The Man With No Borders

by Richard C. Morais

  They turn and wheel the stretcher out under the trees, Sam watching them like a hawk from the gravel drive. The doctor starts fiddling with the drip, which he hangs from a tree branch. The nurse sits on the stump next to me, reading a novel on his electronic tablet, periodically looking up to see how I am doing.

  An eagle soars overhead, looking for rabbits. There is a breeze.

  Lisa is inside Sheep’s Corral with the housekeeper, preparing dinner, and the boys are now off together somewhere, perhaps grabbing a drink at a local bar.

  “Yo estoy en casa.”

  I stare slack-jawed up at the sun-filtering leaves and tree branches overhead—and the sound of the river takes me.

  I am on the bank of Dead Priest’s Pool, the long and deep water where once I swam with Juan and Felipe. I stand there, alone. There is movement and light under the water’s surface, which I think is moving fish.

  It is not. A bloated, moonlike face emerges from the river, followed by black robes. It is the dead priest who drowned, two hundred and fifty years earlier, when he came back drunk from his mistress and slipped from the path.

  He is bald. He points at me.

  “You have not yet properly atoned for your sins.”

  “Cabrón! I am trying! I am doing the best I can. I have confessed to my family.”

  “You must repent all your sins. All your sins.”

  “I am. I am trying.”

  “Try harder. You must peel through to the deepest layers of sin, just like you peel an onion.”

  “Coño! What bullshit is this? What does that even mean?”

  “Are you so shallow and selfish you cannot see how you hurt much more than just your own family?”

  “Why should I listen to anything you say? You are just a depraved priest. A drunk who kept a mistress.”

  “Aah, the Álvarez arrogance. Be careful. That familiar friend of yours will lead you to hell.”

  I crawl back across the border on all fours.

  I pull myself together. I focus, gather my senses, try to sit up a little. I recite the same phrases again and again.

  Stay conscious. Be conscious.

  There is noise behind me, the sound of a car rolling over gravel. I turn my head. Lisa and Sam are enthusiastically greeting an old man. They turn and march him across the grass. He is white-haired, his hands gnarled with arthritis, but he is also thin and fit for his age. He stands erect, putting one foot solidly before the other.

  He smiles across the grass. His black eyes look familiar but I can’t place them. There is something dead in my brain. It will never come back.

  The old man steps forward and shakes my hand.

  “Buenas tardes, Don José. It’s been a long time.”

  He has a gravelly voice, like he has enjoyed his cigarettes and brandy. “We had given up hope you were going to visit us again.”

  “Thank you. Forgive me, but who are you?”

  “I am the mayor of Ribadesella. Or was. I am retired now.”

  “I am honored. That you should visit a dying old man.”

  “But of course. We are old friends.”

  “Are we? I am sorry . . .”

  “I am Felipe. I was your guide on the river.”

  “Oh Dios mío . . . Felipe, Felipe, old friend . . .”

  I clutch his hand, he bends down, and we hug. Both of us have tears in our eyes. Sam’s voice rises, from somewhere behind us. “Dad, when Felipe heard you wanted to come back, he offered us Sheep’s Corral. He arranged everything for us.”

  “I am so grateful.”

  “It was nothing. It is still in the family—thank God.”

  I point to the Rock Pool we could just see through the trees at the far side of the field. “Do you remember? Papá loved to fish that pool during high water. He loved how the fish would take, just above the gray rock.”

  “Your father was a great man.”

  “He had his moments. But he could also be a selfish shit.”

  “Yes. Fathers can be that way.”

  “Coño. The mayor! Congratulations!”

  “Ex-mayor. Retired. But I held the office for twenty years.”

  “That long?”

  “I became political when the salmon disappeared from the Ribadesella. I wanted to stop the overfishing outside in the bay, and to get the EU to subsidize a salmon hatchery on the river, up near Omedina, so we could build back the fish stocks.”

  “We ate what we caught. There was such abundance. We didn’t know then how fragile it all was.”

