made up for a funeral. A goth at her wedding. A goth panting her way up Mahuida. I told her that ever since I was little I’d been obsessed with the smell of gas. For her it was the smell of the water in the cistern. We both liked the sound of stones as they hit the surface of the water before sinking.

Occasionally she’d turned up unannounced at my flat. “I’m downstairs,”she’d say, the car engine still running. She’d smoke as she waited. She smoked so much! I’d take ten minutes to have a shower and find a T-shirt. I guess she assumed that if she was alone, I’d also be alone. After all, the city was something both of us were merely borrowing. Santiago. And I had gotten used to how new loves and friendships always vanish before long.

Her father, who hated seeing her alone and found himself forced to confide in me, asked me to suggest that we take a trip to the beach together. If I say it, she’ll definitely think I’m doing it to protect her, and Bea has never allowed herself to be protected, he told me. Beatriz is strong, at least on the outside. Inside, it’s hard to know. I’m going on holiday to Panama, and you can stay in my house. Come on, it’ll do her good to get out of that apartment. Contrary to what her father believed, the truth is that Beatriz was never there. She worked all day managing a mid-level department in the Catholic University. In the evenings, after work, she walked home: twelve blocks via Portugal, Diagonal Paraguay, Rancagua, Salvador, and Francisco Bilbao. She’d make coffee, have a shower, drink the coffee when it had cooled down, we’d have a five- or ten-minute text conversation, and then she’d turn on the TV and fall asleep before the commercials.

 

3

We were eleven years old, behind the church: me, Rodewald and two other friends, and night was already beginning to fall. We’d agreed to meet to burn Juampa’s plastic pencil case because his grandfather had given him a new one, much bigger and with the logo of El Indio Mining, where he worked, printed on the side. So Juampa donated his old one. We filled it with dry leaves, paper, and pencils we’d brought from our houses. 

Before setting it alight, Seba sprayed it with his older brother’s deodorant. We’d already seen his brother transform the can into a flamethrower on the square, in front of all his school friends. That’s how we knew it was flammable. We couldn’t do the same thing, but stealing it to use in our pyromaniac games was daring enough in our eyes.

After bathing the pencil case in deodorant until it reeked of Atkinson English Lavender, Seba lit four matches at once and tossed them on: suddenly the whole thing was transformed into a short-lived but beautiful blue and orange flame. It only lasted a couple of seconds, then the flame began to go out and we had to strike more matches, lighting the old pencil case at its edges. The flames burnt bright, setting on their victim with no remorse. At times the pencil case seemed to be leaping about, twisting with pain.

We were four boys, eyes wide open, watching it all burn.

That night, as we walked back toward his house, Rodewald told me he’d seen a video in which a group of hyenas hunted down a wounded buffalo and ate it while it was still alive. The animal howled like it was really suffering, he said: a hoarse, drawn-out sound. As if, hanging between life and death, it had chosen to become a ghost. He told me the pencil case had reminded him of it, and that he didn’t like it. He didn’t like remembering.

 

4

We left late. Beatriz picked me up. We loaded up the car with a box full of food, beer, and tequila, and left for Algarrobo. It was cold and the rain was blowing about in the wind. Neither of us were planning to swim in the sea, so we didn’t really mind if it poured over the weekend. The idea was to bring books and fill up the days with pounds and pounds of backlogged reading, as well as the material for the PhD I’d abandon soon after. We also planned to hunt hares and doves on the outskirts of Casablanca. Actually, that was Beatriz’s idea: I was a total wimp when it came to this kind of thing, and I could barely operate a stapler. Rodewald had also had to endure his wife’s hobby, which she’d learned from her father, who in his turn had inherited it from his father.

The house was on top of a hill, a few yards away from a small wood. It looked on to the mountains, far from the hubbub of tourists and beaches. We’d hardly arrived before it began to rain and there was a power cut, so we decided to cancel the few activities we’d planned and jumped onto her father’s bed to watch films on my laptop. We opened a 40 of beer. Tell me what you want to watch, I asked. We decided on the new Batman films, all three of them. We opened another beer. We’d managed to start The Dark Knight when the battery ran out and we had to move on to Beatriz’s computer. We put some music on and kept drinking. Is the rain still bad? she asked with a smile a few minutes later, as she moved toward the window. I’ve got a joint in the car. Do you mind getting a bit wet? It’s in the little box we use as an ashtray. There was no dilemma as far as I was concerned: I put my jacket on, tied my shoelaces, and went out through the muddy entrance, circling round until I got to the car and the joint.

