GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (1): “THE FIRST TIME”

The sun reflected itself too, as if it were not enough to lash from up above and wanted to make use of the ocean to confuse him. Oh dear! Was it possible that she and he as well… he meant… that both of them… at the same time…? He allowed his eyes to run back once more along the path up to the dunes and stealthily raised his collar so that he could look more directly. Let’s see, he ruminated: a woman at the wheel of a car, most likely a sports car, somewhere around twenty or thirty years old, although before being suggested by that machine of which hardly a bit of chassis can be discerned, the dates are given by that face with big, painted lips, emerging out of an evanescent combination of shawl, scarf, and hat. No, there was no mistaking it. She and he, both of them, had in their hands a book which displayed a cover with the same illustration, ultimately the extremely well-known Tamara in the Green Bugatti, by the no less well-known Tamara de Lempicka. The coincidence would already have been enough in itself to start up a fascinating reflection about chance and even fate, were it not for the fact that the book, effectively the same, was for him not the more or less fortunate selection for an afternoon read, but an object upon which relapsed (in equal parts) enormous quantities of vanity and fatigue. It was his most recent novel, which had just come hot out of the oven as they say, and because of that little impulse to not detach himself from it during its first days of life (a compulsion which he repeated tirelessly volume after volume, without the possibility of knowing if that yielded any type of benefit in the slightest), there he was in the midst of his first reading with a number-two pencil searching for the errors which the printers had overlooked.

         It was the first time something like this had happened to him. Because, let’s see… the girl there in front of him, the one with the fuchsia towel—the one who squeezed her knees together as she combed the sand with her toes—went, and forewent any other complementary alternative for sunbathing (sleeping, listening to music, sending messages on her phone) and killed the afternoon—that lazy and most-luminous end-of-July afternoon—finishing up a book. And not just any book, no sir, but one of HIS-goddamn-books. Not one of those fat volumes by Stephen King or by Ken Follett. Not one of those Vargas Llosa titles re-published in paperback in the wake of the Nobel Prize. Not one of those bricks of historical drama with religious conspiracy at their core. Not even one of those manuelorivases with which people tend to clear a bad conscience. The girl was reading ONE OF HIS BOOKS, and even if all of a sudden a tsunami like that of Fukushima were to sweep away the beach (the thought was completely misguided), that wasn’t going to change even a bit what already seemed as unquestionable as scientific fact.

         He felt so unexpectedly satisfied that he still spent a good while wondering to himself if there wasn’t something insane about that uncontainable urge to scream clawing up his throat. To scream! He didn’t do that—needless to say—but the electrical current which began to flow slowly through his limbs, causing every last hair on his body to stand up, sought to notify him that, despite whatever the morning’s chewy croissant could have foretold, that day which had only just begun to slosh into the mid-afternoon was going to be—even just for that—one of those storied days where the most repressed desires, where the things which one secretly spends their whole life awaiting…

         Well. Of course he was sure that people read his books. How could they not! Right there were the sales reports, the royalty checks, and even those emails by the Biblioteca Virtual Galega people that overflowed from the university—not always from old school friends surprised, when not obviously amused, by the type of job he had searched for. Because, without being in any way one of those cracks who argue vehemently against literary agents, right there was that career that could offer some certainly respectable numbers over time. Thirty? Forty? Fifty-thousand books sold? Twenty years, he ruminated, allow for a great deal. Even to delude himself, disabuse himself, and ultimately console himself with those numbers which, by means of adding up lustra, meetings with the press, and one pious lie or another, shot off some results which could be maneuvered in any conversation without the risk of feeling a sharp silence sliding down his back. Nevertheless (and he returned to the point of departure) it was the first time in his whole career that…

         What’s certain is that he had already had occasion, overcoming the mandate of not appearing overly vulnerable, to speak fully with a colleague about that moment in which one manages to truly understand what that with which they are occupying a good part of the day, in general, since the old and confusing adolescent era, consists of. Absolutely. There were those who, despite sum-total certainly less published work, proudly confessed to a pair of encounters with unprepared readers—referring with that descriptor to those who had not anticipated the moment photographing themselves with their books in the same doorway—an adventure which, in terms of setting, displayed such a variety of localizations that it seemed a bit stupid to speak of rules: if some mentioned an airport or a bus or train station, others described a relatively lush park or the relatively appropriate decorations of a bar, of a cafe, of any tavern. He—not seeing himself as any kind of superstitious chimpanzee—knew that only the laws of chance operated in the roulette wheel. Or rather, mathematics (or was it statistics?). Nevertheless (and the adversative became as questionable to him as the fact of seeing some incongruity there), listening to those confessions and hearing his authors touched by a magic wand…

         Be that as it may, there she was, at five, six, perhaps seven meters: his double six, his straight flush, his tiny little paper with its six figures completed by the winning number. What caused her to scrunch up her nose? What caused her to spread her lips after pursing them—like someone whistling—for hardly a second? Was she readying herself to turn the page? Was she turning over the book with the intention of verifying something? He hurried to imitate her in order to settle, like so, gaze fixed upon the black-and-white photograph of the back cover. When he came to recognize himself in Xurxo Lobato’s snapshot—that which found him contorting himself into an armchair in the Hostal dos Reis Católicos with a pose between distracted and self-absorbed (the right side-piece of his glasses, like a hook, puffing out a bright and fleshy bottom lip)—he began to ask himself if the pictured would maintain any kind of relationship with that fellow who now climbed into the fragile metal chair by way of his hips. Well. He was inclined to judge that no, that one had to be an especially observant subject—and perhaps gifted with extraordinary forensic capabilities—to link that kind of black-and-white dandy-démodé with that sweaty nobody in a bathing suit, face dilated by the heat and hair solidified by the saltpeter (the reflection of his glasses did nothing more than to confirm his suppositions in this respect).

         At-this-very-moment-a-woman-is-in-the-middle-of-reading-one-of-my-novels, he whispered, taking advantage of the drawn-out breath with which his gut covered its true nature for a few seconds—something halfway between leather and a kettledrum. Did she like it? The novel, he meant. Was it worth the effort to bring a book down to the beach (from any point of view one of the worst places to surrender oneself to reading)? He searched avidly for some tic, some gesture, some light in that tanned face, lightly illuminated, he wanted to believe, by the refraction of the sun on the page. The darkness of his glasses permitted a direct examination, almost fixedly, such that he scrupulously surrendered himself to the occupation with all naturalness, like someone sitting in front of the television after a long morning in the office. Nevertheless, after a couple minutes he desisted from the idea. Besides the subtle intensification of her brows—which could communicate a pleasant concentration just as much as a wretched headache—it was quite difficult to discern any expression, be it of satisfaction or of displeasure. Such it was that he left aside the first topic and contented himself with a superficial kind of contemplation: one would say the type strictly necessary to fix in his memory the coveted image of one of his readers.

         Before continuing it is necessary, in spite of all that, to make some things clear. Outside of not sharing in absolute those theories which demanded to see a mating tactic as crude or sophisticated as any other in artistic creation, the reality is that his interest lacked even the slightest sexual undertones. Well. She was a woman, and young, and the species being in danger of extinction or of the sirens announcing the final minutes of all this… Oh dear. Perhaps he was exaggerating a bit. What this means is that, without in any way seeing chastity in his gaze—the gaze of a writer can never be chaste; on the contrary it is as if we were to trust an operation to a surgeon-declared-enemy of the scalpel—neither was it fuller of appetite or carnality than the majority of looks that one might direct towards a woman of between eighteen and fifty-five years old throughout the course of a day. And it isn’t that he could not savor a certain attraction. Simply, put to speaking on the matter, she wasn’t even close to his type. Blonde, bronzed, and svelte—well, maybe in excess: there was too much continuity between her thighs, knees, and calves—she maneuvered herself with a firm step along that loose line between youth and early maturity which someone, he no longer remembered, scientifically attempted to situate in one’s thirties. She had narrow wrists and long—extraordinarily long—fingers and eyes of a color somewhere between blue and mauve like those filiform, iridescent shells which crumble between your fingers from the slightest contact. And enough modesty so as to retain, despite the day’s sunburn, the upper part of her bikini. Oh dear. Even when she turned over to situate herself face down—undoing the knots with a skillful unlacing of her fingers—she had the good sense to situate the bronzer and tobacco packet in the proper place to hide the nudity of those, her childlike white breasts.

