It was that kind of truce. Mother again transformed all around her and was getting fat. She only went out on Saturday afternoons. Take that off your head, you embarrass me. And she’d say no, I feel naked, no I won’t. Look, things are different here and lots of people know me and I’ve got a business to run and there’s no need to wear those rags. He bought skirts for her, and she was so tall it wasn’t easy to find ones long enough. Shirts, shoes with a bit of a heel that shone if you polished them with a cloth. All so she could go shopping on Saturday afternoon. Women do the shopping here, not the men. I don’t know what you need, so we have to go out.
I waited for her on Saturday afternoons. It was fun to see mother with her trolley, loading things she wasn’t familiar with and asking me how much things cost. What does it say here? I had to read the numbers and translate them. But not translate them and give the equivalent in one language or another, I had to convert pesetas into units of five, the old duro, because that’s how she reckoned up. There was no alternative. And then translate. How many Saturdays in my life did I do that, purchase after purchase? I don’t remember if it was more complicated than my crosswords. No. In the end it was so easy I no longer had to say I don’t know, it’s difficult, the number’s too high. Those were the days when yoghurts were a luxury item.
I remember the day I found a yoghurt pot next to the road in the village near the provincial capital. Unopened. Flies buzzing around it, though it looked quite full. My mouth was already watering as I went down, shouting to my brothers, I’ve found a yoghurt, I’ve found a yoghurt. When I pulled back the lid, I had to throw it away it was so crawling with ants. The bastards. They’d not opened it, they’d bitten a hole with their incisors and sucked it all out. Then they’d thrown the carton into the field. What a disappointment.
But now we ate yoghurt every Saturday night, when we’d put the shopping away in the compartments in the dining room cupboard, the fridge and mother’s bedroom. Bananas, lemons, fruit salad, coconut flavouring. One day we found they also made them with bits of real fruit, the ones that said ‘with’ and not ‘flavoured’. The world was opening up before us.
I was probably at C in the dictionary when father took us to meet Isabel. Ca is a dog. Or ca, the letter K. Or ca short for house, a ca l’Albert, for example, to Albert’s house, or a ca la ciutat, to the city.
5
Sugar-coated
I wanted to go and see Isabel. It would be a new place, and only at the end of the street, and that way I’d be able to see for myself what a woman like that looked like. Ugly, for sure. She must be ugly and smelly, as mother had told us so often women who eat pork are. But she had a very pretty house. A house, and not a ground-floor apartment full of damp. The glass door gleamed, the stairs were marble and everything was very clean and shiny like in that furniture polish advertisement. I imagined gripping a cleaning cloth and skating over her dining room table. If it hadn’t been for one of those lace mats under an ornate cut-glass vase. If everything in the dining room hadn’t been so fragile, so many figurines, slumbering maidens, dancers, elephants of all sizes with saddles of precious stones, tiny, tiny glass trees or porcelain slippers.
Isabel gave us sugar-coated sweets, and that was enough to make me think she wasn’t such a bad person. She always says she thinks about my children, father had told me, and I didn’t really know what she meant by that. Yes, she told me to think more about us than her, when she’d found out about us, obviously. You see, she loves you already, although she doesn’t know you as well as I do, she loves you as much. And why did she need to love us so much?
I was scared of the dog in the entrance. Nasty. A dog with black patches that didn’t bark, lick or stir. That wasn’t tied up, because it wasn’t necessary and he couldn’t bite anyone. Not a bit of dust. Completely still. There on the landing, under the mirror that greeted you, and you wanted to run off home and stop betraying your mother. But there were sugar-coated sweets and you couldn’t refuse such sweetness.
I didn’t really understand all that stuff, but Isabel had thought long and hard before opening up to us. She’d asked him if he’d forgotten what they’d said and that it wasn’t right. No, of course not, it’s not right for you to take our father from us for so long. But I said nothing because I soon tasted the tidbits and then she gave me one of those figurines, along with aniseed balls from some first communion or other.
