Hour of the Crab

by Patricia Robertson

  Those nightmares about drowning, for example — was that where things had started? Enrique couldn’t remember for certain, only that Emilia had come to him in tears when Nicolás was just a toddler, wanting to know what was wrong with her child, how had he and Mamá handled such things? The truth was they hadn’t had to, though he didn’t say that to Emilia. Nicolás hadn’t been two before he was waking at night screaming and had to be held for hours. The boat, it’s sinking, he sobbed, or Save us, please save us! No one knew what to make of it. The child had never been on a boat. Emilia had the idea of taking him to swimming lessons, but he’d screamed there, too, and refused to go in the pool.

  Then there’d been the business of food. He loved couscous, Emilia reported, and would have eaten it at every meal if she’d let him. He refused absolutely to touch pork. The summer he was three she found him sitting in the garden, clutching a sprig of mint. Make Abuelita some mint tea, he’d insisted, Abuelita would like some tea — only it wasn’t true, Luisa didn’t like the taste. There were the things he couldn’t have known, too, like the fields of lavender he’d seen on TV at about the same age. Alhucema, he said, startling everybody with his use of the word. Ras el hanout, he added, and kept repeating the phrase insistently until Emilia wrote it down phonetically and checked it in an online dictionary. Ras el hanout, it turned out, was a Moroccan spice containing lavender. Emilia bought some at the supermarket and made it into a paste for roast chicken, which Nicolás ate with gusto, though Núria, then a year old, wouldn’t touch it.

  –Tell us again, Abuelito. Tell us the one about the burglar and how the police dog found him.

  They were drinking coffee after dinner, mixed with chicory to make it go further (an old trick of his great-great-grandmother’s during the Civil War, so Nicolás had heard).

  –Not again, chiquitín! You can’t want that one again!

  It was an old formula, this pulling and pushing, begging and denying. Made the story all the sweeter, Nicolás supposed, remembering that he’d done it too at Daniel’s age. Daniel was going to be a vet, he told everyone, or a dog trainer. He’d join the Guardia — the Protectores — just like Abuelo and look after the police dogs. Nicolás hoped fervently this wouldn’t happen.

  –Well, there was a robbery on the Gran Via in Madrid, the famous Grassy jewellery store — it’s not there anymore — and Lobo and his handler were called in. A big black German shepherd, fierce and courageous —

  The door opened and their mother came in, carrying her briefcase and looking exhausted as usual. –¡Ay Dios mío, what a day! She tossed the briefcase in a corner and kicked her heels off. –First one of the girls slaps another, and then there’s a free-for-all in the middle of the classroom, imagine, and then there’s a bomb scare —

  –Mamá, Mamá, Abuelito’s telling a story and you inter- rupted!

  And because it was her baby, her little pet, Danielito, their mother crooned at him and cradled his head against her breasts and said pues claro, her own story could wait, Abuelo should continue and it wouldn’t be the story about Lobo, would it?

  — and Lobo leapt through the door they’d blown off and seized the burglar by the arm and he was so scared he peed his pants — shrieks of laughter from Daniel — and the cops threw him in the paddy wagon and took him off to jail.

  –What happened to Lobo, Abuelito?

  –Well, he got old, eventually, and retired, like all police officers, and went to live with his handler until he died. I’m sure Lobo’s great-great-grandsons are working with the Guardia today.

  Something tore at Nicolás’s chest — a brief glimpse of himself sitting outside somewhere with his arms round a scrawny dog, a puppy really, golden and gangly, and his mother calling him in that strange language that remained just out of reach. The glimpse vanished, throwing him almost physically back in his chair. He smelled thyme and jasmine, felt hot sandy soil under his bare feet, the rough fur of the puppy. He was having trouble breathing and hoped no one had noticed. His asthma attacks, his mother had called them when he was young.

  His phone rang, sparing him. Kassim, one of his co- workers at his restaurant job, wanting him to fill in for someone else who’d called in sick. –Ciao, todos, he said, grabbing his jacket and leaping through the door before anyone could ask where he was going.

