Nevada Days

by Bernardo Atxaga

  “That’s true,” responded Moon Cat. “But, according to Dr Mattriss, the most common kind of alien in the Nevada deserts are the carnivorous cuneiforms. If Fossett had met them rather than the ones selling immortality, they would have eaten him.”

  A third weirdo signed himself “American Soldier”.

  “I agree with some of the opinions given here and not with others. Fossett did have a problem with getting old. He was clearly losing his physical vigor, and he couldn’t accept it. Perfectly normal in a man who held more than a hundred world records. It was painful to him to go on living like a little old grandpa and die in his bed. He longed for a heroic death. That’s why he headed off from the Hilton Ranch in his Citabria and flew straight to Area 51. And that’s no joking matter. Any plane entering Area 51 airspace is immediately shot down by a missile, end of story. That’s how Fossett died. The remains of his Citabria would be crushed, turned into scrap and dumped in some warehouse.”

  I told Earle and Dennis about what I had read when we met at the coffee stall near the library.

  “If they had to pay what we’re going to pay for these coffees for every comment they made, they might have a little less faith in aliens,” Earle said. “That’s the trouble with faith. It’s free.”

  Dennis raised one finger, the way students do when they want to ask something in class.

  “You’re right, Bob, but Fossett is a special case,” he said. “Have you ever seen anything like it? Eight Civil Air Patrol planes and three helicopters, more than a thousand flying hours in total. Then there were the National Guard search parties who spent more than three weeks scouring the mountains, not to mention the Internet users who did their bit by scanning thousands of satellite photographs … So, yes, obviously, that stuff about aliens is all fake, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions about Fossett’s disappearance.”

  Earle addressed the student serving at the coffee stall.

  “Dennis will pay for our coffees, O.K.? I just noticed a little glimmer of faith, and he’s not getting away with that for free.”

  The student couldn’t possibly have known what we were talking about, but he burst out laughing.

  DREAM

  The stranger was wearing a black cape and a hood that covered his face. He was sitting hunched on a round rock. I thought he must be ill and I looked about me to see if there was anyone who could help him. I realised then that the rock was in the middle of the blue waters of Lake Tahoe. Where was the white boat that did tours of the lake and that could have transported the sick man to shore? Nowhere to be seen.

  I looked again at the stranger and saw that he had stood up.

  “Are you feeling better, Casey Jones?” I asked.

  “What do you mean by calling me ‘Casey Jones’?” he exclaimed, taking off his hood, and before me stood Bob Earle.

  I stammered a few words of apology, but he appeared to be thinking of something else. I noticed that he looked sad.

  “Time passes, and the fundamental themes begin to float to the surface the way buoys do that have become tangled up under the water,” he said. “And do you know what is the most important of those themes?”

  I shook my head.

  “Faust!”

  “Faust?”

  “Yes, Faust. Goethe’s not Marlowe’s. Haven’t you, at your age, already given it some thought?” he asked, surprised. “I’ll be frank with you: I wouldn’t hesitate to sell my soul to Mephistopheles if I could have my youth back. I’d do it right now!”

  A memory rose up from the depths of my consciousness, like those submerged buoys he mentioned. I saw Earle in a deserted park in Reno, sitting on a wooden bench. Beside him, wearing a short black dress, was Natalie, Mary Lore’s niece, the one who had shared our Thanksgiving supper, the captain of the university hockey team.

  “May I change metaphors, Bob?” I said. “I’d like to forget about buoys and water and revert to the earth.”

  “I’ve nothing against the earth,” he said, opening his arms wide as if to embrace the whole world. We were sitting now in an apparently neglected vegetable patch. There were roots and weeds and stones everywhere.

  “Bob, don’t expect to find gold coins beneath ordinary earth!” I exclaimed with unexpected vehemence, unexpected even to me. “If you dug a hole in this patch, for example, if you dug a thousand holes like the moles do, what do you think you would find? Gold coins? Love? No, Bob. Under the earth you will find only more earth. I mean it, Bob, don’t fall in love with Natalie! The story of Faust is just that, a story! Os vellos non deben de namorarse!”

