Nocilla Lab

by Agustín Fernández Mallo

  23.

  Before dinner that night we sat at one of the cloister-garden tables drinking vermouth. He brought us the drinks himself, and his demeanour was distant but not cold, an attitude entirely different to that of other hoteliers we’d encountered on the island.

  ‘He reminds me of Kusturica, the film director, but older and grey,’ she said, stirring the ice cubes in her conical glass. ‘Pretty hot, wouldn’t you say?’

  She was right.

  We looked across the bitmap of square windows surrounding us on all sides; we had left the light on in our room. The sun had not yet set but it was dark in the rooms already.

  It looked to me like it had once been a monastery, before an ecotourism place, and before a prison. I pointed this out. She agreed. We seemed suddenly to be agreeing about things.

  We left our drinks half finished and got up to go for dinner. It would never have occurred to me to do so, but she, who sometimes bought pot plants for the terrace at home, and who occasionally even dreamed about TV-advert hydrangeas, ran her hand over the leaves of one of the immaculate hedges. She halted and, leaning down over the green mass, began prodding the leaves with delight. Turning to me, she said:

  ‘Fuck me, they’re plastic!’

  She went over to a tree, and to another of the hedges, ran a hand over one of the lawns, the stones:

  ‘It’s all plastic! The whole garden!’

  I ran my hand over the greenery, too, and she was right, what we had was 75x75m2 of faux foliage. It seemed none of it had been dusted in years, and, beneath this thick grey patina, it looked real.

  Rather: it had become real.

  When we came through the reception on our way to the eating area she picked up some tourist brochures and leaflets; she never read these, they just piled up in the car. I said something about the food maybe being plastic, too. She jabbed me with her elbow.

  There was a large eating area with very long tables and benches. At one end of one of the tables was a tablecloth with 2 places set facing one another. 10 metres along on the same table, at another tablecloth for 2, he was having his supper, alone. He was eating soup that smelled strongly like lamb. We seemed to be the only guests.

  By process of elimination, we sat at the only unattended tablecloth. He got up without a word and went into the kitchens through aluminium swing doors that continued swinging open and shut, open and shut, almost as long as it took him to emerge once more bearing a platter of grilled vegetables and a carafe of red wine. His movements were slow. After serving us, he went back over and resumed eating.

  The rest of the dinner transpired in a series of similar sequences, spaghetti Bolognese followed by very strong lamb stew and then fresh fruit. She and I would exchange brief glances, laughing to ourselves, or grimacing at the lighting, which looked like it had been taken from some shed for animal husbandry, or at the surface of the table, into which names, hearts, messages and pictures had been carved, as far along the tables as we could see; traces left by former prisoners.

  24.

  We did a number of different things in our first few days there: cleaning the car, sunbathing on the terrace, drinking vermouth, and me a little writing when I got tired of lounging around. She started becoming argumentative over the smallest things; suddenly the tiniest detail, the kind of thing no one would notice, became a source of conflict. She said this was a sure sign of her tiredness.

  It was on the third night, going through to the eating area for supper, that we saw an extra place set alongside ours; we asked ourselves who the new guest might be. But the owner appeared a few minutes later, and sat down at this newly laid place, across from me and alongside her.

  He was a lot friendlier than before.

  We returned his greetings. Following that, not a word was spoken until the second course had begun, at which point he took out a cigarette and started rummaging around in his pockets, seemingly for a lighter he could not locate. After a few seconds she spontaneously said to me:

  ‘Pass me the igniter.’

  Which I did. And she gave it to him. And he turned it over in his hands for a few moments. And lit his cigarette, looking directly into the flame. And handed it back to her, and when she went to put it in her pocket, I said:

  ‘Pass me the igniter.’

  Which she did, and I lit a cigarette, and before I had time to put it back in my pocket, she said:

  ‘Hey, pass me the igniter.’

  And I did and she took a Marlboro out of her bag and lit it, and was about to slot the lighter in with her cigarettes, but then he motioned for her to pass it over; his wasn’t smoking properly. And she handed it to him, and he relit his cigarette, and handed the lighter to her, and she again went to slot it into her pack of cigarettes, and I said:

  ‘Hey, pass me the igniter.’

  And she passed it to me and I put it in my shirt pocket. Then he, looking at her and her alone – looking her in the eye – said:

  ‘Thanks.’ And burst out laughing.

  Conversation ensued. Niceties to begin with: where we were from, what we did, and this was how we found out he was a collector of, and researcher into, old texts; he didn’t specify which era. And also how we learned that he had bought the old prison five years earlier, and that setting it up as an ecotourism place was an excuse to keep the world at enough of an arm’s length that he could dedicate himself to his true passion; his argument was the following:

  ‘Ecotourism is very well-subsidized here and, since the jail sign puts off any possible guests, I can pocket the subsidies and spend my time doing what I want.’

  Pretty difficult to argue with, I thought.

