Cold Skin

by Albert Sanchez Pinol

  My descent into bestiality did nothing to alter the pleasure she gave me. We made love so often and with such intensity that yellow sparks appeared before my eyes. At one point, I could no longer distinguish where my body ended and where the cottage, the island or her body began. Afterwards, I stretched out on the floor with her cold breath against my neck. I roughly threw my cigarette aside and got dressed. My mind was taken up with trivial matters as I buckled my belt. I left the cottage. The cold air outside sent a shiver through my bones.

  The drama unfolded barely one hundred yards from the lighthouse. I had decided, if only for a change of pace, to follow the north coast instead of taking the forest path. It was a tortuous route. The ocean was to my right; on the left was an impenetrable line of trees. Their exposed roots emerged from clumps of earth and debris brought in by the undertow. Often I had to leap from stone to stone so as not to topple into the waves. I was singing an anthem from my student days. And in the middle of the third stanza, I saw smoke on the horizon. It was a fine black line, which twisted in the wind before rising. A ship! Some mischance must have set it off course, bringing it close to the island. Yes, it was a ship! I stumbled haphazardly back to the lighthouse.

  “Gruner! A ship!” And, almost without hesitating, “Come help me light the beams!”

  Gruner was chopping wood. He surveyed the horizon with indifference.

  “They shall not be able to see it,” he pronounced. “It is too far away.”

  “Help me send an SOS!”

  I hastened up the staircase. He followed unhurriedly. “It is too far,” he repeated, “too far. They will not be able to see it.” He was right. At that distance, the lighthouse’s beams resembled the flickering of an insect trying to signal the moon with its fluttering. But my intense longing gave rise to optical illusions. For a fleeting instant, the vessel seemed to turn in our direction. That metallic speck seemed to become increasingly tangible. Of course I was mistaken. It slipped over the horizon’s edge. For a while longer, one could still discern the trail of smoke, growing ever thinner. Then there was nothing.

  Until the very last minute, I sent one frantic SOS after another. There were humans inside that ship, an entire multitude. Families, friends and lovers were no doubt waiting for them. Their final destinations must have seemed ever so distant. But what could they know of isolation? Of me? Of Gruner or Aneris? To them, this world, my prison, was nothing more than a distant outline, an insignificant and deserted blotch.

  “They do not see it,” Gruner said flatly, with neither glee nor bitterness in his voice. He simply gazed impassively in the direction of the ship, still gripping the axe and blinking like an owl.

  “Look at you! You have not moved a muscle! Just what kind of man are you, Gruner? You won’t help me with either the Sitauca or humans. Willingly or not, you have sabotaged every sensible plan of survival or escape. If castaways had unions, you would be the perfect scab!”

  Gruner evaded me and made as if to leave the lighthouse. But I followed him down the stairs, hurling insults at his back. He pretended not to hear me and merely muttered abominations in some German dialect. I caught him by the sleeve. He pulled away; I snatched again at both his elbow and his shouldered rifle. We shot a stream of mutual accusations at each other. The sighting of the ship had burst the dam that had kept us from outright hostility. It was a long while before I realised that Gruner had grown silent.

  Gruner’s mouth hung open, mute. His head turned from side to side. The entire coast was swarming with tiny Sitauca. They were half submerged in the ocean or hidden between the rocks and water, like crabs. Their webbed hands and feet were almost transparent. A horsey snort burst forth from Gruner’s nose. He stared up at the sky, the diaphanous light and finally the shadowy silhouettes sheltering themselves on the briny shore. He resembled a man lost in the desert who can no longer distinguish reality from a mirage. He took a step north. The little ones hid behind the stones. The majority were barely a yard high. The sight of those creatures was inevitably soothing. Even the tide seemed to crash with care, for fear of injuring them. They rode the water like a cushion while observing us with curiosity.

  All of a sudden, Gruner’s rifle was off his shoulder. He hastily fumbled with the lock.

  “You won’t do it, will you?”