  “Os vellos non deben de namorarse? What kind of language is that?” he asked.

  “Gallego,” I said. “It’s the title of a short play by Castelao.”

  The conversation had taken an absurd turn, even for a dream. I made myself wake up. There I was in the house in College Drive. Seven o’clock in the morning. Izaskun was sleeping snuggled up beneath a duvet. Out in the garden, the first blue jays of the morning were cackling in the trees, and underneath one tree sat the raccoon, gazing up at the birds.

  INDIAN COUNTRY GUIDE MAP

  The spring vacation was nearly upon us, and we asked Earle where he thought we should go. He didn’t hesitate. We should, he said, visit what was known as Indian Territory.

  We got out our guide to Nevada so that he could show us the route on one of the maps, but he didn’t even bother to open it.

  “No, no, we need a really good road map, and the A.A.A. maps are the best. They have one that includes the whole of Indian Territory.”

  “We’d better buy a copy,” Ángela said.

  “No, they’re not for sale. They’re issued free to A.A.A. members.”

  “But we’re not members,” I said.

  “Yes, but I am. We can go to their office right now if you like. It’s only ten minutes away.”

  I went with him. We drove five or six miles down the I-80 to a complex including offices, shops and restaurants. The parking lot was vast and full of advertising hoardings. A particularly large one showed a model with short blond hair, wearing a blue bra, and with the name of the lingerie manufacturer printed across her belly. I recognised her at once. It was Liliana, “the Russian flower” from the swimming pool. She had a gold chain around her neck; however, the pendant was no longer the Russian Orthodox cross, but the manufacturer’s logo.

  Earle noticed me looking at her.

  “She’s certainly pretty,” he said.

  “Her name’s Liliana.”

  As we were walking over to the A.A.A. office, Earle suddenly grasped my shoulder.

  “Be careful, my friend. Os vellos non deben de namorarse!” And he said this with a strong American accent of course. “Old men shouldn’t fall in love.”

  “Where did you hear that?” I asked. “Since when have you spoken gallego?”

  “Don’t be so surprised. Years ago, I took a few undergraduate classes in one or two of the Iberian languages.”

  I wasn’t so much surprised by the fact that he knew some gallego, as by the truly perplexing coincidence between my dream and reality. By then, however, we were inside the A.A.A. office, and so I said nothing.

  One of the tables was piled high with road maps, and, after first showing his membership card, Earle picked up several. One bore the words Indian Country Guide Map.

  “This is fantastic,” he said. “It covers five whole states.”

  When we got back onto the I-80 – Reno’s casinos were on our right, unlit by neon and looking strangely dull – it occurred to me that perhaps living in Reno wasn’t that easy for a man approaching seventy, however rich he might be and however fit and healthy.

  “Os vellos non deben de namorarse!” I said.

  “Never a truer word said!” Earle said, laughing.

  “Can I say something a little strange?”

  “Feel free.”

  “An idea has been going round and round in my head ever since the Thanksgiving supper.”

&
nbsp; We were just about to take the exit onto Virginia Street. Three more minutes and we would be at the university.

  Earle was listening.

  “If you remember, Mannix asked us to talk about our favourite smells. And one of the people sitting at the table chose liniment. The girl who plays hockey for the university team, Mary Lore’s niece …” “Natalie,” Earle said, looking slightly surprised. “How did you guess?” “Because of your reaction when she said the word ‘liniment’. Mannix pulled a face, but you didn’t. On the contrary.”

  “I can only conclude that you have alien powers. When you go back to Area 51, send greetings to your fellow aliens.”

  The university car park had a space reserved for emeritus professors. Earle parked there.

  “Don’t tell anyone, XY120. Not even telepathically,” he said when he turned off the engine. Then, with a great rolling of r’s, he added in Spanish: “Es amor prohibido.” A forbidden love.

