ASH WEDNESDAY

The priest’s finger slid over young Salva’s forehead, from above to below, from right to left. North, south, east, west. He deposited a cross, a cross of ashes.

         ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’

         The boy got up from the cold stone floor and went back to his mother, who also had an ash cross on her forehead, like everybody else.

         An ash cross. A premonition of the day to come. Outside, not far away, the fire was breaking out for the third day running. As the prayers of the funeral mass continued, one could smell the smoke in the air, getting closer and closer. On leaving the church, he saw it – a black column rising up from the horizon.

         Outside the church, several neighbours were standing, watching the fire. Penelo and the other made their way through the group in search of young Salva. To begin with, they’d hesitated whether to go and fetch him or not, since he was in mourning, but in the end they went, they needed as many men as they could get.

         ‘Come on,’ said Penelo to him. ‘Let’s go and see if we can do something.’

         Young Salva listened to the words of his cousin. It was better to be in the fire than to while away the time, suffering at home. Better to try and do something.

         The baker picked them up, he was going to help as well. It took them little more than ten minutes to reach the point where the teams were gathering. The fire was almost at the side of the road.

         ‘This’ll be fun,’ said Penelo. ‘You’ll see. A fire is one of the grandest things in the world.’

         Nobody knew the story of this fire, but it went like this: the flames had started as a small ember amid the gorse. It had burned bracken, burned brambles, set fire to grass and leaves. During the first night, it had almost died several times, but again and again it had found the strength to continue and had survived. Come daylight, it held sway over two hills, innumerable fields and pine woods, and now it was going after the rest. It had been joined by the wind, which nourished it, enabled it to grow, gave it a direction and purpose. By then, the teams had arrived with their tractors, together with the lumberjacks from a nearby ridge, carrying their chainsaws, which were dripping oil. But it was all a bit late. The fire was in control now.

         Confusion reigned. The chief of the operation had to shout to make himself heard, such was the noise coming from the flames behind him.

         ‘Isn’t it amazing?’ said Penelo to young Salva.

         The two boys gazed at the flames gaining hold of the treetops, the trees falling to their knees as the chainsaws parted their souls. Nearby, a man from the land reform agency, standing on the back of a van, measured the wind speed with a pocket anemometer. With the wind being so strong, he covered the upper end of the tube with his finger and took a reading from the panel on the right.

         The wind was gathering speed.

         Bad news started arriving over the walkie-talkies, which were frisky as dogs. It seemed the wind was opening new fronts all over the place.

         In the end, a patrol chief, a tall man wearing Nomex, came up to them.

         ‘I have a job for you,’ he said, sweating inside the orange outfit. The walkie-talkie crackled on his waist. ‘I need a line of defence in Saia Wood. Do you know where I mean or do I have to explain it to you?’

         ‘We know,’ said Penelo.

         ‘Then get some axes and spades, and come with me. If we don’t stop the fire over there, it’s going to cross the cemetery and cut off the road behind us.’

         There were six of them riding in the back of the van: the patrol chief, Penelo, his brother, someone from the agency, a fresh-faced civil guard and young Salva.

         First, they travelled along the road, where they met locals coming to warn them about the fire heading towards the cemetery.

         ‘Go straight to the cemetery!’ they shouted. ‘The cemetery! The rest can burn.’

         It was the cemetery, more than the houses, that worried them.

         Shortly after that, one had to follow a forest track and climb in the direction of the wood. The van writhed and moaned as it made the ascent. This was the way to the cemetery.

         The track ended when it reached the cemetery, so they got out and walked between the niches. Apart from the patrol chief, they all had relatives who were buried there. They carried on downhill, along a short slope.

         Along the way, they bumped into an old couple from the houses at the bottom. They were coming from the river, carrying buckets of water. The woman begged them:

         ‘For the love of God, children, I entreat you. Stay here with us and help us save the house, it’s all we have!’

         ‘We’re heading to the top of the hill,’ explained the patrol chief. ‘We have to stop the fire there, or it’ll reach the cemetery and then the road.’

         ‘God help us!’ exclaimed the old woman.

         Leaving them behind, the men clambered up the flank of the hill. The fire was on the other side and in half an hour would reach the summit. If they couldn’t stop it there, it would roll down the hill and engulf the houses.

         As they climbed, they felt the fire drawing closer, as if they were on the side of a volcano, but they still couldn’t see it. Young Salva found the rucksack with the axe and spade heavy. The patrol chief, a strong man, was the first to arrive.

         ‘Take a look at this!’ he shouted.

         The fire was advancing up the other side, towards the brow of the hill. With the wind blowing in the other direction, the flames took strength, filled their lungs and flung their arms apart. They devoured pine trees, which crackled and oozed resin. The pine tree, when it burns, gives off large sparks, and its smoke is pitch-black. This is how a pine tree burns.

         The slope was so steep they’d have to create a line of defence just before the summit. They’d have to hurry up or they’d have problems with the small eddies of fire forming under the lee of the hill, one of the fire-fighter’s worst enemies.

         ‘Quick! Get a move on! I want to see you dig.’

         The flames consumed ten metres every minute, while the men dug as fast as they could. They had little time to finish before the fire reached the summit. The ditch needed a kind of barrier to prevent the sparks from passing, and they had to line up the logs, so they wouldn’t roll if they caught fire.

         It was twenty minutes of exhausting work. It was all they could do. The men went fast, but the flames went faster. And then the worst thing imaginable occurred. It happened in a moment.

