B0040702LQ EBOK (20 page)

I'm a fan of magic realism, an avid reader of Garcia Marquez,
Isabel Allende and their illustrious followers. I love novels
and stories that are rich in fantastical characters and fabulous
happenings: wise grandmothers, blood falling as rain, flying
children, galleons mysteriously stranded amidst the greenery
of the virgin jungle. These `romans de pays chauds', as they
were labelled by one defender of outmoded, anaemic literary
values, represent fresh energy and vitality, and bring an element of poetry into the prosaic narrowness of our lives. So,
when I heard the tale of the Thousand Minus One Nights of my
esteemed colleague from the Circle, with its reference to the
stork's nest next to the little house Eusebio rented in the
Alcazaba district, by the mechouar, I recalled certain paragraphs
by my fellow Spaniard, All Bey, on the subject of these migratory waders whose company he enjoyed in Marrakech thanks
to the Sultan's credulity.

According to an old Moroccan tradition, Berber peasants
believe that storks are human beings who adopt that form
temporarily in order to travel and experience other lands, and
then, when they return to their own country, they recover
their original shape. So, on my arrival in Marrakech in pursuit
of the elusive Eusebio, I decided to abandon risky and fruitless
enquiries, and with the help of the historian Hamid Triki I
made my way to the ancient stork refuge next to the Mosque
of Ibn Yusef.

After a great deal of searching and asking for directions, I
came upon Dar Belarx and managed to find the guide.
Encouraged by my generous tip, he produced a bunch of keys
and led me through a side door, along a gloomy corridor and
into a large, magnificent patio, though dirty and neglected.
Heaps of rubble covered the central area, adorned with a fountain; but the fine arcades, the mouldings in the side rooms
and the tile friezes had resisted the ravages of time. There were
piles of feathers and pigeon droppings, and even the recent
corpse of one of those birds, attracted, like her companions, by
the silence and benevolence of the spot. The refuge had been
closed up a century earlier, on the death of a grandson of its
founder.

I mentioned to my escort the legend of the stork-men. To
my great surprise, he corrected my terminology. It was no
legend, but the absolute truth. He himself knew someone
who emigrated in that fashion to Europe and returned
home a few months later, having recovered his former shape.
The man lived in that very alley, and my guide needed no
prompting to introduce me to him.

The quick-change artist - how else to describe him? - was
a placid, serene old man, of a very similar appearance to the
one my colleagues have attributed to Eusebio, with intensely
blue eyes and a carefully-tended white beard, sitting at the
door of his house, his right hand resting on the handle of his
stick. To avoid any boring preamble I will let him tell his own
story; I don't know if it's true, or his own invention, or taken
from folklore.

`Some forty years ago, my wife - may she be with God! -
managed to get a contract to work in a thread mill in France
and so she emigrated in order to improve our modest fortunes, leaving me behind to take care of the children. At first,
we received regular news of her, together with a postal order
representing her savings for the month; but gradually the
money began to arrive on its own, with no accompanying
letter. This strange, long silence, pregnant with fears and
doubts, plunged me into a profound melancholy. My own
letters went unanswered; as did my requests for her to telephone. I wrote enquiring after her to a neighbour who had
also gone to work in a thread mill in the same area. Her
laconic telegram - `all well your wife working' - far from
dispelling my unease, only increased it. If all was so well, why
the silence? Had she forgotten her position as wife and
mother of four children? At night I would toss and turn in my bed, unable to sleep. Meanwhile, the chances of getting a passport had decreased: the economic crisis and unemployment
in the Christian countries meant all doors were closed to
foreigners, and the French consulate did not issue tourist visas
to poor artisans like me: a humble cobbler. They asked me for
a bank reference and goodness knows what else. In short: I had
to give up the idea. But I still yearned to make the trip and
one day, as I was gazing at the storks nesting on the top of the
walls of the royal palace, I thought to myself, if only I could be
like them and fly, to where my wife is working in her thread
mill in faraway Epinal. As though led by a presentiment, I
went to see my eldest brother: I told him I had decided to go
to Europe and I gave him temporary charge of the care and
education of my children. That uneasy period of my life came
to a sudden end.

