All Is Silence

1

‘THE MOUTH IS not for talking. It’s for keeping quiet.’

This was one of Mariscal’s sayings, which his father repeated like a litany and Víctor Rumbo — Brinco — recalled when the other boy saw with amazement what was in the strange package he’d pulled out of the basket and asked what he wasn’t supposed to.

‘What’s that then? What are you going to do?’

‘They have mouths, and speak not,’ replied Brinco laconically.

The tide was out, or thinking of coming in, the calm of the waters shocked and shining, which seemed somehow strange. There were the two of them, Brinco and Fins, near the breakwater formed by the rocks, next to the lighthouse on Cape Cons, and not far from the stone crosses that commemorate lost sailors.

In the sky, the beam from the lighthouse acting as epicentre, the seagulls pecked at the silence. There was a mocking wisdom in the way these birds kept watch. An alert grumbling. They moved off in order to come closer, drawing circles that were ever more insolent. They took this liberty, sharing with abandon a secret the rest of existence chose to ignore. Brinco glanced over at them, amused by their scandal. He knew he was the cause of their excitement. They were waiting for something. A definitive sign.

‘My dad knows the names of all these rocks,’ said Fins in an attempt to detach himself from the course of events. ‘The ones you can see and those you can’t.’

Brinco had learned by now how to show contempt. He loved the taste of sentences that stung the palate.

‘Rocks are just a bunch of old rocks.’

He grabbed the stick of dynamite, which was already fitted with a fuse. As if he knew what he was doing.

‘Your dad may be a good sailor, that I do not deny. But now you’re going to see some real fishing.’

He finally set light to the fuse. Showed enough composure to hold the stick of dynamite in the air, in front of Fins’ face. And then chucked it skilfully over the top of the stone crosses. After a while they heard it explode in the sea.

They waited. The gulls grew more excited, a pack on the wing, egging Brinco on with their screams, celebrating each leap he made on the rocks. Fins kept his eyes firmly on the sea.

‘This will be a mark of fear now.’

‘You what?’

‘The fish won’t come back. Wherever someone sets off dynamite, they refuse to return.’

‘Why? Because your dad says so?’

‘Everybody knows that. It’s because of all the mess.’

‘Right,’ said Brinco mockingly.

In the Ultramar he’d heard similar things and knew how best to respond. ‘I suppose you’re going to say now that fish have memory.’

He smiled suddenly. One force overcame another inside him and it was this that articulated the smile. What came into his mouth was another saying of Mariscal’s. Guaranteed to produce a victory with Fins Malpica looking increasingly on the back foot, pale and subdued as a penitent. The son of the bearer of the cross.

‘If you stay poor for long,’ said Brinco with measured emphasis, ‘you end up shitting white like a seagull.’

He knew that each of Mariscal’s sayings would sweep the board. Never failed. Though it bothered him having such a source of inspiration. There’s something funny about Mariscal and his maxims. Even if he closed his ears, they’d still lodge inside him. What gives a cherry its stalk? That’s another of his. Another one that lodged inside him. Never fails.

Brinco and Fins sat down on a rock and stuck their bare feet in a tidal pool. In this aquarium the only life on view was the animal garden of anemones. They played at drawing their toes closer, a movement which made the false flowers shake their tentacles.

‘Bastards,’ said Brinco. ‘They look like flowers, but they’re really leeches.’

‘Their mouth is also their bottom,’ said Fins. ‘It’s the same hole, their mouth and bottom.’

The other boy stared at him in amazement. Was about to proffer some rebuke. But thought better of it and remained quiet. Fins Malpica knew much more than he did about fish and animals. And all the rest. At least in school. So Brinco decided to catch something in the pool and stuff it inside his mouth. He closed his mouth and kept his face swollen like a lung. Then he opened it and produced a tiny, live crab on his tongue.

‘How long can you hold your breath?’

‘I don’t know. About half an hour or so.’

Fins became thoughtful. Smiled inside. This was the game with Brinco, you had to let yourself lose in order to keep him happy. Pretend you were a fool.

‘Half an hour?’ said Fins. ‘That’s not much.’

It was the first time they’d laughed together since reaching Cape Cons. Brinco stood up and gazed out to sea. With this movement, shielding his eyes with his hand, the din in the sky grew louder. The fierce screams pierced the atmosphere at its weakest point. The first dead fish turned up in the foam, as if parboiled by the sea. Brinco goes after them with his net. Their intestines are all over the place. In the attritional palm of his hand, the contrast between the silver gleam of their skin and the blood of their gills is greater.

‘You see? Now is that, or is that not, a miracle?’

2

HE WAS THE son of Jesus Christ. The son of Lucho Malpica. People would say, ‘That’s Lucho’s son’ or, identifying him with his mother, ‘That’s Amparo’s son.’ But he was better known because of his father. Among other things, his father had spent the last few years playing Christ on the day of the Passion, Good Friday. When he was younger, he’d taken the part of a Roman soldier. He’d even held the whip with which to lash the back of Edmundo Sirgal, the Christ before him, who’d also been a sailor. But Edmundo had left for the oil rigs in the North Sea. The first year he’d managed to return in order to be crucified. But then there’d been some problem. People leave and sometimes you lose touch. What was needed was a new Christ, and Lucho Malpica was the obvious choice. There was another bearded gentleman who could have done it, Moimenta, but he had one Michelin too many. As the priest pointed out, ‘Christ, Christ can be anyone, but he shouldn’t be fat. A good Christ isn’t fat, he’s all fibre.’ And there was Lucho Malpica, strong and thin as a rake. Of the same constitution as the wooden cross on his shoulder.

‘The Companion? He’s half pagan, Don Marcelo,’ said a bore from the confraternity.

‘Like them all. But the way he plays Christ is first class! Straight out of Zurbarán!’

Malpica didn’t stay still. Burned with speed. Brave as well, his guts in the palm of his hand. His son, Félix — Fins to us — was more like his mother. A bit nostalgic. He had his days, of course. We all have our spring tides and neap tides. He had those days when he turned into a zombie, fell quiet. Absorbed in silence.

The point is he was respectful towards his father, but had his confidence. He never asked for his father or Dad. He asked for Lucho Malpica. Outside the house, this sailor was a kind of third man, something separate from son and father. The boy was forced to protect him. Look out for him. Whenever he saw him coming home drunk, he’d run to the door and help him upstairs, put him to bed like a stowaway, so there wouldn’t be trouble at home; his mother had no time for these minor shipwrecks. Once, on the road to Calvary, his mother had said, ‘Don’t call him Lucho when he’s carrying the cross.’ For Fins, as a boy, it’d been an honour to watch his father being crucified with the crown of thorns, the smear of blood on his forehead, that blond beard, tunic with the golden belt, sandals. His attention was drawn especially to the sandals, since this wasn’t a type of footwear worn by men in Noitía. There were women who wore them in summer. One holidaymaker in particular who stayed with her husband at the Ultramar. And painted her toenails. Nails that shone with oyster enamel. Nickel-plated nails. All the boys roundabout, pretending to scrabble on the ground for coins. All because of the woman from Madrid with the painted toenails.

Christ’s toes had tufts of hair, nails like limpets, and, despite the sandals, doubled over to cling to the ground as when walking on the surface of rocks. Before the procession he called Fins to one side: ‘Pop over to the Ultramar and tell Rumbo to give you a bottle of holy water.’ He already knew this wasn’t water from the stoup. No, he didn’t say anything to his mother. No need to worry her. He’d done the job of Cana before. So he applied grease to his shins and ran as fast as he could. On the way back, he decided to take a sip. Just a moistener. To see what it tasted like. If they all swore by it, there must be something about it. And he could do with a pick-up on a day like this. He felt his entrails, and the reverse of his eyeballs, ignite. He breathed in deeply. As the fresh air doused that inner fire, he corked the bottle, wrapped it in the brown paper and pleaded with his feet to arrive in time before his father had lifted the cross.

Back at the procession, he shouted with delight, ‘Dad, Dad!’

And his mother murmured, ‘Don’t call him that, not when he’s holding the cross.’

How well he did it, what conviction he put into his performance.

‘What a Christ, so verisimilar!’ he heard Exile remark to Dr Fonseca. In Noitía, everyone had a second name. Not exactly a nickname. Like having two faces, two identities. Or three. Because Exile was also Lame. And both were the schoolteacher, Basilio Barbeito.

How well he did it, Lucho Malpica. His face contorted with pain, but also dignified, with ‘historic distance’ as Exile would say, the look of one who knows that the flatterers of yesterday will be the deniers of tomorrow. He even stumbled during the procession.

The weight he carried was great. Some of the lashes, owing to the theatrical enthusiasm of his tormentors, ended up really hurting. And then, along the way, that canticle of women: ‘Forgive your people, Lord! Forgive your people, forgive, Lord! Do not be eternally angry.’ Exile pointed out that the celestial scenography helped. There was always a passing storm cloud on hand to eclipse the sun.

‘Verisimilar. All they need now is to actually kill him.’

‘What a horrendous song!’ complained Dr Fonseca. ‘A people on its knees, sick with guilt, pleading with God for a smile. A crumb of happiness.’

‘Yes, but don’t believe it. There’s always a touch of irony in what the people do,’ remarked Exile. ‘Notice it’s only the women who are singing.’

Ecce Homo glanced over at his son and winked his left eye. This image would remain engraved on the boy’s memory. Together with the teacher’s admiring comment. So verisimilar! He sensed what it could mean, but not entirely. It had something to do with the truth, but was somehow superior to the truth. One notch above it. He kept a hold of this word so he could use it to define what most surprised him, amazed him, filled him with desire. Having finally embraced Leda, having finally been able to take that step, leave the islands and advance towards her, that body from the Tenebrous Sea, what he thought was it couldn’t possibly be true. It was all so barbarous, so free, so verisimilar.

3

WITH THE SWAYING of the coffin, in that dark, enclosed space, Fins found it difficult to breathe.

The space was a real coffin floating on the sea, not far from the shore where the waves break and foam. Like a barge, it was tethered by a rope which Brinco held on to. He pulled on the rope, bringing the coffin closer and then letting it go with the ebb and flow of the waters. Next to him, on the sand, were caskets, some broken, some intact, strange moribund containers, their red lining on view, perplexed remains of a shipwreck in the beyond.

This game began to unsettle him. To calm down, as he did whenever he felt himself suffocating, Fins timed his agitated breathing to the sound and rhythm of the beating waves.

He counted ten inhalations. And shouted, ‘Brinco, Brinco! Get me out of here, you bastard!’

He waited. He didn’t hear a voice or notice any special movement that might indicate his call was being heeded. Sometimes he’d talk to himself. He thought this was another peculiarity of his, a further derivation of the petit mal. But when one discovers a fault, one normally tries to find out to what extent that fault is commonplace. And he’d come to the conclusion that everybody spoke to themselves. His mother. His father. The fishwives. The gatherers of shellfish and seaweed. The washerwomen. The milkmaid. The navvy. Blind Birimbau. The priest. Exile. Dr Fonseca on his solitary walks. The man in charge of the Ultramar, Brinco’s dad, whenever he was polishing the glasses. Mariscal after knocking the ice cubes together in his glass of whisky. Leda with bare feet on the frill of the waves. Everybody seemed to do it.

‘What a bastard. I’m going to tear your soul from your body. All the worms off your head.’

He deliberately banged his forehead against the coffin lid. Started shouting again, at the limit of his strength by now. An international cry for help. ‘Víctor, you son of a bitch!’

He reconsidered. There was another possibility. One that made him really mad, ‘I curse the father who made you, Brinco!’

Well, if that didn’t arouse an immediate response, he would have to give up. He took a deep breath. Dreamed that Nine Moons had come to lend him a hand. And along the seashore, barefoot, playing at walking the high wire with her flip-flops in her hand, Leda arrived. She was balancing a basket on her head, crammed full of sea urchins.

When he saw the girl, Brinco tugged the coffin towards the shore.

‘What are you doing? That brings bad luck.’

Brinco brought his forefinger to his mouth to make her be quiet. Leda deposited her basket on the sand and hurried over to see the remains of futuristic death scattered all over the beach.

‘Stop messing around and help!’ said the boy.

Leda paid attention and helped to pull on the rope until the floating coffin was back on firm ground.

‘Inside is a disgusting insect,’ mocked Brinco. ‘Come and see!’

Leda peered over with curiosity, but also with distrust.

Brinco lifted the lid of the box. Fins remained motionless, pale-faced, holding his breath, his arms tied to his body with a tightly fastened belt, eyes closed, in the posture of the deceased.

Leda stared at him in amazement, unable to speak.

‘Are you getting up or not, Calamity?’ mocked Brinco. ‘Our Lady of the Sea is here to see you.’

Fins opened his eyes. And met Leda’s astonished expression. She kneeled down and stared at him with eyes wide open, glistening slightly, but also suddenly filled with joy. What she came out with was a protest, ‘You’re a couple of idiots. Death is hardly a game.’

Leda touched Fins’ eyelids with her fingertips.

‘A game? He was dead,’ said Brinco. ‘You should have seen him. He went all pale and stiff… Blimey, Fins! You looked just like a corpse.’

Leda watched Fins, sounding him with her eyes, as if she wanted to share a secret with his body. ‘It’s nothing. They’re just absences.’

‘Absences?’