         They felt it on their skin: the wind had changed direction. It had gradually turned behind them and was blowing from the blaze in their direction. It was now a hot wind, the breath of an animal. The pines’ inflamed needles came shooting to the ground, while the chestnut trees and oaks in the wood burned majestically. The fire-break still wasn’t finished, and the wind had already crossed it, carrying small sparks like tiny, luminous insects, which passed overhead and nestled among the dried bushes, igniting them like wool.

         ‘Stop, stop! There’s no point!’ shouted the agent, and the six men abandoned the useless ditch, staring impotently at the flames passing overhead and igniting the bushes behind their line of defence.

         ‘All that work for nothing!’

         They watched in amazement as the flames crackled in the bushes and the fire broke out behind them. The fire had crowned the summit and, standing on both feet, with the wind’s encouragement, was preparing to sweep down the hill towards them.

         ‘We have to retreat to behind the old people’s houses and try to dig another line!’

         The speed of the fire went from twenty-five to sixty metres, which was getting dangerous. They literally had to run. The six men hurried down the slope, carrying the fire flappers and hoes.

         When they arrived, they were met again by the old couple, who were desperate by now.

         ‘Children! Don’t go! Our house is going to catch fire!’

         But there was nothing they could do. The flames would consume everything in a matter of minutes. The animals knew this and were stamping about nervously inside the stables.

         ‘Listen! You have to release the cattle!’ the patrol chief shouted in the old man’s ear.

         To begin with, the old man didn’t hear him, but then he nodded. He’d understood.

         ‘These old folk are crazy,’ remarked Penelo loudly. ‘The way they’re going, they’ll burn as well, if they don’t get a bloody move on.’

         The patrol chief and the man moved towards the stables, gently pushing the old woman, who didn’t want to let them pass. The chief opened the gate with two blows of his axe, while the man released all the cows he had, all six of them, giving them a kiss before herding them along, as if they were children. They were followed by the pigs and hens, which came running out into the yard in confusion, turning this way and that, not knowing which direction to go in.

         The pines’ black smoke, the black smoke of the resin, was against them.

         ‘Have you any petrol?’ the patrol chief asked the old man, who appeared confused. ‘Petrol!’

         ‘You what?’

         ‘Do you have any petrol!’

         The old man nodded and pointed to the shed where he kept all his tools.

         ‘You!’ the patrol chief ordered the fresh-faced civil guard. ‘Take these old people to the van and go for reinforcements. The rest of you, take these petrol cans and come with me. We’re going to make one last effort.’

         ‘One last effort?’ shouted the land reform agent. ‘There’s nothing for us to do here! We have to leave right now!’

         ‘One last effort, I said. You only have to stay if you want to.’

         ‘You can do what you like. I’m going back to the lorries,’ he said. He took the old couple and left with them, shielding his face with his hand to prevent the ash from getting in his eyes.

         The others retreated three hundred metres to a field of wheat, carrying the petrol cans. The patrol chief tested the wind and saw that it was blowing sideways on account of the hill. He thought it was a suitable spot for what he had in mind.

         ‘This isn’t going to be easy,’ he explained, ‘but we have to try. We have to light a backfire. We’ll light from those rocks to over there and pray for the wind not to change direction.’

         They divided the line between them. Young Salva was posted next to Penelo, who was in a state of excitement.

         ‘There’s no better smell in this world than the smell of petrol!’ shouted Penelo. He was a mechanic and loved cars. The truth was the smell of the petrol intoxicated young Salva as well, getting in his nose and making him dizzy.

         ‘This is going to burn like crazy!’ said Penelo when he saw all the grass soaked in petrol.

         ‘Get ready!’

         It was the voice of the patrol chief.

         ‘Start lighting and move back!’

         Young Salva took a lighter out of his pocket and began setting fire to the dark liquid. The flames sprang up immediately, and they had to take several steps backwards. The wind pushed one fire against the other.

         ‘How well it burns!’ exclaimed young Salva. The two of them stared at the flames for quite some time.

         When they came to, they realized they couldn’t see the others.

         ‘Where are they? Where the hell are they?’

         The smoke prevented them from seeing and, when it moved, what it revealed didn’t please them at all.

         ‘Shit!’ exclaimed Penelo, glancing from side to side. ‘The wind has changed direction.’

         The bushes and oaks were burning in front of them; behind them, the wheat. They were trapped.

         They shouted out for the others, but no one answered.

         They couldn’t breathe. Their eyes were pouring out water. Ash-stained tears. Young Salva lifted the scarf tied around his neck and used it to cover his mouth, but it didn’t help. He kept on coughing and could barely open his eyes.

         ‘On the ground! Get down on the ground!’ shouted Penelo, and young Salva flung himself to the ground.

         ‘Breathe in the grass!’

         Amid the sweet, dirty grass, young Salva found a small amount of oxygen. He couldn’t stop coughing, and the tears from his eyes moistened the dried earth. He saw Penelo lying beside him, digging the soil with his hands, and he did the same. With his mouth in the hole, he could breathe better. After that, he stopped seeing Penelo. The smoke, which was a result of the wind having changed direction, was even darker now. Gusts passed overhead like a storm of sparks. Inflamed leaves, like tongues on fire, ember-red branches, fell on top of him. He felt something slithering over his body, his arms and back. It was something cold and alive, he felt it on his hands and in his hair. When he opened his eyes, he saw it: fleeing from the flames, in desperation, dozens of snakes, toads and cobras were moving on top of him. The cobras clambered over his arms and carried on their way without biting him, they were so afraid. Young Salva closed his eyes. He was normally frightened of snakes and cobras, but now he didn’t experience fear. He felt a kind of pleasure on noticing something timorous and alive coming into contact with his skin. His fear evaporated, and he was transported to an unreal, intimate place, something like his own tomb. ‘This is how my father is,’ he mused, ‘in a place made of smoke, ash and wind.’ Absurd thoughts crossed his mind, and the terror he would normally have experienced was replaced by a sense of security and strength. So much so that he came to the conclusion that the fire wouldn’t kill him. He felt something soft caressing his head, a warm hand stroking his hair and forehead. The hand of his late father. And the tears he wept no longer seemed stained with ash, but had turned into pure water. Perhaps as a result of having cried so much, or because they were coming from a different place inside his eyes.

