by Unknown
She was very worried, because she’d often heard about Lot’s wife in that passage from Scripture which was read during Mass and seemed to serve as a warning to all women, about gossip, curiosity, that instinct for wanting to know what’s happening, which is why she was punished and became a pillar of salt. She was lost while the angels went about the business of destruction, of burning and razing Sodom and Gomorrah, because there couldn’t be witnesses to such destruction, they didn’t want people talking about the terror inflicted by those angels. This is what crossed her mind, the lesson, applicable to all, that it was better to look the other way. But what confuses her now, what disturbs her as she plucks two pigeons for the priest’s dinner is his warning to Polka not to ask what Lot got up to with his daughters, and his daughters with him, again. He’s not in the mood for sermons. And if he doesn’t tell the whole story, it’s because he doesn’t feel like it, the pillar of salt is enough. She pricks up her ears. Polka starts talking about a certain Elisha, prophet and disciple of Elijah, who lost his temper with some boys who called him baldhead as he was walking along. ‘Go away, baldhead, go away!’ So, bald as he was, he turned around and cursed them in the name of Jehovah and forty-two of the boys were mauled by two she-bears. How many? That’s a lot of carnage for the Lord, I’d say. Anyhow he speaks well, can keep up with the priest, is better even. Little devil, he makes me laugh! The priest puts his hand on his head, which is shorn, and says, ‘I went too far, OK, but you can’t compare what I did with what the bald prophet did to those children.’
She can’t resist, quickly wipes the layer of blood and down off her hands. She’s nervous and heads out of the service entrance towards the chapel to see what it says about Lot and his daughters, there’ll be something in those books, something about the forty-two boys mauled by she-bears on account of the prophet’s temper. Which explains why the housemaid’s expression changed, perhaps for ever, and why the priest asked her if something was wrong when she appeared with a face the colour of pure wax. She was so upset she said nothing about the negligence of serving him with bird down in the cracks of her fingernails.
‘He’s going to be the new gravedigger,’ said the priest.
She wiped the pigeons’ blood on her apron. She knew that rather than talking to someone he was trying to convince himself.
‘Someone has to do it,’ continued the priest. ‘But I did stipulate one condition. No more Carnival procession. No more lame cardinal. No more goliard’s sermons from the tavern’s pulpit.’
And, without wanting to, she felt sorry. Polka was a wretch, but he was funny. She cursed him, but every year, during Carnival, she’d be waiting to see him dressed up as a cardinal, with his Ora pro nobis, sprinkling holy water with a watering can. Dressed in purple, he looked better than the priest. He led the procession in which they carried an effigy of the Carnival made of turnips in order to throw it into the River Monelos. Ever since the war, it had been forbidden to wear a disguise, but they’d come out at nightfall from under the stones. Two years ago, they had the audacity to tack photos of Franco, the Caudillo, to the turnip dummy and to give it an escort of revellers dressed up as Franco’s Moorish Guard, riding donkeys. The police turned up and laid into the revellers. But the dummy had already sunk in the river.
She didn’t reply. What could she say? Besides, there weren’t so many to choose from. The young men were all emigrating. And the old men were more likely to die than dig graves.
‘He’ll get used to it,’ said Don Marcelo. ‘He’ll end up being the most serious person around.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. That was the trouble with that job. Everyone took to their role, treated the whole world as if it were a graveyard.
Rocío, the cook, suddenly remembered, ‘Will he still be allowed to dress up as a woman?’
‘Not in my parish. Certainly not. I don’t care what he does outside it. I’m not going to take a peek at his legs.’
‘Praise be to God!’
And the priest couldn’t tell whether this was an expression of horror or relief.
The Gravedigger
‘I’ve got a job for you, Crecente,’ said the priest.
He stood up and went to switch on the light. A chandelier where electricity was a tired guest. In one corner, in a basket, were the chestnuts, polished now, with that luminous tint, that suppressed glee of a second life you find in fruit ripening inside houses. Like so many other chandeliers, grapes for sweet wine hung from mimosa branches. Apples, pregnant with aroma, occupied the planisphere of Zamoran blankets. Nuts were lost in thought. More than the solid furniture whose wood was mineral, petrified, extracted from the forest of night, Polka noticed this other presence of the fruit.
