The Dedalus Book of Spanish Fantasy

by Margaret Jull Costa (ed)

  Every afternoon they went out for a walk, towards the promontory and the river if the sky was clear, beyond the beach and towards the village if it looked like rain; every day they had to communicate to each other the little changes they noticed (always in respect of their neighbours or surroundings) and the small surprises that their life, though sedentary and monotonous, still provided. Because for them nothing could change, and there was no possible room for novelty, since they had been telling each other for years that they would grow old together.

  Although they lived in the village (they were the only people with book-learning, as the locals put it, to live there all the year round), they had no contacts beyond those necessary to their subsistence, except for a smallholder and his wife who occasionally came to have tea at their home. All they received from town were newspapers, magazines and letters from the bank, and they had never been known, in all the time they had been there, to leave the village for a single day, despite the inconvenience caused by the summer visitors. They were not unsociable, they could not be said to live any differently from the better-off locals, and they were extremely careful never to express, even in private, any nostalgia for the city, nor voice the usual grumbles about the lack of comfort or amusement in the environment in which they had chosen to live, apparently for the rest of their lives.

  They appeared to have measured and weighed up everything with extreme care, to have taken into consideration their age, their frailties, their income and tastes, and chosen that isolation in order to eke out - without extravagance, or waste, with no gesture of impatience, no costly indulgence in enthusiasm - financial resources that must last exactly until the day of their death; that was why they had to deprive themselves of any unnecessary luxuries, avoid even the most innocent temptation; they could not afford to feel curious about outsiders or visitors, they could not allow themselves any feelings of envy, promptly stifled, nor any gesture of surprise over the appearance of the unknown which would allow the irruption on to the stage, set for the last act of the play, of those hidden elements and agents that every age keeps concealed in order to provide itself from time to time with the possibility of a plot. Yet every day they must have hoped for something unusual, though they did not confess it even to each other. Because the refusal to accept novelty, the submission to routine and discipline in order to abort any sign of a chimerical and unfounded hope, these - more than the village with its two brief months of animation, to which one might add the preparations for the summer and the last few faltering stragglers - constituted the essence of their withdrawal from the world.

  They decided to go as far as the level crossing, a rather longer walk than usual. When they first came across him, they must have thought that the situation of the man with the dog was not unlike their own. `Look, they've cut down the trees that were there. Remember?' or `Heaven alone knows what they'll put up here, maybe even a block of flats', or `The baker's wife told me they're closing down the bakery and opening up a shop selling souvenirs and knickknacks and sun cream,' such was the repertoire of banal phrases with which, day by day, they followed the course of a series of changes which did not affect them and which afforded such a contrast with the monastic austerity of their existence, where having to discard a shirt or a duster posed a threat to the harsh vow of endurance which they had firmly and staunchly undertaken, in order to survive.

  The rain and the disappearance of the summer visitors provided everything else that they needed on that occasion; in other words, they again blessed the day they had moved there and gave thanks for the beauty of nature, returning in all her splendour to reign over the place, after two months of humiliating slavery to the demands of summer.

  `Just smell the air: wonderful. All it takes is a few drops of rain, and look at the difference it makes.'

  A prayer of thanks with renewed faith and such sincere conviction that they scarcely noticed their second encounter with the dog and the summer straggler, a man dressed in halfmourning, whom they had overtaken earlier going in the same direction, and who must, therefore, have followed the same route as themselves, but covering the ground more quickly and following a parallel path.

  They stopped to listen to the song of some starlings, which, perched on a line of leafy plane trees, were also preparing to move on. They stood gazing at the sea from the road as it bends round the promontory, huge, intermittent waves that broke at their feet with a bow expressing reverence and submission to all those who, like themselves, had managed to rise above everyday considerations and accept sacrifices at the end of their lives, concerned only with what does not change. They had seldom walked so far on an afternoon; it was one of those days brimming over with trust and confidence, so necessary for the coming six months of cold. They had often commented on how those walks strengthened their spirit.

  `We'll walk as far as the inn. It still doesn't get dark till late, there's plenty of time. It's a splendid day.'

  The inn was almost a kilometre away. Lately, they had only gone that far, to sit in the shade drinking a beer or a lemonade, when someone from the village gave them a lift in their car.

  They had walked down the slope of the promontory and started along the road at the end of which the inn could be found, round a bend hidden amongst a grove of trees, when she suddenly stopped, to listen to something which she had heard indistinctly. `What was that?' she asked, looking up at the sky? `Didn't you hear something? Didn't you feel something odd?'

  It was like an ordinary flash of lightning which, unaccompanied by thunder, and glimpsed only out of the corner of the eye, requires confirmation to dispel the uneasy feeling aroused by something seen but not heard. `I'm not sure ... there, or perhaps over there. Didn't you see anything?'

  `There must be a storm in the distance. The weather is unsettled. Maybe we should turn back.'

  `Let's go as far as the inn.'

  They walked on, with frequent glances at the sky, exchanging those reassuring phrases that optimists always hope will reach the elements and persuade them to restrain their stormy impulses.

