The Dedalus Book of Spanish Fantasy

by Margaret Jull Costa

  The friends accompanying Eulalia know that her father died years ago in the mountains and that he fell to his death, but they do not know that it was there, in Salardu. Eulalia prefers them not to know and says nothing to them about it. She just wants to find out where her father died and to be in the room where her father stayed. She does not know that he also appeared there after his death.That secret has not been revealed to her. It was room number 2. Her mother has often told her that and she remembers it well.

  `Number 2, the best room in the hotel.'

  That is what her mother always said.

  They reach Salardu and the hotel owner, who is older now, shows them the rooms. The hotel has changed little in twenty years. It has been renovated now and then, but the furniture is the same. Things change very little in twenty years.

  Eulalia says to the hotel owner:

  `I would like to stay in room number two.'

  `Why?' asks the owner, who is astute and never gives his opinion without first asking a few questions.

  `Some friends of mine stayed here years ago. They told me that it's a good room.'

  `Yes, it's on a corner and has two windows, but all the rooms are good rooms. Besides, I can't let you have it because it's occupied. A gentleman is staying in it. I'll give you number four, which is next door.'

  `Is he going to be here long?'

  `He hasn't said. He only arrived yesterday.'

  Eulalia installs herself in another room, number 4 next door to number 2. There is a continuous balcony that looks out onto the river and that connects all the rooms. She leaves her things and goes out on to the balcony to look. She knows that they carried her dead father down one of those paths. She looks across at the mountains on the other side of the river, hoping to see the peaks that soar to over three thousand metres. But you can't see them from there. Salardu lies between two secondary valleys and you have to go through them in order to reach the peaks. You can see only the meadows near the river and a slope covered in fir trees.

  Eulalia walks along the balcony to the window of room number 2. The French windows are wide open. There is no one inside. She sees a suitcase under the bed, a coat hanging up and a few books on the table. The coat is a man's coat. On the glass shelf, next to the washbasin, there is a safety razor. Eulalia is deeply moved to think that, twenty years ago, in that very room, her mother spent that most dreadful of nights.

  She goes further into the room. She is not interested in the objects, which belong, after all, to a stranger. She is interested in the room. On the table, next to the books, is an identity card with a photograph. Eulalia looks at the photo and is greatly struck by the stranger's face. She even closes her eyes in order to see it more clearly afterwards. There is an extraordinary similarity between that face and her father's face in the photograph in the silver frame. She examines the document and allows herself to imagine that she is going through the papers of her dead father. She smiles. Her father would be forty-five now. He would probably be a wonderful father. She reads the name on the documents. It's a perfectly ordinary name: Evaristo. She is amused by the name, but she doesn't like it. It is accompanied by two nondescript family names. She doesn't like either of them. Her father was called Felipe.

  She looks at his date of birth: 18th July 1926. She closes her eyes again and then opens them to see better. It is the date of her father's death. Yes, her father died there on 18th July 1926. That peculiar stranger who arrived yesterday and took the room in which her father stayed before he died and whose face looks like the photograph of her dead father, was born the day her father died. Eulalia feels a strange presence near her. She goes out onto the balcony and hears the voices of her friends calling her.

  They want to know if she's settled in. She shows them the room and the river and the distant trees.

  `We should be all right here for a few days.'

  `Yes, fine.'

  They are all very happy and completely oblivious to the secret life that drifts through the thoughts of others. They laugh and go down to the dining room because it is already supper time.

  Eulalia seems distracted at supper. They have to ask her everything twice and her replies seem rather odd. Her friend says to her:

  `The mountain air obviously doesn't suit you.'

  Eulalia laughs to disguise her feelings. It isn't the mountain air, it's because she is concentrating on the other guests. She is searching amongst those already seated at the tables for the stranger born on the very day her father died and she cannot find him. He's obviously not in the dining room. But Eulalia doesn't dare to ask for him.

  Her friend's brother suggests going on a trip the next day. She says yes, but she could just as easily have said no. She isn't thinking about what she's saying.

  `Apparently there's a lake you can visit.'

  `Well, let's go and see it then.'

  `It's quite far.'

  `We can go in the car.'

  `They say you have to walk there.'

  `I'm not sure I could manage a long walk. I'm not used to it and, besides, I've never been into the mountains before.'

  Her friend tries to encourage her and says that they could even swim in the lake. She agrees to everything they say and they arrange to get up early the next day so as to do the trip at a leisurely pace.

  They linger for a while over dessert and then, suddenly, the door opens and in walks a young hiker. He is tall, strong, with long, curly hair. Eulalia recognises him instantly.This is precisely the image she had of her father. The hiker has a knapsack over his shoulder and his skin is burned by the sun. He talks to the owner of the hotel and they both laugh. Then he washes his hands, puts his knapsack down in a corner and sits at a table set for one person. He doesn't say hello to anyone and Eulalia thinks: `Of course, he only arrived yesterday.'

