All Is Silence (9 page)

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.

‘
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.

THE BACK ROOM
of the Ultramar is filled with the impatience that comes with the end of a hand. The players of
mus
and
tute
make up for the blazoned silence of the cards with sharp voices and authoritative raps of their knuckles on the tables. In the games of dominoes, by contrast, it is the discharge of matter that can be heard, tokens on marble, in an ascending scale of blasts excited by the advance of the victorious combination. The middle of the room is occupied by a billiard table ignored by everyone except for the trails of cigar smoke that have gathered in a storm beneath the central lamp.

At Mariscal’s table there sounds the percussion of dominoes. He likes to adorn suspense. Hold the piece in the air for a moment, its value hidden from sight, before revealing the enigma with a thwack that, on triumphant occasions, is followed by outbursts of strange historical consequences. ‘Tremble, Toledo!
Carthago delenda est.
’

Mariscal is on the verge of playing, but seems distracted. As almost always, he’s wearing his white gloves, which act as a shade whenever the piece is bad. He looks up at the other end of the room, above the door. There, on a ledge, is a desiccated bird in a glass case. A little owl. Its eyes shine with an electric gleam. Two illuminated lights. Inverno follows his boss’s gaze.

‘Looks like the owl’s not going to sleep tonight.’

‘Those bastards are behind schedule,’ replies Mariscal.

‘Do you think we’ve an informer, boss?’

‘No, what we’ve got is a new bedbug. That sergeant knows very well what he has to do. But tomorrow he’ll up the stakes, you’ll see. Tell us there’s another mouth that needs feeding.’

He allows his thoughts to be heard, that constant, subordinated rumour. ‘Though it comes from filthy hands, money always smells of roses,’ etc., etc. He gazes at the token’s symmetry. A double three.

‘And we’ll have no choice but to pay! That’s the way the world works, Inverno. There’s no professionalism any more.’

Brinco and Chelín’s mission is to prevent any intruders from entering the back room, which is separated from the bar by two steps and some swing doors. What they do, in effect, is act as sitting mummies. If anyone approaches, even if what they want is to play billiards, though not a sound of this game can be heard, however ignorant or foreign they may be, a simple sideways glance from Brinco, of the kind that says
go jerk off a dead man
, is usually more than dissuasive.

So they concentrate their attention on the sergeant and the man with him. There is a third, Haroldo Grimaldo – Micho – a veteran inspector who sometimes drops into the Ultramar. Often he drops in the literal sense.

‘He’s half pissed already,’ says Brinco. ‘The only thing that saves him is his suspicion. He can see the demijohn before it’s reached him. He’s the one who’s clairvoyant, not you.’

Víctor is talking about Grimaldo, but his gaze is fixed on Leda, who sometimes helps out as a waitress. With her slender body. Her blazing long hair. Black pirate trousers. Tight-fitting white T-shirt. She’s good at her job, thinks Brinco, because she knows how to be with people. How to be and not to be. She doesn’t dole out sugar to horses.