She was ugly, she looked like one of those film baddies, not the seductive sort, just a schemer. Eyebrows that were very thick and far too black, and her nose, sharp-pointed like a witch’s. A witch! I thought. Mother’s much more beautiful, much prettier, I’d like you to know. Then she took out a box of toys full of little dolls and horses and bits and pieces to make forts and Indian wigwams. It was fun meeting Isabel. Her house on two floors with two sinks, with light everywhere and no need to cough because of the damp. The paint wasn’t flaking and the floor tiles didn’t give. I’d have bet anything her water came out hot from the tap and you didn’t have to heat it before taking a shower, and her knuckles didn’t look raw from washing clothes in freezing water in the sink in our outside yard.
Father asked her if she wanted him to bring his wife, they could meet and be friends and so on and she said, no, no, you must be joking. I thought that in other circumstances they could perhaps have been friends, they were similar in ways nobody hardly ever notices. The way they lowered their eyes, for example.
He didn’t introduce them officially. Never. But meeting up was easy enough. One Saturday, he and mother had bumped into Isabel and she’d just nodded. Hello, Isabel, hello. He said it’s her and found the situation amusing. Mother adopted a ‘you don’t say’ attitude and clicked her tongue, looking askance at father. If you tried hard, you could hear her sigh, but only to herself.
The truce seemed to be holding up and perhaps at last this was a definitive peace. Nobody knew what had happened to make it last so long and mother thanked God for guiding his eyes to the righteous path.
The bricks hurt when you picked them up, when you put your fingers in between the holes, because the ridges scraped your skin. The business was going so well father had to go in on Saturday and Sunday and get the materials to the sites. I also wanted to go and work with him. Mother said no, you’re a girl, and my brothers would make cocky gestures and say they’d earn money and I wouldn’t. It wasn’t difficult to persuade father, though. I was always with him and he didn’t mind if I loaded the bricks in the barrow. One at a time, you, don’t try to lift more than that.
It was inside that tannery where it always smelled to high heaven and where father’s friend always said they should meet later on. I don’t know what they did there. The big vats where they cleaned the skins with all sorts of strange salts were still, and where only the boss’s brothers were walking around in knee-length boots and blue overalls. How’s it going, Manel? And father wanted us to speak in their language in front of them so they wouldn’t be offended, what if they think we’re saying something rude about them. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t speak to him in any other language than the one I knew him in. I risked a belting, but I just couldn’t. I could get used to Mimoun being Manel and us living here, but I couldn’t swap Mimoun for Manel.
Mother said you go out too much and launched into one of her lectures, at your age I was already… At her age I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do because she only cleaned and cleaned and didn’t know how to go to the doctor without father, how to go shopping without father or how to live without father. He’d say, you go out, men here aren’t like they are down there, Christians look at ladies in a different way, but she knew he was testing to see if she was the woman he’d tamed or was just pretending.
Where do you want me to go? To the park with us, for example, to the Tuesday or Sunday market, or for a walk… But she didn’t, she cleaned, washed clothes and had afternoon naps, and that was what took her far away. She prayed but didn’t know which direction Mecca was in because father couldn’t
be bothered to find out. For years she pointed herself towards the United States rather than Saudi Arabia, but it didn’t matter because God forgives that kind of slip, provided you haven’t done it on purpose.
And the truce was still holding up, seemed permanent. We’d be happy again. I’d bought a colouring book with the money I earned as a bricklayer’s assistant, painted with the marker pens father’s friend gave us, the one who told him, Manel, a heater isn’t that expensive. He’d even brought us a stove in which we could burn all kinds of shells and it turned our cheeks red, on the days it was cold, when we put them next to it.
I was probably in the Ds when mother said get up and I guessed there’d be no more truce. Go and get your father, and I thought she must have gotten up early if she was waking me up to go and look for him. Go on, go and ask if anything’s happened to him, if anyone’s seen him. It’s seven o’clock and he’s not come home to sleep yet. What if he’s been knocked over by a car or has had a fit and doesn’t know where on earth he is? What if he’s dead?
