Mihaela Šumić

We are indebted to tracks for all we know about the world. Foot- prints, handprints, fingerprints, toothmarks, tracks on paths, in rocks, in wood, on bone, bodies, paper, in words which we spend centuries prying apart, we shunt like stones along the path on our way to discover the crux of emptiness and the germ of fear. ‘We are indebted to tracks for all we know about the world’, repeats María Rosa Ibarra Sánchez decades later at the opening of an exhibition of shells in the capital city of the country she’d abandoned before she and the country were sure of themselves, then she’d look around, seeking the vanished face of her father in the crowd, she’d look for him in the light refracting off the searing pavement, she’d look for him in the crumpled bits of paper on the floor of the house in the village, the same house where she grew up and where she’d refused to set foot for years. She’d find only tracks of pain and guilt which like merciless armies marched through this deserted, mute space.
Many years before she was born, in the forest near the village, two tracks were discovered resembling large paws, so large that the vil- lagers kept revisiting the spot for days, measuring the width and length, comparing them with their own feet, hands, with the paws of a dog, a wolf, a bear, but in comparison with the horrific tracks everything looked so tiny that nobody could figure out how a crea- ture so huge could be rambling through the forest unobserved and what sort of creature this might be.
‘Neither man nor wolf’, they repeated, circling around the tracks in the sour soil, laying their hands each time next to the tracks which would soon become the first evidence of the malice of the unknown and unseen creature, the one which, after a few days, they began referring to as ‘the Wolf Man’, though his human and animal form was out of sight somewhere beyond the trees, underbrush and low grasses.
They didn’t even know her name when they found her dead body in the forest, only a few metres below the tracks caught among the forest paths. They knew that her father, several months before, had brought her to Guillermo and Anita Vaquero’s door. She might have been 14 or 15 when she began working for them. Outside the house she was seldom seen, but whoever went in noticed how everything was pristine and tidy, and Anita’s children, all six, were washed and groomed, which until then had been utterly unimaginable. The whole village heard of the diligent hands of Anita’s new help- er, women begged Anita to lend her to them for a day every week, though they had no way to pay her, while Guillermo and Anita Vaquero had money – two vineyards not far from the village and a restaurant in the city. Rumour had it that Don Guillermo had worked in the royal secret service and that, after the dismantling of several organisations which had been planning a putsch, he was compen- sated with a few hectares of land and the restaurant by the then king of Pilango; their only customers were the rich people from that part of the kingdom. Hence Guillermo and Anita Vaquero and their six children had no need of knowing anything about life in the vil- lage; somebody else had to know it for them, someone nameless to them. There were many such nameless girls and boys who came and went, cleaned, tidied, dug, built, maintained the vineyards, mowed the sharp grass, took the livestock out to graze – the several goats and two cows Don Guillermo had been given as a welcome gift from villagers; as soon as the local people heard the Vaqueros were paying daily wages of 12 cents, they hastened to drag their children to the yard of the huge house, turned their soft and skinny hands to the sun, the sky and the curious but penetrating gaze of Guiller- mo Vaquero, squeezed their shoulders and opened their mouths to show how healthy, sturdy, hard-working they were and how they’d surely be fine workers in the field or vineyard or anywhere, and no matter what task they were given they’d be useful and their hands would surely merit the 12 cents per day. Don Guillermo nodded and smiled, always with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth: ‘But if he complains, he’ll give me back his wages from the last three days and I don’t want to see him here ever again.’
And the villagers valued Don Guillermo in this regard: he was frank and most of all he knew how to take charge, how to handle money, because, unlike them, he had some and made no effort to hide it. Soon almost all the children of the village were working for him, all except the sons of Esteban Cordero, who, at his insistence, went to the city for an education.
‘Your children can work for Don Guillermo, but mine will be Don Guillermo someday’, he said proudly before the tired faces of the villagers who now had to do all the work themselves, because their children were spending their days working for the Vaquero family.
Don Esteban Cordero was a wise but very unpleasant man. He’d of- ten walk through the village and dole out advice which nobody had asked for: don’t shoe a horse like that, but like this; digging here is a bad idea because the soil is dry and rocky, so go farther down; bricks shouldn’t be stacked like that but like this – otherwise they’ll collapse; this should be done in autumn, and not in spring. Some listened, others pretended he wasn’t there, some grumbled: ‘What, Cordero, you went to school so now you’re a know-it-all?’
It’s true that at the time, Esteban Cordero was the only person in the village who’d finished school; his father had been a shopkeeper, he ran a store in the city and wanted his son, one day, to inherit the business, but after his father’s death he was offered five thousand in cash for the premises and soon after that the store was levelled, and construction began on a hotel. With the five thousand, Esteban Cordero bought two plots of land and on each he built a house for his two sons. He’d often strut around the village and brag to the villagers that his sons with their families would be living in their own homes, not like the sons of the other villagers, who would be bring- ing their brides one day to live in the family’s cramped little house where there would no longer be room even for a bed, so they’d all have to sleep on the floor or, worse yet, in the barn, he’d say, squint- ing and raising his eyebrows, and then he’d proceed on his way.
‘Fools will brag about anything’, someone would growl at him and quarrels and shouting followed that would last for days.
Most of the villagers avoided Esteban Cordero because of this, and they’d dismiss all he told them as the empty braggadocio of a per- son who thought he was a cut above the rest.
‘If your Don Guille didn’t do this, kill me now’, he said when Don Guillermo Vaquero came running from the forest, breathless and soaked to the skin, stammering: ‘The Wolf Man… the Wolf Man killed her.’ And pointed to the lifeless body of a little girl lying on the path only a few metres below the huge paw-like tracks. Every- one came running to her body, the women crossed themselves and covered their eyes, the men nudged the girl with their feet to make sure she was dead, she was covered in scars and bruises and on her neck there were visible toothmarks, so deep that another bite would have broken through her thin, tender skin.
They didn’t know her name, they knew only that her father had brought her to the house to help Anita Vaquero with the housework and children, they knew she was hardworking and tidy, and that was all. She was buried there in the forest as a warning about the Wolf Man, his cruelty and bloodthirstiness, about his existence in the dense forest that hemmed the village in on all sides.