  He shakes his head. “We did much more than just hunt for our dinner. Let us at least be honest about that. We slaughtered fish because we could, to inflate our importance, to satisfy our greed, to score points, to show off how we could throw a fly. We slaughtered the fish for many vain reasons.”

  I am uncomfortable. Shift my weight.

  “We forgot that old proverb from these parts. Do you remember it? ‘Take what you want,’ God said. ‘Take it—and pay for it.’”

  We sit silently with our grief for a time. “It makes me so sad,” I say. “It’s almost unbearable. Are there any fish at all coming up the Sella?”

  “They count a few each year. I am not sure how they hang on, but the salmon are like men—some roll over instantly and others are tough and refuse to die. But all our days here are numbered. It’s a different river than the one we knew.”

  “It still looks beautiful.”

  “It is one of Europe’s ‘five-star’ kayaking destinations. The tourist industry, those bastards, they are the new mafia. Everything in our culture, everything that is good and authentic, must now bow down to hordes of tourists. All year round, the Sella is noisy with Scandinavian and German tourists in their damn kayaks.”

  Right then, in the stretch of white river we can glimpse between some birch trees, three kayaks shoot down the rapids. An overweight woman in the back of one kayak is squealing with fright.

  The sun is setting. I am cold and shivering. There is no time left.

  “I remember a story you used to tell us about Dead Priest’s Pool.”

  “That was so long ago. I am impressed you remember. The old women of the village used to say that the penitent priest, trying to get out of purgatory, visits the near dead, urging them to fully repent. They say he is God’s messenger, protector of the land and sea and river and mountains in these parts. I am not sure, in these times of iCloud and cell phones, if it is true anymore.”

  “Funny how things turn out. In those days, you believed the story—I did not. These days, you no longer believe—and I do.”

  “We all become what we deny.”

  Lisa comes to us under the trees and gently puts her hand on my shoulder. “Dinner will be ready soon. Do you think you can eat something?”

  “No. But I will watch you eat. It’s time to go inside.”

  “You will stay for dinner, Señor del Toro.”

  “No, Doña Lisa, but thank you. I must visit my granddaughters. They are expecting me for dinner tonight.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Bueno, old friend. I will visit you again tomorrow.”

  I pat his hand. “Bless you, Felipe. You are a good man. Papá always said you were like your grandfather. A natural gentleman.”

  Even in the fading light, I can see he is blinking back tears, as he looks across the field. “Thank you for saying that. I worked hard. Not to be my father. There was nothing good about him. Nothing at all.”

  “Yes, there was. He gave the world—you.”

  “Any fucking goat can do that.”

  We laugh.

  “Goodbye, Mister Mayor.”

  “Good night, Don José. Ve con Dios.”

  It is night and the witching hour approaches. I am in the front parlor of the narrow lodge, filled with anxiety. I know there are things I must still do, but I don’t know what they are. My foot jiggles, like it has a power of its own. I toss and moan. I am racked with pain.

  The coffee table is pushed against a wall, and my stretche
r is parked before the cottage’s stucco chimney. That, at least, is little changed. The kindling and logs inside are ready for a match, just as they always were in my day.

  The drip hangs overhead, feeds me its opioid honey. There is clatter and chatter, much travel between kitchen and dining room, as the clucking Spanish housekeeper caters to her foreign houseguests. The boys scrape chairs across the dining alcove’s wood floor, take their seats around the table, talk quietly in deference to my enfeebled state at the other side of the room.

  Lisa comes to look in on me. I close my eyes, pretending I am asleep, so she won’t make a fuss. I hear her return to the kitchen and I open my eyes again. The housekeeper comes out with a porcelain urn undulating the yellow vapors of a potato-and-leek soup. She ladles out the soup, bowls are passed down the table, and I drift in and out, to the music of my family together again.

  “The last opera I saw, before your father got sick, was La Traviata—at La Scala. I was so disappointed. The soprano kept missing the top notes.”

  A knife scrapes a plate.

  “We just found a terrific river on the west coast of Greenland. It’s about twelve miles long and feeds into a beautiful bay. It was too cold to sustain salmon, just a decade ago, but now it’s at the perfect temperature for breeding salmon . . .”