  Gruner swallowed a mouthful of spit. He saw there was no threat. They were children, mere children, who did not seek the cover of darkness to kill. And they had chosen that precise moment, just when the days were beginning to grow longer. Finally, Gruner decided to amble back to the lighthouse, distrustfully leaving me in his wake.

  One bullet aimed at the sky would have scattered them. But he did not shoot. Why not? If they were just irrational monsters, if we only owed them nothing but suffering and revenge, why did he not simply kill them? I do not think he himself understood the extent of his sacrifice. Or perhaps he did.

  The little Sitauca, timid as sparrows and prudent as mice, pressed toward the heart of the island. In other words, the lighthouse. They did not dare to venture past the coastline those first days. The creatures made us feel like animals in a menagerie. Hundreds of eyes like large green apples scrutinised our every movement and spied on us for hours on end. We were unsure what would be the best attitude to adopt. Especially Gruner. A harmless enemy utterly confounded the man. This puzzlement brought to light his contradictory nature. Gruner’s scruples set the limits of his stubbornness.

  Gruner turned into a manner of human spider. He continued to scuttle out of the lighthouse at first light. The little creatures, fascinated, would begin to appear several hours later. He turned a blind eye, but swiftly confined himself to his quarters. Gruner often shut Aneris in with him, binding her ankle to a bed leg. However, he sometimes ignored her presence completely. His behaviour was more erratic than ever.

  Gruner had a quite pungent body odour. It was another one of his peculiarities. The sleeping quarters became deeply impregnated with his marked scent. No European nose has ever met with the likes of such a primal stench. The shutters were drawn to stave off imaginary dangers, throwing the space into darkness. I entered one fine day and detected his presence with my nose more than anything else. His murky shape was alongside a narrow window, keeping watch over the floating nursery the island had become. Light from the chink in the wall outlined his eye sockets like a carnival mask. It was not a bedroom, it was a cave.

  “They are nothing more than children, Gruner. Children do not kill, they play,” I said, half in and half out of the trapdoor. The fellow did not even glance in my direction. He put a finger to his lips in reply, demanding silence.

  I also experienced a certain uneasiness. The creatures were otherworldly and inscrutable. They waged wars on us, only to send their children out onto the battlefield. Perhaps they considered us to be a sort of venereal disease, a malady only harmful to adults. Regardless, it did not take a genius to see the connection between the shotgun in the sand and the children’s arrival. What sort of mentality was at work? Were they grand strategists or utterly irresponsible? How would they make their wishes known to us? Our rifles had always been thwarted by naked flesh. I had called for a truce with a useless weapon and they sent us a bevy of innocent bodies. Was this the most perverse or the most perfect logic of all?

  The little ones quickly realised that I would cause them no harm. They began to step on dry land over the days that followed, while still keeping a distance. Although I did my best to appear serious, I often could not help smiling. The little ones observed me fixedly, doing nothing but stare and stare. Their disproportionately large eyes and open mouths seemed to be under the spell of a fairground hypnotist.

  I penetrated deep into the forest one morning. A fur coat padded my shoulders, bulky trousers kept out the fallen snow, and I warmed my chest with crossed arms. It was not exactly a restful nap. My eyelashes batted open at the sound of a murmur close by.

  There were approximately fifteen or twenty of them. They hung from the
branches at varying heights, peering at me. The watchful state I was in made everything seem unreal. The trees were not their natural habitat and they clambered up them awkwardly. Their bodies were so fragile, so vulnerable, that I gave in to their curiosity. I feared they would be startled if I got up, and might get injured while running away. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

  “Away with you,” I said, striving not to raise my voice. “Go back to the water.”

  They made no move. I was encircled by a troop of midget spies. The majority were still and silent. Some whispered, while others wrestled one another in amicable dispute. None of them took their eyes off me. I could not resist touching the feet of the one closest by. He was seated on a thick branch, swinging his legs. The vegetation came alive with a collective giggle when my fingers grazed his foot.

