by Daniel Hahn
Two days later, he calls me. In truth, I’m not surprised.
We’ve arranged to meet on the terrace outside a bar. It’s nine o’clock at night. The heat persists, but there is a gentle breeze, not exactly cool, but not boiling hot, either.
I arrive punctually. I don’t mind waiting. This is when my mind is at its busiest. I take my Moleskine from my pocket and assume the exact appearance of a writer with no time to waste. I see Ignacio Gil approaching between the tables. He’s very pale. We all are, those of us who don’t have swimming pools, who spend this first month of the summer partly shut up in our houses and offices. But Ignacio Gil’s paleness is something else. He has a panicked expression on his face.
‘It’s a disaster!’ he says, almost before sitting down, without even saying hello. ‘Look at my hair.’
I look at his head, the dark brown hair. Artificial, obviously dyed.
‘I just don’t know how I let myself be talked into it,’ he says. ‘It was my daughter Ana’s idea. It was a stupid thing to do. A man like me with his hair dyed… how could I let something like this happen? But Ana insisted. According to her, the colour will fade with time, the more I wash it, and it’ll end up perfect, although I don’t know when. I’ve washed my hair about ten times and it’s still black, as you can see. It’s totally ridiculous, it’s inappropriate. I’m so embarrassed.’
‘Plenty of men dye their hair,’ I tell him. ‘No one’s shocked by that nowadays. And anyway, the colour will fade, sooner or later. It’s a matter of time.’
‘I have to accept it, I know – I’ve got old,’ Ignacio says. ‘I suppose that’s what the problem is.’
The waiter comes over. Ignacio Gil orders a beer. He sighs. In the slightly hushed tone used for secrets, he says:
‘What you told me the other day about your sister, that thing that happened to her in that city, Aleppo, I’ve been thinking about it – do you believe in symbols? I don’t know, it seemed like a really symbolic story to me. What do they represent, the two silk scarves? And the ruined shawl that cost an exorbitant amount? And the old man with the maroon fez? What role does he play in the story? Was he the one who pulled the strings or was it controlled from higher up, from who knows where?’
‘It’s something that happened,’ I say, ‘something real. It sounds poetic, magical, even, when it’s told as a story.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, not very convinced. ‘Does Julia tell you lots of things? That’s a stroke of luck, isn’t it? Being a writer and having people tell you things you then go on to tell. What about Julia? How is she? The two of you are pretty close, aren’t you? Anyway, I don’t know, the story about the silk scarves really affected me. Time suddenly closed in on me, I don’t know why. I felt very old, like I was already on life’s edge. It was like a pang of nostalgia, who knows, nostalgia for my lost youth. You can’t go back, you just can’t. Your sister feeling doubtful as she looked at those two scarves, I liked that, I really did. I’m like that too, I never know what to do. I don’t know what I would have done in her place; maybe I would have gone back too, like she did, gone back to the shop and bought something else, just to pretend nothing had happened, so as not to feel guilty. I understand her, I do, I understand why she did what she did. That’s what moved me, as if that ability, to understand someone, was something that suddenly revealed itself to me, something being resurrected. It had left me and it came back. That’s why I was moved, but moved with a really sad emotion, a kind of anguish. That was when Ana appeared, and started talking to me about dying my hair. She’d been telling me to do it for ages. “You can’t put it off any longer, Dad,” she said. I couldn’t say no. I had to do something, I felt awful.’
‘You can’t really tell,’ I said, lying. ‘You just look a bit paler. When I saw you, I thought something had happened to you. It’s done now, don’t take it so seriously.’
‘I can’t fix it, I’m too ashamed,’ he says. ‘As soon as I see someone I tell them, I want to get in there before they say anything, I want them to know I’m aware of the mistake, that I’m embarrassed.’
‘You could always shave your head,’ I say, thinking that this, in his place, is what I would do, although I can’t imagine myself in his place at all.
The fact is that Ignacio Gil’s remorse touched me. I could see him walking down the corridors of the Faculty of Philosophy, where he teaches, giving explanations for his hair left, right and centre. He would rather get in there first, make a statement, than have to make an embarrassing confession; like the child who, after committing some small crime, fears being discovered and announces his innocence prematurely, suspiciously. I understood him, just as he understood Julia when, after seeing the two silk scarves in her hotel room, she went back to the shop.
