My Sister’s Letters Came from the Ruins, but When I Asked Who Was Sending Them, Simon’s Face Suddenly Turned Pale

At the moment when Simon told me that he had been receiving boxes sent in my sister’s name for seven years, the glass jar fell from my hand and shattered on the stone.

Mother had sent me that jar for Hasinta. Inside were bitter peppers, pickled in oil and vinegar. In childhood my sister would dip bread into them and then say with laughter that she was eating fire. Now red peppers lay among the fragments of the jar, as if little hearts had been scattered on the ground.

“You said seven years?” I asked Simon.

“Seven, señorita. Every year the same woman came.”

“And why didn’t you tell me this until now?”

Simon shifted his gaze toward Don Melesio. The driver was checking the mule’s harness, but he was clearly watching us.

“I didn’t know that you were Hasinta’s sister. The woman said that if anyone asked questions, the boxes would stop coming.”

Something broke inside me. For seven years Mother had kissed those boxes. She kept every letter under her bed, in an old biscuit tin, beside the first childhood ribbon. And I had thought that I was touching my sister’s happiness when I read her handwriting.

Now those letters looked like a ghost.

“Where did you meet that woman?” I asked.

“At the Los Sauces station. By the old warehouse, at five in the evening. She always wore a black veil. She never left the box herself. First she showed me coins, then she told me which village I had to go to.”

“Did she say anything else?”

Simon bit his lips.

“Always the same thing. ‘Mother must not suspect anything.’”

My knees gave way. Mother was waiting for me alone at home, tormented by fever, and believed that Hasinta lived in the mountains, among the coffee plantations. She did not know that San-Lasaro-del-Monte was a village burned nine years ago. Nor did she know that I now stood among the ruins and folded my sister’s letter as if the paper might give me an answer.

“This is her handwriting,” I said.

“It may be so,” Simon answered quietly.

“Then you think she is alive?”

He fell silent.

Don Melesio coughed roughly.

“Enough. We must set out before night.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I answered.

“Staying here is dangerous.”

“My sister may be alive.”

Don Melesio caught my eyes, and for the first time I noticed that he was afraid. Not for my safety. Of his own knowledge.

“Madam, sometimes the thing we think is alive is precisely what kills us.”

That night we camped near the old warehouse. Rain struck the wooden roof, and every blow reminded me of Mother’s cough. Simon gave me a small copper whistle.

“If anything happens, blow three times.”

“Are you afraid too?”

“I am afraid of the woman who hides her face.”

At one in the morning I heard the steps of a horse. I went to the door and looked through a crack. A woman wrapped in a black veil stood by the warehouse wall. In her hand she held a folder tied with a round yellow ribbon.

She closed the door but did not leave. For several seconds she stood motionless, then opened the folder and put her hand inside. I took a step toward her when suddenly she raised her head, as if she could feel even my breathing, and spread her fingers to take out the first sheet from the folder…

…the sheet was not yet in her hand when I forced the door open. The woman stepped back, the veil slipped from her shoulder, and half of her face appeared. For only one second.

I saw a thin, white scar on her left cheek.

When Hasinta was a child, boiling tea had spilled on her, leaving a mark in exactly the same place.

“Hasinta!” I shouted.

The woman turned to run, but Simon blocked her path with his arm.

“Let me go!” she shouted.

It was that voice. Slightly hoarse, tired, but my sister’s voice.

“At least look at me!” I said, stepping in front of her.

She pulled the veil over her face.

“You should not have come, Elena.”

Those two words collapsed inside me like seven years of silence. I put my hand on her shoulder. The black fabric was wet from the rain, and below it came the smell of coffee and charcoal.

“You are alive.”

“And now go.”

“Mother is dying. She is waiting for you.”

Hasinta lowered her eyes.

“If I return, they will kill her too.”

Simon held his breath.

“Who?”

Hasinta looked at him, and such fear appeared on her face as I had seen in childhood only during thunderstorms.

“Tomás.”

At the sound of that name my body froze.

“But Tomás died in the fire, didn’t he?” I asked.

“That is what everyone thought.”

“You lived beside him for seven years?”

“Do not call that living.”

She pressed the folder to her chest. I noticed burned skin on her fingers and dark powder caught beside her nails.

“The letters?” I asked.

“Some I wrote. Some he made me write. And I prepared the boxes myself whenever I had a chance to escape.”

“Why did you lie to us that you were happy?”

Hasinta smiled bitterly.

“In the first letter I told the truth. The next day Tomás showed me a picture of Mother’s house. He told me that if I revealed even one word, he would set fire to your door.”

