The Calligraphy of Dreams

4. A PINK ENVELOPE

For several days the story does the rounds of the neighbourhood. Can that woman have been so despairing, so unbearable her heartache, that she lost all sense of reality on those useless lengths of track? The absurdity seemed all too evident. To pretend that she wanted to commit suicide so publicly does not mean she really intended to kick the bucket, say the wagging tongues in the Rosales bar. At least, not in such a grotesque manner. Considering that in affairs of the heart Señora Mir completely lacked any sense of the ridiculous, it was agreed that what happened was simply another of her melodramatic performances aimed at reining in her fancy man by making him jealous and bringing him back into the fold. She had made a public display of anger at being scorned, a theatrical, very conspicuous gesture, but there was nothing to be alarmed about. She must have felt deeply offended and hurt, and everything appeared to indicate that she herself was certain that the fellow would not return, but even so, however desperate she might have been, and however great her disenchantment and bewilderment following their argument, it was hard to believe she really thought even for a moment that she was going to be run down by a tram in this street where none had gone by for years. They also said she must have been so confused when she left her flat that she had lost all sense of direction and gone up the street rather than down it to the nearby Plaza Rovira, where there were trams numbers 30, 38 and 39. Whatever the truth, her misguided ruse could have had only one objective: to convey to her lover, wherever he might be — according to some of her women neighbours, still in the flat where they had just quarrelled, which explained why the crafty woman kept looking up at the balcony, even though afterwards it was generally agreed she had already thrown him out — a dramatic warning of what she was genuinely thinking of doing some day. In other words, there was no way she wanted to be run over by a tram: she simply had an overpowering need to let him know what she was capable of.

None of this is of any great interest to Ringo. In fact, these days are so full of unexpected events that he has not had the time or the desire to stop and think of that woman’s ridiculous love affairs. Other people’s lives — unless they are in novels or films — scarcely merit a glance over his shoulder, a bored, fleeting consideration. Instead, he has spent a lot of time reflecting on the crushed finger of fate, the finger that was lost. He’s sitting at a table in the Rosales bar, his right arm in a sling and his hand bandaged, head deep in a novel he’s just opened on top of his music book, which is also open. He has ordered a beer, and is drinking it without taking his eyes off the page. At this time of day, three in the afternoon, there’s no-one else in the bar apart from Francis Macomber, Wilson and Margot, who are arguing next to him, throats dry, and sweating profusely as they drink gimlets, their wraith-like voices and unmentionable desires mingling with the sounds of the jungle.

The bar owner’s sister, Señora Paquita, a bustling, middle-aged spinster with a masculine face and lively eyes, is busy behind the counter washing anchovies under the tap. From time to time she lifts her head to study her only customer. A strange boy, she is thinking, not very sociable or polite, possibly quite shy, who never is to be seen with the other lads of his age when they come in during the early evening to play table football or dominoes. Whenever she sees him, aged fifteen and looking so serious, sitting at the table by the window absorbed in a book, she imagines he must be reading because he’s bored or because he feels lonely, and feels obliged to make conversation.

“So, how are things? How’s your mother?”

“Fine,” he replies, burying his head even deeper in his book.

“Working hard, I’ll be bound. What other choice does she have, poor woman? And in the meantime, what’s that rogue of your father doing? What’s that piece of work up to?” she insists brightly, looking askance at him. “Is he at home, or still catching rats and making mischief? He’s a fine one alright! Although I have to admit he’s a likeable rogue.”

Ringo prefers to say nothing, but to push on deeper into the distant, wild plains of Africa.

Thirty-five yards into the grass the big lion lay flattened out along the ground. His ears were back and his only movement was a slight twitching up and down of his long, black-tufted tail. He had turned at bay as soon as he had reached this cover …

