The House of Bonmati

by Claudio Hernández

  Ten minutes later he had arrived there. The driveway was covered in green grass, as if it were a huge carpet. That area was wet because the sunlight didn’t reach it and there was a river crossing it at the end of the road. Juan walked along the thin line of flattened grass crushed under the car wheels, as if he was a juggler on a tightrope, until he reached the empty car. He touched the car but he immediately withdrew his hand, as if it were some kind of dangerous snake. The car was yellow. That color made him think of nasty business. He would never walk under ladders either.

  He turned his face to the ground and he saw big footprints; his father’s footprints. The grass had withered under his father’s shoes. Juan tried to walk overlaying the footprints, so as not to ruin more grass. He turned right and heard a sound that made him feel pure and clean. It was the sound of water descending a series of rocks along a sloped surface. The river was quite wide and there was plenty of water going down the river, tumbling and waving over the bigger rocks.

  The river forked in two streams somewhere along the way. One part of the road was green, four meters away. He focused on the rocks his father had set foot on to cross the river. All the rocks where covered in moss and some tadpoles were swimming around them, under the water, like sperm cells trying to meet an egg cell. He wondered if his father had slipped on any of those rocks. There was a grooved mark indicating that he had.

  Juan set his right foot on the first rock calmly, and a branch touched his hair. It was cold. It was as if the weather had changed suddenly. A water snake moved rapidly inside the water. Juan stood there, adrenaline kept him paralyzed. The snake disappeared downstream, like a drifting rope, zigzagging.

  His heart, which had started beating faster, went back into a normal rhythm. His adrenaline level dropped significantly. He stepped on the flat rock again, maintaining a careful balance, until he got to the following rock, and so on up to the other side of the river bank.

  He didn’t slip.

  50

  “Mum, I think Dad has been doing weird things lately.” Pili explained. It was quite unbecoming for her to approach her mother. This might be worth celebrating. Her mother had been jealous of her, but these last few weeks something had changed inside her.

  “What a clever girl” Antonia said, lolling on the sofa, which was quite usual for her. But she had not a glass of wine or any other alcoholic drink then. She had a black eye.

  “You wake up every morning with a different bruise.” Pili said. She knew for sure that she was not going to tell her mother about her capacity to see those silhouettes. She did not want to get a slap on her nose and see his nose bleeding alarmingly again.

  “I keep falling out of my bed.” Her mother said, downplaying it.

  “All right, but it is very difficult to get a black eye with a bed, isn’t it? Did you get hit with your pillow?”

  Antonia shrugged. She had understood her perfectly well. She knew that her daughter knew about it.

  “I think I need a drink.” She said, eager to take that damn drink. She wanted it with all her heart.

  Pili’s eyes followed her to the cabinet where all those bottles in varying size and colors reeking of alcohol.

  She had entered a new phase with her mother.

  51

  He continued along the path, after crossing the river, the branches of the trees were everywhere, and he had to push them away with his arms, as if they were bees or wasps. The wet grass disappeared as he was moving forward, and soon he was walking on a dirt road, dry and arid. That soil was good for the vineyards but it was not so good for the corn. The rest of the way was narrow and the sun caressed his face and his neck, what made him want to drink some water.

  His father was waiting for him at the end of the path with a hoe in his hand. He had a sickle in his other hand, which had a cutting edge that was shining spontaneously under the sun. His father had a blank stare. It was full of hatred.

  “Let’s go, you useless slob! I have been waiting for you too long, and I don’t like waiting!” His father shouted.

  But that was only the beginning.

  He had changed completely.

  52

  She was eager to tell her, but she just bit her tongue. After all, she had never got along with her mother, although now things seemed to be changing. Pit sat down on the sofa. She sat on the edge, with an earnest expression and her hands on her lap.

  Her mother came back with a bottle with a liquid inside that looked like pee and she plumped down on the sofa. She smiled at her daughter and opened the bottle.

