Pedro the Vast

The chainsaws went quiet all at once. Pedro lowered his arms and rested his machine against a tree. He took off his helmet and wiped the sweat from the visor. Daylight savings meant an earlier dusk, but he still left work at the same time: His departure was as dark as his arrival in the morning. He collected his things and went to change with the rest of the crew.

He imagined the heat of an invisible cigarette as the truck swayed along. Half an hour for a Sudoku sheet, not speaking to anyone. Patricio, his son, had given him a book of those mysterious puzzles. He found them so strange at first. It’s simple actually, Pato had said. You just have to find the right number. Now, with patient practice, he’d made it halfway through the book. He’d just started the hard level and was struggling not to fall asleep before he finished the first exercise. He held the sheet against the back of a snoring coworker and his pencil trembled, at the mercy of the dirt road.

Toward the end of the ride, he decided to get out a little early and pick up something to eat for later. He felt in his pocket for the necklace of eucalyptus pods he’d made. They were like gleaming gems, the little cones coated in green moss. Secret emeralds he treasured between his fingertips. Before, he used to give them to Pato for his collection, but his son was too old for that now, so he made chokers for Catalina. In the chill of the night, his breathing was punctuated by a deep, heavy cough, like a dog’s. Dejected and weary, clutching a bag of bread, Pedro walked with a fist pressed to his mouth.

As he opened the door, Cata dropped the pencil she used for her homework and threw her arms around him. Pedro hugged her and went to the kitchen, took out a pot, filled it with water, added some long dry leaves he’d extracted from a jar in the cabinet. He covered the pot with a cloth, lit the burner, and sat to wait for everything to boil.

“Are you making that weird mixture again?”

“It’s just eucalyptus steam. An expectorant. Good for a cough.”

“I know. Can I help?”

“No, it’s okay. Go give your sister a hand.”

Pedro lifted the cloth when the water reached a boil and the kitchen filled with fragrant vapor. Cata asked when they were going to eat. Pato told her to focus on the assignment, said a quotient meant how many times something is contained in another thing, stop resting her chin in her hands and hold the pencil properly.

Pedro shut his eyes, letting the steam sear his face. He took a long, deep breath until he felt his lungs open like the doors of a train and a sense of elation lifted him up, an eagerness that reminded him of the time he and María traveled up north, their plans to get married, the colors they glimpsed through the window of that train from Concepción to La Calera, seven thirty in the morning, sitting together in the second car, the soothing smell, then the heat seeping into his nostrils, expelling phlegm that had been caught in his throat for weeks, like the wheels of a stopped machine starting to whir. A violent cough, then the watery emerald Pedro spat into the sink.

Once Catalina was asleep, Pedro tossed his backpack, reeking of the day’s clothes, into the bedroom. As he tugged off his boots, he felt a strange presence in his hand, spreading over his skin like damp hair. He swore under his breath and wiped the moss on his pants, his arms, the chest of the thin pajama shirt he’d worn for years. The sticky organism reminded him of the next day’s labors and the scent of the forest. He got into bed. In a single deft gesture, the sheets drew his body from the light. He closed his eyes and coughed again.

Outside, the neighborhood dogs barked at a pale, still moon whose light revealed certain objects: the pair of boots at the foot of the bed, clothes tossed onto a chair, a nightstand crowded with family photos and a darkened portrait, half the TV set, three ends of a cross nailed into the iron headboard, reflections in the glass over an autographed Fernández Vial shirt, framed and hung on the wall, various cosmetics and creams all coated in a fine layer of dust that looked like dew in the half-light.

Curanilahue hadn’t been like this until recently. The water wasn’t always that color. Why doesn’t Catalina want to do her homework. When are parent-teacher conferences. What happened today to that bastard Juan Carlos. What’s the deal with this fucking cough. María was right: The city had gotten so sad. What’s the math teacher’s name. So poor. They should leave. Probably Tuesday. The river used to be beautiful. The cool water. She was so pretty. The rain-slicked tracks and the Spanish moss hanging from the hawthorns. My dad happy to hear I was getting married. Pamela? In her beekeeping suit. Her spring dress. Mariana? The pots of honey in the yard. The clear water where the bees went to drink. The estuary swelling enormous. A floating house.

*

Giovanna jolted awake. It was still dark and the alarm hadn’t gone off yet. She let out a deep sigh, pulling the quilt up to her shoulders and curling into a fetal position. In fifteen more minutes, her cell phone would show the first signs of morning on the nightstand, the noise, the daily riff that would continue in later conversations, the neighbors’ poodle barking, thumps on the shower knob, text messages, drills, jib cranes, steamrollers and shouting from the nearby construction site, dirty plates, traffic, a thousand loudspeakers, clumsy coworkers, the hum of people in the street, talking on the phone, arguing in a restaurant, laughing and crying at the same time, the genomic sequence, the stained lab coat in the laundry, the idiotic neighbor lady and her fights with her husband, the stuck knob in the shower, the hot water that won’t come, that runs out quickly, cut off, like the melody of a flute that clatters to the floor.

Giovanna had fallen back asleep. The fifteen minutes dilated there, snagged between dark trees. She was running far into the distance. She felt chased by fire, fleeing through the woods, afraid she’d stumble.

Two hours later, she parked outside the lab and waited before getting out of the car. She took a long, hard breath, eyes shut, as if trying to use up all her air, expel it from her body.

Entering the lab, she greeted her coworkers with a swift rearrangement of her face. She felt uneasy. She went to her spot, set her phone on the desk, pulled back her hair, draped her jacket over the seat, put on her white coat, opened a fridge, and removed the petri dishes she’d put there the day before. She placed them on the table and examined each one under the microscope, jotting down data in a notebook. She spent the entire morning this way.

As she watched the coffee machine burble and fill, she tried to calculate how many panic attacks she’d had in her life. She remembered an afternoon when she hadn’t been able to find her running shoes. The sun was bright outside and she’d gone two days without leaving the apartment, working on a series of calculations for her dissertation. It was her third year studying mycology at the University of Manchester. She’d just finished the genomic sequence for a lichen and set up a calculation on her lab computer that would process remotely, and she decided to go for a run, take advantage of the weather. She put on an athletic hoodie, leggings, and clean socks, but she couldn’t find her sneakers. They weren’t under the table or the couch or hidden under the books, magazines, and mugs scattered all over the living room, bedroom, terrace, and kitchen. She sat down on the bed, wondered how it was possible. They had to be somewhere. The only person who’d come by in recent days was Tiffany, who’d slept over on Sunday night. But there was no way. She couldn’t have taken them.

Then she noticed a small spot on her chest that was sucking the air inward, a pressure in her arms that made them go limp. She placed her hands on the wall, curved over herself. She couldn’t speak or move. She stayed still, scarcely feeling the air that passed in and out of her. It was like standing in the sleet. A white, paralyzing cold that gripped her in broad daylight in the English spring.

Some afternoons, alone in the lab, something returned her to that moment. She’d learned to face it over time. She’d rest her hands on the metal counter. She’d stay completely emotionless, letting herself sink. Close her eyes. Count through the series of prime numbers.