  “Pass the butter, please.”

  A cell phone rings.

  “Honey, we’re just eating. Can I call you back in an hour?”

  My eyelids are heavy. I smell blood.

  I am standing on a hillock. Dead salmon of all sizes, bloodied and gaffed, are laid out nose to tail, without end, over hill and dale and continuing to the horizon. Silver corpses are everywhere, stretched to the borders wherever I look. Some nerves twitch, a tail or two flaps. The salmon still ooze from their mortal wounds, and the metallic smell of their blood is heavy in the air.

  These are my killing fields, and the endless dead command such respect that even the wind refuses to make a sound. The world is filled with their silence.

  The Frog Queen sits atop a mountain on the far horizon. She beckons me with her stringy arm. She wants to show me yet more fields—filled with dead frogs.

  That poisonous phrase comes, then, from behind me.

  “All quiet in the Alcázar, my General.”

  I scream and sit bolt upright on the stretcher.

  The family jumps frightened from their chairs.

  “Sam! Sam! Get Hans-Peter Grieder down here. Now! Get him here and tell him to bring the bank’s trust lawyer!”

  “Darling! What is it?”

  “Sam! Did you hear me? Promise you will get Hans-Peter down here . . .”

  “Yes, Dad, I promise. Jesus.”

  He sees how anguished I am and he pulls out his phone. He’s dialing as he crosses the room. “See. See. I’m calling him right now. It’s OK, Dad. I got this. Relax.”

  SEVENTEEN

  A car rolls into the lane; metal doors open and slam shut.

  The front door of the lodge slaps open and a round of greetings are exchanged. My drip, dappled in leafy light, hangs from the branches overhead, like a goat’s udder hung out to dry. I turn my head creakily away from my beloved Sella, and see my sons and Lisa standing anxiously around a man sporting black-rimmed eyeglasses and a severe haircut.

  Hans-Peter Grieder has arrived. My muscles unclench, and I sink into the stretcher, letting out an involuntary sigh of relief and exhaustion.

  But I don’t let myself go all the way.

  Hold on a little longer. You are almost there.

  Across the lot, I see my old partner quietly reassure Lisa and the boys that he will take care of everything. Hans-Peter is wearing his Swiss-banker uniform, a dark box suit, and he takes out the white handkerchief from its pocket and absentmindedly cleans his black-rimmed eyeglasses, as he talks earnestly to the family. I know what he is saying. I have given countless such speeches in the past.

  If any changes I make to the will are outlandish and likely the byproduct of the brain tumors, he’s probably saying, Lisa and the boys will be able to challenge my last will and testament in the courts. The process will be costly and unpredictable and there is no guarantee of outcome. But he has known me a long time, he says. He will be able to make an assessment as to my mental state, and can advise them better, after I have stated my intent and rewritten the will. But, he insists, he cannot disclose its details. They must understand the limits of what he can convey back to them.

  The talk with the family is over. Hans-Peter turns and strides purposefully across the grass with Lisa. The bank’s trust lawyer, a blond-haired woman whose name I forget, is carrying two black leather briefcases, and follows Hans-Peter and my wife. I remember she graduated with highest honors from the University of St. Gallen, but nothing else about her. I dealt with her almost daily. Now she is mostly a blank page to me.

  I feel something cold on my forehead. I look up. The Frog Queen is leaning over me from the top of the stretcher, brushing my hair with her webbed hand. Her long gray tongue licks my forehead.

  “Get away, you foul beast.”

  She smacks her lips. She doesn’t say anything, but I can read her mind. “You have always underestimated and misunderstood me. I have always been on your side.” But then she smiles, maliciously. “Well, sort of.”

  Lisa touches my shoulder. “Darling. Look who’s here.”

  “José María,” says my old partner, clasping my gnarled and spotted hand. “It’s good to see you. We came at once. As soon as we got Sam’s call.”

  “Thank heavens you are here. I want to change my will.”