         Without really knowing why, he felt a certain fascination for that preventative and abashed naive gesture. Maybe, who knows, it was the contrast: the energetic counterpoint to that multitudinous dance of brilliant breasts unleashed around him, a true paradise for the onanistic and voyeuristic adolescent he had once been. Pity that (to) paradise (one) always arrives late. Like that train or that plane that never waits. In short! Nor is it that the proliferation of toplessness among that ever wider age range displeased him. In a way, he concluded by extending one step further that chain of conviction that the beach equalizes, that sandals, and towels, and bathing suits are nothing more than small hand grenades against class differences. Naturally: the more naked we present ourselves, the more similar we appear. Right?

         Lost among these greasy thoughts, he still delayed a little while in realizing that his reader, covered by a slender white dress, was slowly picking up her things and shaking her towel, ready to leave for another beach momentarily. Seeing her there, standing up, without posture or gravity altering her figure very perceptibly, he had a chance to complete his first portrait. More than blonde, the woman was almost albino, and as such (not being due to the saltpeter or the meager remains of sunscreen) the contours of her eyebrows could scarcely be perceived. Her tan, uniform at first glance, nevertheless did not cease to reveal—by dint of the presumed whiteness of her breasts—some areas which, as a result of adjoining portions of blonde hair, could well illustrate the results of an overly prolonged solar exposition. That which had not changed—or if it had, helped to bury definitively any threat of desire—was her extreme thinness. She appeared a completely sexless being, an angel or maybe one of those androgynous beings which so puzzled the aesthetes with as much life in their spines as there was ever-so-little feeling. He had wanted to lend a toupee to Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde’s friend—there, seated at his side, with a straw hat resting on his knees and the Irish bear’s hand on his back—but his attempts to remember that old photograph found themselves accompanied by the instantaneous evocation of that still where Dirk Bogarde, with peripatetic hair dye streaming down his face, struggled between life and death in a hammock while the actor who played the boy Tadzio—delicate, blonde, angelic…

         When the seagulls rescued him from his self-absorption, his reader was no longer there.

         But the sun remained there, in the sea, playing at self-reflection.

CONDENSED MILK

When the old captain, H.P. Stewart, had managed to secure the little wooden bowl, the dreadful jolt had already spoilt the better part of his afternoon tea. The sausages, the ham, the eggs, the bread, the bacon… He attempted to shorten the route to his tea with the point of his knife, but when he realized the impossibility of bisecting the trajectory of that ardent stream running full speed along the tray, there was nothing for it but to drop all pretenses and hurl an oath. “For the love of God!” he roared. And he can’t be blamed. Truthfully it is not at all agreeable to see how the outcome of half an afternoon in the kitchen (a personal stovelet, ideal for persisting in one’s routines without bothering the cooks) can pick up and go down the drain in the space of one miserable second. “For the love of God!” he roared once more, this time throwing his back against the chair. While his eyes remained fixed upon the mess, he cast his hand instinctively toward his watch. He did not, however, know his reason for not looking at the time. What’s more: so unaware was Captain H.P. Stewart, that he did not even know why he went in its search, like so, a bit reflexively, as if night’s invisible fingers had begun pressing some secret spring. What is it he hoped to measure? What has already been? What has already been has no remedy (a foot-of-the-pew truth), and it was going to be worth little to him, for example, to note in his journal—double rule, turquoise jacket, gold ribbon—that disgraces, like surprises and tragedies, are perfectly capable of walking over irrefutable fractional paths.

         “Can I come in, sir?”

         He didn’t have the slightest need to respond. Nor even to ponder who was asking permission. The chamber door absorbed a face and it corresponded more or less with Saunders, the Welsh quartermaster’s, the man who was said to only warm up after the second bottle of whisky. More or less is said, permitting the head of a doubt to appear, for the simple reason that the captain did not remember his very old and very dried-out subordinate. His lips, always gripping a put-out cigarette, did not this time manage to detach themselves from an assuredly unsettling message. The Viper, ultimately the sixty-eight meter long steamer in which they navigated, had run into—as a result of who-knows-what accursed miscalculations—the throat of that same Galician gale that they had been playing cat and mouse with the whole journey.

Captain H.P. Stewart concealed the true scope of his contrariety and rushed to abandon the chamber while he put on his raincoat. The corridor, the lanterns, the ladders… It turned out to be quite difficult for him to fix his gaze upon an area which did not seem to come alive. So much was that the case, that only when he was able to throw his hand upon the latch, beset by the flame of another oath, did he realize that his feet—protected for the occasion by some rain boots bought in the very inclement Edinburgh—came to cross the not-negligible distance that separated his cabin from his cover. As if that were not enough, the moment he poked his face into the young night, a strong gust of wind threatened to smash him against the bridge, for which he found himself obligated (at his age!) to correct the inclination of his body with an acrobatic leap backwards. Alley-oop! If only old Reggie could see him! And yet did he ever tire of saying that he was just as rusty as the accursed cranes in Calcutta’s port?

He ran the tip of his tongue along his painfully salty lips, jammed his cap back in its place again, and blinked his eyes to assure himself that what was grinding up there, in front of him about fifteen, eighteen, maybe twenty feet high, was nothing less than the prow’s headlamp swaying noisily like one of those thieves who they still executed when he was a boy.

Wrapped in his rain coat, he directed his stumbles towards the hold in order to check the state of the cargo. He stamped the floor forcefully as a forewarning to the rats—among his mandates was that of always giving his rival an opportunity—and stopped to look at those unstable towers of boxes as can be done only by someone who has spent three quarters of their life on a relatively bulky plate which occupies itself by floating in the ocean. Well. Sometimes he begins to wonder whether humanity might not be mistaken with its idea of endlessly occupying solid ground, when the oldest sailors have already demonstrated that the planet, being something, must be quite similar to an enormous blue ball. And if the thing, in reality, was not prevised as such by the Creator? Does it make sense that the creature made in His image and semblance should live—well, live and die—on the smallest part of the planet? The fact of paying rent (and no small amount) for a tiny apartment in Mayfair did not change his opinion even in the slightest. Dolphins and whales put into port on the beach for a time from voyage to voyage as well. Of course those many-month absences, thanks to which he could go on considering himself a sea wolf, were not the most peculiar (or scandalous) thing about the little house. Despite having already seen and done it all, as is popularly said, he had found himself impelled more than once to give explanations for the fact that it was not a woman (if not the wife, the neighborhood seemed to agree upon a niece or upon a more neutral housekeeper) who kept the fire going during his long navigations and bothered herself with taking a taxi to Victoria Station in order to receive him with a hug. Reginald… For the love of God! Was it so hard to understand? Strand Magazine’s many subscribers delightedly applaud the adventures of the tenants at 221B Baker Street, and then it goes and turns out that they are unable to comprehend that, in that same West End, without any turbid attachment between them, an old sailor on active duty and a crippled gentleman from the British Colonial Army could live together. Well. Obviously as a result of cohabitating—and they were already up to nearly two decades doing so—one ends up having the same domestic discussions that a married couple might have, or, more appropriately, one of those married couples that, for work reasons, live three quarters of the year apart. (It is a simple sequence: a second honeymoon upon their reunion, an unbearable odor of cold soup after the third or fourth day, and the first door-slam when one realizes that there is nothing but one miserable crumb left in the tea tin.)

