‘In Noitía a funeral was always a funeral, and a party a party.’
‘Patience, Marcelo. Remember the first-born of Egypt are in charge!’
‘I’m going. My work here is done.’
‘Thank God your work is never done, Marcelo. You have to take care of us, your flock. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. We must meet some day and have a chat about Unamuno.’
As the priest leaves, from the far side of the cemetery, hidden until that moment, emerge the members of a mariachi quartet. The musicians, dressed in typical Mexican clothes, perform the ballad ‘Pero sigo siendo el rey’.
A murmur of surprise ripples around the cemetery. Followed by several disapproving looks. This has never happened before in Noitía. The most there was, and this was some time ago, was a bagpipe intoning a solemn march. But as the ballad progresses, the faces take on a renewed sort of expression.
‘If the acoustics are good,’ says Edmundo, ‘in three minutes you’ll have yourself an age-old tradition.’
‘That’s the thing about death,’ replies the Companion. ‘It lends itself to everything.’
44
IT WAS A refreshing sensation to be in one of the miradors used by Mariscal and not to have to hide, stay under cover, but instead to share the view. What was happening was more than unusual. It struck him as nothing short of miraculous. Because of the person by his side and the topic of conversation. Grimaldo had bumped into him in the station car park. Fins had expected a peevish greeting. Or nothing at all. But in the end he’d spat out a kind of telegram: ‘Meet me at the mirador in Corveiro. In fifteen minutes.’
‘I know you don’t trust me,’ he said when they were there. ‘You do well. Never trust me. But today make an exception.’
Haroldo Micho Grimaldo had the appearance of a dandy from the suburbs, just like the Old Man. A single policeman, he was the only guest in a boarding house whose mistress treated him like a king, viewing any other candidate as a small-time crook who’d come to the wrong door. He didn’t have a shining reputation, at the police station anyway. Though paradoxically he was, or proclaimed himself to be, the Scourge of Vice. One of his roles was to inspect so-called singles clubs, a euphemism he took it upon himself to clarify.
‘Singles clubs? Whorehouses, you mean.’
Proceedings were sometimes begun, but none of the brothels was ever closed. Except when there was a scandal, an argument leading to injuries or casualties, which transcended the barrier of night. This control was vital in the fight against prostitution rings. So Micho Grimaldo was a cynic. Or more than that. Most people thought more than that. This being the case, the strangest thing about his behaviour was that he wasn’t more hypocritical when it came to his impression of an exemplary life. There were periods when he did his best. His virtuous days, as he liked to call them. When his tongue became sharper than usual, like a cut-throat razor. But after that he’d let himself go. Roll from club to club with the repellent air of a perfumer. If others put up with him, it was because he was on the verge of retiring. And because he knew a lot. Or so people supposed. In the past he’d worked for the Political-Social Brigade, whose job it was to hunt down opponents of Franco’s regime. He’d been involved in Barcelona and Madrid. And then returned to his birthplace. He’d inherited a country house from his father, all refurbished, in a village inland, but hardly ever went there. He’d acquired an exciting new identity in his role against vice. Being a whoremonger.
‘Well, are you going to trust me or not? I can’t bear know-it-all silences.’
‘Go ahead, Grimaldo,’ said Fins.
It was dusk. The estuary was like a log, burning from the inside out. Behind them, the darkness slipped whistling over the eucalyptus leaves.
Micho Grimaldo took a stick and began to draw a map on the ground. The axis was the river Miño. He traced the iron bridge at Tui. Despite the conditions, he exhibited a wish for accuracy. He marked the main towns on either side of the border with dots and joined them up with lines representing roads.
‘This Sunday there’s going to be a party,’ he said. ‘An important party. With the excuse of a wedding. Not many guests, very select ones. The party’s going to be here, in the Lower Miño, in a place named Quinta da Velha Saudade. Not far away is an old quarry. There is a track, about a hundred yards long, with a turn-off leading to a site for abandoned machinery. A good spot to hide your car. You’ll have to climb a bit, then go through a forest which runs parallel to the road. On the other side of the road, after a bend, is the mansion. A large terrace overlooking the estuary. High walls. Two entrances. But cars can only go in and out through an automatic gate. When they leave, they have to observe a stop sign, which is right on the bend.’
He’d leaned down in order to draw on the ground and straightened up slowly, holding on to his hips. He stared at Fins. ‘You have to be there! On the sly, of course. Take note of everything on your camera. And that’s all I’m going to say.’
‘Are you going as well?’
‘Didn’t I tell you it was an important party?’ he scoffed.
The man was fat — ‘adipose’, Mara Doval would have said — but seemed to have been whittled down by the shade. He erased the map with his shoes. Then sought out the final embers of the setting sun on the sea.
‘I received two medical reports today. One bad: I have cancer. The other good: it’s progressing rapidly.’
He opened the door of his Dodge. Before leaving, he turned to Fins and remarked with an air of distance, ‘Don’t mistake confidence for compassion. If I’m telling you this, it’s not because of my soul. It’s because of you. Because I understand you haven’t sold yourself. Yet.’
He emerged slowly on to the road, let the car descend the hill in neutral. It was a long time before he switched on the lights.
From his hiding place, Fins had photographed all the cars leaving Quinta da Velha Saudade. With his zoom he’d managed to make out Montiglio. Then Mariscal with Carburo driving. After an interval in which the occupants of the cars had been strangers, mostly young, with a festive air, probably no more than guests, he’d focused on another familiar vehicle. The Alfa Romeo in which the lawyer Óscar Mendoza was travelling on his own. He’d seemed to wait far too long at the stop sign, even though there weren’t any other cars on the road. But finally he’d pulled off in the direction of the border.
The sun was about to go down. It didn’t bother his eyes any more. On the contrary, this emigrant beauty struck him as the best gift of the day.
Fins glanced at his watch. Thought about leaving, but something held him back. It wasn’t to do with the outside, but with his own mind, which had been influenced by the long wait in front of a gate that kept opening and closing. What was going on inside his mind wasn’t an absence on account of the petit mal, but the memory of an absence. What happened when an absence took place. Those moments of timelessness which were, however, extremely brief. He could see Leda with a serious expression, measuring time on the stopwatch of her fingers. This image merged with the first time he remembered seeing her. Of course he’d seen her before, when she was a girl, but this was the first time his eyes had focused on her presence to the exclusion of everything else, the day she painted her nails. She’d found a bottle in the sand, that way she had of walking as if excavating the ground. The container was small, conical, made of thick glass. In the palm of her hand, despite the coating of sand, her discovery had an animal appearance, a kind of alert immobility, a red ampoule which grew when she wet it and rubbed it with her thumb. That was when she placed her right foot on a rock, among limpets. Her foot was no longer a girl’s. It must have grown overnight. She opened the bottle brought by the sea and, using the brush in the lid, slowly painted her toenails.