Obabakoak (15 page)

The sceptic cast doubt on the owner’s argument, the latter produced another anecdote as an example, Agustín chimed in with something else he remembered, I asked a question… and so it went on into the early hours.

In the summer, we’d carry one of the tables outside and enjoy leisurely conversations beneath the stars, each of us with a beer in one hand. And toward August, when the scent of newly harvested wheat wafted to us on the breeze, everyone in the group became more than usually loquacious and cheerful. The hunting season was at hand.

5. You reached the highest point of the village by walking up the hill where I lived, at the top of which villagers had built their wine stores or bodegas. From there, looking down to the right, an observer could see the village rooftops and the church’s thick, cracked walls, while ahead and to the left, over a distance of some eight miles, stretched a plain bare of trees with the River Pisuerga in the background. Behind you lay the two high plateaus that formed a deep valley where they met and extended as far as the Astudillo forest.

Punctually each day, in straggling lines and small groups, the retired men of the village made their way up there to watch the peaceful evening hours pass by. As nearly all of them were—in the words of the old riddle—men who went on three legs, they’d get as far as my house and, greeting me with a lift of their stick, take the opportunity to rest from the climb by stopping to talk for a while, then, once they’d recovered, continue on up the hill.

That was how I became friends with Julián and Benito, two of Villamediana’s elder statesmen.

The day we met, Julián said to me: “Now, sir, I know you’re cleverer than a rabbit, but I bet anything you like that you don’t know the real reason behind this daily pilgrimage.” He was a stocky man with melancholy eyes and gnarled, sclerotic fingers.

“You’re quite right, I don’t,” I replied, sitting down on my doorstep to indicate that I had all the time in the world and could stay chatting to them for as long as they liked.

Julián sat down too, but on the stone seat opposite the front door. Benito, who was leaner and stronger, remained standing. He seemed to have a lot of problems with his eyes, because whenever he looked at us he would lean forward, half-closing them and adjusting his glasses.

“But first you must clear up something else for me. What makes you say I’m cleverer than a rabbit?” I asked him.

“Of course. I’ll clear up both points this instant,” said Julián calmly. Benito, who was always circumspect in the extreme, simply nodded. Yes, his friend would explain everything to me.

“The reason I’m convinced you’re clever is because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be sitting here at eleven o’clock in the morning on a working day. You’d be in the fields or in the factory, like all the other fools in this village. You may not know it, but all peasants are fools. And I’m the biggest fool of all.”

Benito, who until then had been nodding his head, now began to shake it. But Julian took no notice and, like a Moorish
cadi
dispensing justice, merely collected his thoughts and continued in the same sententious tone.

“That’s the first point answered. Now let’s move on to the second point. I spoke of a pilgrimage and I used that word because all us old men who trudge up this hill do so in a spirit of hope. We get up every day and ask ourselves: Will I manage to get up the hill this morning? And that’s what we’re thinking about as we set off. We don’t want to be left down below. Getting left behind is a bad sign. It means we’re ready for admission to the biggest house in the village.”

“When he says ‘the biggest house’ he means the cemetery, because it’s never full,” Benito explained for my benefit.

“There was no need to explain, Benito,” Julián scolded him gently. “Haven’t I just said the gentleman’s cleverer than a rabbit? And, anyway, I obviously wasn’t referring to the town hall!” he concluded, turning to me with a wink.

I later discovered that it was often difficult to ascertain when he was joking and when he wasn’t. You had to watch his eyes all the time.

“Mind you, the church is pretty big too,” said Benito, frowning.

“There you go, always thinking about the church. But no matter, Benito, no matter. If they were to take us to the church now, what do you imagine would be the reason? To baptize us?”

And then he added, addressing me again:

“Benito is very innocent, sir. Always has been. How he ever managed to get married I’ll never know.”

“I may be innocent, but I’m sure to go to heaven,” Benito said, getting up and looking slightly grumpy.