Without a doubt Reggie had his hang-ups, and who doesn’t, might it be known? Starting… starting with his relationship with that dirty pet of his, foul-smelling George: dignified representative of that species endemic to Madagascar, which the first Europeans to arrive on the island took for purgatorial spirits or, more simply, for beings between the boundary of man and beast (seeing their size, however, more properly between a bogy and a beast). Lemurs, they say. With their enormous phosphorescent eyes and their dusty rat’s fur. That’s what a friendship in the Customs Department is worth! How many times, seeing it nibble its cookies with that characteristic avarice, had he believed himself before a child or before the result of one of those aberrations which cause us to believe that perhaps the world can always be yet more terrible. The strangest thing, even so, was not the fact that a veteran of the colonial army would decide to keep an exotic animal as a pet. As soon as one decides to do the math, it turns out that from Charing Cross to Chiswick—to cite a route that doesn’t come to two hours at a medium trot—among cockatoos, parrots, marmosets and even a python or two…

The strange thing—and the first time he witnessed this episode he had to rub his eyes multiple times—was that Reginald, the always cordial, patient, and phlegmatic Reginald, did not treat his friend with, shall we say, very much affection. When something upset him—whether it be the bill from the Oriental Telephone and Electric Company or the unexpected solutions to the puzzles in British Chess Magazine—he beat the poor thing as if he were beating a punching bag. “Do you see what you made me do, you fucking monkey?!” he shouted. He knew well that a lemur is not exactly a monkey—just as many naturalists never tire of repeating—but when he discharged his wrath upon the poor animal there was no other word that worked for him. In short! There were those who did that, and those who killed their pensioner’s days bent over a table, re-counting coins with wool gloves and a nightcap on.

The boxing sessions with the lemur, the obsession with dyeing and curling his sideburns, his visceral hate for Handel and his no less visceral devotion towards Purcell, the insistence upon allowing his thumbnails to grow more than is permissible (for certain hygienes that had never seemed to him very hygienic)… Everyone has their hang-ups, sure, although nor does it cease to be true, in any case, that everything has its proper place. A small example? So, returning to the door-slam when one verifies that, not only did the other not take upon themselves the refilling of the tea, but nor did they even bother to leave a note of apology, there would be nothing to do but to breathe deeply, arm oneself with patience, and make the most of one’s already being in the street to go to Fortnum & Mason and return with a couple tins of Earl Grey (and, already put to it, with some smoked salmon and a bit of fresh Stilton).

The sudden evocation of that famous Piccadilly market—where one could find anything from terrine pâté and foie gras to bittersweet cucumbers, passing by trays of devilled eggs, pickled quail, and the best French champagnes—caused him to judge as yet more abnormal the content of those boxes whose equilibrium he had set himself to check. Condensed milk! Is that a cargo which merits such a name? Captain H.P. Stewart wasn’t sure about any of it. The explanations of his consort—his yellow-stained handlebar mustache, his monocle, those black ribbons and medals with which he always ended up ruining his collars—had not helped very much to understand the real reasons for which someone would decide to load such pigswill into the intestines of a steamboat either. Apparently, and given that her most good-humored majesty’s troops had to be fed—to give an exact number of heads was, more than an audacity, a royal waste of time—she managed to develop a system which mitigated the risks of transporting (and then drinking) a drum of milk which from, take for example, the courts of Hereford or Aberdeen to the kitchens of the South African campaign, could come to add up to—and this in the best of cases—few days less than what a couple months add up to. It can be seen that following a rigorous process of condensation, and canning it like fish preserves, a product is achieved which could be cast away for years in the darkest and most abandoned pantry without deteriorating anyone’s health when they decide to ingest it. Something—well examined—completely stupid, added Reggie, and that for two very serious reasons: the first, that if the higher-ups would leave their scruples for other things, nothing would be lost in attempting to drink local milk, for rare was the place where there were no cows (sacred or not) susceptible to being milked; and the second, and in the opinion of the old lieutenant, the most relevant, was that one had to have an excellent imagination in order to envision a soldier of “Her Majesty’s Armed Forces” with a cup of milk in their hands.

In short. Stupid or not, worthy of his name or not, the cargo remained in its place despite all the yawing which the ship—under his command—experienced with ever more frequency. Three-hundred boxes and each one with one-hundred bottles, ruminated Captain H.P. Stewart. How many wretched gallons of thick-sticky-disgusting condensed milk did this old steamer carry in its gullet? Speaking truthfully, he would never become accustomed to travelling in something so similar to an enormous cream cake. But the captain—and this had already been so since the slave-ship days—was in all likelihood the individual with the least say concerning the cargo. The customer is in charge, obviously. Were it the owner of a sugar plantation, were it the one-and-only queen Victoria, wrapped—pardoning the insolence—in that Union Jack for which so much blood—and perhaps milk—had been spilt throughout History.

Once he had verified that the boxes maintained a more or less uniform distribution from the morning they were stowed, he managed to climb up to the command bridge. Neither the telegraph, nor the compass, nor the enormous navigation charts merited even a single second for those awaiting up there, as the only the thing they could manage to do, holding on wherever they could, was to look at the steersman in complete silence. Light from the lighthouse? Since when do lighthouses change places at random? Rick “the Weasel,” surely the most veteran sailor on the voyage, had spent all afternoon telling stories about the people from that coast which stood out against the lightning-scoured horizon; apparently, they would hang lanterns on the collars of cows and other animals to confuse merchants and hurl them against the rocks. It was Saunders, the quartermaster, who dared to repeat his words there on the bridge with a certain morbid fascination. And, tale or not, what is certain is that it did not cease to be an explanation for everything that was happening.

The captain shot a gaze towards the dark contours of that coast which, as far away as it should have been, was revealed to be ever closer by the brightness of the lightning bolts.

“Spaniards!”

“Not exactly, sir. Galicians.”

“It’s the same shit, anyways!”

While saying this, Captain H.P. Stewart shoved over the steersman with one swipe in order to take his place right away. He gripped the rudder forcefully, fixed his sight upon the nebulous heart of the Galician gale, and, at the same time that he did this, peeling through his memory of more than forty years of sailing, he set himself to giving out orders among all of those officers who, based on the uncertain expression which adorned their faces, did not have the slightest idea of what the hell was happening. However, he was no longer able to heed his own words. For the usually healthy bellow on which his always sound instructions floated did not surpass a light, superficial breath this time, devoured quickly by a resounding crack which flowed right from his left rib, over there where his old watch continued to wither. His-old-watch… But what the hell was special about that wretched metal creature? In truth, he would not know how to answer that. How many times had the same question been asked, only to soon after be stuck with his lower lip full of air like a moron. Well. The only certainty was that it was a Vacheron Constantin, and with all sureness, based on the era he had glimpsed it in, one of the first models that the company had commercialized after the agreement between Jean-Marc Vacheron’s nephew and François Constantin, somewhere around the second or third decade of the century. Without having any compelling reasons to conceive such a thing, Captain H.P. Stewart liked to imagine that man and machine used to keep the same time, that while his body attained the beloved mother wind, a meticulous Swiss master armed with a pair of tweezers, eyes frightfully enlarged by a magnifying glass, persisted in encasing the diminutive gold and silver pieces of the device. The mystery, nevertheless, could easily have been resolved if Horace Patrick Stewart—native of the Isle of Sheppey in Kent County, unmarried, educated at the Portsmouth naval school—had obtained his watch just as gentlemen always have, that is, travelling to Brompton Road and spending their good pounds at Harrods. Nonetheless, that is not how things had woven together. Captain H.P. Stewart did not pay a penny for his watch and nor is he even sure that the popular Knightsbridge grand markets would have had a remote suspicion of their existence when that Swiss marvel happened to come into his hands.

His find demonstrates, in a certain way, that even in the most terrible of hells a happy occurrence can be born. But nothing which happened during that dark night, forty-eight, forty-nine, maybe fifty years before, portended an outcome of such nature, especially given that it was the bells of the church, with its blackest of drum rolls, which shook the modest, westward oriented cot where little Horace as well as his three little brothers slept. It rained without pause. Since the raindrops had begun to darken the murky path toward the beach, just an hour before twilight, the sky had not granted a single moment of rest. The rain fell upon the tiny village of Shellness with the persistence of a biblical punishment, adding to its terrifying insistence the threat of the messy estuary waters and the waves breaking where the open sea roared.