  MARKING THE MAP

  We spread out the Indian Country Guide Map on the office desk. It was a big map, about 3½ feet by 3½ feet. Earle picked up a black pen and began marking out our itinerary, explaining as he went along.

  “If you leave Reno by the usual route, you’ll reach Carson City. Then you follow Route 95, which takes you through Tonopah, and when you reach Goldfield, you can always turn off and say hello to those aliens in Area 51. You can spend the night here, in Beatty. The second night here, in Las Vegas. Then you keep going until you reach Mesquite, and from there you go on to Utah, then over towards Arizona, until you come to Kayenta …”

  He mentioned many more names, marking in black the roads and the places where we could stay the night.

  MESSAGE TO L.

  BEATTY (NEVADA), MARCH 19, 2008

  Today we drove over three hundred miles across the desert, from Reno to Las Vegas, and now we’re in a small town called Beatty. It’s twenty past five in the afternoon, and the temperature is 28 degrees C. According to the motel receptionist, this is nothing to complain about, especially when you consider how hot it gets in summer. Death Valley, which is not that far from here, holds the world record for the hottest air temperature: 60 degrees C.

  The motel has two floors, but the first floor is really a casino, with one-armed bandits on either side and three poker tables in the middle. It was packed with people when we arrived, slightly emptier when I went back up to our room.

  I’m alone at the moment, and from the window I can see Ángela, Izaskun and Sara. They’re in the jacuzzi in the inner courtyard. The jacuzzi is tiny, just big enough for three.

  On the journey, when we left Route 50 and joined Route 95, leaving Fallon behind us, we saw rows of small domes. They looked like glass bubbles that had popped up from the ground. I was expecting something odd and unusual, because Earle had told me that this part of Nevada is home to the biggest arsenal in the world, and that all kinds of weapons and bombs – nuclear and plutonium and who knows what else – are stored in artificial underground caves, but having only seen the satellite images Dennis downloaded from the Internet for me, I hadn’t imagined anything like those rows and rows of domes. The satellite images had shown giant targets and landing strips traced out on the desert floor.

  We drove for miles and miles and still the domes were there. The whole area is fenced off, and there are lots of roadside signs: WARNING: RESTRICTED AREA. WARNING: NO TRESPASSING. WARNING: MILITARY INSTALLATION. PHOTOGRAPHY OF THIS AREA IS PROHIBITED. Very intimidating.

  About eighty miles from Beatty, three planes appeared; they looked like flying knives. A second later, they had gone and, in front of us, on the side of the road, as if the planes had deposited it there, was a white yacht. If it had been a real yacht, I would have found the image deeply disturbing – as Francis Bacon said, the mind cannot tolerate absurd images – but it had been converted into a house. A man wearing red shorts and a vest was hanging out his washing on the deck.

  We don’t know exactly how many miles Beatty is from Area 51, probably about eighty, but since the film “Independence Day”, this place has apparently become a magnet for tourists hoping for an encounter with a flying saucer or a little man with a very big head. Most, though, choose to visit Death Valley. That’s what we’re going to do tomorrow. We’re setting off really early, making sure to wear our hats and to apply plenty of sun cream, especially on our ears.

  MESSAGE TO L.

  LAS VEGAS (NEVADA), MARCH 22, 2008

  We’re in Las Vegas now, in the Excalibur Hotel. With its red and blue cone-shaped towers, it looks like an imitation of the medieval castles you read about in fairy tales. The casino on the ground floor is huge, and is constantly criss-crossed, as if they were on skates, by uniformed employees offering customers various forms of entertainment. As soon as you escape one, you’re tackled by another: “How’re you doing, sir? Take a little look at this. You won’t find a better show in the whole of Las Vegas.”