‘Yes, absences, that’s what they’re called. Absences. It’s nothing. And don’t go blabbering about it!’

The girl looked up and soon changed her tone. ‘And these coffins?’

‘They have an owner already.’

‘That wouldn’t be your dad by any chance?’

‘What’s wrong with that? He saw them first.’

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ exclaimed Leda ironically. ‘He’s always the first.’

Brinco’s expression turned sour. ‘You have to be awake when others are sleeping.’

Leda glared at him, still mocking, ‘Of course you do. That’s why they say your dad goes around howling at night.’

He’d have liked to fight her. They’d done this once, played at fighting. The three of them. Whenever he sees her, he starts to feel difficulty breathing. Fury rising in his body. The thumping of his heart injecting a burning red neon light into his eyes. She’s prettier when she’s silent. She doesn’t know that the mouth is for keeping quiet.

‘You better be careful what things you howl, Nine Moons.’

‘One day someone will tear your soul from your body,’ she replied. Whenever she got mad, she spoke differently. In a voice with shadow.

‘You’ve plenty of tongue, but you don’t scare me.’

‘They’ll pluck the worms from your head one by one.’

Fins rose from the coffin, suddenly wide awake, and quickly made to change the subject. ‘So is it true you’re going to sell these coffins at the inn?’

‘We sell lots there,’ said Brinco. ‘Anyway, you shut up, you’re dead.’

4

THE MAIN BEACH in Noitía was shaped like a half-moon. To the south lay the fishing district of San Telmo, which had grown as a shoot of the village which started it all, A de Meus, with its stone houses and sea-painted doors and windows. Further south were the disused salting places and the last drying place of octopus and eel. There, sheltered from the widows’ wind, the ramp of the first harbour was preserved. After the rocks of Balea Point came Corveiro Bay. In the middle of it all, the town, spilling new buildings like scattered dominoes. Between San Telmo and Noitía, following the coastal road and before reaching the bridge at Lavandeira da Noite, was Chafariz Cross. From there started a smaller road which climbed uphill to the Ultramar inn, bar, shop, cellar, with its adjoining dance hall and cinema Paris-Noitía.

The far north, where the river Mor and its reed bed formed a natural border, was still untouched. This was a zone of dunes, the oldest with abundant vegetation to leeward, with a predominance of the bluey-green patience of sea holly. The front line of dunes was very steep, where the vanguard of the storm hit first. At the top of these dunes, tied down with the long hair of Bermuda grass, rose a crest of marram grass against the wind. Further north, protected by a natural armour of rocks, was another, more isolated beach. But anyone looking for it, after a pine grove to the rear of dead dunes, would find the emblazoned gate and walls of Romance Manor.

Which is why the vans stopped before that, at one end of the half-moon, where there were barely any bathers even in summer, except on a public holiday. Most holidaymakers didn’t make it past the reeds. But people in vans were not holidaymakers. They were something else. Some arrived at other times of the year. Like these two, this couple, who’d left their van in a corner at the end of the track used as a car park, at the start of the dunes. It was a Volkswagen which had been fitted out as a caravan and painted the colours of the rainbow, with curtains on the windows.

Leda didn’t say a word. She was used to doing things like this, of her own free will and on the quiet. What Fins and Brinco did was follow her. They clambered up the inside of a dune until they were confronted by the sea. Hidden by the crest of marram grass, they could see without being seen. There they were, the couple. Rather than swimming, they played at moving away and coming closer with their bodies. In the waves, in foamy whirlpools, attempting not to lose their footing. In the end, both man and woman emerged from the sea. They were holding hands and ran laughing over the sand in the direction of the dunes. They were both tall and slim. She had long, blond hair. It was a luminous day with a young, springy kind of light which glistened on the sea. To the spies, what they were seeing resembled a hypnotic mirage.

‘They’re hippies,’ said Brinco with a certain contempt. ‘I heard about them in the Ultramar.’

And Leda murmured, ‘Well, they look Dutch or something to me.’

‘Ssssssssh!’

Amid laughter, Fins told them to be quiet. The couple, seeking somewhere to hide, came closer to the peeping Toms. The lovers caressed each other with their bodies, but also with the ebb and flow of their breath, their words.

‘Ohouijet’aimejet’aimeaussibeaucouptuestplusbellequelesoleil tu m’embrasses.’

‘Ohouioucefeudetapeautuvienstuvienstumetues tu me fais du bien.’

The accelerated pleasure of bodies on sand, that pleasurable violence, the throbbing of their whispers, unsettled the sentinels. Fins ducked down and leaned against the inner slope of the dune, and the other two copied him.

‘That was French,’ said the red-faced Fins in a whisper.

‘Who cares?’ said Brinco. ‘You can understand everything.’

It was Leda who decided to take one last look. And what she saw was the torso of the woman on top of the man, astride him, copulating, lifting her head to the sky and stopping all the wind, tensing her body, filling the horizon, everything an attentive gaze could take in. At the highest point, the woman closed her eyes, and so did Leda.

Then Leda started rolling downhill. And Fins and Brinco had no choice but to follow her.

‘If they’re hippies, I suppose they’d be talking hippy.’

They’d already passed the bridge by the reeds, but were still a little nervous. Their bodies had yet to settle in their bodies. From time to time a mouth would let out a blast. They didn’t talk about what they’d seen, but what they’d heard.

The other two burst out laughing. Leda didn’t like it.

‘I was only joking!’

‘No you weren’t,’ said Brinco in order to wind her up. And he continued the joke: ‘Hippies speak hippy!’

‘You’re a couple of idiots. You’ve a screw loose.’

‘Don’t get mad,’ said Fins. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

‘You can go to hell, go write on water,’ shouted Leda. ‘You’re both the same.’

5

THEY WALKED, DEEP in thought, along the side of the coastal road. The two boys had their hands in their pockets and were watching Leda’s bare feet on the tarmac. She played with her flip-flops, humming the tune of ‘Lola’ and swinging them in the air like huge dragonflies.

When they reached Chafariz Cross, on the other side of the road leading to the Ultramar, they saw another boy who was younger than them. He was calling to them and waving his arm urgently.

‘It’s Chelín! He must have found something,’ exclaimed Leda.

Brinco cannot avoid being sarcastic whenever he sees Chelín. ‘Sure, he’ll have found something. He doesn’t know how to live without that damn pendulum.’

‘Well, it works sometimes, doesn’t it, Leda?’ said Fins in a conciliatory tone.

‘Only because he’s so damn stubborn,’ replied Brinco.

Leda gazed at them both as if rebuking them for their ignorance. ‘His dad used to unearth springs. He was clairvoyant, a water diviner. He discovered all the wells in this area with a rod or pendulum. There are people like that, who see into what’s hidden. With magnetic powers.’ She learned her trade in the river and sea, washing and collecting shellfish. Her speech had a gurgle that made her stand out. An excess load that acted as defence. And she still had time to murmur with what was left of her open body. ‘Some people are just smoke. They don’t kill or frighten, tie or untie.’

‘Amen,’ replied Brinco.

‘That must be why he’s so good at stopping the ball,’ interjected Fins. ‘Hidden powers!’

‘Maybe. But where the hell is he taking us?’

Leda ran to meet Chelín. She knew where they were going. For a short while the path became deeper, surrounded on either side by clumps of laurel, holly and elder, which bent down as if to form a vault. It finally gave way to a stone staircase. Next to each step, fermenting moss that resembled a curled-up hedgehog. Suddenly, on top of the hill, a house which seemed to be propped up, supported, by nature. One of those ruins that wants to disappear but can’t, which is bound, not cleft, by the ivy on the walls. Behind a tangle of gorse and broom were two hollows. A dislocated wooden door and a distrustful window with a squint. The building was so taken by nature that the visible part of the roof was a field of foxgloves, and at the eaves the thickest branches of ivy intertwined in order to fall back on themselves as gargoyles. On the threshold of the door, the leaves had respected the tiles, perhaps because of their vegetal forms, which were modernist in style, orange and green, and adorned an inscription in letters glazed blue on white: ‘American Union of Sons of Noitía, 1920’.

Chelín was taken up with his role. He concentrated all his senses, outside and in, just as his clairvoyant father had taught him. There was something special about the pendulum in his hand. The magnetic weight at the end of the chain was a bullet.

To start with, it didn’t move. But then slowly the pendulum began to sway from side to side.

Leda rebuked the disbelievers: ‘See?’

‘He’s doing it with his wrist,’ replied Brinco. ‘You’re a fraud, Chelín. Here, give it to me.’

Chelín ignored him. Because he knew Brinco was a stick-in-the-mud, and because he really was following another clue. Absorbed in the intricacy of flows, deposits and currents. He started walking towards the hollow of the door, the pendulum swaying ever more quickly.

‘Come on, have no fear!’ exclaimed Leda with conviction, because she knew Brinco was more than reluctant. Normally so forward, he always came up with excuses here, warned that the place was dangerous, on the verge of collapsing.

The inside of the School of Indians was largely in shadow, but there was a crater in the roof through which entered a substantial beam of light. A natural skylight opened by a circular cascade of tiles. And there were other, smaller holes, cracks through which entered spears or arrows with the nature of sun rays. The air was so thick that the light found it difficult to penetrate as far as the ground. But it was important it did so, both for the intruders and for the place itself. Because what this beam of light and the occasional slender lantern illuminated was the large relief map of the world which covered the floor. Carved in noble wood, it had been treated, varnished, skilfully painted and preserved, not with the idea of eternity, but so that it could accompany as optimistic ground, somewhere between time and the intemporal, the future of Noitía. In the American Union of Sons of Noitía’s school, built with the donations of emigrants, there was this peculiarity, which was later copied: each pupil sat in a corner of the mappa mundi and moved with the passing of the years, so that when he finished, he could be said to be a citizen of the world. There were other things that made the so-called School of Indians unusual. The typewriters and sewing machines sent from Argentina or Uruguay. The impressive library, imported or paid for. The zoological collection with the presence of desiccated animals and birds in glass cases, according to the custom of that period. There was still the odd specimen, the spectre of some bird which had been left for an unknown reason, like the long-necked crane hanging incredulous next to the detachable pedagogical skeleton missing an arm. On the main wall, faded like cave paintings, the trees of Natural Sciences and the History of Civilisations. Faded as was the map on the ground, over which the children walked, with Chelín and his pendulum leading the way, across countries and continents, islands and seas, the geographical names still discernible, despite the gnawing and abandonment of time.

Chelín came to a halt. The pendulum was swinging like crazy. He’d brought them to a shady corner where they could make out a bulky shape covered in a brand-new tarpaulin, which upped their expectations, since the visitors weren’t much interested in relics. A large part of the furniture and collections had burned in another time, an archaic period outside time, referred to by the grown-ups as ‘war’. There were still a few books on the dusty shelves, subsumed by cobwebs and rilled by lice. Not much was left. A few furtive visitors would come and rummage through the rotten, gnawed, fearful remains. Though each year the population of bats increased, hanging on their shadowy hooks.

Nobody dared. In the end, Chelín took hold of the bullet and decided to lift one end of the tarpaulin. They were silenced, astonished.

‘Well done, Chelín! Now that’s what I call a treasure.’

It was a large cargo of boxes full of bottles of whisky. The discoverers of the haul gazed in fascination at the image of the tireless Johnnie Walker.

Leda moved forward and managed to extract a bottle with the famous label of the rare and much sought-after imported whisky. She turned to Chelín and declared a historical redress in admiring tones: ‘You’re our hero, Chelín!’

Fins pointed at him triumphantly. ‘No more Chelín. From now on, Johnnie. Johnnie Walker! Our captain!’

The blast of a shotgun echoed around the old school’s interior as if propelled by the core of this last sentence. The echo. The fragments of tile. The crazed flight of the bats. The bulging eyes of the clairvoyant’s son. Everything seemed to have come from the weapon’s smoking barrel. Leda was so dazed she dropped the bottle of whisky, which fell to the ground and smashed in a bluey area named ‘The Atlantic Ocean’.

Two figures emerged from the darkness with absolutely no intention of passing unnoticed, and came to a halt beneath the accidental skylight in the roof. The first to make himself visible was a giant hulk carrying the shotgun. But he was soon replaced in the foreground by a second man wearing a white suit and panama hat, who wiped away his sweat with a crimson handkerchief without removing his white cotton gloves.

They knew who it was. They knew it was useless trying to escape.

He took possession. The large bully dusted off a chair and offered it to his superior. When he started talking, he did so in a deep voice, which was both intimate and imperative. The man was Mariscal, ‘the Authentic’, as he himself liked to be known. The other man, the one with the weapon, was Carburo, his inseparable bodyguard. Nobody used that word. He was the Curate. The Stick under Orders. The Bully. This was his name. He’d worked for a time as a butcher, and used this snippet from his CV whenever he thought it appropriate, with convincing self-esteem.

‘I shit on the keys of life, Carburo! Don’t worry, boys, don’t worry… This oaf has a taste for artillery. I’m always telling him, “Carburo, ask first. Then do what you have to.” A fortiori. These things happen. You finger the trigger, it’s the trigger that’s in charge. As the philosopher once said, with gunpowder and a kick in the balls, that was the end of man.’

Mariscal became thoughtful, his gaze fixed on the ground. The wood-carved map in relief. The work that must have gone into it, the work involved in remembering.