         Someone was pulling hard on his feet. When he opened his eyes, he was lying on the grass. Penelo had pulled him out of the fire and dragged him to a place where he could breathe a little better. Young Salva could see where he was – in the middle of the cemetery. He gazed sadly at the withered flowers, bouquets and wreaths being toasted and consumed on top of the stone. All around, branches were falling, and it was snowing ash.

         ‘You fell unconscious! Do you want to die or something!’ his cousin shouted angrily.

         The wind, however, clearly didn’t want to kill them this time and provided a solution.

         The wind’s hand dispersed the black smoke and, pushing aside the ears of wheat in the field behind them, showed them the way to the river.

         ‘That way! We can get to the river!’

         They ran as fast as they could through the middle of the wheat swaying all around them, being buffeted by the hot, furious wind, in swirls of ash and fire, like a swarm of flames. Young Salva couldn’t see where he was going. He was still confused and coughing, holding the scarf to his mouth. He stepped on the soft ground, the ploughed soil, soft and fine as flour.

         ‘I can see some willows!’ shouted Penelo, his mouth in the other’s ear. ‘That must be where the river is!’

         He was right. The willows, which only like water, had not deceived him. The river was in that direction. Having reached it, they couldn’t do any more and fell into the water. They were both exhausted. On either side of the river, the trees were on fire, so close they could feel the throbbing of the flames. The heat licked their face and hands. Up to their knees in water, they followed the course of the river downstream. The tunnel of fire seemed to go on for ever. The short, stout trunks burned. Since it was the end of March, they were covered in silver catkins, which also caught fire and fell into the water. They carried on walking over pebbles and sand until finally emerging from the fire’s body.

         They were out by now.

         In the clean meadow, the sirens of the Rural Action and Civil Protection Land Rovers whirling furiously, young Salva kneeled next to an ambulance and clutched the oxygen mask like a thirsty man. As he drank, he seemed to feel his lungs dilating and his blood cooling down.

         ‘Breathe slowly, boy, breathe slowly,’ suggested the medic standing next to him.

         ‘Get these people out of here! Come on!’ shouted a corporal in the Lugo dialect.

         The medic shook his head:

         ‘Look at the state you’re in. If you could see yourself…’

         Young Salva saw his shoes and trousers were badly scorched.

         ‘That hand, we’ll have to take a look at that hand. I’ll bandage it for you, but tomorrow you’ll have to go to Lugo.’

         The back of young Salva’s hand was raw.

         ‘Does it hurt then?’

         It was Penelo, in a good mood, drinking water from a plastic bottle he’d been given by a civil guard.

         Young Salva shook his head.

         ‘Leave the oxygen now, boy,’ said the medic, removing the mask, ‘or you’ll float off like a balloon.’

         The guards and Penelo laughed.

         ‘That was good, eh?’ said Penelo. He was happy as a sandboy. He’d also been afraid, but this was something he liked.

         ‘What about the others?’ he asked the guards.

         ‘The others have gone down already. There’s nothing more to be done. We’re also going to leave.’

         As they were returning, sitting in the back of the van, Penelo hummed to himself. Behind them, the fire burned, victorious on every front. It had been impossible to stop. The fire had consumed the road, the cemetery, the houses all around… The operation had been moved back a whole mile, and now all hope rested on the aeroplanes that had yet to arrive.

         ‘It’s going to be a long night. We might have to come back tomorrow.’

         Young Salva was thoughtful.

         ‘You know something, Penelo? Up there, in the fire…’

         ‘I was frightened,’ said the other quickly, thinking this was the problem. ‘But that’s good. You have to be a real man to experience fear.’

         ‘I saw things…’

         ‘It’s the smoke,’ said the land reform agent, who was with them. ‘Carbon dioxide. If you breathe it in, it makes you feel bewildered. Makes you see things that don’t exist. It’s like a drug.’

         That night, Salva could still smell the smoke. His bandaged hand prevented him from sleeping. He lay in the dark, while the glare from the fire entered through the window and shimmered on the whitewashed wall with its portraits of his grandparents, old clock, and prints of virgins and saints. When he heard the sound of the planes, he leaned out to watch how they dropped the sweet water of Belesar Reservoir on the castigated mountains. He then went back to bed. His hair and forehead had burned where he’d felt the fire stroking him. He passed his charred hand over the same place where he’d sensed his father’s warm hand, but all he felt now was pain, intense pain.

         On the following day, the whole district awoke in the middle of an unexpected silence. The mountains were bare and quiet, bereft of birds. The fire was heading somewhere else, far away. His mother woke young Salva so he could accompany her to the cemetery.

         ‘Get dressed, and let’s see what there is,’ she said.

         They walked over the scorched landscape. Where no pine trees had burned, the ash was white like a snowfall of sugar. The fire had reached as far as the eye could see. The higher they went on their way to the cemetery, the more scarred areas became visible. There were lots of other people, cleaning the gravestones with wet cloths and changing the flowers consumed by the fire. It’s said that ash contains all the strength of the things it’s burned. The ash on the ground was still warm, young Salva could feel its heat through his shoes. His mother, having washed the portrait on the gravestone, kneeled in the ash and muttered her prayers, while young Salva, who never prayed, stood beside her and gazed at the surroundings. He breathed in the scent of charred cypresses, the peculiar scent of cypresses, like some strange perfume, and didn’t cross himself in case he touched the open wound on his forehead, which still hurt and which, he thought, would remain with him for the rest of his life.

