B0040702LQ EBOK (50 page)

In the street. There are still a lot of people about. That's
because it's the start of the fine weather and everyone is out
walking, trying to make the evening last as long as possible.
Everything is alight, contented, a sudden, frank outpouring. I
plunge down the pavements, gladly drinking in their healthy
vitality, shopwindows full of light, my package weighing
heavy in my arms, clothes shops, piles of socks, jackets, raincoats, end of season sale, a large U Certificate on the hoarding
outside the Odeon cinema, depicting an allegory of the Wild
West, the sheriffs star dangling drunkenly from one corner,
and Pedrell the florist's, a mean little place selling clay flowerpots from Catalonia and scrawny carnations kept deceitfully
erect with wire. Soil and seeds for sale. The miracle of Casa
Simon's radiant shopfront: bottles of liqueur, cognac, wine, bottles of every size and shape, and the photographs by
Lumiere; I always stop to look in the window and try to
decide who's pretty and who's ugly in the photos, I've seen
him somewhere or other, she's the woman I saw that day on
the stairs, pulling up her stockings, and from this angle he
looks just like ... I hold the package more tightly under my
arm. What did he look like? He could be any of them. The
same surprised, shackled look, an identical degree of resignation. The jeweller's, a dazzling flight of lights, the shop selling
leather and sports goods, skates, skis, rifles, nets, thermos flasks,
sets of folding cutlery, plastic cups, picnic baskets, shoes for
hiking and cycling, tennis balls: Sensible. Economical. Use a
Remington electric shaver, suitable for all voltages. Shoeshops,
pharmacies, hardware stores, the package still weighing heavy
in my arms; another cakeshop, over the door, the name
Suchard flashing on and off, a clock above it. A cafe full of
young people, the windows open, cigarette smoke gusting
forth, laughter and jokes from the table by the window, occupied by students and vulgar women plastered in makeup. I
can't go in, even though someone calls to me, because of this
package. The river is still a long way off and the package is
very heavy and, from time to time, I have to stop. That man
over there, I can see him raising his hand to his hat, I sense that
he's going to ask me about my father, the usual tiresome
vacuities: When did you get back? What a surprise! How did
you enjoy the last three months? And I can't say that I've
spent the last three months like this, shut up at home, remembering nothing. The bookshop. I linger for a moment at the
window, novels by Pierre Loti, Jose Maria de Pereda, Padre
Colonial something by Shakespeare, the collection of Araluce
Classics. The usual rubbish. The Winkler Encyclopaedia. All
the Science and Art of the World for just a few reasonable
instalments. Learn about electricity. Surgical pathology, First
Year, by the professor who teaches the subject. My package.
(Good evening, how are you, All the best, Nice to see you,
Give my regards to your family.) There are too many people.
A bar: someone emerges drunk, cursing, and starts throwing
up just by the door. The policemen on duty continue walking along on the opposite pavement, completely unmoved, then
surreptitiously duck down the next street. The silence of a
steep street with no shops in it. The woman selling newspapers by the railings round the monument to Columbus: La
Noche! All the football pool results! A convent bell; a pallid,
distant grief drops asleep above the flowering acacia trees.
Children playing in a circle. The bell. A strident, speeding car.
Ring-a-ring o' roses. Another car. The bell. A pocket full of
posies. The light on a balcony goes on in a dark facade and
someone yells: Conchita! Paquito! Time for bed, you've been
playing out there long enough. The damp neglect of the now
black street that leads to the bridge. Tourist posters hiding in
the darkness. Cold. My package, I'm going to throw the package in the water. At the last roundabout, by the entrance to Las
Rondas, the arrows on the road mark vague distances heading
off into the night. To the frontier, 6 kilometres. Cars: queue to
the right.

I put the package down on the ground for a moment, to
rest. By the light of a tram, it looked enormous, pulsating. I
tried to hum a little tune, but I couldn't. The river is close
now. Onward.

