Chapter 2: The Mortar and the Master
The ten bags of thin-set mortar were a dead weight in the trunk of Damián’s sedan. He’d had to fold the rear seats down, and the gritty dust from the bags had already coated the immaculate interior. He didn’t care. The act of loading them, of driving them up the mountain, felt like a penance. A necessary offering.
The white van was there. No music today. Just the sharp, percussive sound of a hammer striking wood.
He parked, the sound of his car door closing too loud in the clear air. He didn’t go to the main entrance. He walked straight to the garage side door, as if reporting for a shift.
Mateo was inside, squatting by a damaged floor joist, assessing it with a critical eye. He glanced up as Damián entered. “You brought it.”
“It’s in the car.”
“Bring it in. Here.”
Damián turned. He made six trips, heaving each eighty-pound bag onto his shoulder, carrying it into the dim garage, and stacking it where Mateo pointed. Sweat soaked through his sweater by the third bag. His muscles burned. He said nothing.
Vasile entered from the main house, wiping his hands on a rag. He watched the seventh bag land with a thud. “Slow,” he commented idly.
On the tenth and final trip, as Damián dropped the bag onto the pile, Mateo stood. “Sweater is dirty now.”
Damián leaned against the stack, catching his breath. “It’s fine.”
“Take it off.” Mateo’s tone left no room for discussion. It was the same tone he’d use to say pass the wrench.
A cold tremor, unrelated to the mountain air, went through Damián. He pulled the sweater over his head, the static making his hair stand up. The garage was chilly.
“T-shirt too,” Vasile said from behind him. He was leaning against the workbench, arms crossed. “You are sweating. You will get sick.”
The casual cruelty of the command, framed as fake concern, was a new twist. Damián peeled the damp t-shirt off. The air prickled against his skin.
Mateo walked a slow circle around him. “The pants. They are covered in dust from the bags. You will track it everywhere.”
Damián’s fingers fumbled at his belt. The button. The zip. He pushed his jeans and boxer briefs down in one motion, stepping out of them, leaving the small pile of clothing on the concrete. He stood in the grey, uncertain light, exposed. His body was lean, well-cared for, a stark contrast to their rugged, weathered forms. He was shivering.
“Better,” Mateo grunted. He went to the new stack of thin-set bags, slit one open with a utility knife, and scooped out a heavy glob of the grey powder with a margin trowel. He walked back to Damián. “Arms out. Turn around.”
“What?”
“You heard him,” Vasile said.
Damián complied, spreading his arms like a scarecrow, turning slowly. Mateo began spreading the mortar. Not on the wall. On him.
The powder was icily dry at first, then, as Mateo spat onto the trowel and mixed it right on his skin, it became a cold, abrasive paste. Mateo troweled it in broad, rough strokes across Damián’s pectorals, down his sternum, over his abdomen. It was shockingly cold. Damián gasped, his skin tightening into gooseflesh.
“Hold still,” Mateo murmured, intent on his work as if Damián were just another substrate. “This is a good mix. Good for filling cracks. For making a smooth surface.”
Vasile came over, took another scoop directly from the bag with his hands, and crouched down. He began applying it to Damián’s thighs, kneading the gritty mixture into his skin, his fingers digging into the muscle. “See, the skin is like a canvas,” Vasile said, his voice a low monotone. “It accepts anything. You just have to prepare it right.”
They were coating him. A living, breathing doll of cement and shame. The dust filled his nostrils, coated his lips. He kept his arms wide, trembling from cold and adrenaline. The material dried quickly, pulling his skin taut, an ever-hardening shell.
Mateo stepped back, admired his handiwork. A streak of grey across Damián’s chest. “Now, the tiles. We need to see if they are level.”
Vasile took Damián by the arm, his grip firm on the drying cement, and guided him—stiffly, awkwardly—toward a stack of large, rectangular subway tiles leaning against the wall. The cold of the tiles seeped into his back as Vasile pressed him against them.
“Arms on the stack. Head down.”
