All Is Silence (11 page)

He closed the window of the room and all he could hear was the unmistakable knocking of the boxwood needles. They were in a home for old people and not such old people with Alzheimer’s. Amparo’s illness was something else. She was convinced she could remember everything.

‘Poor things! They sometimes forget their own names. I’m the one who has to remind them.’

She tapped her forehead with her index and middle fingers. ‘It’s all in here!’

Next to Amparo was her carer, a young and kind girl.

‘Her hands get more and more agile,’ she said. ‘Look at them. It’s as if the skin is smoother and her hands move more quickly. Good hands for making lace, aren’t they, Amparo? And who’s this little marvel for?’

Amparo Malpica stared through the large window with melancholy.

‘It’s for my son. For when he’s born.’

The neuropsychiatrist had said, ‘Her mind has suppressed a time that hurts her. Her illness is a property. The property of erasing a period of her life. Or at least erasing it as an explicit memory. Something we call retrograde amnesia.’ The period she’d kept alive was precisely her experience as a girl, before she left Uz and went to live with Lucho in the seaside house in A de Meus. Fins knew the dynamite had exploded not only on the boat. His mother, in her own way, had put an end to a life that included him. But seeing her there, physically well, with her agile fingers, that fertile gaze, dispossessed of the fears that used to hold sway over her, knowing her name, smiling at anyone passing by, he couldn’t help feeling annoyed.

‘So what you’re saying is she forgets what she wants to forget?’ he asked reproachfully.

Talking to Dr Facal, he had the impression that he was before the sea and the sea was stronger than him.

‘No. Memory is often painful. She’s gone past the limit of pain. In order to survive, her mind has rejected the bit that’s hurting her. Memory has these strategies. She could have chosen a different path. But she’s chosen this one. We’ll never fully understand why.’

‘Is it reversible?’

The doctor took her time. In Fins’ experience, he knew that if the answer was positive, he’d have been told it already.

‘The truth isn’t always pleasant,’ she said eventually.

And this was the truest thing he’d hear in a long time.

‘
ISN’T THAT THE
son of Malpica, the one who died using dynamite?’

They gazed from the sea. Used to seeing from the outside in. From west to east. From darkness to dawn. From mist to morning. At varying depths. Several of them half submerged, the water around their waists. They moved like amphibians, with effective slowness, overcoming hydraulic resistance with their home-made diving suits of waterproof clothing over wool, their whole bodies like pistons plunging down, digging, scratching, harvesting the sea with ancient implements, long-handled hoes, rakes, forks. Their heads covered in an array of scarves and hats.

These women had been his world. They’d all passed through it. Guadalupe, Amparo, Sira, Adela, Belvís’ mother, Chelín’s mother, even Leda, with their buckets full of cockles and sacks of clams.

‘It is. I heard he studied to become a policeman.’

‘Do you have to study for that?’

‘It all depends . . . Not if you want to walk around with a truncheon in your hand, like your husband.’

‘That’s right, woman!’ The gatherer of shellfish gestured with the rake between her legs. ‘I bet you wish your husband had a truncheon like mine!’

They all burst out laughing.

‘Go wash out your mouth!’

‘Leda . . . she’s a clever one.’

The shellfish harvesters resumed their work. In search of molluscs, their bodies transformed themselves into strange, prehistoric monsters.

‘They say he’s going to be an inspector, a secret investigator.’

‘It can’t be that secret if you know all about it!’

‘That’s what I heard. Doesn’t bother me! He can be an astronaut for all I care.’

‘Oooh, an astronaut would be nice!’

The women’s voices and laughter combined at that hour with the sea’s phonemes, the screeching and splashing, greedy warnings of vigilant birds. Fins couldn’t help himself. He took a photograph. Just one. And withdrew like a poacher.

In front of the house in A de Meus, the hand on the door, calling outwards. Inside what gave him the warmest welcome was the oilskin tablecloth, on which stood an abandoned bottle, with a trail of wine like a tidemark. At dusk Fins wandered along the coastal road. Stopped at Chafariz Cross, where he used to wait for the bus. Stuck his hands in his trouser pockets. A normal man should always have some spare change. He hesitated. He had a good excuse for staying where he was. But by the time he realised, his feet had already transported him to the door of the bar. He could hear the hustle and bustle of a Friday night.

Without touching the door handle, he moved to one side and peered in. The luminous novelties of the Rock-Ola and game machines.

