Miguel-Anxo Murado specializes in short stories that take temporal events and turn them into something universal. Ash Wednesday (172 pages), a collection of sixteen such stories, is one of his most accomplished books.

         In the title story, ‘Ash Wednesday’, a boy receives the sign of the cross in ash at his father’s funeral. Outside, a fire is raging on the mountainside. The boy and a cousin go to help the fire-fighters. His cousin is excited at the prospect of seeing the fire, which has started as a spark in the heather. They join a patrol and try to dig a line that will cut the fire’s progress and protect the cemetery, but the wind changes direction and they have to retreat. An old couple begs them to help them save their house, but there’s nothing they can do, except release all the cattle, which the old man kisses as they leave. Then they try to combat fire with fire by pouring petrol on to the mountainside and setting it alight, but again the wind changes direction. This time, the boy and his cousin are caught between two lines of fire. They dig a hole in the ground so that they can breathe. The boy feels first something very cold – escaping snakes, cobras and toads sliding over his body – then something very hot – the approaching flames. It’s as if his dead father is stroking his head, but what happens is that his cousin pulls him out of harm’s way by the feet. The houses and cemetery burn. At night, the planes arrive, transporting water, and the fire moves off in a different direction. The boy accompanies his mother to the cemetery, where people are washing the gravestones and replacing flowers. He watches his mother pray, but refrains from making the sign of the cross so as not to touch the burned skin on his forehead.

         In ‘Tell Me Something Nice’, a young girl dreams of beauty. She agrees to have her hair cut in exchange for being taken to the cinema, but afterwards she watches her elder sister talking to her boyfriend on the phone, combing her long hair with a pencil. The girl goes to have an eye test, reads the letters on the screen while the optician covers one eye. She is given a ‘very nice’ pair of glasses which enable her to sit at the back of the class and read the names of oceans and countries on maps in the classroom, but her sister tells her they make her look like a schoolteacher, so she decides to hide them under her wardrobe and pretend she’s lost them. She watches her sister pull out a packet of tissues, light a cigarette, she gazes at her earrings and tights, and dreams of her own beauty. Her sister confesses she didn’t sleep at home last night. She argues with her mother, who says she will die from so much displeasure.

         In ‘There Were Five’, an oil tanker with a Malaysian crew has run aground. A helicopter tries to rescue one man on the deck of the ship. His hands are burned as a result of the fire and freezing because of the cold water. After two attempts, the pilot gestures that they should leave. They are in danger of being pulled down. The co-pilot asks for one more try. This time, the man on the deck manages to make contact with the rope, but he can’t hold on because of the state of his hands and gestures in farewell. The co-pilot is happy to have rescued four men already, but the four men lament the loss of the fifth man from their village. In ‘Nobody Is Going to Help You’, a small boy is knocked about on his first day at school. When he returns, he finds a hiding place, where he goes during break, but on the fifth day an older boy turns up, who offers to be his friend. The boy prefers not to return and this time hides on the staircase. When he is again pushed about and dropped in a pond, his mother tells him he must still go back to school and study hard, so that others will love him as much as she does. The boy tries desperately to think of an excuse. In ‘Wang’s One-Night-Ready Shop’, the author visits a tailor’s shop in Hong Kong and orders a suit, which he will need for the following morning. That night, he cannot sleep, since he is aware that the tailor has taken his measurements, the measurements of all those who have ordered clothes and left their calling cards under the glass of his table. The following morning, the suit is ready as promised.

         In ‘Nothingness’, a baby plays on the sitting-room carpet, rolling across the floor and sticking his fingers in ashtrays. An old woman visits and gives him her keys to play with. The baby throws them away, the old woman returns them, and so on. When his elder brother returns from school, he shows him how to write, but when he leaves the room, the baby draws on his notebooks and one of the notebooks gets torn. The older boy is distraught and sent to his room for punching his younger brother. The baby soon forgets about all the fuss and ponders the nothingness he came from. In ‘An Unexpected Outing’, two children of Galician parents in London attend a wake in Camden Town. The children do not know that someone has died and think it’s a party. When they enter the house, they see cakes and sweet things on the table and soft drinks on the sideboard. Their mother talks to other guests in Galician, a language they do not speak. The older boy catches sight of a silver bell and rings it, not understanding that this is the bell once used by the deceased. The widow snatches the bell from him and bursts into tears. In ‘Before Disembarking’, an Irish first officer goes blind while on board ship. He is relieved of most of his duties, but insists on negotiating the ship on his own, without help. When the ship docks in Rio de Janeiro, the captain tries to persuade him to see an optician, but he refuses, accusing the others of selling their souls to the devil by visiting brothels, while he learns how to walk in such a difficult world. He boasts of his wife, a beautiful Frenchwoman, and their garden of flowers. But as they approach their destination, and the time comes for him to disembark, he becomes increasingly irascible, on the gangway attempting to return to the ship – the only world he knows.

