Obabakoak (37 page)

I recalled the half-wild Ismael of my primary school days and I couldn’t get over my amazement. It was true what the old primary school photo had said. Life certainly is full of changes. In my uncle’s garden, Ismael was holding forth like a professor, with authority and rhetorical style. My friend and I didn’t know how best to resist his reasoning.

“But why do you still trap lizards? You still haven’t explained that.”

“I don’t trap them, I collect them. To save them, of course.”

“To save them?”

But this time we were only pretending to be amazed. We hadn’t forgotten the remark Ismael had made about the seascape hanging on the wall of his pub, and you didn’t have to be a genius to grasp what he meant by “saving” them. My friend and I began to feel ridiculous.

“I belong to a society,” Ismael began, by way of explanation. “We look after endangered species. I look after lizards. They’re in a very bad way. A lot of them are dying from the insecticides farmers use. The one last night was very sick. I took it back to the hut, but I don’t know… I don’t know if it will survive.”

“You’ve got a hut?” my friend asked.

“Yes, right here, next to the church. It’s like a little hospital. And do you know who looks after everything when I’m working?”

We shook our heads.

“Albino María. He really loves lizards. Even more than I do. And I give him a little money for the work he does.”

He was looking at me and smiling as he spoke. But I felt incapable of saying anything. I was speechless.

Fortunately, at that point my uncle interrupted the conversation.

“Are you all right out there?” he called to us from the door to the house.

“Fine! The shade from this tree is wonderful!” Naturally it was Ismael who replied.

“We’ll have to change the program. Samuel has just gotten into the bath. How do you feel about having lunch at half past two?”

“Whatever suits you best, Uncle. We’re in no hurry.”

I wasn’t telling the truth, for my one desire at that moment was to be somewhere else, but… how can you avoid lying when the truth is impossible to explain? My uncle could never imagine the conversation taking place at that table.

“We can go and see the hut if you like,” Ismael suggested. “If we go via the colonnade by the church we can be there in less than five minutes.” We had no alternative but to accept.

“This is the same way we came the day they took that photo of us, do you remember?” I said to lsmael as we went up the hill. My tone was conciliatory. Deep down I wanted to excuse myself for the injustice we had done him. He was not a nice person, but neither was he someone with an unhealthy obsession with lizards.

He said only: “Yes, you’re right.” He had put on his dark glasses by then.

Ilobate, Muino, Pepane, Arbe, Legarra, Zumargain, Etxeberi, Ostatu, Motse
… we walked past the houses we had seen so often in our childhood and reached the stone steps. They were just the same as in the photo: old, serious, full of cracks.

“I stood here, on the top step. Albino María stood there, right next to me,” said Ismael, standing on one corner of the third step and mopping with a white handkerchief at the sweat brought on by the climb.

It was a mocking insinuation aimed exclusively at me: “Why don’t you say now that Albino María went mad because of me?” That was what those words meant.

“What are you two doing up there? It’s getting late!” called my friend from the shade of the church cemetery. He understood how uncomfortable I felt being alone with Ismael.

“We’re coming. But don’t worry, we’re nearly there.”

The hut was behind the church, in the middle of a field surrounded by barbed wire. Built of white-painted cement, it was about thirty feet by nine in area and about nine feet high. The small windows were covered with wire netting. The iron door was painted green.

“The hut is divided into two sections. In one I keep the lizards that have nearly recovered. In the other I keep the ones that are still sick,” Ismael told us once we had gone through the gate in the fence.

“And what happens then? What do you do with the lizards once they’re completely cured?” asked my friend.

“I look for a clean river and release them near there,” replied Ismael, taking out the key to the hut from his pocket.

We smelled the stench the moment he opened the door. It was really disgusting, sickening.

“Oh, the smell!” said Ismael when he saw us covering our mouths and noses. “It’s not very pleasant, is it? I don’t even notice it anymore. What do you think? A lovely sight, eh?” he added, taking off his sunglasses.

No, it wasn’t a lovely sight. It looked more like a warehouse for storing rotting vegetables and apples and not even the leafy branches placed in one corner modified that impression. Moreover, it was horribly hot inside.

