Maybe they would have, but it wouldn’t have been as deep and long lasting as death.
When he regaled them with his theories like the one he had about “heat and revolution” (according to him, most revolutions took place in the summer), Soto displayed what a good orator he was, while, simultaneously, Zeberio proved what a great listener he was. Lazkano had borrowed bits of both of them. Soto’s conspiratorial soul was insatiable, his hunger to try to understand how humanity worked and its tendency to do harm too. “Mussolini; I’d love to have a cup of coffee with him,” he used to say, with the same passion with which he said “Silvana Mangano; I’d love to have a cup of coffee with her.” He loved dialectics, fiery discussion, shocking his friends: “Oh we are dark inside, but may old age not catch up with us without us having done at least one crazy thing,” he used to say, so many perfectly rounded sentences that seemed to spontaneously bloom from his head, and which years later Diego kicked himself for not having written down verbatim in some notebook, back in those days when he was still naïve enough to believe that Soto would be his closest dearest friend forever, how many hard-hitting sentences thrown about like they were nothing; Diego remembered some, like that one, that one he hadn’t forgotten: “oh we are dark inside, but may old age not catch up with us without having done at least one crazy thing,” events that won’t ever take place, things that were impossible now, words that became painful because they were a testament to everything that could no longer happen, words like those are not forgotten.
Lazkano had no doubt about it: Soto was destined to be a great writer. And, whereas Soto’s passion was human relationships and their dark core, Zeberio’s passion, on the other hand, was focused on electrical structures: cables, simple and complex installations, dynamos, alternating currents and direct currents, plugs, switches, transformers, electrical boxes, outlets, peeled copper cables put back together again. If you wanted to know something about the weakness of the human spirit and its few moments of lucidity, Soto was the man to ask. If you needed to know why a blackout had taken place or the way in which light flew and forked through buildings and series of rooms, all you had to do was ask Zeberio.
Soto and Zeberio’s duties were split according to their abilities, of course, you didn’t need to think too hard to realize what kind of occupation they would have been destined to if their years in hiding had stretched a bit longer. The allocation of duties would have been quite obvious. However, they didn’t have the chance to put their predictable abilities into practice within the organization: they didn’t have time to regret it, they didn’t even have the time to do anything they might regret. While Soto developed his theory about “heat and revolution,” Zeberio would feel the urge to talk about thermodynamics, give them a brief lecture on the renewable energies of the future (back then they didn’t even have that name), about the possibilities and benefits of wind power versus nuclear power.
“Do you intend to turn the four winds into electricity, Kepa? Really, tell me, how does that happen?”
“It’s very easy, Xabier: with windmills.”
“Windmills? You’re not going to turn into the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance now, are you? The fields of Castile are filled with windmills…we won’t live to see that.”
“We won’t live to see that.” “Oh we are dark inside, but may old age not catch up with us without us having done at least one crazy thing.” “Where in the notice does it say anything about blind people?” Sentences that had been carbon-copied into Lazkano’s head, as if he’d typewritten them into his brain with burning brands.
Soto and Zeberio always. The sentences of one, the silences of the other. The memory of Zeberio was constant in Lazkano too, to the point that his eyes filled with tears every time he saw one of those windmills that had proliferated so much in the past few years on the hills on the sides of highways. “We won’t live to see that.” How right you were, Soto.