TELL ME SOMETHING NICE

When her mother sent her to have a haircut, Ani didn’t protest, either before or afterwards. She wasn’t a disobedient girl. Besides, that Sunday, in the afternoon session at the cinema, they were showing a film she wanted to see. So she swapped her beautiful locks for the chance to watch The Snow Princess. It struck her as a fair deal. Seated in the enormous barber chair, she allowed a large man to dispossess her of her locks without uttering a word. She limited herself to listening to one of those dumb programmes on the radio and attempting to read the aftershave labels and brand names of the hairdryers: Ciba-Geigy, Acqua Vitae… The letters were a bit fuzzy. She had to close her eyes and start again, as in a game. Only if she frowned could she read them.

         When the man had finished, she thanked him politely and bent down to pick up the hair that lay scattered all over the floor at the foot of the barber chair.

         ‘My mother will come and collect me,’ she said simply, and sat down to wrap the hair in a parcel of newspaper.

In the sitting room at home, Ani lies on the carpet, with her chin in her hands, turning the pages of a story. From time to time, she looks up and gazes for a while at her sister, who is sitting on the sofa, talking with her boyfriend on the phone. ‘Now there’s a beautiful woman,’ thinks Ani, ‘and her hair is really nice.’ While Ani is watching her, her sister combs it with a pencil, curls it, holds it in her hand and brings it to her lips, without realizing what she’s doing, so she can kiss it. ‘It’s the same colour as mine.’ Ani pulls out a hair and examines it to make sure. ‘Yep, the same colour.’ Her sister laughs because of something she’s been told on the phone. Ani laughs as well, even though she hasn’t heard it.

         ‘Come on, Ani!’ says her mother, poking her head around the door. ‘Come on, or you’ll be late for the cinema!’

         Ani snorts and sinks her head back into the story.

         ‘Are you listening, Ana María?’ shouts her mother from the kitchen. ‘You still have to comb your hair. It’s a real mess!’

         ‘I’m coming,’ shouts Ani.

         But before she can make up her mind to move, her mother enters the sitting room with a comb.

         ‘Come here and let me tidy your hair a little. You won’t arrive on time. And don’t bring your eyes so close when you’re reading, I’ve already told you.’

         Before leaving the sitting room, Ani takes one last, furtive look at her sister and sees the expression she has: serious, hard. Beautiful.

         ‘I look like a boy.’

         As her mother handles the wet comb, Ani searches for herself in the mirror. She moves her head.

         ‘If you keep on moving your head, I won’t be able to comb you.’

         ‘What colour are your eyes?’

         Her mother looks at herself in the mirror, peering over Ani’s shoulder, and says:

         ‘I don’t know. What colour are they?’

         ‘I think they’re brown. Brown and a tiny bit green.’

         ‘Come on,’ she speaks softly. ‘Enough chit-chat. All week long saying you want to see that film, and now you’re going to be late.’

         As her mother goes to fetch her coat from the hallway, Ani practises a hard gesture in front of the mirror. She thinks this is her sister’s secret. She knows her sister is beautiful, but she’s still too young to understand why.

MXIORTNT, Intx, nrabpdr, qsprqedfr… The consonants accumulated capriciously in the middle of a nebula. They trembled like objects behind a curtain of steam, and Ani couldn’t make them out. All they were was a confused line, sometimes broken, sometimes continuous. She squirmed in her seat, but no, even like this she couldn’t distinguish them clearly. Then, as the optician added lenses and adjusted them, the outline of the consonants became sharper, until suddenly she could see them with a clarity that amazed her. First, she opened wide her mouth, and then she smiled from behind the optical apparatus.

         ‘What can you see?’

         ‘Aliens’ names,’ replied Ani.

         ‘Tell me, what does it say?’

         ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Ani in her politest voice, ‘but I don’t know how to pronounce it. It’s very difficult.’

         The optician took hold of Ani’s head in both hands and placed it back inside the apparatus.

         ‘Don’t move. You don’t have to pronounce it, you just have to read each letter.’

         ‘M, x, o…’ Ani started saying, in a school voice this time. ‘R, n… t… Hey!’ she shouted with a laugh. ‘You’re covering one of my eyes!’

         ‘I know. I’m doing it on purpose. Now carry on.’

         ‘Oh, I see… I, n, t, l…’

When Ani got home, she was very content. The optician had given her a bag of sweets and a piece of paper, so they could make her some nice new glasses. Ani had it in her satchel, like a glowing school report. She wanted to show it to everybody. But her mother and sister were arguing. Her mother, wearing an apron and holding a glass she was washing, kept going from the kitchen to the sitting room to shout at her sister every two seconds. Her sister, on the other hand, was ignoring her and carried on reading a magazine, seated on the sofa. Ani stood in the hallway and put the optician’s piece of paper away.

         She realized they weren’t going to pay her the necessary amount of attention, and surprises are far too valuable to throw them away at the earliest opportunity.

