B0040702LQ EBOK (6 page)

`Is that her?'

`Yes.'

`That's my niece, Susana.' She paused, then in a much
lower tone, she added: `She died five years ago.'

Arturo felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Not
because he believed what the old lady had just said, but
because he assumed she was mad, and there was no other sign
of life in the house. Only the sound of the rain.

`You don't believe me?'

`Yes, I do, but I could have sworn ...'

They looked at each other with stricken expressions.

`We met at a dance.'

The sentence struck the old lady full in the face. The fine
wrinkles on her skin trembled.

`Her father never allowed her to go dancing. He's in South
America. May God forgive him ... ! You don't believe me?'

`Yes, I do.'

Suddenly, the little old lady's tone of voice calmed Arturo.
`She's probably not dangerous,' he thought to himself, `the
main thing is to humour her.'

`If you like we can go to the graveyard and I'll show you
her grave.'

`Of course.'

`I'll get my cloak. I'll just be a moment ...'

Arturo was left alone. Gripped by fear, he tiptoed towards
the door. But caution made him slow. He had not quite
reached the door when the old lady came back.

They went out. The rain had stopped, it was a clear night
with clouds scudding across the sky. As they walked up the
hill to the place where the cemetery lay, their feet grew heavy
with mud. The wind had died down, and the coolness of the
earth refreshed everything. In vain they called for the gatekeeper. Evidently he had gone out or fallen fast asleep. Arturo
insisted they should turn back. Her word was good enough
for him. (It must be very late. His mother would be expecting
him.) They were just about to leave when the old lady made
one last attempt and discovered that the gate was only closed,
not locked. As might be expected, the hinges creaked, making
them stop in their tracks, just in case, they didn't know why.
They went in. There was no moon, but the light of the stars
was growing bright enough for them to make out the paths
and the cypress trees. Puddles glistened. Frogs. They advanced
without difficulty till they came to a long wall, in which the
recesses for the coffins seemed blacker against the night.

`Have you got a match?'

Arturo patted his pocket, brought out his lighter and
produced a flickering light, which seemed immense in the
darkness and enabled him to read on a glass-covered plaque:

Here lies the body of Susana Cerralbo y Munoz.

Died aged eighteen years.

28 February 1897

Between the marble plaque and the glass, in a frame just like
the one in the sitting-room, was a portrait of Susana smiling.

Arturo slowly lowered the hand holding the lighter, which
fell to the ground. Mechanically, he followed it with his eyes
and when they reached the earth they discovered there, dry
and neatly folded, his raincoat. He picked it up. He stared at
the old lady, his mouth open in astonishment. In the distance
a light was approaching. It was the gravedigger.

`What do you want? Don't you know you're not supposed
to wander around here at this time of night?'

On the other side of the wall, a youngster passed singing a
song:

`I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you ...'

Arturo took to his heels. Afterwards, as usual, the years
passed. ('Silence runs with mute steps,' as Lope de Vega put it.)

The young man, who soon ceased to be one, became very
friendly with the old lady. In her house, while the evenings
limped away into night, they talked interminably of Susana.
He died not long ago, a bachelor, a virgin and poor. He was
laid to rest beside the girl, though no one could explain this
vehemently expressed wish. The old woman disappeared. I
have no idea what happened to her; the house was knocked
down.

The raincoat went from owner to owner without ever
wearing out. It was one of those garments that get passed on
to sons or younger brothers, not because the owner has had a
lucky win, or grown too fast, but because nobody really likes
it. It travelled far: the Rastro market in Madrid, the Encantes
in Barcelona, the Flea Market in Paris, a second-hand clothes
shop in London. I've just spotted it, altered to fit a child, in the
Lagunilla Market in Mexico City, because clothes get smaller
rather than bigger as they grow older.

It was bought by a sad-faced man for a little girl, pale and
drawn, who clung to his hand.

`It suits you!'

The girl seemed happy. Now, don't go jumping to
conclusions: her name was Lupe.

© Helena Aub

Translated by Annella McDermott

Max Aub (Paris, 1903-1972) was the son of a French mother
and a German father. The family moved to Spain in 1914 and
later took Spanish citizenship. In 1939, following the Spanish
Civil War, Aub crossed to France, spending three years in a
French concentration camp, before leaving for Mexico, where
he spent the rest of his life. There he published three novels on
the Spanish Civil War: Campo cerrado (1943; Field of Honour, tr.
G. Martin, Verso, 1989), Campo de sangre (1945) and Campo
abierto (1951), as well as a large number of short stories and
novels on other themes. Aub is best known as a writer of
fiction, though he also wrote plays and essays. He made several
incursions into the world of fantasy, notably in the book of
short stories, Ciertos cuentos (1955), from which this story is
taken.