Damián leaned forward, his palms flat on the cool ceramic surface, his cheek resting against it. The dried mortar on his chest cracked slightly with the movement.
He heard the rustle of clothing, the drop of a tool belt. He didn’t need to look. He knew.
Mateo moved behind him. There was no spit, no preamble, just the brutal, tearing push of entry. Damián cried out, a sharp sound that echoed off the bare garage walls, his forehead pressing into the tiles.
“Quiet,” Mateo grunted, setting a relentless, punishing rhythm. “The music is off. The whole mountain can hear you.”
Each thrust drove him harder into the stack of tiles. They shifted slightly, clacking together with a sound like teeth. The dried mortar on his front scraped and crumbled against the smooth ceramic. Pain and a degrading, hollow pleasure merged into a single electric current. He bit his own arm to stifle the sounds.
When Mateo finished, pulling away with a final, rough shove, Damián stayed bowed against the tiles, his body throbbing. The cold air hit the wetness on the back of his thighs.
He expected a respite. There was none.
Vasile took Mateo’s place. His approach was different. Slower. More exacting. He didn’t just take; he positioned. He placed his hands on the cracking mortar on Damián’s hips, adjusting the angle, forcing his spine into a deeper arch. “There,” Vasile breathed, almost to himself. “Now it is level.”
His entry was a slow, excruciating pressure that burned. Damián groaned, the sound muffled by his own flesh.
Vasile moved with a cruel, surgical precision. He talked, his voice calm and close to Damián’s ear. “You think about your wife? When you are here? You think about your drawings, your meetings?” He thrust deeper, drawing another choked gasp. “This is the only thing that is real now. This feeling. The rest is a ghost.”
He was right. In the agony and the humiliating rapture, the world—the chalet plans, his city life, Elena—dissolved into a faint, grey mist. Only this crushing weight, this violation, was tangible. True.
When Vasile was done, he held himself there for a long moment, his breath hot on Damián’s neck. Then he withdrew.
They left him there, slumped against the tiles. He heard them moving around, gathering tools, the clink of a water bottle. Normal sounds.
After a time, a bucket of water sloshed down at his feet. A stiff-bristled scrub brush landed beside it.
“Clean yourself,” Mateo said, already walking toward the door to the main house. “And clean the tiles. Your mess is on them.”
Damián slid to his knees. The water was freezing. He took the brush and began scrubbing at the grey, cracking shell on his chest. It came off in gritty, pasty chunks, revealing the red, abraded skin beneath. It took a long time. He scrubbed his thighs, his arms. He scrubbed the smears from the tiles.
He dressed in his dusty clothes, his body feeling raw and foreign inside them. As he buttoned his jeans, his fingers brushed over tender, bruised skin. He winced.
Mateo popped his head back in. “We need expansion joint foam. The canister kind. And a new diamond blade for the wet saw. You will get it tomorrow.”
Damián just nodded, staring at the grey, dirty water in the bucket.
Vasile appeared behind Mateo. He looked at Damián, really looked at him, taking in the red marks, the exhaustion in his eyes, the way he stood—slightly hunched, protective.
“You learn fast,” Vasile said. It wasn’t a compliment. It was an observation, like noting that cement had set properly. He reached out and flicked a last bit of dried mortar from Damián’s hair. “Tomorrow, don’t wear such nice clothes. You are wasting them.”
They left.
Damián drove home in a silent daze. The hot shower was a ritual of agony. The spray stung the brush-burned skin on his chest. He soaped himself three times, but the smell of dust and sweat and them seemed embedded in his sinuses.
At dinner, Elena was talking about a gallery opening. He nodded, pushed salmon around his plate. “The work is more physical than I expected,” he said, when she asked why he seemed so tired. “Lifting materials. It’s good for me.”
He went to bed early, feigning sleep when she joined him. He lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. His body ached in specific, secret places. A map of the day.
He thought of the expansion joint foam. The diamond blade. A list of errands for his masters.
A strange, calm emptiness settled over him. The fight was gone. The fear had transformed. It was just the work now. The real work.
He slept more deeply than he had in years.