Ani is at the back of the class, watching everything from behind her new spectacles. While the other children flick through the book of natural sciences and chew on their pencils, trying to understand, she plays at reading names on the map at the other end of the classroom. She can make out the names of oceans very well. They’re the ones she always discerns best: PACIFIC OCEAN, ATLANTIC OCEAN, INDIGO OCEAN (she imagines this one must be a special blue colour). That said, she can’t read the names of countries quite so well. They’re a bit small. She can only make out RUSSIA, CHINA and AUSTRALIA. Her eyes continue roaming while her ears pay limited attention to the hum of the teacher’s voice, which is almost as imperceptible as a fly. She can now finally distinguish the poster with MUSCLES OF THE HUMAN BODY and see the numbers written in chalk on the blackboard. She could see them a little bit before, but not when she was sitting at the back of the class. Now she is right at the back, wearing her nice new glasses, and this is something she experiences as an unexpected enlargement of her own private world.

         At the school gates, her sister is waiting for her under an open umbrella. She’s wearing one of those transparent, plastic raincoats. It’s pouring down, and her locks are soaked, plastered against her forehead.

         ‘Did you come to pick me up because it was raining?’ asked Ani.

         ‘That. And also because I happened to be passing by.’

         Ani was sorry she wasn’t wearing her glasses so her sister could see what they looked like but, on coming out of class, she’d taken them off because she was afraid that, if she started running as usual, they might fall and break. She’d stored them in the glasses case with the cleaning cloth, and now they were safe at the bottom of her satchel. To tell the truth, she liked the case almost as much as the spectacles.

         Her sister looked around and said, ‘It’s raining a lot. We’d better go to that café and wait for it to clear up.’ She pointed towards a café at the far end of the avenue.

         Ani took her sister’s hand and made as if to shelter under the umbrella. She’d thought to herself, ‘This time, I’m going to notice everybody who’s wearing glasses,’ which is why she sometimes dawdled and had to jump a little in order to catch up with her sister. It was amazing just how many people wore glasses.

         Her sister ordered a coffee and a glass of water with ice, and a Pepsi for her. It was one of those cafés that resemble small waiting rooms in airports: on the other side of the large, soundproof windows, cars hurried home to be in time for lunch.

         ‘How was school today?’

         ‘OK. Are you having breakfast?’

         ‘I just got up.’

         Ani sipped her soft drink noisily.

         ‘What are you looking at?’ asked her sister with a smile.

         Ani was looking at her sister’s handbag. She’d have given anything to take a peek inside. She stretched her neck in a vain attempt to observe what was in there, but couldn’t see anything. She was sure there would be paints, her notebooks with phone numbers written in tiny handwriting, eyeliner pencils, keys, and a bunch of women’s secrets. ‘Women’s secrets,’ thought Ani, probably remembering the title of a film on TV, and the words made her feel the intoxication of being pronounced.

         Her sister lit a cigarette. Ani watched the whole operation in fascination: the pack of Kleenex her sister took out of her handbag; the pack of cigarettes wrapped in cellophane, which had to be broken very carefully. Smoking was full of tiny, delicate details, decisive and sometimes sweet gestures. Her sister lifted the cigarette to her mouth with indolence or bit the end of a nail on her other hand. The smoke descended in tiny spirals that became entwined and disentwined in mid-air. Ani stared at her earrings, the ring on her little finger, her tights, all of this with a sincere devotion to beauty.

         She would have told her sister how attractive she was, but she already knew this. All attractive women know this.

         ‘I didn’t sleep at home last night.’

         Ani breathed in sharply and clasped her chin.

         ‘Are you serious?’

         ‘Yep. Anyway, let me see what those glasses look like.’

         Ani took the case out of her satchel, carefully opened the lock and removed the glasses.

         ‘Why do you keep them in that case?’ asked her sister with amusement.

         ‘Because I like it,’ laughed Ani.

         ‘Let’s see them then,’ said her sister, putting the glasses on her herself.

         She smiled and said:

         ‘How funny! You look just like a schoolteacher.’

Her sister unlocked the front door. They were just putting the umbrella in the umbrella stand when their mother appeared at the end of the hallway. Ani went running over and grabbed hold of one arm. But their mother didn’t move. She remained rigid. Standing in the doorway, she stared at her elder daughter, who slowly removed the see-through raincoat, folded it and deposited it in the bathroom. She then went to her room, as majestic and defiant as always.

         Ani looked at her mother. She was shaking her head and pursing her lips. Ani discovered some wrinkles around her mouth she hadn’t noticed before.

         ‘Your sister,’ she said, although she may not have been addressing Ani, ‘is heartless. One day, she’ll be the death of your mother, you’ll see,’ and she passed her hand over Ani’s head. A hand that smelled of detergent.

Ani stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, with her glasses on. She had positioned herself in a thousand ways, tried out all kinds of gestures and finally reached the conclusion these glasses made her look like a schoolteacher. That’s right, they were the glasses of a schoolteacher. There could be no doubt. She put them in the case and thought of somewhere to hide them. In the end, she placed them under the wardrobe in her bedroom. She’d already thought of what she was going to say: she would say she had lost them. She then opened her bedside table and, from under a few clothes, took out the parcel of newspaper she’d used to store her hair from the barber’s. She unwrapped it with great care, as if it were a meringue, and examined it for a while, feeling very content, lying on the bed.

         Her hair would grow back. She was sure of that. What she didn’t know for certain is whether she’d be able to continue averting all those attacks against her beauty, her radiant beauty.

THERE WERE FIVE

They were going to make another attempt. The helicopter twisted its tail and, leaning ever so slightly forwards, returned to its objective. The pilot made a prearranged signal, and the co-pilot stared: down below was the boat again, like a dead whale, beached and wounded on one flank, pouring out thick, dark blood and crowned by two red lights showing there was no one at the helm. The boat was almost parallel with the waves and could barely keep afloat. On the deck, a man, an orange dot, could be seen waving his arms.