He worked as a labourer. Whatever was going. In summer, the odd aubade on the bagpipes. He’d have liked to go back to working for parks and gardens. But he was lame and had a record. Being lame, he used to say, was a record and a half.
You couldn’t have a ‘record’. A word you’d have thought was easier to pronounce than ‘salicylic’, but it had weight and sloped upwards.
Some men had a record and others did not.
He also seemed to have a stubborn destiny.
He was arrested during the war. When he thought they’d forgotten about him, they came to fetch him in a lorry carrying prisoners from Silva and San Cristovo. And they simulated something. They took them at night to Castro. To the ruins of the Celtic settlement. The moon was shining and he could see the shadows of memories, of nine months before, when Holando read out the commandments of naturism. They were told to dig. It was all very sinister, having to dig a ditch there, in Castro. The order was, ‘Dig hard, in a straight line!’ And he thought, Bloody hell, imagine I find Terranova’s treasure now! It wasn’t funny, come on, after all he was digging his own grave. ‘Your mental current’s back to front,’ Holando had told him. ‘When you have to cry, you laugh. You’re a walking paradox.’ The freethinker’s gift. He had to bite his lips, make them bleed to turn the current around. Come on, dig. But one of the spades hit on some metal. ‘What’s this?’ ‘Some junk,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘Let me have a look,’ said another, who was wearing a Cabaleiro cloak. He knocked the clay off against a stone and held the object up to the moon.
‘Well, blow me down if we haven’t got ourselves a torque!’
‘Let me see. Are you sure it’s not a horseshoe?’
Everybody examining the object in the moonlight, fondling the metal, in search of gold.
‘We’ll have to see what it looks like in the daytime. Now get digging!’
‘Straight?’
‘Sideways! One piece leads to another.’
Sideways is better, reflected Polka hopefully. You don’t dig graves sideways.
They were there the whole night. The soldiers eagerly sifting each clod, examining each pebble, poking in holes.
‘Here’s something hard. Oh no, they’re bones!’
‘Bones? An animal’s, I suppose.’
‘Well, what else are they going to be?’ said the big guy in charge of the squad. He then looked at the hole as if the question he’d asked were now turning over soil.
With the thirst for gold came dawn. Painting witnesses on the horizon. Men on bikes and mopeds, women carrying the first light of day. The whole hilltop between the rocks of Ara Solis riddled with holes. The idea was to kill at night. ‘We’re out of time,’ said one of the squad of soldiers and it wasn’t clear whether he meant for digging or killing. The point is they ordered them back on to the lorry and so it was that Polka went to prison. Having dug his own grave, first straight and then sideways.
‘I’ve got a job for you, Crecente,’ said the parish priest. He hadn’t stopped turning the matter over since punishing O. It was obvious he felt remorse. ‘A job for you. With two conditions. No more pagan processions with the lame cardinal and monumental women during Carnival. And no more competing with me by preaching in taverns. I know you do it well, you make people laugh, but it�
��s time for you to shut up, Polka. That’s the way it goes. You can’t be priest,’ he said ironically. ‘Verger’s taken. That leaves gravedigger. What do you think? As a gravedigger and a bagpiper, you’ll get by, so to speak . . .’
‘The man was very chatty,’ Polka informed Olinda.
King Cintolo’s Cockroach
It had to be said properly, not any old how. ‘Acetylsalicylic acid’.
‘Come on, Pinche, repeat it.’
‘Acetylsacilytic acid.’
‘Not “sacilytic”! Salicylic.’
Polka believed if you wanted to speak well, you had to be able to say ‘acetylsalicylic acid’. An invention which was to be found in nature, like all others. It just had to be rescued from invisibility, as music is sound rescued in bagpipes. One of Polka’s set phrases, though he was careful when to use it. Everything of importance had been rescued from invisibility. And aspirin was no exception. The best proof of the virtues of aspirin was in river rats if only you could see them. They were always healthy, clean, with shiny skin. Why? Because they gnawed at willow roots. And what was in a willow?
‘Acetylsacilytic acid!’
‘Salicylic!’