  “Let’s talk” she said.

  53

  “I’m sorry, the road is uphill” Juan complained, gasping intentionally, as if he was tired.

  “There are just a few fucking curves.” His father said, staring at him as if he was a weirdo.

  Juan wished there was a hole he could crawl into and die. He could sense the increasing hate where there had been a good relationship, and he could hardly believe it.

  “Take this” His father gave him the hoe. “You must pull all the weeds. Like them.”

  Had he mentioned them?

  Juan was puzzled.

  “What do you mean like them?” Juan wanted to know, without any smile on his face.

  “Shut up!” His father snapped, turning around and walking away.

  There was a first esplanade at the end of the path. It was covered in dry grass and it looked like the hair of an old man. The burning sun came down on the fields. The cornfield was on his left. The vineyards were on his right, and there was an area of arid land in the middle.

  “Buff, it’s too hot. It was cooler near the river.” Juan explained, whipping the sweat off his forehead with his shirt sleeve.

  Then he noticed something that it should come as no surprise for him at this point, but it did. His father was holding the Bible strongly in his hand, while he had the scythe on the other hand.

  “Do you see the cornfield?”

  Juan nodded. “Yes.”

  “Well, the grass around the corn has to be plucked, both the dry and the green grass. Do you understand?”

  Juan nodded again.

  54

  “I had to keep your father on track from the very first moment I married him.” Antonia paused for a moment to drink some whisky. She was thirsty. “Do you know what I mean?”

  Pili shook her head negatively.

  “I don’t think I know much about marriages.”

  “It is your father’s attitude.” She drank again and continued. “He was a quiet man, he never laughed; he didn’t know how to talk to people, distant from society, who kissed cats. But he didn’t kiss me. He had no decision-making ability at all. Ultimately, he was a henpecked, and I always did what I wanted with him.” Her eyes got watery.

  Pili felt sorry for her mother for the first time. Something was changing inside the family. And on the other hand, she was overwhelmed with mixed feelings about her father. That was unbecoming of her, who was always with him, clutching to her father’s trousers, like a drunk clinging to a window to keep from falling. She remembered his kisses, but he had been yelling too much at her lately, and those shouts deleted those nice memories. She was scared of him. That was the proper word: Scared.

  55

  He lifted the hoe above his sweaty head. Then he dropped it, and the hoe hit the ground with a thunderous thud. There were sparks when it struck the stones, which shot out like rockets in a fire-work display, and the grass roots split in two. Juan was committed to his job well. He always did. But now he was restless, a lot. What was his father doing with that Bible in the fields?

  Juan kept weeding the soil with the hoe, which was starting to become heavy to his short, thin arms.

  “Don’t be so rough!” His father yelled from the other side of the cornfield, which had corn plants as tall as him.

  Juan did not answer.

  The hoe hit the ground again, lifting the roots and leaving holes in the soil. A lizard came out of hidin
g and ran away. Juan kept on with his job, with his head down and his body bent forward. He went on working as if his life depended on it. He was angry. He wanted to take out his anger.

  “Keep mumbling verses in the shade, come on; keep mumbling.” Juan clenched his teeth, and his lips were compressed together so that his mouth looked like a tight line.

  “Lord, make them return to where they should be. Lead us not into temptation.” His father’s voice could be heard as an echo amongst the rows of corn and the trees, and he added: “Fuck, I’ve had enough of hearing banging!”

  Juan stopped with the hoe over his head. His father still had the Bible on one hand and the scythe on the other hand, but he was not mowing grass. He was now staring at him with defiant eyes, frowning and revealing his dark side.

  He had a look full of hatred and madness.

  56

  “I have seen the way your father yells at you,” Antonia said with half-closed eyes. “Besides, he does not caress you any longer. He does not grope your tits.”

  “Mum!” Pili felt dirty.

  “That man is no longer with us. There is another man now.”

