Obabakoak (21 page)

ONCE UPON A TIME
, in the city of Baghdad, there lived a servant who worked for a rich merchant. One day, very early in the morning, the servant went to the market to do the shopping. But that morning was different from other mornings, for he saw Death there in the marketplace and Death looked at him oddly.

Terrified, the servant returned to the merchant’s house.

“Master,” he said, “lend me your fastest horse. Tonight I want to be far from Baghdad. Tonight I want to be in the far city of Isfahan.”

“But why do you wish to flee?”

“Because I saw Death in the marketplace and he gave me a threatening look.”

The merchant took pity on him and lent him the horse, and the servant left in the hope that he would be in Isfahan that night.

That afternoon, the merchant himself went to the marketplace and, as had happened before with the servant, he too saw Death.

“Death,” he said, going over to him, “what did you mean by giving my servant a threatening look?”

“What threatening look?” replied Death. “It was a look of pure amazement. I was simply surprised to see him here, so far from Isfahan, for it is tonight in Isfahan that I am to carry your servant off.”

AFTER LISTENING
to the story about the servant, my friend grew thoughtful. He stared into his coffee cup like someone trying to extract some meaning from the dregs.

At last he said: “I agree with Boris Karloff. It really is an excellent story.” And, as happens in all late-night conversations worthy of the name, that remark brought with it a rather metaphysical question, not at all easy to answer:

“But why is it good? What makes a story good?”

“I know a much better story than that,” exclaimed someone sitting near us, a man with a foreign accent.

Surprised at the presence of that unexpected witness, my friend and I turned around.

“It’s me,” the man said.

But we’d never seen him before in our lives. He was an elderly man with white hair and beard. Although he was bending toward us, almost crouching, he seemed extremely tall to me. He must have been over six foot five.

“I know a much better story than that,” he said again. His breath smelled of whiskey.

“Tell it to us then,” we said at last. I wondered what country he came from. His clothes betrayed his foreignness.

He solemnly raised one hand and asked us to wait a moment. Walking over to the bar, he stood head and shoulders above the other customers. He really was very tall.

“We’d better go somewhere else,” I said to my friend, and added, to reinforce my decision, that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to talk about things in peace.

The white-haired old man seemed an interesting character, but he was also extremely drunk. Besides, we had to drive on to Obaba.

“Have you spoken to the uncle from Montevideo? Does he know I’m coming too?”

“Yes, I’ve warned him. He was thrilled when I told him that you’ll be reading something too. You know what he’s like. The more victims he has, the happier he is.”

“We’d best get to bed early then. We’ve got a hard day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“Okay, let’s go,” I agreed, smiling.

But the tall man was back already. This time he was wearing a hat and carrying a glass of whiskey in one hand.

“My story really is very interesting,” he insisted. When he went to sit down, he tripped and fell on top of us.

“I’m so sorry.”

“We’re all ears,” said my friend. The old man took out a small tape recorder from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table.

“The story is entitled ‘The Monkey from Montevideo,’” he said, pressing the Record button.

But he got no further. His tongue was thick with drink and he stumbled over his words, some of which were in English. With a sigh he switched off the tape recorder.

“It can’t be done,” he said apologetically, repeatedly covering and uncovering his ears with his hands.

“No, you’re right. It’s much too noisy in here,” said my friend, getting up, “and anyway we really must be going. Another time perhaps.”

“It’s a real pity,” he said, once all three of us were on our feet.

“It certainly is. But what can we do? Maybe we’ll meet again. We’d love to hear your story.”

I was on the point of inviting him to the gathering to be held a few hours later in Obaba but, although such surprise moves usually pleased my uncle, in the end I didn’t dare. The old man’s liking for the bottle frightened me a little. When we went to the bar, the waiter told us our drinks had been paid for.

We waved to the white-haired old man to thank him and he responded by raising his hand to the brim of his hat. Then we left the café and walked back to the car.

“We were talking about what makes a good story,” said my friend when we were barely half a mile down the highway. The subject obviously interested him.