He raised his eyes and noticed Leda. ‘Where did this girl come from?’

‘I came from the mother who had me!’ exclaimed Leda in a rage. She was furious about the loss.

‘Kyrie eleison,’ said Mariscal after a pause. ‘And who is that saint, if one may ask?’

‘Not “is”,’ said Leda. ‘She died when I was born.’

Mariscal clicked his tongue and leaned over. He seemed now to be inspecting the trail of lights in the ceiling. You grew up well, girl, he murmured to himself. Nature is wise. Very wise. History returns, he thought, and it’s good to step aside. He recalled Adela, an employee at the canning factory where Guadalupe used to work. He didn’t stop still until he’d bought the factory. He hated the owner, the foreman, those stingy, sticky exploiters. Let them go grope their own mothers. The owner didn’t want to sell, but had no choice in the matter. And when the factory was his, he said to Guadalupe, ‘Now they can sing and eat all they like.’ But that was only for a while. He ended up employing the same foreman. Adela? Yes, Adela. Her beauty, her shyness, her resistance, her sudden yielding, her unfathomable sadness in the mezzanine after what happened happened. She shut herself up at home. Never came back to work. Somebody convinced Antonio Hortas, a poor, single sailor, to marry her and give his surname to the baby. Antonio didn’t need much convincing. Or paying. Because Antonio Hortas loved that woman. And if it was a question of horns, he didn’t mind; he knew plenty of illustrious members of the Confraternity of St Cornelius.

God keeps an eye on the devil, who’s just a poor old demon. God gives as much as he has to give.

‘Mutatis mutandis,’ murmured Mariscal, avoiding the girl’s gaze. And then recovering his tone of voice, ‘Well, troops… there’s an end to it. You heard nothing. You saw nothing. Os habent, et non loquentur. They have mouths, and speak not. Learn that and you’ve gained half a life. The rest is also very simple. Oculos habent, et non videbunt. They have eyes, and see not. Aures habent, et non audient. They have ears, and hear not.’

In the ruinous School of Indians, his voice sounded charming, velvety and hoarse. They were all ears and eyes.

He fell silent. Sized up the weight of his charm. Then added, ‘Manus habent, et non palpabunt. They have hands, and touch not. Don’t pay much attention to that. The hands are for touching and the feet are for walking. But it fits the bill when things have an owner. As is the case here.’

They listened like schoolchildren being treated to an impromptu masterclass. Here was a man acting himself and revelling in the role. He cleared his throat. Stroked his lips.

‘It’s very important to know why the senses exist. What are the eyes for? For not seeing. There’s what cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be said. And, in this last case, what cannot be said you have to suppress and keep your trap shut. What about the mouth? The mouth is for keeping quiet. That’s the funny thing about Latin, one thing leads to another.’

Brinco understood perfectly the meaning of Mariscal’s words. But what he liked best was the way he said them. That assuredness. That manner of asserting control with a hint of scorn, which captivated and drew you in with an obscure sense of sympathy. He felt linked to him by an invisible intelligence. A force stronger than that of rebellion, but which couldn’t override it completely. Shit. His guts. The way they rumble so it seems everyone can hear. That whiny bastard, how Mariscal likes to talk. To listen to himself. The mouth is for keeping quiet.

Víctor Rumbo made as if to leave. Started to do so.

‘Brinco, stay where you are. I haven’t finished yet.’

Mariscal approached the teacher’s desk, mounted the platform and, possibly because of his position, raised his voice, giving free rein to his discourse. ‘You have to differentiate between reality and dreams. That’s the firstest thing.’ He laughed at his grammatical error. ‘The first is always the firstest.’ Then he recovered his grand gesture, his sobriety. ‘The day you get that confused, you’re lost. So walk very carefully, children. There are bad people about, people who on account of a Johnnie Walker, one miserable smuggled bottle, will hang you from a butcher’s hook.’

Mariscal turned his gaze towards the wall with the faded Tree of History.

‘History started with a crime,’ he said abruptly. ‘Haven’t they taught you that yet?’

He interrupted himself. Seemed to gauge the weight of his own words. Stared at the map on the floor and murmured tiredly, ‘Enough lessons for today!’

The glare of lightning illuminated the ocean inside the School of Indians. They waited, but the clap of thunder held back, as if summoning all its strength to burst through the crater in the roof intact.

‘Home, all of you! The beams of heaven are about to cave in!’

6

LUCHO MALPICA WAS shaving in front of a small mirror with a diagonal crack, which hung next to the window opposite the sea. Half his face was covered in shaving foam, which he removed with the razor, leaving half Christ’s beard. From time to time he would stop and stare sombrely through the window, in search of signs in the sea and sky.

‘Seems like the old so-and-so has finally calmed down.’

Into a cushion used for knitting lace, on top of the stencilled pattern, a woman’s hands, Amparo’s, stuck pins with different-coloured heads which appeared to be inventing a map of their own. The hands paused for a moment. They also were on the lookout for Malpica’s embittered voice.

‘How long is it since I last went fishing, Amparo?’

‘Some time.’

‘How long?’

‘A month and three days.’

‘Four. A month and four days.’

Then he added a piece of information he immediately regretted. But he’d said it already. ‘Do you know where there’s a tally? In the Ultramar’s book of IOUs. That’s where they keep track of the stormy weather. Some sailors never leave that place.’

‘They shouldn’t have gone there to start with,’ said Amparo angrily. ‘Let them drown their sorrows at home.’

‘You have to do something. God knows, I wish I were in prison!’

Amparo raised her eyes and responded with irony, ‘And me in hospital!’

Seated at the table, Fins watched these two words, ‘prison’ and ‘hospital’, cross the tablecloth and build a strange abode in the red and white squares of the oilskin. A space that was quickly occupied by the creatures from the book he was reading, which twisted and turned and which until now had been unknown to him.

Amparo’s hands took up their work. They moved with the urgency of arriving somewhere as soon as possible. As they managed the boxwood needles, the sound of the wood formed a musical percussion which seemed both to mark and to follow the rhythm of the man’s restless pacing, of the storm in his head.

‘So me in prison and you in hospital. What fun! This life is for letting off fireworks!’

Her hands dropped to her lap. ‘You’re getting worse, Lucho. You used to have more patience. And more humour.’

The sailor pretended to zip up his mouth. Felt guilty for the sense of unease. Attempted a smile. ‘I used to cry with one eye and laugh with the other.’

Fins had been dividing his imagination and gaze between the print of his parents and the illustration in his book. He took advantage of his father’s sudden silence. ‘Dad, have you ever seen an Argonaut?’

The sailor sat down at the table, next to his son. Thought about it. ‘Well, there was a Russian boat that went down once. The sailors wore heavy leather jackets. Black leather jackets. Good they were too…’

‘No, Dad. I’m not talking about people. Have a read of this: “Such cephalopods are very ugly animals. If one looks inside an Argonaut’s eyes, one sees that they are empty.”’

Fins looked up from the book and stared at his father. Lucho’s expression was one of enormous surprise. He was running through all the sea creatures he knew. He thought about the rainbow wrasse, which some years was male and others female. He thought… But no, he’d never gazed into an Argonaut’s empty eyes.

‘That book came from the School of Indians,’ he said. He poured himself a glass of claret and emptied it in one go.

‘Why was it called that? School of Indians?’

Lucho’s hurt gesture. His smile. He always made the most of this opportunity. Fins knew what he was going to say, the same old joke about playing cowboys and Indians, being an Apache and so on. But this time a flicker of pain interrupted his smile. A spasm introduced by memory.

‘Many from here — many! — left for America. Most were stonemasons, carpenters, bricklayers, day labourers… and sailors. Once they’d got themselves a bit of silver, the first thing they’d do is go and buy themselves a suit for dancing. The next thing, get together in order to set up a school. That’s what they did. All over Galicia. It was for them the Modern School. But after the war, when it was abandoned, it got this other name, School of Indians.’

He glanced over at Amparo, who was slowly inserting pins into the cushion.

‘It wasn’t just any old school. It was the best school! Everything they had hoped for. Rationalist, they called it. And they sent typewriters, sewing machines, globes, microscopes, barometers… They even packed in a skeleton so we could learn the names of all the bones. They set up loads of schools, but this one had something special. An extraordinary idea that the floor of the school was the world. They made it out of noble wood. That floor was built by the very best carpenters and carvers. Every now and then, you’d sit in a different country.’

He fell silent. Made an inventory. In this composition of the thinker, he held his head with such pressure, so horizontally, that he seemed to be stopping a leak in his temple.

‘That’s all that’s left, more or less. The floor and the skeleton.’

He stood up and with his right forefinger started pointing at his left hand, ‘Trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate…’ One word jumped on top of another. Lucho Malpica was content. He noticed the fizz of memory on his lips, the fact that he could remember. That salty taste.

‘Do you know which is the most important bone of all? No, you don’t.’ He smacked his son on the nape. ‘The sphenoid!’

Lucho then made a bowl with his scarred hands and declared, as if holding a human skull, ‘I can hear the teacher now. Here’s the key, the sphenoid! The bone with a chair like a Turkish bed and a bat’s wings, which opened in silence all through history to make room for the enigmatic organisation of the soul.’

He stared at his hands in surprise, the bowl of eloquence they’d made. Then exclaimed in amazement at himself, ‘Blessed hosts!’

The other two, mother and son, also stared at him in wonder. He was a taciturn type. On the quiet side. At home there was a connection between his ruminations and the knocking together of the boxwood needles. To Fins, when he became aware of it, this was a wounding sound. A chattering of the house’s teeth. But there were these moments, increasingly rare, when the sound became transfigured. And the cud showed itself.

‘Which parts of the world did you sit in, father?’ asked Fins with shared enthusiasm.

Lucho Malpica suddenly changed tone. ‘I don’t want you going there.’

‘Any day now the sky will fall on top of you!’ added his mother.

Lucho went over to the window to take a look at the sea. From there, he spoke to his son in an imperative tone. ‘Listen, Fins, you need to go and clean the vats again.’

‘He’s too big to be getting into those vats,’ remarked Amparo angrily. ‘Besides, he gets dizzy.’

‘Not half as much as at sea,’ mumbled Lucho.

He got down on his knees by the hearth in order to stoke the fire. At his back, the smoke imitated the seascape, taking the form of mists and storm clouds. ‘What do you want me to do, woman? Rumbo asked me. I can’t tell him no.’

‘Well, it’s about time you learned to say no once in a while!’

Lucho ignored his wife. If only she knew the times he’d had to say no. He decided to speak to his son, and did so vehemently. ‘Listen, Fins! Don’t go telling anyone about your absences. If you talk about it, you’ll never get a job. Understand? Don’t ever talk about it. Ever! Not even to the walls.’

Amparo took up her work and the boxwood needles resounded again like the house’s anguished inner music. There was now a thread connecting the lacemaker’s imagination and the way the needles knocked together. In Amparo’s mind, seeing what she’d seen, there were new and old times. On occasion, the new times even gave birth to the old. Which was why she preferred not to let the memories show themselves. The shadowy mouths had had their say. When she was a girl, anyone who suffered from epileptic fits or prolonged absences ended up being considered mad. A simple nickname like that could land you in the madhouse.

A great-aunt had died there. Back when each internee had a number tattooed on their skin. There had even been professional loony hunters who’d visited remote villages and poor districts in covered wagons like cages, searching for suitable candidates. The Church, in league with some powerful families, had founded a hospital. And the administration took money from the local councils according to the number of internees. The more loonies, the better.

Oh yes. She knew what she was talking about. Which was why she kept quiet. And her fingers ran further away.

7

FINS HEARD THE door knocker and knew who was at the door. Three knocks in succession, followed by another. The knocker was a metal hand. A hand Lucho Malpica had found in Corcubión Estuary. He said it came from the Liverpool, which had sunk in 1846. He’d cleaned off the rust and polished it very carefully — like a real hand, he said — until it shone again like metal. According to him, the hand of the knocker was the most valuable object in the house. Whenever he came home drunk from one of his personal shipwrecks, he’d stroke the hand, taking care not to bang it.

The three knocks were repeated, followed by another. His mother also knew who this Morse code belonged to. She stopped her knitting and gazed at the door with distrust.

Fins ran to open it. It was her. Leda Hortas.

He had no chance to ask questions. She pulled at him excitedly. First with her eyes. Then she grabbed hold of his arm. Even she wasn’t aware of how strong she could be.

‘Come on! Run!’

She let go and started running barefoot towards the beach. Fins didn’t have time to close the door. When he heard his mother’s voice again, he didn’t want to. He knew she’d be sitting down, muttering, ‘Nine Moons!’

‘Where are we going, Leda? What’s up?’

But no, she wouldn’t stop. Her legs, dark feet, pale heels, seemed to grow as they ran. They laboured their way up the side of the largest primary dune, between corridors of storm, until they reached the top.

She was beside herself, her eyes wide open. ‘Look, Fins!’

‘My God! It cannot be!’

‘That’s nothing.’

The beach near where they were was covered in oranges discarded by the sea. The two youngsters remained motionless. Grafted on to the sand. Feeling the Bermuda grass, being tickled by the spikes of marram. In amazement. Turned to wind.

It was a while before Leda and Fins heard the sound of heavy machinery. They were about to jump down the vertical face of sand. Touch the mirage with their hands.