  It did not take long to gain their trust. So much so that the children became a genuine annoyance. Small bald-headed figures ranged all about me everywhere I went. They were just like the flocks of pigeons that throng the plazas of every great city. My waist was often hemmed in by a mass of heads. I would make a brusque gesture to shoo them away, but they only sidled a few paces back. The boldest creatures nipped at my knees and elbows, retreated only to charge again in a barrage of gooselike honking. All bedlam let loose if I ever attempted to sit down. Countless fingers fought over hanks of hair on my head, sideburns and chin. I slapped a few here and there. But I felt the sting of punishment more than they did.

  In truth, I grew accustomed to their attentions in a matter of days. We sported about the lighthouse from morning till night. The only precaution I took was to always keep the lighthouse door fastened. The creatures would scrounge around otherwise. They crept inside as soon as the door was left open, taking the most diverse objects from the storeroom: candles, cups, pencils, paper, pipes, combs, axes and bottles. I once caught a little thief loaded down like an ant with an accordion twice his size. Another day it was a cartridge of dynamite. Who knows where they found it. I caught them, to my horror, playing a game quite similar to rugby using the cartridge as a ball. All the same, it would be unfair to brand them thieves. The concept of stealing meant nothing to them. The fact that an object existed was enough reason for them to appropriate it. They were indifferent to my scolding. They seemed to be saying that those things were there for the taking and belonged to no one. All my attempts at pedagogy, whether with feigned threats or affection, were useless. Shutting the door kept them out of the storeroom, but the exterior defences suffered for it. The cracks in the wall were resplendent with bottle shards in gaudy tones of yellow, green and red, mottled by salt water. The children yanked them out of the wall to fashion costume jewelry for their games. It was a black day when they discovered that the network of tins and string was an ideal toy. They dragged the clanking mass of rope and metal behind them while they ran. As everyone knows, children’s crazes are even more contagious than adults’. I spent half the day repairing the damage. I roared like a dragon whenever I caught them being naughty. Since I was known to be harmless, they pulled their ears at me with two fingers.

  I began to view the children as canaries in a coal mine. The Sitauca would never attack as long as their children were in our midst. I was more concerned about the young ones’ safety than my own. I did not like to think how Gruner would react if the little band dared to open the trapdoor to his quarters. The most mischievous of them all had the look of an extremely unsightly triangle. A pair of broad shoulders angled sharply down to narrow, almost feminine thighs, as though nature had not yet determined the monster’s gender. He could twist his face into a rogues’ gallery of grotesque grimaces. The others would come near me only in packs, finding safety in numbers. Not him. The fellow often paced back and forth in front of me. He took firm steps, lifting up his elbows and knees with a martial petulance. I ignored him. He responded to my disdain by ranting directly in my ear. In those cases, the best thing was to take him by the shoulders and rotate his body 180 degrees. The little fellow retraced his steps, just like a windup toy. But on one occasion he went too far.

  I was sitting on a rock as the sun was setting one day, trying to mend an already ragged jersey. The children had gone beneath the waves for the evening. All but the Triangle. He was the first to appear every morning and the last to leave at night. The little creature came up to me and began to bellow directly in my ear. I was not skilled with a needle and those strident cries were an added nuisance. Suddenly I realised he was clinging to me. Hands and feet circled my chest and waist. Not only that, he caught my ear in his mouth and began sucking on the lobe. He received a sharp whack of course.

  My Lord, how the creature sobbed. The little Triangle darted about, crying and screeching horribly all the while. At first, I could not help laughing, but then regretted it immediately. One could easily see that this creature was different from the others. He ran tearfully toward the north coast, stopping short where the waves struck the sand. It was as if, all of a sudden, he remembered that no solace was to be found beneath those waves. Without a pause, he headed weeping toward the south shore. This time, the creature did not dare touch the tide. His tears were mixed with disconsolate shudders. The Triangle roamed as aimlessly as a spinning top.