Beneath all this is what matters. It was the anecdote about the scarves in Aleppo that led Ignacio Gil to dye his hair.
‘There’s nothing interesting in my life,’ he says, in a tiny little voice. ‘I have a friend, Gerardo, who’s had lots of adventures, some very odd things have happened to him, incredible things. The next time you and I meet up, if you’ve got time, I’ll tell you some of these stories, you could write a novel with them, several novels even.’
‘I’m not an epic writer, Ignacio,’ I say. ‘I’m more interested in the subject of your hair.’
He looked at me, his eyes very wide in the middle of his white face, probably convinced I was teasing him.
I told my sister about my encounters with her old Shakespearean boyfriend. One of them. The best, without a doubt.
‘Why do you think he rang me?’ I asked her.
‘He probably wants to be your friend. Maybe he feels lonely.’
‘It’s because of you,’ I said. ‘All that stuff about dying his hair after I talked to him about you, well – it’s pretty obvious, his memory of you stirred something up, he wanted to be young again. You’d better watch out, any day now you’ll run into him and he’ll try and ask you out again.’
‘He always was quite an elusive guy,’ Julia said. ‘But not totally elusive, not totally… I might have been more elusive than he was. I never thought he’d end up becoming a scholar. He’s an authority on Shakespeare. I didn’t see that coming.’
The thing is, Ignacio Gil doesn’t call me again. It’s not that I miss him, but in a way, his story, the one about the dyed hair, had interested me and probably his relationship with my sister had, too.
In the middle of summer, sitting out on the terrace of a bar, my Moleskine on the table and my head empty, or too full, but of heavy, useless things, I slide my finger over the screen of my mobile phone. Ignacio Gil.
‘How’s the hair?’ I ask.
‘Oh, the hair, yeah, much better! I’ll call you back, I’m driving.’
He hangs up and calls me back a minute later.
‘Where are you?’ he asks. ‘I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’
It’s curious, but as I wait for Ignacio Gil – slightly longer than ten minutes – I have the impression I’m waiting for a great friend, someone I really trust.
He’s not so pale any more. His hair isn’t completely black, it has a more muted tone, more matt. Ignacio Gil is looking good. He looks younger. If I told him this, he’d be pleased, but I don’t. I don’t really know why, but I keep quiet. In any case, he already seems pretty pleased.
‘You haven’t left either,’ he says. ‘This city is great in the summer. I’m so happy I stayed. Laura and the kids are at the beach, but I have to finish off a translation.’
‘Shakespeare?’
‘Of course. It’s never-ending, you can always improve it.’
‘Have you been thinking about the Aleppo scarves, about everything that happened to Julia and that you thought was so symbolic?’
He smiles with forced indifference, and shakes his head.
‘Occupational hazard,’ he says. ‘We students of literature are always looking for symbols in everything.’
‘The most interesting
thing about that anecdote,’ I say, ‘is Julia herself. Her doubts, her suspicions, the decisions she makes, perhaps the wrong ones.’
He looks vague. He might agree with me, he might not. It doesn’t matter. It’s ancient history now. He’s tied up in other matters. Shakespeare again, those kings out of context, those improbable scenarios, those exaggerated passions, those manipulators, so evil, or the professional scroungers, the cynics, the egotists, that capacity of Shakespeare’s to go from one to the other, casting a net of captivating lines that is hoisted higher and higher. Ignacio Gil is, without a doubt, at his peak as an orator, as an academic lecturer. Occasionally, there is a phrase in English that he intones slowly, accompanied by gestures. He raises his arms up a little, separating his hands, and traces a circle in the air, a magnificent sphere that encompasses everything.
He has cast a net out towards me, his own net of words, interlaced on top of Shakespeare’s words, but I am an experienced observer. Ignacio Gil is euphoric, that’s what matters.
I say goodbye, but he stays where he is. He’s not in a hurry, he says. He’s on his own in Madrid. He’ll have a drink somewhere and then go home and work some more. A long night of intense work awaits him.
I could have told him that I’m on my own in Madrid too, suggest we have a drink together, but I know that Ignacio Gil would carry on talking about Shakespeare, would hardly let me speak, that the night would be for him, for his monologue.