O liked the theory of invisibility, but not rats. They didn’t strike her as a model of healthy beauty. She always tried to have a stone to hand in case they showed up along the river. But one day a rat stared at her from the other side, the first time she saw its eyes, and O came to the same conclusion as Polka. She decided it was beautiful. An unsettling beauty, as with all animals that live by the river and try not to be seen, like the praying mantis, easily confused with the grass, or water boatmen, which live on the surface of the water without ever getting wet, darning river marks with their long, slender legs. According to Polka, the most interesting creatures also formed part of what was not immediately visible. And this was the solemn moment when he would contribute his own discovery.
‘No,’ Olinda would say, losing her patience. ‘That’s enough of that!’
‘Where’s the harm in it?’
O and Pinche would laugh. They’d heard it many times before. They already knew that the prettiest creature on earth was the cockroach that ate bat shit in King Cintolo’s Cave.
Acetylsalicylic Acid
‘What this boy needs is acetylsalicylic acid. Bring me an aspirin.’
Neves stands still. Rigid. She’d been expecting something else, some cure. A few divine words. Some animal’s anatomy. A picture of saints. Of a cabaret singer. Herb tea. Something.
‘Aren’t you going to say something to him?’
‘Listen, is there an aspirin?’
‘There is. But take care, you’ll make a hole in his stomach.’
‘I know that, woman. Dissolve it in a spoonful of water. And make some coffee.’
‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, coffee. Coffee from the pot.
‘OK. Now listen, Gabriel. Take the aspirin first and hold it in your mouth for a bit, without swallowing, so you get the taste. The bitter taste. Don’t spit. Good. That’s good. Now take a sip of coffee. Coffee’s also bitter. Bitterness on the palate is the best thing to get you talking. Sweetness is far too conformist. That’s it, my boy.
‘Now what you have to say is “acetylsalicylic acid”.’
Gabriel repeated it swiftly, perfectly.
‘Good, that’s good. Did you notice how the words contained what was spoken?’
Gabriel looked at Neves and O. They had large, wide open, beautiful eyes. He thought he’d like to be an ophthalmologist when he was older, as well as an underwater archaeologist. Be able to look into those eyes.
‘Ophthalmologist,’ he whispered, surprised that fear hadn’t climbed the walls of his throat.
‘What was that?’ asked Polka.
‘Ophthalmologist.’
‘That’s also valid,’ said Polka with satisfaction, seeing an improvement in Gabriel’s initiative. ‘It’s also scientific. Now let’s re-turn a few other re-turnables. As if we were singing, but without singing. Say, “The drunken accordion speaks English, German . . .”’
It was then the kitchen door suddenly opened. The judge was wearing his hat and overcoat, he hadn’t hung them up in the hallway as he usually did, which may have been why he looked bigger than the door. To Neves, the most nervous among them, he was like an enormous creature trying to enter a miniature house. The man with the sack of beans inside a bean. A cat, with whiskers as wide as the door, inside a mouse-hole. Behind his glasses, his eyes bespoke urgency. He glanced at Polka. A local. In his kitchen. The poor light at that time was like a continuation of a country storm.
‘And my wife?’
‘She received a call from Fine Arts, your honour. To take some foreigners on a tour,’ Neves replied nervously, but quickly, without slipping up. ‘She said if you called, you were not to worry. She’d be at the official dinner on time, just as you arranged.’
‘I see.’
Before leaving, he looked again at Polka. It was a fleeting, wordless glance. He was waiting for Polka to gesture to him in greeting with his corduroy peaked cap. For his part, Polka thought the opposite. That the initiative should come from the man in the hat. He was the owner of the house. The one who had to welcome him.
‘This is my father, your honour,’ said O.
‘Hello. How are we today?’
‘Same as always, your . . .’
He was going to add what he always said with friendly humour, ‘Working for eternity, making a bed for those who are going to sleep in the open.’ But he didn’t have time, he spoke like a mute, because the judge was already taking leave of his son. ‘Don’t forget your exercises.’ An admonition that, from the tone, appeared to be directed towards everyone.
Neves accompanied the judge to the door. Polka, meanwhile, poured himself some coffee, which he sugared generously.
‘But you’re . . . having . . . sugar!’ the boy protested.
Polka winked.
‘My words are re-turned already.’
‘Phew! I’m glad he didn’t ask anything,’ sighed Neves when she came back.
‘I’d have explained it all to him,’ said O. ‘We weren’t doing anything wrong.’