I've walked along this avenue leading to the New Bridge so
often. Whenever I have, the palms of my hands always tingle
with a secret happiness. The rows of trees, the lights of the
petrol station, the white arrows on the asphalt indicating the
directions, the notices stating how much weight the bridge
can take ... All so familiar, so mine. And now I read everything, lingering over every letter; I look at it all as if bidding it
a final, abandoned farewell, my teeth wet with sad saliva. My
package. It's so heavy. I'm going to throw a ... I should say
`man' into the river. And nothing changes. The clumps of
rhododendrons are the same as last year and the lights on the
jetty blink amongst the blaring music from the gramophone.
All the same. Only I am more ... I don't know what. I've
killed a man. Now I am sure that I killed him. The trees tell
me so with a bow that only I understand; I know it from the
way the lovers fall suddenly silent as they huddle together on
the benches as I pass.

Surrounded by silence, for the first time since I set foot in
the street, when I left the house with ... And now I realise that
perhaps I have been too hasty. I should have found out more
about the dust I swept up from the mattress ... Even by just
looking in the encyclopaedia, under Decomposition. There
was bound to be something about it there. I should have read
the article on the Soul too, just in case. It was thoughtless of
me, but what's done is done. I can feel the cool air from the
river. My skin prickles and I stop on the edge of the pavement:
I didn't check all the rooms in the house. And what if ...?
Oh, honestly, a dead body can't move, and, besides, it was still
on my bed. Where I found it. No, no, I mustn't go back now.
The river is so close And in a few moments ...

In a few moments. And that's the worst thing about this
ridiculous stubbornness of mine. In a few moments it will be
worse than now. Much worse. I am going to throw a man, or
what remains of him, into the river. A man, with his hands, his
sorrows, his problems, his prejudices. I don't know how to
swim, my friends look at me contemptuously when they find
out, and I'm going to throw a man into the water. Perhaps he
doesn't know how to swim either. I'm going to plunge him
in, wrapped in newspaper, with all the news of the day, political parties, crimes, United Nations fiascos, sixteen dead on
the Israeli frontier, the meat prices for the whole week and
Gina Lollobrigida's latest film. Into the water. He'll soon rot. I
don't know, I haven't been able to ask anyone, if that dust
resembling mica will float, dissolve, precipitate, submerge,
form compounds, encourage algae, or ... Who knows. The
only certainty is that I don't know how to swim, maybe he
didn't either. But his hands would have been accustomed to
waving hello or goodbye, to winding up children's clockwork
toys, to peeling mandarins. The fish will eat those hands. The
light is on in the customs shed. The customs men are playing
cards on a rickety table, and a few glasses of wine leave large
rings on the surface. One of the men calls trumps and the
other, pushing back his cap, unleashes a curse. A few runnynosed gypsy children are watching, enthralled, as the cards are
placed on the table, jacks, threes, aces, the occasional queen, the four kings with their crowns firmly on their heads. A car
races by, overtaking me. A brief, neutral good evening directed at me; they go on playing. He too would have said Good
evening and he would have doubtless enjoyed counting the
circles left by the strong wine on the table and comparing
them and, evoking some outdoor bar, when he was a student,
when he saw similar circles one evening, now yellow with
memories, perhaps with a pretty, willing young girl. I'm
drowning. Now I can clearly hear the hum of the sluices and
the obstinate knocking of the water against the sides of the
Sunday boats. On some afternoon, somewhere, he would have
gone down to a river and heard that persistent gurgle, violins,
damp, a few towers looming on the shore, lights on the bridge,
a woman gesturing obscenely to him from the balustrade. He
probably wouldn't have gone with her, he seemed such a
pathetic chap. He had pale eyes. I don't know how to swim,
yet I'm going to throw him into the water. That man, as
innocent as me; that man, who, doubtless, one dull Sunday,
after dozing for a while in an armchair, drank a glass of cognac
to set himself up, to keep him going, on to the next thing and
let's see what happens, and he would have gone slowly out
into the streets to see faces and shopwindows, and towers and
advertisements, and the promising farther ends of the long
streets, when the chill five o'clock air bursts upon the paving
stones and doorways, and hearing the song of a young single
woman behind a window or in a courtyard, and watching the
little boys leaving the children's session at the cinema and
peeing by the side of the road, seeing who can pee furthest, to
the horror of the little girls, and then he would have knocked
at a door, I can almost see it now, it could be my front door,
but I can't see who opens it ... No, I can't possibly have killed
a man like that, who used to say Good evening, and Always
and Never and Later, or simply Oh well!, perhaps he was a fan
of costume dramas, he probably smoked black tobacco and
drank rum, or was interested in the history of Latin America.
Because I killed him, I did: he died of my wanting so much
to kill him ... But the package drops into the water, it fell
quickly, confirming the second law of motion governing acceleration and the principle of When an object is totally or
partially immersed in a fluid, it experiences an upthrust equal
to ... circular waves, getting gradually lighter, dragged along
by the current, and a fleeting struggle to relive innumerable
remembered returns, the night at the station, the five clocks
on the way home, the journey, many other journeys, the
sleepy clarity experienced that time with my first girlfriend,
endless exams, the broken nose I got when I fought Pedro
Juarez for the photograph of Jeannette Macdonald, and the
foolish, white joy of my first communion, and more things
and people that he had never recalled, now present, pointlessly
and randomly restored to him, the waves on the river superimposed on those of a far distant beach, all blue, the little
bucket leaving the sand in ordered geometric patterns, the
water that goes and never comes back, cold, damp, everything
black now, becoming lost in the depths of the river, a deep
sigh, a star smooth again on the calm surface, a compact, gradually hardening solitude closing in above the hum of the
sluices.