Daci, dàcia, an adjective, dació, an action and dacita, a rock.
6
Streets, bars, parks and gardens
Seven in the morning was a fine time for an eight- or nine-year-old girl to go out any day of the week to look for her father. Even if she were ten. Or eleven. Father had always come back late and drunk and woken mother up to talk to her and made so much noise he woke us up too. What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Nothing, go back to sleep, mother would say, and he’d go on dancing or whimpering, depending on the drunken state he was in.
Luckily it wasn’t foggy, and was a pleasant morning. It wasn’t hot, yet wasn’t cold, and mother had said go and find your father, go on, find him, wherever he is. Heaven knows where, and I grabbed the lilac tracksuit bottoms that were so bright they hurt your eyes and the white T-shirt with the stains that wouldn’t go away. You lot shouldn’t wear white, said mother, after she’d rubbed it as much as she could in the backyard sink, the one in front of father’s pigeon loft. No need to comb your hair, just pin it up. And that’s how I went out, in sandals, tracksuit and feeling more than one knot in the bundle of hair that was my bun, I could feel loads when I ran the palm of my hand over my head. Go on, then, look, it’s seven o’clock and he’s not back yet. Ask in the bars where he always goes, walk round the barri, look in the parks and gardens.
It probably never occurred to her that I too was scared of walking around on my own at seven a.m., the same way she’d never thought I might find it difficult to calculate pesetas in units of five and then translate them. It wasn’t, but it might have been.
All I needed was a cape and breeches over my lilac bottoms. I felt like a heroine, I had to save my family. Mother always said I was more responsible than my brothers, more hardworking, more studious, more everything, but I think the only thing I was more of than them was a girl.
I could have done with that Superwoman cape going from bar to bar at that early hour. I did a round tour. One bar was shut, in another they shouted out what’s that, he’s not been home yet? He left here last night… I’ve not seen a sign of him since they finished playing cards, he lost loads of money but don’t worry, he’ll be all right. I went to the bowling alley by the river but they hadn’t opened yet. I gripped the iron grille door and saw all the holes at the back where the ninepins dropped when they fell. It was best if you got them all to drop, not just one. Much better. I went to the park and I expect I went on the swings for a while and then thought what on earth are you doing, your father might be dead and here you are with not a worry in your head. But it was fun, the horses went round if you pushed one of their legs, the pigeons threatened to shit on you and I probably thought we’ve had enough shit thrown at us already. Or perhaps I didn’t, because at that age you have other things on your mind.
I went from bridge to bridge like in the board game. From the cement bridge to the Romanesque but not Roman bridge, and even looked down into the filthy water in case I spotted him floating on top of the remnants of animal skins from the factories. Imagine how our lives would change if he was fished out of the water with glassy eyes and purple lips. Imagine if that had happened. You’d cry a lot, but possibly wouldn’t have been too stricken with anguish, it’s true. You were afraid to look inside yourself and catch yourself longing for an outcome like that, for better or worse, but in tragic mode.
I even had time to lean over the bridge I’d always liked and smell its stones. There was nobody in the street, perhaps it was Sunday or a holiday. The wool shop was shut and I raced home, jumping over the gleaming paving stones. Mother called to me from the window. What do you think you’re doing? How can you play at a time like this? And you said I’ve not tracked him down and nobody’s seen him.
I sat opposite the door to our house, in the neighbours’ doorway with the ochre-coloured step next to the garage where you couldn’t park or they’d make sure you were towed. I rested my head on the palms of my hands, my elbows on my thighs, and mother screamed at me again. Don’t do that, it brings bad luck. Only orphan girls sit like that.
No sign of him. In the park? No. In the Andalusian bar? No. Nowhere, mother, heaven knows where he is. No sign of him.
Go back round the whole barri and if we don’t find him we’ll raise the neighbours and you can tell them he’s disappeared. I raced off, jumping from one paving stone to another, in my imaginary cape and breeches that were now losing their colour, and returned to where I’d started out. I sat there, swinging my knees from side to side, together, apart, sometimes knocking together.