Behind the glass, in that large belljar, memory fermented. Life twisted and turned to the sound of music. With him on the outside.

Rumbo was filling glasses on a tray placed on the counter.

A little further down, on the other side of the counter, Leda and Víctor. He was sitting on a tall stool with a glass in his hand, looking serious. She was standing up, playing with her finger at curling the taciturn man’s hair. At that point the mocking, seductive gesture was the centre of the world. A gesture he recognised, which said, ‘Where are you?’

Leda turned to heed Rumbo’s call. Fins could see her face to face. The pottery of time had improved any memory. He was afraid he might be seen, he who was an expert in angles of shade. A specialist in shade. He could measure the textile thickness of shadows. There were shadows of satin, wool, cotton, nylon, polyester, velvet. Transparent. Waterproof. But when he peeped in again, she had her back to him, with the tray in her hand. From the eye of the catafalque, life became painful again. People were coming. He ran away from their intrusive radiance.

WELL, LOOK WHO’S
coming. Look who’s just come in. I’m not surprised the bats are bothered. They’ve been hanging there for months, chewing on the shade, and now they’ve woken. Hear, I don’t think they have any problem hearing, and anyway Malpica has forgotten where to put his feet. Who’d have thought he’d end up looking so ugly? He knocks against all the geographical features. We’re all right. I’m a local. My nest is made. The blind mannequin and the one-armed skeleton no longer surprise me. Or the desiccated crane. How well they did those eyes. Those little dots that look everywhere at once. Wherever I am, they can see me. They’re watching out for me. I found my place. My hideaway. Even the pendulum has calmed down. And in this little corner, this screened cubbyhole with its slats of disarranged books, there’s a scent of coves, as if the sea itself came up here one night, to the map of wood, and left all these cracks and beads. The box with its glass lid and sign that says ‘Malacology’, whoever thought of that name, full of all kinds of shells and periwinkles, which I took out of the grid and put somewhere else. There were also collections of butterflies, beetles and spiders imported from America, some of them as big as your fist. I have respect for spiders. I once squashed one, a little one, on my best shirt. It was a white shirt and the bug kept climbing up, so in the end I squashed it. Never squash a spider on your shirt. You wouldn’t believe the amount of blood a bug like that can hold. A whole life’s worth. The same as a hit. The gentle pulling of the piston once you’ve found the vein. The colour of blood, the initial colour, can handle everything. The same with the amber liquid. And then you pump blood of your own blood. A blood pump. In three movements. I like to pump in three movements.

The point is, several years ago, when I was more hung up than ever, they saved my life. I gathered and sold the zoological troop, the ranked creepy-crawlies, spiders, silver-plated beetles, American butterflies. I said to the guy, ‘I’ve brought you the whole of Genesis, this lot is worth a fortune.’ So he went and gave me a ball of smack, ‘Here’s your globe, so you can stuff it up your arm.’ That’s why there are species, so I can get a fix. But not the collection of malacology. He didn’t want to see it. It must have been because of the name. Or because we’re sick of shells around here. Not me. I get genuinely sentimental whenever I set eyes on anything remotely shelly. Like the conch of a hermit. Now that’s what I call architecture. That is art. Like sea urchins. That is beauty, their spines. If I was standing face to face with one of those famous artists, I’d stick a sea urchin in his hands and say, ‘Go on then, do it, if you’ve got the balls!’ There has to be a mysterious mystery for such symmetries to grow in the sea. Now they’re uninhabited, the crabs have gone to hell, but the shells are good company, they adorn the ruins on this side of the School of Indians. The hermit crabs will be hiding behind some geographical feature, I suppose. I’m not quite sure what part of the world I’m in. It feels like the Antarctic on account of the cold. But everything went well. Everything was going well. The spoon secure, stuck between two volumes of
Civilisation
. Don Pelegrín Casabó y Pagés. Chronicles can be extremely useful. Thank God for
Civilisation
. At the height of his work, my hands are free to warm the smack in the water. To see the amber colour of smelting. And so on until you pump the geographical feature in three movements.