It was a sunny spring morning and the first swallows were whistling through the clear air. After a moment spent contemplating their maneuvers, Julián returned to the topic raised by his friend:

“You were quite right to say what you said, Benito. Because I must confess that there is something that bothers me and I’d like to take advantage of this opportunity to ask the gentleman here what he thinks. What do you think, sir, is there a heaven or isn’t there?”

I too was watching the swallows, trying to buy time before giving my reply.

“They say there’s no way of knowing,” I said at last, “that each person must find the answer in his heart. But if you’ve always believed in its existence, ever since you were a child, I see no reason why you should stop believing in it now. It would be absurd to abandon a belief that’s been with you all your life.”

Benito showed his wholehearted agreement by nodding his head vigorously.

“But what do
you
think?” asked Julián, fixing me with his eyes.

“Sometimes I think there is and sometimes I think there isn’t.” I could find no other way out.

“Same here.” He sighed, getting up from the square stone bench. “I’ll tell you one thing, though, Benito. If there is a heaven, we’ll both be going straight there,” he concluded, making his final preparations before continuing their ascent.

“Well, I certainly will,” replied Benito, adjusting his glasses. He was none too sure about his friend’s spiritual future.

“Anyway,” they announced, picking up their walking sticks, “on with the test.”

Whatever their declared reasons for doing so, they didn’t climb up the hill merely to test out their strength, just as old fishermen don’t go down to the harbor simply for a stroll. Installed up there on the highest point, the retired men of Villamediana could keep an eye on the work going on in the fields and on life on the plain; they could see who came and who went, how much time it would take for someone to finish their sowing and how much time another would take to plow a fallow field. And just as old fishermen can instantly recognize a ship on the horizon, those men could identify a tractor from miles away—there goes Purísimo, oh, and that’s José Manuel getting started—where a stranger could barely make out even a shadow.

“Now you may be cleverer than a rabbit, but I’ll bet anything you like that you can’t see as many things from here as I can,” Julián said to me once. Julián, Benito, and I were sitting on the stone bench outside one of the bodegas and the plain they kept such a close watch on lay stretched out beneath us.

“I’m sure you’re right, but what makes you say so?” I asked.

“Because you only see what’s there, whereas I see both what is there and what isn’t there.”

“Such as?”

“Do you see that path?”

And with his stick he indicated a pathway that crossed the plain and disappeared into the plateau. Benito, as usual, leaned forward and half-closed his eyes.

“What do you see there? Just a path and nothing more, right? I, on the other hand, see the path that leads to Encomienda. I mean that’s what I think and when I think that, I see the place called Encomienda and in my mind’s eye I see the big old house and the fountain. And it’s the same with everything else. See those trees over there?”

“I can’t,” said Benito. The trees were a fair way off, on the banks of the Pisuerga.

“Do you remember the plot of land where we had that party when we were young?”

“The place where we went swimming?”

“That’s right, Benito. And that’s what I mean. When I see those trees I see all the parties we held when we were young. I see the girls and the boys, I see Benito and myself. Not old and decrepit like we are now, but with our white shirts on and with all the grace of our twenty years. Isn’t that marvelous?”

“It certainly is,” I said when he’d concluded these reflections. “And I’d add something to what you’ve just said, and that’s that new places always seem hostile to us. When I arrived in Villamediana, I spent the first week walking the streets of the village, from one end to the other, reconnoitering the territory, if you like. And I must admit it seemed the saddest, most desolate place in the world.”

“Call themselves Christians!” exclaimed Benito, suddenly angry.

Julián told him not to interrupt.

“Well, all I mean is that the village just seemed very hostile to me. Of course, then I could only see Villamediana with my eyes, I saw only houses, walls, windows… what you might call the outer shell. For example, I’d walk past your house and see only walls and windows. Now, though, when I walk by, I think: There’s Julián’s house. There lives the wisest man in Villamediana. That makes a big difference, I think.”

