“The French francs.”
“Yes. Fungo took them, and to be able to spend them freely, he converted them to Italian lire. The bartender at the restaurant did it for him. My thought was, if it was francs that you lost, then it was francs you needed to get back. I made Fungo confess where he had exchanged the francs for lire; I made him take me to the restaurant and get the francs back. But the bartender had already gotten rid of them. I was so mad I hit him again. I said to him, ‘You son of a bitch, you’ve already tried my patience too much, now I’m going to pound on you until you get together every last bit of French currency we need to settle things with that foreigner.’ Fungo tried to argue, he said there was no need, that giving you lire would be enough, but I said to him: ‘This is a question of manners, the gentleman deserves our consideration.’“
“Thank you.”
“It’s nothing. But the truth is, he didn’t understand, the poor guy, so I had to smack him around to get it into his head, and so he goes off looking for francs in every bar we come across, always with me watching him, you know. And this way, we get a couple of bills here, a couple of bills there, and finally we’ve got the total, 200 francs. Is that correct, Sir? Have you counted them? Is anything missing? I wouldn’t be surprised, knowing that bum had his hands on them…”
I don’t need to tell him: I don’t need to look again, I already counted them while he was in the shower, there are twenty ten-franc bills, each one new. Not only that, they are the exact same ones I had before.
I recognized them when he gave them to me, then I looked them over and made sure. They were clean and crisp before, now they’re a little grubby and worn after the day’s hijinks. They have a peculiar, arbitrary fold: not only are they creased in the middle, the usual way you fold banknotes, but there’s another pleat, parallel to that one but a centimeter to the side, which passes over Voltaire’s nose. I didn’t put it there, it was that way when I got my change in Orly.
All of which means that these bills are mine and the twenty of them have been together from the time they were filched; it’s not true that Fungo, threatened by Turì, had to ambush place after place, searching near and far, to gather them…
So the both of them are thieves, or they cover for each other and share they spoils afterward. If Fungo is a bandit, so is this weasel whose thirst I’ve just deigned to quench.
I don’t let the deception rankle me. I’d rather say goodbye to Turì in a pleasant, dignified tone.
I imagine the scene. I ask him, Friends?, he shakes my hand, and he replies, assuredly, Friends. Perhaps he adds: Forever. Each takes his separate path and we never see one another again.
I scold myself for these thoughts, for if I am with a thief, he’s not just any thief, and he has repented.
A very wide street passes in front of the hotel; in the middle is a canal, rather narrow, rather tranquil.
When we exit the garage, him in the front, holding his bicycle by the handlebars, Fungo is wandering around on the other side of the canal. He waves and greets us cheerfully: Ciao, as though nothing had happened.
Turì seems to be emerging from a tender dream, and raises his hand and shakes it to acknowledge him:
“Ciao, Fungo. Wait. We’ll go together. Where are you headed?”
“Dunno,” Fungo calls out from the distance.
“Doesn’t matter,” Turì responds.
Feeling rushed by the uncanny encounter, he pulls away from me, saying, “See you, Sir. Thanks, thanks so much for everything.” Not a word about Friends!
He gets on the bike, and before he treads on the pedal, his back turned so I can see the nape of his neck, I look at his lone ear and ask myself if this lucky madman isn’t racing away foolishly to give up the other to be eaten, in this way completing his vow. (Today, Fungo could allege a new set of motives.)
Turí crosses the nearby bridge to reach the second section of the canal, where Fungo is waiting for him. Turì stops, Fungo climbs onto the bike frame, and they go. They ride in figures of eight, mouth off, make merry.
The sun-soaked day still presents me with infinite possibilities. But I need to sleep, and I enter the hotel.
It’s five in the afternoon.
from Stories from Exile (1983)
Tropics
I don’t know what you did to find me, I thought I was in the furthest corner of the Universe.
