The Childhood of Jesus (7 page)

‘Well, maybe we should ask you to be our paymaster. Then we will all get medals and as much money as we want and next week there will be nothing left in the moneybox.'

‘There's always money in the moneybox,' says the boy. ‘That's why it is called the moneybox.'

He throws up his hands. ‘I won't argue with you if you are going to be silly.'

CHAPTER 7

SOME WEEKS after they first presented themselves at the Centre, a letter arrives from the office of the Ministerio de Reubicación in Novilla informing him that he and his family have been allocated an apartment in the East Village, occupation to be effected no later than noon on the coming Monday.

East Village, familiarly known as the East Blocks, is an estate to the east of the parklands, a cluster of apartment blocks separated by expanses of lawn. He and the boy have already explored there, as they have explored its twin estate, West Village. The blocks making up the village are of identical pattern, four floors high. On each floor six apartments face upon a square that holds such communal amenities as a children's playground, a paddle pool, a bicycle rack, and washing lines. East Village is generally held to be more desirable than West Village; they can count themselves lucky to be sent there.

The move from the Centre is easily effected, for they own few possessions and have made no friends. Their neighbours have been, on one side, an old man who dodders around in his dressing gown talking to himself, and on the other a stand-offish couple who pretend not to understand the Spanish he speaks.

The new apartment, on the second floor, is modest in scale and sparsely furnished: two beds, a table and chairs, a chest of drawers, steel shelving. A tiny annexe contains an electric cooker on a stand and a basin with running water. A sliding screen hides a shower and toilet.

For their first supper in the Blocks he makes the boy's favourite food, pancakes with butter and jam. ‘We are going to like it here, aren't we?' he says. ‘It will be a new chapter in our life.'

Having advised Álvaro that he is not well, he has no qualms about taking days off from work. He is earning more than enough for their needs, there is little to spend his money on, he does not see why he should exhaust himself to no purpose. Besides, there are always new arrivals looking for casual work who can fill in for him at the docks. So some mornings he spends simply lazing abed, dozing and waking, enjoying the sunny warmth that pours in through the windows of their new home.

I am girding my loins
, he tells himself.
I am girding my loins for
the next chapter in this enterprise
. By the next chapter he means the quest for the boy's mother, the quest that he does not yet know where to commence.
I am concentrating my energies; I am making plans.

While he relaxes, the boy plays outdoors in the sandpit or on the swings, or else roams among the washing lines, humming to himself, winding himself like a cocoon in drying bedsheets, then gyrating and unwinding himself. It is a game he never seems to tire of.

‘I don't think our neighbours will be pleased to see you handling their freshly laundered washing,' he says. ‘What do you find so attractive about it?'

‘I like the way it smells.'

The next time he crosses the courtyard, he discreetly presses his face into a sheet and draws a deep breath. The smell is clean and warm and comforting.

Later that day, glancing out of the window, he sees the boy sprawled on the lawn head to head with another, bigger boy. They seem to be conversing intimately.

‘I see you have a new friend,' he remarks over lunch. ‘Who is he?'

‘Fidel. He can play the violin. He showed me his violin. Can I get a violin too?'

‘Does he live in the Blocks?'

‘Yes. Can I have a violin too?'

‘We will see. Violins cost a lot of money, and you will need a teacher, you can't just pick up a violin and play.'

‘Fidel's mother teaches him. She says she can teach me too.'

‘It's good that you have made a new friend, I am glad for you. As for violin lessons, perhaps I should first have a chat with Fidel's mother.'

‘Can we go now?'

‘We can go later, after your nap.'

Fidel's apartment is on the far side of the courtyard. Even before he can knock, the door is thrown open and Fidel stands before them, sturdy, curly-headed, smiling.

Though no larger than theirs and not as sunny, the apartment has a more welcoming air, perhaps because of its bright curtains with their cherry-blossom motif repeated across the bedspreads.