  When we were walking down Las Vegas Boulevard, we were given a handout, a black-and-white photocopy, entitled Things to Do with Children. So Las Vegas does think about children too, although, of course, it thinks much more about other things. Ten minutes after receiving that photocopy, and when I was alone – Ángela and the girls had gone to see the gondolas in a hotel called the Venetian – another distributor of leaflets handed me a very different one, Las Vegas Sundown: sixteen full-colour pages containing about fifty photographs of girls: Susie, Brandi, Amy, Celeste, Angel and Robin (“college students”), Nissi, Roxy, Candy, Kiki and many others, all half-naked. “Real girls. Directly to your room. Parties for newly-weds. Private parties.” And there they are, Tina and Amber – “for those for whom one girl simply isn’t enough” – two girls who don’t look much older than twelve.

  MESSAGE TO L.

  SPRINGDALE (UTAH), MARCH 23, 2008

  Last night, I went downstairs to the casino in the Hotel Excalibur to have a glass of whiskey, and a man came over to me. He was a rather coarse-looking fellow in his fifties, with muscular arms and a bit of a belly. His breath smelled of drink.

  “Don’t you recognise me?” he asked.

  To judge by his accent, he came from somewhere near the village where I was born, Asteasu. He took off his baseball cap. He had curly hair.

  “You’re a plumber, aren’t you?” I said at last. He had done some work at my parents’ house.

  He nodded.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “We’re on holiday.” And he pointed to a group of men at the other end of the bar.

  “We’re all plumbers,” he said. Then he called the waiter over and raised my glass. “Bring him another one of these.”

  He explained that they saved up all the money they accumulated from trade discounts and then, once a year, organised “a bit of a jaunt”, a Candy, Roxy, Susie kind of jaunt.

  I took a sip of my second whiskey.

  “What about your family, what do they have to say?”

  “You mean my wife?” he asked.

  He started to explain, but then stopped and went over to his friends. He returned with a camera.

  “We’ve got hundreds of pictures like this,” he said, pressing a button. The photographs started scrolling past on the little screen.

  They hadn’t been taken in Las Vegas, but in rather more religious places. In most of them, the plumbers were seen posing in front of or inside various colonial churches. I recognised the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

  “Mexico City,” he said.

  The plan was a simple one. First, they went to Mexico and spent two days “furiously taking photos”. Then they flew to Las Vegas, where they were spending four days “having a high old time”. On the seventh day they would be flying back to Madrid via Atlanta.

  I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe, mother of the alibi!” I cried, raising my glass to him. He was not amused.

  “I’m a good Catholic, you know,” he replied in rathe
r wounded tones. I thought he was going to get seriously annoyed, but it went no further than that. “After all, if the President of the United States can do what he did with Monica, I reckon a plumber can too. That’s democracy for you.”

  “Long live Clinton!” I cried. That second whiskey was clearly having its effect.

  The waiter happened to be standing right in front of me, and he smiled broadly.

  “I agree, sir. He’s certainly the best President for us Latinos.”

  When I went up to our room, the girls were watching a film, and Ángela was sitting in an armchair, reading. On the wall behind her hung a large picture of Merlin.

  “You can learn a lot in Las Vegas,” I said.

  “Who from? The architects?” she asked, without looking up.

  “No, the plumbers.”

  With the aid of those two whiskies and that silly joke, I slept like a log.

  Right now, we’re in a small town called Springdale, in Mormon territory. Tomorrow, we’re going to visit Zion National Park.

  MESSAGE TO L.

  TORREY (UTAH), MARCH 26, 2008

  The place we’ve stopped at today is called Capitol Reef National Park. It reminds me of a Zen garden, with gentle sandy paths and rocks worn smooth by the elements.

  We walked a lot, going up and down hills, seeing a stone arch here, a rushing stream there; further off, a beautiful clump of trees. Fortunately, it was only when we came back that we noticed the official sign explaining what to do if you met a mountain lion.

  Before leaving the park, we were strolling along a narrow path, when we heard the sound of running feet. It was a herd of deer galloping through the trees. Then we happened on a wooden cabin. We looked through the window and saw that there were desks inside. A sign explained that this was a school built by the Mormon pioneers.

  I felt like phoning my mother, because it reminded me of the ‘school’ where she taught, in an old farmhouse in Asteasu, but I thought she probably wouldn’t remember and I would only confuse her, so I didn’t call.