I made you a guest in my house (my cabin, my shack), where all this time I’ve lived alone, with a dog and a lizard as tame as the dog. The lizard doesn’t care for rocks in the sun or caves or nooks and crannies, he likes water, and since the river here is so calm…The dog is well-mannered, too, maybe a little passive, being so fat…In times of hunger, I’ve thought of eating him.
I have neighbors out on the coast, three hundred yards or so from here. A French couple you’ve gotten along with perfectly in English.
It was hot – we’re in the tropics – and the woman provoked her husband nonstop. She refuses to let me be witness to their lascivious goings-on.
When you got here, I put on some music, nothing that would remind us of our country.
The French woman stretched out like a mulatta on a hammock spanning two trees.
You wanted to make a paella to get on their good side, but I refused:
“It’s too heavy, no offense. We’re right on the equator.”
You wanted us to reminisce about the names of people from there, those of friends, of people from school. I said to you:
“Get off it, brother. I’m dead to them.”
Graciously, you lent me your sandals, so I wouldn’t ruin my feet walking over the sand and splintered shells.
I saw you were still just a colt, a young stallion, and I advised you:
“Don’t take the Frenchman’s woman, she’s the only thing he’s got. Don’t get sly and tell me you’re just going to borrow her and you’ll give her back once you’re done.
I went on telling him:
“I know you well, Andrés. You can’t fool me. The Frenchman either, hell he played a pimp in a Jean Renoir movie. Let’s go get a bite. I’m hungry. On the way, you can tell me how you wound up here. Crossing the river, I get it, but how could you know…”
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
The Impossibility of Sleep
The impossibility of sleep is horrific. If you don’t sleep, you can’t dream. You can think and remember, but poor you if wakefulness turns loose memories and labyrinthine thoughts. You will suffer, from them and from the yearning to sleep, because if you can’t manage it, when tomorrow comes, you’ll fall asleep standing up, and you won’t understand your orders, and they’ll beat you.
During the day, the prohibition against lying down in bed: the prohibition against sleeping or dozing.
The prohibition against sleeping sitting down in your seat, which has no backrest anyway and offers no support. If you fall asleep despite the prohibition, you’ll freeze. You are surrounded by cement walls and windows without panes, with nothing but bars across them.
At night, the guard wakes him, time and time again.
One evening, the guard doesn’t show, not even to glide down the corridors and pound the bars with his baton. Suddenly the light comes on, controlled from outside. It goes out, and with it the fear of a nighttime inspection, when you would have to jump up naked and chaos and destruction would ensue.
The light turns off and when the tension goes slack, I return to my sleep and my fancies. Then the light erupts again, over and over, cutting off and on, with interims of brightness, as though to let flower, all at once, fear, disgust, and hope. It comes on, it goes off, all through the night. It goes off.
The man dreams he is dreaming that the guard won’t let him rest.
The guard wakes him with a violent shove and rebuffs him: “You’re asleep…? Get up, it’s daytime!”
Lazarillo of Hermosilla
On my usual route, from the office to my room and vice versa, I pass through the subway tunnel that opens in Goya, di
ps under Calle Doctor Esquerdo, and emerges in front of the honey store. Around the corner from there, on a street lined with what once were gaslights, is where I live.
Where the tunnel flattens out under the sidewalk and buses, where the sound goes dead, was the dog. I saw him in wintertime, wrapped in a blanket.
His owner lay dozing, most often on the tile floor. He didn’t make a show of the dog, and he had no gift for music, playing the violin or the accordion for tips, as so many do; nor did he have a cardboard sign set out, appealing to the charity of the public: I’m out of work, my wife died, I have six children, and my hovel burned down. His hat did all the work, upside down on the ground.
I found his very somber approach interesting, and admired the patience of the dog, who must have received some nourishment from his owner at certain hours, bought with whatever the daily haul of pesetas could afford.
But I didn’t care enough about them to let down my guard.
One day, when things had gone well – they weren’t going to fire me at work, not yet – I wanted to show my gratitude, but I didn’t know how or to whom. I let a coin fall into the upside-down hat.