The Rosales bar is one of the oldest taverns in the neighbourhood. It has a battered, uneven floor of black and white tiles, and an old brick counter whose edges and top are imitation rough pine trunks made of mortar and painted brown, with very convincing knots and grain. The counter was rebuilt with his own hands by the bar owner Señor Agustín, who had once been a labourer and fancied himself as a decorator. In its day, the counter was highly praised by the regulars because it looked so lifelike, but Señora Paquita detests the trunks because the tree-bark that was so much admired collects dust and dirt, and she is utterly fed up with having to scrub it with bleach. To one side of the bar stand five big barrels of wine, three on the bottom and two on top, and a few kegs of spirits also sold on tap. On the other side are three rectangular marble tables with wrought-iron legs. They are pushed back against a wall decorated up to halfway with tiles, in which a window with a faded old blind opens on to the Calle Torrente de las Flores. At the back, the bar narrows and becomes gloomier near a table football game standing beneath a lamp with a green shade that until two years ago lit a billiard table here. The business is based on sales from the barrel rather than what is served in the bar, and the regular customers who drop in for a drink are few and far between, especially on weekdays. Anyone glancing into the dark tavern from the street would likely as not see the predatory, hunched outline of a silhouette at the bar, the wavering shadow of a solitary, patient drinker with a glass of wine in his hand, and yet apart from the four or five locals addicted to dominoes or card games on weekend afternoons, the same ones who on summer nights take their stools and a cold beer and sit out on the pavement, or the gang of young boys who gather noisily around the table football before moving on to a dance at La Lealtad or the Verdi, the bar is an odorous cave of shadows and silence.

When Señora Mir enters, Ringo buries his head still deeper into his book, and finishes the paragraph about the wounded lion: All of him, pain, sickness, hatred and all of his remaining strength, was tightening into an absolute concentration for a rush.

“Hello there, Vicky, how’s things?” says the woman behind the bar.

“So-so.”

“Good heavens, I haven’t seen you for days! And if you only knew what I have to tell you!”

“This soda siphon you gave my daughter doesn’t work.”

“I’ve got a surprise for you, Vicky. I was waiting for you …”

“You press it but nothing comes out, look!”

“I’m sure it wasn’t me who gave it her. I always test them first.”

“Then it must have been your brother, but what’s the difference?”

“Okay, I’ll give you another one. But listen …”

“And fill this bottle with a litre of white, would you?”

“Of course!” Then, dropping her voice to a syrupy whisper: “But first there’s something I have to tell you, something that’ll interest you, sweetheart, and how!”

Señora Mir does not appear to hear her. All of a sudden she has thrown back her head, arched her back and twisted round in a contrived gesture of coquettish abandon. She is putting on this acrobatic display simply to examine her calf, stick out her tongue, moisten the middle finger and rub off a stain on the firm skin below her knee. She does it with such a fatigued, rehearsed gesture, blinking her eyes as she does so, that Ringo finds it hilarious. A woman like her shouldn’t do these things, he thinks: she’s stumpy, ugly, has folds on the back of her neck, too big a backside and too much hair in her armpits, too much lipstick. Not to mention her impossible eyelashes with all that sticky guck on them, that buxom delight she shows when she is whistled at in the street, and the hint of frustration and disappointment that appears in her eyes the harder she tries to please. A week has gone by since she played dead on tracks dating back to the year dot, and she’s still living in the year dot and making herself look ridiculous.

As she straightens up, she discovers the young lad bent over his book.

“You’re Berta’s son, aren’t you?” A friendly fluttering of her eyelashes precedes a kind of apology. “Well, I mean Berta’s adopted son … you were studying to be a musician and had to abandon the idea, I know.” Her rough voice contrasts strangely with her smiling plump doll’s face. Noticing the sling and the bandage, she adds: “What’s that? What happened to you?”

He closes his eyes and the book, leaving the fate of the wounded lion for a more suitable moment. Disgruntled, he starts playing notes on the marble tabletop with the fingers of his left hand.

“Huh!” he pants. “My finger got caught in a rolling mill.”

“Good gracious! How did it happen? Where?”

A blink of his eyes, not magical this time, and the slow twisting of the plated gold traps his finger once more, then the two steel rollers swallow it.

“At the workshop,” he reluctantly replies.

“Oh, how terrible! I’m really sorry, my lad. But you’re feeling better now, aren’t you?”

This time he says nothing. He intends to make it clear he wants nothing to do with this vulgar, unpleasant kind of thing, still less with the romantic heroine playacting Señora Mir goes in for.

“Vicky,” the woman behind the bar interrupts. “Do you want to hear what I’ve got to say, or not?”

“Of course, I’ll be right with you.” She stares down at the boy’s fingers playing rapidly on the tabletop next to the beer glass. “You ought to be drinking barley water. How old are you?”

“I’m going to be sixteen.”

“Is your mother alright? She’s such a good, kind woman. Say hello to her from me. And tell her that if she needs me for anything at all, she only has to ask.”