The wind was splattering the rain into my eyes, and I’d forgotten to bring a flashlight. It was already pretty dark. When I got back inside, I headed to the room and saw Beatriz sitting totally still before the light of the computer screen, covering part of her face with both hands. Her entire aspect had transformed. I stayed there watching her: she was in the same position for twenty seconds, as if she was praying with her face covered. Suddenly she let her head fall forward by ninety degrees, without taking her hands away, and her breathing quickened. You could see it in her shoulders. At the same time, each bone in my fingers throbbed with cold.

I took a cigarette from my wet jacket pocket and lit it, letting out a mixture of smoke and condensation, and looked into the room at that pale, limestone statue, the way she seemed to fear the storm might shatter her into pieces. I felt that only Miguel could embrace her, enter into the pit of all that hurt. Seconds later she took her hands from her face, wiped her eyes and came out to find me. Hey, did you find it, she said, smiling by the doorway. 

 

5

It was already evening when we came back with Rodewald, running breathlessly in an attempt to win the race against time and avoid a telling-off from his dad, who wouldn’t let him come out with us after seven. The time on his digital watch said nine forty. When we got back to his house we found his father smoking underneath the lintel. Rodewald came to a sudden halt. Cross the road, he said, pulling me by my T-shirt, get on the pavement, and he pushed me away. I could see from looking at the pores on his face how grave the situation was, and so I took his advice. Rodewald’s dad’s eyes followed me. I think the only thing we could hear was the sound of the earth and pebbles beneath Miguel’s feet as he approached the door to his house, dragging his feet in trepidation. I’m certain his dad could hear it too. Cars floated through the space between us, erecting a wall between one side of the street and the other. I stopped, waiting for what was about to come. When Miguel was sufficiently close, his dad told him to stay still. “Stay still”, he repeated, more firmly this time. “Lift your head up. Look at me.” He noticed the ash stains on his arms and shorts. Show me your hands. Miguel didn’t want to. “Your hands!” he shouted. He showed him the black palms that gave us away. “Now put your hands in your pockets. I said look at me, raise your head, and put your hands in your pockets.” He might as well have asked him to look directly into the sun without blinking. Everything stopped after that. Often we beach kids didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to each other. We’d wake up one morning to find that the houses were empty again, awaiting new guests, perhaps people without children our age. Other times there’d be hugs and farewells. And on other occasions, such as this one, sudden departure was the punishment laid down for disobeying the rules. That’s how it started. The slap went down in history. The sound of his dad’s arm cutting through the air and breaking like a wave upon the cheek of my friend, Miguel Rodewald. There was no going back. “Stand up straight. Move your hands from your face. I told you to put your hands in your pockets. Stand up straight and look at me!” His face had turned a dusky red. He didn’t wait for Miguel to open his eyes before landing the second blow. There was the short, sharp sound of the palm striking the boy’s tear-sodden skin, before this time he let out a yell and fell to the floor. Just as I was starting to think that the man would keep on hitting him until he died, he stopped and entered the house. I couldn’t move, I just wanted Miguel to look at me so I could ask him to forgive me for leaving him alone, at the mercy of the hyenas. But then, suddenly, instead of tidying himself up and going inside, he turned around and ran off. He refused to accept the fate that awaited him in the house. I wanted to shout and tell him not to do it, but instead I followed him. Go back or they’ll kill you, I was thinking. They’ll kill you, they really will.

After one block I saw him stop in a small, dark square with wooden swings. Seba’s older brother’s friends had broken all the streetlamp bulbs and no one ever came to replace them. When I got to him he was hiding behind a bench and crying inconsolably. I sat down with him and begged him to go back home so they’d stop hitting him, believing that this was the only punishment a boy could possibly receive from his dad. Still crying, Miguel Rodewald hugged me tightly and between the sobs he let out a single phrase, faltering and disjointed, like a leaking tap: burn him. Burn him, burn him. I took his miserable face in my hands, wiped away his mucky tears, and gave him a long, suffocating kiss. Don’t worry, we will, we’ll burn him. We’ll burn him, I repeated, and then I burst into tears.