  She no longer notices anything anyone says to her. She has eyes only for this stranger who is so like her father. She cannot imagine her father looking any other way. That is how he would have been, had he not died on the mountain. A little older perhaps, but with the same build and the same features.

  When she says goodnight to her friends and goes into her room, she says:

  `See you in the morning.'

  `They'll call you at six.'

  `Fine.'

  But she has already formulated a plan. She won't get up. She won't go with them on the trip. All she cares about is meeting the man who looks like her father. And that night she can hardly sleep. She has strange visions and holds interminable conversations with the man whom she has only seen from afar, once, sitting at a table.

  When they call her the next day, she doesn't get up. And when they come to find her in her room, she tells them that she slept very badly and isn't up to a walk. She begs them to let her sleep and she stays in bed. But she does not sleep or get up late. She goes out onto the balcony and sees the French windows of room number 2 standing wide open. But she does not dare to look inside. She stays there, waiting. She knows that the stranger will come out onto the balcony the moment he wakes up. He can't do anything else.

  The stranger emerges when it is already quite late. Eulalia has gone to sleep on the balcony, sitting on the floor. The stranger sees her there and does not dare to speak to her, but he makes enough noise to wake her up. She wakes and sees him, they say good morning to each other and they have a bizarre dialogue that no one else would understand, indeed not even they do, and in which the words are the least important part. She says:

  `We arrived yesterday.'

  He takes all the usual questions as read and asks:

  `Are you staying long?'

  `Ten days.'

  `Me too.'

  Eulalia has got up and is standing next to the stranger, leaning her elbows on the balustrade; without moving her hands or her eyes, she exclaims:

  `It's the river!'

  `Yes, and there are the paths and beyond that the high peaks.'

  `My name's Eulalia.'

  `I would have liked to guess
your name.'

  `You'd never have guessed it.'

  `Why not? You couldn't possibly be called anything else.'

  `I might be called Teresa.'

  I wouldn't like you so much then and the only reason you are here is for me to like you immensely.'

  And they talk and talk tirelessly. Then they have breakfast together on the terrace and afterwards lie down in the meadow by the river and they swim in the river and they have lunch brought down to them there and they spend all day by the river lying in the meadow. By nightfall, when the hikers return from the lake, Eulalia has taken into her heart the one man she can truly love.

  He wants to go with her to the mountain the next day and she agrees, but she is afraid to mention it to her friends. That night, before going to bed, she writes to her mother. She does not tell her about the stranger who is no longer a stranger. Nevertheless, her mother realises, when she reads the letter, that an irrevocable change has taken place in her daughter's heart. She knew that this would have to happen some day, but she is troubled by a strange presentiment. Why there exactly, in Salardu, where that other much-loved man had died so many years ago? Could it be an evil omen?

  The following day, Eulalia gets up before dawn and leaves her room without making a sound. Evaristo is waiting for her at the door of the hotel, and the two of them go off to spend the day up the mountain. They are happy. There are no doubts or secrets between them now. The veil has been ripped away in a single day. This is true love, which always begins at once with love.

  When, that night, Eulalia has to explain to her friends, all she can say are three words, round and hard as steel balls.

  `I love him!'

  `But you only met him yesterday.'

  `It doesn't matter, I love him.'

  `You don't even know who his parents are.'

  `I don't care, I love him!'

  `You don't even know 1 f he's got any money.'

  `I don't care, I love him!'

  No solid reasons have ever triumphed over that brief, earnest argument. And her friends are finally convinced that she does, in fact, love him, and because they also love her, the woman decides to write to Eulalia's mother to tell her what has happened. Her mother reads the letter and is not in the least surprised. She knew it all already.

  One day, the two of them are alone on the mountain, Evaristo and Eulalia.They have climbed one of the peaks, they have swum in a lake and are resting, waiting for the the sun finally to set. It is that unforgettable hour when people always tell the truth. They are holding hands, sitting very close together.

  She asks him:

  `What made you come here?'

  `It was like an irresistible impulse. I'd never been here and I didn't even know this valley existed. One day, I was packing my suitcase to go and spend the summer at the beach with my family, as I always do, when, suddenly, this name `Salardu' came into my mind. Where had I heard it before? I couldn't remember. But I became obsessed by the name and, the following day, instead of going to the sea, I came to the mountains. At home, everyone asked me if I had taken leave of my senses and I didn't reply because I might have had to tell them that I had.'

  `How odd.'

  `What's even odder is that when I reached the hotel, I had the feeling that I knew it already because I had been here before. Even the owner's face seemed familiar. I called him by name, without even realising it, and it was the right name. He asked me if we'd met before and I couldn't say yes or no. I was afraid that either answer might be a lie.'

  `How odd.'

  `Some even odder things happened to me after that. The following day, I went up the mountain for the first time in my life. I've always spent the summers by the sea, and yet a particular peak, unknown to me, drew me on irresistibly. I didn't know this peak, but I looked at it as if I had seen it before. I thought, I must have seen it in a dream. But it wasn't that. When I got to the peak, I saw that it was exactly as I remembered it, despite the fact that I had never seen it before. And as I climbed it, I had the feeling all the time that I knew the paths already. I didn't have to ask anyone the way and I didn't get lost.'