         This time, the wind allowed the helicopter to hover over the shipwreck. The pilot decreased the speed of the rotor, and the helicopter began to descend and then braked, shaking from side to side. Underneath it, a sudden squall buffeted the ship’s deck. The two machines – that of the ship and that of the helicopter; one in agony, the other at the limit of its strength – drew closer.

         Holding on tightly to the door-frame, the co-pilot prepared the winch so he could release the cable. But at that moment a gust of wind struck the side of the aircraft, which swayed violently. The co-pilot fell to the floor. Down below, a wave engulfed the deck, and the waiting man also fell, sliding down the sloping metal of the forecastle and colliding with the bridge. He hung on as best he could and, when the wave had passed, his figure reappeared.

         The pilot veered slightly to the left in an attempt to resist the buffeting, and then reversed a little, succeeding in stabilizing the aircraft. This time, the co-pilot managed to get the cable out of the open door. The cable trailed over the deck, and a pair of hands reached out to catch it, but it went straight through them and escaped, knocking against everything in its path.

         The helicopter turned, tilted, barely managing to stay upright as a result of the power of the two rotors. The windscreen was soaked, it was difficult to see. The pilot made a gesture which meant they should give up. Their objective was inside the rigging now, and he was afraid the cable might get caught and bring them down as well. But the co-pilot stretched out his index finger, asking for another chance.

         They released the rope again, and this time the man, making one last effort, got hold of it next to the gunwale. But the contact with the rope caused him a sharp pain: his hands were burned. Unable to keep hold of it, he embraced it, gave it a kiss and let it go. The co-pilot gestured to him to put on the harness, but, with his hands both burned and frozen, there was no way he could this. So he used them for the only purpose they had left: to say goodbye. He raised his right arm, meaning ‘Everything OK, don’t wait’ in the international code of signals, but in this case it was clearly a message aimed at the helicopter. A sad message, an authentic farewell.

         That was the last they saw of him. A wave swept over the deck and, by the time the water had run away, the man had gone. The tall, long-crested waves broke heavily, depositing a thick foam in the direction of the wind. The sea was almost white, white as death.

         The pilot didn’t wait any longer. He was having great difficulty keeping the aircraft up. He turned in order to protect the tail rotor from the wind and, gaining height, flew away. The huge, sloping ship was left behind, slowly turning on itself, revealing its keel, painted with minium, like an intestine, and being pulled down into the ocean’s abyss.

         Everything is over now. On the journey back, the co-pilot turns to the four men they managed to save before making their final attempt. These four, dark-skinned men are sitting on the floor of the helicopter, wrapped in blankets, silent. The co-pilot smiles and offers them a cigarette, but they refuse. He is happy, almost euphoric. While he’s sorry not to have rescued them all, he has performed the impossible: he has got four of them out in conditions no one else would have tried in. He shouts something to them in English, but they do not reply. The co-pilot doesn’t understand and wonders what they are thinking. They’re Malaysian. What are they thinking? All four are thinking the same, something very simple: that there were five of them, not four. Five men from the same village. There were five.

NOBODY IS GOING TO HELP YOU

On his first day at school, little Samuel got such a monumental beating from the other pupils a teacher had to take him home. Along the way, Samuel didn’t complain. He was still stunned and walked with a look of incomprehension, like a duck, while gazing in surprise at the dark red blood staining the handkerchief he held against his nose. His parents thought about moving him to another school, but, either because it was too late or because they decided, as the teacher had told them, that this was just children’s stuff, the fact is, a week later, without having informed him, they put Samuel in the back seat of the car, gave him a letter and left him back in the school.

         By this time, Samuel had acquired an insuperable horror of the concrete playground the children ran around during the half hour that break lasted and, while the beating wasn’t repeated, he made quite sure he avoided any gangs, groups where picture cards were being traded, places far away from the entrance to the classrooms and other children in general. For the first three days, he stayed almost by the door, watching the others’ games and slowly eating the vast cheese and quince sandwiches prepared for him at home.

         Between the basketball court and an adjoining building site was a hidden space which was out of bounds. This was where little Samuel found a perfect refuge for the dangerous half hour over the next five days. There were rusty cans, nails and abandoned spades. In the midst of all these things and on top of pieces of Uralite, he used to sit in silence, eating his sandwiches and waiting for the bell. On every single day, at the start of break, he did more or less the same thing: while the other children raced noisily and loudly down the stairs towards the playground, he lingered for as long as he could on the steps, gazing through the windows. By the time he got down, all the others were busy with their games, football matches, miniature reptile markets. Busy enough, at least, not to observe him. So it wasn’t difficult for him to bustle quickly in the direction of the building site without anybody noticing.

         But on the fifth day he was in for a surprise. He was running when he arrived and had to pull up smartly: in the refuge was another child. The child was standing on a builder’s wheelbarrow, jumping up and down. He was from a higher year, three spans taller than little Samuel, and his face was flushed from the effort he was making. When he saw Samuel come in, he also stopped for a moment and studied Samuel carefully: his face, the light blue smock that signified a lower year, the numbers embroidered in red on the right, his sandwiches… He screwed up his nose with indifference and carried on jumping up and down, without paying him the slightest attention, as if to say, ‘You do not exist.’ Samuel also chose to ignore him, though for him this was a comfort, and scurried over to his corner to unwrap the sandwich from its covering of aluminium foil.

         For about ten minutes, the two of them behaved as if the other wasn’t there. The child kept throwing bricks at some lizards that scattered over the pavement and the wall. He lifted the bricks apparently with just one hand, but with a lot of effort, sweating inside his dark blue uniform, and from time to time cast a furtive glance at Samuel.