“Hyenas” © Eduardo Plaza. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2019 by Rahul Bery. All rights reserved.

Hienas

1

Yo era muy amigo de Miguel Rodewald. Nos conocimos porque su familia solía veranear en Coquimbo. Viajaban desde Temuco. Cuando pendejos, su papá arrendaba una casa a pocas cuadras de la nuestra, en El Llano. Éramos cinco los que nos juntábamos detrás de la iglesia, en un sitio pelado donde, por las tardes, ejecutábamos nuestro pasatiempo favorito en vacaciones: prenderle fuego a cualquier cosa. Cuadernos llenos, ropa vieja, basura, pelotas rotas y descosidas. Después nos saltábamos hacia adentro a robar agua. Más tarde, si ya no había ánimo para quemar porquerías, matábamos las horas desinflando ruedas de autos. O dejando marcas de zapatillas en las puertas blancas de las casas más bonitas. La de Rodewald era una de ellas. Al menos así fue durante las tres primeras semanas de febrero por cuatro años.

Lo vimos sentado en la entrada, mirando pasar los autos de izquierda a derecha y no sé por qué, en vez de esperar que se metiera en la casa, le pregunté si podíamos marcar la puerta a patadas, y qué importaba, si no era suya. Ni suya ni de su padre. Quizá yo quería ponerme a pelear. Quizá era solo por joder a este niño que no hacía más que mirar hacia la calle todo el día y que, contrariamente a enojarse o salir huyendo, me preguntó si él podía hacerlo primero.

Ese era Rodewald y yo era muy amigo suyo.

Nos reencontramos mucho más viejos. Digo “reencontramos” porque llegó uno de esos febreros y ya no estuvo más. No volvieron. Nunca le pedí su teléfono, para qué, si nosotros no teníamos, no todos tenían por esos años. ¿Acaso pensaba llamarlo? Y fin. Los niños de la playa vivíamos siempre con ese destino precario: hacer amigos que desaparecían.

Llevaba viviendo un año en Santiago cuando lo volví a ver. Nos topamos haciendo el mismo ramo optativo en la universidad. Yo comenzaba un doctorado que después de un tiempo dejaría a medias, como todo por esos días, mientras él liquidaba los últimos créditos pendientes de un magíster que debía defender ese mismo año. Me costó reconocerlo: estaba delgado, alto y un poco calvo, mientras que en mis recuerdos se imprimía un niño gordo de mejillas brillantes. Pero él no dudó un segundo, gritó mi nombre desde la mitad del casino en Gómez Millas, se acercó con una enorme sonrisa y me apretó con sus brazos fuertes. ¡Soy Miguel, hueón! Esa tarde no entramos a la clase y fuimos a tomar cerveza al lado del servicentro.

Rodewald se había casado con Beatriz. Me mostró algunas fotos en su celular: una rubia altísima, pálida y risueña lo abrazaba en una playa de Río. Una rubia altísima sostenía su torta de cumpleaños. Una rubia altísima posaba junto a él en una comida familiar.

Rodewald, además, se había convertido en sociólogo. Había vuelto un par de veces a Coquimbo. No cuando niño: su mamá murió de un infarto el último año en que nos vimos y eso aplastó por completo a su papá, que arrancó de los recuerdos familiares y se refugió en una vida dedicada exclusivamente al trabajo. Rodewald volvió con veintitantos. Una de esas veces, junto a Beatriz, y caminaron las mismas calles que caminamos nosotros.

Desde ese día otra vez nos comenzamos a ver a diario. Esa primera noche terminamos en su departamento, junto a su mujer, conversando y riéndonos hasta que nos sorprendimos descorriendo las cortinas para dejar pasar la luz de la mañana. Hablábamos de nuestras historias como las historias de alguien más. No éramos sino testigos de esos niños. Nosotros éramos hombres. Hombres tan lejos de nuestros cuentos como de nuestras casas. 

Tres semanas después, Rodewald se fue otra vez.

 

2

Beatriz quedó viuda a los veinticinco. Ella también era de Temuco. Migraron porque le ofrecieron un buen puesto a Miguel y ella decidió apoyarlo. En Santiago no tenían a nadie salvo al padre de Bea, que vivía en Vitacura y en Algarrobo.

