I dashed along the corridor in the West Wing, past Ishmael’s bedroom and discovered, as I imagined, that the door into the country garden was unlocked. The keys were hanging in the lock. I removed them, cautiously slipped outside and locked the door behind me.
As I passed the purple bougainvillea, smelling a hint of jasmine in the air, I heard a flapping sound, like a seal playing, coming from the direction of the pool to my right. Laughter cut through the darkness. The laughter was from Oñé.
I trampled over spikey grass, my feet tingling as I realised that I had forgotten to put on my shoes. It was freezing. There was still snow on the mountains. As I approached the pool, a man heaved himself out of the water and ran towards the labyrinth. Oñé lay on his back floating in the pool. Was he dead? I didn’t hesitate but dived in and thrashed through the water towards him.
He rolled over in the water and began to laugh. “This is such a funny game we play together. You feel that you have to rescue me.”
I grabbed him around the neck and held his head under the water for a couple of seconds. I pulled him up and he spluttered. For the first time I saw fear in his eyes.
“Who was in the pool with you, you little brat?”
He pushed me away and swam to the edge. “There was no-one in the pool. I will tell Sophia what you are doing to me. That will be the end of your wedding plans.”
If I could have ducked his head under the water once more I would have held it there for more than a few more seconds. As he pulled himself out of the pool he scraped his knees against the rough edge; in the darkness I saw blood trickling from his knees.
I yelled, “I know that there was someone there. Who was it?”
Oñé looked at me, wiping tears from his eyes. “There was no-one there. No-one threw stones at the window. You imagined it.”
I shouted at him. “You pretended to be asleep. I didn’t mention anyone throwing stones against the window. You heard them. You’re too young to be a good liar. What’s going on?”
He smeared blood from his knees across his cheeks. He hugged himself with his arms crossed over his shoulders and his body shaking. “I’m cold. I’m going to die here. What will you tell my mother then?”
He turned and ran towards the labyrinth. I followed him to the entrance. I couldn’t go inside. I heard leaves rustling as he pushed forward. I sat on the ground outside, waiting. I looked at my watch. It was half-past midnight.
I called softly to him. “Oñé please don’t do this. It’s time for bed. I’m exhausted – you must be also.”
I heard something growling from inside the labyrinth. It sounded like a large cat, a panther or a puma. Then I heard a couple of coughs. I didn’t know if it was from Oñé or whatever animal was inside. I looked around for a long stick. There was one by the pool. Oñé must have been playing with it. I picked it up, returning to the entrance, prepared to enter as Oñé ran out.
He threw his arms around me. “I’m sorry.”
I hugged him. “So am I. Forgive me.”
I held him close to me for what seemed to be a long time. I buried my head into his wet hair. For the first time it felt as if he was truly my boy, my child. I had a warm feeling in my heart. I had a sense of being a part of Nature which wanted me to care for this boy as my own. I kissed the top of his wet head. I knew that he didn’t want this moment to stop either. We both wanted it to go on and on and on.
I knelt on the ground, took his hands and asked, “I heard a noise from the labyrinth. Is there an animal in there with your friend?”
“I’ll show you in the morning. I want to go to bed now.”
I slept on the carpet on the floor in his bedroom, with a duvet to cover me. I listened to him sleep. He snored a little and turned around in the bed. I listened to his breathing. It calmed me. I fell into a deep sleep.
Monday 29th January 2018
Oñé reached under the duvet, searching for my hand. “I want to show you something. You are right. I have a special friend in there.”
He pointed through the window in the direction of the labyrinth. I felt that familiar fear return to my stomach. He laughed. “Don’t be afraid. Come and see him. You will be amazed.”
Oñé led me to the labyrinth as if he were leading a blind man. I noticed that had cut ribbons of cloth which he tied to the bushes to avoid getting lost. He was breathing deeply, wanting to rush ahead, pulling my heavy weight behind him.
“He will be sleeping now. I need you to see him. He needs food or he will die. I can’t help him on my own. You need to help me.”