  Whatever it was the boy would outgrow it, or so the doctor told them. Emilia clung to his words as if they were scripture, though Enrique’s aunt — the boy’s great-great-aunt — said it was obvious the boy was psychic and that no one outgrew that. –It’s a gift and a curse, the great-aunt said. –But it’s given, not chosen.

  Village superstition, Enrique told himself, and repeated none of it to Emilia. But the words lingered, troubling him. Madness ran in his mother’s family, so he’d been told — a great-uncle had been confined to a mental institution. And yet most of the time Nico was simply an ordinary boy, bright, lively, prone to mischief. Enrique went so far as to consult a psychiatrist friend of his, who said it was likely the boy had peculiarly vivid dreams and was too young, yet, to be able to separate them from reality. When, some time later, the boy’s father lashed out at him for his lies, Enrique took him aside. –Look, Roberto. They’re dreams, that’s all. Vivid dreams. That’s what a doctor friend of mine told me.

  –But he’s almost six! He knows the difference between dreams and reality!

  For his seventh birthday Nicolás asked for, and received, an oud, and still remembered the look of relief on his mother’s face when it turned out he didn’t already know how to play it. He slept with it next to him and sometimes talked to it. Lay with his hands resting on its pear-shaped belly, smelling again the fragrance of the wood shavings, hearing the sounds from the street, his father’s voice. It was the only thing that calmed him, that reassured him everything was all right.

  And then, as the doctor had predicted, the dreams — if that was what they were — faded away. When the boy’s parents separated — Nico was thirteen — Enrique watched him guardedly, wondering if stress would trigger something, but saw nothing. In fact the boy seemed unusually mature for his age, serious and responsible, perhaps because he was the eldest and now had to be man of the house before he was ready. He was thoughtful and tender with his sisters, though impatient with Daniel, who admittedly was a handful. For a while Enrique wondered if Daniel had inherited the same condition — he had seen his grandmother, he told everyone just after Luisa died of that stroke, sitting on the sofa, watching them all and smiling — but there were no further visitations.

  Nicolás was at the restaurant setting tables when the distant banging of pots and pans started. Some demo or other, then; he’d lost track. In high school he’d gone to them all, had even joined the EUFD, Students United for a Different Future — then it had been EUCF, Students United Against the Future — but now he didn’t care anymore. What was one more demo going to achieve? The truth was that survival itself was a full-time job. He’d got his part-time one the only way possible, through the cousin of a friend. People made do through bartering, scrounging, living with their families. The only hope was to emigrate. Robberies had gone up twenty-fold, or so he’d heard.

  –¡Venga, hombre! It was a friend from his mathematics class, Miguel, thrusting his head through the door. –Everybody’s in the street, everybody, you wouldn’t believe. He raced off before Nicolás could answer. Nicolás flung down the napkins and followed slowly — the restaurant was empty anyway. As he neared the plaza he could hear the roar and heave of the crowd, the chanting of slogans. Two young women rushed past pushing toddlers in strollers. A heavyset man, sweating in the heat, was urging people onward to the square through a megaphone.

  Nicolás leaned against a wall at one of the square’s entrances, watching. They could shout themselves hoarse, they could dent every pan and pot in the country; nothing would change. He was about to go back to the restaurant when he heard the first screams, the first crump of tear gas rounds. Someone near him yelled for a medic as a
middle-aged man collapsed. Then mounted police were charging the square in several directions, and the women he’d seen earlier with the strollers rushed past him again. He didn’t hesitate but turned and ran after them. Cobarde, a voice whispered inside him. Cobarde.

  Ahead of him another young woman tripped on the pavement and went down. Dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, a distinctive red jacket — it was Paola, wasn’t it, she was in one of his classes. He grabbed her arm and helped her up and they limped onward. From behind him came the hammer of running feet, the clatter of police shields. The door to some shop opened, children’s toys in its window, and a stout older woman waved them frantically inside. There, among the stuffed animals and the building blocks, they watched the demonstrators race past, followed by the police.