Tras el accidente de Miguel, prefirió quedarse en la capital. Se hubiera muerto en Temuco, seguro. Santiago le entregaba la tranquilidad del anonimato: todos los días podía descubrir un barrio nuevo, una feria, una plaza. Caminaba mucho. Cuando caminó suficiente como para conocer quince cuadras a la redonda, decidió que era tiempo de comprar un auto. Otro. El primero lo perdió cuando lo perdió a él.

Empecé a acompañarla en sus salidas. Al principio porque quería saber más sobre Rodewald. Conversaba con ella porque era imposible conversar con un muerto. Ninguno de los dos quería sentarse a conmemorarlo, como solía pasar cuando Beatriz viajaba a su casa y debía soportar aquellas charlas sobre cómo estás tú porque yo todavía no lo puedo creer. Veintinueve años. Quién puede morir a los veintinueve años. No sé cómo te sostienes en pie. Y Beatriz siempre amable. Ese nunca fue nuestro estilo.

Más bien, lo que hacíamos era buscar la forma de tenerlo presente sin padecerlo. Yo aprendía de ella para conocer el mundo del tipo al que abrazaba en las fotografías. El tipo en el que se había convertido mi amigo antes de que la muerte apareciera así, frente a nosotros, que —recién empezando a vivir— no íbamos a morirnos jamás, tan conscientes de los límites de la vida ajena y tan inconscientes de la propia.

Con el tiempo su compañía se volvió renovadora. Salíamos a almorzar los fines de semana. Queríamos encontrar lugares distintos, ese era nuestro proyecto, recorrer Santiago completo. Por supuesto, nuestra definición de “Santiago completo” solo incluía lo que se encontraba al interior de la figura que formaban Los Zapadores por el norte, Matucana al poniente, Departamental hacia el sur y la casa del padre de Bea al oriente. A veces, cuando ella andaba con ganas de arrancar, nos íbamos al Mahuida y subíamos hasta donde llegara el auto. No era mucho. Caminábamos dos o tres kilómetros más por la reserva. Me hablaba del explotador de su jefe. Me hablaba del matrimonio de su tío mayor, el que había jurado no casarse de nuevo. Me hablaba de las mil personalidades que tuvo durante la adolescencia, cuando se creyó hippie y se creyó gótica y se creyó hiphopera. Yo la miraba e intentaba imaginarla gótica: rubia y blanquísima, vestida de negro y maquillada para funeral. Gótica en su matrimonio. Gótica subiendo el Mahuida con la respiración vacilante. Yo le contaba que desde chico tenía una fijación por el olor a combustible. Ella, por el olor del agua del estanque del baño. A ambos nos gustaba el sonido que hacían las piedras al chocar contra el agua antes de hundirse.

En ocasiones llegaba de improviso a mi departamento. “Estoy abajo”, me decía, con el motor del auto encendido. Esperaba fumando. ¡Cómo fumaba Beatriz! Yo demoraba diez minutos en ducharme y buscar una polera. Supongo que asumía que si ella estaba sola, yo también lo estaba. Después de todo, ambos habíamos tomado esta ciudad prestada. Santiago. Y yo seguía habituado a que los amores y los amigos no tardaban mucho tiempo en desaparecer.

Su papá, que odiaba verla sola y se vio forzado a confiar en mí, me pidió que le sugiriera un viaje a la playa. Si se lo digo yo, seguro va a pensar que lo hago para protegerla, y Bea nunca ha permitido que la protejan, me dijo. Beatriz es fuerte, al menos por fuera. Por dentro es muy difícil saber. Yo me voy a Panamá de vacaciones. Quédense en mi casa, vamos. Le hará bien salir de ese departamento. La verdad es que, contrariamente a lo que su papá creía, Beatriz no estaba nunca allí. Trabajaba todo el día como encargada en un departamento de medio rango en la Universidad Católica. Por las tardes, después de la oficina, caminaba a casa: doce cuadras por Portugal, Diagonal Paraguay, Rancagua, Salvador y Francisco Bilbao. Preparaba un café, se duchaba, se tomaba el café tibio, conversábamos cinco o diez minutos por mensaje de texto, miraba televisión y se dormía antes de los comerciales.