  At a certain point we told one another our names; he and I had the same name, it turned out, Agustín, a coincidence that set us off laughing again for a while.

  We were surprised by the liveliness of his conversation and just how charming he was. We talked about books, and he threaded together stories and anecdotes that led off in all sorts of different directions. We listened carefully to everything he said, our only interruption being me occasionally asking if people wanted more wine, and filling the 3 glasses. She didn’t talk at all. Dinner ended, and after we had talked a while longer, he offered to show us round his living quarters and where he worked.

  We followed him over to the door at the far end of the eating area and into what looked like an apartment.

  His exact words were: ‘The prison governor used to live here.’

  It consisted of several adjacent rooms, no passageways between them, and minimally furnished; you could almost say of them that the concept of decoration didn’t exist. On the chimney breast hung a row of miniature figures, Captain America, the Fantastic 4, and some other Marvel characters I can’t now remember, all made of toxic rubber. All of this he showed us quite hastily, as though it were a mere prologue to the place the mention of which made his eyes gleam: the studio.

  We left the apartment through a back door and came into a kind of orchard, little-tended and surrounded by stone walls, which we had not laid eyes on until this point. 2 rows of globular lights had been strung across the middle, casting faint patches of colour onto the weed-choked path. At the far end stood a low stone gatehouse. He said nothing as we crossed the orchard, not even when the door to the gatehouse refused to open and he had to apply his shoulder. Then, with a kind of bow, he invited us to go in. She went first, he watching her intently.

  Inside, the 4 walls were covered, literally, with books. Books seemingly old, new and everything in between, and in one corner, a glass table with metal legs bearing a laptop that was turned on. He told us that he spent entire days at this table consulting texts, archiving offprints, searching for traces of hugely valuable, supposedly lost books. I saw scattered around the place other seemingly antique objects, revolting figurines, half-assembled clocks, dried-out fountain pens, more Marvel superheroes, that kind of thing.

  I can’t remember very much else about the night, except that we had quite a good t
ime sitting in his leather chairs drinking a liqueur made from myrtle leaves.

  Then, over the following 4 days, we didn’t see him at all.

  25.

  We’d get up in the morning and find that our breakfast had been placed on the same tablecloth, always the same place, along with a note saying ‘Busy today’; it was the same at lunch and dinner. The only sign of him was the music that seemed to be coming from his studio. Neapolitan songs, very loud. The sorts of classic songs we were familiar with from TV and movies. ‘’O sole mio’, that sort of thing.

  We used this time to go on car trips in the area. The sea turned out to be 2km to the south. One afternoon, sitting on the beach, we saw something out at sea, what looked like an island with turrets of some kind projecting upwards into the sky. On another occasion we came to a very long beach which, instead of sand, was formed entirely of grains of rice; very worn white quartz of the same dimensions and ellipsoid shape as a grain of rice. What a thing it was to lie down in that paella – like waiting to be cooked.

  26.

  He emerged on the fifth day at lunch. He was beaming, said he’d made important progress in his research, cause for celebration. He didn’t tell us specifically what, but we supposed it must be something important – he did say he’d been struggling with it for 2 months, some spanner in the works, but didn’t go into details. He said, a few times, that if it came off it was going to be his most significant finding.

  We retired early that night. We were worn out from the sun and walking. She went to bed but I went up to the rooftop terrace: it was a beautiful night, the moon nearly full. To one side stood the plastic garden, completely stationary, not the slightest movement of a single leaf, and on the other his studio: though I couldn’t see inside from where I was, light streamed out through the windows, and his music was audible too. I smoked a cigarette, contemplated the island we’d seen from the beach and its turrets, doubtless military in character, which were dotted with lights. After that I descended the metal stairwell, came back along the gangway, also metallic, and past the cell doors, some of which were shut but most of which stood ajar, and, reaching ours, got straight into bed. I thought of the square of light our window comprised, and of lighthouses guiding ships that go off course, of the click of the light switch that gives you a north, saving you from disorientation, and about the fact that there probably wasn’t anybody within a radius of several kilometres to see it. She lay breathing on my right. I turned out the light.

  27.

  A few days passed with no further sight of him, but now he’d stopped bothering to make us any food. He left badly-written notes to say we should go into the kitchens and help ourselves.

  We started spending quite a lot of time in these kitchens. When you are away from home, you never have access to this particular, commonplace area. It’s comforting.

  Stoves of an industrial kind, steel countertops, sealed-off store rooms here and there, like a library but for food.

  The first time we went into the kitchens, the playful essence of childhood was rekindled, kind of, and we kissed, and envisaged playing out the clichéd scene of her trying to escape along the gangways, provoking a pursuer, only in the end to let herself be caught, and to let me do whatever I liked with her. It was silly, but for the first time in a long time I saw her laugh.

