All Is Silence (6 page)

‘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.’

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.