When he heard his father speak down below, and soon after the whistle of wind in the door, he ran to put on his pants as well as his clogs. In vain, his mother ordered him to return to bed. He threw on a fur coat, liberated himself from the arm which attempted to throw the lock, and, defying the harsh winter night—constantly wiping his face to free it of the rain’s aggression (always salty, ever since that day)—he made an effort to follow that line of undulating lights (torches, lanterns, lamps) which snaked among the rocks, immersed in silence.

Just as he left the bog path behind, he heard how the chimes of the village were dying away, and how, from afar—he wanted to believe from the pier—the sharp hisses of whistles began to traverse the darkness. No one awaited him. No one felt the necessity to wait for a curious and inquisitive rascal, incapable of not, quite often, leaving his clogs in the muck.

Upon arriving at old Pembury’s shed, he heard the drunkard’s caustic voice defying the wind:

“Listen to me, little waif. It’s better to die flooded in whisky than with your lungs full of bloody saltwater. Run, little rogue, run! Run, and you’ll see that what I say is true!”

The first thing he felt upon arriving at the beach was a strange heat. Neither the winter nor the downpour forecast such a thing, but what is certain is that his cheeks went aflame all of a sudden the moment he sank his feet into the sand. However, the swelter did not just come from the campfires with which people attempted to illuminate the area, but from a horrifying tether of fire which consumed the timbers, the ropes, the sails, the complete remains of a shipwreck. Despite being split in two, the prow half submerged and the stern wrapped in flames, little Horace was able to clearly distinguish a brig. It still retained the two masts (clippers have three), and it was easily visible that its sail, although deformed by rain and a hellish wind, was mostly erect. Crossed by the liquid reflection of the flame, the waves swept along all kinds of detritus. Rods, sails, winches, sheets, clothes, barrels, boots… The image, in all its poignancy, was magnificent. It seemed torn from a painting or from the deepest of dreams. Even the silence which surrounded it all, robbing the tempest of its voice, was a silence as pure as that which reigns invincible in many nightmares.

Someone perched a hand on his shoulder and in that same moment, as if his life had recovered all of its breath, his ears found themselves assaulted by a stream of emotion. Screams, wails, cries; the chain of small explosions within the heart of the magazine; the incessant gaseous rumble of flames resistant to being extinguished; the men, the dogs, the whistles. Finally something which isn’t entirely unpleasant: his father.

“For God’s sake, Horace! Come back home!”

It was then that he allowed himself to take in all of that which a modest soul would crave to erase forever from the face of the earth. Bodies with their faces buried in the sand and their hair tossed about by the last lick of the waves. Nine, ten, eleven… he no longer wants to go on counting. He sees a woman. And a newborn baby. The netmaker Gibbs’s dog carries something in its mouth, someone has to take it out, they warm its back. Next to the drowned are a pair of bare-fleshed Christians. One of them is still steaming from the ears. The other, his body infested by black scales, won’t stop screaming. The flame has devoured his lips and eyelashes, and his face resembles that of a sheared lamb. The men of the village make a circle around him, although no one knows what to do. Perhaps it was better to kill him, thought Horace, remembering that old percheron which the roof of the stable had collapsed on. To sit beside him, open up his jaw, and give him a shot in the head. However, no one does any of that and the horrified passivity of the adults prompts the little one to hate himself for housing those kinds of thoughts. He retreats. He drags his clogs awkwardly through the sodden area, distancing himself little by little from the place where the majority of dead bodies are concentrated. It was then that he saw it: bright, enormous, golden, its face half sunken in the sand, and its chain giving shape to a delicate ellipse of shining links.

The charm radiated such that all else ceased to hold any importance.

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (2): “THE ENGLISH CEMETERY”

He sat as always on one of the port’s terraces, awaiting his plate of grilled fish when Ramiro, the owner of the small restaurant he had chosen that night (he was reoffending: it was already the third time in the course of a week that he had hunkered down in one of those pretentious padded-cushion wicker chairs), happened to appear by his table with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

         “How goes it, writer? Do people still read?”

         Despite rejecting as a rule any dealings with this human type, by virtue of summering in the same villa over the last six or seven years, he had come to have a certain familiarity with some of the area’s hostaleers. He took advantage with his prices, that Ramiro, like that Argentinian golden ball which he said he admired; he guaranteed that only one time had it occurred to him to read a book (only to pick it up and drop off in the middle), but the truth is that ever since he found out what he dedicated himself to, he tended to sit with him while they finished preparing him his fish inside. He supposed that in reality he did not cease to be an exotic customer, such as an aeronautics professor or a theatre actor would be, but it was doubtful that a night would pass without the old fox allowing himself the pleasure of drinking with him in view of the whole world. In his own way, he made conversation. And it is well known that in a villa like this, in the middle of the summer, one cannot be overly discriminatory about their methods of killing time.

         “If books were like wine, good sir, then you would see how many readers there would be around the world… Thousands of millions, hey! Just kick over a rock, then a hundred would appear to you. Like I said: thousands of millions… As sure as you’re going to ask me to fill your glass; as sure as my name is Ramiro…”

         For a moment—assuming some familiarities which he did not actually have, or precisely as a result of that—he was on the verge of speaking about his experience that same afternoon, his fortuitous first encounter with one of his readers, that which Italo Calvino, to give an example, could very well have titled: “The Adventure of a Reader.” In any case, he knew how to brake in time and steer the conversation towards much less compromising places.

         “The important thing is to have good stories to tell. From there…”

         “Good stories, you said?”

         All of a sudden it was as if his host had remembered something. He smiled, in the same moment smoothing that so out-of-fashion mustache (the blame lay with one of those prognathisms which people try to hide as much as possible) and departed towards the inside of the restaurant, wiping his hands on his undershirt. When he returned around three or four minutes later he was grasping one of those padded folders full of papers. Based on his appearance, grease stains included, he must have spent a long time wherever he had been (a pantry? perhaps sharing a shelf with onions and Parmesan cheese?). Newspaper cuttings. Well, not quite. It could be said that no one had bothered to use scissors.

         “Have you seen this, writer? The lady stopped by here before she went back to her country. When I found out about her, I mean, when I found out she wasn’t a tourist like the rest, right away I said to myself that there was something there for you…”

         He remembered the matter. He read the papers every once in a while too. It was a piece of news about a sexagenarian named Allison Atkinson, a school-bus driver over in Cornwall, and, more concretely, about the tale of her journey in search of the place where her great-uncle was buried: one Stanley C. Halford, boilerman on the celebrated ship, the HMS Serpent. The article was accompanied by a photograph of the cheerful woman gazing at the sea—her face lit up by the sun, a scarf around her neck, and her quite white hair tousled by the wind—as well as the reproduction of an old yellow photograph that her mother kept in a box at home and which had set her onto the trail of that cemetery, engraved, in her own words, in a “windy, rocky, and grey” place. With varying amounts of literature, every newspaper in those days (from the 8th to the 11th of May, 2011) coincided in commentating upon the woman’s journey (the Plymouth ferry had left her in Santander and from there she had arranged to go by bus), the 172 victims of the horrible shipwreck (which occurred on November 10th, 1890), and her intention of leaving some flowers in honor of her relative among the graves of the English Cemetery now that she knew that it was there where he rested forever and ever.

         “You know what, writer? Even though we’re here about a dog’s walk away from there, as they say, I’ve never thought of setting foot in that place, because it’s not like it grabs your attention, does it? If you were to tell me it’s one of those old military batteries there are still dozens of on the coast…”

         He conceded him that. The cemetery—the burial place from the old photograph—might have been anything but a cemetery. In fact, from the road, at the foot of the furze, it could have passed for a Romanized (and properly cemented) little castro, or, in our insisting to see a necropolis in those low walls, one of those small cemeteries constructed ad hoc during the Civil War to lay the Moorish troops’ dead to rest. (To speak about its similarity to certain public bathrooms would seem completely out of place now.)

         “The Serpent’s wasn’t the only shipwreck,” it occurred to him to say, as he placed the newspaper clippings back into the folder. “As far as I know, there were dozens of them.”

         Ramiro filled up his glass once more.

         “They don’t call it the Coast of Death for nothing.”

         “Are you sure that’s why?”