Fidel's mother comes forward to greet him: an angular, even gaunt young woman with prominent teeth and hair drawn tight behind her ears. In an obscure way he is disappointed by this first sight of her, though he has no reason to be.

‘Yes,' she confirms, ‘I have told your son he can join Fidelito in his music lessons. Later we can reassess and see if he has the aptitude and the will to progress.'

‘That is very kind of you. Actually, David is not my son. I don't have a son.'

‘Where are his parents?'

‘His parents…That is a difficult question. I will explain when we have more time. About the lessons: will he need a violin of his own?'

‘With beginners I usually start on the recorder. Fidel'—she draws her son closer, he hugs her affectionately—‘Fidel learned the recorder for a year before he began the violin.'

He turns to David. ‘Do you hear that, my boy? First you learn to play the recorder, then after that the violin. Agreed?'

The boy pulls a face, shoots a glance at his new friend, is silent.

‘It is a big undertaking, to become a violinist. You won't succeed if your heart isn't in it.' He turns to Fidel's mother. ‘May I ask, how much do you charge?'

She gives him a surprised look. ‘I don't charge,' she says. ‘I do it for the music.'

Her name is Elena. It is not the name he would have guessed. He would have guessed Manuela, or even Lourdes.

He invites Fidel and his mother on a bus ride out to the New Forest, a ride that Álvaro has recommended (‘It was once a plantation, but it has been allowed to go wild—you will like it'). From the bus terminus the two boys race ahead up the path, while he and Elena stroll behind.

‘Do you have many students?' he asks her.

‘Oh, I'm not a proper music teacher. I have just a few children whom I help with the basics.'

‘How do you make a living if you don't charge?'

‘I take in sewing. I do this and that. I get a small grant from the Asistencia. I have enough. There are more important things than money.'

‘Do you mean music?'

‘Music, yes, but also how one lives. How one is to live.'

A good answer, a serious answer, a philosophic answer. He is, for a moment, silenced.

‘Do you see lots of people?' he asks. ‘I mean'—he grasps the nettle—‘is there a man in your life?'

She frowns. ‘I have friends. Some are women, some are men. I don't distinguish between them.'

The path narrows. She goes ahead; he falls behind, eyeing the sway of her hips. He prefers a woman with more flesh on her bones. Nevertheless, he likes Elena.

‘As for me, it is not a distinction I can give up,' he says. ‘Or would wish to give up.'

She slows to let him catch up, gives him a straight look. ‘No one should have to give up what is important to him,' she says.

The two boys return, panting after their run, glowing with health. ‘Have we got anything to drink?' demands Fidel.

It is not until they are in the bus, going home, that he has another chance to speak to Elena.

‘I don't know about you,' he says, ‘but the past is not dead in me. Details may have grown fuzzy, but the feel of how life used to be is still quite vivid. Men and women, for instance: you say you have got beyond that way of thinking; but I haven't. I still feel myself to be a man, and you to be a woman.'

‘I agree. Men and women are different. They have different roles to play.'

The two boys, in the seat in front of them, are whispering together, giggling. He takes Elena's hand in his. She does not pull free. Nevertheless, by the inscrutable means by which the body speaks, her hand gives answer. It dies in his grasp like a fish out of water.

‘May I ask,' he says: ‘Are you beyond feeling anything for a man?'

‘I don't feel nothing,' she replies slowly and carefully. ‘On the contrary, I feel goodwill, much goodwill. Towards both you and your son. Warmth and goodwill.'

‘By goodwill do you mean you wish us well? I am struggling to grasp the concept. You feel benevolent towards us?'

‘Yes, exactly.'

‘Benevolence, I must tell you, is what we keep encountering here. Everyone wishes us well, everyone is ready to be kind to us. We are positively borne along on a cloud of goodwill. But it all remains a bit abstract. Can goodwill by itself satisfy our needs? Is it not in our nature to crave something more tangible?'

Deliberately Elena extracts her hand from his. ‘You may want more than goodwill; but is what you want better than goodwill? That is what you should be asking yourself.' She pauses. ‘You keep referring to David as “the boy.” Why don't you use his name?'

