The Dedalus Book of Spanish Fantasy

by Margaret Jull Costa (ed)

  After the first weeks of sadness, I grew bolder: I resolved to go on the offensive. I left my wretched nest and, without further ado, stalked into the house. At first, the intruder tried to shoo me away, but she stopped him.

  `This stork is a blessed creature which reminds me of everything I left behind. If it wants to live in the house it shall live in the house. God sent it to us, his will be done.'

  The fellow oozed bad temper. `That's all very poetic, but who's going to clean up its droppings?'

  `I will! Haven't I told you a thousand times it's a sacred animal?'

  He muttered something about India and its sacred cows, she shrugged her shoulders and got her own way. From now on, if I wanted, I would share their home day and night.

  The new situation brought about by my wife's energy and determination favoured my plans for revenge. Taking advantage of their absence during working hours, I rifled through the drawers and poked around in every corner of the house; I discovered that Aicha treasured her children's photos, paid her entire wages into a savings account and regularly sent a proportion of this money to my address. The shopping - including the fish and maggots intended for me - and the gas and electricity bills, were all paid by the intruder. This evidence of provision for our future, together with her kindness towards me, made me bolder: I increased the frequency with which I soiled objects and garments belonging to the intruder; I -parked myself on their bed.

  As I had hoped, the rows and domestic quarrels got worse.

  `Surely you're not going to let it dirty the sheets!'

  `If she does, I'll wash them. (She often referred to me in the feminine.) The poor soul, she's had a long journey, then she fell ill, and she feels comfortable here, she's part of the family.'

  I pretended to give in to the fellow's irritation, and surrendered the field in a dignified manner. I waited till they had turned off the light and he had begun to move around and touch her, then I hopped onto the bedspread and soiled it. He immediately snapped on the bedside light.

  `Right, that's it! This time it's gone too far! Enough is enough!'

  `If you so much as touch a feather on that bird, you'll be sorry! If you must know, I'm tired of you mauling me. I just want to get to sleep!'

  `If you want to sleep, sleep, but not with that creature. I've told you a thousand times, I can't stand it.'

  `In that case, go and sleep on the sofa. I'm staying here.'

  `Honestly, anyone would think you were married to it. Ever since it arrived, you've been behaving oddly. These mad ideas and superstitions may be all very well where you come from, but they don't suit a modern, civilised nation.'

  `My country is better than yours, do you hear? This stork belongs to me, and if you don't like it, I'll leave and that'll be that.'

  From then on, there were quarrels every day. I wanted to sleep on the bed with my wife, and the intruder was beginning to give in and migrate to the sofa. I could feel that Aicha preferred me and was thinking about me. Sometimes she would sit at the kitchen table and write letters home, to the house next to the stork refuge founded centuries ago. She and the nsrani fought like cat and dog. When she was out, I would fly to the roof of the shed and take up my position on the nest. I feared the intruder might slit my throat with a knife, or club me to death. My success was reassuring and I began to recover my pleasure in flying. One day, after swallowing my ration of fish, I bade a silent goodbye to Aicha, waited till my flock came into view, joined them and began the flight back to Marrakech.

  As soon as I arrived there, I regained my human form. I turned up at my house as though I had only just left it and embraced my children. My brother had taken good care of them, they were attending school, and they danced for joy to see me. Beside the clock in my bedroom there was a pile of letters from Aicha. They spoke of the stork's visit, of her deep longing for her homeland and her family. She was still working in the thread mill in order to save enough to buy a little business on her return. When she did return, two years later, she was radiant with joy and came loaded down with presents. I forgave her, of course I forgave her: I forgot her betrayal and lived happily with her until God called her to His side and we buried her in Bab Dukala.

  I never told her about my visit, nor did I tell anyone else, except one neighbour and also a gentleman of European origin living in the neighbourhood, whose Moroccan friend was killed in a traffic accident and who ever since then had withdrawn from the world; he wrote poetry and in the evenings would go and sit quietly in the Mosque of Ibn Yusef. His name was Eusebio.