ONE-HUNDRED AND ONE WAYS TO COOK A PIGEON

Señor D. Roque Rivas Mourullo and wife

Trasdoval, n/n, San Fiz

Sant-Iago, 6th of October, 1915

Dearest papá and mamá,

Having Carliños Pons, señor Amadeo’s oldest son, here is truly a good fortune, and a most joyous idea that you had at the time of giving me his contact information in order to make my acclimatization to this city easier. I am inclined to say that my countryman knows Sant-Iago like the palm of his hand, and that is without a doubt a benefit for him who had yet to reach four years in this populous and most pleasant metropolis. On his arm, as a Dante Alighieri following the dictates of Publius Virgilius Maro—and pardon the mephitic reference—all the crevices of this labyrinthine Seat of Knowledge, subject to rules of its own not so evident as one could come to think, reveal themselves to me with meridian precision. The inn is clean and calm and, despite having a busy eatery below it where they never stop grilling meat or pouring cider and wine, nothing alters the peace of the rooms where we very often find ourselves shut away into the late hours of the morning, deciphering our books and manuals of law and jurisprudence by lamplight. Roman Law, nothing more and nothing less! Res nullius, mancipatio, traditio brevi manu… Luckily I learned my Latin with that good old Father Florencio!

         The faculty is a most beautiful building and my classmates, come from the four corners of the country, form a most encouraging mosaic of patience, goodness, and erudition—although the professors completely surpass them in this regard: all learned, honorable, and generous men. I take advantage of what little free time is left me by my books to stroll around and enjoy the magnificence of these centenary stones, with the conviction that in my occasional walks through the Parque Alameda or the Rúa do Vilar you will not see any abandonment of my obligations, but rather that necessary and innocent solace in which to take a few breaths, refresh my muscles, and oxygenate my brain. Occasionally Carliños Pons joins me, and then the outing becomes far too short from the pleasurability of the conversation. How often we believe ourselves to have stumbled upon the solution to all of the world’s problems! Every once in a while we allow ourselves to be accompanied by other students, and then the portrait which is painted amongst the trees, the bushes, and the statues has nothing to envy from the Lyceum of the Stagiran insignia.

         As you see, everything is following its course. And if it were not for how much I miss you all, I would go as far as to say that I am living my happiest and most productive days. Send my thoughts to my dear sisters, Rosiña and Marimar, and, if you perceive the need to make them quite happy, tell them that their photographs pass from hand to hand among my classmates and that, unless I’m quite mistaken, either a future judge, or notary, or even some state prosecutor is already reflecting upon going over there and speaking about those things which it is necessary to speak about with the parents of such beautiful and pleasant girls. Send greetings to Father Florencio for me.

         With all my love, your son,

Xosé Miguel

Xosé Miguel Rivas Cartelle

Modest Price Inn

Rúa da Conga, Santiago de Compostela

Trasdoval, San Fiz, 19th of October, 1915

My dear son,

Allow for it to be me, your ever loving mother, who gives answer to those lines of yours which so delight us, as you already well know that your father, when it comes to these things… However, I do not believe I am exaggerating if I say that I feel his breath as I write this and I would like you to know that, from being so proud, he never stops talking about you in either the town or the village, where, as you know, he expects to open a new practice if things orient themselves as we are hoping and we are able to sell the flat in A Coruña at a good price. In other words, that he is so very happy that you decided to follow in his footsteps, that I am inclined to say that the notary, just as much as the lower court and investigating judge, cannot sleep a wink anymore for fear of seeing you appear around here with your toga on. You speak about Carliños Pons: see how we managed to find you a good example! Señor Amadeo never faltered in depicting his son to us as a model of manners and perseverance (I say the last part because of the polio, which I suppose you would have already imagined is the cause of that, his poor little deformed leg), and based upon what you tell us, his words were not just worthy of paternal-filial devotion. It is pleasing to see that things are even better than one had expected them to be. Send him my regards. Many. (Your father’s as well.)

Apart from that, I see that in your letter you mention Father Florencio, your tutor from the first few years of high school. Do you know what? Something you didn’t guess? Well, in a gesture that I believe honors us—and I say that with all the modesty in the world—we have decided to take him in with us, and I mean here, at the Trasdoval cottage, for the poor man, being so old and so down on his luck, no longer had—pardon me—“a place to fall down dead” (they’re papá’s words). What do you think! The Rivases with a priest in the house, just like the noblemen of the past! I don’t know what your father will think, but perhaps it was a good moment to make use of the little chapel and allow him to say Mass. I can see it now, Migueliño! Your aunts—I’m sorry, but I know that you love them more than you let on—all four of them just dying of envy!

Anyway, I will not distract you any longer, as I suppose you’ll have a great deal of studying to do. We are counting the days until Christmas. Many, many, many kisses from your

MAMÁ

P.S. You do well to rest every so often (you really should). You already know that nothing in this life is good in excess. Do you remember that gentleman whose sense dried up from so much study?

To the attention of don Florencio

Trasdoval, n/n, San Fiz

Sant-Iago de Campus Stellae, 11th of January, 1916

Most dear Father Florencio,

         The first thing—how could I not—is to give you my SINCEREST THANKS for that money order which I have just received this very morning. In spite of its very praiseworthy destination—that was the descriptor I employed when I explained to you the reason behind my petitioning for money—I trust that the issue, as in so many other cases, will truly remain between us and will not reach my parents’ ears. As I already told you last Christmas, searching for that “aside” which it so cost me to find, even today I do not know how it might appear to them that the money which they send to me—I have the impression that with more effort than they let on—should run out, no longer from paying for the inn and books and maybe some little capricho in the form of a Cuban cigar, but rather from taking up a collection intended to supply food and medicine to the war orphans from the Kingdom of Montenegro—as you already know, at war with the Allied side in the terrible armed conflict which devastates our old and dear Europe. And if I say this, it is not so much from doubting your good Christian sentiments as for my not being too clear on which my father’s sympathies might be in this respect. As I have already commented to you (on the afternoon of New Year’s Day, when we managed to find that Porto wine that the very sly one reserves for very special occasions, I believe), around here everyone knows which way to lean. While the teachers and the officials tend to pull for the Germans and for Austro-Hungary, the greater part of students with any kind of intellectual training, not to say the vast majority of them, are quite clear that those ideas of equality and fraternity—towards which not even the Church, as you have recognized, can continue in indifference—will only be universalized with the Allied faction winning the competition. Now then… What opinion might be held in this respect by don Roque Rivas Mourullo: lawyer, secretary of the town’s Lyceum of Artisans, and honored partner (if not illustrious founder) of a good number of societies and coteries, not all of which are of a decidedly conservative disposition? Would he applaud my decision to help the noble cause of freedom? Would he at any rate prefer an affiliation with the faction of order and discipline, even if it were only—like many other pragmatic men—in order to purchase their good German war bonds?

         You will understand that I beg for your silence once more, dear friend, which does not, of course, take from my knowing to thank you for a gesture like that which you have just made towards me, and I hope that you will not find yourself compromised by the new request that I should make of you. You see… Would you have the so-saintly kindness to make out a new order for five pesos? It would appear—and as always, behind this matter is the very sensible Carliños Pons—that it is no longer just about helping and taking pity upon the victims of one of the factions, since the Bulgarian or Turkish children, take for example, can share little blame, if any, for the decisions made by Sultan Mehmed V or King Ferdinand Maximilian Karl Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Do you not think the same?

Pending fain fulfillment of my request, accept, in the meantime, a fond embrace.

