Obabakoak (17 page)

Even if Tassis believed what he said, his manner of speaking didn’t impress me. All that occurred to me was what an excellent personnel officer he’d have made.

Nevertheless, the rules governing our relationship were established according to his wishes. My “initial blunder” dictated that he would play the role of teacher and I of pupil. He would speak and I would listen. Somehow I had to be made to pay for that terrible act of compassion.

And, like good Jesuits, we both accepted the rules of the game.

“People like myself were a real headache to the wise men of past centuries,” Tassis continued, as we walked through the spot known as Valdesalce. “According to them the world and everything in it were in God’s mind from the very beginning, everything was preordained and indeed had already happened before creation. And the past, as well as the present and the future, were no more than a secretion from the mind of God. But what happened? Monsters like myself emerged. And then the wise men asked in amazement…”

He was getting himself worked up, as he had when he recited the poem by Góngora, and he paused to take a breath. His doll-like face, however, still bore that look of scorn. It occurred to me that his facial muscles perhaps lacked elasticity and that once they were set in a particular expression or grimace, it might be difficult for them to relax into a normal pose.

“They asked… but if absolutely everything was in God’s mind right from the very beginning, what could he possibly want with monsters, invalids, paralytics? Is He not Good, infinitely Good?”

By this point Tassis was doubled up with laughter.

Even in my role as good pupil, I wasn’t prepared to witness another scene like that of the first day and I suggested we continue our walk.

He agreed, but went on talking. He explained to me that in earlier ages it was thought that people like him had no soul, that they were not even considered to be human, that all manner of abuses were therefore permitted against them.

“It must have suited them to think that,” I said, interrupting. “When the Spanish went to America and set about laying waste to everything in sight, the Court philosophers decided that the Indians weren’t human either and reached that conclusion, mind you, basing themselves on the writings of Aristotle and others. They claimed the Indians were animals and that killing them was not therefore a sin. Have you ever seen the film
Blade Runne
r
?” I added.

“I don’t care for the cinema,” he replied stiffly.

“I respect your right not to like it but I see no reason to be so proud about it. Only mediocrities take pride in their dislikes,” I said, momentarily stepping out of my role as pupil.

“Touché!”
he said, laughing, and staggered about among the trees pretending to be wounded. Then he said: “What about this film
Blade Runner
then?”

“Well, it deals with a similar problem, with the question of what is a man and who is endowed with human nature and who is not. I mean, the problem could arise again. In the year 2200 a schoolchild might ask: Is it all right to kill a robot? and the answer won’t be that easy.”

“The teacher will just say: No, you can’t kill a robot because they’re too expensive,” commented Tassis and this time we both laughed long and loud.

That first outing became the model for all our subsequent ones and not only as regards the role each of us would take in the conversation or its unerringly intellectual, impersonal tone. Each outing was identical in form, length, and route.

Each Friday we would walk for two hours, from seven in the evening until nine. We’d head off away from the plain—this part of the walk we did separately—and having climbed the plateau to our right would then meet up by the forest, beneath the first oak tree. There Tassis would explain the etymology of some word or other, just as he had that first day, and, taking that subject as our starting point, we would walk along the little valleys—Valdesalce, Valderrobledo, Valdencina—that extended into the forest until, almost without realizing it, we’d reach the plateau on the left-hand side, or rather the intersection of the two plateaus, at the top of the streambed. We would sit there for a while and then follow the path home, in silence, each one thinking his own thoughts, but this time paying more attention to the landscape.

During that walk, which was repeated seven times, we touched on many topics, though I can’t remember them all. Most, however, revealed to me a Tassis who seemed far more uncertain than he had on that first occasion, though no less talkative and arrogant. I would compare what he told me with what Daniel or Julián or Benito said and on the whole their thoughts seemed more valuable.

However, what he said to me on our seventh and last walk together was different. On that occasion what Tassis said really touched me and not just because it proved to be our final walk. That day I learned many things about him.

We were sitting at the intersection of the two plateaus, with the village below us and beyond that the plain.

“What do you think,” I asked, “does Villamediana have a river or doesn’t it?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Well, the people in the village can’t agree about it. Some say that, though it lacks water, there is a river with a valley, a streambed, and banks as well as bridges.”

“Bridges? Where?” He studied the streambed with his blue gray eyes and I realized that he’d never ventured any farther than the local shop owned by a pale woman called Rosi, that he’d never been beyond the place where he did his shopping. Because the bridges (two bridges to be exact) were in the square itself.

“Between Rosi’s shop and the shepherds’ huts,” I lied, hoping to confirm my suspicions.

“Ah, yes. Now I remember,” he replied.

I realized he was afraid to risk other people’s mockery. I realized too how terrible it must be to wake up, possibly from a happy dream, only to find that one’s deformity is still there. I realized then that dawn must be the cruelest time for all those who suffer.

“The people in the village also say that, once, this river even flooded,” I said, in an attempt to dispel the thoughts going around and around in my head.

Shortly before, in an old program for the village fiesta some years before, I’d read about a flood that apparently happened at the beginning of the century and it seemed peculiarly appropriate to mention to him the strange story recounted there. The author of the program said that, during the flood, some local people had seen a white horse ridden by a man dressed in red and that the rider kept thrashing at the waters with his whip to drive them back. But he didn’t know if that had really happened or if it was just the imaginings of a terrified populace. What most intrigued me about the story was its exactitude. It was such an archetype, it could have been an entry in a dictionary of symbols. As I remarked to Tassis, the part about the rider thrashing at the waters, for example, corresponded to the so-called Xerxes complex, because that was exactly what Xerxes had done. To say nothing of the rider all in red or the white horse. There was a mass of literature about what they represented.