On occasion Lazkano forced himself to think about the presumed advantages of dying young. Coldly. When he watched, say, a documentary about James Dean’s death on TV, about the way in which his early disappearance fed the mythology of his persona; he would speculate then about whether that could be applicable to Soto and Zeberio’s deaths. Nothing to do, of course, although the actor also died young, truncating the promising future ahead of him: the driver coming toward him never saw the silver Porsche James Dean was driving, the actor’s gray car disappeared in the gray asphalt, it dissolved, the sun diffused and melted the Porsche in the eyes of the driver who crashed against him, making it impossible for him to see it, blinding him. Had James Dean been driving a red car, a car in a more vivid color that was easier to distinguish for the person driving the car in front of him, the deadly outcome probably wouldn’t have taken place. If Diego Lazkano had had the ability to drive a red car or a vehicle of any other color, the events would also have been very different. It didn’t take much to imagine James Dean living on a ranch in Texas, aged eighty; a Republican, having undergone some cosmetic surgery, grumpy, alcoholic, an inveterate cocaine addict. “If I were handsomer, I’d be dead,” whose line was that? Perhaps that wasn’t the exact quote: “Thank God I’m not too tall: being as handsome as I am, were I six feet tall, I’d be dead.” Who said it? It didn’t really matter. The truth is that, in Diego’s fantasies, James Dean’s death overlapped with Paul Newman’s splendid old age; some people knew how to age, he told himself, some people, even if they didn’t know how to, they learned; a lot of talent was needed for it, or, in talent’s absence, the right amount of luck and enough money to buy a sailing boat, plus the benefits of good health. He could draw up a long list with the aches and discomforts that came with the passing of time, with the disagreeable humiliations we had to suffer, with the bloopers that made us wish the earth would swallow us, with the mean simian feelings we all carry, hidden deep in some recess of the brain, which come out at the worst possible moment, “Oh we are dark inside, but may old age not catch up with us without us having done at least one crazy thing.” Who wished for disloyalty, for the aging of parents, for the face’s vocation to turn into orange peel, for thinning or graying hair, for the loud presence of viscera, for the body that stops obeying, little by little or suddenly? Did a natural vocation to tiredly instruct our children – those tiny paralytics with promising futures – really exist? Despite the fact that they would end up fundamentally enacting our same mistakes, if not some other worse ones? Who needed all that? The betrayal of our vital organs, the crunching vindication of a set of bones that, back in the day, were silent and discreet, the cancer in our dearest ones or in ourselves, “let’s do some tests just in case”; in other words, who wished for decadence? Who would want that? Who didn’t find that they could do without one half or three quarters of life? Not to mention appearances, the extensive, never-ending list of undesirable things that day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year we did against our will. Even the good things in life, Lazkano knew this well, became repetitive from a certain point onward, even the good things in life could drive you mad: to fuck once or a thousand times, to get drunk once or a thousand times, it’s obvious after a certain age that the best bender and the best fuck, the most spine-tingling adrenaline high, is already in the past. Why go on, then? To reach the wisdom that could be the recipe for tranquility, or the tranquility that could be the recipe for wisdom? To try heroically to become Paul Newman without being in possession of his genes?
All the writers’ festivals were the same, Lazkano told himself, every new person he met resounded with the exact echo of someone he’d met many years ago who looked suspiciously a lot like them. The repertoire of men and women, psychologists knew this well, didn’t extend beyond around twenty personality types, and Lazkano already knew about twenty examples of each of those twenty typologies; repeat patterns, enough people and more to satiate even Soto’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Or maybe Lazkano lied to himself about that. Maybe life would never satiate Soto. Maybe
it was a matter of having the talent to live – Soto had oodles of it, Lazkano lacked it. Maybe that was why it was so boring for him to meet new editors, writers, and readers lately. Would Soto have been able to keep that dynamic spirit intact, “where in the notice does it say anything about blind people,” if he’d lived for another twenty years? It was hard to ascertain, but he probably wouldn’t have.
And, despite that, on occasion Lazkano forced himself to think about the presumed advantages of dying young, and although one thing couldn’t be compared to the other, although a car crash or a suicide had nothing to do with torture, he never tired of seeking similitudes, parallelisms, the comfort of likeness. In the case of suicides, there was always the consolation that those who take their own lives are exercising a right that belongs to them, even though some studies establish that people who’ve failed at their attempted suicides and survived them are said to regret them: Hopefully they thought it through, hopefully they put all the pros and cons on the scale, why doubt their opinion was reasoned, generous, measured, the wise decision of someone who’s decided to say enough to eternal repetition and stand their ground. The suicide has the chance to say goodbye, to write their last few words or not, to chose the moment and time, to leave everything in order (or not), to be conscious as to whether they have left everything in order or not. To know that is to know a lot, those who didn’t choose to come into life, choose the moment of their death, and they have the right to do that, even if it causes pain or if it leaves more than one with a feeling of guilt: they’ll say their decision was selfish but…let’s repeat it even if it isn’t true, is being generous with oneself maybe another way of being generous?