I hurried back home. It must be ages since I left. I don't know
where the time has gone. I have a vague feeling that there is
some difficult matter I must resolve, that there is something I
have forgotten. Perhaps I should set off early tomorrow on a
journey. The men in the booth were still playing and I
thought I saw a couple of women with them. They'll make
the most of their night there alone. No one greets me. The
few people I meet pretend not to know me. Just as well, that
makes everything easier. It's awful walking through a city
where everyone knows everyone else, or thinks they do. I'm
fed up with all the Good luck, See you later, All the best, I'll
bring it round later. Bah! The street door was open. The
concierge was standing outside on the pavement talking to a
group of women. She just looked at me and said nothing.
Poor woman. I raced upstairs and, unthinkingly, rang the bell.
Out of habit, I leaned over the stairwell and saw the concierge
looking fearfully up at me. A question was forming inside me,
did she not recognise me. As soon as the maid opened the door, they're obviously back, I pushed straight past her. The
maid, who's easily frightened, gave a cry. I go straight to my
bedroom, I'm tired and want to lie down. I lie down on the
still unmade bed without bothering to take off my clothes. I
hear noises in the corridor, alarmed voices. It's not possible,
You don't know what you're saying. I almost recognise the
inflections of those voices, although every time I hear Who is
he, they sound farther off, stranger and more desperate.
Someone knocks at the door. I don't want to be bothered.
When I don't answer, the door opens cautiously and through
the narrow crack I see my mother, my sister, the two maids,
my little cousin Chucho who they must have brought back
with them from the country and who is a terrible little whinger, I see how frightened they all are, they're trembling. I start
to feel uncomfortable. I get up to tell them to let me sleep, that
I've already had supper and that I won't be going to university
tomorrow, and I find my father, visibly shaken, doing his best
to speak calmly. I don't really understand what's wrong with
him. He began by saying, and I can't reproduce his cold tones,
that I must have got the wrong apartment. That room
belonged to his son (yes, I know, but, in that case, why mention it!) and that there had obviously been some mistake (how
could I mistake the room and the hollow in the mattress?) and
Be so good as to leave, sir, otherwise I shall be obliged to ... I
suddenly saw their serious, hostile faces. They didn't love me
any more. I wondered darkly if they had discovered something. But it's odd, this unanimously scornful look of suppressed fury. `This is my son's room, You must have made a
mistake,' my father was saying again, calmer now. I didn't say
anything. I realised that when they rapped at the door it was
not in order to offer me some supper or to ask Where have
you been? How was the journey? nor to let me know they
were back. It was in order to throw me out, to inform me that
the room was no longer mine. I sensed that it would be useless
telling them that I had slept for some months on that mattress
and that it was almost mine, that ... There was no point. Who
was I. Where can I go now, where can I stretch out my weary
bones tonight. I put on my overcoat, which was draped over the back of a chair, and I left. My father no longer looked like
my father when I said Goodnight, the expression on his face
had grown so hard. As f o r the others ... They, who are usually
so easily reduced to tears, didn't shed a single one. Six heads,
far up on the first landing.