  I remember that he listened to me attentively and then he wrote down word for word the same story that I have just related to you.'

  © Juan Goytisolo

  Translated by Annella McDermott

  Juan Goytisolo (Barcelona, 1931), essayist, travel writer and novelist, is probably the best-known Spanish writer and intellectual commentator of today, though he has spent long periods living out of Spain, initially in Paris, from 1957 onwards, and latterly in both Paris and Marrakech. Some of the defining traits of his personality as a writer have been his left-wing politics, his discovery and exploration of his homosexuality and his great love of North African culture. A large number of Goytisolo's books are available in English: Serpent's Tail have published, amongst others, Landscapes After the Battle (1987; tr. Helen Lane) and Marks of Identity (1988; tr. Gregory Rabassa), Quartet Realms of Strife (1990; tr. Peter Bush) and Saracen Chronicles (1992; tr. Helen Lane), and Faber The Marx Family Saga (1996, tr. Peter Bush). This story is taken from Las semanas del jardin (1997; an English translation by Peter Bush is to be published soon by Serpent's Tail).

  The shooting gallery was located in the stern, to starboard: a brilliantly lit wooden stall painted with red and green stripes.The hollow eggs, glass butterflies and clay pipes went round and round in front of the black backcloth. For target shooters, there were two sets of those horizontal zinc tubes with bits of cardboard at the end, which always look like telescopes that have swallowed a star. A blue-and-yellow celluloid ball bobbed up and down on the plume of water spouting from a fountain. There was a cutout skeleton that performed a ghostly, dislocated tarantella when hit between the eye sockets. A black woman, made out of cardboard, writhed about like Josephine Baker when a bullet struck her belly button.There were other dolls as well ...

  A man and a woman, dressed up like circus sharpshooters, were loading the pistols and rifles.That was where Arcadio found Prince Emilio. He was the one who, to the great admiration of onlookers, never failed to shatter the hollow eggs, the glass butterflies and the clay pipes. He was a superb shot, the bullet seemed to follow his eye exactly. And he stood and moved so elegantly. Now he was taking on the skeleton. Arcadio went over to the stall. The Prince aimed, fired and the mechanism broke into a crazy dance of vertebrae and bones. Everyone applauded and laughed.Then the man who ran the stall pressed a button and restored everything to its proper place. La Molinari was at the Prince's side, exclaiming enthusiastically:

  `That's amazing! I've never seen anyone shoot better than that.'

  And the Prince replied modestly:

  `Mere child's play, Lina.'

  `Now try and hit the black woman.'

  `All right.'

  The Prince hit the black woman in the navel and the black woman danced. There was applause and loud laughter. Suddenly, though, the Prince turned pale, and the hand holding the pistol shook. Amongst the `audience' he had just spotted the ironic gaze of Strong. The Prince turned from white to scarlet, and the mocking curl of his lips became an angry scowl.

  `Come on, set up the targets, quickly!'

  They loaded a rifle for him. He fired, once, twice, several times, aiming through the tube at the cardboard rectangle. The shots reverberated in the metal chamber with a thunderous roar.

  `Bring it over here.'

  The man pushed the target round on some rails.There was a crown of holes and, in the middle, a cross. The Prince, deaf to the applause and oblivious to the kiss bl
own to him by La Molinari, took the target and held it up against the light so that everyone could see the perfection of the design he had made with the bullet holes; holding it out to the blond gentleman, he said:

  `Could you do the same?'