The labyrinth seemed to be a series of endless twists and turns but Oñé knew where he was going. He walked quickly ahead of me, glancing behind him, smiling at me. I listened to the wind shaking the tightly intertwined leaves. I looked upwards – the green walls were threatening to me, the height of two people standing on one another’s shoulders. I remembered Ishmael telling me that the labyrinth was a mechanism for understanding the Universe.
I didn´t know then what he meant by that then but now I felt that he was whispering its truth to me in a curved path which seemed to circle back on itself. I felt the fear of my smallness within the immense infinity of the world. I had a desire to hide within the thick green walls and cover my eyes with my hands. I didn’t want to understand the Universe. I felt that I would be stripped bare by it and then torn apart. The human mind wasn’t designed to understand something so immense. It was designed for routine, for simplifying chaos, making life bearable, not understandable.
Oñé whispered to me as he began to run ahead of me. “We’re nearly there.”
We turned the last bend into the centre where I knew we would find the well but what else had Oñé discovered? My heart beat furiously in my chest. My breathing was rapid.
Oñé beckoned to me, placing a finger over his lips, telling me to be quiet. “Look, he’s sleeping.”
To the left of the well, I saw a duvet which Oñé must have taken from the house, folded into a circle. On top of the duck feathers, slept what I knew had to be a puma. It had a mixture of a yellow and tan coat, a round face, erect ears and a long tail curled around its body. It made a loud purring noise as it slept.
I grabbed Oñé’s hand. “Don’t waken him – don’t you know that it can kill an animal several times its own weight?”
Oñé dropped my hand. “He is my friend. He wouldn’t hurt me. He needs water.”
He went to the well and threw the bucket into the blackness. I heard the chain spinning down until the bucket splashed onto the surface of what I knew was a dark yet pure source of water coming from a nearby spring. He pulled the filled bucket to the surface and lifted a large dish he must have brought earlier from the garden. He poured the water into the dish. I took a few steps back as he walked towards the puma. Oñé, placed the dish beside his head and began to stroke him.
The puma’s eyes were open. He struggled sleepily to his feet and walked to where Oñé had placed the water. Kneeling beside him, he reached his hand out to stroke again the puma’s head. The puma sat still, staring at Oñé and they maintained a deep contact of eyes for a few seconds. Then the puma reached out a thick paw and touched Oñe on the lips, before bending his head to lick Oñé’s hand.
I couldn’t speak. I was afraid that the puma would see me and his behaviour would change.
Oñé whispered to me as the puma licked at the water. “He needs food. He’s surviving on mice, rats and other small animals that wander into the labyrinth. It’s not enough for him. A few times I have seen that he has hidden a wild goat to eat later. I even saw him kill one. He stalked slowly behind him, jumped on his neck and bit him. He died within seconds. Christian then pulled him over there.” Oñé pointed at a hollowed out part of the hedge. “That is his fridge.” He laughed.
I took a few more steps backwards. “You call him Christian?”
Oñé continued to stroke the puma’s back. “Yes. That’s his name.”
“Well, let’s get out of he
re and we will find help for him. There are people trained to capture him and give him a good home in a zoo. That must be where he has escaped from.”
Oñé’s lower lip trembled. His eyes filled with tears. “I trusted you. You can’t have him imprisoned in a zoo. He needs to be free. We need to feed him. He will die in a zoo. I can’t betray him.”
Christian turned and looked at me. I didn’t know how to respond. I attempted to do what I had seen Oñé do – to look at him and not to move, although my body screamed at me to run. Then a strange thing happened, instead of running, I looked into his eyes. I felt myself falling into the stillness within them. It seemed as if Christian could remove fear from my body with only his gaze. We continued to look at one another for several seconds. Christian then turned to Oñé and licked his hand. Oñé slowly got to his feet and walked backwards with his eyes focused on Christian.