Xosé Miguel

To the attention of don Florencio

Trasdoval, n/n, San Fiz

Sant-Iago, 12th of February, 1918

Dearest Father Florencio,

It will certainly surprise you that instead of sending you my greetings by way of the lines I write to my parents once in a while, this time I would have the boldness to direct myself to you once more without any mediation other than the post office. The explanation for this behavior, esteemed Father, solely obeys the necessity that someone know, first-hand, the reality that these, my days at the university are, as you may already suspect, in truth much different from how I tend to present them in my missives to certain progenitors who I would not, under any circumstance, want to displease or cause any type of concern; my fear of disappointing them is much stronger than my aversion to falsehood or lies. With this I do not mean to say, understand me, that I would be indifferent to disappointing you—absolutely not—just that few people, even if only because of the many times you took my confession, know as well as your honor my many frailties and weaknesses. Nor do I believe that what I could say to you here would surprise you very much. In counting the number of years I have spent away from home, you might already imagine that my studies, to call them something, are not going nearly as well as I would like them to. I trust—and trust well—that you will not uncover me: the two “draconian and partisan subjects which escape me” are in reality eight, dispersed among many and varied courses, as such you should be able to understand my many evasions each time that you questioned me about the matter, the previous Christmas being the latest. Eight, Father Florencio, and worst of all is that even in my most optimistic calculations I only feel myself prepared to pass two of them, and that with a good bit of luck. Civil Law! Judge for yourself (and be assured I am transcribing): “None shall construct, near a wall of median stature, or belonging to another wells, sewers, aqueducts, ovens, forges, chimneys, stables, corrosive material depositories, steam-powered mechanisms, or factories which by themselves or by what they produce might be dangerous or noxious, without maintaining the distances so prescribed by the regulations and uses of said place, and without executing the necessary safety precautions, with restraint in the manner, to the conditions which the same regulations prescribe. If there be a lack of regulation, the precautions which are judged to be necessary shall be taken, with a prior expert’s ruling, with the goal of avoiding any damage to estates or neighboring buildings.” All common sense, don’t you think? The problem is that in examining it one can do nothing more than bind oneself to the legal text, and it is here where everything becomes awfully tangled up. The periods, the commas, the Castilian; all of the words seem to free themselves from the page and set themselves to dancing in front of one’s eyes, causing genuine vertigo. Well, there are almost two thousand, Father Florencio! And all of them just as pompous and verbose, do you not think? Well, here comes another (and I continue to transcribe): “The proprietor of a beehive shall maintain the right to pursue it over the neighboring estate, indemnifying the possessor of such, the damage caused. Were it fenced in, it shall require the consent of the owner to enter within; when the proprietor has not pursued, or ceases to pursue the hive two consecutive days, the possessor of said land shall be permitted to obtain and retain it. The proprietor of domesticated animals shall as well be able to reclaim them within twenty days, counting from their occupation by another. This period passed, they will pertain to him who has recovered and maintained them.”

         Perhaps it is a vice of this pedagogical system, as I have heard you criticize so often, but if the issue truly consists in saying without pause every single thing which occurs to the Civil Section of the General Codifying Commission, with consent from señor José Canalejas y Méndez, minister of Grace and Justice (I have before me the old Gaceta de Madrid where he perpetrated the crime), I am inclined to say, Father Florencio, that never in my life will I put an end to all this chatter. Much as it pains me, I am not a parrot. Memory has its limits and in this, as in so many other things, there are people with natural capacities much more solvent than mine: my comrade Carliños Pons, for example, although he may not be a good model because of his non-interest in academic life. And if it is such when obtaining a degree, dear tutor, what will it be when the important things truly begin. Do you believe that I will perhaps have the smallest perspective of success in mounting the path of a notary? Might there be anyone who trains to be a judge, a clerk, or a state attorney with a memory as fragile as mine? The response, being so overwhelming, hurts, Father Florencio, inflicts harm. You, who about vocations know or must have known a mountain, will not be at all impeded upon seeing not even a trace of it in him who directs these lines to you. The problem, anyway, is not so much a problem of today, as it is a problem which grows its twisted roots into the future. Do you understand my reason for hiding the reality from my parents now? In other circumstances nothing awful would happen for another Rivas to be living off investments, but now that the cottage is heading inexorably towards ruin… By the way, would you happen to be able to tell me if all that about working commercially with wine is serious? My father takes great caution in speaking about that topic in front of me, but I cannot find another explanation for all those extravagances, inconceivable in a situation as grave as that of our family: the new wine presses, the casks, the services of that mysterious and disagreeable surveyor who does not take a step without wrinkling his nose… If this is so, I can do nothing more than wish for God to take pity on our bloodline. For between such a wild idea and the future that is disclosed to this his servant, one need in no way be a prophet to paint a positively horrifying portrait.

         Apart from that, I believe I should be fair and destroy—metaphorically speaking, of course—that ever-so-nice idea that I tended to project over my days during the last few years. If my academic scores are not as desired, perhaps we could award its part in the play, by the hand of my natural incapacity for study, to the many entertainments that this city can offer to anyone who seeks an opportunity to put down their books and take to the streets. Yes, Father Florencio, yes: disregarding all of the advice that has been given to me, I surrendered myself to decadence and diversion without any resistance. And right from the first day. Yes, read this well: right from the first. As much as my ears reverberate with the words which you used to say to me when we went over Latin at the turn of the afternoon—“That which counts is not how things begin, but how they end”—it was enough to set foot onto the damp, old, greenish Compostelan stone pavement to know that from then on nothing good would become of me. For do you know who came looking for me at Carliños’ instructions? Well it was the one and only tuna, Father Florencio, can you believe it? I hadn’t even set my luggage down and now there I was, dizzy as a top among a swarm of caps, cloaks, ribbons, mandolins, tambourines, and guitars. I cannot say that they did not take me to the inn (even carrying the bags which the youngsters fought over), nor that they were very quick about it. Beforehand—and captained by Carliños, a complete stranger—they swirled around me with itchings for a dozen bars, taverns, and locales of the bad sort, and if I say a dozen, Father Florencio, it is because those were my calculations when I heard the cock crow at my back.

         It could not be said that the days that followed were better. For Compostela, revered Father, is not—contrary to what my father thought when he declined to send me to Madrid—that sad conglomerate of convents and religious orders that we all have in our minds, for, although at first it seems something else, next to the dark buildings where pious tasks are carried out by the Dominican nuns, the bieitas, the clarisas, the fillas de María, and (with a devotion as strange as it is tireless) the Carmelite sisters, and the barefoot mercedarias, can be counted—along with the cafés and innumerable eateries—more than fifty taverns and two or three dozen busy and energetic pubs. Do you want to believe that I had sworn not to set foot in the university until I had a comprehensive knowledge of these numbers? The blame lay as always with Carliños, the most debauched individual in this city. Who could have said it, over in Trasdoval, right? What is certain is that, despite the passage of time, and in spite of every single one of my good intentions, nothing has changed nor has withies of changing. (Will there come a day when someone saves me?)

         In short! I do not want to transfer you one more crumb of this bitterness; as such I prepare myself to finish these lines, but not before concerning myself over your health. How are you doing, Father Florencio? Have the doctor’s orders produced any results? Pending your information by return mail (I do not believe I will be able to go home until the summer), accept in the meantime an affectionate greetings from your friend,

Xosé Miguel

Xosé Miguel Rivas

Modest Price Inn

A Conga, Santiago de Compostela

Trasdoval Cottage (San Fiz), 4-2-18

Dear Xosé Miguel,

         First of all, allow me to begin these lines with a response to the anxieties with which you concluded your disconcerting letter of the 12th of February. You asked about my health? How much better it would be if you were to concern yourself with something else! As you will know, it all has to do with this, my old stomach: as unpredictable as a chess piece. Yet have I not eaten some of everything since I decided to dedicate my life to others! Did I ever tell you what the most requested plate in the Philippines is when there is nothing better to put into one’s mouth? No? Well, better that you do not know, Xosé Miguel, you would give up eating for weeks. But back to where we were going: what I at first understood as a more or less foreseeable consequence of the excesses of Christmas (where, as is coming to be habitual—and even if it is only as an homage to our lord Jesus Christ—my diet of the monastic or Spartan kind had been suspended in order to eat what is given to me to eat, in normal circumstances, over ten or fifteen days) in truth turned out to be something much more serious and worrisome. Pain and despair accompanied me ceaselessly day and night, and when at the end of the day I found myself with the unavoidable obligation of freeing my stomach, I felt as if all of the demons of hell had made an agreement to torture me with their sharp tridents. Modesty—now, you might say nonsense—caused me to silence my pain, but you can see here, as another has said, that the truth ends up coming to light by its own means: my nightshirts went as always to the wash and not an hour passed without my sorrows being upon the whole world’s tongue. The doctor arrived with an awe-inspiring swiftness, perhaps the same who had assaulted me when he ordered me to move to the basement and to assume the ridiculous position which I found myself obligated to assume. I will save you the details about the examination and subsequent intervention that he was ready to put into effect while he concerned himself—and I no longer know if with a certain malice—over the cause of my afflictions. “Have you eaten cheese?” he asked. “I have,” I answered. “Have you tasted ham?” “I have.” Until I arrived at the desserts, after an itinerary which left behind empanada de carne, bacallau with cauliflower, and grilled veal with pepper and potatoes, the very crude man did not consider himself satisfied.

