Cold Skin

by Albert Sanchez Pinol

  Nevertheless, I was neither afraid of nor concerned about Gruner. It was not long before I came to expect from him a sort of twisted camaraderie. Gruner did not seem to have a treacherous nature. Who knew if it was out of intrinsic nobility or the savage veneer of rugged island life. He lived for the future – although in his case the word “future” referred strictly to “tomorrow”. Once I was within the lighthouse, our coexistence was taken as a given. My very presence abolished the shared history of our pettiness, animosity and threats.

  I was living through an exceptional epoch, more than willing to swallow any inconvenience in order to survive. The great difference in our characters did not bother me; I was prepared to accept that. But as in all marriages, the most insufferable dramas were brought about by the least material of concerns. For example, he utterly lacked a sense of humour. Gruner laughed only to himself, never in complicity. He would look disconcertedly at me whenever I would speak in jest, as if dimly aware that the joke was funny but not knowing why.

  One morning, a light drizzle fell while the sun shone splendidly through the shower. I was reading Frazer’s book, which according to Gruner belonged to the lighthouse, not to him. In other words, it must have been left behind by one of its builders. I was reading drowsily and somewhat uninterestedly when Gruner passed by. He laughed, head bowed in a futile attempt to contain himself. I will never know if he was trying to tell me something or merely happened to be wandering by. He laughed and laughed, punctuating it with an odd punchline from a half-told joke:

  “… he wasn’t a sodomite, he was an Italian.”

  It was a cavernous and infectious chortle. Gruner repeated, “He wasn’t a sodomite, he was an Italian.” As he climbed the stairs, he laughed and retold the end of that mysterious anecdote.

  The next time I heard him laugh was another matter entirely. I had just retired to my mattress after a particularly violent attack. The danger had passed; it was growing light out. I was settling down to sleep when a series of noises pulled me from my bed. The little beast was moaning. Was he beating her? No. The mascot was soon drowned out by a lustful Gruner. I could not believe my ears, and wondered if I might not be hallucinating. No, no, I was not. They were most certainly moans of pleasure. The bed upstairs banged rhythmically against the bare wooden planks dividing from their sport. Minute wood shavings began to drift down, as if it were snowing inside the lighthouse. My head and shoulders were soon sprinkled with those flakes of wood. The lighthouse’s circular form magnified and echoed every noise as my imagination envisaged the scene above with incredulity. The fornication continued for an hour or two until it was brought to an abrupt halt by a crescendo of grunts and thrusts.

  How could he lie with one of the very same monsters that plagued us every night? How did he manage to justify the act, in defiance of all the obstacles set down by civilisation and nature? It was worse than cannibalism, which is almost understandable under desperate circumstances. Gruner’s sexual incontinence was worthy of a clinical study.

  Naturally, discretion and good manners did not allow me to comment on Gruner’s zoophilia. At the same time, it was obvious that I knew. He failed to mention it out of carelessness, not shame. It was Gruner himself who brought the matter up one day in passing. Without showing excessive interest or disdain, I posed a question of a practical nature:

  “Does she suffer from dyspareunia?”

  “Disparoon … what?”

  “Dyspareunia, painful copulation.”

  We were eating at the table and his mouth was opened wide for a bite, the spoon poised in midair. Gruner never finished his meal. He laughed so hard I thought his lower jaw would come unhinged. His guffaws welled up from his belly, chest and neck. The man almost lost his balance from slapping his legs so. Shedding great big tears, he paused to wipe them away and resumed his cackling. Gruner laughed and laughed; he began to polish a rifle but could not stop snickering. His hilarity did not let up until it grew dark and the night demanded our undivided attention.

  However, when the topic of the mascot happened to come up again and I enquired why she wore that absurd scarecrow outfit, that dirty, stretched-out and fraying jersey, the answer was as emphatic as it was final:

  “For decency’s sake.”

  That was the way of the man.

  7

  JANUARY 11

  The Japanese philosopher Musashi once said that only a select few appreciate the art of war. Gruner is one of them. The battle is defensive at night. Amorous forays with the mascot fill his days. It is hard to tell which of the two activities impassions him most. Gruner discovered a pair of wolf traps among my supplies. The irons are as cruel as shark jaws. He set out the snares well within range of our bullets. The assault last night was comparatively mild. Two monsters were captured, three killed. These casualties were strictly unnecessary if we are to follow Gruner’s doctrine of conserving resources. He went to inspect the snares in the morning, driven by an unspeakable desire for battle trophies. The monsters, in their craving for meat, had already taken the cadavers away and the snared monsters with them. The loss frustrated him greatly.

  JANUARY 13

  To continue on with Musashi: A good warrior is not defined by the cause he defends, but rather by the meaning he derives from the struggle. Sadly, this aphorism is meaningless at the lighthouse.