Soto and Zeberio’s case was very different: a sudden death – not one but two, and not so sudden after all: they probably saw centuries buried in every second while they tortured them, pinnacles and abysses that the living rarely face; a sheet of paper still inside the typewriter, an interrupted sentence on it, so many expectations reduced to rubble. And, despite that, Lazkano forced himself on occasion to think about the presumed advantages of dying young, when he found himself in a predicament or when he felt too overwhelmed by everything to carry on, when he thought that it was absurd to celebrate life as if it were the greatest, because life wasn’t all that after all.
But it was: life was all that, even the most despicable and miserable one was all that, “where in the notice does it say anything about blind people,” there was always the possibility of a sharp joke, the invigorating racket of children and their moments of eternal innocence – the centuries buried in seconds, maybe we’ve forgotten them, but the child we were still remembers those buried abysses. The promise of love and sex – just the promise is often enough, it’s enough, even, to be a witness to that promise, sometimes it’s even enough for others to make that promise to each other and for one to see it from the crack of an open door; like an old fox or a tired god who needs his eyes washed, sometimes it’s enough to be a witness to that promise.
Life was nothing and it was everything, life was a vanishing point, the only possible one, “oh we are dark inside, but may old age not catch up with us without us having done at least one crazy thing,” let’s forget for an instant that we represent a role that someone wrote for someone who isn’t us, let’s forget our inescapable personalities of mediocre second-class actors, let’s absorb those rays of light, let’s drink up the escape, even if it’s intermittent and fleeting. Everything, intermittent. Everything, fleeting.
The pinewoods reach all the way down to the beach. On the sand closest to the pines, dry leaves shaped like needles pile into reddish heaps that look like they’ve been there for years. The beat of the drums emanating from the squalid speakers sounds like it could be anything but a percussive instrument: a gas can being hit with a stick. “Come on, let’s twist again, like we did last summer; yeah, let’s twist again, like we did last year…” The voices and chorus – “uh, uh; wah, wah” – save the song. Soto and Lazkano, lying down on the sand, can see Zeberio from their spot; he’s bent over, taking the punctured tire off the axle of a Volkswagen van, keeling over slightly because of the jack. Soto smiles, half closing his eyes impishly.
“Consumatum est, primo…”
“What?”
“He’s got her in the sack, man…”
“Shouldn’t we help them?”
“Ménage à quatre? No way! Let him be…It looks like he’s getting on very well with that Dutch girl. Besides, for once he hasn’t asked the girl to change the music.”
“…and round and round and up and down we go again! Oh, baby, make me know you love me so…” The melodies of the empire. Lazkano remembers the arguments they used to have in the apartment: Victor Jara, the Doors. Afterward he remembers Ana: Echo & the Bunnymen and Errobi. Mikel Laboa and Patti LaBelle. The lanky girl standing next to Zeberio wears a semi-transparent orange dress and smokes a cigarette while wearing a straw hat; it’s almost as if the wind were smoking the cigarette for her: it burns quickly, as if the quick lapse in which tobacco became ash were trying to warn them of something. The girl blatantly stares at Zeberio, looking him up and down, with her hands on her hips, while the wind makes the ribbon in her hat flutter, an accessory made out of a remnant from her dress. In contrast to her dress and the ribbon, the wind doesn’t blow the pine needles heaped at the feet of the trees. It’s curious how some things find their place in the world, having retreated and in silence. Among pine needles, for example.
The radio on the VW van is on and they can still hear Chubby Checker’s playful tune, parodying the voice-over in the old Superman series: “Who’s that flyin’ up there? Is it a bird? No! Is it a plane? No! Is it the twister? Yeah!”
When the saxophone solo starts, the girl offers Zeberio her cigarette.
Soto and Lazkano stop looking in that direction and lie down belly up. Looking at the sky.
“Do you remember when things were really hummin’?”
When they turn around to look in that direction again, the tire still hasn’t been changed, and two sets of ankles can be seen behind the screen created by the small van: two naked ankles and two covered ones. For a moment that seems eternal, they see how the bare feet stand on tiptoe. Some reddish pine needles are stuck to the dirty soles of the girl’s feet.