         Since then, my dear son, not a day passes that I do not dedicate my time to thinking about certain processes which, from the very moment of our being born, move along by themselves for their own sake and at their own risk without any necessity of relying upon our assistance. If to that we add the time which I pass with my warm-water ablutions or that which I spend applying those unguents which the village pharmacist prescribes me… But this is already quite enough complaint, you must have me down for an old crybaby! Let us speak about you, for that is what is truly important.

         That which you tell me in relation to your studies—and I believe we can get down to business—does not take me completely by surprise. Do you think I was not able to perceive the shadow of a lie in the words that I managed to extract from your mouth last Christmas? Two thousand articles, the Civil Code! And you will still complain! Being much younger than you are, I found myself obligated to memorize the Corpus Juris Canonici, a half-dozen quite-complete collections extracted from the 12th century. Do you believe I pity you? The key, Xosé Miguel, is to have incentives, and, if there are none, to search for them, dammit, search for them, for that is why God gave us sufficient reason, differentiating us from the beasts of the mountain. Let us say, for example, granting your parents peace of mind, as the poor things well deserve it. And speaking of them, forgive me, in spite of the opinion that I hold about the wines from the cottage’s presses, for not taking a stance about the idea of commercializing it, or about the plans which don Roque has or ceases to have. Towards your parents, with all the defects which you might like to assign to them, it is only right for me to be grateful to them for life, as many others, in their place, instead of taking care of an old man like me, would have solved the matter by donating some pesos to the parish in order to then look in the other direction. In the war which it appears you wish to start, Migueliño, you cannot count me as an ally. And if what you expected was advice: study. Study and give up the tall tales already. Everything else—and I speak of vocation as well—will come with time. As Napoleon once said: “Victory belongs to the most persevering.”

         As concerns the other issue—and you already know to what I am referring—I believe that my advice cannot go in a different direction. If one persists, that is, if one truly persists, one can always begin anew. Although you may not believe it, even the most immeasurable of roads to perdition—and I am not saying that yours yet merits this description—can be turned back upon if we resolve ourselves to it. In this, as with one’s studies, there is only one formula: force of will. Knowing to say “no” is, much as you may not believe it, one of the most important things that one can learn in life.

         But I will not continue. The wind is blowing outside, among the trees in the garden, and I would like to be asleep before it begins to rain, for, as you know, I am one of the few people who do not enjoy listening to the rain in their bed. (Do you not by chance see that water and fire share their music?).

         Without any more details, accept this blessing from your friend and one-time earnest tutor,

Florencio

P.S. It is odd to me that such a meticulous person—at least this is the idea which I retain from our classes—would allow smudges, even if they may just be two or three, to be seen in their writings. Might it be true that you are out to lose?

To the attention of don Florencio

Trasdoval, n/n, San Fiz

Sant-Iago, 26th of May, 1918

Dearest Father Florencio,

         The enormous perplexity, not to say disappointment, which your lines caused me resulted in my not making an effort to answer them until today, when—you will learn the reason later on—I have just spent the last round of my salvation. Incentives! Perseverance! Force of will! (The reprimands about the lack of tidiness in my writing I am unable to comprehend.) Is that all you are able tell me? You must forgive me, but that is not what I was looking for when I decided to make you party to the truth of my days here in Compostela. Maybe I was not sufficiently clear with the description of my sufferings (well, about the academics, perhaps yes, for which I need not go over them again). I am dying of hunger, dear friend! Hunger! And in your letter you still allow yourself to relate the menu which spoiled your stomach!

         You see, Father Florencio, from so much going out on the town, spending on liquors what is not spent on the brothels of O Inferniño, many students stalk the pigeons in the Parque Alameda with the hope of encountering an opportune victim. One must walk softly. In any case as the use of firearms is able to assume safe passage to the Falcona (to the calaboose, that is), necessity put everyone’s heads together such that if I were to set myself to relating to you the tricks, devices, and other inventions with which they give chase to the pigeons and doves of the city, I would not be finished after an entire day. Bows, crossbows, traps, guillotines… I am sure that the poor things would not hesitate one second in switching places with those that flew over the Verdun front with their encoded messages!

         The one best given to the thing—and despite his cadaverous skinniness there are those who say he only hunts to kill time, since he no longer has any need to—is a boy from somewhere around the ría of Arousa, or possibly of Pobra or Rianxo, who I no longer know if he is named Manuel or Antonio or who knows (see what I am telling you about my memory!!!) if the two together or separately. He is himself a boy far younger than us (in fact, he appeared in the city to study for his diploma) to whom are credited frenzies as great as that of travelling to France with the intention of fighting in the Foreign Legion against the Germans or—even though it may be that it is only a distorted derivation of the original frenzy—arriving in Russia to help the Bolsheviks in their cause. There are also those who say that it is all a fib, that it is solely desire to call attention and along with that to catch the eye of some amorous young lady. I, in seeing him risk his head for a cursed pigeon, can only say that I have no cause to doubt his accomplishments.

But the problem, Father, is not just in hunting the wretched creatures. Apparently, the manner of cooking them has its own science as well. Starting with knowledge of how to pluck them in order to see if they are carrying ringworm or any one of those foul diseases which they are said to be capable of carrying and—the relevance can be seen here—transmitting to humans. For pigeons—and doves too, I suppose—are some of the dirtiest animals in the world. Did you know that there are those who call them the “rats of the sky”? As such, someone who, outside of knowing how to hunt them, knows how to put them into the pot in such a way that all of their infections and ailments are purged…

Á catalá (with tomato, almonds, plums, and raisins), á laranxa (orange), ao chilindrón (with tomatoes and peppers), á provenzal (with olives, with bay leaves, and with spring onions)… Cooked, stewed, grilled, fricasseed… With rice, with peas, with tomato… Although in the end I was not made to do such a thing, I even thought of preparing it with a condensed-milk sauce. Condensed milk, Father Florencio! Do you remember how much I liked it when I was a boy? Did I not secretly open up cans to dip my spoon or, if not, my fingers straight in! My parents never hesitated when speaking about the origins of my affection. There is an explanation for everything, isn’t there? The blame, it would seem, was with Pepereta (do you remember that old witch?) and her notion of coming around the cottage with some enormous jars which she sold to us at a bargain price under the condition of not asking any questions—her conviction that she sold us paint did not logically take away that my father, a cultivated and well-travelled man, knew what it truly was). But back to where I was going… Á laranxa, with a thick soup, with chestnuts… When I was still able to hold a pencil between my fingers (you do not know the inhumane pain which I bear to be able to send to you these lines of distress) I began to record every single one of the methods of preparing them in one of those tailor’s notebooks, to thus give myself the illusion that there was a certain originality to my meals. I even set myself a challenge: to reach one-hundred and one, which is a manner of saying that one has reached one-hundred but that one could still go further. However, when Carliños discovered that which I held between my hands, I had no other option but to drop it. You know? It is as if any distraction that could make me forget that the world revolves around him should be exterminated at its root. He does not want competition. Not even from an occupation as innocent as that. It makes no difference, that, in a certain way the painful reality of having to feed myself on pigeons would arise from the horrible blood-letting which he has inflicted upon me ever since the very day I arrived in this city. Since then, and except for the occasional coin I could hide in places which one should not refer to in writing, I have not seen a single miserable cent. I have been a slave, Father Florencio; I am completely enslaved to that diabolical lame. I cannot take a step without it being known, as far as to appear that my mind is being read. Even in the hours immediately before spending my last round—and I prepare myself to account for that which is already foretold—it appeared that what I determined to do could be scented. I was not left alone for even a second. I crossed the Parque Alameda, Hórreo, and Ponte Pedriña, where respectable couples used to stroll, with the retractile breath—characteristic of the lame—upon my neck. I ate a breakfast and lunch and dinner of my marinaded chicken breasts with his odious foot touching mine. He even gathered up the need to urinate when I went to the bathrooms to do the same.

