B0040702LQ EBOK (22 page)

With me still inside the house, and with the dog howling sadly
at the door, death has, in fact, already often come to visit
me. It came when my daughter made a surprise return one
night to occupy the room that had remained padlocked
since the day of her death. It came when Sabina rose from
the dead one New Year's Eve in the old photo that the
flames slowly consumed and when she kept watch over my
suffering, as I lay burning up between these same sheets,
devoured by fever and madness. And it came to stay with
me for good on the night that my mother suddenly
appeared in the kitchen, all those years after she was buried.

Until that night, I still doubted my own eyes and even the
very shadows and silences in the house. However vivid those experiences had been, up until then, I still believed,
or, at least, tried to believe, that fever and fear had provoked
and given shape to images that existed only as memories.
But that night, reality, brutal and irrefutable, overcame any
doubts. That night, when my mother opened the door and
was suddenly there in the kitchen, I was sitting by the fire,
opposite her, awake, unable to sleep, as I am now, and when
I saw her, I didn't even feel afraid.

Despite all the years that had passed, I had little difficulty
recognising her. My mother was just as I remembered her,
exactly the same as when she was alive and wandered about
the house, day and night, tending to the livestock and to the
whole family. She was still wearing the dress that Sabina
and my sister had put on her after she died and the black
scarf that she never took off. And now, sitting on the bench
by the fire, her usual still, silent self, she seemed to have
come to prove to me that it was not her but time that had
died.

All that night, the dog sat howling at the door, wakeful and
frightened, as she did when the people in Ainielle still used
to keep vigil over their dead or when smugglers or wolves
came down into the village. All night, my mother and I sat
in silence watching the flames consuming the gorse twigs
on the fire and, with them, our memories. After all those
years, after all that time separated by death, the two of us
were once again face to face, yet, despite that, we dared not
resume a conversation that had been suddenly interrupted
a long time ago. I did not even dare look at her. I knew she
was still in the kitchen because of the dog's frightened
barking and because of the strange, unmoving shadow that
the flames cast on the floor by the bench. But, at no point,
did I feel afraid. Not for a moment did I allow myself to
think that my mother had come to keep vigil over my own
death. Only at dawn, when, still sitting by the fire, I was
woken by the warm light and realised she was no longer
with me in the kitchen, did a black shudder run through me for the first time, when the calendar reminded me that
the night ebbing away behind the trees was the last night of
February: the exact same date on which my mother had
died forty years before.

After that, my mother often came to keep me company. She
always arrived around midnight, when sleep was already
beginning to overwhelm me and the logs were starting to
burn down amongst the embers in the hearth. She always
appeared in the kitchen suddenly, with no noise, no sound
of footsteps, without the front door or the door from the
corridor announcing her arrival. But before she came into
the kitchen, even before her shadow appeared in the narrow street outside, I could tell from the dog's frightened
yelps that my mother was approaching. And sometimes,
when my loneliness was stronger than the night, when
my memories became too full of tiredness and madness,
I would run to my bed and pull the blankets up over
my head, like a child, so as not to have to mingle those
memories with hers.

One night, however, around two or three in the morning, a
strange murmuring made me sit up suddenly in my bed. It
was a cold night, towards the end of autumn, and, as now,
the window was blinded by the yellow rain. At first, I
thought the murmuring was coming from outside the
house, that it was the noise of the wind dragging the dead
leaves along the street. I soon realised I was wrong. The
strange murmuring was not coming from the street, but
from somewhere in the house, and it was the sound of
voices, of words being spoken nearby, as if there were
someone talking to my mother in the kitchen.

Lying absolutely still in my bed, I listened for a long time
before deciding to get up. The dog had stopped barking
and her silence alarmed me even more than that strange
echo of words. Even more than the rain of dead leaves that
was staining the whole window yellow. When I went out into the corridor, the murmuring abruptly stopped, as if
they had heard me from the kitchen. I had already picked
up the knife which, ever since the day Sabina died, I
always carry in my jacket, and I went down the stairs
determined to find out who was in the kitchen with my
mother. I didn't need the knife. It wouldn't have been any
use to me anyway. Sitting in a circle round the kitchen fire
with my mother there were only silent, dead shadows,
who all turned as one to look at me when I flung open
the door behind them, and amongst them I immediately
recognised the faces of Sabina and of all the dead of the
house.

I rushed out into the street, not even bothering to close the
door behind me. I remember that, as I left, a cold wind
struck my face. The whole street was full of dead leaves and
the wind was whirling them up in the gardens and courtyards of the houses. When I reached Bescos' old house, I
stopped to catch my breath. It had all happened so fast, it
was all so sudden and confused, that I was still not entirely
sure that I wasn't in the middle of a dream: I could still feel
the warmth of the sheets on my skin, the wind was blinding and buffeting me and, above the rooftops and the walls
of the houses, the sky was the yellow of nightmares. But no,
it wasn't a dream. What I had seen and heard in the kitchen
in my house was as real as me standing at that moment
in the middle of the street, stockstill and terrified, again
hearing strange voices behind me.

For a few seconds, I stood there, paralysed. During those
seconds - interminable seconds made longer by the wind
rattling the windows and doors of the houses - I thought
my heart was going to burst. I had just fled my own house, I
had just left behind me the cold of death, death's gaze, and
now, though how I didn't know, I found myself once more
face to face with death. It was sitting on the bench in
Bescos' kitchen by a non-existent fire, watching over the
memory of a house that no one even remembered any more, on the other side of the window against which I just
happened to be leaning.