  They reached the bend while there was still a couple of hours' light left. Impatient to catch sight of their goal, he kept craning his neck, or stepping out into the middle of the road, to calm the anxiety that had seized his steps. And again she stopped suddenly, with her feet together and her mouth open, staring straight ahead.

  `What's wrong?'

  He shook her arm, grasped her hand and squeezed it tightly, an inert hand, through which he could feel flowing into his own body all the force of her apprehension, a hand reduced almost to nothing, then, with the countryside steeped in the sudden silence that is the prelude to the storm, when you sense that even invisible beings are crouching down to shelter, then, in another very different place, but, again, behind him, he felt - he did not see - the flash of lightning, the simultaneous, contradictory rupture of sea and sky which, after the mirage, took on a graver, more deceptive look, like a child trying to hide with his body some damage he has caused, both sea and sky suddenly made old and worn by a film of dissolute rust.

  He had turned round to look at the walker with his dog - now incredibly far away, considering he had just crossed their path, at the moment of crisis - when she emerged from her trance.

  `What about the inn? Where is the inn?' she asked.

  It was that insistent question that completed his sense of disorientation. He walked forward a few steps, leaving her alone on the road, he climbed up a little mound to look around in all directions and came back more confused than ever.

  `I think we passed it.'

  `It's round that bend.'

  `I don't know what we were thinking of. Anyway, let's go back.'

  But she looked at him very oddly; her face was expressionless, but incredulity had invaded her whole body to such an extent that he could not suppress a gesture of annoyance.

  `Let's go,' he said to her, trying to turn her in the opposite direction to the one they had been following. But she stood ther
e rigid, staring straight ahead.

  `It's no good,' she replied.

  `What do you mean, it's no good? Come on, it's getting late. It's time we went back.'

  `It's no good,' she repeated.

  `What on earth do you mean, it's no good?'

  `I mean it's different. Everything is different. Look how different it all is. Give me your hand. Look.'

  He obeyed, and the lightning flashed again, perhaps as a direct consequence of the electric charge he had felt when he touched her hand. It was true that everything had changed; after the dazzle produced by the lightning, everything around him, though there was not the slightest perceptible alteration, was unrecognisable, just as a photograph of a familiar landscape, printed the wrong way round, is hard to recognise because there is no actual deception.

  They took a few light, faltering steps in the direction they had been following earlier; then he stammered incoherently:

  `The inn ... further on, a bit further on.'

  `Exactly, a bit further on.'

  They stood rooted to the spot, hand in hand and staring open-mouthed up the road, not moving a muscle or giving the faintest reaction when the man walking his dog crossed their path once more, paying no heed to the unusual sight they presented.

  Nor did the dog cast a glance in their direction, but tore on, straining at the leash.

  As for them. . . the last vestiges of their senses did not allow them to notice that, as well as the dog, the man used a stick, held out in front in him, almost motionless, above his stiff, rapid steps, he did not look to left or right and his eyes were hidden behind dark glasses.

  © Herederos de Juan Benet

  Translated by Annella McDermott

  Juan Benet (Madrid, 1927-1993) was unusual in combining the profession of engineer with the practice of literature. Benet wrote a large number of novels, short stories and essays. His style is generally considered difficult, but he is widely admired, particularly by other writers, and is felt to have opened up new possibilities for the Spanish novel. Volveras a Region (1967; Return to Region, Columbia University Press, 1987) was the novel that first brought him to prominence. Meditation (1969; Meditation, tr. Gregory Rabassa, Persea Books, 1982) won Spain's Biblioteca Breve prize. `The Catalyst' is from the book of short stories, Cinco narraciones y dos fibulas (1972) and is an example of Benet's characteristically demanding style. The limpid and economical `Fables 9,10 and 10a' are from Trece fabulas y media (1981).

  At the end of a pleasant June, Enric Espol turned up with his right hand bandaged, revealing a clenched fist beneath the gauze. His very presence, full of unfamiliar facets, created a sense of foreboding, but no one could imagine the full impact of the blow that had felled him.

  His face, which had never before provoked the slightest interest, now bore the air of melancholy victory so characteristic of modern wars.

  The day on which his life experienced this change had dawned entirely unannounced. He awoke in his customary foul mood and then walked about his flat, from the bathroom to the dining room and from the dining room to the kitchen, to see if walking would help him wake up. He felt a pain in his right side and a slight breathlessness, two conditions that he had never before experienced jointly and which increased so rapidly that his sense of alarm jerked him into full consciousness. Dragging his feet and leaning on the furniture he found in his path, he returned to the bedroom and sat down next to the bed, prepared to die.

  Fear covered his entire body. Slowly, health was clambering up the tree of his nervous system intending to escape out of his mouth, but, just in time, Espol rebelled. At the moment of death, he seized hold of something and closed his hand tight around it, trapping life inside. The pain stopped and his breathing returned to normal. In a gesture of relief, Espol drew his left hand across his forehead, because his right hand now had a new mission to fulfill.