I pulled his leg a bit, teasing him about his love of serious conversation. In fact, I really admired the adolescent, still full of uncertainty and utterly immune to frivolity, who lived on inside the doctor. He was not at all a typical example of late twentieth-century man.

“We could begin by recalling some stories we’ve enjoyed and see if we both agree about their quality,” I suggested, dropping my brights so as not to dazzle the driver of the red Lancia that had just passed us.

“I think that was Ismael,” said my friend.

“What?”

“I think it was Ismael driving that Lancia. At least it looked like him.”

“He’ll be going to Obaba to spend Sunday, like us,” I said.

“I told you the lizard story still had plenty of mileage in it,” laughed my friend.

“Just like the one the old man wanted to tell us, the one about the monkey from Montevideo. I’m sure we’ll hear the whole thing one day.”

“So we’re back to where we started. We need to clarify our ideas before that occasion arises. Otherwise we won’t be able to tell him if his story is good or bad, and the old man will be disappointed,” said my friend. I noticed that he was becoming more and more animated.

“You begin. Tell me a story you think is good.”

“I’d choose one by Chekhov.”

My friend then gave me a summary of one called “Sleep”: Varka, a very young maid working in a rich house, could never get to sleep. What stopped her was the baby she was in charge of, an insomniac baby that cried all night. She cradled it in her arms and sang it sweet songs, but all in vain. The more she longed for sleep and the more exhausted she became for lack of it, the more the child howled. And so it went on day after day, until one morning, the parents of the child leaned over the cradle to say good morning and realized with horror that …

When my friend had finished, I began to tell him a story by Evelyn Waugh entitled “Mr. Loveday’s Little Outing”: A high society lady takes pity on a kindly, mild-mannered old man who has spent the last twenty-five years locked up in an insane asylum. “Why is he kept locked up? He seems to be such a kind person, so normal…” the lady asks the doctor. “He’s here of his own free will. He’s the one who doesn’t want to leave. He must have been very different before because, according to what we were told, he killed a young girl, apparently for no reason whatsoever, when she was out for a quiet cycle ride. But things are different now. After all this time, he ought to be out in the world.” Then the lady tries to convince the old man that he would be much better off outside, that freedom is a marvelous thing, even offering to help him make the necessary arrangements. “I don’t much want to leave here,” says the old man, “but you’ve convinced me by what you’ve said. Yes, I think a change of air would do me good. And besides, there is one thing I’d like to do.” And so the kindly, mild-mannered old man regains his freedom. But only a few hours after leaving, he’s back at the asylum. Meanwhile, not far away, a lorry driver finds a bicycle lying by the roadside, and …

“Excellent. We agree then. That’s my idea of a successful story too. There’s another one I like, about a necklace. It’s by Maupassant. Do you know the one I mean?”

“I do but it’s been ages since I read it,” I said as we overtook a minivan.

“The protagonist was called Mathilde Loisel, wasn’t she? Yes, I think that was her name,” my friend began.

But he was forced to fall silent again for a moment before continuing because the driver of the minivan—either annoyed at us for overtaking him or because he was in a playful mood—accelerated until he was almost alongside us, on our left, making a hell of a noise.

I braked and let him get ahead of us. My friend and I needed silence.

“Have a good time in France,” we both said when we saw the French license plate.

“Mathilde Loisel lived in France too. She lived in Paris,” my friend went on, “in the elegant Paris of the eighteenth century. She was married to a boring civil servant and her life with him was far from stimulating. And then one day she received an invitation to go to a ball held by the Minister, M. Ramponneau. This good news, however, only made Mathilde sadder still. She wanted with all her heart to go to the ball but how could she? What dress could she put on? What jewels could she wear? Then she suddenly remembered a childhood friend of hers who had married a very rich man. Why not ask her if she could borrow some jewels? She decided she would and she got the jewels, among them a beautiful pearl necklace…”

“Ah, now I remember. Having danced until she dropped, Mathilde Loisel suddenly realized that the pearl necklace her friend had lent her was no longer around her neck. She’d lost it… isn’t that what happens?”

