Dez had already decided, before Anceis’ death, that I Was Forsook had to exist. But in his own way. It would now be Tomás Dez’s second book, the sequel to his literary debut, From Mars to Daphne. A decade had gone by. It was a prudish book, but he had to be grateful to a work he was deeply ashamed of. It had enabled him to make contacts, there’d been a few reviews in which the book was described in agreeable terms and, since then, he’d appeared as a poet in the wake of the so-called ‘creative youth’, those who after the war had followed the banner of Garcilaso de la Vega, poet and soldier. Not unintentionally had he begun his work with a quote from Garcilaso’s Second Elegy: O crude, o rigorous, o fierce Mars, clad in diamonds for a tunic and always so hard! His strategy worked. An initial review in the local press, which was unsigned, talked of ‘poems of virile race’, a formula that was repeated in other commentaries. He’d also sent the book to Agustín de Foxá, with a humble dedication in which he deliberately used Foxá’s own verses evoking Madrid: From my eucalyptic shadows, these poems travel in a landau with cinnamon horses to visit the master and kneel while he drinks from the pink shell with rainbow veins. He was a real admirer of Foxá. He’d memorised the two centaur sonnets, the young and the old. Reciting them was one of his coups de théâtre among friends. But Foxá never answered. He may not have liked the image of someone kneeling while he drank from the pink shell. The truth is it was a ridiculous dedication. He realised this as soon as he’d posted it. As often happens with extreme eulogies, it smacked of parody. Nor did he reply to a second attempt, when Dez sent a copy of Tableau of the Middle Ages, asking for it to be signed, for which he enclosed an envelope with the necessary stamps. He had better luck with Eugenio Montes, when he did the same with his book The Star and Trail, published by Ediciones del Movimiento. He went straight to the point and paraphrased Sánchez Mazas’ preface in a spirit of Fascist camaraderie: ‘With thanks for placing human letters at the Falange’s service.’
I Was Forsook, that is The Moment of Truth, would signify a radical change. A literary bomb. ‘Garcilasistic’, my foot! He was going to shock the literary world beyond this oyster city, stuck in its own shell. And then this had to happen. He had to do something about it. Right away.
He again visited the Sahara boarding-house, where Anceis had stayed during his last two years as a grounded sailor. No, said Miss Dalia, the owner, no one had asked after Aurelio Anceis. No relative had turned up. No one had made any claim.
‘No one?’
She didn’t find it so strange. In a boarding-house like hers, with a majority of long-term guests, the world was seen differently. Some people, some sane people, who were like hermit crabs, only ever came out of their rooms to eat. Talked to nobody. Lived like zeroes.
‘Zeroes? Why do you say zeroes?’
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ replied Miss Dalia. ‘What I mean is nobody missed him. Nobody came looking for him before you.’
Dez would remember this visit. It was the last time he saw him alive.
Anceis barely said anything. He complained of a strong migraine. He was dressed under the bedspread, with his sailor’s hat pulled down as if he wanted to hold on to the pain rather than letting it go. He asked him, out of courtesy, how he felt and unexpectedly Aurelio Anceis replied he felt guilty.
‘Guilty for what?’
‘For having survived. Don’t you feel guilty?’
‘No, not really,’ said Dez.
‘I’d like you to return I Was Forsook.’
‘Why?’
‘You heard me. All the paperwork. The poems, applications. Everything. It’s my last wish. I can’t demand it of you, so I’m asking you as a final wish, as a plea. If it doesn’t reach me in time, burn it. I was going to burn it anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I wanted the poems to come out as a book so that I could burn them. Make a bonfire down by the docks. They were written to be burnt.’
He was seized by a violent cough he quickly tried to stifle with a handkerchief, though all it did was redden his face. Dez associated Anceis’ words with that cough and the abrasive change in the colour of his skin.
He stood up, turning away, averting his eyes from him. This was not the proper way to behave. To hell with it. He was in the company of an ex-man.
He turned back at the door. ‘Goodbye, Mr Anceis. I hope you get better soon.’
When he reached the censor’s office, he told his secretary, ‘If that seafaring poet turns up again, I’m not in and I’m not expected. Get rid of him straightaway.’
‘Yes, Commander Dez.’
Commander. He liked it when his secretary called him that.
‘Anything to report concerning Aurelio Anceis?’ Tomás Dez now asked the owner of the Sahara boarding-house. Dalia had shown him into that lounge which still had a gramophone. Mute, but there it was, lending a certain style. The woman also looked more ancient and more attractive than the first time, with those painted nails dancing like dragonflies. ‘Anything new turn up, any request?’
‘You know what he wanted. Everything of his to be burnt. What a fright he gave me when he tried to do it in the kitchen. He wasn’t very good at handling fire. At the end, this became his obsession. In the lounge, he’d start writing verses on scraps of paper and then set fire to them in an ashtray. It was the only time I had to ask him to be careful.’
It was better to confront your ghosts than to carry them on your back, thought Dez. There was a certain matter rolling around in his mind. He realised he was talking to a smart woman, who maybe didn’t just read the fashion magazines with faded covers scattered about the small lounge of the Sahara boarding-house like holidaymakers caught out by winter. The same could be said of Miss Dalia. Her hairstyle, jewels, make-up, nails, everything about her shared a family likeness with the gramophone and those illustrations in Belle époque summer programmes.
‘I wonder if you share my opinion,’ said Dez. ‘There was something wrong with Aurelio Anceis. I mean apart from his illness. Recently he’d become very suspicious, don’t you think?’
‘I know people who spend their lives at sea and come ashore to die, Mr Dez. They can’t accept things. They find us strange. But he never used to complain. On the contrary, to him almost everything was wonderful. In his last days. .’
‘The man was a wretch!’ Dez blurted out in a loud voice that was petulant and accusing.
‘Did he never tell you about the dance in L’Étoile?’
Now it seemed to be the characters in the cover photos listening to her narrative. Dez guessed she wasn’t the kind of woman to start crying, but she blinked and rubbed her hands, ‘In his last days, of course we didn’t know it, he’d pay tribute to the smallest things. I’d give him an apple for dessert and he’d carry on looking at it for hours. He’d say to me, “Isn’t it wonderful, Miss Dalia?”’
Dez glanced in the same direction as the Sahara lady, but found nothing that could be described as wonderful. She abruptly shook her head and said, ‘If what you mean is whether Mr Anceis had a secret, I’d have to reply I don’t know. If he had any secrets, he took them with him. All he left me was a Festina watch.’
‘That’s all very interesting from the point of view of Anceis as a poet. But right now I was thinking about something else. Do you think there’s any possibility Aurelio Anceis hasn’t died?’
She was stunned. Dez would have liked to know whether her contemplation had to do with him, an assessment of his sanity, or whether she was really considering the hypothesis Anceis might not be dead.