Then I was angry I had done so, because from then on, when the man saw me come down the tunnel with my respectable beard, he would stare at me, albeit discreetly. Despite that test to my compassion, my action wasn’t to be repeated.
My resistance was bolstered by what he said to me when I indulged my weakness and paid him mind.
I asked:
“What did you do before, what were you?”
He replied:
“Not what was I, what am I.”
“What then, what is it you do?”
“I’m an inventor.”
“Of what?”
“What kind of things does an inventor invent?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“I’m an inventor of what doesn’t exist.”
“Ah…so what’s your most recent invention?”
“The dog.”
I let it go. All that arrogance, and the suspicion he was having a laugh at my expense, relieved me of any inclination to help.
Dog and man disappeared. They’d changed spots, I supposed with relief, and I wished them a more prosperous destination.
Then the dog came back, but alone. No man, no blanket. I couldn’t ask after his master.
Later on, it was the same thing: the solitary dog, not laid out, as usual, but rather sitting on his hindquarters, expectant, with an anxious demeanor. The man is ill, I thought, or he’s busy with something and has left the dog to mind his post, so some other beggar doesn’t come along and take it.
Supposing his owner would be back anytime and knowing the dog had to eat, I laid a few pesetas at his feet, or rather paws.
A woman watching me followed suit, without excessive conviction, perhaps, since, it looked a little stupid at first glance, giving money to a dog.
Wednesday was no different. Save that the money from before had vanished. I imagined something magic had occurred, either to the money or to the dog. Then I tried to clear the conjecture from my mind. My life has no room for the marvelous: not a single fancy has ever embellished it. Nothing extraordinary has ever happened to me, nor have I ever encountered anything I might even consider strange.
Thursday: dog and coins intact; there were even a few duros. I concluded he had passed the night there, that his owner hadn’t returned, that he was used to people leaving him alms, but if someone tried to take them away, a little growling and baring of fangs had sufficed to run them off.
I was convinced the man had died, and I went to the offal shop to get some tripe and oxtails for the poor thing, something hearty to help him through the wait, which was possibly pointless now, but from which there was no dissuading him. I suppose he was thankful for what I’d given him. Either way, he bit into it. Not with voracity: he still had his good manners.
I don’t work on Sundays, and this past Sunday I stayed in my room. At one point, a voice rose up from the lots around the square where the children play…a dog’s voice. It was barking energetically, peremptorily.
I stepped out onto the balcony and there he was down below. I think he saw or smelled me, and since I hurried like a coward to shut myself up inside, he started moaning, with woeful tones, at my absence.
A boarder has lost his patience and shouted at him, a neighbor lady pitied him, other dogs showed their support with dull, fatalistic howls.
The lapdogs seemed to be sobbing. When night fell, a lonely ululation rose up, and there, between my four walls, I heard the hoarse, accusatory murmurs of the families.
At daybreak on Monday, I pricked up my ears to check whether the plaintive howling had abated. Not a single note hovered in the air. Feeling safer, I went over to look. I peeked over the potted geraniums: nothing.
It occurred to me that he must be wandering along the sidewalks in search of leftovers or castoff food in the doorways, and that soon he would return to his post in the subway. So I walked to the metro via the over-ground route, since at that hour, the cars aren’t yet hurtling en masse down Calle Goya.
The shadows lurking in the office pummeled me with their claws, and a few remained stuck in my flesh. They fired me, I mean to say.
I’ve spent weeks without work, more than a month now, taking care of the dog, which I usually see in the square – the park, as they call it – in front of the Church of the Holy Family. Properly speaking, the park is called Fuente del Berro, and that’s where the dog cheers up and feels better. He’s young, and he makes it clear he’d like to romp around, but I can’t follow him on his diversions.
Since we get along well, I still don’t have a job, and his owner hasn’t come back, I’ve taken over his old post in the pedestrian tunnel that runs under Calle Doctor Esquerdo.