         ‘You’re a little ’un,’ he said at last, without looking at him, tired of not hitting a single lizard. Samuel didn’t say anything, but his tranquillity had suddenly disappeared.

         ‘We pushed you about on the first day, remember?’ the other boy continued, searching now for some cans, which he made into a pile, ‘because you were late. Any little ’uns arriving late can be knocked about by the older children.’

         Samuel had stopped eating. He was toying with the top button of his smock. Staring at his fingers, he whispered something to himself. The other boy gave the pile of cans a violent kick, and they flew in different directions, with a terrible racket. He turned around, feeling very proud of himself, and sought Samuel’s unconditional admiration.

         ‘If you like,’ he said, ‘I can be your friend.’

         At that moment, the bell rang. Samuel still hadn’t answered.

         In the playground, the teachers were blowing their whistles, and the children were running to form queues in front of the classrooms. When little Samuel stood up to hurry away, the other boy grabbed hold of his arm and said:

         ‘This place is off limits. I always play here. If you tell anybody, I’ll kill you.’

         From that day onwards, Samuel stopped visiting the refuge. He’d worked out he could stay on the stairs leading down from the classrooms to the corridor. During break, the lights were switched off, and it was possible to wait in the shadows and join the rows of children coming up. Sometimes, sitting there, he heard the rapid footsteps of an older child carrying a message to the classrooms or teachers walking down the stairs, chatting in pairs: at that point, he would make himself invisible by crouching behind one of the doors. He was a very small child, even for his age, and could fit anywhere. He also had the capacity to be quiet and still for hours on end.

         The following week, from his cubbyhole, he heard what sounded like the crying of a child approaching. The head-teacher was marching up the stairs, dragging a child by the ear. The child was sobbing and tussling like a hare. As he passed, Samuel recognized the boy he’d met in the refuge a few days earlier. They stared at each other for a second. He didn’t say a word. What for? It only takes a second for a threat to be issued.

         While having lunch at home that day, in front of a large plate of mashed potatoes, Samuel moved his spoon in circles. At a certain point, in a barely audible voice, he said he was never going back to school.

         Shortly before nightfall, his mother was in the kitchen, talking to a friend on the phone. His father had just returned from work and was watching TV in the lounge. There was a knock at the door. When his father went to open, he found a teacher again accompanying little Samuel, who was bruised and soaked from head to toe. The teacher spoke in serious, grave tones: a group of older children had beaten Samuel and thrown him into a pond.

         In the lounge could be heard his father shouting at the teacher and the other’s feeble excuses. Meanwhile, in his room, Samuel’s mother took off his wet clothes, applied antiseptic to his wounds and put him to bed. During the night, little Samuel cried and coughed, clinging to the side of the bed. His mother sat beside him and gently rubbed his back with her cold, slender hand. She removed a lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead with two fingers and started talking in a melodious voice:

         ‘Samuel… your father and I were talking, and we both think you should go back to school. Your father made the head-teacher promise that nobody will beat you, and they’re going to punish those who did it. They’ll get a real hiding, you’ll see.’

         The child’s face remained pressed against the pillow, his gaze lost in the darkness of the room. His mother continued:

         ‘You have to go back and keep studying. Be the best pupil there is.’ At this point, her voice turned into a kind of supplication, it even seemed as if it was going to break and she was going to cry as well, though in the end she didn’t. ‘That way, nobody will ever laugh at you or hit you. You have to study as hard as you can, more than anybody else, so that when you’re older, everybody will love you… as much as we love you now, Samuel.’

         Little Samuel didn’t turn around, nor did he look at his mother. He wasn’t even really listening to her, to tell the truth. He was thinking about the playground, the stairs, the people, and how he had to think of something quickly because the following morning, when he woke up, he’d be back there for another half hour and he still didn’t know how he was going to defend himself.

WANG’S ONE-NIGHT-READY SHOP

In Hong Kong, I visited a tailor. Master Wang had a shop on the third floor, near Peking Road, the street that at nights fills with whores and sailors and transforms into a gay, miserable neon firmament.

         In the dilapidated house, after going through a gloomy entrance and climbing a twisted staircase like an old person’s set of teeth, was the establishment: three dark rooms where suits could be made ‘in a night’, as it said on the sign written in three languages – English, French and Japanese – that hung defiantly on the wall, surrounded by a medley of calendars, pages ripped out of western fashion magazines and Chinese prints – allegorical, bucolic images of women and summer fruits – all eroded by the passage of time, sick due to the lack of light.

         Master Wang welcomed me at the front door and continued bowing all the way to the room he considered his office. In that little room, where the ceiling seemed about to give way from so much effort, Master Wang had his sanctuary.

         Under the glass of the table, he kept hundreds of visiting cards. For years, travellers and business men from everywhere, passing through Hong Kong, had ordered shirts, a jacket or some trousers. Most were unable to spend more than twenty-four hours in the city, and that is why they had recourse to Master Wang. Wang’s One-Night-Ready Shop. He had never gone back on his promise to complete a job from one day to the next.

         I wanted to order a jacket. Had I chosen the colour? Master Wang began to spread his catalogues of cloths and colours in front of me: thick books and small folders containing every possibility under the sun. Rayon, linen, cotton, silk, silk with a solution of tin – he didn’t recommend this, ‘cut well, but not last long’ – cambric for shirts, calico, holland, chintz, madapollam, muslin… Cloths from all over the world had travelled over oceans and seas in order to converge in that cold building in Hong Kong, where the pipes clanked in agony and the paint clung to the ceiling in the form of scales. I thought about this as Master Wang showed me his catalogues amid a shower of eulogies and exaggerations. He gave them to me to feel and rubbed their ends with his smoker’s yellow index finger, deformed from the thimble and eye of the scissors and calloused because of the needle.