He then turned around when he reached me and said, “You will help me take care of him, won’t you? You won’t tell anyone about him. He will be safe here in the labyrinth, until he chooses to leave. You only need to make a sign to say that people should not enter the labyrinth as there are improvements being made and there are parts of it which may be dangerous. I don’t think he will stay for too much longer. He wants to return to the mountains. There are lots of goats there. He will survive.”
Sweat broke out on my forehead and chest. “But who was the man with you in the swimming pool?”
“He told me not to tell you.”
“Tell me, if you want me to help Christian.”
“It was Ishmael.”
23
PABLO PICASSO
“Art is a lie that makes us realise truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.”
Tuesday 30th January 2018
Next morning with Oñé. I watched Christian curl up on the duvet in the labyrinth, resting his head on his paws.
“Let’s go Oñé. Let’s find food for him.”
Oñé took my hand and we began our journey out of the labyrinth. He pointed to one of the white ribbons in the hedge. “There are seventy-seven of them if you ever want to enter alone. They are all numbered”.
“What are you talking about?”
“The ribbons. I know that you are afraid of the labyrinth. So was I at first but it’s under control.”
He showed me a white ribbon where he had written with a felt tip pen the number thirty-two.
“This is halfway towards the exit which is numbered seventy-seven. The first number is zero at the well.”
We walked quickly around the bends and convoluted curves. He took my hand and looked into my eyes. “Why are you not asking me about Ishmael? I said he was alive. I have talked to him. I have swum in the pool with him.”
“Yes, you told me that you splashed together in the pool. I do not understand why you wanted to swim in a pool with temperatures barely above zero. What kind of person would encourage you to do that?”
Oñé looked at me. “I lived in Sweden. We used to enjoy swimming in the sea in the winter. We are used to swimming in cold water. It’s never warm there even in summer.”
I could understand that what he was saying could be true. I asked, “I know that there was someone there in the pool with you. How do I know that it was Ishmael?”
“Did you not recognise him?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t.”
Later that day Oñé and I brought food for Christian.
With a certain relief, I watched him devour six skinned rabbits which we found in the market. Oñé filled his water dish and brought it inside the hollowed hedge. He looked at me as he stroked Christian.
He asked, “How do we make sure they don’t see Christian from the air? They will be looking for him, if as you say he has escaped from the zoo.”
We worked together, building a fence, with a roof made from an old olive door I had stored in the Studio, thinking that I could turn it into a sculpture one day. Oñé tempted Christian into his sanctuary by offering him two large steaks taken from the fridge, given that he had eaten all of the rabbits. The big cat followed, licking his hand. Christian sat calmly on his duvet and chewed on one of the steaks as we closed a fence around him and covered it with leaves.
As we walked away, we heard a noise in the labyrinth. Oñé placed his hand on my arm. “Listen. There is someone here. I don’t think it is Ishmael. He told me he wouldn’t be here today. Whoever it is are they watching us. Have they seen Christian?”
We were silent for a few minutes listening carefully. At first there was only the sound of birds cheeping overhead, a rustling of wind within the leaves of the labyrinth walls. Then there was a scuffling sound. It didn’t sound like a small animal but something larger.
Oñé whispered, “Stay here. I will be back.”
He ran first right, then left and was out of sight. I heard Christian whistle from his hideaway as if attempting to communicate with Oñé. I said ‘Shuush’ to him in a gentle voice before hearing a shout from Oñé, followed by a panting and a crunch of pebbles as he neared the centre of the labyrinth.
“I don’t know who it was. I saw the back of a man as he ran from the labyrinth. It wasn’t Ishmael. Whoever it was escaped. He seemed to know the labyrinth better than I do.”
I lowered myself onto the ground sitting cross legged on the pebbles. “Let’s forget about whoever that was for a minute. I don’t think they had seen us, although they may have been trying to find us. Let’s go back to Ishmael. What did Ishmael say that he was doing? Why did he leave?”
I didn’t feel good about asking that as I knew it to be a lie. But I had to find out who Oñé had been swimming with, who he was talking to and why he was pretending to me that it was Ishmael. “He said that he needed a little bit of space. He wanted to make sure that I was okay.”