Raising her arms to adjust a profusion of noisy bracelets, she finally spins round towards her friend so quickly she almost stumbles, but recovers instantly and, without losing her poise or the musical, festive spring in her step, that odd way she has of standing at the counter as if she were resting her fat backside on an invisible, tall stool at some elegant bar. She thinks she’s living in a movie, he reflects, and yet again lists what he most dislikes about this monument to affectation and kitsch; he doesn’t like her dyed yellow curls, or her puckered mouth, her throaty voice, her rounded, weary shoulders. He does not like the way she clutches the bottle under her arm, or her fluttering, ever-present hands, or that broad white belt that emphasises her haunches and lifts her breasts, or her tarty shoes with their gold straps that reveal her purple toenails …

“Are you feeling alright, Vicky?” asks Señora Paquita, seeing her so distracted.

“Oh, yes. What were you saying?”

“It’s something you can’t even imagine!” She has finished rinsing the anchovies and lines them up carefully on small dishes. Glancing slyly at the adolescent pretending to read over by the widow, and wishing he weren’t so close, she says in a hollow voice: “Something you’re going to be pleased to hear …”

“Really?”

“He was here yesterday!”

“Who?”

“What d’you mean, who?” She lowers her voice still further: “Your man. He sat at that table at the back and didn’t say a word for quite a while. He looked really down.”

“You don’t say.” Señora Mir looks thoughtful: she has not yet decided whether to be impressed by the news or not. “He swore we would never see him again.”

“Well, he was here. It was a little after half past three in the afternoon. Agustín had gone for a nap and I was sorting out the refrigerator when I saw him come in through that door. And listen to me, Vicky: he didn’t look the same man. He was in such low spirits. He said hello, sat down, ordered his aperitif and a glass of water, then sat for more than half an hour head in hands. He really made me feel sorry for him. He asked me if I’d seen you go by, or if your daughter had been in, and I said no. He told me he had been knocking on the door of your apartment for an hour, but that you didn’t want to let him in.”

“That’s nothing but a lie. I haven’t been out all day and I didn’t hear a thing, so he’s lying. The thing is, he doesn’t dare show his face …”

“Yes, that’s probably it. Because I told him to try again, that you were bound to be home, but he didn’t even listen. He took a fountain pen out of his pocket and asked me if I had any writing paper and an envelope. I said I did, but that he might not like them, because they were pink. It’s the only little whim I allow myself, I told him when I saw him pull a face … Well, the thing is I went up to my room and came back down with half a dozen sheets of paper and an envelope. Then he goes and asks me if I would do him the favour of handing you the letter myself …”

Señora Mir betrays no emotion.

“Why on earth would he do that? And where is the letter?”

“Well, look, when he had almost finished writing a page — after stopping to think dozens of times — he picked it up, screwed it into a ball, and put it in his pocket. He struggled to write two more pages, then also crumpled them up and put them away. It was obvious that the letter wasn’t coming out as he wanted, because of his handwriting or whatever. I didn’t move from here, but I could see everything. He didn’t even taste the aperitif, maybe even forgot he’d ordered it, because in the end he came to the counter, asked for a brandy, and said to me I can’t do it, Paquita, I can’t do it, I’ll write it at home. I can’t find the words. He drank the brandy, and guess what he said before he left?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“That he’d send someone with the letter, and could I do him the favour of handing it over personally.”

“He said that?”

“Yes, those were his exact words. I had to promise him I wouldn’t tell you a thing, not even that he’d been here. But there are no secrets between us two, are there, sweetheart?” Señora Mir nods with a complicit little smile. “After that he left, taking with him the envelope and the three or four remaining sheets …”

“Oh, yes? And who was the letter for?”

“You’re kidding me! For you, of course, you silly thing! Who else? Of course, I asked him, but there was no need for him to say a word. I think he said something like ‘the name will be on the envelope’. The rogue wanted it kept quiet, which is only normal, isn’t it? And by the way, the brandy he ordered is the one you like. He’s never asked for that brandy from the keg before!”

Señora Mir blinks. She is confused, and strokes the lobe of her ear.

“Yes, I think I remember he said something of the sort … After that dreadful row at home, when I asked him never to speak to me again, do you know what he said? Well, he said calm as you like that he was going far away but that one day he’d explain everything. At that moment I didn’t believe him.”

“Why not? Give him the chance to ask for forgiveness, sweetheart.”

“No man deserves to be forgiven for what he did.”

“And what was that exactly, Vicky?”

Wrapped up in her thoughts, looking at herself as always in a self-indulgent mirror, Señora Mir is not listening.