From the top of the dune they saw the lorry making its way with difficulty along the dirt track. It stopped in the clearing at the end of the road, in an area used for extracting sand. A man and a boy got out of the cabin. They knew them both very well. The elder one was Rumbo, who was in charge of the Ultramar. The younger, Brinco. In the trailer three others, Inverno, Chumbo and Chelín, unloaded some baskets or panniers with which to collect the fruit.

Brinco pretended not to notice them. They realised he was pretending.

That’s what he was like, thought Fins. When he was absorbed in his own things, he was absorbed in his own things. He’d get annoyed if you stuck your nose in. Turn invisible. Deaf. Mute. But when he wanted your interest, your attention, there was no way of getting rid of him.

At Rumbo’s orders, the group started gathering the oranges the sea had brought in from the listing-over of some ship.

‘Take a look, Víctor. The sea is a veritable mine,’ said Rumbo. ‘It gives out everything. Without a single shovelful of manure! You don’t have to fertilise it, like the blasted earth.’

Leda jumped down the vertical face and marched towards the group of harvesters. Fins always had the impression that his feet sank in the sand more than hers. She didn’t sink, she seemed to walk on the surface. Especially when she had an objective in mind. A destination.

‘These oranges are mine!’ she shouted. ‘I saw them first!’

Rumbo and his companions stopped working. Stared at her in amazement. Except for Brinco. Brinco turned his back on them. Sometimes, when he got annoyed, he’d say, ‘You’re always sniffing at other people’s farts.’ But now he preferred not to see them.

The girl squared up to the boss. ‘You know the rules. A shipwreck’s remains belong to the one who finds them.’

Rumbo gazed at her with a mixture of amusement and confusion. ‘How much is the cargo worth then, girl?’

‘A lot!’

Leda took in the possessions on the beach with her hands. There were still oranges emerging from the foam. ‘Although I’m not sure yet if I want to sell them.’

Rumbo pulled a coin out of his pocket. ‘Here you go. For the trouble of seeing.’

‘What the hell is that? That’s a piece of shit, Mr Rumbo!’ said Leda.

The man held the coin between his thumb and forefinger and twirled it mysteriously in front of Leda. ‘Close your eyes.’

Leda did as she was told. Fins wasn’t sure what was going on. Rumbo flicked the coin in the air and called to the others, ‘Now you’ll see!’

Rumbo crouched down. Let his hands slide along Leda’s naked legs, from the knees downwards, grabbed her right foot, which was bare, and placed it on top of the coin. All the others were waiting, Brinco as well, who’d returned from the land of the invisible.

Rumbo was absorbed in his experiment and murmured, ‘Now you’ll see, yes, now you’ll see what a woman’s skin is like.’

Then, out loud, ‘Tell me, girl, heads or tails?’

Leda still hadn’t opened her eyes. Without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Tails!’

She moved her foot and uncovered the coin. It was tails. They could see the imperial eagle. Rumbo had a quick look at the other side, Franco’s head, where it said Caudillo of Spain by the grace of God.

‘She’s right. It is tails!’

The group of workers burst out laughing. Rumbo produced a wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a hundred-peseta note with the image of the beautiful Fuensanta painted by Romero de Torres. ‘Take this. A darkie! The most popular in the whole of Spain! Lots of people keep these stuffed in their mattresses.’

Then, addressing the others, ‘Now you see what a woman’s skin is like. Even the skin on her foot! This one was born wise. She’ll be rich one day. It’s written in the stars.’

Leda placed the back of her thumb on her mouth. Quickly made the sign of the cross. And spat in the direction of the sea.

‘Poor I won’t be.’

8

TO BE IN the dark and scratch darkness with a broom. The dark’s boundary smells acrid. This is his work. To scratch the crust of shadows. He feels drunk and dirty inside. Possessed by a putrid intoxication. But his instinct tells him to climb the slope and exit through what resembles a fleshy mouth, opening and closing for him. He lies face up on the stony ground. Out of breath to start with. Then, in and out of his body, he feels a tingle like never before. As if, for a moment, all the attention of the cosmos is centred on him.

He gets up. Looks at the mouth of hell. The great vat. He’s still holding the small broom in his hand. His arms and face are covered in grime spread by his sweat. He’s wearing old, patched-up clothes stained by the work of cleaning. He feels better, even attracted by the mouth, by the now succulent memory of the dizzy spell and his escape.

It has been a day of great heat, of burning noon. In the yard of the Ultramar the sun is still strong, but the large gate at the end frames a hazy sea, a depression spreading along the coast. Fins Malpica blinks. Finally comes to completely. And swings towards the mouth of the other huge vat, next to the one he’s been cleaning.

‘Brinco! Hey, Brinco! Can you hear me? Can you hear me or not? Víctor! Brinco!’

Faced by the other’s silence, he decides to get into the dark vat. He pulls at Víctor Rumbo with all his might. Grabs him by the ankles, lifts him in his arms and places him on the ground, taking great care not to knock him against the stones. Víctor is unconscious. Alarmed, unsure how best to proceed, Fins kneels down, searching for a pulse or heartbeat, for signs of life in his eyes. But the other boy’s hand is limp, his chest doesn’t heave and his irises seem to have disappeared. Fins hesitates, then makes up his mind. Gets ready to apply the mouth-to-mouth. He knows how to do it. He is a fisherman’s son and has seen cases of people close to drowning on Noitía’s beaches.

With both hands he opens Víctor’s mouth as wide as he can. Takes a deep breath, and bends down to apply his mouth to the other’s. The unconscious victim pouts his lips with mocking exaggeration in preparation for an amorous kiss.

‘Mmmm!’

Fins understands he’s being made fun of and stands up in annoyance.

Brinco gets to his feet as well and bursts out laughing. He can’t stop himself. His laughter seems to have no end. But then he suddenly stops laughing. This happens when he hears the sound of an engine, turns his gaze and sees a car coming up the hill with treacherous calm.

The car halts in the yard, next to where the others are standing. It’s a white Mercedes and out gets Mariscal. Looking elegant, always like some kind of beau, in his white suit and panama hat, his shoes white as well. His hands in white gloves like the ones used at gala ceremonies.

‘How are things down in hell, boys?’

Brinco looks at him, shrugs his shoulders, but remains quiet.

‘Getting by, sir,’ replies Fins.

‘I’ve been in there as well!’ says Mariscal, addressing the other boy. ‘Mmmm! It’s strange, but I always liked that smell.’

Without touching the mouths, taking care not to stain his immaculate suit, he goes over to inspect the vats’ vast interiors.

‘This is a job that needs doing! It certainly does,’ he declares in solemn tones. ‘If the vats aren’t clean… what’s the word?… un-ble-mished… the whole crop goes to waste. On account of the tiniest speck of shit. For that simple reason, the whole lot is wasted. Think about it. Imagine one of those vats is the globe. A single speck of shit could finish off the planet.’

Pondering his own statement, with a look of concern, he stresses his point. ‘No joke. It could finish off the planet. Ipso facto. Think about it!’

Mariscal puts his hand in his pocket and solemnly chucks a coin through the air in Brinco’s direction. Brinco grabs it with a swift gesture, as if his arm has acted by itself and is used to this game. But his mouth refuses to say thank you. As for the eyes, any casual observer would think it better, now and in the future, to steer clear of this person’s trajectory. But the man in white doesn’t seem surprised or affected by the boy’s silent hostility.

‘And you, you…’

‘Fins, sir.’

‘Fins?’

‘Yes, Malpica’s son, sir.’

‘Malpica! Lucho Malpica! A fine sailor, your dad. One of the best!’

He fumbles in his pocket and throws another coin at Fins, who catches it in the air. Mariscal takes his leave with a greeting, by caressing the brim of his hat.

‘Now you know. Not a speck of shit!’

He walks quickly towards the back door of the Ultramar.

He is muttering something. Talking to himself. The memory, the name of Malpica, bothers him for some reason. ‘A fine sailor, yes sirree. Sensu stricto. Stubborn as well. One of the dumbest!’

The boys watch him go. Shortly afterwards, when he’s disappeared through the door, they hear his ingratiating tones: ‘Sira? Sira, are you there?’

His voice echoes in the yard. Fins glances over at Brinco. His gaze now contains the fuse, dynamite, anemones. Like someone playing with a whip, he brushes his feet with the broom.

‘What do you say we search for that speck of shit that’s going to finish off the world?’

Brinco doesn’t want to play along. All Fins gets back is a ration of sullen eyes. Fins knows how the other boy’s face can change. He finds it difficult to say, for example, when it’s friendly or not, happy or not. Brinco’s mood swings from one state to another, as the sky changes in Noitía. His eyes now are focused on the point where Mariscal has gone in. They scour the front of the house, pierce the stones. Gaze up at the windows on the first floor. In one of which the face of the white-suited gallant appears for a moment behind the curtain. A woman slips past him. It’s Sira. The man follows. Both vanish from sight in a flicker of shadows.

9

BRINCO WENT IN through the back door and climbed an inner staircase which led to the first-floor landing, where the Ultramar’s rooms were. On the staircase was a warm light, of the kind afforded by bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling by twisted wires. Up on the landing, the wind introduced gusts of light which clung to the curtains. On the opposite wall, without windows, were a few typical souvenirs: ceramic plates painted with marine scenes, scallop shells, starfish and coral branches on varnished wood, oil paintings of flowers and leaves on polished planks the sea had cast up on the shore.

With a grimy face and tense expression, Brinco walked down the carpeted landing, not bothering to push aside the curtains. He was heading for the room at the end, known by everyone at the inn simply as ‘La Suite’. He stopped in front of the closed door.

For a short while he listened to the sighs and murmurs of the amorous struggle. Coming through a door, the human Morse emitted by pleasure sounds remarkably like the language of pain. Brinco suddenly heard his own name. A voice from afar, which penetrated the curtains’ turbulence. His father always called him by his Christian name. He didn’t like his nickname.

‘Víctor! Where the hell are you? Víctor!’

Rumbo’s voice made him even angrier. With the back of his sleeve he dried the tears streaming down his grimy face. Left very carefully. Quickened his pace. Started running, furiously barging into the curtains that, with the sash windows half open, seemed to flutter in time, when in fact each was governed by its own wind in rigorous, stormy succession.

The walls of the Ultramar’s bar were covered in posters and stills from Westerns. There was also a poster from a local group dressed up as mariachis with the name ‘Noitía’s Magicians’. And there were a few well-known faces of singers and film stars, all of them women: Sara Montiel, Lola Flores, Carmen Sevilla, Aurora Bautista, Amália Rodrigues, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren. In the midst of them all, of a smaller size but in a prominent position, a black and white photograph of Sira Portosalvo with the following dedication: ‘To the one I most love and make suffer’.

Fins was seated at a table, eating mussels boiled in their shells, which Rumbo had served him when he’d finished cleaning. As he ate, he seemed to watch and listen to everything that was being said. Over at the counter, Rumbo and a couple from the Civil Guard — Sergeant Montes and a younger guard, Vargas — were talking about cinema.

‘There I agree one hundred per cent with the authority,’ declared Rumbo, staring at the sergeant. ‘There’s nobody like John Wayne. Wayne and a horse. That’s enough to make a film. No need for a pretty girl or anything.’

This categorical exclusion was followed by a silence Rumbo correctly interpreted as profound disagreement.

‘Though if there is a pretty girl, it makes for a perfect trio. Wayne, horse and girl, in that order,’ he clarified before redirecting the conversation. ‘Even though he had to change his name.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked the sergeant in confusion. ‘Wasn’t he called John?’

‘No, his name wasn’t John. His name was… Marion.’

‘Ma-ri-on?’ repeated the sergeant, barely able to suppress his disappointment. ‘You don’t say!’

Then, after taking a sip of his drink, the sergeant added, ‘Someone else who changed his name was Cassius Clay. Now he’s called Muhammad Ali or something.’

‘That’s different entirely,’ muttered Rumbo in a low voice, looking in the other direction.

‘They’re going to throw him in prison because of his refusal to go to war. The world champ! Those Yankees sure don’t hang about with half-measures.’

Rumbo’s attention was focused on the front door, where Brinco finally appeared. He’d deliberately gone a longer way to avoid coming down the inner stairs. He had the glazed look of someone whom the sea has deposited directly on the shore.

‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Rumbo in annoyance. ‘I went to the yard, but you weren’t there. You left Fins all on his own, cleaning that shit. This boy wasn’t born for work, damn it! Couldn’t you get him a job as a guard, my sergeant?’

Sergeant Montes slapped Brinco on the back. ‘He has himself a good sponsor, Rumbo. Who wouldn’t want him? You were born on your feet, lad.’

After that it was Rumbo who felt uncomfortable, taking refuge in the silence at the other end of the bar and making out he was busy. Later he returned, bringing Víctor a sandwich. ‘Here you go. It’s got omelette inside, don’t you know?’ he said sarcastically. ‘Made by your mother’s own fair hands.’

Vargas the guard had remained on the margins. He’d clearly been deep in thought ever since they started discussing cinema. ‘You know the one who drives me crazy…’

The sergeant didn’t let him finish. ‘Listen, Rumbo. If the baddy’s a good ’un, the film’s a good ’un. Now is that or isn’t that so?’

‘Yes, that’s so,’ said Rumbo abruptly, with a fixed stare. He was keeping his thoughts to himself.