The next day, I was on my way with a flight of storks, in a
state of bliss and delight difficult to express in words. The
world was both tiny and immense: landscapes and towns like
toys, seas glinting like mirrors, white mountains ... Height,
weightlessness, speed of movement, made me feel superior to
humans, slow as tortoises, tiny as insects. I was flying with a
sense of utter happiness towards the prosperous and enlightened continent from which Christians had ventured forth in
order, apparently, to educate us, and incidentally offer us work,
distracted by the rapture of soaring from the precise purpose
of my journey. Those were weeks of freedom and contentment, untrammelled by borders and official stamps. Carrying
no papers of any kind, we crossed the boundaries of separate
territories, we broke their petty laws, eluded customs barriers
and police checks, laughed at the mean discrimination
represented by visas. Once we had passed a huge chain of
mountains, covered with snow like the Atlas range, the view
changed: the fields were greener, woods more frequent and
thicker, the towns with ochre tiles gave way to others with
roofs of grey slate. We were following the course of a river on
whose banks stood cities and factories. A few days later, after
many a long day's flight, halting by night on towers and belfries, I felt my drive weaken, I could not keep up with my companions, I was falling hopelessly behind, I could scarcely
move my wings. Unable even to hover, I nearly plummeted to
the ground, but landed-as-best I could in a garden.

My appearance startled the owner of the house, a Frenchman of about forty who was pruning some trees and trimming the lawn with shears. `Look, Aicha, a stork,' he cried.
The name of my beloved wife set my heart fluttering wildly.
Who was this fellow, and how dare he address her so intimately? When she appeared at the door, I was ready to faint. I
kept staring at her and my eyes flooded with tears. `That's
incredible,' she said in French. `There are lots of them in my
country. I'm sure that's where it's come from.' She came over
to me, without recognising me, and stroked my feathers. `How
tame it is! It has probably fallen ill and can't fly on. I'm going
to take care of it and feed it raw fish. Where I come from they
say it brings good luck; it's a guest out of the blue and it
deserves our respect and hospitality.'

Aicha's sweet, welcoming words, instead of easing my pain,
increased it. Her use of `our' and her obvious intimacy with
the man confirmed my suspicions: she was living with him as
man and wife, sharing his bed and table. Still bewildered, and
full of bitterness, I wondered whether they had children. I was
afraid I might hear a baby crying, and I scrutinised the washing line, fortunately without spotting any nappies or baby
clothes. But the sense of superiority and pride I had previously felt, up in the sky, gave way to feelings of impotence and
rage. I was two steps away from my wife and her lover, incapable of responding to her adultery, with my awkward wader's
movements and my discordant squawks. The affection and
maternal instinct Aicha showed, her eagerness to care for me,
choose my food, build me a kind of nest on the roof of a shed,
degraded, rather than exalted, my temporary status as a bird.
The sight of me reminded her of home, she covered me with
kisses and caresses, but at night when they both came back
from work - she from her thread mill, he from a branch of a
major bank - they would go inside and close the door, leaving
me standing one-legged on my nest.

After the first weeks of sadness, I grew bolder: I resolved to go on the offensive. I left my wretched nest and, without
further ado, stalked into the house. At first, the intruder tried
to shoo me away, but she stopped him.

`This stork is a blessed creature which reminds me of everything I left behind. If it wants to live in the house it shall live in
the house. God sent it to us, his will be done.'

The fellow oozed bad temper. `That's all very poetic, but
who's going to clean up its droppings?'

`I will! Haven't I told you a thousand times it's a sacred
animal?'

He muttered something about India and its sacred cows,
she shrugged her shoulders and got her own way. From now
on, if I wanted, I would share their home day and night.

The new situation brought about by my wife's energy and
determination favoured my plans for revenge. Taking advantage of their absence during working hours, I rifled through
the drawers and poked around in every corner of the house;
I discovered that Aicha treasured her children's photos, paid
her entire wages into a savings account and regularly sent a
proportion of this money to my address. The shopping -
including the fish and maggots intended for me - and the gas
and electricity bills, were all paid by the intruder. This evidence of provision for our future, together with her kindness
towards me, made me bolder: I increased the frequency with
which I soiled objects and garments belonging to the
intruder; I -parked myself on their bed.