  `How odd.'

  `And there's another even odder thing. The second night after that strange walk up the mountain, I went to bed very tired and I fell asleep at once. I didn't dream. I never do. But I suddenly woke up with the definite feeling that there was a woman lying beside me. I would go so far as to say that I even touched her. And in the darkness I saw that woman's face. And it seemed to me that I had loved her for a long time and that this was not the first night I had spent with her.'

  Frightened, Eulalia asked:

  `What was this woman like?'

  `She was like you, but she wasn't you.'

  `My mother.'

  The words came out involuntarily. Then she covers her mouth with her hand and bursts out laughing. She tries to change the subject. He has heard Eulalia's words, but they meant nothing to him and he gave them no importance. He is still immersed in remembering the inexplicable phenomena that took place during his first two days there. She realises that the inexplicable has just entered her life, she does not see what clear or defined role she has to play in it all and she begins to feel strangely troubled. Evaristo says:

  `And the following morning, I came out and found you on the balcony.'

  `That's not so odd.'

  `For me, it's the oddest thing of all, because when I saw you, I immediately fell in love with you.'

  `I loved you already from the night before, when I saw you in the dining room.'

  And the conversation became one of those dialogues so common between lovers, in which everything has deep significance, except the words.

  This story could go on for some time, but the end was swift and cruel and it is best to tell it quickly, with no rhetorical flourishes.

  Evaristo is a medical student and belongs to a very good family. On that account, her mother can have no complaints. She thinks only that he is too young for her daughter. But her daughter is very much in love and, according to her, so is he, and they don't min-d-waiting.-

  Time passes and her mother has still not met him. Her daughter describes him to her, but that is not enough. She demands to meet him and her daughter always says the same thing:

  'You will.'

  But she carefully avoids a face-to-face meeting between Evaristo and her mother. Why? She doesn't quite know. Perhaps there is no reason. Nevertheless, she fears that nothing good will come of any interview between her fiance and her mother.

  Eulalia, the daughter, has never dared mention to her mother that her fiance's face is identical to that of the man in the photo in the silver frame. Nor has she said that he was born on the same day her father died. She can't. She doesn't want her mother to know. Nor has she ever told her mother about the conversation that she and Evaristo had that afternoon on the mountain when he explained to her the strange impulse that had brought him there and the strange visions and incomprehensible memories he experienced there. Her mother must never know about any of that. But Eulalia does not know how to tell her fiance that her mother must never know. What reason could she give?

  Eulalia, the mother, has never spoken to her daughter about the apparition she had on that sad night, nor about her father's promise to return one day. If her daughter knew, she might be even more frightened. Evaristo is the only one who has no secrets, the only one who lets himself be carried along fearlessly by the impulses of his heart. Sometimes he is surprised by vague recollections of a former life he has never had, but he doesn't give it much importance. He is a medical student and he knows that there are many dark wells in the life of the spirit whose depths can never be plumbed.

  It all happens very naturally. Eulalia, the mother, has not been very well. Now on the mend, she is sitting in an armchair next to the window, in the main living room on the first floor of the old house which was once her parents' house. Her daughter is in the garden with her fiance. Her mother knows this and is sitting there,
waiting, feeling a little sad that at last the moment has come to meet the man who will take her daughter away from her.

  She hears the two of them coming up the stairs. It is a bright summer afternoon and the balcony doors are standing open. Eulalia, the mother, adopts a slightly affected pose and waits there, not moving, her eyes fixed on the distance. She hears footsteps approach and a dear voice calling to her:

  `Mama!'

  And what happens next can scarcely be described. It is all so quick and so tragic. The mother and her daughter's fiance are brought face to face and for a moment they do not move. They stare at each other with wide eyes. They are no longer in control of their own wills. They are driven by apparently irrational, utterly irresistible impulses. The mother gets up and walks straight over to him. And the two of them fold each other in a long, close embrace, one of those almost legendary embraces that occur only between people who have loved each other very much and who have not seen each other for a long, long time. Eulalia, the daughter, sees her mother's face pressed against that of her fiance and she goes over to the open balcony doors. She knows it is fatal. She cannot cry out and she cannot go on living. She falls, almost involuntarily, from the balcony onto the flagstones in the courtyard below and her head cracks open on the stones.

  When the servants carry her dead body upstairs, Eulalia, the mother, and her daughter's fiance are still locked in each other's arms.

  © Maria Rosa Millis Vda de Claraso

  Translated by Margaret full Costa

  Noel Claraso (Alexandria, 1902-Barcelona, 1985) trained as a lawyer before dedicating himself to writing. He was also an enthusiastic traveller and amateur botanist. He began publishing in 1940 and his work encompasses short stories, crime novels and books on gardening. Among his publications are: Seis autores en busca de un personaje (1951), Fruta prohibida (1964) and Seis vidas al margen del ley (1965). `Beyond death' is taken from iMiedo! (1948).