‘For example, I reckon I’d make a real good baddy,’ said Sergeant Montes. ‘Don’t you reckon, Rumbo?’

‘I reckon you would, sergeant. A real good baddy.’

The sergeant fell silent, chewing over Rumbo’s answer. ‘Don’t be so sure,’ he said finally, with an inquisitive look.

Vargas seemed blissfully unaware that he’d just been party to a short duel of words. He was still trying to finish his sentence. ‘As for Westerns, the one who drives me crazy is that woman… in Johnny Guitar… wearing trousers.’

This invocation changed everything. Rumbo grew enthusiastic, as if he could see the screen. ‘Vienna, Vienna… That’s it, Joan Crawford!’ he exclaimed, pointing to the guard. ‘Clever man. The force is going up in the world, sergeant!’

‘But let’s be serious,’ replied Sergeant Montes. ‘For a woman in arms, take Duel in the Sun. Can you name her, Rumbo?’

‘Jennifer Jones!’

Quique Rumbo, barman at the Ultramar, in charge of the dance hall and cinema Paris-Noitía, was a man of resources. He was seldom prone to exaggeration, but possessed a fine sense of spectacle. He lifted his arms in a liturgical gesture which he prolonged by drawing voluptuous curves in the air.

‘Pange, lingua, gloriosi Corporis mysterium!’

They heard the cough and footsteps of someone coming down the stairs from the Ultramar’s rooms. From the table where he was sitting with Fins, Brinco saw this person’s white shoes. Followed by Mariscal himself.

‘I thought I heard some kind of prayer. Was that you with the divine words, Rumbo?’

He took a while to respond. And did so uncomfortably, looking askance. ‘We were talking about cinema, boss.’

‘We were talking about females!’ clarified Sergeant Montes. ‘Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun.’

‘Now that’s a topic of conversation! Personally I would go for the glorious body of St Teresa, by which I mean Aurora Bautista.’

He let them chew over the unexpected billing in order to cap it off, ‘Though let’s not forget the bodies in Ben-Hur!’

The others laughed, but Vargas was confused. ‘Ben-Hur?’

The younger guard followed the movement of Mariscal’s arms as he demonstrated the to-and-fro motion of galley rowers.

‘Why don’t you ever take your gloves off?’ asked the guard abruptly.

Sergeant Montes feigned a cough and pretended to pay particular attention to what was going on outside the window. That simpleton Belvís was walking along the road, imitating the sound of a motorbike. Vroom vroom. Which was how he went about his errands. Mariscal ignored Vargas’ question and instead carried on rowing in a roundabout motion, till he clapped his hands together to signal the end.

‘Mutatis mutandis. There’s no one like John Wayne!’

Rumbo agreed, gestured OK and served him a glass of Johnnie Walker.

‘With him and a horse, you can make a film,’ Mariscal went on, blessing his statement with a swig. ‘You don’t even need a woman. What’s more, you don’t even need a horse. But a weapon, yes. You need a weapon, that’s for sure.’

In ceremonial style he clanked the ice cubes against his glass. ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’

‘And keep on doing so for many years!’ said Montes, raising his glass.

Brinco stood up and walked towards the front door. This insipid exit drew the men’s attention. Rumbo immediately fired a warning shot. ‘Víctor, I don’t want to see you in the ruins of that school.’

‘Lame goes there. I saw him,’ replied Brinco, referring to the schoolteacher Barbeito.

‘He knows where to step.’

‘Your father’s right,’ said Mariscal solemnly. ‘That place is bewitched. Always has been!’

After this, everyone waited for him to add something. Mariscal realised at once that his statement had been a key and not a lock. Instead of bringing the matter to a close, he had just opened or reopened the mystery. He suddenly changed subject, with a mocking expression. He had that ability. One face concealed another. ‘Listen, boys. Talking of school, I want to teach you something useful.’

As he addressed the two boys, he winked at the guards. ‘Never forget this saying: when you’re working, you’re not earning any money.’

He chucked a coin, which landed at Brinco’s feet. The boy stared at it, with contempt to start with. He didn’t even bend down. The group of men carried on watching him. Fins as well, sitting next to him. Through the half-open door the wind danced inside the curtains, not pushing them very far. Finally Brinco bent down and picked up the coin.

Mariscal smiled, turned to the bar and rang the ice cubes in his glass, ‘Another spiritual, Rumbo, if you don’t mind!’

10

LEDA GRABBED THE door knocker. She liked this hand made of metal and green rust. It was cold and hot at the same time. Then she knocked insistently at the door of the Malpicas’ home. Three and one. Three and one. Fins went to answer the door. Nine Moons stared at him. Laughingly to begin with, then more seriously. She had a collection of different expressions. She pulled at him imperiously. ‘Come on, move!’

This time she picked a short cut through the old dunes, jumping from side to side to avoid the sea holly. They ran to the top of the primary dune, from where they contemplated the beach’s Dantesque spectacle. The sea had now vomited up mannequins, of the kind used in shop windows for displaying the latest fashions. Wooden corpses. Mostly disjointed. The waves nuzzled amputated bodies, loose extremities. Arms, bare feet, heads twisting and turning in the sand.

Nine Moons and Fins trudged their way through the field of casualties, unearthing and lifting up members they then returned to the ground.

They were searching for survivors. Leda finally came across an intact body. A black, female mannequin. She bent down and wiped the sand from its mouth and eyes. Its face had sculptural features and was attractive.

‘Pretty, hey?’ she said.

The dry sand resembled silver make-up. Fins gazed at this face that was both alive and dead, that seemed to be forming itself as its features emerged. But he didn’t say anything.

‘Give me a hand, will you?’ said Leda, standing up. ‘We’re going to take this one.’

‘Take it? Where?’

Leda didn’t answer, but grabbed the mannequin by its ankles. ‘Hold it by its shoulders. With tenderness, mind!’

‘With tenderness?’

‘Just hold it.’

Leda and Fins carried the mannequin along the coastal road, following the shoreline. The girl took the lead, holding the figure by its calves. Fins went behind, supporting the mannequin by its neck. Their laborious walk accompanied by the heaving sea.

What fills the valley now is the sound of a Western trailer. Wind on the back of wind. Shots in the air. A requiem for mannequins. Advancing slowly along the road, in the opposite direction to Fins and Leda, is a car, a Simca 1000, with a roof rack to which is tethered a loudspeaker emitting the trailer, an advert for a film to be shown the following weekend in the cinema Paris-Noitía, at the Ultramar. For a Few Dollars More. The way the shots resound in the valley. The wind climbs on top of the wind. That music counting down to the showdown. Rumbo feels happy. Not just because the film is going to fill the cinema, which it is, but on account of this exhilarating ride on horseback, this taking the film out for a spin in the valley. Setting all and sundry on edge. Stunning birds and scarecrows.

Quique Rumbo stopped the car on reaching the mannequin bearers and turned off the cassette blaring out of the loudspeakers. He always gave the impression of being a man of experience. Someone who was used to the unexpected and trained to give a suitable response. And yet, according to Lucho Malpica, Rumbo — Quique Rumbo — had moments when he spat blood. He wound down the car window with a look of curiosity.

‘Why don’t you get Los chicos con las chicas?’ Leda began.

‘That’s a very fine dummy, Nine Moons!’ he exclaimed ironically. ‘How much do you want for it?’

‘It’s not for sale,’ replied the girl firmly. ‘It doesn’t have a price.’

This wasn’t the first time Rumbo or Fins had heard her sound off like a trader just beginning to bargain. What she did, however, was start walking again with a sudden impulse that took in both Fins and the mannequin.

Rumbo leaned out and shouted from the car window, ‘Everything has a price, you know!’

At Chafariz Cross, she took the road leading uphill to the Ultramar. Fins hoped she might agree to sell the dummy after deciding on a price. But to his surprise, she kept going, turning left along a sunken path. She stopped to catch her breath. The two of them were exhausted. But their tiredness was different. His amounted to a dissatisfied fatigue. That dummy was heavy. Weighed like a blasted robot.

‘You’re not thinking of taking it there, are you?’ he asked.

‘I am.’

‘You’re not!’

Leda smiled with steely determination, and lifted up the rigid beauty.

‘I am.’

Inside the School of Indians, the blind mannequin made a pair with the one-armed skeleton. They called it a skeleton, though it wasn’t exactly that. It was more of an Anatomical Man. You could see the different-coloured organs and muscles, some of which had disappeared over time, starting with the heart, red-painted latex, and the glass eyes. But there he was, the homunculus, complete with bones. It was a question of entering and selecting the spot. One was calling out for the other.

They decided to clean and explore the floor of the world, each in a different direction.

‘Where are you, Fins?’

‘In the Antarctic. And you?’

‘I’m in Polynesia.’

‘You’re miles away!’

‘Just whistle if you want me to come closer.’

Fins didn’t wait long. He gave a whistle.

She replied with another whistle, which was better and stronger.

In this way they drew closer. She didn’t say so, but walked with her eyes closed. Felt a geographical feature at her feet. Came to a stop. Opened her eyes and looked down.

‘Hey, I’m on top of Everest!’ she shouted. ‘Where are you?’

‘In the Amazon.’

‘Well, be careful!’

‘You too!’

They were interrupted by a creaking of roof tiles. Dust trailed down, along the line of light. A few bats exited the shady zone, flying with the clumsiness of sleepwalkers.

The couple looked up. The noise stopped. The light focused on them. They decided not to worry.

‘I’m in… Ireland,’ she said.

‘I’m in Cuba.’

‘Now we have to be really careful,’ said Leda. ‘We’re going to cross the Tenebrous Sea.’

They approached each other. Met. Felt. Touched with their hands. The hands are for touching. They embraced. When they started to kiss, another, louder noise was heard coming from the ceiling.

Leda and Fins, half blinded by the dust, looked up again. Brinco popped his head through the crater, imitating the sound of an owl: ‘Twit twoooooo!’

The intruder expelled a gobbet of spit, which sank to the floor next to the standing couple.

‘Pig Island!’ shouted Leda.

‘There’s nothing that can’t be eaten!’ he replied. Then they heard him moving off across the tiles.

‘We’d better leave. He could bring the whole roof down.’

He stopped himself because Leda was staring at him, gently wiping the dust off his shoulders.

‘Don’t worry, nothing’s going to come down.’

Nine Moons surveyed the map of Fins Malpica’s face with her fingers.

‘Arctic, Iceland, Galicia, Azores, Cape Verde…’

Fins is now seated at the teacher’s desk, to the right of the blind mannequin and the one-armed skeleton. Pretending to type. Banging on keys that move a carriage without paper.

Nine Moons is holding a book. She opened it to have a look, but started turning the pages and is now absorbed in her reading.

‘What are you reading?’

‘It has lice marks.’

‘Did they eat all the letters?’

‘Just type.’

‘I’m not sure I can. I don’t have any paper.’

‘That doesn’t matter, stupid! Look, type. “All is mute silense…”’

‘Shouldn’t it be “silence” with a “c”?’

‘No, it says “silense” with an “s”. It must be for a reason.’

11

THE PARISH PRIEST climbed into the pulpit and, before speaking, tapped the microphone with a mixture of caution and shyness until several smiling faces nodded in his direction. It was working. At which point Don Marcelo said that we all more or less knew that God was eternal and infinite. He lasts for ever and is omnipresent, knows no limits. Which is why he is said to have invented human beings, so he had somebody to attend to the minor details. Somebody, so to speak, who could use the Decimal System. Who’d look after the smaller things. Such as changing broken roof tiles. Unblocking drains. Watching the introduction of novelties that make all our lives more bearable. ‘To give free rein to the spirit, one must keep an eye on worldly matters. Which is why it is so important to recognise the progress represented by the outdoor speakers we are using for the first time today owing to the kind donation of our fellow parishioner Tomás Brancana, known to all and sundry as Mariscal the Marshal’ — though obviously he didn’t say this — ‘to whom we owe other improvements in this church of St Mary, such as the recent repairs to the roof. One day such generosity will be repaid,’ etc., etc. And Mariscal, who had Dona Guadalupe to his right, and to his left the couple formed by Rumbo and Sira, responded with a reverential bow. Don Marcelo, with the increasing confidence supplied by new technology, after his initial nerves, gradually spurred himself on as he realised, indeed felt, that his voice was filling the temple, spreading across the whole valley, climbing the mountainsides and crashing into the sea over at Cape Cons. Even the pagans, to avoid using a stronger word, however much they tried, would never be able to bar this outburst of the spirit. And as he gained in both potency and dominion, he also felt he was gaining in rhetorical quality, in eloquence, and Mariscal himself, a connoisseur of such things, was moved to lift his head and prick up his ears. Because of this, and because it was time, the priest took it upon himself to discuss the mystery of the Holy Trinity. ‘In many images,’ he said, ‘the Supreme Being appears as a venerable old man. And we can all recognise the figure of his Son on the Cross. But then there’s the most complex person. The third person. The Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit like?’

At this point Belvís unexpectedly jumped up and whirled his arms like wings. ‘It’s me! It’s me!’

The simpleton had been sitting in the pew for young people. Next to Brinco from the Ultramar. They spent a lot of time together, because Brinco enjoyed his company. And treated him well. Could even be said to be fond of him. Always had been. Which might be why he smiled. Others turned to look at Belvís in surprise, but the priest decided to ignore him. This was a day to remember. Everything was going swimmingly. The speakers were working. So he picked up from where he’d left off, with an explanation of the Holy Spirit.