It’s then that I realise Ignacio Gil hasn’t asked me about Julia.
Maybe I’ll leave Madrid. I’m tired of this heat. The advantages of the empty city aren’t enough for me – not exactly empty, just with fewer people and less traffic – but I don’t know what I could do, with whom or where to go. I make a few phone calls. When I go to sleep – or try to – at around two in the morning, the blanket of heat seems to have dissolved and an almost-magical, soft breeze is blowing, incredibly fragile and destined, without a doubt, for a very fleeting life. I now have some kind of prospect, a journey to the north in the company of another solitary traveller.
My parents are still in Madrid. A few years ago they installed air conditioning in their seventh-floor apartment, at the very top of the building. They don’t mind, they say, staying in the city for all of August. You can’t go anywhere in August. The hotels are full, the beaches overflowing. They wait until September. They spend a fortnight in a hotel. They always choose the south, Almería or Cádiz. Portugal, occasionally. They go with another married couple, my mother’s younger brother and his wife. They have a lovely time. They argue a little about the quality of the wine they order with their meals. My mother’s younger brother and his wife have become very demanding and order expensive wines, which upsets my parents’ budget. They try to negotiate, to reach an agreement. OK, we’ll spend a little more on the wine for you guys. In return, let’s visit some churches today. My father’s passion: little shrines in secluded mountain gullies, ancient, enigmatic constructions of brick, who knows what they hold or what was made there, ruins in the middle of the countryside. Visiting churches includes all this.
I call my mother and tell her to expect me at dinner.
‘I think I’ll leave tomorrow,’ I say. ‘I’ll come and say goodbye first.’
I spend the morning writing. That is, having breakfast, reading the paper, showering, drinking coffee, walking around the house, sitting in front of my computer, getting up, checking my emails, checking something on the internet.
I decide to walk to my parents’ house. I take the shady side of the street. The breeze from last night, the fleeting one, is still fluttering, its life happily prolonged. I feel like leaving, losing sight of this city for a few days, leaving aside my grand literary projects, my wandering around the house waiting for important calls, proposals, plaudits, prizes (oh God, sometimes I dream of prizes, too!). Swimming in the sea, in the freezing water of the north, where my friend has a house, gazing at the trees, the orchards, the vineyards, the parks, the gardens.
My mother opens the door. She looks very pleased to see me, as if rather than the five or six days that have passed since we saw each other, a whole year had gone by.
‘Where are you off to, then?’ she asks.
‘Galicia,’ I say. ‘I’m going with Adrian, to the house he has there. He couldn’t really be bothered to go, but it’s different when someone goes with you, we both warmed to the idea.’
The phone rings.
‘How nice, darling! What a lovely surprise!’ I hear my mother say. ‘Of course we’ll wait for you. Your brother’s here too, he’s just arrived, he’s off tomorrow. This is such a coincidence, now you two can see each other.’
My mother, evidently, is speaking to Julia. She puts down the phone and looks at us.
‘Julia is in Madrid. She got here this morning. She had to do something at the boys’ school, something about the curriculum there, I didn’t fully understand; anyway, the thing is she’s on her way, she’ll be here any minute. Now you two can see each other,’ she says again, the same phrase she ended her phone call with.
Julia has come to Madrid for a few hours and I’m still in Madrid, this is the only thing that matters to my mother. The rest is unimportant. My mother’s great joy comes from Julia and I seeing each other, sitting together around the dining room table under her satisfied gaze, as if the two of us being there, by her side, were a guarantee of something, of some sort of continuity, beyond plans and personal wishes, something transcendent that will last forever.
‘Now you two can see each other,’ she repeats. A simple phrase, a kind of mantra.
I had my own mantra, made up of images: Ignacio Gil listening in fervent silence and with pensive, melancholy gaze to the story of the scarves of Aleppo; his pale face a few days later, in unnerving contrast to his dyed black hair, his shame and the nostalgia for his youth; the euphoria of yesterday, as he spoke about Shakespeare, not an atom of nostalgia by then, alone in the city abandoned for the summer, far from his wife and from his children. This, as a logical continuation of the story, was where Julia’s unexpected arrival slotted in.
