UNKNOWN

FAITH

Pilar Vargas is flushed pink and breathless with adrenaline when she first lays eyes on Russell. She’s high from dancing a fast, percussive Bulerías; the undisputed hit of the fruit pickers’ talent night. She’s wearing her black lace traje de flamenco – hand-stitched, tight bodice and sharp, flared skirt, open to the hip and lined with red silk. He leans in to help her unlace her castanets, and she clocks him sniffing her. His taut, ropey tanned body heats her blood.

            Later, she peels her dress off for him and lets him slide the mantilla out of her hair. ‘O Christ,’ he whispers as the dark, red rose it was securing tumbles down her naked body – hot, shaky breath across her ear – ‘Beautiful girl, Beautiful, beautiful girl.’ He lifts the tiny, golden crucifix that hangs on a fine golden chain around her neck and kisses it softly, carefully.

They move to a station on the edge of the outback. Their rusty tin-framed bed squeaks whenever they so much as draw breath. The noise it makes when they have sex is, on a good day, hilarious. They look beautiful together, she thinks, looking at their sweaty bodies looped together in the aftermath, rising and falling with breathy laughter. 

She rises each day just before the sun and walks out across the paddocks. She loves the inky blue dawn and feeling a part of the sunrise. She watches the sky shift to a paler and paler blue until it peaks into almost white, so blinding it makes her squint. It reminds her of home. She sends her love toward the sun, to her family, far away in Andalusia. She pictures them as this same sun rises on them twelve hours later, faces upturned, breathing her love in. She feels held by the love of her family, by Russell and – in an intimate, private way – by God.

DOUBT

She and Russell had planned a family, but their chances seemed increasingly diminished. Three or four times, Pilar had held her breath thinking they’d managed it, but each time she ended up bent over with cramps, then heavy, clotted bleeding. Russell forbade her from speaking to the local GP. ‘She’s a fucken’ gossipy bitch,’ he spat when she tried.

Her parents didn’t like the phone and refused to use Zoom. They were old, fearful and set in their ways. She went back a few times. She felt as forsaken there as she did at the mess she called home.

She spoke to Matias, her brother, a few times, but the sound of his children in the background poleaxed her with jealousy and grief.

She had herself tested on her last visit to Seville. Nothing. No reason. She flew home, red-eyed and frozen, feeling that her womb was withered. Poisoned.

APOSTASY

She hated Russell.

She hated Australia and her nasty, lonely outback life.

Every day was bleak heat, and the grinding whine of the rusting water pump. Every night was screaming locusts and the stutter-buzz of insects fritzing in the bug zapper. The dust crept into every crevice. Nothing was washable. Nothing could get clean.

Russell spent most nights on the veranda, drunk and morose. He kept his esky of beer and ice beside his chair, only standing to piss into the dust. He muttered, staring at the ground. He hid his thickening body from her, slept in other rooms, sometimes disappeared for a few days, even weeks, with no explanation.

One night, out of nowhere, he drank himself into a rage and tried to fuck her by force. She scratched and kicked and spat in his face. Afterwards, she slumped like a doll in the heat, panting and glassy.

INFERNO

She wandered out one February morning wearing a tiny tank and knickers.

She crossed the paddocks, leaving gates open behind her. As the sun lifted higher, the horizon seemed to bend in the heat. The back of her knees started to sting. Her bare feet cracked and split. Starving livestock stared at her with moon eyes, mad with thirst, their ribs stark and visible.

She came to the edge of the station, past the line of arable land, the last paddock before the true outback took hold.

Stared back fiercely into the sun, burning her retina.

Lifted off her tank, stood for a moment sensing the sun on her naked, wasted breasts, then dropped it in the red dust.

Unclasped her crucifix, stepped out of her knickers and left them both hanging on the barbed wire of the boundary fence. Signs. Clues.

Felt her skin starting to tighten and dehydrate.

Imagined herself flayed, picked over by carrion in the desert.

Breathed the burning air, whispered a final Ave Maria, and walked on.

Into the inferno.