         In ‘Shame’, a boy runs away from a fight with the children of another district, who are more numerous, better equipped and have a dog. He hides in a train carriage. For the next three days, he has to bear the stigma of shame, being ignored by his friends and excluded from their games. In order to regain their respect, he joins them and, like the soldier in Isaac Babel’s story ‘My First Goose’, proves his worth by brutally – but necessarily (in his opinion) – killing a cat that is sunning itself nearby. In ‘In That Distant Country’, an American in New York is married to the daughter of Galicians. They have what is called a problematic child. One day, the wife, whose father has died, discovers that her paternal grandparents need somewhere to live, and they take them in, but are unable to communicate with them on account of the language. They do not speak Galician, and the grandparents, despite having lived in New York for forty years, barely speak English. However, the child is able to establish a relationship with them. The grandfather dies, and the child is disconsolate when the grandmother is taken to an old people’s home. The wife finally shares with her husband her memories of that distant land.

         In ‘Or the South Wind’, a new arrival at a college, who has previously studied Latin, is forced to lick the boots of a veteran, the Corridor Chief. When he insults the veteran, he is dunked in the toilet while the Corridor Chief quotes various Latin authors, but, like the imperturbable sage in one of Horace’s Odes, the novice refuses to give way even before the south wind. In ‘The Gulf Stream’, a man is saved from a fire on board a ship, but shipwrecked in the mist. He makes out the voices of others. The waves keep them close, but separated. When the current changes, they bid each other farewell, and he imagines how his body will be carried by the Gulf Stream up to the Arctic, where it will be frozen, only to be carried south, past his homeland and children, and, although he won’t be alive to experience this, he thinks his bones will feel something of the heat.

         In ‘Resentment’, a seventeen-year-old gets a job on the other side of town, but every evening, on his way home, his wage packet is stolen. One evening, he takes a monkey wrench from his workplace, meaning to resist the thieves, but drops it to the ground and is scarred on his face. Later that night, his ailing grandfather hands him a kitchen knife and tells him to kill the thieves. The young man lies in bed and cries out of a feeling of loneliness, not resentment. In ‘Communion’, the author tells how his mother received her first communion in a silk dress, despite being very poor. Her father died in prison, and her uncle was killed by the Falangists. Another uncle enlisted in Franco’s army and used to preserve photographs from the houses the soldiers ransacked in the hope of returning them later. He flew on a plane. The officer on the plane treated the crew badly, and the crew decided to kill him during the last days of the war. They then divided a silk parachute between them, since it was the only thing of any worth, and this was the silk used for the dress worn by the author’s mother at her first communion.

         In ‘Two Friends’, the author and a friend attend the local festivities. The friend admires all the girls who have come from outside, but is unable to pluck up the courage to talk to them. The author has no problem doing so, and the two of them end up falling for the same girl. They decide to cycle over the mountain to where she lives. The one will attend university; the other will go back to the village. On their return, the author feels how their lives are inevitably drifting apart. In ‘The Flowering of Cherry Trees’, a professor receives an invitation from a Japanese colleague to visit him in Kyoto and view the cherry blossom. The professor is suffering from cancer and doesn’t have long to live. He takes the decision to go and is introduced to Japanese customs: the tea ceremony, a Shinto temple (which is destroyed every twenty years, but rebuilt exactly, so that it is both new and old), a garden of stone, where anything perishable is excluded. His colleague’s daughter does origami and cuts him out a paper crane, a symbol of immortality. The professor decides to return home, since everything reminds him of his own impending death. On the way to the airport, he stops the taxi and watches how the blossom falls. He is relieved that his own suffering will finish soon.

         These stories are striking not only for the way that they are written, with poetic sensibility, but also because of the range of material. The author is widely travelled and is able to draw on various experiences. The stories are haunting, poised, and deal with all the different stages of human existence. They draw lessons from daily life, but also leave the right amount unsaid. The reader feels enriched after reading this book.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne