Traces of Ink

by Antonio J. Fuentes García

  —But where are you going? — Juan Diego had a bad taste in his mouth. Maybe he should not have messed with him so much—. Have I to worry?

  —Stay calm— he tried to smile but it didn’t go well—. I’ll return home partner.

  Chapter 2

  He decided to catch the train at the New Ministries Station even though the Atocha Station was closer. He needed to clean up his mind, walk a bit, and Atocha always was more congested.

  He bought a tourist class ticket and declined to buy a return ticket for half the price. Despite the recommendations of the girl at the counter referred to the AVE, he preferred to take Altaria train, although it took a little longer, it brought back to him very good memories. He declined too to arrive non-stop to Lorca, for a strange melancholy that had taken over him and he wanted to recreate the same journey that he made every summer when he was a child. He remembered that loaded up with bags and suitcases, they took the train up to Carmen Station —in the middle of Murcia’s downtown—, and at that little stopover his parents, due to his good behavior during the trip, let him choose a big ice cream with balls of different flavors. That ritual became the only real moment that he experimented with his parents. He did not remember to have lived another moment that made him feel such illusion and excitement as those trips to his grandfather’s home. At least nothing that the three of them had lived together. When his father accepted the position of the editor in chief in La Razón, they lost him forever.

  When they left the station in the big illuminated sign appeared the names of the next stations that they will stop, Jonás took out the tray in his spot and connected the laptop. A quick glance to the main pages of the newspapers confirmed him that they all were referring to the same topic; the meeting that morning and the lack of consensus. He glanced again at the sign that indicated that they left Madrid behind and the hour of the arrival to Murcia was estimated in four hours and fourteen minutes. He took out the laptop, connected the iPod and felt asleep.

  When the megaphone of the train announced the end of the journey, he woke up startled. He had slept during all the journey, improper way in him, as much he used to sleep only a few minutes leaning against the window. The breaks’ bellows resounded with great noise above the people’s muttering, and still sleepy he waited to stand up until the rest of the wagon was emptied. When he stood up he went to take his suitcase and he realized that he had a pain caused by the wrong position used during his four hours of travel, and he also had difficult in focusing; “how can it be that I felt asleep for so long? I am getting older” he told himself.

  The Carmen Station had changed too much since he was there the last time at twelve. Very little was left of that small stopover, and although it was far from being one of that great railway stations, the one of Murcia had cleaned up its appearance compared to others much bigger but less reformed. A little bit lost he went to the line of the ticket office where the tickets to the surroundings were sold and he bought one for the next train to Aguilas’ direction. As informed in a big bright sign where were the schedules’ parade, his train departure was at 3:45 pm; so that he had to wait an hour and a half. He decided to eat something, because since his breakfast based in coffee and tart he had not tasted anything, and he was starving. He searched a little restless for the ice cream shop and checked with disappointment that in its place was a little bazaar that prayed in its slogan, “if we don’t have it, it doesn’t exist”. He went in Breads & Company and ate a delicious ham, bacon and melted cheese sandwich. He checked his cell phone two or three times while he devoured his snack, but there were no calls or messages. “Better this way” he thought, even though for some reason he couldn’t guess, he felt disappointed. Ten minutes before the outskirts train made its departure, Jonás was sitting looking with sadness and melancholy through the window.

  ****

  In size it had grown a little, but the platform of the Aguilas’ Station was right the same way that Jonás remembered it as a child. The tiny canteen, the end of the journey with those disused railroads and with its wagons —who had exceeded its services—, waiting to be dismantled to dress more up to date machines.

  Jonás didn’t wait for a welcome committee, but neither that helplessness. He was the only one that descended from the train, although that was the last stop. There was no soul in the platform, neither in the canteen, except for the bored owner who did not deign to look up from the Marca. Outside, a sun of justice hit him immediately, and he was surprise to see no parked cars. It is true that in Murcia at 4 pm in June, you can’t wait to see crowds in the streets, but he didn’t expect such emptiness. He walked along the bus station and asked for a taxi in the nearest stopping place. The sleepy taxi driver asked him the address with rude manners, and when Jonás told it to him he seemed to listen that the taxi driver cursed under his breath. When he arrived at the Vida Plena’s hostel he suddenly had butterflies in his stomach when he saw his parents’ Mercedes parked there.

  Chapter 3

  The retirement home was a modern exposed brick structure with a bony color, surrounded by an awesome extended garden that it was lost in the distance. Jonás felt overwhelmed by the huge surface that the manor presented and by the modern installations.

  He called at the little phone at the entrance, and after saying his name and whom he had come to visit, they opened the door for him. As he followed the arrows he crossed a stone road that snaked between slender eucalyptus and he arrived at the main entrance. He had to repeat there the little phone scene, and Jonás couldn’t put down the feeling of being penetrating a high security prison and not an old people’s home.