  JANUARY 14

  Early evening: the sky is unusually free of clouds. There is an impressive array of fixed and shooting stars. The sight brings tears to my eyes. My thoughts dwell on the latitude and the positioning of the firmament. I am so far from home that the constellations have come unhinged from their usual positions and I am unable to recognise them. But we must accept that there is no such thing as chaos. It is simply the human incapacity to assimilate new arrangements and orderings in the world. The universe is not susceptible to chaos; we are.

  JANUARY 16

  Nothing. No attack.

  JANUARY 17

  Nothing.

  JANUARY 18

  Nothing, nothing at all. Where have they gone?

  JANUARY 19–25

  The austral summer is fading timidly, but with grandeur. I spotted a butterfly today. Here, inside the lighthouse. It flitted by, indifferent to our torment. Gruner made a halfhearted attempt to crush it in his palm. It would have been a shame. The cold is encroaching and I doubt we shall see another. But it would be impossible to express such a sentiment to a man like him.

  This leads me to a more disquieting and less wistful reflection. The summer nights were exceedingly short. Now we are inexorably heading toward the winter, or rather the darkness. The monsters always swarm at night. Their strikes grow ever longer. How will it be when the nights last twenty hours or more?

  JANUARY 26

  Due to the reduced dimensions of the island, objects tend to erode beneath our gaze. My eyes have scrutinised every surface a thousand times. We speak of the lighthouse and its environs as if it were an entire state. Every nook and cranny has a name; every tree, every stone. An oddly shaped branch is baptised immediately. Distances are distended out of proportion. To hear us speak, anyone would think we were referring to remote places. Actually, everything is within walking distance.

  Time also becomes relative. A drop of water may suspend from a spiderweb for centuries before it falls. But then again, a week passes in the blink of an eye.

  JANUARY 27

  Thanks to the lighthouse’s peculiar acoustics, I cannot help overhearing erotic murmurings. Gruner generally sets to his pleasure at the first glimpses of dawn, once I have gone downstairs. He can draw out the activity for two, three or even four hours. His moans occur with clockwork regularity. He sounds like a thirsty man crossing the desert, in the throes of a monotonous agony. I sometimes think he could lose himself in that syncopated rhythm for days on end.

  The mascot is curiously insatiable. One can chart the progress of her perpetual arousal, from the accelerating spasms to the culminating climax that finishes the job.
The effervescent explosion of volcanic and long-drawn-out squeals occurs every one and a half minutes. This acute ecstasy is sustained for twenty full seconds, and far from ending, the whole process begins again. Gruner pounds the beast over and over with complete indifference until he consummates his pleasure with a low oath.

  JANUARY 28

  Crabs form a part of our diet. They would be considered inedible in Europe. Their shells are extremely thick, beneath which there is a great deal of fat and precious little meat. But we have no other choice than to accept them gladly. At first, I leapt like an ingenuous fool among the rocks on the coast. The crabs skittered down into the crevices, evading me with ease. The waves splashed hollowly against the crags, dousing me with the spray. The whole endeavour was not so much diverting as it was perilous. I had merely intended to enliven the lighthouse’s stores, but my fingers had grown stiff in the icy water. I was unused to such small but constant hardships.

  Luckily, Gruner happened by, commenting, “Friend, you look like a lame goat.”

  He was heading for the forest with a hatchet swung over his shoulder. The mascot followed close behind. He called out a command with a smack of his lips. The beast slithered between the stones like a snake, snatching up the crabs with insulting ease. She also collected a species of mussel, which adhered so firmly to the stones that I had not even considered removing them. The job clearly seemed to require both a scalpel and a hammer. The mascot made do with her fingernails. I was relegated to holding the basket open for the beast. The mascot would occasionally rip off a crab’s leg and swallow it whole before throwing the rest of it in with the others.

  I discovered an edible mushroom in the forest, my sole contribution to our diet. It clings to tree roots with the same tenacity as the crustaceans adhere to the rocks. One must extricate them with a knife. The fungi are sure to be of little nutritional value, but I gather them anyway. I also crush the roots of various sylvan plants, reducing them to a vitamin paste.

  As Gruner is such a reticent and silent man, I feel compelled to register one of our more voluble exchanges.

  “And how do you know the herbs are not poisonous?” he asked, looking doubtfully at a syrup concocted from mixing the paste with gin.

  “Herbs are like people. Each one possesses unique characteristics. They cannot be labelled simply as medicinal or poisonous,” I answered, taking a swig. “It is a question of knowing what one is dealing with, that is all.”

  “The world is filled with horrid people, very horrid. One should have to be a perfect child to trust in human kindness.”