 

3

Teníamos once años. Estábamos detrás de la iglesia con Rodewald y dos amigos más, ya casi oscureciendo. Quedamos en juntarnos a quemar el estuche plástico de Juampa porque su abuelo le había regalado uno nuevo, cobrizo y metálico, mucho más grande y con las letras grabadas de Minera El Indio, donde él trabajaba. Entonces Juampa ofreció el otro. Lo llenamos con hojas secas, papeles y lápices de grafito viejos que habíamos traido de nuestras casas.

Antes de prenderle fuego, el Seba lo roció con el desodorante sprayde su hermano mayor. Ya habíamos visto cómo él jugaba a transformarlo en lanzallamas cuando se juntaba en la plaza con sus compañeros del liceo. Así supimos que era inflamable. Nosotros no éramos capaces de hacer lo mismo, pero robárselo para usarlo en nuestros juegos de piromanía ya era un acto que considerábamos temerario.

Después de bañar y apestar el estuche a Atkinson lavanda, el Seba prendió cuatro fósforos juntos y los lanzó: de pronto todo eso se convirtió en una breve pero hermosa lengua azul y anaranjada. Fue solo un par de segundos, luego la llama comenzó a apagarse y tuvimos que encender más fósforos, quemando el viejo estuche por sus puntas. Las llamas lucían vivas, atacando a su víctima sin reservas. Por momentos el estuche parecía saltar, retorcerse de dolor.

Éramos cuatro niños de ojos enormes mirando todo arder.

Esa noche, mientras caminábamos hacia su casa, Rodewald me contó que había visto un video en el que un grupo de hienas cazaba a un búfalo herido y se lo comían mientras seguía vivo. El animal gemía como si estuviera penando, decía: un sonido ronco y largo. Como si, entre la vida y la muerte, hubiera preferido convertirse en fantasma. Me dijo que el estuche se lo había recordado. Y que no le gustaba. No le gustaba recordar.

 

4

Salimos tarde. Beatriz pasó por mí. Cargamos el auto con una caja de comida, cervezas y tequila y partimos a Algarrobo. Hacía frío y corría viento de lluvia. Ninguno quería bañarse en la playa, así que no había problemas si caían gotas durante el fin de semana. La idea era llevar libros y ponernos al día con kilos de lectura atrasada, además del material del doctorado que pronto tiraría por la ventana. También pensábamos salir a cazar liebres y tórtolas en los alrededores de Casablanca. Era Beatriz quien lo pensaba, en realidad: yo era un perfecto cobarde para esa clase de cosas y con suerte sabía usar una corchetera. Rodewald también había sufrido con el pasatiempo de su mujer, que lo había aprendido del padre, quien, a su vez, lo heredó del suyo.

La casa quedaba sobre una loma y a metros de un pequeño bosque. Apuntaba hacia los cerros, lejos del ruido de turistas y playas. Apenas llegamos se puso a llover y se cortó la luz, por lo que decidimos suspender las pocas actividades que planeamos y nos tiramos en la cama de su papá a ver películas en mi laptop. Abrimos una cerveza de litro. Dime qué quieres ver, le pregunté. Nos decidimos por las nuevas de Batman, las tres. Destapamos otra cerveza. No alcanzamos a empezar TheDark Knight cuando se acabó la batería y tuvimos quepasarnos al computador de Beatriz. Pusimos música y seguimos bebiendo. ¿Estará lloviendo muy fuerte?, me preguntó risueña minutos después, mientras se acercaba al ventanal de la pieza. Es que tengo un pito en el auto. ¿Te importaría salir a mojarte un poco? Está en la cajita que usamos de cenicero. Para mí no había dilema: me puse la chaqueta, me até las zapatillas y salí por el barro de la entrada, rodeando la casa hasta dar con el auto y el pito.

El viento hacía que las gotas salieran disparadas a los ojos y yo había olvidado llevar linterna. Ya estaba decididamente oscuro. Cuando volvía adentro, pasé por fuera de la habitación desde la que brillaba la luz del computador, y frente a él, inmóvil, Beatriz tapándose parte de la cara con ambas manos. Su talante había cambiado. Me quedé mirándola: estuvo veinte segundos en la misma posición, como rezando con el rostro escondido. De pronto dejó caer la cabeza hacia adelante noventa grados, sin destaparse, con la respiración acelerada. Se notaba en sus hombros. A mí el frío me punzaba cada hueso en cada dedo.