“Yes, now I remember … There was a huge argument, you see. I started shouting and my daughter shut herself in the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her head, she was so scared … I saw him put on his jacket and pick his things up from the dining-room table, his tobacco, sunglasses, his tube of Ephedrine for his asthma, the shirts and socks for his boys’ football team — we used to wash them and mend them each week, see how good we were to him … That was when he said: I’d better go, farewell, I’ll write to you. Yes, that’s what he said. I was in the middle of the corridor, so frightened I couldn’t even move, and I couldn’t breathe, and thought I was going to faint … So then I opened the door and ran down the stairs!”

“But what was the argument about? What did he do to you, Vicky?”

There is a gleam of curiosity in Señora Paquita’s big black eyes, but she waits in vain for a reply, while the boy lowers his own gaze with bored resignation, hearing without listening. He stares down at the imaginary keyboard and plays doh, mi and soh with his thumb, middle and little fingers, finding it hard to manage all three at once, because now in his mind’s eye he can see Señor Alonso’s dark, knotted hand fleetingly touching Señora Paquita’s bottom one rainy night the previous winter when the two of them were standing in the doorway. He was carrying the umbrella she had lent him so that he would not get wet crossing the road to Señora Mir’s place, and had opened it behind his back before saying goodbye, partly concealing them both, although not completely.

“What’s clear is that he did you a lot of harm,” Señora Paquita says. “You deserved something better, my girl.”

“Yes, of course,” Señora Mir sighs. “I deserved better luck, that’s for sure. But happiness is worth fighting for, Paqui, however much it costs … It was my fault, you know. I told him: the door’s over there. It was me who threw him out. It was my fault. I should never have allowed him to take such liberties in my home …”

“Can I ask you a question, dear? Don’t be angry, but I don’t quite get it. Who has to forgive who? You him, or him you?”

“Oh, Paqui, I would have forgiven him, I really would. May God forgive me, but if only he’d given me time … You have to believe me! I made a mistake, one of those great blunders of mine! What I need is for him to know that, and to pardon me for insulting him and slapping him like that!”

“You slapped his face? My, my, that must have been some scene!”

“Oh, yes, it was, it was!”

“That’s such terrible luck, sweetheart! And now it’s all over, what do you think now about what happened, Vicky?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, I’ve just told you. I messed up. When I came home that day my back was crucifying me. I’d just had to deal with poor María Terol — you know, with her hundred and ten kilos, her cellulitis, and that bad temper of hers. Anyway, I was exhausted and I lost the plot. And then those damned tram tracks! Why on earth did they leave them there like that to confuse me still further! They should be dug up, and the cobblestones along with them!”

“I’m not talking about that, Vicky.” Señora Paquita hesitates before saying it: “I could swear there’s another woman involved … am I right?”

“There’s always another woman.”

“How did you find out? Did he admit it?”

Señora Mir shakes her head.

“Of course not. But a married woman knows when these things are happening. Especially if she’s well past the forty mark.”

“Ha! You’re not the only one there, sweetheart. But what’s worse would be if it was something serious, I mean … something long-lasting. If it was just a fling …”

“The thing is, apparently there was nothing to it. I’ve already told you, I imagined things … and he took it very badly. Anyway, what can you do? Everyone knows there’s no true love without suffering, don’t they, sweetheart?”

“That’s a load of nonsense, Vicky. Complete nonsense. At your age.”

“Maybe he thought our relationship was going nowhere … It could be, you never know with men … Anyway, I made it easy for him, and he took off!”

“I can’t believe it! You’re lying. You must be lying …”

“No I’m not, Paquita, I swear! I should never have slapped him like that!”

Señora Paquita stared at her, still suspicious.

“Well, that’s your business. But let me tell you one thing: you ought to go and find him as quickly as you can.”

“But where, for heaven’s sake? He never told me where he lived. Did he ever tell you or your brother?”

“He never said a word to me.”

“Well, he didn’t tell me either,” sighs Señora Mir.

“Really? He was a strange fellow, wasn’t he?”

“Stranger than a white blackbird, sweetheart.”

Yes, a strange fellow indeed. Señora Paquita recalls that when he first began to drop in he was very chatty and likeable, as well as being a bit forward. Especially with her, although there was never any way of knowing whether he was being serious or not. One day he told her with a perfectly straight face that he was intrigued by the effect of the passage of time on potatoes. No, he wasn’t from the countryside, he wasn’t interested in the evolution of vegetables: he explained that he had once been the trainer of a youth football team in El Carmelo, and used to massage the boys’ legs with an ointment made from oil and crushed wrinkled potatoes. He was unsure how long it took potatoes to go soft and start to wrinkle, and apparently one day he heard about Señora Mir, a masseuse who was expert in that kind of thing. Someone gave him her card, but he had lost it, which was why he had come into the bar to ask if they knew where she lived.

