Trafalgar (15 page)

“It’s a real disgrace, Señor Medrano,” she said, “a real disgrace.”

“That your cousin the mayor has no character?” I asked.

“No, no,” she said without taking her eyes off her sewing. “I was speaking in general.”

More than discreet, I think I am opportune. That’s it, opportune. She was quiet for a moment and I didn’t ask any questions because I sensed she was going to keep talking. She made a few stitches, cut the thread with a pair of scissors whose blades were very thin and very long, threaded the needle again and, of course, continued:

“Because, imagine everything one could do here, everything we could already have, because there’s no shortage of capable people, with those kids who sacrifice themselves studying, investigating, inventing and trying things in secret.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about and she assumed I did, and I didn’t ask that time either, not out of discretion but because I felt too peaceful and something was going to start to go badly if I stuck my foot in it.

“Lights,” she said. “Electric lights—even atomic ones—automobiles, airplanes, injections, submarines, telephones, television, hospitals, sewing machines, all of that. And the only thing we can do is learn they exist on other worlds, thanks to what the wayward youth are able to find out and make known in secret.” She looked at me. “They haven’t been in contact with you yet?”

“Who?” I asked, like an idiot.

“The Wayward Youth,” that time I heard it correctly, with capital letters.

She had gotten up to light two oil lamps.

“Ah,” I said, a little unsteady, more even than the lamps’ little flames. “No, no, not yet.”

She went back to her sewing.

“You’ll meet them. Poor people, they do everything they can.”

She sewed a while longer, not speaking, and I didn’t speak either. Afterward, she left the sewing and stood up. It was night, late at night.

“What would you like me to make you for supper?” she asked.

“Look, ma’am,” I said, “leave me something light prepared, because I’m going to go out now and I don’t know what time I’ll be back.”

“Ah,” she said, with a knowing smile.

Afterward I learned she had not been thinking about the girl with the lace or about any girl, but in fact about those very Wayward Youth.

“I’m going to make you a stuffed egg,” she said, and she went to the kitchen. A stuffed egg was taking my request for something light a little too literally, but it wasn’t a hen’s egg or an egg from an animal the size of a chicken, but a plasco egg. A plasco is an oviparous mammal similar to the farfarfa of Pilandeos VII, so imagine the size of that egg: I couldn’t eat even half of it. But of course; oh yes, I’d be pleased if you’d join me. No, gastritis, never. The day I get gastritis I’ll have to park the clunker for good. There are places where you can’t go around choosing your food: on Emeterdelbe for example, either one digests the damned pies, sede pies, felepés pies, estelte pies, resne pies, pies made out of anything you can imagine, always fried in pelende fat, or one starves to death. And on Mitramm you have to have an iron stomach to tolerate the meat of the. I beg your pardon? Yes, I imagine so, I was intrigued, too. So I told her so long and she went to the door to say good-bye, with her cheeks red from the heat of the wood stove. It occurred to me that she must have been a beauty when she was young, not so long ago, and I gave her an approving look and as she was no fool she noticed and she laughed at me. Maybe she also laughed because she liked me looking at her that way. I left. I crossed the plaza in which, although it was already night, there were an enormous number of people who didn’t seem to be doing anything. Everything was dark, save for a torch on a corner here and there. I carried a lantern and, of course, the Aqüivanida brake secured to my wrist. No, I call it the brake because of the effect it produces; they call it an apical molecular recensor, AMR. I arrived at the girl’s house, turned around, hopped over the wall and went into the garden. No one seemed to be there. It was a neglected garden, not like Ribkamatia’s, and I went behind a bush that was in urgent need of the pruning shears and waited. I almost fell asleep standing up. After half an hour, or more, I felt someone grabbing my arm. They must have crept up like a cat because I didn’t hear any footsteps. In my fright I didn’t manage to grab the lantern or the brake. But whoever it was let out a
tsk
at me: it was the beauty of the lace.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “you step with more care than a fat tightrope walker. I didn’t hear you arrive.”

She squeezed my arm again and went
tsk
and she led me by feel to a corner with a bench while I thought about how I should best begin, with the sentimental approach or with the clever questioning: it seemed to me best to combine information with pleasure. But it was no use on either front. On the pleasure side I couldn’t, I won’t even say take her to bed, which was what any normal guy would have wanted to do, I couldn’t even touch the little finger of her left hand, because she was sullen, distrustful, a little stupid, and she was afraid. And on the information side, for those same reasons, she didn’t want to tell me anything and she even suggested I was pulling her leg or wanted to make her fall into a trap. All I could find out was that she wouldn’t let me get close or extol my undying love and that she didn’t want to tell me anything because her grandfather, her grandmother, her great-grandfather, and above all her great-great-grandmother had forbidden it.

“Good lord!” I said. “What a long-lived family you have.”