  As he was indicated at the reception he should go through the corridor at the right and take the lift to the fourth floor, where the rooms were. On several occasions he had to look away uncomfortable due to the old men’s inquisitives reviews, as they hanged around the corridors in the pure style of a zombies’ movie. He made a mistake in looking inside a room that was near the lifts, where the patients with reduced mobility were crowded together dozing in their chairs and waiting for the nurses to come and take them for a walk or bring them their foods. The vision produced a chill in Jonás in just thinking that his grandfather could have been in that room.

  The fourth floor was totally different from downstairs’ stays, since the dark and lifeless colors were replaced by a pink and green palette that gave the place a most alive aspect. The furniture’s design looked more like that one of an art-deco hotel than that one of a nursing home, the air smelled like fresh flowers, that probably came from the vases that have been put all along the corridors spaced three or four meters from one another. The girl at the reception had told him to go to the 246 room, at the end of the corridor. On his way he met an old couple who greeted him with a slight nod. They were luxurious dressed, and they seemed to be keeping a secret, as they both laughed between whispers and they kept quiet to each other. When he had only a few meters left to arrive to his grandfather’s room, an oppression appeared in his testicles and went up through the stomach until it stopped in his chest. Standing up there, in a retirement home’s corridor of the region where he had grown up, he felt the awfullest panic in all his life. From there he could smell his father’s expensive and conservative perfume, mixed with the little drops that his mother used behind the ears; “as Marilyn used to” she joked. There, holding his chest with despair, he seemed to listen his grandfather’s laughter when he tried to throw the phishing line and it got tangled between the rocks. For a while he thought that he was having a heart attack, until that hot ball that had been installed in his chest continued ascending to the throat. He felt breathless, and the bright colors of the room seemed to grow dark. Suddenly, he remembered that he had been sometime in this situation before and tried to relax. He left his arms fall inertly to each side of his body and raised his head a little shutting his eyes at the same time. He inspired noisy by the nose, and he expelled the air very slowly through the mouth. He repeated the same action seve
ral times, trying in not thinking about that a few meters from there, in that retirement home’s room his powerfullest fears were gathered together. For some strange reason that was worrying him, his father exercised a devastating effect on him. They didn’t get on well, and that must matter little to Jonas, but in a strange way Antonio José Ulloa brought him back to the age of six with only one glance. To this was added the anxiety about his grandfather’s illness, the only man that he had truly loved and respected to the extreme. Every treasured memory that he kept from that man was a childhood trace of happiness.

  Little by little his calm was recovered, and noticed the air flowing again into his lungs. Those panic attacks weren’t usual for him, but not strange at the same time. He had suffered some of them when he studied for the selection, at the end of his career, his first interview, and of course, after a strong discussion with his father when he worked at the newspaper. It was during that quarrelling that he decided to appoint himself to yoga, making meditation a habit up to the present day. He opened his eyes and his pulse accelerated. He made a gesture and gave a jump backwards. Right there, at distance of one meter, a man was looking roughly at him. In his eyes dark as night was a disgusting shine.

  —Jonás.

  —Antonio José.

  For some seconds they studied each other, and Jonás realized that calling his father by his name it was still disgusting for him. His progenitor’s thin lips curved in a grimace and turned around without saying a word. Jonás, feeling not knowing why he had lost the first battle, followed him. Before they came in the room his father turned and putting his hand on his chest he stopped him.

  —Don’t make him upset— he ordered—. He doesn’t need your bullshit.

  Without giving him an option to reply he disappeared through the door.

  The room was warm and friendly as much as it could be that one of a retirement home no matter how modern it was. He confirmed that the absence of personal stuff, although more beautiful than a hospital’s room, made it a transitory abode. In the middle of the little room was a bed —not very big—, but it seemed like a football field in comparison to the body that was on it. To both sides of the bed there were small night tables crowded with medicines and plastic cups. His mother was next to the bed, sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair. When she saw at him she jumped to her feet and run to hug him. Jonás left himself to be wrapped in the arms of that woman as he noticed the familiar fresh smell that she always gave off, and he could not avoid seeing his grandfather laying in that bed and reduced to half his essence. That vitality remembered by Jonás had vanished with his health, and in those eyes where he had seen security and optimism, there was only left an ill-concealed suffering. He felt an irrepressible desire to cry, but his father’s phrase came to his head “He doesn’t need your bullshit”; he bitted his tongue very hard.

  —My son! — exclaimed his mother between whispers—. You are so handsome.

  —Thanks mom.

  —When have you arrived?

  —On the train—he answered, still unable to articulate due to the anguish—. A few minutes ago.

  —You should have come with us— his father replied dryly from the other side of the room—. In the Mercedes we have only taken four hours.

  “He doesn’t need your bullshit”, he remembered.

  When he could get rid gently of his mother’s arms, he approached slowly to the bed’s side, as if afraid of waking up the old man in spite that it was evidently that he was not asleep. He felt a pain when the man turned in the bed as to see him better.

  —How are you, granddad? — he asked with a shaky voice.

  —Waiting that they let me get out of this dump to go fishing with you captain.

  Jonás was happy to realize that the illness hadn’t lessen his grandpa’s sarcasm and inventiveness. He broke almost into tears when his grandpa’s deep and magnificent voice broke and started coughing uncontrollably.

  —How many times I’ve told you that you should have stop smoking? — his father ticked off while the old man was still struggling with his coughing.

  Jonás raised his eyes up to his father until he fixed his sight on his father’s eyes. Antonio realized that he was being observed, fixed his gesture in a more decent one that he adopted as to appear as an honest man of flawless influence. Jonás wished to punch his distinguished face until that grimace of petulance disappeared.

  —My son —answered the old man in a low voice— Fuck off!

  Jonás almost let off a loud laughter, while his mother let off a little shout and covered her mouth, pretending to be scandalized. Grandpa always had been the only one able to put his father in his place.

  —All right— he said with a rictus of a condemned to death—. I am leaving to the cafeteria. Call me if you need something.

  —Don’t hesitate— the old man replied.

  When he had left the room, the grandfather turned to Jonás and to his mother and apologized.

  —Sorry— he excused—. It is my son and I love him, but sometimes he is a handbook annoying as hell.

  —At that point with his father’s absence, Jonás could not repress his feelings anymore and blew up in a noisy laughter. He went near to his grandpa and gave him a strong hug and several kisses in cheeks and forehead. The old man got rid of his grandchild’s pampering with an unreal rudeness.

  —It was time for you to come and see your old grandpa— he expressed in a false tone of reproach. You could notice happiness in his voice— I have to die so you come and visit me?

  Jonás felt awfully, he desired to have left aside his selfish misfortunes and centered a little more in the person that he loved better. In spite that it was almost more a decade that they haven’t seen each other, Jonás always had considered his grandpa as his truly father, the man that had inculcated him the taste for journalism. He studied the career just for him and because he wanted to live himself some of those adventures that he remembered from childhood, when that man took him to fish and entertained him during hours with those little battles. On the contrary as much grandsons, Jonás could check that those intrigues weren’t an old man’s exaggerations, since as well as real, they all have been documented.

  José María Millán had been one of the most famous journalists between the fifties and the sixties, until he had to retire prematurely. Jonás had read thousands of newspapers clippings from the time that his grandfather worked in the “El País” and made interviews to the great celebrities of the moment. After will arrive the change that turned his life upside-down.

  —Jonás I’m very glad you came to see me —he said standing up with difficulty. Margarita tried to stop him, but the old man stopped her with a hand’s gesture—. If I stay longer in that bed I am going to end setting fire to this building.

  He grabbed with difficulty from the bar that hold the oxygen tank and walked towards the bath with short steps.

  —Jonás boy, give me those clothes that are beside you— he asked him, pointing at a small shelf where they were washed and ironed perfectly some trousers, a shirt and a cardigan—. I don’t think I might need your help, but if I can’t put on my socks I’ll shout, and you come.

  Jonás never certainly new when his grandfather was joking or when he was being serious, since que composed what he called “poker face”. After a few minutes in which Jonás and his mother barely spoked, the old appeared well dressed, with that elegance that always characterized him. He was no longer connected to the metallic bottle.

  —Let’s go— he told Jonás—. I want you to see the garden.

  Margarita opposed, but José María clearly said that it wasn’t a debate. Before the stubbornness of her father-in-law, the woman put on a thin jacket — out of place in that month of the year—, and she prepared to accompany them.

  —Marga daughter, I would like to talk alone with your son.

  She refused, but José María promised her that if he felt dizzy he will send Jonás for help. She, although reluctantly, gave in.


  ****

  The natural trail had been formed due to the eucalyptus and the jacarandas and they allowed to walk on the stony road without burning with the Murcia summer’s justice sun. José María walked slowly, but with no signs of pains. The passage was splashed each four or five meters with lovely wooden varnished benches, and they kept fresh thanks to that they were under trees’ foliage. Jonás offered the old man in several occasions that he could rest, but his grandfather sustained that he didn’t need him and that they will rest afterwards.

  — How you get on with work son? — José María asked his grandson—. Are you still in the newspaper?

  The old man new very well it was not like that, but he needed his grandson to open. During the last years he had followed Jonás steps, reading his articles when he worked at the newspaper, and seeing his reports afterwards.

  —No grandpa— he said almost shyly—. I left it.

  —My son, working with your father must not be easy, so what I find strange is that you lasted so long — he said—. In any case, journalism is no longer true.

  During the road’s several meters they got entangled in a conversation a thousand times maintained between them in what investigative journalism meant, the truly information sources, and what the soul of an honest journalist represented; publish true news, without censorship and to inform.

  —In my times what we were looking for was not to please the masses or the political parties— the old man went on—, but to unveil the mysteries, the plots, show the real condition of human beings.

  —That was journalism— Jonás proudly assured.

  —Don’t kid yourself son. The journalist makes the journalism, not the news. In hour times, politics were more rooted than now, it was more powerful and mortal. But we treated it as what it was, a weapon. I one went out of the line, we will poke him, if he was an honorable man, we searched for the rubbish, and if he didn’t have it, we waited for him to spoil it, it’s that clear.