“Where are they?” asked my friend, like me looking at the floor.

“Don’t look at the floor. Look at the walls,” said Ismael.

There they were, clinging to the cement walls. I saw five on the left wall, three on the right, and one more on the ceiling. Their throats puffed in and out. From time to time they opened their disproportionately large mouths and out flicked a black thread, their tongue.

“I’ve seen enough, I’m going outside,” I said. My desire to throw up was getting stronger by the minute.

“Wait a moment, let’s go and see the cages in the other part.”

I flatly refused. I went out into the field and my friend followed.

“Well, I don’t find them disgusting,” said Ismael, coming over to us. He put on his sunglasses again. “Nature is an absolute unity, a totality, and that’s why I love all animals. Lizards, for example, remind me of birds, because I know that they’re almost the same thing. You mustn’t forget that the first bird was born of a lizard. I know you don’t feel the same, but…”

“No, we don’t feel the same,” my friend broke in, heading for the fence. His stomach was churning too.

“Let me just shut the door and I’ll come with you. I have to pick up my car from the garden.”

“Any moment now he’ll start spouting about theology,” my friend whispered. He was rather angry. It had been a dirty trick taking us to that place just before lunch.

Fortunately, Ismael didn’t persist in explaining his concept of nature and we walked back in complete silence. We reached my uncle’s house just as the clock was striking half past two.

“Here ends the story of the lizard. Try using a bit less imagination next time,” Ismael said from the window of his red Lancia.

“We’ll try.”

He reversed out of the garden. A few seconds later he had disappeared from view.

“At last!” said my friend. We didn’t go back into the house straightaway. We wanted to get a bit of fresh air and forget the disgust provoked in us by the stench of the lizards.

“Oh well, there’s nothing we can do!” said my friend, thinking out loud. It seems we did go a bit overboard with our hypotheses. But it doesn’t matter, it’s good to make a fool of yourself once in a while. I think we let ourselves get carried away by our passion for stories. And anyway, basically, we were right. There is something a bit sinister about Ismael.”

“I quite agree,” I said. But I felt distinctly depressed.

“Martini time!” called my uncle from the living room window.

“The more I see of your uncle, the more I like him. A couple of minutes with him and we’ll have forgotten all about the lizards.”

“Yes, you’re right. It’ll be a really good lunch. And I’m sure Mr. Smith will have some interesting stories to tell.”

We were not mistaken. Lunch with the two ex-emigrants flowed by on a wave of jokes and anecdotes, and my friend and I could only marvel—once again—at how full our elders’ lives seemed to have been.

Around five o’clock—returning once more to the program—with our cognac and coffee before us, we settled down to talking about literature: What exactly was originality, where did plagiarism start and end, what should the function of art be?… and that was the moment Mr. Smith chose, as he put it, to give us a surprise.

“Ah, my friend,” he said to my uncle, “my opinions are not as strict and severe as your own. I’m also in favor of intertextuality. I agree with these young men.”

“Really? I don’t believe it!”

“Well, it’s true. And I’m going to give you the proof right now.”

Our eyes lit up. Mr. Smith’s tape recorder was on the table.

“Wait a second,” I said. “If you record the story on there, you’ll erase the one about Amazonas. Uncle, have you got a blank tape?”

“Yes, I have,” he replied, a little puzzled, for we hadn’t yet told him about the previous night’s adventures.

“Don’t worry! One side of the tape is still blank,” said Mr. Smith to reassure us. And he began to recount in English, with a Dublin accent, a story entitled “Wei Lie Deshang, a fantasia on the theme of Marco Polo.” The time has come, then, to insert yet another parenthesis, because I find it impossible to continue my search for the last word without first transcribing this story. I did my best to make the translation a good one. Now let’s see the result.

A fantasia on the theme of Marco Polo

WEI LIE DESHANG
was not like the other servants at the palace that Aga Kubalai, the latest governor of the city of Kiang’Si, had had built on a small island in the bay, and he never resigned himself to his fate. While the others complained about their lot, he reflected in silence; while their eyes flowed with tears, his eyes, full of hatred, remained coldly watchful.