She got mad. She got so mad she even made noise when she got up from the bench and she told me to leave immediately. I couldn’t convince her even by promising to maintain five meters of distance between us. Fine, I thought, to hell with her, her loss. I wasn’t even interested anymore, I wanted a woman but I wouldn’t have gone to bed with that fool for anything in the world. But I was more intrigued by the minute, and on that front, too, I had to go away hungry. The girl left me standing there and ran toward the house, and then I headed for the garden wall. And at that moment I saw we had not been alone: there was a great big woman with a viper’s face, who couldn’t be the great-great-grandmother because she wasn’t that old, close to the place where I had been hidden, and two guys, one old enough to be her grandfather and another, younger one, and the three were watching me with hangman’s eyes. I didn’t wait to find out who they were or what they wanted. I jumped over the wall and left with all the rage in the world. The houses were dark and closed up but the streets and the plaza were full of silent people who came and went or sat on the benches or stood on the corners and looked around. Ribkamatia had left a small oil lamp burning in the hall. I picked it up and went to the kitchen where I attacked the plasco egg which was delicious but was too much for me: I never eat to excess and especially not before going to bed. That might be why I don’t have gastritis. Then there was a noise of steps in the dark corridor and she appeared and said she had been waiting for me to set the table. I thanked her but told her she shouldn’t do so again and we sat down in the kitchen and unstuffed what we could of the stuffed egg. She was dying of curiosity but she didn’t ask me anything and I was in no mood to tell her about the let-down I had suffered. She made me coffee and I drank it and I felt better. I said I was going to bed and she stood up. I picked up the lamp and set off toward the bedroom. I opened the door, I wished her goodnight, and right there I did the best thing I had done in a long time: I lifted the little oil lamp to see her better and caressed her face with my free hand. She gave me a sweet smile. I don’t like adjectives but the smile was sweet, what can I say, sweet and placid. She opened the door to her room and I wasn’t going to be so slow-witted as to go into mine. Yes, I slept with her, in as much as I slept, which was just enough. No lace seller, no girl as splendorous as she might be, no amazon, no big woman bored with her old husband, no adolescent or queen of eight kingdoms or professional or slave or actress or hungry conspirator or anything, not one have I found, I remember no one who knew as well as she what a man wanted in bed—not a macho, a man. From what there was between the two of us those nights, we could have been married for years and years and could have gone to bed together hundreds of times, each one like the first or second time, and everything was always going to go well and there was nothing to worry about. Why is it that I don’t like to talk about her much? It was almost dawn when I fell sound asleep and it seemed to me that not even five minutes had passed but it must have been late because the sun was starting to come through the cracks in the shutters when a noise and a shout woke me up. I sat up in bed and saw a guy standing in the open doorway, his face twisted and contorted with rage. Ribkamatia opened her eyes but she wasn’t frightened: she just looked at him as if to say ugh, here you come to screw things up again while the jerk breathed heavily with his hand on the door handle. She said very calmly:

“And now what is it?”

He insulted her at length but without using a single word the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela couldn’t have used on a Maundy Thursday afternoon. He reminded me of a priest who taught us religion when I was a boy. I was, as you will understand, at a disadvantage: naked, half asleep, in a strange house and a strange bed and without knowing what right the shouter had to come into the bedroom. I didn’t like him calling her filthy sinner and other things of a biblical ilk so I stood up and insulted him but without watching my language, on the contrary. The guy paid no attention to me, it seemed the issue was with her, and so much so that he came close to the bed and made a move to strike her. Oh no, my friend, in front of me, no: if someone wants to hit a girl and the girl is stupid enough to let him, it doesn’t matter to me, but not if I’m around, because then you’ve started something. I grabbed him by the shoulder, I made him turn around, and I landed a punch. He stumbled and came right at me. He was shorter and stockier than I, but if he was mad, I was madder. I landed a couple of good blows and faked with another to the face trying to make him cover so as to hit him in the gut, knock him to the ground and kick him in the head. Yes, I was furious and when I’m furious, I’m no gentleman in the ring. He was furious, too, obviously, but on the theological side, and there’s nothing like theology to sap the effectiveness of your punches, so I looked likely to win. He saw that and snatched up the long scissors that were on the dresser and lunged at me. He was no gentleman in the ring either, I am sorry to say, may he rest in peace. I grabbed him by the wrist, twisted it until it cracked, and took away the scissors. He threw himself on top of me—he didn’t lack courage—and I parried with my right but I had the scissors in that hand. I buried them up to the handle in his chest and the guy fell down. I was stunned. Even more so when I looked at Ribkamatia, thinking I would find her half fainting, pale and covering her mouth with her hand, and I saw she was just fine: irritated, I’d say, impatient, but not scared. I may have killed at some time or another, I’m not saying no and I’m not saying yes, either, but if I believe in anything, I believe in the
non possumus
. For a second, I shouldered all the sins of all those sentenced to eternal punishment, and the next second, when I looked at the guy dead on the floor, I saw him stand up, almost as if nothing had happened except for the scissors driven in at the level of his heart, and I saw how he yanked them out without leaving a hint of the wound, with no wound—do you understand?—and how he dusted off his shirt and pants and how he put the scissors on the dresser and left, looking backward and muttering things, more insults I think, although I didn’t hear him. The door closed and I sat down on the edge of the bed.