It was easy to imagine: Soto had woken Zeberio from a siesta, or not, he hadn’t woken him exactly, Zeberio was the lightest sleeper, he slept like hares do, with one eye open, he’d wake up with a leap, fearing an emergency and ready to defend himself, leaping from the bed was his way of drawing his weapon; he was the weapon, and the sheets, his holster; since he didn’t have a weapon he drew himself, “here I am, I am the weapon, what’s going on?” Zeberio liked to have siestas, but he always remained alert, he was the only early riser of the three – he had a hunter’s habits – although seeing as it was usual for Soto to spend the night awake, writing, it was possible for him not to have even gone to bed at all, so disorderly were his sleeping habits; “enough with your siesta, let’s go to the festival in Ustaritz right now, let’s go and live a little”; something like that, maybe Soto had been reading and Zeberio was bored – “you read too much, primo” – or, simply, he felt like going on a bender. He had abandoned the book he was reading on page 215, As I Lay Dying; Zeberio had noticed the title, “what on earth are you reading, my man, it sounds super joyful, what is it, a collection of obituaries? It’s quite the tome…doesn’t it go on a bit too long to be about someone who’s dying? And that Faulkner dude with his mustache, who the fuck is that Faulkner, he looks like a self-satisfied member of the bourgeoisie…Is that the kind of writer you dream of becoming, Soto? Why don’t you write a version of Mao’s red book, translate it into Basque, and hand it over for free in factories?”
Those were too many words for Zeberio but, who knows, even shy guys have their exuberant days.
It was easy to imagine, and it was difficult to imagine. Lazkano tried once and again. Because that day he sh
ould have been there with them. Because he could have been there instead of them. And because he wasn’t there with them, or instead of them. Because he was locked up in El Cerro, and had just confessed his friends’ whereabouts.
Soto had been singing that silly song about uncensored clothes and uncensored feelings from one of Madrid’s new wave movida pop groups for days: “No controles mis vestidos, no controles mis sentidos…,” swinging his hips; he loved dancing more than anyone, he wasn’t your archetypal Basque of fused hips, Zeberio was much clumsier and prudish in that sense; even though they were both full of life, they exteriorized their vitality in very different ways: through dance, through hunt. “No controles mi forma de bailar,” don’t censor the way I dance, Soto sang, he didn’t know much more than that, he could only repeat the chorus of the song that had become all the rage in the past few months: “No controles, ¡no!” moving his hands in one direction and his head in the other, an almost hydraulic swing, crouching a little, looking slightly like a dancer from the days of the swing, “sing with me, Zebe,” he said; “you’re a clown,” Zeberio would reply, “you’re nuts, you don’t make any sense.”
“Nutcase,” Zeberio would call Soto, nutcase, as if he were saying brother, but uttering nutcase, words aren’t really important when they are said with the biggest smile. And Soto would take a piece of paper then, a train ticket perhaps, and place it inside the book, leaving it on page 215, to recommence his reading there tomorrow…That book, As I Lay Dying, “what the hell, just this once, it’s just one day, we’re still young and we won’t be forever,” and he decided to go out with his friend: “But I ain’t so sho that ere a man has the right to say what is crazy and what ain’t. It’s like there was a fellow in every man that’s done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.” We are many inside, we are many in the depths of our heads, it’s paramount to understand that. But there are many outside too, and not all are looking after our best interest. And there was someone observing them, someone watching them, were they so important, really? They waited for them in the street, stalking them, hiding where they least expected it, they didn’t let them get into their car, they caught them unawares, maybe they put dark hoods on them, whispered some threat into their ears, true, words aren’t really important when they are uttered with the coldest of hatreds, something soft and terrible, “get in the car,” a foreign accent they detected from under their hoods – don’t all accents sound foreign when you hear them from under a hood? Clown, fool, you don’t make any sense, nutcase…it was so tender, the way in which Zeberio pronounced those words, and now Soto can hardly breathe inside a dusty hood, what just happened, what dark hole have they fallen into, who pushed them there, and fear surfaces, “silence, don’t say anything,” they’re both the same, they never had the smallest chance to defend themselves, they’ve been hunted down like rats, they were waiting for them, “are we so important, really?” “enough with your siesta, let’s go to the festival in Ustaritz right now, let’s go and live a little,” for once, they’re headed to a party they will never reach, an interrupted book “for tomorrow,” for the following day, As I Lay Dying, “No controles,” page 215, clown, nutcase, brother, “this isn’t Chile.”
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