Once I was able to tear myself away from him, after following his routes for a couple days, I rushed to take that step which had delayed me so much. I prepared my conscience, Father. I poured out all the bottles of wine and liquor that covered my room into the toilet. I tore apart all my cigarettes between my fingers. I opened the windows to aerate the room. I bathed in cold water. Three, four times—up until I felt the agitation of the cold stabbing at that space which exists between the ribs.

For a cup of rice and three fingers of ground coffee, I traded the two lean pigeons on which I had planned to survive this week.

For greater security, once I had arranged the books on the desk—there, hit nicely by the light of the street—I rushed to block the door. Although this time, as God well knows, without any intention of impeding the path for the landlady, dona Leocadia, that woman who only remembers her tenants’ many debts one she has finished swallowing her royal honey pills. Even so, things started to become twisted quite soon. Enraged by seeing that the handle did not give into his impulses, that maleficent Carliños prepared himself to deploy all his wiles, starting with that, the one which desires to inspire pity: rubbing his disfigured little leg against the door. You cannot imagine, Father Florencio, how awful it is to listen to that knee of his, practically indistinguishable from his femur, knocking on the wood like a puppy’s snout. “Open up,” he said. “No matter how much you want to, don’t behave badly with me.” He had to go to O Inferniño. He needed it. We had to return to see those girlfriends of ours who made such nice little figures with their eyes and hummed coplas and drank eau de cologne in secret; we had to go by there, even if it were only to be sure that nobody—other than us—had lain a hand on them. O Inferniño awaited us. And the Galo tavern. And additionally, but only if I wanted, that reserved room at the Swiss café.

To all this, Father Florencio, I acted as if I could not hear a thing. For every invitation, for every proposition, for every supplication, I had an effective antidote: a deafness as great as that demon’s desire to open the door. If it had been up to me, I could have stayed there until Judgement Day.

Nevertheless, my will began to diminish. And I no longer know if the blame lay with that menu of perdition that he recited to me in a low voice from the other side of the door or because of the despair that I began to have for that solicitous and seductive spring which this time was not going to get its way either. Cursed Carliños! His threat of defenestrating himself—and look where for the first time in my life I find an opportunity to use that awful word, my teacher—resulted in convincing me to leave the chair in which I was seated, to remove the one that blocked the door-handle with its back, and to succumb, definitively, to the idea that to have willpower the first thing is to enjoy a bit of this last thing. It was enough for that devil, him, to cross his eyes with mine, in order for all of my will to leave me. There was my last round, Father Florencio. Even a little cloud of gunpowder—one of those left in the windy air by explosives—has more consistency than my integrity.

I no longer know how everything will turn out. Be that as it may, take note: DO NOT SEND MONEY. I will repeat it; for all you hold dear, Father Florencio, DO NOT SEND MORE MONEY.

Yours,

Xosé Miguel

Xosé Miguel Rivas

Modest Price Inn

A Conga, Santiago de Compostela

Trasdoval Cottage (San Fiz), 6-3-18

Dear Xosé Miguel,

         I wish that I did not have to read your letter three, four, up to five times to conclude that I have just understood, and begging your pardon, the half of it. Who is to blame for your debility? Who brings you to the awful complacency that causes you to forget your obligations as much of a faithful son as of a good Christian? The city? The devil? The spring? May I be crucified if I understand a thing! Are you entirely sure that those pigeons which you say you eat are not having an injurious effect on your sense?

         If the confusion which is perceptible in your words is the offspring of desperation, I can only take pity upon you and hope that in a forthcoming missive—which is already overdue—you manage to be frank with me and say if it be appropriate that this old sack of bones decides to travel on a railroad for the first time (you know my opposition to that demonic invention well) to complete what he considers to be one of the last mandates God has reserved for him.

         If on the contrary it is another trick to dress up your meager desire for study, all that is left to me is to turn—now that my advice is not worth anything—to that which others can advise you. Well then, as Baltasar Gracián said: “An average capability, with effort, goes farther in any art than a talent without it,” which does not cease to be in harmony with that which Aristotle noted: “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” All this, of course, without our forgetting Virgil’s labor omnia vincit ofwhich we spoke about so much in days past.

Blessings,

Florencio

P.S. Money! Do you believe that I ever believed the tall tale about the war orphans? That said, and to force you to write that letter which I request, I am sending you a small part of what I tend to borrow from your father’s desk—and may God forgive me—for your requests. The rest now depends on you.

To the attention of don Florencio

Trasdoval, n/n, San Fiz

XXXX, 11th of June, 1918

Unknown—although cherished—Father Florencio,

         Without a doubt you are asking yourself to whom this narrow handwriting belongs (if you have not already hurried to read the last line in search of a name) and for what reason the author of these lines addresses you. Well then. I have no problem resolving both of these unknowns, beginning, though it should not serve as a precedent, with the first. I am—and what a strange verb—neither more nor less than Xoán Carlos Pons Mella (perhaps the Carliños which some do not strip from me might be more familiar to you) and if I am able to direct these lines to you, up to the point of making them arrive where they are meant to, it is a result of the infinity of times in which I had access to Xosé Miguel Rivas’ outgoing mail, not to speak of the multiple occasions in which I saw him hands at work at his table while I looked for something to cover myself with. On top of that, it was precisely to you whom he wrote when… But let’s leave that. Let’s not speed up events. Ever since I managed to find out that it was you and not his parents who punctually and on-demand made out the frequent money orders to my comrade, I have continued to hold a respect for you that I have never had occasion to hold for anyone else. Do you know how many of my sins were defrayed by your generous munificence? No? Some of it you should know already, as for a while now poor Xosé Miguel has been in bad spirits and quite prone to making those confessions which one comes to regret sooner or later. Well then: multiply by three the vices which our mutual friend allocates, and it could be then that we are facing a portrait that does me some justice.

         But let’s move onto the heart of the matter, that my sins are, like my hangovers and my bedroom companions, strictly a thing of my own. I dare to write you these lines thanks to Xosé Miguel’s refusal to ask you for money again, as a result of which, after making disappear—this time in its entirety—the letter I had been writing you when I decided to pass on the facts, it is I who takes the trouble of doing so. But do not think that I have so little shame as to ask without giving anything in exchange; no, none of my dealings could be called a “free exchange.” As such I am including with this missive—I trust that you would be intelligent enough so as not to open it prematurely—a little packet that will doubtlessly contribute to dispelling your doubts about all this which I have just told you, overcoming the reservations you might have held with respect to my request, as well as persuading you to maintain the silence necessary so that our deal reaches a—good—conclusion.

         You still have not guessed its contents. Perhaps a little rat? Perhaps the wing of a freshly caught pigeon? If I tell you that it is the same thing that Van Gogh had delivered in a rag to his favorite prostitute, it may be that you know how to anticipate it. Do you have even the remotest idea of who that insuperable madman happened to be?

Summing up, pater: send me a sign of good faith—let’s say, ONE-HUNDRED PESOS—before I take away your appetite for mail. But no money orders this time. On the morning of San Xoán leave them at the foot of the statue of Rosalía de Castro e Murguía that they unveiled about a year ago in the Parque Alameda. If at all possible, in a little box of cookies. Once you have done it, leave immediately and do not look back again under any circumstances. As you see, I am concealing the place from which I write this, which means that you will gain nothing by sending the police to the Rúa da Conga. Be a smart one and do as I say: do not speak to ANYONE about our deal.

P.S. You should know that I myself have never considered eating a pigeon.

         I’m not that crazy.

X.C.P.M.

Text © Xabier López López

Translation © Jacob Rogers