  It was a challenge. Arcadio feared for the Prince. The Prince's eyes blazed, but the look in Strong's eyes was purely and simply one of pity. Everyone awaited the Englishman's response. Anxiously. Everyone had sensed that there was some kind of duel or drama going on between the two men. The wheel stopped abruptly, as did the music. Around the shooting gallery a profound silence fell; one could hear in the distance the dull tumult of another party in full swing. Nazarof, Lorenzi, Mr Steinert and Don Manuelin suddenly appeared at Arcadio's side.They were panting. They had run there, in obedience to some mysterious order. And Commander Wolf, the superintendent and the purser had also inexplicably appeared. Strong took a while to reply. He did so with a placid, pitying smile, and reached out to take the Prince's trophy in one pale, perfect hand. Meanwhile, all the passengers from the staterooms were flocking to that part of the deck, pushing and shoving, all anxious to get close to Prince Emilio and to the stranger, for, apart from `the seven', no one knew Angel Strong's name nor who he was. He took the pierced piece of card. He looked at it, held it up to the lights on the stall, so that everyone could see it, radiant ... And while he was slowly giving it back to the illustrious marksman, he said:

  `That's nothing.'

  The Prince could not contain himself.

  `Nothing! Now look here, I'm the sort who could hit William Tell's apple, or miss it altogether if necessary ...'

  Strong retorted:

  `I'm the sort that never misses. This is just a game. You've hit every target on the stall and left none for me.'

  `What about this one?'

  The Prince struck his own chest, or, rather, his shirt front.

  `A challenge? No, sir. We'll just have to look for a more difficult target.'

  Paying no heed to the Prince's impatience or to the murmurings and shouts that warned of the crowd's hostility towards him, he looked up, opened his eyes wide and stared at the moon.

  `Give me a pistol! I'll take the moon as my target.'

  La Molinari let out a musical laugh. Others followed suit. Some whistled.

  `He's a fraud!'

  `He's making fun of us!'

  `Go on, shoot then!'

  `Ladies, gentlemen ...' said the Commander calmly.

  The Prince was trembling with rage, Arcadio with fear. Mr Steinert was paler than the moon itself. Lorenzi was the colour of quicksilver. And the laughter had frozen on Don Manuelin's lips.

  `Gentlemen, let him do it. Let him shoot at the moon and hit it. He is neither a fraud nor a madman. Give him a pistol, now!' said a cracked, hysterical voice. It belonged to Dr Demetrius.

  The stallholder looked at the Commander and hesitated, the empty gun in his hand.

  `Load it!'

  And turning to the group, the Commander said:

  `Gentlemen, why all this upset? You mistake a mere joke for a threat. It's all right,Your Majesty. Calm yourself, doctor. I myself will place the gun in the gentleman's hand.'

  He did so. Angel Strong stretched out his arm, screwed up one eye and aimed at the vast, perfect moon. The moon was not a silver moon, but blonde, almost golden. The stars encircling it were growing pale, its gold dripped onto the waters of the sea. It was a beautiful moon, young and lovely, that did not deserve to die. Inexorably - and smiling diabolically - Strong was aiming between its eyes - the moon's large, grey eyes, the eyes of one in love.

  `One, two ...'the commander was saying.

  When he said `three', the shot was fired. And everyone - all those who could withstand the terrible lurch the ship gave, as if it were about to be sucked under by a sudden whirlwind; all those who could withstand the apocalyptic yet harmonious din, a sound like a vast glass tower crumbling - everyone witnessed the marvel of seeing the moon pierced, cracked, shattered like a mirror by a bullet. Phosphorescent fragments of moon were sinking into the ocean. The light from the moon and stars was replaced by a profound, icy gloom. Almost all the witnesses to the catastrophe were lying on the floor, some stiff as corpses, others in the grip of an epileptic fit. Mournful voices and cries of terror arose while the Amphitrite righted itself, recovered its equilibrium and regained its previous solid stillness, like an islet newly born out of the stormy womb of the sea. Meanwhile, Angel Strong was laughing. He alone was roaring with laughter. No one had the strength to rebuke him or to stop his laughter. Then, suddenly, as if the feeble, terrified crowd filled him with pity or disdain, he said:

  `Don't worry, I've got plenty of spare moons.'

  And then the second marvel happened. With the skill and dexterity of a magician he drew from the inside pocket of his dinner jacket a small, shining disc, which he stroked and turned in his fingers, before throwing it into the air. They saw the disc describe a perfect parabola and then watched it growing and growing until it was the same illusory size as the moon. The disc came to rest in exactly the spot where the moon had been. And there it was once more, the blonde, almost golden moon dripping its honey onto the sea.