I imagined he’d been devoured by hungry dogs that had ripped his belly open and left his intestines spilling out. Or been the victim of a hit-and-run, lying there with his arms and legs all dislocated. I kept seeing images from the horror films we rented from the video club on the corner. I’d have loved to tell everyone an ending like that. We found him with his guts hanging out, poor father. I imagined going back to the village, asking for charity because grandfather had no more land to sell. Only then did I look within myself and feel I was missing something, there was no Superwoman in the whole story. Mother kept repeating, ay, ay, what mess has this man got himself into now, ay, my God, why do you punish me thus? God, let him return safe and sound.
Why are you sitting out here? he’d said the second he got out of the red car. You got a car? No, I haven’t, what are you doing there? I was waiting for you, which was a lie. I saw a woman through the rear-view mirror who was looking as if she shouldn’t be there. A woman who’d driven him home.
I followed him indoors and mother went on, you really frightened us, we thought you’d died, couldn’t you have let us know? He went thwap, and slapped her, and nobody could think what to say. I don’t want to hear another word from you, he’d said, from now on I’ll do what the hell I like, the same way you did whatever you wanted. Nobody knew what she wanted to do or who she was or why he had to slap her as he said that, but we all understood the truce was over. E, for the letter e. E, Latin prefix or eben, ebony.
7
Bottle of Butane
Her name was Rosa but mother couldn’t pronounce her name. She was so short and round everybody began to call her Bottle of Butane, though she wasn’t orange. You only had to see her to understand father’s choice hadn’t been made freely, no way. With all the women in the world… he couldn’t willingly have chosen one so horrible. The skin on her face was full of little pink bumps as if she’d lived to the full, but it also made her ugly. Greasy, and not just her flesh. She seemed to ooze grease through every pore, but smelled only of cigarettes and alcohol.
Mother said to me, go on, he’s telling you to, and leaving her by herself upset me, though she had a washing machine now. We liked the car and it was like going on a fair ride getting into the seatless back of her Citroën and swinging from side to side behind that lady who was now part of our lives. I always had to choose, every day, and every day it was more difficult. On the one hand, car rides, ice cr
eams in bars around the district, even the toys she gave us. On the other, mother left on her own, waiting for us to come home sooner or later. In fact, it was a lie that I could choose. Because he said let’s go and I was his beloved daughter and couldn’t let him down. Come on, I tell you, you’ll soon get used to it.
Mother had only one explanation for all this. She said the night before he met Bottle of Butane, father had been invited to his cousin’s house, and his wife, whose hobby was splitting up married couples, must have put something in his food. Your father is so silly and so ingenuous, he probably didn’t even notice. But nobody knows what went through his head that night to come back so late it was night no more.
Our lives changed. We went to the beach that year. All together, not knowing how to squeeze into a car or how we should sit. Mother, us, father and her. Her and her two daughters, each by a different father, one older than us and the younger one who scowled at us. The older one was always asking that stuff about why does the chicken cross the road? Shut up, donkey, you know all that! Shut up, you’re the donkey, can’t you see your mother’s shacked up with a man who’s got lots of children and a wife, but I never did say any of that stuff.
I never did find out if she was a baddy or not. When I wasn’t thinking about mother, I liked her, but the day on the beach was a bit strange, all of us together as if we were one big family, and she and mother who couldn’t understand each other, although they’d not have said much anyway. I don’t know how you put up with her, she stinks so. And those fat sausage legs. Mother said that in our language and she smiled back at her, you’ll get a good tan, won’t you? Mother smiled at her and replied with an ugh, you go and shit yourself, though the other woman understood not a word. She didn’t go pstt because it would have been too obvious, but she wanted to spit on her feet, I could see her storing up her saliva. It was a long beach with the finest of sand, but mother kept saying my God, what am I doing here? We played near the water’s edge while they were in a beach bar drinking all the beer they could knock back. I’ve never liked father in swimming trunks.
The Last Patriarch Page 14