  –Cabrones, the woman muttered, though Nicolás wasn’t sure who she meant. –Where’s it all going to end, I ask you? What hope is there?

  She guided Paola into the back office, propped her swollen ankle up on a chair, and fetched a cold cloth as a compress. –I don’t take sides here, she said. –It’s a nasty business all round, no? And everyone loses, everyone.

  Once things had quietened Nicolás helped Paola walk to the restaurant. Strands of tear gas still floated in the street, people hurried past with eyes averted. Outside the restaurant chairs and tables had been overturned, but otherwise the place was undamaged. A man from the grocery shop opposite was sweeping up glass.

  –Are you hungry? Nicolás asked, unlocking the door. –There’s some pescado frito left from lunch.

  –Fish? Real fish?

  Nicolás grimaced. –The fake stuff, of course. But there’s lots of it.

  Paola limped to a chair. –There’s still fish in Germany. Or so I hear.

  –That’s where you’re going? He fetched a bottle of wine and poured glasses for both of them.

  –That’s why I switched to engineering. There’s jobs there, my cousin got one last year. My parents have already gone back to Italy, to Milan.

  So that explained the faint accent. Her mouth was too big for beauty but there was something about the glossy hair escaping from its elastic, the cut of the red jacket, that suggested ease and comfort.

  She shifted position and winced and bent to touch her ankle. –And you, what are you going to do?

  Nicolás shrugged. –Go to America, maybe. I have a friend there.

  The truth was he didn’t know a soul in America and couldn’t have left his mother and siblings on their own anyway, but this smooth assured girl irritated him. What made her think she had any more control of the future?

  –How come you were at the demo? He refilled her glass.

  –Oh, I wasn’t. She laughed and the bluish-grey eyes lit up. –I was just walking past. The eyes narrowed reflectively. –I had no idea. It was horrible.

  –I’ll take you home, he said, but she shook her head and took out her cellphone.

  –I can take a taxi. If my sister-in-law can’t come and get me.

  No one he knew took taxis. –My brother’s a businessman, Paola said — airily, or so it seemed. –He says there’s talk about a coalition, the PDN and that new party.

  That was what his uncle had said the month before, over the obligatory Easter dinner at his beautiful house in Seville. They were in talks, he and the other members of the Partido Democrático Nuevo, the centrist party, with the new upstart, the one that had done so well in the last regional elections, the far-right New Dawn.

  –So now we’re in bed with the fascists, Nicolás had said as his mother and his aunt Marisol exchanged glances. –No one I know even voted in the last elections.

  –They’re not like the old fascists, his uncle said tartly. –They’re realists, they understand how things work. Don’t you think we need a government?

  –A government that’ll make things better, yes, but those thugs —

  –Nicolás, his mother said, raising her eyebrows warningly, but by then he had the bit between his teeth and didn’t care.

  –Do you know how people are living, Tío — real people? They don’t have Mercedes and trips to New York like you. Their children don’t go to boarding school in Switzerland. Haven’t you noticed? They have nothing. Just like us.

  That night, when they returned home, he had to go and lie down in his bedroom, holding the oud. He hadn’t taken it out of its case since he could remember. He gently blew the dust off and held it close, trying to hear again those sounds, those voices, only this time they spoke to him not of the safety of his father’s workshop but of danger and menace. He understood, without knowing how, that secular music was now forbidden and his father no longer made ouds, ever since gunmen had burst into the workshop and destroyed his instruments. He bent over the oud. There, at the base of the pear-shaped bowl, was a tiny crack, one he’d never noticed before. He tightened his arms round the instrument and closed his eyes.

  It was Núria, of all people, who told him about the Enrejado, the Lattice, starting up in their own neighbourhood. He’d heard about the Lattices that threaded across the country and, increasingly, the continent, forming their own trading and banking and schooling networks, but he hadn’t paid much attention. Now here was his sixteen-year-old sister getting involved in some dubious organization.