Belvís did the same. Whirled his arms as if he was going to fly, like one of those wading birds that need a run-up in order to take off. ‘It’s me! It’s me!’

I remember it well because it was the day the outdoor speakers were first used. The priest couldn’t take any more, and from the pulpit, without realising that his words were being broadcast over the whole valley, as far as the sea, blurted out, ‘That’s right, yes. The Holy Spirit is everywhere. But that doesn’t give you an excuse to fool around!’

Several adults went over to where Belvís was, and he was forced to leave. He never returned to church. I’m told that in St Mary’s, during Mass, whenever the priest makes reference to the Holy Spirit, there are still some who spontaneously turn around and glance at the spot where Belvís was, moving his arms like wings: ‘It’s me! It’s me!’

He stayed in Noitía for a few more years. He’d run errands, take fish and shellfish to the restaurants, goods to old people who were unable to fend for themselves, always gadding about on his imaginary motorbike.

‘Will you be long, Belvís?’

‘No, I’m on the Montesa.’

Vroom vroom.

He ended up in the loony bin in Conxo. By which I mean the psychiatric hospital. But I don’t think he was mad either then or now. He had no father, and suffered a lot when his mother died. When he was a child, his mother looked after him as best she could. In abject misery. The child walked around half naked, without nappies, his willy and bits hanging out in the wind. Which meant he did his necessities wherever he felt like it. One day he chose as a firing range the porch of a neighbour living in the Big House. She had plants, begonias and so on, it seemed like a good enough place and he dropped his entire payload. He needed to go and so he went. But it so happened that the neighbour spotted him and gave him a real spanking. He returned home in floods of tears. When his mother found out, she took him in her arms, went to the Big House and called to the neighbour until she appeared on the balcony. Then Belvís’ mother lifted him up, his naked bum in the air, kissed him on his buttocks and shouted out, ‘What a bottom, what a blessing!’ Now that is love.

He was so taken aback when his mother died that he lost all his voices, even the Montesa. He’d always been good at voices, ever since he was a little boy. A man or a woman’s. He could make puppets out of anything, out of cardboard and rags, and get them to talk. He did a fine impersonation of the singer Four Winds, who starred at local festivities and had this nickname because of four missing teeth. He would sing, ‘Let the boat leave the beach, it will come back again. There is his lover, she is constant, constant, constant, constant… in her feelings towards him.’ This repetition of the word ‘constant’ occurred to him as a boy and people couldn’t stop laughing. He had that ability. His best voice was definitely Charlie the Kid, by which I mean Charlie Chaplin with a Buenos Aires accent. He was good at that. The puppet and voice were all he inherited from a great-uncle who came back from Argentina to die.

Then things changed at the hospital. They let him out. Well, they discharged him, but then they let him come back. On account of the Kid, he says, who feels better there. At weekends he hits the road, a kind of one-man orchestra, out with his puppet to make a few pesetas. He’s very good, though that is hardly surprising. So much time talking to themselves. That must be why Víctor Rumbo hired him to perform at that club of his, the Vaudeville. So he could earn himself a few pesetas. He probably did it as a joke. But I don’t think that was any place for Belvís. People who go there are after something else. And I don’t just mean the scroungers and hangers-on, as the Kid would say. That’s the thing about Brinco, he was always like that. Attracted to strange people like Chelín or Belvís. Those he loved, he loved a lot. But those he hated, he hated with enthusiasm.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Now I can see them as children. They’re playing football in a flat area of the old dunes, halfway between A de Meus and Noitía. A good place to use as a pitch. The dunes protect them from the north-east wind and act as a wall to stop the ball running down to the sea. You have to see Belvís, who is broadcasting the game as if it was a match between football legends, in which he himself is an ace. And now they’re going to take penalties. Chelín is in goal. He’s just made a superb save from Brinco. He’s euphoric, having just stopped Fins’ pile-driver. And now Leda is running up. It’s her turn to shoot. She takes aim, but has to stop all of a sudden. Chelín abandons his post.

‘Where the hell are you going?’ asks Leda, feeling annoyed.

‘Women don’t take penalties.’

‘Since when?’

Belvís darts and swoops about them. Continuing to commentate in his exaggerated style. ‘There’s a moment of great tension in the stadium of Sporting Noitía. Nine Moons has got in the way of Chelín the goalkeeper. Chelín’s not happy about it. Attention. Fins the referee is having to intervene,’ etc., etc.

‘Tell the truth, Chelín,’ barks Brinco, who finds the whole situation very amusing. ‘You’re shitting yourself.’

‘No, it’s just I’m not a homo.’

In a rage, Leda picks up speed and drives the ball with all her might. But Chelín shows his reflexes, makes an arc in the air and stops it. He embraces the ball, lying on the ground, his face in the sand, smiling, victorious and out of breath.

‘See? I’m not afraid. It’s my hidden powers.’

‘You fool,’ she says. ‘I’ve always stood up for you. Now you’re going to have to kiss my feet.’

12

THEY WERE ALWAYS there, as volunteers, to help turn the cinema into a dance hall. Rumbo would give them a few cold drinks as a tip. And let them take the bits of celluloid he cut in order to splice the film when it was broken. To tell the truth, they all ended up in the hands of Fins, who was crazy about stills. He’d put together his own collection, and would order all those fragments of cinema at home. One memorable day Rumbo came back to A de Meus, the sea heaving in the background, with Moby Dick and Captain Ahab, Gregory Peck, in his pocket. That was several years ago, though the film was still included each season because it was one of his favourites. He had his obsessions, one of which was Spencer Tracy. He showed Captains Courageous more than once, and the film about the life of Thomas Alva Edison. When Edison invented the filament of light, all the audience applauded. But Rumbo’s admiration for Tracy could be summed up in a single gesture. He’d take his arm out of the sleeve of his jacket, which hung down like a one-armed man’s, and declare the title with great exaggeration: ‘Bad Day at Black Rock!’ He always said the name of that accursed place, Black Rock, with a croak in his voice. His attraction for this actor may have had something to do with the fact that Rumbo looked like him. Whenever anybody pointed this out, he would reply ironically, ‘Or vice versa!’

That said, the films he liked best were Westerns. Followed by gangster movies. From time to time there would be an Italian film and he’d attend the projection with the bearing of a navigation officer on the bridge. He’d declare, ‘Too much truth for the cinema.’ An opinion he let slide into the cans when he was putting away the rolls of film, as if he had no one else to talk to. ‘That Magnani puts them all to shame.’ He definitely didn’t like films with swordsmen, an opinion he shared with his boss, Mariscal. Fins knew this, having heard a curse that was regularly used in the Ultramar: ‘I shit on the Three Musketeers and Cardinal Richelieu!’ Rumbo’s theory was that, in the age of firearms, it was backward to make films with steel. And, together with the audience, he celebrated the progress that saw Indians equipped with Winchester rifles. ‘That gives them a fighting chance.’ Though in the end they just died more and more quickly.

Today, as night fell after the afternoon’s session, the sound of shots being fired, Clint Eastwood’s horse on the move and the lazy flight of scraps of dried grass all descended into the dunes’ desert. Rumbo whistled the catchy tune to For a Few Dollars More and so set the rhythm for the methodical, simple transformation that turned the cinema into a dance hall. All the lights went on, emphasising the colours of the garlands. Brinco, Leda and Fins placed the chairs against the wall and swept the floor, though Belvís was the quickest, riding his noisy, invisible Montesa. On the stage they let down a velvety black curtain that covered the screen. The musicians entered without a sound. Sometimes you weren’t even sure they were there until they took out their instruments and began to warm up. Rumbo arranged a buffet at the other end of the hall, opposite the stage, in a dimly lit area. The band of musicians today included two guitarists. Today was special. Sira was going to sing. She hadn’t sung since the previous New Year’s Eve. It wasn’t that she was responsible for livening up the dance; she wasn’t even the main voice. But she’d always come out to sing two or three fados. And this was a starlit moment. As the schoolteacher Barbeito used to say, there were two nights after listening to Sira Portosalvo. The night that froze the sense of unease. And the night that gave it shelter.

Everybody was waiting. The eldest were sitting down on either side of the hall. In front of them, couples dancing. The youngest in the middle and at the back. While the musicians played merengues and cumbias, a group led by Brinco mucked about with Leda and Fins, pushing them so that they would dance together. The girl was wearing a printed summer dress and turning round and round. Fins felt annoyed. He had his arms crossed and defended himself with his elbows against the others, who jumped around at the end of ‘La piragua’. The moment Sergeant Montes and Vargas the guard came in, a few of the elders sitting down stopped talking and glanced in their direction. The guards surveyed the scene and headed for the bar, where Rumbo made sure they were well attended.

Then Sira came in. Wearing a black shawl and large silver hoop earrings inlaid with jet. She looked around, her head raised, then removed her shoes.

‘I would like to dedicate the first song of the night to the dance’s finest couple,’ she said. ‘The one from the Civil Guard!’

She’d done this before. No one was surprised. Sergeant Montes smiled with satisfaction. Hungered after the singer. And the fado began, ‘I had the keys of life, but didn’t open the doors where happiness lived’, at which point all the other details lost their meaning. Sira, Sira’s voice, captivated every nook and cranny, every glance. The door of the dance hall opened and in came Mariscal, who walked diagonally without taking in the stage. At the buffet, he gestured in greeting to the guards with his hat. Whispered something to Rumbo, who nodded and offered the guards a second drink. Imported whisky. Johnnie Walker. They were grateful and raised their glasses in a toast.

And while Sira sang ‘Chaves da vida’, Brinco left the dance hall. Followed by Leda and Fins.

Brinco ran towards the beach, abandoned the dance hall, in an attempt to escape his mother’s charming voice. He realised there were two hangers-on. Stopped and turned around with an angry expression. ‘What? Always sniffing around my bottom.’

‘We belong here as much as you!’ said Leda defiantly.

‘You really never stop talking. My mother’s right.’

Brinco knew how to wound with his tongue, but this time he realised that his last sentence was an arrow aimed at himself. He set off running. Leda’s voice chased after him, ‘Well, look who’s doing the talking, mummy’s boy!’

The whore who gave birth to her, he thought, how well she knew how to hit the spot. He came to the beached boat where two men were waiting, the veteran Carburo and younger Inverno. Garbled the message, tripping on his words because of all the running and the annoyance caused by the others, like carrying along a string of cans. ‘Rumbo says you can start unloading!’

‘Unloading what?’ asked Carburo. The boy needed training.

‘The tuna, of course!’

The other two approached, running.

‘And these two Martians?’ asked Inverno.

‘Oh, these two will work for free.’

The two men laughed. ‘Well, aren’t we the lucky ones?’

The group started walking with Carburo at the front. His large head, his body slightly bowed. A sculpted figure wounding the night. Leda heard what Brinco said to Inverno and reacted bravely. ‘Free, my arse.’

‘She’s a wild one,’ said Inverno. ‘That’s it, girl, make sure you protect your interests.’

In a whisper, to Brinco, ‘That girl, in a few years’ time, will be pure dynamite.’

From the end of the breakwater, a man signals in Morse with a torch. Another replies from a boat not far out at sea. It’s summer and the sea is calm. Shortly afterwards there is the sound of a nautical engine, and the silhouette of a fishing boat comes into view.

The fishing boat docks. Heavily laden, fore and aft, with large shapes covered in nets and other fishing tackle, such as buoys and creels. When the sailors remove the camouflage, cardboard boxes containing smuggled tobacco are revealed. Mussel-raft blond. More people have arrived, mostly men, but also some women, moving between the darkness of the nearby pine groves and the light of the moon, which illuminates the ramp of the old harbour.

A Mercedes turns up and out gets Mariscal. All the carriers take up position, quickly forming a well-spaced human line. Mariscal follows their movements from the promontory. He has a good panoramic view, but he also knows that he is visible. Raised in the night. The mouth that talks.

‘Everything all right, Gamboa?’

‘Everything OK, boss.’

‘Carburo, get these people moving!’

‘Everybody listen. At full speed. In order and in silence. There’s no need to worry. The guards are still at the dance.’

One of the women taking part in the procession starts singing a ballad, ‘Did you dance, Carolina? Yes, I danced! Tell me who you danced with! I danced with the colonel!’ and Mariscal smiles. Orders quiet. Claps his hands in the air.

‘Now let’s get to work. It’s not true that God gives time for nothing.’

The line begins transferring the packages in absolute silence, from the ramp to the old salting factory, a sombre stone building of a single storey. There are about twenty of them. They work with diligence and normality, except for the children, whose sweat shows they’re doing it for the first time. When it’s all over, Mariscal pays everybody in person. Listens to the murmured litany of appreciation. When it’s Brinco’s turn, he grabs him by the shoulders with satisfaction.

‘This time you’ve earned yourself a Catholic Monarchs!’

Then he whispers in his ear so that only Brinco can hear. Does so with a paternal smile. ‘Don’t bring volunteers without telling me first, got it?’

‘But they stick to me!’

‘I know, they’re just stray dogs.’

‘Boss, the guards are coming!’

‘Not to worry, Inverno. They come when they have to.’

Sergeant Montes emerges from the pine groves. Vargas quickly takes up position behind him.

‘Nobody move!’ shouts Montes. ‘What’s going on here?’