‘David is a name they gave him at the camp. He doesn't like it, he says it is not his true name. I try not to use it unless I have to.'

‘It is quite easy to change a name, you know. You go to the registry office and fill out a name-change form. That's all. No questions.' She leans forward. ‘And what are you two whispering about?' she demands of the boys.

Her son smiles back at her, raises his fingers to his lips, pretending that what occupies the two of them is secret business.

The bus deposits them outside the Blocks. ‘I would have liked to invite you in for a cup of tea,' says Elena, ‘but unfortunately it is time for Fidelito's bath and supper.'

‘I understand,' he says. ‘Goodbye, Fidel. Thank you for the walk. We had a good time.'

‘You and Fidel seem to get on well together,' he remarks to the boy once they are alone.

‘He is my best friend.'

‘So Fidel feels goodwill towards you, does he?'

‘Lots of goodwill.'

‘How about you? Do you feel goodwill too?'

The boy nods vigorously.

‘Anything else besides?'

The boy gives him a puzzled look. ‘No.'

So there he has it, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. From goodwill come friendship and happiness, come companionable picnics in the parklands or companionable afternoons strolling in the forest. Whereas from love, or at least from longing in its more urgent manifestations, come frustration and doubt and heartsore. It is as simple as that.

And what is he up to, anyway, with Elena, a woman he barely knows, the mother of the child's new friend? Is he hoping to seduce her, because in memories that are not entirely lost to him seducing one another is something that men and women do? Is he insisting on the primacy of the personal (desire, love) over the universal (goodwill, benevolence)? And why is he continually asking himself questions instead of just living, like everyone else? Is it all part of a far too tardy transition from the old and comfortable (the personal) to the new and unsettling (the universal)? Is the round of self-interrogation nothing but a phase in the growth of each new arrival, a phase that people like Álvaro and Ana and Elena have by now successfully passed through? If so, how much longer before he will emerge as a new, perfected man?

CHAPTER 8

‘YOU WERE telling me about goodwill the other day, goodwill as a universal balm for our ills,' he says to Elena. ‘But don't you sometimes find yourself missing plain old physical contact?'

They are in the parklands, beside a field on which half a dozen disorderly football games are being played. Fidel and David have been allowed to join in one of the games, though they are really too young. Dutifully they surge back and forth with the other players, but the ball is never passed to them.

‘Anyone who brings up a child does not lack for physical contact,' replies Elena.

‘By physical contact I mean something different. I mean loving and being loved. I mean sleeping with someone every night. Don't you miss that?'

‘Do I miss it? I am not the kind of person who suffers from memories, Simón. What you speak of seems very far away. And—if by sleeping with someone you mean sex—quite strange too. A strange thing to be preoccupied with.'

‘But surely there is nothing like sex for bringing people closer. Sex would bring the two of us closer. For example.'

Elena turns away. ‘Fidelito!' she calls, and waves. ‘Come! We have to leave now!'

Is he mistaken, or is there a flush on her cheek?

The truth is, he finds Elena only mildly attractive. He does not like her boniness, her strong jaw and prominent front teeth. But he is a man, she is a woman, and the children's friendship keeps drawing them together. So, despite one polite brush-off after another, he continues to permit himself mild freedoms, freedoms that seem to amuse more than anger her. Willy-nilly he finds himself slipping into daydreams in which some or other stroke of fortune impels Elena into his arms.

That stroke of fortune, when it comes, takes the guise of a power cut. Power cuts are not infrequent across the city. Usually they are announced a day in advance, and apply either to even-numbered or to odd-numbered dwellings. In the case of the Blocks, they are applied to whole buildings according to a rota.

On the evening in question, however, there is no announcement, just Fidel knocking at the door, asking whether he can come in and do his homework, since there is no electric light in their apartment.

‘Have you eaten yet?' he asks the boy.

Fidel shakes his head.

‘Run back at once,' he says. ‘Tell your mother that you and she are invited to supper.'