  Pili remembered the featureless faces that only she could see at first, which were grey and dull. And the time when she had seen her father’s face in the mirror of Angel’s bedroom. Her heart started pounding really hard, but she held back the desire to tell her mother.

  “He behaves differently with me.” Pili agreed raising her hands in the air.

  “I am your mother and even though it seems that I never loved you, I gave birth to you out of this pussy.” She opened her legs and pointed towards her crotch. “I will always be there, by your side. Because deep down, what the hell, I am going to tell you, I love you.”

  Pili discovered that she had gained a mother and she had lost a father. Something she had never thought it might happen.

  57

  Suddenly Juan saw something shining on his forearms. They were like fish scales, shining like little white diamonds. His eyes got round and he left the hoe on the floor, under the watchful eye of his father, who was leaning on a tree.

  “Why do you stop?” His father asked softly.

  Juan did not look back.

  “I am a bit tired.” He explained.

  “Go on, you little cry-baby!” He ranted while turning a page from the Bible. It was a small bible, a pocket-size one.

  Now the shine of the scales changed. They were yellowish. Like dad’s car, but shining. He felt his face going numb and he was short of breath. His heart started racing like a freight train, it was speeding up, like a washing machine drum on spin. His father was still leaning on the tree, staring at him with hatred. His eyes seemed to turn whitish, but Juan did not see it. He was holding his arm, which was hurting him now. All those scales were like blisters filled with a viscous liquid.

  “Something is happening to me,” Juan complained, almost saying it out loud.

  His father was watching him with inquisitive eyes. He was tight lipped and his muscles were contracted, as if he was in front of a lot of people at a bodybuilding show.

  “You have always been a good-for-nothing!” He vociferated from the tree. His back was now marked by the tree trunk.

  “Dad!”

  The scales had turned into blisters filled with a red fluid. Both forearms were now completely covered by those blisters, like a tattoo, and they looked like embers ready for a barbecue. He started feeling an intense burning sensation and his eyes were wide open.

  “Go on, pipsqueak!” His father shouted biting his lips. He was going crazy.

  “Dad!”

  He felt his heart had started burning as much as his forearms, as his head. He could smell something burning. As if his own skin was falling to black pieces. He saw the blisters burst and the fluid in them dashed out like an oil jet. It seemed a helium balloon deflating, engulfed in flames. Juan started screaming and moving his arms like the sails of a windmill. Fire came out of his fingers. His eyes turned whitish and his mouth opened his mouth frightfully.

  Pedro was only seeing his child moving like a zombie under the sun, destroying the corn plants. He could see nothing else, and he started reciting bible verses while a voice whispered inside his mind.

  “Kill him” it said.

  “The Lord will protect me.” He said, raising his voice.

  Juan’s arms started burning like torches, and smoke was coming out of his head. His heart seemed to stop after the stress. His legs went totally numb. He arms were also tingling, but they were burning, the same as his head. He threw himself on the floor. The fire extended from his head and it spread to a row of corn plants, which started to burn. A few seconds later a tongue of fire was devouring the cornfield, and it was getting dangerously close to the trees.

  Then Juan noticed, astonished, that he was fine.

  58

  “I am going to tell you the truth.” Antonia was already dizzy and lolling on the sofa, pointed to her black eye. “Your father did this to me. He said that they had told him to do it.”

  “They had told him?” She felt a sudden burning sensation in her belly, and she grabbed her hands.

  “He says he hears things. That they talk to him. I think that he has lapsed back to that nonsense of black magic. His gaze is the same as it used to be, when he did all those rituals with that awful black cloak. Do you remember?”

  Pili nodded.

  59

  “Look what you’ve done, you fool!” His father shouted, throwing the Bible on the grass. The pages closed with a strangled noise.

  “I’ve done nothing, dad!”