As I had hoped, the rows and domestic quarrels got worse.

`Surely you're not going to let it dirty the sheets!'

`If she does, I'll wash them. (She often referred to me in the
feminine.) The poor soul, she's had a long journey, then she
fell ill, and she feels comfortable here, she's part of the family.'

I pretended to give in to the fellow's irritation, and surrendered the field in a dignified manner. I waited till they had
turned off the light and he had begun to move around and
touch her, then I hopped onto the bedspread and soiled it. He
immediately snapped on the bedside light.

`Right, that's it! This time it's gone too far! Enough is
enough!'

`If you so much as touch a feather on that bird, you'll be
sorry! If you must know, I'm tired of you mauling me. I just
want to get to sleep!'

`If you want to sleep, sleep, but not with that creature. I've
told you a thousand times, I can't stand it.'

`In that case, go and sleep on the sofa. I'm staying here.'

`Honestly, anyone would think you were married to it.
Ever since it arrived, you've been behaving oddly. These mad
ideas and superstitions may be all very well where you come
from, but they don't suit a modern, civilised nation.'

`My country is better than yours, do you hear? This stork
belongs to me, and if you don't like it, I'll leave and that'll be
that.'

From then on, there were quarrels every day. I wanted to
sleep on the bed with my wife, and the intruder was beginning to give in and migrate to the sofa. I could feel that Aicha
preferred me and was thinking about me. Sometimes she
would sit at the kitchen table and write letters home, to the
house next to the stork refuge founded centuries ago. She and
the nsrani fought like cat and dog. When she was out, I would
fly to the roof of the shed and take up my position on the nest.
I feared the intruder might slit my throat with a knife, or club
me to death. My success was reassuring and I began to recover
my pleasure in flying. One day, after swallowing my ration of
fish, I bade a silent goodbye to Aicha, waited till my flock
came into view, joined them and began the flight back to
Marrakech.

As soon as I arrived there, I regained my human form. I
turned up at my house as though I had only just left it and
embraced my children. My brother had taken good care of
them, they were attending school, and they danced for joy to
see me. Beside the clock in my bedroom there was a pile of
letters from Aicha. They spoke of the stork's visit, of her deep
longing for her homeland and her family. She was still working in the thread mill in order to save enough to buy a little
business on her return. When she did return, two years later,
she was radiant with joy and came loaded down with presents.
I forgave her, of course I forgave her: I forgot her betrayal and lived happily with her until God called her to His side and we
buried her in Bab Dukala.

I never told her about my visit, nor did I tell anyone else,
except one neighbour and also a gentleman of European
origin living in the neighbourhood, whose Moroccan friend
was killed in a traffic accident and who ever since then
had withdrawn from the world; he wrote poetry and in the
evenings would go and sit quietly in the Mosque of Ibn Yusef.
His name was Eusebio.

I remember that he listened to me attentively and then he
wrote down word for word the same story that I have just
related to you.'

© Juan Goytisolo

Translated by Annella McDermott

Juan Goytisolo (Barcelona, 1931), essayist, travel writer and
novelist, is probably the best-known Spanish writer and intellectual commentator of today, though he has spent long
periods living out of Spain, initially in Paris, from 1957
onwards, and latterly in both Paris and Marrakech. Some of
the defining traits of his personality as a writer have been
his left-wing politics, his discovery and exploration of his
homosexuality and his great love of North African culture. A
large number of Goytisolo's books are available in English:
Serpent's Tail have published, amongst others, Landscapes After
the Battle (1987; tr. Helen Lane) and Marks of Identity (1988; tr.
Gregory Rabassa), Quartet Realms of Strife (1990; tr. Peter
Bush) and Saracen Chronicles (1992; tr. Helen Lane), and Faber
The Marx Family Saga (1996, tr. Peter Bush). This story is
taken from Las semanas del jardin (1997; an English translation
by Peter Bush is to be published soon by Serpent's Tail).