But I saw that he wasn’t listening and dropped the subject. Tassis wasn’t interested in symbols, only etymologies.

“I’m boring you,” I said.

“No, no, it isn’t that. It’s just that today I’d rather talk about something else.”

“As you wish.”

“I’m going to tell you about something that can’t be found in books,” he said, ironically, giving me to understand that he’d cottoned onto my latest habit. For since getting to know him, and as befits a good pupil, I too had taken to studying etymologies. “It’s to do with whether Villamediana has a river or not,” he added.

“You still think it hasn’t.”

“Of course. Since it has no water, it has no movement and therefore lacks the vital ingredient. In all things, movement is the deciding factor. Movement means life. Stillness, on the other hand, means death.” He gave a triumphant laugh, as if he’d just been acclaimed the winner of some contest. But this time, unlike on other occasions, he gave me the impression that he was only pretending, that he didn’t really want to laugh.

“All things, if they are good things, are related in some way to movement. Or to life, if you prefer. But while you cannot see life, you can see movement. I would say that movement is simply another name for life.”

“Go on.”

“If I say that a person is animated, I’m saying a lot of different things at once; I’m saying that the person has
anima
or spirit, for example, or simply that they’re cheerful. But in fact all the word
animate
really expresses is life and movement. And the same goes, of course, for
animation
…”

He fell silent, as if something else had just occurred to him. But then he continued on in the same vein.

“And what, you might ask, about that excellent word
vivaciou
s
? Where does that come from? Does that have anything to do with movement? Well, yes it does, a lot.”

“Where does it come from then?”

“From
vivax
meaning full of life, lively.”

It was the twilight hour when all the animals on earth fall silent. A gentle breeze was blowing and, in the west, the clouds were the color of dark wine. Far off, the rooftops of Villamediana were growing dim.

“Have you ever read anything by the poet Carlos García?” he asked me. I said he wasn’t a poet I was familiar with.

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason. It’s just that a few poems he wrote about this time of day, the twilight, contain some rather similar thoughts.”

“The word
twilight
appears in any number of poems,” I protested.

“But the ones I’m telling you about are good!” he shouted. But, possibly influenced by the atmosphere about us, he soon reverted to a whisper.

“Carlos García speaks of the stillness of this hour. He says that this is the hour when all the birds go to rest, fall silent, when the roads empty of people, and that, as the light fades, the landscape takes on the static quality of a stage set… and that the sky itself, with no sun traveling across it, with no shifting clouds, gives the impression of being just another backdrop.”

He was speaking very quietly, so quietly I could barely hear him. I didn’t know this Tassis at all.

“Go on,” I said.

“That’s all. All I wanted to say was that at this hour everything seems very still and that, because there are no reference points, time too seems to stop. In one way or another, it brings with it a remembrance of death.”

A little beyond where Tassis was standing there was a line of three tall plants. I noticed that only one of the plants was moving in the breeze.

“But there’s always some movement, however slight. We hear the beating of our heart, we walk…”

“Yes, of course. And that’s precisely what makes the twilight so special: It mingles life and death and that’s why it has that capacity to make you feel simultaneously happy and sad.”

We spoke ever more quietly, he even more quietly than me. The silences between us grew longer and longer.

“The spectral hour,” I said at last, for it occurred to me that specters never move.

“I’m getting cold,” said Tassis suddenly. I noticed an odd note in his voice and I looked into his face. His eyes were shining with tears.

We walked the rest of the way home in complete silence. I wanted to say something to him but didn’t know what.

“Today’s talk has made you sad,” I remarked when it came to saying good-bye.

“Oh no, not at all!” he exclaimed. But I knew he was lying.

“Would you like to go to the bar? We’ve never been there together.”

“No, thanks, I’d better rush. Claudia will be getting impatient when she sees I’m not home yet. Anyway, I have to do some shopping first.”

He hadn’t even finished the sentence when he was already hurrying off to Rosi’s shop.

The following Friday he didn’t come to the forest, nor the Friday after that. When I think about it now, it seems to me I should have gone and searched him out and asked that we continue our walks together. But I did nothing and it was only much later that I went to see him. And I did so, moreover, for the very reason he’d forbidden: because I felt sorry for him. It was the worst thing I could have done.

During the installation of a bathroom in one of the houses in Villamediana some seventeenth-century frescoes were uncovered and because of that, some restorers came up from Madrid. I met one of them in the hunters’ bar and he invited me over to see what they’d found. Viewing the paintings—the city of Jerusalem on one wall and some religious scenes on the other—didn’t take us long, however, and we soon set to talking about things in general. Inevitably we passed from the name of the village to the figure of Count Juan de Tassis and from there, my fault—of course—to that of Enrique de Tassis.

“He’s not a dwarf by any chance, is he?” exclaimed the restorer, opening his eyes wide, though I was even more surprised.

“Do you know him then?” I asked.

“He studied with me at the university. And he’s well-known in certain circles in Madrid.”

“Really?”

“His real name is Carlos García.”

I was so taken aback I couldn’t speak. My companion was looking at me anxiously. He couldn’t understand the reason for my sudden confusion.

Finally I asked him to give me a brief biography of Carlos García. He told me that he used to write and had published two volumes of poetry, neither of which, unfortunately, had been well received by the public.

“He gave classes in philology. Then he got it into his head that he was descended from the Count of Villamediana and he went a bit crazy. At least that’s what they say. So he lives here now, does he?”

“Yes, but I think he’d probably rather not see you.”

“No, of course,” he agreed.

The following day, I went to the empty quarter with its abandoned houses and knocked at the door of the big house overgrown by nettles.

I had to wait a long time before the door opened, even longer than that first time I went with Daniel. And then he only opened it a crack.