  Pedro began to run towards him with the scythe on his hand, tight lipped and with a fierce look. Juan was afraid for a minute that he was going to kill him cutting off his head with the scythe. Thus, instinctively, he put his hand on his throat, and his sweaty forehead shimmered under the sun once again. Now he was sweating profusely, while the tongues of fire spread towards the woods.

  “Start putting out the fire!” His father’s face was distorted. He started cutting the corn plants with the scythe, its edge shining under the sun. They started dropping like towers on the ground, noiselessly, only the crackle of the fire could be heard. He removed them with his feet to leave them where there was no fire. The fire was knee-high, but he kept mowing the cornfield. “You bastard, do something!”

  It was a dire situation.

  60

  “Is dad sick?” Pili asked, remembering those blurry apparitions and those who were not so blurry. He was supposed to see them too.

  “He is a bastard. Now your dad is wicked. He hears things and speaks alone. He speaks out loud with someone. I guess he is going nuts for some reason.” Antonia saw the empty bottle of whiskey and dropped it. It crashed against the stone floor and it fell to pieces.

  Pili moved her feet away, raising them to the sofa.

  “Has he ever said if he has seen those things in this house?” Pili would have expected a furious glare from her mother and that she would shout at her. But she could hardly move from the sofa, and she was telling the truth.

  “I don’t think so. Do you see things?”

  Pili shook her head and said:

  “No. I just can see rats; big rats.” A forced smile lighted her face, one of those smiles that don’t come from your soul, but from your brain.

  “I see them too.” Her mother said half-closing her eyes. She was totally drunk.

  “And what else?”

  “What am I supposed to see apart from your father’s balls?”

  “You are supposed to see nothing!” Pili exclaimed, this time smiling sincerely. Her cheekbones went red under the yellowish light of the sitting room.

  61

  The tongue of fire devoured most of the cornfield, but Pedro was ahead of it, where there was no fire, and the corn plants were falling on the ground. Then, he removed the cut plants and threw them three meters away as fast as a magician pulling a rabbit out of the hat. He was trying to
do a fire-break. He was sweating hard, but he had not time to take off his shirt. His breath was labored, emitting sounds from his trachea. His muscled arm moved from right to left and vice versa, and the corn plants fell down under the burning sun that was shining brightly in the cloudless sky.

  Juan had joined him trying to extinguish the fire, using the hoe. He was doing the same as his father, cutting the corn from its root. His heart was racing and his eyes almost popped out of his head. The fire kept spreading from behind, and they were ahead of it, next to the trees. They built a two meters wide corridor that separated the fire from the rest of the cornfield in just a few minutes.

  “I just can’t do it anymore!” Juan gasped while his arms moved slower and slower.

  “You suck, don’t stop!” His father shouted over the noise of the mowing scythe and the crackle of the fire. “You are a piece of shit! You are good for nothing!”

  Although he was gasping like an old train, he had enough strength to go running under the tree where he had been comfortably leaning to pick up the rake and go back with it to strew the ground with soil.

  His arms moved at a colossal speed, it seemed that smoke was coming out of his forearms. At a certain point, Juan pointed at him.

  “Dad!”

  “Don’t stop! They are talking to me about you and about what a piece of shit you are!”

  Juan opened his eyes wide and the flames started losing power. The wind was starting to abate and only smoke reached the nearest tree branches.

  The big fire turned into a handful of smoky bonfires with dying embers of a burnt out fire. The smell of burnt corn could be sensed from there, and Juan thought for a second that it smelt like popcorn.

  When finally the fire stopped and died totally, Pedro went to the tree reeling, leaning on the rake, and he dropped on the ground in the shade of the tree, breathing heavily as if he was just about to die. He was gasping and there were whistling sounds coming out from his throat. His blood shot eyes were glaring at Juan with such a hate that he felt he would be killed by his deadly gaze.

  He was lying on his back on the ground while his breath started flowing into a quieter rhythm, his mouth sometimes opened like a toad’s mouth and some other times with his mouth closed, gritting his teeth. He was gasping and listening to the voices inside his head.