“And there was another thing yesterday that took me by surprise. Just as he was leaving …” Señora Paquita falls silent as a fat, very flustered-looking man comes in and slumps at the bar, calling urgently for a cold beer from the barrel. Señora Mir takes advantage of the pause to ask for a small glass of brandy from the keg, and another with soda water. The customer is not a local, and so Señora Paquita avoids striking up a conversation with him. She serves the beer in a mug, then pours her friend’s brandy and soda water. She turns on the tap of a barrel of wine and uses a funnel to fill Señora Mir’s bottle. She goes back behind the counter, places the bottle on it, pushes the cork in, and forces it down. The man noisily gulps down the beer, dries the sweat from the back of his neck with a handkerchief, and casts a sideways glance at the plump woman next to him. She is staring at the picture on a calendar hanging from the wall behind the counter. The picture is a reproduction of an old sepia photograph showing a football team from the past posing on a pitch before a game. Shaking her head slightly, Señora Mir says under her breath:

“He would be better on his knees.”

Somewhat bewildered by this, the customer finishes his beer, pays, and goes out.

Crouching at his table, Ringo goes over the instructions for five-finger exercises in the notebook he has just opened on top of his book of stories. The musical stave still attracts him more than fiction, and will go on doing so throughout that summer and well into the autumn. For the moment though he finds it hard to concentrate, because the two women have struck up their conversation again:

“And just as he was leaving,” Señora Paquita resumes without any kind of pre-amble, picking up the beer mug and wiping the counter with a cloth, “I was about to ask him why he didn’t just post the letter rather than bringing it here. I thought it was odd he wanted to entrust it to me …”

“It’s because of the girl,” Señora Mir cuts her short, and her moon face puckers as though she is on the verge of tears. “I’m sure it’s because he was thinking of the girl. Because let me tell you, Paqui, if that man talks about what I’m afraid he might talk about in the letter, there’s no way he would want it to fall into my daughter’s hands. There are some things a young girl shouldn’t know about … That’s why he doesn’t want to send it by post. So when he comes back with the letter, keep it safe and give it to me directly. And not a word to Violeta.”

“Don’t worry.”

Señora Mir downs the brandy, then moistens her lips with a sip of soda. She pays, tucks the wine bottle under her arm, and makes to leave the bar, the soda siphon dangling from one finger.

“Above all, Paqui, whatever you do, if the letter arrives, make sure you don’t give it to Violeta. I’ll come and get it.”

“Of course, darling. Don’t give it another thought.”

*

Exercise One: Place your forearms and your extended fingers on the surface of a table you are sitting at. Then, first with the right hand and then the left, and finally with both together, lift your fingers in the order indicated. Make sure you lower the finger you have raised before lifting the next one, and repeat each sequence several times: 1-2-3. 3-2-1. 1-4-2.1–2.4.2-1-3 …

He practises this for a while with his left hand on the marble tabletop, then stops and stares out of the window. A blink of his eyes, the trick he has often employed to enter the world of desire and fantasy with the rest of his gang, and on the scarred wall on the far side of the street a poster suddenly appears, announcing in red letters the debut concert of the GREAT NINE-FINGERED PIANIST. That would make a good advertisement, wouldn’t it? Who knows what the finger of fate holds in store for you, even when that finger has been tossed into the limbo of unborn pianists? A few men pass by the poster, walking briskly or wearily from their homes to other bars and taverns. Some of them stay close to the walls, and all of a sudden one of them comes to a halt, head down and staring at the ground as if a chasm has suddenly opened beneath his feet. A little higher up the same street, in the middle of the tiny island of melancholy, moss-covered cobbles, the lengths of tram tracks emerging from an abolished yesterday stubbornly abide. Ringo feels a sudden, throbbing pain in the nail that is no longer part of his finger, nor the finger part of his hand. He closes the music lesson and returns to the book of short stories.

The lion is still alive; it will fight to the death. Señora Mir and Señora Paquita are standing in the doorway, chatting away. Ringo leans his elbow on the table and covers his ear with his free hand so that he can escape to the protective undergrowth, the wild fragrance of the tall grasses on the Kenyan savannah, where the wounded lion lies flattened against the ground, ears pinned back, waiting for the chance to pounce.