  Prudence warned him not to ponder too many different possibilities. He was sure, right from the start, that there was only one solution: on no account to unclench his fist. In the palm of his hand, wriggling gently like a little fish or like a drop of mercury, lay Espol's life.

  In order to avoid endangering his life by a single moment of inattention, he decided to bandage up his hand, and then, feeling slightly calmer, he drew up a provisional plan of action. He would go and see the manager of the company where he worked, he would ask the advice of his family doctor and of his friends, and he would gradually try to explain the facts to the people closest to him.

  That was when the new Espol appeared. He would walk along the street, staring into space, his face transfigured (for it was stamped with a quite understandable look of stupefaction). And although they had grown accustomed to strange sights, people seemed to sense that his bandage was in some way different and they would often turn round to sneak a furtive glance.

  Today, halfway through the morning, the manager is listening to the story with growing interest. When Espol tells him that he will have to leave his job because, being right-handed, he will no longer be able to wield a pen, he replies:

  `Let's not rush things. Sometimes, these things go as quickly as they come ...'

  `This is permanent,' says Espol. `The day I unclench my fist to pick up my pen, my life will escape.'

  `We could move you to the department dealing with the preparation and setting up of subcontracts.'

  `No.'

  `And how will you make a life for yourself?'

  `I have it here,' he says, showing him his right fist. `This is the first time I've actually been able to locate it and I must find a way of making use of it.'

  An hour later, his family doctor, coolly attentive, is listening to the story. He is tired, weary of all the tales his patients tell him; he merely nods, occasionally asking questions and more questions: `Do you cough during the night?' `Have you ever had diphtheria?' and other equally mysterious things. In the end, he says that it's obviously some kind of allergic reaction; he prescribes a special diet and 500 units of penicillin. As the consultation is about to end, he mentions a Swiss school for the partially disabled where they can teach you to write with your left hand in about six months.

  Back in the street, Espol feels the charm of his newly acquired importance. He goes to his girlfriend's house and tells her everything. At first, she experiences a rush of maternal solicitude; she insists on applying hot compresses to the clenched fist and, when Espol refuses to let her, she declares the bandage horrible and says that she will knit him a mitten for his fist. The idea appeals to her and, forgetting about him, she phones her mother:

  `Listen, Enric's life was just about to escape, but he caught it in his hand. Now he has to keep his hand closed all the time so that it doesn't escape once and for all.'

  `I see.'

  `And I was thinking that perhaps we could knit him a kind of bag, in a pale colour, so that he doesn't have to wear the bandage.'

  Her mother shows a discreet interest.

  `Hmm,' she says, `like the one we made for Viola when she hurt her paw.'

  Mother and daughter are immersed in their conversation. Feeling neglected, Espol leaves and is accompanied to the door by a murmur of. `No, I wouldn't use plain. I'd go for rib myself ... You knit a few stitches then decrease, knit a few, then decrease ...'

  Walking mechanically across the invisible sands, Espol heads for his best friend's house. He finds him and tells him about this singular event. And his friend (why, no one will ever know) feels jealous and tries to change the subject: `It's nothing, forget about it. Now something really extraordinary happened to me - about two years ago in May - one Monday ... While he talks, he is thinking what he would do to make the most of a situation like that, and the unease he feels gradually stops the flow of words.

  A silence falls, broken by the lightest of breezes rippling over the dunes. The friend pretends he's bored and doesn't even listen to his visitor who, as he's leaving, says:

  `It's my life, you see. Here, look,' and he raises his fist and holds
it at eye level. `I can feel it right now, like a cricket. If I squeeze with my fingers, I start to feel breathless again.'

  He leaves, because he needs some fresh air. It's a big city, and he is heading towards the east. On his way, he passes the shop of a bookseller whom he knows slightly. The bookseller, who is rather slow-witted, thinks long and hard ... Then, he goes over to Espol and, with his forefinger, touches the fist.

  `Does it hurt?'

  `No.'

  The man suddenly becomes very excited. With his face aglow, he takes Espol by the arm and says:

  `Since time began, it has always been up to the individual to do what he thinks best, but, if I were you, I would go up onto the roof, take off the bandage and, when the first flock of pigeons flies by, I would open my hand.'

  When he returns to the street again, its crowded solitude casts a shadow over his heart. He is reminded of a familiar address by the destination on the front of a bus, and he runs to catch it. A sister of his mother's lives in a house near Parque del Este. She is an old lady, who likes to live surrounded by marquetry work, by furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl and by walls lined with red velvet. She whiles away the hours making wax fruit and figures of saints, which she places under glass domes with a mahogany base.

  Espol kisses his aunt's hand and launches straight into his story. At first, his aunt takes a very firm line. She advises him to stop all this nonsense, to take off the bandage and unclench his fist this instant.

  `But just the thought of it makes me feel sick.'

  `Don't be so pathetic. A man must be a man and that's all there is to it. Do you intend going on like this? Life needs air, and if you carry it around shut up like that, you'll snuff yourself out like a candle, and no one will even notice.'