Unexpected and fleeting. Julia turned up late, just as we were about to sit down at the table, and left immediately, not staying for coffee. She said she had lots of things to do. Errands, things that Marco and the kids had asked her to do, she had very little time. I felt like she was lying, that the voice she said all this in was not her own. Her voice, her eyes, her gestures, her smile, everything was different.
Egyptian Puppet
Vicente Molina Foix
translated by Frank Wynne
She had enjoyed it more than he had, though the man had wept at the end. They made their way down from the balcony with the rest of the crowd, she walking slightly ahead of him; outside the rain was waiting, a heavy curtain curious as to who would part it and who would baulk. Some braved the torrent, sheltering themselves as best they could, but the couple paused for a moment beneath the stone archway. ‘By providence the heavens kept the rains away until the play was done.’ The man smiled and shook his head. ‘It rained half an hour ago. When the Roman climbed the tree to watch the battle. A drop or two, no more. I saw them splash upon the railing.’ ‘Perhaps it was but your tears you saw?’
The rain was lashing harder as they crossed the bridge and arrived home, their faces and arms wet, their clothes sodden. It was the second day of August, and though their summer clothes afforded little protection, they were easily removed. Both were naked now, the man kneeling before the hearth to light the fire. The woman hugged him from behind, her fingers running over his lips, covering his eyes, tousling his hair as she stared into the first flames that licked the logs, which were slow to catch as though the damp had seeped from the man’s skin. His felt hat lay at his feet, crushed by the weight of the rain that had fallen on it.
‘Why did you weep?’
‘For her. Others wept. You shed no tears, being a woman.’
‘I never w
eep, however fine the players.’
‘I do not understand why she acted so.’
‘In taking her life?’
‘In suffering. She was beloved by the most eminent men of the age. And the Roman suffered too.’
‘He had to suffer; he betrayed her.’
‘And I cannot understand why ancient tales of love must end in death. Do you remember the youthful lovers of Verona in the sepulchre? No one now dies such a death.’
It took them some little time to fall asleep, her more so than him, he drifted off as soon as the firewood ceased its crackling. When first his eyes closed, the woman thought he was pretending and stealthily drew nearer, fluttering her hand between his brow and his lips; he began to breathe quietly. She turned away from him in the bed and lay, still wakeful, until his childlike breath lulled her to sleep.
She was roused by the sun stealing past the shutters they had forgotten to close the night before in their haste to dry themselves and restage the amorous frolics of the Queen and the Triumvir on their narrow mattress, that dance of beaded skirt and heavy doublet in a painted palace. Today was Sunday, and they had no cause to venture abroad, yet his eyes opened when he felt the same ray of sunlight and heard the bells of St Mary-le-Bow toll seven of the clock, then, without returning her kiss, he leapt from the bed, pulled on shirt and breeches and stumbled across the yard to the privy; no sooner had he returned than he was eager to be gone, with not a morsel to eat, with not a kiss for her. What could he be doing on the Sabbath, when he was not called to work at the gaol?
‘A gaol does not close, and there are some fellows would toast my birthday. Will you call upon your sister? I shall be home late.’
Night drew in and still the man had not returned; lying awake in bed, Margaret waited. When she heard the first footfalls in the street below, and the voice of a woman chiding a querulous child, she rose and went to her embroidery frame; she had four kerchiefs to furnish for a marriage on Thursday but did not feel disposed to work. When eight bells rang at St Mary-le-Bow, she left the house and walked to Newgate Prison where she sought out Cyril, who, like her husband, had been raised in the West Riding and was the only gaoler she knew by name. Today, they were to execute a priest found guilty of treason and conspiracy against the Crown and a great crowd had massed before the gates. Whole families had come up from the country, the men still garbed in muddy work clothes; noblemen with ready sneezes had reserved seats in the stands, while dogs prowled in search of a master or some gobbet of meat. A cohort of magistrates, stripped of their robes, stood apart from the throng to make it known that they would watch this grisly spectacle only in the service of the law. Margaret became lost among the teeming crowd of women come in search of wayward drunken husbands who had not been seen these two nights since, not even floating in the river, or lawless sons wounded in some tavern brawl on Saturday whom they yet hoped might languish in the cells and not the morgue.