         ‘I have to catch a plane from Kai Tak at ten tomorrow morning. Will it be ready before then?’

         Wang smiled. He loved this question. His whole life revolved around it.

         ‘Naturally, sir. Seven morning. Work all night.’

         ‘Good.’

         And I agreed to have my measurements taken.

         ‘My nephew, Chang, brother son, take measurements. Learn. I,’ he said, placing a hand on his belly, ‘old.’

         I remembered that, for the Chinese, the soul resides in the intestines.

         His nephew arrived with the tape measure. He was a small, skinny boy and didn’t stop coughing.

         ‘Faai dì gwoh lei!’

         The boy, slightly nervously, started taking measurements with the yellow tape and half-heartedly singing out the numbers in Cantonese.

         ‘Yi sap gáu… sap sei… sap chat…’

         ‘Màt yë?’

         His uncle quickly gave him a slap and took the tape measure out of his hands. While muttering angrily, he measured the whole of my body with lightning speed, saying the numbers with a determination that bordered on rage. He had a familiarity with them, with people’s body measurements. The boy, who was really just a child, jotted down the numbers in an oilskin notebook, his cheeks slightly red, trying not to cry.

         Master Wang bowed and again assured me with a smile that the jacket would be ready at that hour: seven in the morning.

         ‘Nephew take hotel. Tomorrow seven sharp. Seang ng. Wang promise,’ he said, taking the notebook and stuffing it in his pocket.

         ‘No doubting, ready morning,’ he repeated with a bow. And with one hand he gestured proudly towards the table, the hundreds of visiting cards, the maze of names which constituted his prestigious capital and permitted him to survive in that difficult world.

         I returned to the hotel in the middle of the crowds in Kowloon. The neon was lit, and the nightlife was just starting to get going in the whole bay and on the island, in the expats’ Lan Kwai Fong, in the English pubs still presided over by a portrait of Queen Victoria, where rumours were rife about the imminent occupation of the city by Chinese troops, in the mysterious alleyways of the native city, in the nocturnal markets where the whole of Asia was on sale, in all the streets down which flowed a river of humanity just like that other river coming down from Canton, clogging up the bay, day after day, imperceptibly.

         In bed at the hotel, I had difficulty getting to sleep that night. Neurotic solitude kept me thinking that Master Wang had my body measurements jotted down in his oilskin notebook, the measurements my life fitted into. And I spent part of the night, before falling asleep, recalling things. Lying next to my packed suitcases, which gave me the impression I was lost somewhere between two points, I remembered things I’d long forgotten and others I would have preferred to forget.

         I was woken by a call from reception. It was half past six in the morning. A Chinese boy was waiting for me in the lobby, with a message.

         A message. I guessed that Wang had broken his promise after all.

         There was his nephew, heavy with sleep, wearing the same clothes as the day before. He’d probably been working on my suit all night. His tiredness was mine – was my fault in a certain way. He didn’t have the finished job with him, but he had a note. A note saying that the suit was ready, but would I be so kind as to go with him, so that the sleeves could be adjusted?

         I followed the boy to Wang’s shop. We crossed streets that were just coming to life; double-decker buses warmed their engines for the day ahead. When we arrived, the old man, holding six needles between his lips, was concentrating on drawing lines with a blue piece of steatite, the tailor’s chalk. In the room next door could be heard the thunder of sewing machines, like a demented train. The roar of the machines was like the sound of that house’s heart, a heart beating away furiously until eventual exhaustion.

         I tried the suit on and looked at myself in the mirror. I also was sleepy, and it was my sleepiness I saw first in the mirror, not myself. I don’t like looking at my own reflection. But the suit was fine. When I finally said so, Master Wang immediately relaxed his look of concern and again smiled triumphantly.

         At that point, the door behind him, which was badly closed, began to open slowly, miaowing like a cat. In the middle of the darkness, I could just make out the white hands and bowed heads of the Chinese working girls. Wang closed the door quickly.

         ‘Seven o’clock, sir. Promised,’ he said, pointing to the large Coca-Cola wall clock, the hands of which moved tediously in the direction of infinity. His other hand was waiting for the money.

         I paid and was going to leave at once when the old man humbly attracted my attention:

         ‘Sir, sir,’ he said. ‘Card, card…’

         Sleepy as I was, it took me a while to realize what he was saying. To start with, I thought there was a problem with my credit card. Until I understood: he wanted my visiting card to put it among the others.

         I searched for it in my wallet and managed to find one by chance. He received it with outstretched arms, like someone taking possession of something of great value. He gazed at it for a while and then, raising the glass of the table, placed it with the others.

         Then, on seeing how he placed my card under the glass together with the others, I noticed how many were frayed and the names were faded. I thought some must have been there for twenty years or more, and many of those names were the names of people who were no longer alive.

         ‘Thanks, thanks, sir,’ said the old man, whose bow caused his face to be reflected in the glass, the enigmatically smiling face of a man who knew the measurements of all these people. The face of a god.

         Putting on the new suit, I felt like another person. I crossed the landing, listening to the mechanical sound of the sewing machines at which toiled the exhausted Chinese working girls, badly paid, hidden behind that impassable door. I wandered out into the early morning of Peking Road on the way to the hotel, into the empty streets where silence made the creaking of the worn, illuminated neon audible, as the last prostitutes and drunks filed homewards beneath a firmament of indecipherable neon Chinese characters.

Text © Miguel-Anxo Murado

Translation © Jonathan Dunne

This title is available to read in English in Carys Evans-Corrales’ translation – see the page “Stories”.