  Translated by Margaret full Costa

  Alberto Insua (Havana, 1885-Madrid, 1963) was the pseudonym of Alberto Galt y Escobar. Born of a Spanish father and a Cuban mother, Insua was educated by Jesuits in Havana and only came to Spain when he was fifteen. There he studied law, but soon became immersed in the worlds of literature and journalism. During the First World War, he was correspondent in Paris for the Madrid newspaper ABC and, after the war, was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French government. The openly erotic nature of his first novel, La mujerfacil (1909) caused a huge scandal and the book became a bestseller. El negro que tenia el alma blanca (1922) was his most famous work and was adapted for both stage and screen. He wrote more than seventy novels, as well as two volumes of memoirs (Memorias, 1951-52). This story is taken from a novel entitled El barco embrujado (1929).

  Ever since then, death has continued its slow, tenacious advance through the foundations and the interior beams of the house. Calmly. Unhurriedly. Pitilessly. In only four years, the ivy has buried the oven and the grainstore, and the woodworm has entirely eaten away the beams supporting the doorway and the shed. In only four years, the ivy and the woodworm have destroyed the work of a whole family, a whole century. And now the two are advancing together, along the rotting wood in the old corridor and the roof, searching out the last substances that still bear the house's weight and memory. Those old substances, tired, yellow - like the rain falling on the mill that night, like my heart now and my memory - which, one day, possibly very soon now, will also decay into nothing and collapse, at last, into the snow, perhaps with me still inside the house.

  With me still inside the house, and with the dog howling sadly at the door, death has, in fact, already often come to visit me. It came when my daughter made a surprise return one night to occupy the room that had remained padlocked since the day of her death. It came when Sabina rose from the dead one New Year's Eve in the old photo that the flames slowly consumed and when she kept watch over my suffering, as I lay burning up between these same sheets, devoured by fever and madness. And it came to stay with me for good on the night that my mother suddenly appeared in the kitchen, all those years after she was buried.

  Until that night, I still doubted my own eyes and even the very shadows and silences in the house. However vivid those experiences had been, up until then, I still believed, or, at least, tried to believe, that fever and fear had provoked and given shape to images that existed only as memories. But that night, reality, brutal and irrefutable, overcame any doubts. That night, when my mother opened the door and was suddenly there in the kitchen, I was sitting by the fire, opposite her, awake, unable to sleep, as I am now, and when I saw her, I didn't even feel afraid.

  Despite all the years that had passed, I had little difficulty recognising her. My mother w
as just as I remembered her, exactly the same as when she was alive and wandered about the house, day and night, tending to the livestock and to the whole family. She was still wearing the dress that Sabina and my sister had put on her after she died and the black scarf that she never took off. And now, sitting on the bench by the fire, her usual still, silent self, she seemed to have come to prove to me that it was not her but time that had died.

  All that night, the dog sat howling at the door, wakeful and frightened, as she did when the people in Ainielle still used to keep vigil over their dead or when smugglers or wolves came down into the village. All night, my mother and I sat in silence watching the flames consuming the gorse twigs on the fire and, with them, our memories. After all those years, after all that time separated by death, the two of us were once again face to face, yet, despite that, we dared not resume a conversation that had been suddenly interrupted a long time ago. I did not even dare look at her. I knew she was still in the kitchen because of the dog's frightened barking and because of the strange, unmoving shadow that the flames cast on the floor by the bench. But, at no point, did I feel afraid. Not for a moment did I allow myself to think that my mother had come to keep vigil over my own death. Only at dawn, when, still sitting by the fire, I was woken by the warm light and realised she was no longer with me in the kitchen, did a black shudder run through me for the first time, when the calendar reminded me that the night ebbing away behind the trees was the last night of February: the exact same date on which my mother had died forty years before.