Terrified, I started running down the middle of the street,
with no idea where I was going. My whole body broke out
in a cold sweat and the leaves and the wind were blinding
me. Suddenly, the entire village seemed to have been set in
motion: the walls moved silently aside as I passed, the roofs
floated in the air like shadows torn from their bodies and,
above the infinite vertex of the night, the sky was now
entirely yellow. I passed the church without stopping. I
didn't think for a moment of taking refuge there. The belfry leaned menacingly towards me and the bells began to
ring again as if they were still alive beneath the earth. Yet in
Calleja de Gavin, the fountain seemed abruptly to have
died. Water had ceasing pouring from the spout and,
amongst the black shadows of the algae and the watercress,
the water was as yellow as the sky. I ran towards Lauro's old
house, battling against the wind. The nettles stung me and
the brambles wrapped about my legs as if they too wanted
to hold me back. But I got there. Exhausted. Panting. Several times I nearly fell. And when I was finally out in the
open country, far from the houses and the garden walls, I
stopped to see what was happening around me: the sky and
the rooftops were burning, fused into one incandescent
brightness, the wind was battering the windows and doors
of the houses and, in the midst of the night, amongst the
endless howling of leaves and doors, the whole village was
filled by an incessant lament. I did not need to retrace my
steps to know that every kitchen was inhabited by the
dead.

During the whole of that night, I wandered the roads, not
daring to return to my own dead. For more than five hours,
I waited for dawn, afraid that it might perhaps never come.
Fear dragged me aimlessly, senselessly through the hills, and
the thorns snatched at my clothes, gradually eating away at
my courage and my strength, not that I was aware of them. Blinded by the wind, I could barely see them, and madness
propelled me beyond the night and beyond despair. And so,
when dawn finally arrived, I was far from the village, on the
top of Erata hill, by the abandoned watering hole of a flock
that had not been seen for several years.

I continued to wait, though, sitting amongst the brambles,
until the sun came out. I knew that no one would now be
waiting for me in the village - my mother always left with
the dawn - but I was so tired I could barely stand. Gradually,
though, my strength returned - I may even have managed to
sleep for a while - and when the sun finally broke through
the black clouds over Erata, I set off again, ready to go back.
Downhill and in the full light of day, it did not take me
long to cover the distance walked that night. The wind had
dropped and a deep calm was spreading softly over the hills.
Down below, in the river valley, the rooftops of Ainielle
were floating in the mist as sweetly as at any dawn. As I
came within sight of the houses, the dog joined me. She
appeared suddenly at the side of the road, from amongst
some bushes, still trembling with fear and emotion. The
poor creature had spent the night there, hiding, and now,
when she found me, she looked at me in silence, struggling
to understand. But I could tell her nothing. Even if she had
been able to comprehend my words, I could not explain
something that I myself could not grasp. Perhaps it really
had been nothing more than a dream, a murky, tormented
nightmare born of insomnia and solitude. Or perhaps not.
Perhaps I really had seen and heard everything that I saw
and heard that night - just as now I could see the garden
walls and hear around me the cries of the birds - and those
black shadows were perhaps still waiting for me to return
to the kitchen. The presence of the dog gave me courage,
however, to walk past the houses and go towards my own.
The street door was still open, just as I had left it, and, as
always, a profound silence welled up from the far end of
the corridor. I did not hesitate for a second. I did not even
stop to remember the things I thought I had experienced during the night and on many other previous nights. I went
in through the door and entered the house convinced that
it was all a lie, that there was no one waiting in the kitchen
and that everything that had happened had been merely
the nightmarish fruit of insomnia and madness. Indeed, no
one was in the kitchen. The bench was empty, as it always
was, touched by the first light of day coming in through the
window. In the fireplace, though, quite inexplicably, the
fire I had doused before I went to bed was still burning, still
wrapped in a strange, mysterious glow.

Several months passed and there was no recurrence of these
events. I sat waiting in the kitchen every night, alert to the
slightest sound, fearing that the door would again open of
its own accord and that my mother would appear once
more before me. But the winter passed and nothing happened, nothing disturbed the peace of the kitchen and of
my heart. And so, when the spring arrived, when the snows
began to melt and the days to grow longer, I was sure that
she would never return, because her ghost had only ever
existed in my imagination.

But she did return. At night, completely unexpectedly, while
it was raining. I recall that November was drawing to a
close and that, outside the windows, the air was yellow She
sat down on the bench and looked at me in silence, just as
she had that first day.

Since then, my mother has returned on many nights. Sometimes, with Sabina. Sometimes, surrounded by the whole
family. For a long time, so as not to see them, I would hide
somewhere in the village, or else spend hours aimlessly,
senselessly wandering the hills. For a long time, I preferred
to shun their company. But they kept coming, more and
more often, and, in the end, I had no option but to resign
myself to sharing with them my memories and the warmth
of the kitchen. And now that death is prowling outside the
door of this room and the air is gradually staining my eyes with yellow, it actually consoles me to think of them there,
sitting by the fire, awaiting the moment when my shadow
will join theirs for ever.

© Julio Llamazares

Translated by Margaret full Costa

Julio Llamazares (1955) was born in the now non-existent
village of Vegamian near Leon and currently lives in Madrid.
Initially he trained and worked as a lawyer, but soon abandoned that career to work as a newspaper, TV and radio
journalist. He has published two books of poetry: La lentitud
de los bueyes (1979) and Memoria de la nieve (1982), for which
he won the Jorge Guillen Prize. He has also written two
books about his childhood and the area where he was born -
El rio del olvido (1990) and Escenas de cine mudo (1994) - and
two remarkable novels: Luna de lobos (1985) and La lluvia
amarilla (1993), winner of the Premio Nonino for the best
foreign novel published in Italy. The latter, from which this
extract is taken, is an elegiac account of an abandoned village
near the Spanish Pyrenees, of which the narrator and his dog
are the sole remaining inhabitants.