By the time he was twenty, after five years working in the palace abattoir, he felt his desire for vengeance might drive him mad, for he saw the head of Aga Kubalai on that of every animal he butchered, images that went on to fill his dreams. But he had a strong character and he went on hating, went on searching for the path that would lead him to fulfill the promise that, in the name of his parents, he had made when he was fifteen, the moment he first set foot on the island. Aga Kubalai must die and Kiang’Si, the city that had accepted him as governor, must be destroyed.

Ten years later, when he was thirty, he heard talk of a new religion preached by a beggar called Mohammed, and he saw at last the path he had sought for so long. It was a dangerous path and difficult to forge, particularly in its early stages, because it required him to escape from the city nearly every night and return before the sky was lit by the first star of morning. But he preferred to risk dying at the hands of the guards to dying, like certain snakes, poisoned by his own hatred.

It took him three years to achieve his objective. Then, sure that no one could stop him, he decided to leave the island forever and go to the mountains of Annam. There lived the men who would believe in him and who, later, would be the instruments of his vengeance. The days of Kiang’Si were numbered.

One moonless night, along a path that crossed the governor’s hunting wood, linking the abattoir with a small beach on the island, Wei Lie Deshang set off on his last journey. It was his usual route, the same one he had taken on each and every one of his nighttime escapes and he arrived without mishap at the rock where he moored the sampan he had bought three years ago in the city. A moment later, he was rowing toward the coast.

Kiang’Si, the most prosperous city on the Cathay Sea, was situated on a wide bay, built on the gentle hills that overlooked the beach. Beautiful by day, it was even lovelier by night when, by the light of the torches that lit it, the buildings seemed weightless, a succession of shining, red roofs. By night, Kiang’Si did not look like a city; it looked like a flock of birds about to alight on the sea.

But Wei Lie Deshang felt utterly indifferent to the beauty and kept his eyes fixed on the waves as he rowed. Once out in the bay, he steered the sampan toward the city’s great pagoda.

He disembarked near a flight of steps crowded with cripples and beggars and headed for the place where, for the last eighteen years, his god Siddartha had awaited him. He had not set foot in the temple since the day he had been taken to the island.

The gigantic image was covered with orange flowers. Beside it Wei Lie Deshang seemed but an insignificant man.

As soon as he had knelt down he heard a voice inside him say: “What do you want, servant?” Siddartha was speaking to him in the voice of a harsh father.

“I know I look like a servant,” replied Wei Lie Deshang in humble prayer, “but I come from a family of soldiers and the blood in my veins is still that of a soldier.”

“So why are you not a soldier?”

“Because my family rebelled against Aga Kubalai, the foreign governor. The punishment for them was death. For me, for I was only a child then, the humiliation of being a servant.”

Wei Lie Deshang closed his eyes and fell silent. It hurt him to remember all that had happened at the time of the rebellion. Why had the city of Kiang’Si surrendered to a man like Aga Kubalai? No one had wanted to hear his family’s call to arms, no one had wanted to struggle against the new regime. Not the merchants, not the priests, not even the captains in the army. But that betrayal would not go unpunished.

“Now I want to avenge myself, Father,” continued Wei Lie Deshang, prostrating himself before his god. “Everything is ready. All I need now is your blessing.” But Siddartha would not agree to his plea. His voice grew even harsher.

“Tell me first,” he heard the voice inside him say, “why you became a thief and a murderer. In three years you have killed more than thirty merchants.”

“I needed their gold, Father.”

“And why in that house in To’she do you keep a long list of names and numbers?”

“They are the names of all the traitors of this city, Father. And the numbers indicate the places where those traitors live.”

“You should not avenge yourself, servant. Hatred cannot put an end to hatred; only love can do that. That is an ancient law.”

“I want to kill those who broke another ancient law and allowed a foreigner to rule in Kiang’Si.”

“Silence, servant!” The mighty Siddartha’s voice changed, he grew angry. “Remove these malignant desires from your heart. Go back to the island and confess your sins.”