  Lisa exchanges a worried glance with my former protégé, who gives her another one of his reassuring private-banker looks before turning back in my direction. “Yes, of course, José,” he says soothingly. “Let us get right to it. Should we go inside?”

  “No. We will do it right here.” I gesture at Lisa and point at the house. “Please get them chairs.”

  She smiles, leans over and softly kisses my forehead, then walks back toward the lodge.

  “You, St. Gallen! What is your name again?”

  “Gisella Ohrbach.”

  “Did you bring a tape recorder?”

  “I did.”

  “Turn it on now.”

  She undoes the clasp of the leather briefcase, rummages around inside, and then retrieves a digital recorder. She turns it on, states the time and date and place, who she is, who is there, and why we are there. Then she places the recorder on the stretcher, next to my head.

  “This is the last will and testament of José María Álvarez de Oviedo. I am dying of a brain tumor. But I am, at this moment, fully compos mentis. I am alert and conscious and, after reflection, have decided to make changes to my last will and testament. Both Hans-Peter Grieder and . . . and . . .”

  “Gisella Ohrbach . . .”

  “. . . and Frau Ohrbach are witnesses to my state of being and can attest I am fully in control of my mental faculties at this moment. And so, now we start.”

  John and Rob bring two dining-room chairs from the cottage, which they position under the oak trees. “Do you need anything else?” Rob asks.

  “I am fine. Now go. Go. I need to be alone with my banker and lawyer.”

  “Relax,” John snaps back. “Seriously.”

  Don’t get upset. He doesn’t understand how important this is.

  Hans-Peter and the lawyer smile apologetically at the boys, who withdraw. They take out notepads and pens and sit in the chairs under the trees.

  I gather my last reserves of energy and look across the field. The Drowned Priest and the Frog Queen are deep in conversation, walking back and forth along the river. I know they are discussing me.

  “God wants me to pay for what I took from this world,” I say.

  “We are listening,” Hans-Peter says carefully.

  The Frog Queen and the Drowned Priest have stopped in their tracks, and are silently looking at me with beady, glittering eyes from
across the field. They are like vultures, waiting for me to die, and the bile of panic starts to rise inside of me. I have not seen my brother in a long time.

  Juan—where are you? Don’t desert me now.

  But he is nowhere to be seen. I am alone.

  I hear Papá’s deep voice, urging me to forge ahead. This is the place where we all are in the end—completely alone. So I muster all my strength, all my powers of concentration, and turn my attention back to Hans-Peter and the lawyer.

  “I want you to sell Privatbank Álvarez to Zürich Union Bank, to Swiss Federal Credit Bank, to whatever firm is going to pay us the best possible price.”

  Hans-Peter and the lawyer glance at each other, with real alarm, but they hear me out and take extensive notes. At the end of it, Hans-Peter snaps shut his notebook, looks me solidly in the eyes, and says, “I will execute your wishes, José. I promise.”

  “You won’t help them contest this will?”

  “I will tell them it is my professional opinion these are all reasonable changes to the will. They are.”

  “Bueno. Gracias.”

  I slump back against the pillow. There is a strange popping noise coming from my chest. “I am finished. I have nothing more to give.”

  “We’ll let you rest, then.”

  When I wake up, my old friend and guide, Felipe, is sitting on the stump where the male nurse was formerly sleeping off the previous night’s bender.

  “Hola, Don José.”

  “Hola, Felipe. Have you been here long?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me? . . . Cabrón. Tell them I need more painkiller!”

  But before Felipe can stand, the nurse, discreetly hovering in the leafy shadows, steps forward and injects more opiates into the drip.

  I feel the rush.

  “For what reason should I wake you?” Felipe says. “You were sleeping so soundly and I was having such pleasant memories. It is no hardship to sit under the trees by the Sella River and think of the days when I fished it with my grandfather and served as your family’s guide.”

  Lisa and the boys come out of the lodge, laughing.

  “Darling, there’s a farmers market today in Ribadesella,” Lisa says. “The boys and I have decided to run into town and take a look. See what’s fresh in from the sea. We’re all in the mood for fish tonight.”