Nobody says a word. Mariscal waits. He knows how to let the gears of time engage.

‘Forgive me, sergeant,’ he says finally. ‘Would you mind if we spoke alone for a moment?’

Once they’re at a certain distance, Mariscal casually drops something on the ground. ‘Sergeant, I do believe you dropped two notes. Two green ones, sensu stricto.’

The sergeant glances at the ground. Yes, there are two thousand-peseta notes.

‘Excuse me, sir. Sensu stricto, I do believe I dropped at least ten.’

And Mariscal proceeds to free the other notes, as if he’s already made the calculation.

13

BACK FROM UNLOADING the tobacco, Fins placed his thousand-peseta note on top of the oilskin tablecloth. His mother, Amparo, put down her knitting in surprise. His father was listening to the radio closely, making an ear trumpet with the palm of his hand. Cassius Clay, newly named Muhammad Ali, had just been stripped of his world heavyweight title due to his refusal to be inducted into the military during the Vietnam War. Lucho Malpica turned down the volume and jumped to his feet. ‘What’s this money?’

‘Mr Rumbo gave it to me for cleaning the vats.’

‘He never pays that much for cleaning vats.’

‘Well, it was about time he paid more,’ said Fins uneasily.

Lucho Malpica waved the note in front of his son’s face. ‘Don’t ever lie to me!’

The boy remained silent, feeling uncomfortable, chewing over the words of before and afterwards.

‘The worst lie of all is silence.’

‘Mr Mariscal gave it to me,’ said the boy eventually. ‘I helped unload some tobacco.’

‘That’s more like it. More than I can earn fighting with the sea for a whole damn week!’

Now two of them were chewing over the past and present.

‘Have you any idea how that bastard got rich?’

‘Wasn’t it in Cuba, before the revolution?’

‘In Cuba?’

Lucho Malpica had always dodged the issue of Mariscal. He even avoided saying his name, would take a roundabout route in the conversation, like someone sidestepping a turd. But now the issue had been blown open. And the unstoppable destination was irony.

‘What did he do in Cuba? What was his job?’

‘Wasn’t he a boxing promoter, organising fights, with a cinema or something? I don’t know, Dad, that’s what I heard.’

‘Selling peanuts in a cone. In Cuba? That guy never set foot in America.’

Lucho Malpica realised it wasn’t going to be easy to tell the story of Mariscal. Even for him, who was of the same generation, there were large areas of shade. Mariscal vanished and came back. With a shadow that grew and grew, and made him more powerful.

‘After the war, his parents worked on the black market. They’d always been involved in smuggling.’

‘Everyone was involved in smuggling,’ said Amparo suddenly. ‘Where there’s a border, there’s smuggling. Even I, as a girl, went over one time with a flat stomach and came back pregnant, God forgive me. I took over sugar and three pairs of high-heeled shoes and came back with coffee and silk. I did it once and never again. It wasn’t a sin, but it was a crime. They once shot a Portuguese kid who didn’t stop when he was supposed to. He was carrying a pair of shoes. His mother came to see where he’d fallen. There was still a trace of blood. She kneeled down, took out a scarf and wiped it up. Didn’t leave a speck. Shouted, “I don’t want any to remain here!”’

‘What you’re talking about was survival,’ said Malpica. ‘There were people who hired themselves out, smuggled things in their bellies…’

‘That’s what I was like,’ replied Amparo. ‘Though I lit a candle to St Barbara first, so it wouldn’t thunder.’

‘What I’m talking about wasn’t to feed people’s hunger. The Brancanas ran an organisation. Like today. There were lots of part-time smugglers. Smugglers for hire. Women with bellies. But the way they made their money was with wolfram. Then oil, petrol, medicine, meat. And weapons. Whatever was needed. And the mother, who’d been a maid, when she went up in the world, got it into her head that one of her children could be a bishop or a cardinal. Someone ironically suggested they could be a marshal. And she replied with evident glee, why not? A cardinal or a marshal. Which is how Mariscal the Marshal got his name. You know how quick people are on the uptake round here. So she decided to send her precious boy to the seminary. In Tui. He was no man’s fool. Always a smart one. And even then he was good at solving problems. His own and others’. He got a private room in the seminary and turned it into a marketplace. Of course there was the odd priest who shared in the profits. And that’s where he met Don Marcelo, who was also a student.’

‘Don Marcelo is of a different vintage,’ intervened Amparo.

‘All saints are endowed with manhood,’ said Malpica.

‘Don’t talk for the fair, Lucho! A good speaker is one who stays silent.’

‘I talk in round terms, keep nothing silent from the sun’s son… Oh, enough of that! It went from mouth to ear, as they say around here.’

‘Then why did he leave the seminary?’ asked Fins.

Malpica smiled at Amparo, seeking her complicity in the story.

‘He must have been there for three years. When he’s drunk, he says it was because he wanted to become pope. What he doesn’t deny is that he started a roaring trade in foodstuffs. Had a grocery store beneath his bed! There was cold and hunger. And he took advantage of the situation. He had coffee liqueur and Western novels. He always was a competent supplier. But I don’t think they chucked him out because of that. The trouble is, a chalice and image were stolen during a pilgrimage he went on as an acolyte. They found the chalice under his mattress. Nothing was ever known about the Virgin. Though he always had a taste for virgins. The family covered it up, compensated the Church with money. It all remained under wraps. As did what came afterwards.’

Fins’ father turned to the radio and slowly moved the dial in an effort to tune into some frequency. For radio waves as well, A de Meus was a place in shadow. Fins was afraid his struggle with the static would put paid to the story about Mariscal.

‘So what happened afterwards that people don’t know?’

‘He went to prison.’

‘Mariscal was in prison?’

‘That’s right. Tomás Brancana, Mariscal, was in prison. And not as a visitor either. He started by helping out in the family business, which was well established. But he was ambitious, and he found another, more lucrative activity. He got himself a tanker, but didn’t transport oil or wine. He transported people! He had his agents, his engajadores, in Portugal. The emigrants gave him everything they had in order to get to France. And during the night, on top of some mountain, he’d tell them to get out and shout, “You’re in France, for crying out loud. La France, remember! Run, run!” Of course it wasn’t France. He left them sometimes on this side of the border, lost on some snowy mountaintop, without food or money, dying of cold. One day there was a collision, an accident, and they had no choice but to declare it was him since he was the one who’d been driving. He went to prison, but not for long. Nobody knows. I’m not sure there was even a court case. Evil knows how to float. It floats like fuel, just beneath the surface. And he had a tidy sum of money set aside. And partners! So when people say he was in America, you can give that country this name: the clink on Prince Street in Vigo!’

Fins Malpica recalled the first time he’d listened to Mariscal up close. That sermon he’d spouted in the School of Indians when they discovered the stash of whisky. He tried to remember his Latin phrases, the rhetoric they were couched in. Learn that and you’ve gained half a life. The rest is also very simple. Oculos habent, et non videbunt. They have eyes, and see not. Aures habent, et non audient. They have ears, and hear not.

They have mouths, and speak not.

‘You’ll be thinking I know a lot about a man I never talk about. Well, you’re right. And do you know how I know? Because I also tried to get to France… Later on, when I could have gone there legally, I didn’t want to. I still had icicles on my beard from the first time. That man only ever did one good thing in his life, which is when he burned his hands in the School of Indians. They say it was on account of the books, but it was because of the desiccated animals. Even better. Desiccated makes you feel more sorry for them. Not even the fox got away. That’s what he did. God knows why.’

Fins stared for a moment at the burn scars on his father’s hands. Lucho Malpica rolled his son’s note into a ball and flicked it across the table. The ball veered to one side and came to a halt in front of Amparo.

‘She’s also partly to blame,’ said Amparo suddenly.

‘Who?’ asked Lucho.

‘That loudmouth who drives him crazy, Antonio’s daughter. You should say something to Antonio. You spend all that time together out fishing.’

Lucho glanced at his son and then at his wife. They should know by now that sorrows on a boat were for spitting into the sea. ‘What am I supposed to tell him? That he should keep her tied up at home?’

‘That wouldn’t be a bad idea. She’s far too wild. She’s always going barefoot. Like a beggar or something.’

‘It has nothing to do with us,’ remarked Lucho bitterly. He could barely hide it when a topic of conversation annoyed him. ‘Let her walk however she likes.’

What bothered him even more, however, was a breakdown in the domestic order. And so he adopted a more conciliatory tone. ‘We do talk, from time to time. But you can’t touch Antonio’s daughter. She’s the most precious thing he has in the world. He’d do anything for her.’

14

MALPICA HAS A small motorboat which he uses for coastal fishing. It handles well, is definitely seaworthy, but Lucho and Antonio Hortas rarely stray from their familiar marks. They have their points of reference along the coast, the main one being Cape Cons. With these marks, their eyes trace invisible lines, the coordinates of their sardine shoals for fishing. Underwater places that almost never leave them empty-handed.

This time they go further out. Even the seabirds seem surprised by their new direction and abandon them. The boat bobs up and down, in unfamiliar territory. The men are two grafts who resist the swaying of the boat impassively. It’s Malpica who decides where they’re going, who acts as captain from time to time. And now they’re headed north. Antonio neither asks anything nor makes any comment. He’s one of those who respect silences. They pass Sálvora. Head towards the outer sea. The cormorants on Death Coast peer at them with the look of medieval sentinels. Lucho Malpica still hasn’t said a word, but Antonio can hear his nasal hoarseness, his sibilant pout, those two murmurs that compete in his friend’s silences.

The captain opens a wickerwork basket lined with canvas. Antonio knows what’s in there. He knows Malpica visited the Ultramar the previous night. He didn’t enter the bar, but he saw him arrive on his ‘little horse’, as he calls his Ducati. He must have gone in through the shop door. The attendant called to Rumbo through the hatch which communicates with the bar. And the barman disappeared for a while. Then Antonio heard Malpica leave. Heard the motorbike. The put-put of the engine. The annoyance of old engines at having to start up again. They left in daylight, too early. When Fins came round with the countermand that they would be heading out to sea, Antonio knew the fishing would be special.

He’s seeing all this now, with absolute clarity, in causal sequences. He may not have heard the engine from the bar. It may be the engine on the boat, its laborious bad temper, providing a soundtrack to his memory.

The sticks are wrapped in an immaculate white cloth inside the basket. Even there he’s being too careful, observes Antonio. Dynamite doesn’t like being thought about so much. Antonio remembers seeing maimed people. The idea has to get back to the hands. If the idea stops to think, it doesn’t reach the hands. That’s when you get injured people. Amputees.

‘Leave that to me, Lucho.’

‘Why?’ he says, turning around with an angry expression.

‘You haven’t the experience.’

He was going to say, ‘You don’t know how.’ Like someone saying, ‘You don’t know how to fuck.’

Antonio doesn’t mind. He knows others use dynamite. The sea takes whatever’s thrown at it, etc., etc. But deep down he’s annoyed that Malpica has given in. Has lit the damn fuse.

‘What science is there in this, Antonio?’ says Lucho uneasily, waving the stick in his hand. He’s on the starboard side and heads towards the bow.

‘To start with, it doesn’t have a very long fuse!’ shouts Antonio.

Malpica turns around. See? Do you see what’s happening? The idea has got caught in his head, entangled in the brambles en route to his damn consciousness, and isn’t going to reach his hand in time.

‘What’s that?’ asks Malpica.

The idea doesn’t get there. It’s the dynamite which has decided to explode. And explodes.

Fins starts throwing stones at the sky. There are so many seagulls he has the impression he hasn’t hit any of them. Then he takes it out on the sea. Looks for the flattest pebbles and skilfully hurls them by arching his body. Like a discus thrower. His initial intention is for the stones to skim the surface of the sea. To jump on the back of the waves. After that, he doesn’t mind. Small, big. In a fury. Let the stones explode. It’s the sea’s fault. That generous, greedy giant. That crazy lunatic. ‘The sea prefers the brave ones and that’s why she takes them first,’ says the priest at the funeral. Everyone nods. They all wear expressions that suggest agreement with that part of the sermon. Enough said. What happened happened. It was written in the stars. It was out of his hands. Fins thinks he’s being looked at askance. Are you brave too? Are you like your father? Yes, there is compassion in their gaze, but also a hint of suspicion. He never put to sea with his father. It was time he lent a hand. Are they in on the secret? Do they realise he’s not fit for the sea?

His father was certainly brave. You could see that when he carried the cross. A first-rate Christ. Verisimilar. Did the priest say that, or was it an echo emanating from his mind? Do they know he suffers from the petit mal, has absences?

Like now.

He can see his father shaving himself. The mirror, which has a diagonal crack, reflects two faces. His mother asking. Not asking.

‘And that?’

‘It has time to grow. From now until Easter.’

Without a beard, his father looks strange. Like another. The reverse of what he is. All the bones on his face appear bereft of bandages.

15

THE RADIO IS broadcasting the Holy Rosary. The litany sounds sometimes when the radio is turned on at dusk, but it never usually gets a response. Not from the mouths. Possibly from the intentional beating of the knitting needles. Fins rereads a piece of headed paper:

LA DIVINA PASTORA

NAVY SOCIAL INSTITUTION

School for Sea Orphans

Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz)

Is that someone knocking at the door? Fins stirs in discomfort. Stands up. Looks at the radio. The lamp on the dial which gleams with the intensity of a beacon in the open sea. The trembling of the cloth covering the loudspeaker like skin. The memory of his father’s fingers fishing in the short waves, tautening the dial like a fishing line. He’s listening carefully. Turns to him with a smile. ‘Do you know what he said? “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.”’ Fins glances at his mother.