I asked, “Did he ask about me?”
Oñé nodded. “Yes. He said that he would see you when you felt ready to see him.”
I gave up trying to find out the truth for now. It was exhausting.
I took his hand. “Christian has had his lunch. Why don’t we do the same?”
We walked through the labyrinth, counting Oñé’s ribbons.
I said, “That’s a clever system you came up with.”
We walked towards the front door, past the sculpture.
Then there was the sound of the buzz of an airplane flying low over the garden. I put my arm around Oñé’s shoulders.
“That is the police. You were right. They are probably looking for Christian. Don’t worry, he is well hidden.”
Oñé looked back at the labyrinth. I knew that he wanted to return and be with Christian.
I squeezed his arm and whispered, “Don’t go into the labyrinth – it will attract attention. Let’s go to the fountain and clean it. They will photograph us and the empty labyrinth. They will not see Christian.” I smiled at him. “Look relaxed and as if you are enjoying yourself.”
Oñé picked up the gardening tools lying beside the fountain and began to clean the moss from the inside edge of the fountain. I sat on a wooden garden chair watching him, before I found my gaze fixed on the sculpture. The plane circled overhead sweeping low above the labyrinth. As I turned to see where it was going next, I again caught sight of the sculpture and looked away quickly. I had been unable to bring myself to look at it for quite some time.
My eyes smarted. I rubbed them with the back of my hand. How would I ever be able to let go of this intense shame and guilt for what I had done? I pressed my hands into my eyes.
Oñé dropped the tools he was working with and approached me and stroked my arm the way I had seen him pet Christian. Oñé looked concerned.
“Are you OK?”
I buried my head into his shoulder and began to cry.
He asked, “What’s happening?”
I knew that I was frightening him with this strange behaviour. “It’s nothing. Sometimes adults feel sad. It passes.”
I moved fro
m the wooden chair and lay on the grass. Oñé stood over me, looking at me. His voice seemed far away when I heard him say, “Christian has escaped. Augustin – get up.”
I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t move on the grass. I felt the roughness of a tongue like that of a kitchen scourer move across my hand. Christian then approached my face. I heard him breathe deeply and cough from time to time. I remembered that he communicated with his eyes. I opened my eyes. He patted me on the face with a heavy thick soft paw and climbed on top of my chest. He sat on top of me with his paws spread across my shoulders. I felt a little pressure from his nails slightly pressing into me – the way that a kitten kneads the belly of its mother as it sucks on a teat. His eyes were magnets drawing me in. His strength flooded through me. He moved a paw, patting me on the mouth.
I said to him, “You can go now. You’re free.”
As he slid from my body, I realised how heavy he had been. I took a few deep breaths as he circled around my body a few times. I lay still. I noticed Oñé standing to my right watching us. Christian licked my face and moved towards Oñé who threw his arms around his neck. He rubbed his head against Christian’s head and with one last lick of Oñé’s face, the puma turned to the right, running across the spiky grass with a sloping wave-like motion towards the mountains. He easily jumped the wire boundary fence of Can Animes to Boulder Hill and disappeared from sight without looking back.
24
PABLO PICASSO
“When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you will be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll end up as the Pope. Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”
Tuesday 30th January 2018
Pep Conejo hasn’t done a great job.
The garden is overgrown. Suckers sprout from the roots of the olive trees. Oranges and lemons lie rotten on the ground. The once clear pebbled pathways are turning into grass walkways speckled with stones. The bougainvillea which Ishmael loved to shape into bushes is spreading out of control across the thickened hedge of the labyrinth. It looks pretty but it is not the way Ishmael would have wanted it to be. He liked clean edges and spaces with beauty erupting from within and around, rather than the mingling disorderly forms of Nature which he preferred to contain with the English country garden. Not this mingling of Nature, taking over the world which he shaped. Not that he was a control freak as a gardener – quite the contrary; he loved the spontaneous energy inherent in plants and stones but felt that Nature itself wanted to be shaped by him.
The Painter Page 21