With the dog at my side, without pleading, without a cardboard sign – we keep up appearances – I stand there, as though I’m waiting. My face does the begging for me, it seems: it’s pale, wounded, weakened.
If its argument isn’t persuasive enough, I stretch out my arm before the good people who pass. To fool myself into thinking I’m not reaching my hand out for charity – aware of my hypocrisy – I hold a plastic bowl instead.
I envy a skilled competitor who drops in every two or three days, presumably when his funds have run dry, and holds a guitar in one arm, fingers with the other hand, and blows accompaniment into a harmonica held on by a chinstrap, attracting more attention than I.
I envy the young couple in the Goya metro, the man with his flute like Manuel de Falla and the woman with her long gauze skirts and black braids that make her look like a real live gypsy.
All I have is my hunger, my bowl, and my face. A lady who stopped, her attitude hesitant, as if not sure that I’m an authentic beggar, opens her mouth to tell me something, with a defiant air, never looking away: Am I not ashamed to use a poor dog to rouse people’s compassion?
The stern reprimand, uttered wrathfully to my face, does not manage to unnerve me; but I check myself, and don’t respond as I should.
“He’s my seeing-eye dog, Miss, don’t you understand? What do you want from me, should I tear out my eyes so you’ll have a perfect portrait of blind man and guide dog to stir your heart? Is your money worth all that, Miss?”
I turn to walk away. The dog is slow to react, but he may have a sense that the woman has pushed me to the peak of humiliation, for he follows me, his head down, on wobbling legs.
Halfway to who knows where – my confusion has actually blinded me – my thoughts grow clear and I began to conceive of something that makes me whistle. I see if the dog’s paying attention and yes, he’s picked up on my lifted spirits.
I stop suddenly, struck with an idea. Now I know what I have to do.
I retrace my footsteps, back down to the tunnel. The harpy is no longer there. No matter, I’ll put the show on for myself.
When the dog reaches his customary spot, he looks at me inquisitively, a
nd when I say nothing, he lies down, as usual. In a tyrannical voice, I order him up. He stands. Then I move into his place. I throw myself to the ground and start barking.
Calle Hermosilla, Madrid
Orthopterans
I’ll tell it the way they told it to me. This clarification is necessary as the language, meant to be as plain as that of the original story, is a bit casual. The speaker, in this case, is not a resident of any of the settings evoked, but rather a man of the city, a journalist. For whom the story began, or was lived, though later he may turn his eyes into the depths of a timeless past, sometime around the 1930s.
Or maybe earlier, because the phenomenon frayed the nerves of Don Jacinto Benavente, and given the circumstances, this could only have happened when they awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature, that is to say, in 1922.
Don Jactino was traveling by train, with a theater company, maybe Lola Membrives’s…No, it can’t be, he repeated that journey, but without its perilous exploits, with Membrives, thirty years later.
The itinerary the travelers were meant to cover took them from Buenos Aires to Santiago de Chile, with an obligatory stopover in Mendoza. The arrival in this city in the Andes, anticipated at around midnight, did not take place till the following morning, with muted alarm among those who had some sense of who Benavente was and were already informed, by means of the telegraph, that as they passed through the San Luis station, a messenger came onboard with something important in his leather satchel. This man, an employee of the post office, went from car to car, asking which among the passengers was a Mr. Benavente, and when he found him, he passed him a telegram. The four lines contained the message from the Swedish Academy.
Back then, that train was known pretentiously as the Buenos Aires-Pacific Line and was run by the English, who were both punctual and proud of their punctuality, so that its late arrival meant a black stain on the service record of those responsible for every subsequent stop on the line. When it pulled in, and the swiftest bystanders, the stationmaster among them, leapt at the diminutive and now venerable figure of the Nobelized Spaniard, the latter, still bewildered by his impressions, received them with a cry of terror in his throat: “Locusts! Locusts!”
Nest in the Bones Page 19