‘It’s the static,’ says Amparo. ‘Pray with me. It won’t hurt!’

He should go to see her. Her dad is still in hospital. All his skin burned off. Eight hours being beaten by the sea. From rock to rock. He has pneumonia as well. He should go to see her.

‘I should go and see Antonio.’

‘He’s still in the municipal hospital. I’ll go. He’ll get over it. He was saved.’

Her silence finishes the sentence: ‘He was saved, but your father wasn’t.’

‘At least now he may have more luck with her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Haven’t you seen her? Riding around on the other’s motorbike, in a tight embrace. You have your head in the clouds.’

‘Brinco was given a motorbike. He’s trying it out. What’s wrong with that? The other day he took me for a ride.’

‘But she’s a woman. She’s a woman by now! She has to look after her father. She can’t be a source of gossip.’

Fins has always had the impression that his mother has various voices. Two at least. She keeps the rough one for Nine Moons. She sometimes tries to be polite, but when Leda comes to visit, she always ends up falling silent. It’s too much for her.

‘It’s the last night. Pray a little with me, child.’

Lord, have mercy… Lord, have mercy.

Christ, hear us… Christ, hear us.

Fins resists, moves his lips, but is unable to find his voice. Slowly he notices how the saliva kneads his words. Feels well. The litany wets its feet, steps on the soft sand, closes its eyes. Opens them. He thinks he hears someone knocking at the door again. His look pulls him in that direction. He suddenly stands up. Opens the door. The wind in the fig tree. The screeching of the sea. His mother’s rosary. Outside in, inside out, everything sounds like a single litany. The unmoved hand. Made of metal and green rust. From the Liverpool. He’d like to be able to pull it off. To take it with him. Three and one.

Holy Virgin of virgins, pray for us.

Mother of divine grace, pray for us.

‘Tomorrow you have to get up early. To arrive in time for the train, you have to catch the first bus. Why don’t you go to bed? I’m not sleepy.’

And she gets the expression of her feelings messed up. She wants to cry, but comes out with a twisted smile instead. ‘It’s the night of the widow.’

‘Good night, mother.’

‘Son…’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t forget to take It.’

It’s funny. His mother never wants to call things, medicines or illnesses, by their name. She doesn’t even call dynamite dynamite. She says ‘the thing that killed him’. In his case, Luminal is ‘the thing for absences’.

‘I’ll send It to you every month. Dr Fonseca promised me. Your father spoke to him. And he gave his word.’

Fins climbs the stairs to the landing where the bedrooms are. Meanwhile his mother takes up her work with the cushion and needles for making lace. She carries on listening to the rosary on the radio, but stops murmuring the litany as her movement with the needles accelerates. The geometry of lace starts to confuse lines. Sound confuses rhythm. In his room, Fins hurries to open the window. The humming and screeching of the sea come in. He feels the itching of salty darkness in his eyes. Closes it again. The fig tree’s resentful shadows slice the window all through the night.

Dawn cannot lift its feet due to the weight of the storm clouds. But the sea is almost calm, its blue so cold it gives the slow curls of foam the texture of ice. Fins walks along the coastal road, following the shoreline. He crosses the bridge at Lavandeira da Noite and sits down to wait at Chafariz Cross, where the bus stops. As he was walking, he watched the women gathering shellfish on the sandbank. The more distant ones looked like amphibian creatures with water around their thighs. From the window of the bus, before leaving, Fins Malpica glances at the beach for the last time, through the filter of condensation. Now rosy-fingered dawn clears a way with daggers of light. All barefoot women are Nine Moons. And he opens the book at the page about Argonauts with empty eyes.

16

‘YOU BELIEVE IN that naive contention that a world in which everybody read and everybody was cultured would be better. Imagine a place like Uz, but where every house had a library and every bar its own circle of readers. Whenever there was a crime, it was carried out with style and criminals were vested with the prosody of a Macbeth or a Meursault.’

‘I think we haven’t done too badly as far as the last point goes. In the history of Spain, people have killed with great eloquence. The greatest poets presented Philip IV with an anthology of poems for killing a bull with a harquebus.’

They were in the Ultramar, in the chiaroscuro of the table in the corner, next to the window. They chatted there almost every day, in the evening, when the old teacher Basilio Barbeito had finished school. He lived at the Ultramar. During the winter season, apart from the odd visitor, he was the only guest. Dr Fonseca had a house in town, near his surgery. For the married couple, Sira in particular, who prepared the food and washed the clothes, the schoolteacher, with the passing of time, was just another member of the family. He didn’t seem to have anywhere else to go. Though he did receive lots of letters in the Ultramar, some of them with the red, white and blue stripes of airmail. He was a poet. Without books. But he scattered his poems across the globe, in minor magazines. And he had been working for some time on a Dictionary of Euphemisms and Dysphemisms in the Latin Languages.

‘Barbeito, I fail to understand, with everything you’ve witnessed, everything that’s happened, how you can continue to scrabble about for sparks of hope.’

‘You’re the one fighting against death. I have no other choice but to write poems in an attempt to divert his attention.’

‘Fighting against death? He always get his sums right,’ murmured Dr Fonseca. ‘Always gets what he wants. If this one isn’t ready, he takes someone he wasn’t supposed to.’

‘You should patent that law.’

‘Oh, it was patented a long time ago. I do what I have to. Something I find increasingly tiresome. You’re the one who has a redeeming vocation. That’s damaging. Your poetry promotes well-being, as heating does.’

The schoolteacher listened to the other man’s observation with a triumphant sneer. ‘And they say that poetry has no uses! When I had lots of energy, I used to write poems of despair. Now that I’m old, I’ve become hymnic, celebratory, pantheistic, fabulous. For me a poem is like stretching out your hand. Fonseca, you know more about the arrow than I do.’

‘What arrow?’

‘The arrow of terrible beauty.’

‘I think about the body’s text from time to time, yes. You’ll find there all the different genres: Eros, crime, travel, Gothic terror… But I have been castrated by scientific puritanism. I lack the courage to turn the leucocyte into a hero, as Ramón y Cajal did: “The wandering leucocyte opens a gap in the vascular wall and deserts the blood for the conjunctive regions.” Now that is epic!’

‘Don’t fool yourself. You could be another Chekhov,’ said Barbeito suddenly. ‘Why don’t you write, why don’t you express what you have inside you before it explodes?’

‘Because I haven’t the balls.’

‘Fonseca, my friend, allow me a solemn reproach. Humanity is lessened by the silence of one who knows.’

When Basilio Barbeito deliberately adopted a grandiloquent tone, with comic seriousness, not without double meaning, Dr Fonseca would play along with his rhetoric game and respond with a melancholy verse taken from a poem by Rosalía de Castro, which he turned into a mocking refrain: ‘The tremor of little bells, Barbeito!’

But not this time. This time he added, ‘I haven’t the balls or the authority. I can’t write what I have to. Do you remember when the herdsman comes across Oedipus the King? “I stand upon the perilous edge of speech.” That’s what the old herdsman says, more or less. And Oedipus replies, “And I of hearing, but I still must hear!” What a magnificent couplet!’

The doctor would have loved to preserve the process passing through his mind in Ehrlich’s methylene blue. He’d been held in St Anthony’s Castle in Coruña during the military uprising. A horde of captive men, unaware whether all this was going to end in tragedy or a passing kind of stupor. But before it was dark, an officer arrived with his assistant, a new recruit. The officer ordered this soldier, who sometimes acted as his secretary, to read out a list. A list of people. That’s all it was. The whole bay fell quiet. A series of names and surnames. No explanation about what would be their destination, just the abstract idea of a ‘transfer’. ‘Get ready for a transfer.’ The word had blushed with the shame of such a terrible euphemism. And then Luís Fonseca heard his name. He kept silent. Couldn’t remember how long that silence lasted. The soldier repeated his name, louder this time. And out of the crowd of people appeared a man. He was older than the doctor. About ten years older. Fonseca later found out he’d been a mechanic. He’d never heard of him, they weren’t related, but they had the same name. ‘I’m Luís Fonseca,’ he said with gritty determination. He was killed that same night. Now that was a classic question of the Double.

‘But I’m not a herdsman, nor am I Oedipus,’ remarked Dr Fonseca. ‘I am not upon the perilous edge, nor do I have anything to say.’

‘You belong to the mysterious lineage of Dictinius,’ said the schoolteacher. ‘In the sixth century, he wrote The Pound in praise of the number twelve. He later burned it, leaving only that great saying in the history of Galicia: “Swear, forswear, and reveal not the secret!”’

Mariscal had come over and sat down at the table, as he did on other evenings. In time to hear the resignation in Fonseca’s voice. He had a psalm on the tip of his tongue, but there was too much bitterness in the doctor’s silence to joke around.

‘What about you, Mr Mariscal?’ asked Barbeito in an attempt to lighten the mood.

‘I’m Unamunian!’

Normally he’d have left it at that, an outlandish statement hanging in the air. But on this occasion he decided it was prudent to expand on his thesis. ‘I’m of the opinion that you have to pretend you have faith, even if you don’t believe. I’m always telling Don Marcelo, it’s fine for priests to eat their fill, drink the best wine, even fornicate. But they have to make an effort to believe, because people need faith. Here nobody believes in anything. That’s the problem. It’s all in Unamuno, yes sirree!’

He attracted Rumbo’s attention. Without words, using a series of gestures the other man interpreted with a nod. Shortly afterwards the barman placed a bottle of Johnnie Walker on the table.

‘Without taxes! It came by sea, as saints used to in Galicia.’

‘You’ll have a lot of stories to tell, Mariscal,’ said the doctor. ‘Some magnificent, diabolical memoirs!’

Mariscal rang the ice in his glass. Took a sip, which he savoured.

‘Sincerity’s not good for business. As you well know, I spent some time in the seminary. There’s lots of gossip, lots of rumours. Spineless stuff! Rubbish, most of it. But today’s a good day for confessing. Once the director of the seminary called me to one side and asked if I really had a vocation. I told him of course I did. But how much of a vocation, he wanted to know. I replied, a lot. Yes, but how much? And that’s when I told him I wanted to be pope. He turned pale as wax. As if I’d uttered the most terrible thing.’

‘So you didn’t say you wanted to be God?’ asked Dr Fonseca ironically.

‘No. That’s a legend. Though it’s true that a young lad from Nazareth tried it and managed it. To become God.’ He drank a second sip. Clicked his tongue. ‘Had I told you that before? Oh, what a shame! That’s the trouble with us ancients.’

‘Another drink?’ asked Rumbo.

The two of them had been alone for some time. Without talking. From the back of the bar came the sound of urgent voices, shots and the screeching of cars and trains. On the television, Brinco was watching The Fugitive.

‘What does a tiger care about one more stripe?’

Sira came out of the kitchen. In time to encounter her husband, who was returning with the supplies. Another bottle of Johnnie Walker.

‘Where are you off to? That’s enough for today!’

Mariscal jumped up on hearing her thundering voice. But when he tried to move, he stumbled.

‘A coffee!’ he exclaimed, stretching his sense of comedy. ‘How would sir like his coffee, with or without brandy? Without coffee!’

The joke was addressed to Sira, but she ignored him.

‘Never mind,’ he mumbled, heading for the exit. ‘Open the door, it’s not going to fit!’

‘I’ll take him,’ said Rumbo.

Mariscal turned around and pointed at the barman. ‘No you won’t! Do you want us both to be killed, Simca 1000? I’ll get a breath of fresh air. The sea has a cure for everything.’

‘You can sleep here if you like,’ said Sira. ‘The inn is yours.’

Now Mariscal was the one who felt tense. Bad-tempered. ‘No way! Mariscal always spends the night in his own home.’

‘Go with him!’ said Sira to Brinco.

The boy rose mechanically to his feet without saying a word, as if this was the outcome he’d been expecting. Went behind the bar and came back with a torch.

‘Good idea,’ said Mariscal. ‘Let’s ride out the storm!’

Brinco went ahead, walking uneasily, moving the torch up and down, from side to side, deliberately, like a machete. Behind him, Mariscal hummed. Puffed and panted. Hummed. Paused to catch his breath.

‘It’s a bit cold,’ he murmured.

When they reached the new wharf, near the centre of town, Brinco directed the torch towards the water. At the mouth of the sewer, which led directly into the sea, was a horde of mullet. A nervous crowd of intertwined bodies in the muck.

A section of the marine golem twisted and turned in the glare of the torch. Mariscal peered over. ‘Those gluttons will eat anything, even the light!’

At this point he tripped on the edge of a stone and slipped a little, stumbling right on the edge of the wharf. He managed very carefully to sit down on a bollard. Brinco was right behind him. Mariscal realised the boy hadn’t moved a muscle. As if the accident had never happened.

The beam of the torch ran over the voracious cluster of fish in the sewage.

‘Yes, they’ll eat the light,’ said Mariscal. ‘Look at them chewing!’

He let himself go, leaned forward, as if the fall was inevitable. But just then Brinco grabbed hold of him and pulled him back on to firm ground.