Something heavy rolled across the warehouse roof in the wind. I involuntarily looked back.

Hasinta came closer to me.

“He deliberately burned the village. The land documents were kept in San-Lasaro. He did not want people to remain there. After the fire everyone was forced to leave. Whoever resisted disappeared.”

“And you?”

“I was in the forest then. When I returned, Tomás found me. He knew that I was the last witness to the land.”

She untied the yellow ribbon of the folder. Inside were several hand-drawn maps, old receipts, and copies of the letters.

“Everything is here,” she said. “But one sheet is missing. The sheet that shows to whom Tomás handed the lands after the fire.”

“Where is it?”

Hasinta did not answer me. Outside, the mule’s bell rang. Don Melesio called to us, but his voice sounded strangely distant.

Simon went to the window.

“Someone is coming.”

Hasinta’s face turned pale.

“They already know that you are here.”

“Who knows?”

She took a small iron key from the folder and put it in my hand.

“Under the church of San-Lasaro there is a room. Tomás kept there what could be turned against him.”

“Then let’s go.”

“First you must know whom you can trust.”

At that moment someone knocked three times from outside the door. We heard Don Melesio’s voice.

“Elena, come out. It’s the police.”

Hasinta shook her head.

“This is not the police.”

The knocking came a second time, harder. Simon handed me the whistle. I hid the iron key in my fist when a man on the other side of the door calmly pronounced my name…

…“Elena Murgia, I know you are inside.”

The voice was unfamiliar, but it held such confidence, as if this warehouse, this road, and even our breathing belonged to him.

Hasinta pushed me against the wall.

“Go out through the back window.”

“Together with you.”

“If they catch both of us, no one will be able to bring Mother.”

Simon stacked wooden boxes on top of one another. First he climbed through the window, then Hasinta. I was last. When I landed on the rain-soaked earth, the warehouse door collapsed and the heavy steps of men sounded inside.

All three of us ran through the old trench. Dawn had not yet come. Mist stood among the trees, water dripped from the branches, and my shoes sank into the mud at every step. I held Hasinta’s hand and could not believe that she was truly beside me.

A small stone cross still stood by the ruins of the church. Hasinta knelt at the base of the wall and put the key into a rusty lock. The door opened beneath the earth.

There was such a smell there, as if no one had breathed the air for years. In the corner stood a wooden chest. An old coffee sack had been spread over it, with one letter cut into it in red.

Hasinta opened the chest.

Inside lay records, seals, and photographs. In one photograph Tomás stood in the village square, several days before the fire. Don Melesio was visible beside him.

My breath caught.

“Melesio?” I said.

Hasinta lowered her head.

“He worked for Tomás. He watched the roads and told him who had remained in the village.”

“Then why did he bring me here?”

“Perhaps because Tomás ordered him to. Or because he thought I would still not dare to tell the truth.”

At the bottom of the chest they finally found one folded sheet. On the paper was a record of the transfer of the village lands. Tomás’s name was written as the recipient, but another seal appeared beneath the signature.

Hasinta raised the sheet toward the sun.

“This is what was missing.”

“Whom does the seal belong to?”

“The regional land office. Tomás arranged the fire so that he could receive all the land in one day. But this document confirms that the deal was made before the fire. That means he planned everything in advance.”

Inside the chest we also found a small wooden recording device. Beside it was written a date, from nine years earlier.

Hasinta stopped my hand.

“Do not listen to it.”

“Is this why he threatened us?”

I turned on the recorder.

First there was crackling. Then Tomás’s voice.

“The village will no longer exist tomorrow. Whoever survives will say that everything happened by accident.”

The second voice was Don Melesio’s.

“The Murgia girl is alive.”

Tomás answered:

“Then she too will be on our side. If not, her mother will not live long.”

The recorder fell from my hand.

Hasinta began to cry, but silently. I understood why she sent the boxes, why she wrote the same calm words every year. She was not only deceiving us. She was leaving us a path.

Suddenly the sound of a car came from outside. Someone braked by the church door.

Simon looked out the window.

“Tomás has come.”

I felt not anger but cold.

Hasinta covered the recorder with her hand.

“He thought this thing had been buried forever.”

A man’s shadow appeared at the entrance to the church. Then the telephone rang. There was a message from Mother’s house on an unknown number: “Your mother is alone. If you want to find her alive, return immediately.”

Hasinta looked at my face, and then we understood that Tomás did not want only to hide the past. He had already reached Mother…