I didn’t forget that bit about the geographical features. ‘The eagle now is hunting flies. Tell me, Balboa, the names of some geographical features.’ It’s funny what stays and what doesn’t. That teacher, Lame, Exile, always used to say, ‘We are what we remember.’ What do I know? We are what we remember. We are what we forget. Whenever I forget something, I stick my tongue where my tooth is missing. Where all the things I forget go. I’ve a hiding place there that is a bottomless well. Exile also said, ‘Nothing is heavy for someone with wings. You have wings, don’t you?’ Of course I have wings, Don Basilio. Like Belvís. He wasn’t a bad guy, Don Basilio, though he looked tired of children and was always playing around in the clouds or out gathering words. That’s what he was like, always on the trail of other sayings, in the same way we used to search for grapes left over from the harvest. When he came down, he did so very carefully. One day he asked what we wanted to be when we were older, and I went and said, ‘A smuggler!’ He replied, ‘Better to say “entrepreneur”, child. “Entrepreneur”!’

That catechist with the cropped white hair told us we all had an angel. A guardian angel, we all knew that. But she gave details. She wasn’t fooling around. There were angels whose task was to watch over and care for God’s throne, organise the celestial rehearsals. I could understand that. It all seemed reasonable enough. God’s not going to keep tabs on everything, on whether they move his chair this way or that, what time the sun is going to rise, whether there’s a flood over here and a drought over there. And then there are the guardian angels, those who side with us, with the flock we are. I really liked the explanation about why they aren’t visible, why they don’t have a shadow, so to speak. Because they’re a profession, not matter. They come and go, do their work, this is good, that isn’t, but they don’t inspect you, don’t pop the bill in the post or pester you. They work and let others work without getting in the way. If it wasn’t like that, it would hardly be life. For you or for them. ‘Where you going?’ ‘I dunno, for a walk.’ ‘What you using that for?’ ‘I like it.’ ‘It ain’t good, you know it ain’t good.’ ‘If I like it, it can be good, so stop bugging me.’ ‘What you want a weapon for?’ ‘What weapon?’ ‘That pipe.’ ‘What pipe?’ Blasted angel, digging around where he’s not wanted, his feathers on fire. But on the other hand, you know your Guardian A. is there for you, to give you a message and bugger off. That’s what I would call a transparent profession. Then we’ll get the Last Judgement. Sounds reasonable enough. ‘Proceedings were instituted, here you have the report on so-and-so.’ ‘Mr Xosé Luís Balboa, also known as Chelín, we understand from your Guardian Angel that you were in possession of a firearm. What was it for?’ ‘For lining dogs up against the wall, Mr St Michael.’ ‘Very well, let us proceed to weigh your soul.’ At which point St Michael gets out the scales for weighing human souls, which are remarkably like the scales used by a refined dealer who supplied me in a villa on the outskirts of Coruña. Shame that catechist never came back. That girl I met once in the disco Xornes. With the cropped hair. She looked younger than she really was. Had a man’s hoarse voice. She must have been an angel. Because there’s a third class of angels, or so I understand. Errant angels like her. For whom sky and earth are closed.

And in he comes, Ugly Mug, digging around. I’d just got my fix, the flash had gone by and I was coming down slowly. I was back in the Antarctic, next to Malacology, and thinking of giving Don Pelegrín a go. You can’t read very well in the semi-darkness of the Antarctic, but I’ve read plenty of saints in here. I’ve a soft spot for Lord Byron. You what? Lord Byron contemplating the freedom of Greece. And in he comes, stepping on the geographical features. Sticking his nose in where it’s not wanted. Both matter and profession. He could be an eagle, I suppose. While he’s up north, he won’t spot me. All the same, I’d better put the tools in the shed of
Civilisation
, stay still as the crane, between the planks of wood. He’ll be reminiscing about Johnnie Walker. He sits down at the teacher’s desk. Pokes around inside the typewriter. Removes bits of fallen tiles. Blows away the fluff and dust. Pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket. Wipes the keys, bars, carriage, platen. Starts typing with his eyes closed. Mission nostalgia, Malpica!

O my godmother! You never know where to expect her next! Be amazed, blind mannequin. Be amazed, one-armed skeleton. Well, blow me down. Be amazed, Mr Crane. Be amazed, Mr Chelín. Because who should enter the stage but Nine Moons! Earth, swallow me up. No, Leda, you shouldn’t be here. What’s she doing in Operation Nostalgia? A century, a millennium, has gone by. Franco snuffed it years ago. Some weirdo went and shot John Lennon. Leda’s working in the Ultramar. She has a son with Brinco. And Brinco, well, he’s the number one. When Brinco’s involved, everything goes swimmingly. He’s the best pilot in the whole estuary. The best pilot in the world. There’s not a submarine will catch him. He’s got himself an iron angel, a fearless guardian. The women are crazy about him. What you doing here, girl?