“That imbecile never learns,” Ribkamatia said, and she ran her hand over my head.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“My husband,” she said.

I looked at her, so pretty and fresh, so pretty: “But aren’t you a widow? Isn’t your husband dead?”

“Of course he’s dead,” she said, “and I have already told him a thousand times I’m not a coward and no one’s going to keep ordering me around, not him or anyone.”

“Ribka,” I said to her, feeling suddenly perfectly calm, “I want you to explain to me how a dead man can be alive and come to fight with his widow’s lover.”

“He’s just like all of them,” she said, “he can’t help it, poor thing.”

“All of the dead are alive,” I said.

“They’re dead but it’s as if they were alive,” and she looked at me for a while without saying anything. “Then, you didn’t know?”

“No,” I said. “You thought I knew, but no. Who are the Wayward Youth? What are the dead? Zombies? Vampires? Why is there no electricity, no clocks? Are all of those walking around the streets dead? Why can’t I sell medicines?”

She laughed. She put her arms around me, she made me lie down again next to her and she told me. On González people died just as they do anywhere, but they didn’t stay deceased and quiet in the coffin like the polite departed. There weren’t even coffins. Or niches or pantheons or cemeteries or funeral parlors. What for? The dead got up just a little while after having died and devoted themselves to messing with the living. They died, no joking: their hearts stopped and their blood didn’t circulate and there were no more vital functions, but there they were, in the streets, in the plaza, in the countryside, moving into the family home from time to time or going off who knows where. Only they weren’t different solely physiologically. They were different due to anger or resentment, due to death: they wanted things to continue as they were when they were alive and for that reason they wanted the living to live like the dead. They didn’t allow anything to happen that might alter the life they had known. With their common ancestors always among them, like someone who has a deaf great-aunt living in their attic, it was logical that they all continued being part of the same family, and they were all cousins and they were all named González. Of course, as there were very ancient dead, the monkey faces wrapped up in skins, but there were also more recent dead, the new
ones compromised on a few things that in their turn, when they were alive, they had managed to impose against the wishes or the orders of the dead they had had to put up with. That’s why there was running water, for example. But there weren’t doctors or hospitals or medicines, because the dead wanted the living to join the dead as soon as possible. And the less romance there was, the better; fewer marriages, although what romance has to do with marriage is something I haven’t managed to comprehend, unless it’s a risk one has to know how to avoid, but the dead have a very particular idea in that respect: fewer offspring, fewer of the living. In sum, González was on the path to being a world of the dead. I was getting to that: hundreds of thousands of years ago, a comet passed by and the tail grazed González and it seems it liked the neighborhood because it returns every five years. I don’t remember what the comet was called or if it had a name: probably not, because it didn’t have a name the first time it passed. Every five years it renews the phenomenon of the suppression of some of the characteristics of death—rotting decorously, for example, and not appearing again unless it’s at the three-legged table of some charlatan. At least that was the explanation Ribka gave me and that everyone accepted as valid. There doesn’t seem to be another: there must be something in the tail of that comet and I have no interest in finding out what it is. I can’t imagine God the Father decreeing that the dead of González have to keep on screwing over the living for all eternity. The Wayward Youth? The ones who talk back and disobey dad and mom, the rebels, the ones who conspire—and you will recognize that it’s not easy—against the dead. A clandestine organization, but not really, because you can’t do anything entirely hidden from so many dead among whom some were Wayward Youth when they were alive: an organization that made plans, favored study, resistance, research, and curiosity. They flew in balloons—remember?—for coordination and information from city to city, but in secret. Every time the dead found a balloon, they destroyed it. I had caught one they hadn’t managed to land before it got light and it had seemed to me as if it was camouflaged. It was camouflaged. No, of course not, the dead weren’t supermen, they didn’t have any other faculties than those they’d had when alive: they couldn’t prevent people arriving from elsewhere, but they could oblige some of the living, the wimps as Ribka called them, not to give them the time of day, or lodge them, or give them food or provide them with anything. Those who arrived left again as soon as possible. But the Wayward Youth managed to talk with them and have news of what there was on other worlds. Well, the dead threatened the living that they’d kill them if they didn’t obey. It seems, nonetheless, that they couldn’t do it, that a dead person had never killed one of the living, otherwise González would have been peopled with the dead centuries ago. It’s possible they couldn’t. But just in case, the living obeyed. Not all of them: observe Ribka and the Wayward Youth. And the living didn’t want to join the dead, one because nobody likes to die and two because they knew what they would become. You see, the perfect fear. Yes, those strange people in the street were dead and those I met in the lace girl’s garden were dead. The not-so-old woman was the great-great-grandmother who had died at thirty-seven and the oldest old guy was the grandfather who had died at seventy-six. Many of the living let themselves be controlled by the dead, like the mayor and the lace girl and Ribka’s neighbor. But others did not. They fought—so far as they were able, but they fought. And I, who as my friend Jorge says—he’s a poet but a good guy—I am a romantic and my chest throbs achingly at certain things; I, who had spent with Ribka the loveliest night of my life, I entered the bullring to fight, too. I sat up in bed and I said: