“Then I woke up. Have you ever had a dream where you got just what you wanted, and for a second when you woke up you thought it might be real? There’s absolutely nothing worse than realising you’re wrong. It’s soul-crushing, absolutely soul-crushing. Still, I should know by now that nothing is ever that neat, that simple. When I finally find Sonia and Eli, things are going to be messy and painful. I just hope to shield him from as much of it as I can.”
Rachel was quiet. He hadn’t noticed her stiffen as he spoke, but now that he was done he felt her tense body and looked down. She was staring at her swollen belly, silently rubbing it with both hands. Then, with some effort, she slid off the bed and stood.
“Let’s go out. I’m feeling claustrophobic holed up in this little room after being on that bus for so long. I think a walk will do us both some good. Just give me a minute to get ready.”
Rachel left the room and he heard her feet softly pad down the hallway. Noah went over to the window and opened it, but without a breeze the air refused to move. He looked out instead at the darkening street below. The heat radiating off the ground distorted everything he saw. The village itself looked insubstantial, as though it might vanish altogether, and instinctively he worried what he would do if that happened, how he would find his Eli. He shook his head. It was crazy. All of it was crazy. But the building heat in their room only made his thoughts more muddled, and he knew Rachel was right—he had to leave before his imagination consumed him in a blaze.
There was no one at the front desk when they left, though they could hear the señora somewhere in the back, whispering or watching television. The air outside had cooled only slightly, but remained stagnant, and he was wiping his brow after only a few steps. He hated the heat, but would endure it for Eli. Rachel wasn’t as accommodating.
“I can’t stand the feeling of my skin sticking together. Or the fact that every time I lick my lips I taste salt.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“No, I need to be moving around. Dr Mielke says I need all the exercise I can get now before I can’t do it any more.”
Even in the darkness, the broken spire of the church was still darker, a black void in the evening sky. The small buildings and houses at its foot were all without lights, as though the hanging cross cast its shadow long across the Astilla de la Cruz street. Noah and Rachel walked hand-in-hand in as straight a line as they could along the uneven pavement, and as Rachel seemed focussed on remaining upright Noah spied those people they passed on the street. None were walking, all instead silently stood and glared at the couple as they approached. When Noah came alongside, he looked at their dark faces and saw the jumble of emotions he’d seen earlier on the face of the señora at the hotel. Was it so strange for the village to get visitors from outside the country? Did Sonia stick out just as much? He wanted to show the newspaper clipping to them, find out if they held the secret of his missing child, but it was clear none of them would help. He and Rachel were strangers, and small villages despise strangers.
“It’s quiet here, isn’t it?” Rachel was panting, but not enough for it to be worrisome.
“I suppose,” Noah said. Outside, in the darkness cast by the church, little was revealed of the Astilla de la Cruz streets. The houses seemed to be less built and more sprung from the ground as though a crevice had opened from which each had sprouted. Like rows of plants, each tiny house was at a different height than its neighbour, and mixed with the random sheets strung between two poles to form makeshift tents for the less-than-poor, the terracotta skyline attained a jagged uneven appearance, slightly hallucinatory in the near-dead light. The walls of the homes looked to have been crumbling for years beneath the baking sun, which had clearly bleached the colours to dusty grey. Or perhaps that was a trick of the ebbing night. Noah could just make out the advertisement for Corona painted large upon a wall, though the paint had flaked to such a degree hardly more than the name of the beer was still visible. And yet, in front of the barely legible sign a series of tables were set up with candles burning on each—a small outside cantina, under-populated. At the furthest table from the light sat a solitary old man, perhaps in his sixties, hunched so completely his head was halfway down his chest. Yet Noah could still feel the stranger’s eyes on him, and though he tried to return the intimidation with his own glare, the man seemed unmoved. “I don’t think they like foreigners here. Hopefully that will help us flush Sonia out.”
As though on cue, a middle-aged woman approached Noah and Rachel, a smile wide across her tanned face. Noah thought he saw her eyes first, like twin moons in the darkness, bright and round and moving towards him. Only when she reached the couple did he realise she was wearing glasses too large for her narrow face, too old to be anything more than second-or third-hand. She carried a bag at her side that was misshapen and lumpy, its contents having no distinct form. Noah thought he saw peeking from its opening coloured tissue paper, dulled by the absence of light.
“¿Nos has traído un bebé?“ she said with undue warmth. Noah wondered if she were as genuine as she masqueraded to be. “¿La puedo tocar?“ She made motion with her hands, as though beckoning Rachel into them. “Ella e,” the woman said to Noah, and he was stunned to see tears had welled in her eyes. “Ella es.“
Noah stammered, unsure how to respond. Rachel, uncomfortable, shrugged.
“Gracias?“ he finally offered.
The woman smiled again and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand, then kissed it and placed it on Rachel’s belly. The contrast of foreign skin was never clearer. “Madre,” she said, then nodded her head. Rachel did the same, though it was clear to Noah she had no better clue what was occurring. The woman removed her hand and kissed it again before reaching into her bag. Rachel rubbed the spot where the woman’s flesh touched hers. From the bag, the woman produced three ochre dahlias, their stems twisted together to form some sort of wreath, and reaching up, placed it like a crown on Rachel’s head. “Una corona para la futura madre,” she said before turning and walking quickly away, back into the night. Noah watched her go, then glanced at the old bent man. His glower only intensified.
“I can see why Sonia likes it here,” Rachel said, taking the wreath off her head and smelling the flowers. She then looked at Noah with a face twisted in stunned apology.
“Sorry, honey, that’s not what I meant. I just meant it’s a nice place to raise a child.”
“I don’t think a cult is the right place for anyone, let alone a child. My child. My Eli. He doesn’t belong here.” Noah felt his anger rising, and Rachel was quick to diffuse it.
“I know, I know. We’ll find him. We’ll go out tomorrow and we’ll show the picture around. Someone has got to know where he is. The place isn’t that big. Look over there—” She pointed in the distance, up the hill that started behind the church and only went back and up into the darkness. “That’s the edge of this place. We’ve already walked across most of it. How can she possibly hide from you here?”