When they’ve occupied my head entirely and displaced the very last of the invading voices, it will be time to return my shivering body to the comforting warmth of the sheets.
“I WARNED HIM, course I warned him, it’d’ve been criminal not to, even with the risk involved. What I find hard to believe is nobody else did. This was his home town, a lot of the people who turned their backs on him had been friends of his father’s, they’d been to his christening, watched him play in the square, watched him grow up. And it was down to me — an outsider, a newcomer in town back then — to tell him,” says Berraja, shaking his head, the owner of the local love hotel, whose rooms — the beds with their lacquered bedheads and plastic-lined mattresses, the worn, red carpets, the odd compass rose made out of offcuts of mirrors, the posters of naked silhouettes against orange-crush sunsets — he wanted me to see before showing me into his office. It’s a cold, rainy afternoon, and the surface of the lagoon is raised in little wave points, like gooseflesh, and, every time the wind shakes them, fat drops run down the windows of Berraja’s office and trace sinuous lines through the fine spray of drizzle. “But what else could I do, Ezcurra was a regular as you’ve probably heard,” he says with a wink from behind a lens of his glasses. “He was one of the first to adopt me when I came here. Put yourself in my shoes, an establishment like mine in a town like this in those days — those holier-than-thou women with nothing better to do, greed dressed up as local council and police morality, sermons in church for those as went, the very ones who’d head over here when they got out or ask me next day who was with who last night che. Ezcurra wasn’t bothered about any of that, just the opposite, and what I wonder today is of all those young girls who opened, well, let’s say their hearts to him not one, not even for those couple of hours of happiness they spent together, had the common decency to tell him? Or perhaps that’s precisely why — they may’ve been afraid Ezcurra’d let the cat out of the bag afterwards and go shooting his mouth off about who’d warned him? Or it may’ve been out of spite or revenge or morbid jealousy?”
“But you warned him,” I intervene.
“I told him, course I did, I told him to look after himself, that there were people in town who wished him ill, that he’d be better off going away for a while, far away, but he, you probably know what he was like from what you’ve been hearing, he got worse, dug his heels in, he said Tell … I can’t remember who he said, Tell whatsisname that if anyone’s going to have to leave town it’ll be him, and tell them from me to find someone else to tend to his horns, I’ve done my bit.” Berraja smiles as he recalls, and mumbles, “Real piece of work that Ezcurrita.”
“But you set him straight? You let him know the problem was with the police?”
Berraja’s initial hesitation gives me the answer his words try to correct.
“A nod’s as good as a wink,” he finally manages to articulate. “I didn’t spell it out to him, the name, if that’s what you’re getting at. But I was certain he’d understood at the time. Subsequent events proved I may’ve been mistaken, but then it was too late to correct my mistake. I did a fair bit, while his lifelong friends, his partners, his neighbours, even his relatives left him to his fate without so much as batting an eyelid. If Ezcurra’d been less pig-headed, less proud, less omnipotent, he’d’ve realised straight away. But there’s none so deaf as those that will not hear you know. Besides, they were both customers,” he adds unnecessarily.
“Both?” I ask.
“Ezcurra and the Superintendent. They’re both dead so I can permit myself the breach of confidence, though I can’t do the same about their partners of the fair sex you’ll understand,” he says in a winking tone, which fortunately his eye refrains from backing up. “What’s more, that week halfway through the week, they ran into each other here one night at the entrance — Ezcurra on his way out, the Super on his way in. I was a witness. You can just imagine, by that stage there was nobody who didn’t know what was afoot, not even Ezcurra, or so I thought, though I’d mistaken what was sheer foolishness for courage. The glances of the men who’d be victim and executioner crossed for a second, you could hear the toads croaking in the lagoon in the silence that ensued. Then Ezcurra acknowledged the Super with a nod and a half-sardonic smile and left with his bird on his arm. The Super left his — always the same one, methodical the Super was — and came over to the window. Does he know anything? he asked me with his eyebrows. Not from me I gave him to understand, shrugging my shoulders, and he believed me. I swear, for a moment there I was afraid he’d rumbled me, went weak at the knees I did, I can remember as if it was yesterday, soon as he’d gone after his chinita I had to sit down and have a couple of whiskies before I could carry on.”
“AND CLOTA, poor thing, so fond of God’s creatures she was, ’cause she couldn’t have children I say, well she did have one that died young she told Chesi and me once and they couldn’t have any more after that one or didn’t want any, I’m not sure, you know Fefe when there’s a misfortune like that you try to avoid the subject; and just imagine us asking her husband — a very helpful man the Superintendent was, but with secrets not just professional ones, wait I’ll tell you in a minute, he couldn’t keep that one from us, silent as the grave he was, and I reckon that that must’ve been why she was so fond of animals, full of cages the house was and a pair of little plovers loose in the garden and sometimes even a martineta which didn’t last her long see on account of the possums and you can’t keep them in the hen coop ’cause the hens’ll kill them her husband used to bring them back for her when he went hunting famous for his aim he was if he wanted to he’d kill them and if he didn’t he wouldn’t and take them back home as a present for his wife. But her favourite was the little dog she was given when they first moved to town, by … oh of course your grandparents what a scream Fefe I was about to say the Echezerretas as if you didn’t know them I’ll forget my head next but your Auntie Porota’s getting on,” my grandmother’s friend, whom I’ve always called Auntie, will say to me, and her sister Chesi will look up from her knitting and smile. “Adored that little dog she did, from being a puppy she’d make it talk like a person you know Mummy Mummy give me those ickle bonies from the barbie Clota’d pretend the little thing said what was it called Chesi and she’d take it out for walkies oh you know with little bows on and all dolled up because truth be told it was a lovely gesture of your grandparents’ but the little tyke didn’t have much of a pedigree to be honest and well that’s what I wanted to tell you her husband also had one of his own not much of a pedigree either I can tell you why would I beat about the bush Fefe dear we can call things by their names a bit of chinita fluff she was and to make matters worse she was so young coming out of school in her white pinafore, she must’ve been around fifteen then but she was still in sixth grade, didn’t have much up here, worked for me at one time she did and I had to send her back. So she’d come out of school and make straight for the headquarters, but that wasn’t enough for him, he had a room booked in that hotel on the highway, I don’t know if you saw it on your way into town … Can you imagine Fefe! A hotel room, and all for a chinita! And poor Clota, how couldn’t she have known, she was bound to. She played stupid poor thing. But then she wouldn’t’ve been the first, or the last, there are times that look, all sorts goes on in these towns we’d prefer not to know about.”