“Exactly. Mathilde had lost the necklace. But, of course, she couldn’t tell her friend what had happened. She had to give it back to her. And so she mortgaged everything she had, even her life, in order to be able to buy another necklace.”

“Yes, the whole affair proved disastrous for her. She had to work day and night to earn enough to buy another necklace. And then, just imagine, some years later, walking along the street, she meets her childhood friend. And what does she discover? That the pearls on the necklace she had lent her were fake, it was costume jewelry!”

“You won’t believe this, Mathilde,” said her friend, “but this necklace hasn’t been the same since you wore it to that ball, the pearls have a different quality about them altogether, almost as if they were real.”

That story was followed by another by Schwob, the story by Schwob by one by Chesterton, and then, telling tales as we went, we left the highway and took the road that winds through the mountains to Obaba. We opened the car windows.

“When we were little, we used to call this road ‘the road of moths,’” I said to my friend.

“I’m not surprised,” he replied. In the beam of the car lights, an infinite number of white moths could be seen fluttering about us.

“It looks like it’s snowing,” added my friend.

“We often came this way when we were small. By bike, of course, like the girls in Evelyn Waugh’s story. We’d spend the whole summer riding around on our bikes.”

“But why are there so many moths?” asked my friend.

“I think this particular variety of white moth feeds on mint. And the woods we’re passing through now are full of the stuff. I imagine that must be the reason.”

Inspired by what I’d just said, I stuck my head out the window and took a deep breath of the warm summer air. Yes, the woods still smelled of mint.

We drove the next mile or two in silence, each of us immersed in his own thoughts, observing the moths, watching for stirrings in the woods. From time to time, where there was a stretch of road with clear views to the side, we could make out the bright lights of houses on the slopes of the mountains, distant and solitary.

When we were only half an hour from Obaba, we saw a small white cloud form in the sky among the stars. The small cloud was followed by the noise of a rocket exploding.

“There must be a fiesta in one of the villages near here,” said my friend.

“That one down there,” I said, pointing to a bell tower whose silhouette stood out above the trees.

“It seems moths aren’t too keen on fiestas. Look, they’ve disappeared.”

My friend was right. At that moment, the car headlights showed only the colored flags adorning the roadside.

We parked the car right at the entrance to the village, on a hill. From there, as if from a high balcony, we looked out over the whole square and could watch the dancing. The music from the small band came to us in gusts, depending on which way the wind was blowing.

“So what conclusions have we reached about stories then?” my friend asked.

He didn’t want to go down and mingle with the crowds without first clarifying the question, at least to some extent. And to tell the truth I felt exactly the same. It was nice up on that hill, ideal for daydreaming and smoking.

We didn’t stay there long, but, even so, we managed to make a fairly reasoned analysis of what it was that writers as fine as Chekhov, Waugh, and Maupassant set out to achieve when it came to writing their stories; and, in conclusion, we managed to establish the characteristics of the genre and were left with a sense of having had a highly profitable conversation.

In the first place, there seemed to us to be an evident parallel between stories and poems. As my friend said when summarizing what we’d talked about, both come from the oral tradition and both tend to be short. Moreover, and because of those two characteristics, both have to be intensely meaningful. The proof is that bad stories and bad poems end up being, as someone else said, “futile, empty, and trite.”

“Looked at like that, the key doesn’t lie in making up a story,” my friend concluded. “The truth is that there are more than enough stories. The key lies in the author’s eye, in his way of seeing things. If he’s really good, he’ll take his own experience as his material and extract its essence, something that has universal value. If he’s a bad writer, he’ll never get beyond the merely anecdotal. That’s why the stories we talked about tonight are good. Because they express essential things and aren’t just anecdotes.”

The band hired to make the fiesta go with a swing was playing a very slow, sentimental number. The couples who only a moment before had been bouncing about to the music were now clasped to each other, barely moving.