Every time they came by, the tower of bodies covered by the straw sack would be added to. Bodies with their skulls crushed and cratered, shoulders dislocated, rather than having been shot. And now and then, bodies that still appeared relatively intact, dressed carefully in neat hospital gowns, and swathed in bandages.
On one occasion, the bodies of ten people they’d just piled up seemed to be missing their heads. At first I thought they’d been decapitated; then I realized that, in fact, their faces had been covered in white paint, erased. I swiftly shrank back. Necks tipped back, those dazzlingly white faces were angled toward the thicket. Staring out into the empty air, their features a perfect blank.
—
Had these bodies all been packed into that street?
Had they been there alongside me, jostling my elbow, part of that vast mass of humanity whose voices ebbed and surged as one, yelling and singing and cheering at the buses and taxis that inched their way through the throng, headlights on, making a show of solidarity?
What happened to the bodies of the two men who’d been gunned down in front of the station, which some of the protesters loaded into a handcart to push at the head of the column? What happened to those two pairs of feet bouncing gently in the air, almost unseemly in their nakedness? I saw a shudder run through you the moment you spotted them. You blinked violently, your eyelashes fluttering in agitation. I grasped your hand and tugged you forward, toward the head of the column, while you muttered to yourself in blank incomprehension, our soldiers are shooting. They’re shooting at us. I pulled you toward them with all my strength, opening my throat to sing while you seemed on the point of tears. I sang along with the national anthem, my heart fit to burst. Before they sent that white-hot bullet driving into my side. Before those faces were canceled out, expunged by white paint.
—
The rot ran quickest in the bodies at the base of the tower, white grubs burrowing into them until not an inch of skin was left untouched. I looked on in silence as my face blackened and swelled, my features turned into festering ulcers, the contours that had defined me, that had given me clear edges, crumbled into ambiguity, leaving nothing that could be recognized as me.
As the nights wore on, increasingly more shadows came and pressed up against my own. Our encounters were, as always, poorly improvised things. We were never able to tell who the other was, but could vaguely surmise how long we’d been together for. When a shadow that had been there from the first, and one that was newly arrived, both came to touch my own, extending along flat planes and folding over edges, I was somehow able to distinguish between them, though I couldn’t have said how. Certain shadows seemed marked by the weight of long drawn-out agonies, whose depths I was unable to fathom. Were these the souls of those bodies whose clothes were roughly torn, who bore deep purple bruises beneath each fingernail? Every time our shadow-boundaries brushed against each other, an echo of some appalling suffering was transmitted to me like an electric shock.
If we’d been given a little more time, might we have arrived, eventually, at a moment of understanding? Might we have groped our way toward exchanging a few words, or thoughts?
But this thread of quiet nights and days was severed.
That day, the rain bucketed down all through the afternoon. The sheer force of it sluiced the caked blood off our bodies, and the rot ran even quicker after this ablution. Our blue-black faces gleamed dully in the light of the full moon.
This time, they arrived earlier than usual, before midnight. As I always did at the sound of their approach, I angled myself away from the tower of bodies and melded seamlessly with the shadows of the thicket. The past few days had always brought the same two people; this time, I immediately made out at least six figures. They gripped the new bodies roughly, carrying them over and piling them up in a much more slapdash manner than the usual neat cross shape. This done, they immediately drew back, covering their noses and mouths as though gagging on the stench, gazing at the tower of bodies with a vacant look in their eyes.
One of them went over to the truck and returned with a plastic can of petrol. His back, shoulders, and arms tensed up as he struggled under the load, staggering toward our bodies.
This is it, I thought. A multitude of shadows quivered all around, grazing my own and each other’s with soft shudders. Trembled meetings in the empty air, instantly dispersing, edges overlapping again, a soundless, fluttering agitation.
Two of the soldiers who’d been standing back came forward and took the plastic can between them. Working calmly and methodically, they removed the lid and began to pour the petrol over the towers of bodies. Making sure that each was evenly covered, that no body got more or less than its fair share. Only after shaking the last drops out of the can did they draw back to a safe distance. Each of them broke off a piece of dried shrubbery, sparked their lighters, and, once the flame had caught, hurled it forward with all their strength.
—
The blood-stiffened clothes, their rotting fibers matted to our flesh, were the first to burst into flame. After that, the flames ate steadily through the head’s thick hair, the fine down covering the body, then fat, muscle, and innards. The blaze roared up as though threatening to engulf the wood. It was as bright in the clearing as it was in broad daylight.
It was then I realized that what had been binding us to this place was none other than that flesh, that hair, those muscles, those organs. The magnetic force holding us to our bodies rapidly began to lose its strength. At first shrinking back into the thicket, we slipped past each other’s shadows, passing over and under like a caress, until finally, clinging to the heavy clots of black smoke being belched from our bodies, we soared up into the air as though exhaled in a single breath.
The soldiers began to return to the truck—all but two, who, seemingly having been ordered to stay and watch until the very end, remained in their places, standing at attention. I skimmed down toward them, flickering around their necks and shoulders, where one bore the insignia of a private first class, the other that of a sergeant. I peered into their faces. How young they were. How their black pupils, dilated with fear, reflected the bonfire of our bodies.
The sparks spat out from the blaze snapped like fireworks. Water in the viscera hissed and boiled, until the organs dried and shriveled. Black smoke rolled off our rotten bodies in ragged, intermittent breaths, and in those places where there was nothing left to produce it the white gleam of bone was revealed. Those souls whose bodies had already been thus reduced drifted farther away, their wavering shadows no longer sensed. And so eventually we were free, free to go wherever we would.
Where shall I go? I asked myself.
To your sister.
But where is she?
I made an effort to keep calm. My body was at the very bottom of the tower, so there was still some time before the fire consumed it.
Go to those who killed you, then.