Tomé un cigarro del bolsillo húmedo de la chaqueta y lo encendí, echando humo mezclado con vapor, mientras miraba la estatua de caliza pálida erguida en la habitación, temerosa de deshacerse bajo el temporal. Pensé que solo Miguel podía abrazarla y entrar en el foso de esa pena. Segundos después se quitó las manos del rostro, se limpió bajo los ojos y salió a buscarme. Por favor, dime que lo encontraste, me dijo sonriendo en la entrada de la casa.

 

5

Ya era de noche cuando volvimos con Rodewald, corriendo sin aliento, intentando ganarle la carrera a los minutos para evitar el reto de su papá, que no lo dejaba juntarse con nosotros más allá de las siete. En su reloj digital eran las nueve cuarenta. Cuando llegamos a su casa, encontramos a su padre fumando bajo el dintel de la puerta. Rodewald frenó en seco. Cruza, me dijo, tomándome de la polera, ándate por la vereda del frente, y me empujó. Yo sentí el espesor del momento en los poros de su rostro y le hice caso. Su papá me siguió con la mirada. Creo que lo único que oíamos eran las piedrecitas

y la tierra bajo las pisadas de Miguel, que avanzaba hacia su puerta arrastrando los pies con temor. Estoy seguro de que su papá también las oía. Los autos pasaban flotando entre nosotros, levantando un muro entre un lado de la calle y el otro. Me detuve a esperar a que sucediera lo que iba a suceder. Cuando Miguel estuvo suficientemente cerca, su papá le dijo que se quedara quieto. Quédate quieto, repitió más fuerte. Levanta la cara. Mírame. Notó las manchas de cenizas en sus brazos y en los pantalones cortos. Muéstrame las manos. Miguel no quería. ¡Las manos!, gritó. Dejó ver las palmas negras que nos delataban. Ahora métete las manos en los bolsillos. Mírame, levanta la cara y métete las manos en los bolsillos, te dije. Aquello era como pedirte que miraras directo al sol de mediodía sin pestañear. Entonces se suspendió todo. Los niños de la playa muchas veces no lográbamos despedirnos, podíamos levantarnos una mañana cualquiera y darnos cuenta de que las casas volvían a estar vacías, esperando nuevos arrendatarios, quizá sin hijos de nuestra edad. Otras veces se iban con abrazos. Y había otras, como esta, cuando la despedida era la condena impuesta por desobedecer las reglas. Así comenzó. La cachetada marcó el hito. El sonido del brazo de su papá cortando el aire y rompiendo como una ola sobre la mejilla de Miguel Rodewald, mi amigo. Eso era un nunca más. Ponte derecho. Sácate las manos de la cara. Te dije que te metieras las manos en los bolsillos. ¡Ponte derecho y mírame! Su rostro ahora era rojo y negruzco. No esperó que Miguel abriera los ojos para repetir el latigazo. Un sonido breve y ácido de su palma chocando

contra la piel empapada del niño, que esta vez soltó un gemido y cayó al suelo. Cuando pensé que seguiría golpeándolo hasta matarlo, el hombre se detuvo y entró. Yo no podía moverme, solo quería que Miguel me mirara para pedirle perdón por dejarlo solo a merced de las hienas. Pero entonces, de repente, en vez de limpiarse y meterse a la casa, se dio media vuelta y salió corriendo. Se negó a aceptar lo que le esperaba adentro. Quise gritarle que no lo hiciera, pero en vez de eso lo perseguí. Vuelve o te van a matar, pensaba. En serio te van a matar.

Una cuadra más adelante lo vi meterse en una plazuela sin luz con columpios de madera. Los amigos del hermano mayor del Seba habían roto los focos y nunca nadie llegó a cambiarlos. Cuando lo alcancé, lloraba sin consuelo escondido detrás de una banca. Me senté con él y le rogué que volviera a su casa para que no le siguieran pegando, creyendo que eso era todo el castigo que un niño podía recibir de su papá. Sin dejar de llorar, Miguel Rodewald me abrazó con fuerza y entre sus gemidos dejó escapar una sola palabra, entrecortada y sin ritmo, como una gotera incesante: quémalo. Quémalo, quémalo. Tomé su rostro triste con ambas manos, limpié sus lágrimas sucias y le di un beso largo y ahogado. No te preocupes, que lo vamos a quemar. Lo vamos a quemar, repetí, antes de ponerme a llorar.

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