  Sometimes compassion takes us by surprise, like an unexpected vista through the trees. I asked myself if that submarine world was so very much different from ours; they must have fathers and mothers. The Triangle was proof that they also had orphans. Unable to stand his sobs, I threw the creature over my shoulder like a sack and brought him back to the rock. I carried on with my sewing. He latched onto my body once more and fell asleep while sucking on my ear. I pretended not to notice.

  14

  I knew that what appeared to be peace was actually a precarious truce, renewed every hour the guns and monsters were silent. But the Sitauca seemed further away as each day passed. I took great pains not to think about how they were sure to return, sooner or later. Wishful thinking is the most tenacious of human frailties.

  The Antarctic winter was giving way to a savage spring. Every day the light shone a bit longer, stealing precious moments away from the darkness. The storms were no longer so brutal; the flakes fell less thickly. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether it rained or snowed. We were almost never hemmed in by fog. The clouds were much higher in the sky, but they were certainly not silent.

  I refused to take part in Gruner’s nightly vigils. There was no need. But I did not take anything for granted. The children’s presence did not just call a truce; it gave both sides a much needed respite.

  I told him, “We won’t be attacked, Gruner. The children are our shield. They will not touch us, by night or day, as long as the little ones are with us. Rest.”

  He counted and polished his bullets.

  “We can begin to worry the day the little ones fail to show up on the island. Perhaps something will happen then, I know not what.”

  Gruner opened his silk handkerchief, counted the bullets and knotted the fabric up again with care. He treated me as if I had never set foot inside the lighthouse.

  Then there was the question of the Triangle. Once I let him near me, it was impossible to get rid of the creature. He slept with me every night, unaware of our anguish. The Triangle was a bundle of nerves, scampering under the blankets like a giant rat. It took him quite a while to calm down. He would finally fall asleep by sucking on my ear, clinging to me like an infant and breathing noisily though his nose like a clogged drain. But the creature was a blessing. The egotism of childhood put our suffering into perspective. While I was worrying about how to end that cosmic war, he was enjoying a warm bed.

  Gruner sensed the perils of such an apparently harmless activity. We were playing, and that was all. But play, no matter how innocent, creates a sense of fellowship and equality. Borders cease to exist when people play together. There are no hierarchies, no past. The game is a space open to all. Naturally, Gruner felt threatened by something so simple and friendly.r />
  Before he went inside, I threw a snowball at him, which smashed against his neck.

  “Come now, Gruner, enjoy yourself a bit,” I said. “Who knows, we might get out of this yet.”

  His glare branded me a traitor. Another snowball might have been one too many.

  I had unwittingly, and without even trying, developed a routine. It was the start of a new day. After a bloody battle, the first rays of light divided the terrestrial and celestial realms in two. We had been given a shock at the last minute more than once. The island was practically devoid of life. There were no birds or insects. The wind and waves were the only sounds to accompany our own. Gruner and I dreaded calm weather. Smooth waters and a light breeze set our nerves on edge. We would set off flares at the slightest noise, convinced that the Sitauca were coming. But my outlook was changing. It took a great deal of effort to recall my past, a time when silence did not pose a threat. The island was bathed in light. Bands of little creatures gambolled around the lighthouse’s walls. Gruner holed up in his fortress like an elephant cowed by mosquitoes. It was his way of turning his back on reality.

  The Triangle had princely privileges. The mite hung from my neck and chest as he pleased. It was hard to believe.

  I had kept the Sitauca out of the lighthouse for months with cannon fire. And yet, I was unable to disentangle myself from a creature which barely came up to my waist.

  The Triangle had the hotheaded nature of impetuous youth. Throughout the day, he led hordes of young Sitauca all over the island. He dropped from exhaustion when the other children left, no matter how rough the terrain. I would find him curled up beneath a tree or rock crevice and carry him to my mattress. I do not know why I wrapped the creature in a blanket. The Sitauca seemed to be indifferent to the heat and cold. But I covered him nonetheless.