“See, Benito?” Julián said, laughing. “You see how talking helps you understand people. It’s very kind of you to call me ‘wise’ but, as everyone knows, I’m nothing but a fool. The only wise man in the village is you, Benito, not me. Now you really do see things that no one else does! Do you remember that business with the statue?” Julian asked him, winking at me. Did I know what he was referring to? Indeed I did. It was something Benito had told me some months before when we were sitting on that same bench.

“Do you like this village?” Benito had asked me then.

“Yes, I do, very much. I really like it here.”

Well, you would. It’s not surprising really. There are a lot of things to see in Villamediana, loads of them. We even have a statue of Trajan…”

“A statue of Trajan?” I said incredulously because I’d never heard anyone mention such a thing all the time I’d been in the village. I glanced at Julián to see if he could enlighten me, but in vain. By some mysterious process of mimesis, he too had been transformed into a statue.

“Yes, Trajan! We have an equestrian statue of Trajan in the village!” Benito was talking with some vehemence, banging his stick on the ground for emphasis.

“What’s it like?”

“It’s made of gold. The whole thing is solid gold!”

“And where is this statue?”

I imagined a museum or some similar institution. However, Benito raised his stick above his head, traced a few circles in the air, and declared:

“Out there somewhere!”

“Don’t you think that’s remarkable! What I’d like to know is how he can describe in such detail something that hasn’t even been discovered yet,” said Julián, guessing my thoughts.

“The council should find it any day now!” Benito said.

Two months had gone by since that conversation and the equestrian statue of Trajan had still not turned up. But by then—and this is what lay behind the wink—Julián had discovered the identity of Benito’s informant.

“It seems an angel told him about the statue. What do you think of that?”

“I think he’s very lucky,” I said, looking across at Benito’s radiant face lit up by a beatific smile.

6. Houses that have never been lived in, or, for example, holiday homes that have been built to be lived in only at certain times of the year do not tend to have ghosts. Although empty, they don’t seem it, and any murmurings you hear coming from them are never overly querulous. Such houses know deep down that their solitude will not last forever. Sooner or later someone will come. The doors will open, the lights will go on, and they’ll begin to live again.

On the other hand, houses that were lived in once but have since been abandoned seem even emptier than they really are and they begin to talk the moment they’re left alone. It’s said that the life they gave shelter to in days gone by never quite disappears and that they display odd bits of evidence to the passerby, as if displaying old wounds. Thus a curious passerby might find a kitchen utensil abandoned on the ground, the small mirror the house’s former owner used when shaving, or a metal rod that was once part of a baby’s cradle. And having listened to that revelation, the passerby comes to realize that all abandoned houses are literally crying out for someone to walk through the front door and make themselves at home.

There were some three hundred houses in Vilamediana and almost all had been abandoned fifteen or twenty years before I arrived. Beyond the church, for example, there was an area that seemed more like a cemetery for dead houses than part of the village. You would look in vain for signs of life in its deserted streets and squares. Nothing stirred, no light was lit. There were only shadows, ghosts, silence, and, in the midst of that silence, the dull clamor of the abandoned houses calling: Come in, come in, or whispering: Over here, over here.

People in the village disliked any mention of the place and did their best to forget its existence; they were even ashamed of the dilapidated state of its half-ruined walls and roofs. The few times they spoke of it, they did so with repugnance. There’s nothing but rats and snakes there now, they’d say, it’s a danger to the health of the whole village. It’s no use to anyone. It ought to be pulled down.

That very general way of talking, however, concealed an inaccuracy, or at least so it seemed to me one Sunday afternoon when, after climbing up to the bell tower of the church, I was sitting there reading. For I had the distinct impression that somewhere there was a little boy walking around. Something, some noise probably, made me raise my eyes from my book and look down below me. And there I saw a small figure apparently strolling along a winding road, appearing and disappearing from view as he followed the path traced by the curves. He was walking along, his hands behind his back, with the serenity of one of those wealthy emigrants who returned from South America at the turn of the century. From time to time, he’d sit down on a stone bench and—like me—settle down to read.