  “The inherent moral worth of an individual is irrelevant. The question is whether people, once thrown together, are able to form a functioning society. The balance of a man’s worth does not depend on inclinations of character. Imagine a pair of castaways, two exceedingly detestable characters. Separately, they may be odious. But once at each other’s mercy, they would opt for the only possible solution: unite in order to create the best living conditions possible. What would their personal failings matter?”

  But I couldn’t be sure he was listening. Gruner gulped the swill down and said, “We drink schnapps in Austria. I prefer gin.”

  Gruner and I also fish. He had long since placed a complete array of rods along the southern coast before my arrival. They were driven into the rock fissures, like slender staffs projecting out into the open sea. Contrary to what one might think, our problem was not so much the meagreness as the overabundance of our catch. The fish at these latitudes are either truly dimwitted or they simply have never seen a hook before. Their combined bulk and vigour, however, is enough to snap a rod in two. To forestall this problem, Gruner thrust the poles firmly into the crevices. He fashioned snares out of steel wire with hooks shaped like chicken feet. Despite all his efforts, a fishing rod gets lost now and then. One can still see them tossing in the currents a full day after having been rent from their moorings. We burst into impotent rage upon discovering such losses. Still, one must admit that the island sustains us. The provisions I brought with me complement and enliven our meals, but our survival does not depend on them.

  JANUARY 29

  My daily routine: I abandon my post on the balcony at the break of dawn. After having removed my rifle, I stretch out on the mattress, often still fully dressed. I lose consciousness like an oil lamp being snuffed out. Nature dictates the length of my slumber. I lost the ability to recall my dreams upon entering the lighthouse.

  I generally wake at midday, or thereabouts. I breakfast on a tin plate, like a prisoner. If the weather is exceptionally fine, I may take the plate outside. I see to my toilette once back inside. This is the highlight of my day. But it seems that my hair or at least those locks on the nape of my neck have changed colour permanently. They turned ash grey during those first days of terror and remain so still. My wardrobe is quite simple. The trousers I wear most often are made from a coarse cloth, ideally suited for rough labour. A sailor’s high-necked sweater tops several layers of undershirts.

  I do callisthenics twice a week even if it rains, as it often does. For want of a barber in these remote climes, I hack off my own hair in the style of a medieval page. But I am quite scrupulous about shaving. Why do I so love the feel of perfectly smooth cheeks? Sometimes the distinction between barbarity and civilisation is dependent on such an insignificant thing as a good shave. Gruner’s unruly beard disgusts me. He takes very little care of it. One would think that he went at it with a hatchet. It is far worse when he sunbathes outside, with his back leaning against the lighthouse wall. Gruner adopts a crocodile-like stillness while the mascot agilely runs her fingers through his beard. I finally realised one day why she did so. It was to feast on the morsels lodged in his tangle.

  The rest of the day is given over to a series of chores, which Gruner and I have divided between us. I collect firewood. The logs take time to dry and must be piled in the shelter of the lighthouse long before they may be burned. In the end, the work may be useless, but it gives us an illusion, however false, of the future. I gather and store the fishing rods, repair and reinforce the network of tins, smash bottles and search for rusty nails to make the cracks in the stone even more deadly. It is inconceivable to someone outside the lighthouse how a scant quarter of an inch of bare space between one key and another or between two shards of glass may become an obsession. I also carve fresh stakes of wood, keep track of our dwindling supply of ammunition, and ration the food supplies. Gruner does not argue with my schemes as a general rule. For example, I proposed that we incise a star into the base of an ordinary bullet cartridge, transforming it into a fragmentary shell. I also suggested that we insert short, sharp stakes into the natural fissures of rock around the lighthouse so that the monsters would injure the soles of their feet as they surged forward. The idea came straight out of Roman military strategy. It obviously does not keep them from drawing near, but it certainly makes it more difficult. Indeed, this innovation has cast a lugubrious pallor over our surroundings.

  I dispose of leisure time until nightfall, if such a concept means anything here at the lighthouse.

  FEBRUARY 1

  A lovely evening. The horizon resembled a colossal stage-set as day drew to a close; the light was sucked away, beaten down and overlaid with washes of ink. It was as though a giant brush had painted the sky black, letting the minute sparks of stars shine through. While on watch, I noticed we were being spied on by an unusually small and early-rising monster. The beast was so well hidden I shouldn’t have spotted him. But the little creature happened to be perched in the very tree where I had unsuccessfully attempted to murder Gruner. He observed me like a two-armed mollusc. I was sitting on a stool, smoking. I set the cigarette on the railing and calmly took aim. The monster did not associate my posture with imminent death. He remained in the tree, gazing at me in puzzlement. His heart was set squarely in my line of fire. A shot rang out. The monster toppled, pulling a jumble of leaves down along with him. I lost sight of the thing for an
instant. But his legs got caught up in branches before hitting the ground. The monster’s arms dangled loosely; he was dead. The bullet had gone straight through his chest.