  –Rafael says we’ll never have a government, Núria said as they cleaned up the kitchen together. –Rafael says it’s a thing of the past, vertical organizations.

  –Who’s Rafael?

  –He’s a shop steward at the electronics repair place near here.

  –I don’t think you should get involved. It isn’t safe.

  –And it’s safe if I don’t get involved? Besides, it’s too late. I’m helping with the bread run. She flung her hair back. –After what you said to uncle Felipe, I thought you’d be pleased.

  The bread run, it turned out, was a distribution system, to which the neighbourhood bakeries contributed free bread each morning for the poorest households. –We’re starting to organize other things, too. Soap and canned food and milk and — oh, all kinds of stuff. Daniel came with me last time.

  He saw them, his sister and brother, lying bloodied on a street somewhere, clouds of tear gas encircling them. –Leave Daniel out of this, he said, grabbing her arm, but she pushed back.

  –Who do you think you are? Papá? Anyway it’s too late. Daniel’s got his own little run, right in this street.

  In this new, cracked world, one where the voices were leaking in again, he was helpless. But at least if he joined the Lattice he could keep an eye on Núria and Daniel. Even Maite, who’d just turned thirteen, was on some computer committee or other. –And on Friday nights there’s concerts in the square by the church. All the local musicians come.

  –Why didn’t you tell me before?

  Núria regarded him pityingly. –With your head full of mathematics? Admit it, Nicolás, you live in your own world most of the time.

  –Suppose I want to help?

  –Then you can teach math. We have classes for anyone who wants to come.

  He went reluctantly, sure no one would turn up, but instead there were sixteen people, including Rafael from the electronics place — the heavyset man he’d seen at the demo — who’d always wanted to learn calculus. Afterwards Rafael took him aside. –We need more teachers, you know, for other subjects. Bring your friends. And money to buy supplies. If you know anyone who has any.

  The next time he saw Paola in class he told her about the Lattice. –You ought to organize one in your own neighbourhood.

  –But no one there needs free bread, she said, puzzled. Her ankle was still bandaged but she didn’t seem to be limping anymore.

  –We need sympathizers, Nicolás said. –We need money and support. It’s your job to find it. What about that brother of yours, the businessman? Start with him.

  The violence, according to Kassim, was the sign of a system in its death throes, flailing like a wounded beast. That was how it had been in Algeria during the Civil War of
the nineties, when Kassim’s father, a journalist, had been assassinated, and his mother had fled with her two-year-old son and his sisters to Spain. Now Kassim worked for the university newspaper, writing a column called The State Is Not Your Friend.

  –Western democracies were supposed to be different, he told Nicolás. –In Algeria we have a saying: If you step on its paw, even the tamest cheetah bares its teeth.

  Nicolás brought him to the neighbourhood to teach classes in journalism and media. Paola, to everyone’s surprise, came by too, bringing a large donation of cash. Her brother had been very grateful for her rescue at the demo, she told Nicolás, handing over the neatly folded wad of bills. –He wants me to leave, to join our parents in Italy. He says things are going to get much worse.

  –He’s right, Kassim said. They were sitting on the steps of the church, waiting for the Friday night concert to start. –But there’s nowhere to run. You think Italy’s better off?

  Paola said something that was drowned out by the sounds of a guitar tuning up. –You have to stand your ground somewhere, Kassim added. –Your brother won’t be able to protect you forever. His teeth, white in the fading light, looked positively feral; Nicolás decided he wouldn’t want Kassim as an enemy.

  Paola came regularly after that to the concerts, often bringing food to contribute to the weekly feast that Núria and the other women organized. She even sat in on the strategy meetings organized by Rafael and Kassim and a group of workers from a local furniture factory. They called themselves the Grupo Cinco de Junio, in honour of a day the previous year when police on horseback, charging a group of demonstrators, had killed three. Nicolás watched with skepticism, especially when Paola and Kassim began sleeping together.