I

When, at the beginning of this century, a part of the French
army seized the historic town of Toledo, its leaders, mindful of
the dangers they risked if billeted separately in Spanish towns,
began by adapting Toledo's largest and finest buildings to
serve as their barracks.

Having occupied the Alcazar, the magnificent fortress
palace of Charles V, they next took over the Tribunal, or Casa
de Consejos, and when that was full, they began to invade the
seclusion of monasteries and convents, till finally they turned
even churches into stables. Such was the state of affairs in the
town where the events I am about to relate took place, when,
one night, very late, there arrived as many as one hundred
dragoons, tall, broad and arrogant (as our grandmothers still
recall with bated breath), wrapped in their dark uniform
capes and filling the narrow, deserted streets that run from the
Puerta del Sol to the Plaza de Zocodover with the clanking of
their weapons and the loud ringing of their horses' hooves,
which struck sparks from the cobbles.

They were under the command of a youngish officer who
rode about thirty paces in front of his men, speaking in low
tones to another man, also a soldier, to judge from his clothing.

The latter, who was walking ahead of his companion with a
lantern, appeared to be his guide through that labyrinth of
dark, narrow, winding streets.

`Truly,' said the rider to his companion, `if the lodgings
being prepared for us are such as you describe, it would perhaps almost be better to set up camp in the countryside, or in
the middle of a square.'

`What can I do, Captain,' replied the guide, who was, in
fact, a billeting officer. `You couldn't squeeze another blade of
grass into the Alcazar, far less a soldier. And as for San Juan de
los Reyes, there are monks' cells with fifteen hussars sleeping
in them. The monastery where I'm taking you wasn't a bad
place, but three or four days ago, one of those special squadrons that are everywhere in the province suddenly appeared,
and we should be grateful that we managed to pile them into
the cloisters and leave the church free.'

`Very well,' said the officer after a short silence, as though
resigning himself to the strange lodgings offered him by fate.
`At least if it rains, as seems likely from the look of those clouds,
we shall have a roof over our heads, which is something.'

The conversation ended at this point, and the horsemen,
preceded by the guide, continued in silence till they arrived at
a small square on one side of which could be discerned the
dark silhouette of the monastery, with its Moorish tower, its
belfry and steeples, its pointed dome and the dark, uneven
ridges of its roof.

`Here is your lodging', exclaimed the billeting sergeant to
the officer, who, having ordered his troops to halt, dismounted, took the lantern from the hands of the guide and
advanced in the direction indicated.

As the monastery church had been stripped of its furnishings, the soldiers occupying the rest of the building had taken
the view that the doors were now of little use; and gradually,
one board at a time, they had ripped them out to serve as
firewood.

Our young officer thus had no need to force locks or slide
back bolts in order to enter the church.

By the light of the lantern, whose flickering beam wavered
among the dark shadows of the naves and cast on the wall the
monstrously enlarged shadow of the billeting sergeant who
went before him, he examined every corner of the church,
inspecting all the deserted chapels one after the other, then
finally, having satisfied himself as to the nature of the place, he
ordered his troops to dismount and organised them as best he
could, men and horses all together.

As we have said, the church had been dismantled: from the
tall cornices of the altar there still fluttered the tattered remnants of the veil with which the monks had covered it before
abandoning the church; all along the naves there were altarpieces leaning against the wall, with the images removed from
their niches; in the choir, a beam of light revealed the strange
shapes of the larchwood pews; amongst the paving stones,
which were cracked and broken in several places, one could
still see broad tombstones engraved with seals, coats of arms
and long Gothic inscriptions, and in the distance, in the
depths of the silent chapel and along the transept, stone
statues could be glimpsed in the darkness, like motionless
ghosts, some lying full length, others kneeling on the marble
of their tombs, seemingly the only inhabitants of the ruined
building.

Anyone less exhausted than the officer of dragoons, who
had covered fourteen leagues that day, or less accustomed to
observing these acts of sacrilege as if they were the most
natural thing in the world, might have been kept wide awake
by his imagination that night in the dark, imposing church,
where the blaspheming of the soldiers, loudly cursing their
improvised lodgings; the metallic ring of their spurs on the
tombstones on the floor; the sound of the horses, neighing
impatiently, tossing their heads and clanking the chains with
which they were tethered to the pillars, created a strange and
fearful cacophony that filled the whole of the building and set
off a muffled echo in the lofty vaults.

But our hero, though young, was already so familiar with
the vicissitudes of military life that no sooner had he settled
his men than he called for a sack of fodder to be placed at the
bottom of the chancel steps and then, wrapping himself as best
he could in his cloak, he lay down and, within five minutes,
was snoring away as peacefully as King Joseph himself in his
palace in Madrid.