‘He’s very particular,’ commented Neves in a low voice. ‘When he gets all authoritative, there’s nothing to be done. He walks with his bust on a pedestal.’
Polka savoured the last drop of sugary coffee. La dolce vita, he called those dregs. A phrase he’d heard from Luís Terranova. What had happened to Terranova, to that boy who was a diamond, a Gardel? He hoped he hadn’t had dealings with eternity.
Polka savoured the last drop as if it were an undying pleasure and then clicked his tongue.
‘What was the problem? He looked at me and didn’t see me.’
He turned to face Gabriel.
‘Now you know. What you have to do is look and see. Give eyes their vision. Words their meaning. Come on. Let’s have another go. Say, “With each note he played, the bagpiper made a polished diamond”.’
Gabriel recited the sentence without getting stuck on the jingle. He didn’t choke on a single word. His voice sounded happy and singsong and the words contained everything they named.
‘That’s it. That’s what I call many happy re-turns,’ Polka congratulated himself. ‘You have to find the right key for the lock.’
He was emotional. He took Gabriel’s head in his hands as if he might lift it off his body and polish the sculpture. These were no sad verses, but the man’s eyes were wet. He heard Luís Terranova’s voice again. He was standing naked, a god in the nude, on top of Ara Solis. He mumbled that incomprehensible refrain Yamba, yambo, yambambe! as if it were Latin. Something Polka only did when he’d just killed a worm of fear.
The Witch’s Kiss
‘What? Isn’t anyone going to die? There’s no money to be made here!’
This is what Polka would say when he passed in front of the the Cuckoo’s Feather bar. His jokes as parish gravedigger encouraged
people to carry on living. Sometimes he’d switch refrain and say at the door:
‘Anyone want a reference?’
And they’d shout to him from inside, ‘What death needs is an open mouth. Wine for you, Polka!’
This was something he could always count on. An invitation to a round of wine. He liked it this way. One thing he couldn’t stand was drinking on his own. There are lots of solitary drinkers. But Polka didn’t go in for this wine of solitude. Wine deserved a story, a conversation. Of the Here and the Hereafter, in people’s opinion, he knew more than the priest, who toed the official line. There were questions they didn’t discuss in the vicar’s presence, simply because he couldn’t answer them. For example: ‘Polka, tell us, who’s in charge of the Holy Company, the procession of the dead?’ ‘As I understand it, the one who sets the Holy Company in motion is the first to be buried.’ ‘And who’s the leader?’ ‘Why, Adam, I suppose.’ ‘And who buried Adam, Polka? Was it Eve?’ ‘No, it was a son, a third son who’s rarely talked about and must have been a good sort. Here Cain and Abel get all the attention. The third man must have wanted to avoid any publicity. But it was he, Seth, who buried his father. And stuck an olive branch in the ground over the first corpse. From that olive tree, they took the wood for the Holy Cross.’
‘That’s quite a coincidence, Polka.’
‘Life is like that, my friend, its vocation is to be a story. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand anything. So I suppose it’s Adam, in order of antiquity, who calls to the others, “Arise, ye dead, and come out together!” Which seems to me an important detail. The fact they decide to come out together, without distinction.’
Polka to O: ‘Don’t be afraid of the dead. What you have to watch out for are the living who spoil life. Old people used to say those who hate life belong to the Bone Society. Sowing terror is both ancient and modern. What they used to do was throw a bone at night against a window they saw illuminated. Which was their way of indicating the victim. But the dead know how to get their own back. Something these thugs don’t realise. The dead find a way to defend themselves. Old people used to talk of a cold slap, which is a slap given by the dead who haven’t been properly buried. I know lots of examples. Lots of examples of murderers who were never judged. Or worse than that. Murderers who even now are meting out justice, making laws. But there were lots who got a dead man’s cold slap. Murderers who lost their mind. Like one who went around with Luís Huici’s fountain pen. Do you know who Huici was? One of the most cultivated, most stylish men this city ever had. A forerunner, a shining star. Well, his assassin would swagger into the bar with the dead man’s fountain pen. And one day he decided to write with it. But all he could write was Luís Huici’s signature. Luís Huici’s name. He died a little later from an illness. That’s what they said. But I knew what it was. He got a cold slap.’