  There was a heavy steel door to one side – the door to the cold storage room. We opened it. White icy smoke enveloped us. We could half-see a number of frozen lambs hanging from hooks. ‘Fuck me!’ she exclaimed. It didn’t affect me. There were also a number of pig heads that had been chopped up, to strangely beautiful effect; the snouts had been sliced straight down the middle, giving a view of the bizarre structure of the nasal cavities, which looked like fractals; I waited for them to defrost a little and took a photo. She made lunch. I threw the head onto the land behind the complex, it barely rolled.

  28.

  We were making breakfast one morning in the kitchens. The lamb stew was almost ready when he appeared. He pushed open the swing doors and said,

  ‘Anything for me?’

  He looked dishevelled, and older, with several days’ worth of grey stubble.

  The 3 of us ate our breakfast standing there, next to some aluminium, industrial-sized pans. We spent a long while chatting, any comment from us would prompt him to talk and talk; he said he was very happy. ‘Great progress,’ he declared, over and over.

  He drank his coffee quickly, devoured the stewed lamb sandwich and went away again.

  29.

  I was woken by the sun one morning. We’d forgotten to close the shutters. She was still sound asleep, but I’d had trouble digesting the previous night’s supper and hadn’t gone to sleep until well into the early hours; I now felt heavy. I got up.

  I don’t remember the exact time, but it would have been around 6 a.m. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, focusing particularly on my tongue and a place where I was starting to get a cavity. The towel was very dirty, I decided to go and get a clean one from another one of the cells.

  There weren’t any towels in the room next to ours, or in the next one along, or in the next. I checked as many as eight rooms and then, out of simple curiosity, carried on walking along the gangway.

  It made me feel slightly dizzy looking down through the grate flooring. Across the way, the gangway of the opposite ‘pavement’. You could poke your head out and look up at the floors above, and down at the road-like central corridor breaking off to left and right. I went along opening cell doors, all with the exact same metal door and sliding peephole. Inside, the cells were also all the same; a repetition I found obscurely exciting. I went down to the second floor and did the same again: opening the doors, going inside, looking around for a few seconds, thinking about the man who would one day have done time there, coming back out. And so on until I came to the central corridor, crossing and taking the steps on the far side, up to the cells across from ours. In a way, I thought, it was like the spot-the-difference game you got in newspapers, trying to find the 7 differences between the 2 apparently identical pictures. I went on opening and shutting doors. And found just the one difference: a typewriter on a bedside table in one of the cells. I opened the drawer and found a stack of unused A4 paper. On an impulse, I gathered up both the typewriter and the stack of paper and took them with me. It was precisely what I needed in order to type up my notes. And there was no way he’d notice the change; I’d never seen him anywhere near these rooms. Coming out of the cell, I saw that in our room, almost directly opposite, she had now got up. She got out of the shower, naked, and in that moment I had no regrets about having chosen her.

  I went back. Typewriter under one arm, A4 paper under the other, and the white towel I had gone in search of slung over my shoulder.

  Over the following days I shut myself in from dusk till dawn, typing up the scattered notes I had been making in my spiral notebook. She brought up my food at meal times.

  30.

  Though you normally have to pay a week up front in ecotourism places, we had been there for a long time and hadn’t been doing this. We’d lost track of exactly how long. With the help of a calendar in reception, we made it 18 days. I worked out how much we owed, and she waited for me downstairs as I went to our room to get the money.

  As previously, to get to his studio you had to go through his quarters. As we were coming through the living room she sat down for a moment, looked around, then shut her eyes and sighed.

  ‘I feel like going home.’

  I fingered the toxic-rubber Marvel figures on the chimney breast.

  We went out into the orchard through the door he’d shown us, crossed beneath the swaying coloured bulbs and knocked on his door. The music stopped; after a few seconds he came to the door. The light inside gave a clear view of his face. She spoke first:

  ‘Hi, we’ve come to pay –’

  ‘Oh, good,’ he said cutting her off. ‘I could do with the money, actually. Come in.’

>   The place was messier than usual; there was a strong smell of stables.

  We picked our way through chairs, books and piles of junk; there were numerous lamps placed here and there in the room, each casting its own little pool of light. We must both have seen it at the same time; we both stopped. On the floor, next to his worktable, there lay the case for a Gibson Les Paul, black, and inside it what we could see were all the necessaries for the Project, our Project.

  ‘Ah,’ he said without looking at us, ‘this is what I’ve been working on.’

  Then, looking us each in the eye, he said:

  ‘It’s a project, an immense project. I’ve been so completely wrapped up in it, I’ve put aside my studies altogether.’

  I couldn’t think of what to say; after a couple of seconds she spoke:

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Found it on the beach,’ he said. ‘The sea washed up this guitar case. But that’s all I can tell you, it’s a secret, as I say, something immense.’

  I felt a sort of dizziness, a rush of blood that demanded the floodgates in my head be opened, I don’t know, I think I was on the verge of fainting – out of this cloud the question emerged, the question I asked out of pure intuition, and without knowing very well what kind of intuition, it couldn’t even be called a hunch or a premonition, it came from somewhere deeper and further off than hunches or premonitions: