The assumption is that Dad is spending the money he has coming in and occasionally dipping into his savings, and that the two of us are getting the benefit of that. And I understand Carmen’s annoyance, her indifference, her caution. This isn’t a particularly appetizing dessert; the end of life’s banquet is not exactly sweet, but let’s not talk here about love. Do you understand, Liliana? No one likes the idea of living with a zombie who wanders down the corridor and sits staring at the TV screen, or who lies there, open-mouthed, when you lay him down on the bed, his vacant eyes fixed on the ceiling, a zombie from a real-life horror film who clicks his false teeth at you the way the skeletons do on the ghost train, and pushes them out with his tongue until you can see the teeth in their pink plastic, a zombie who still wolfs down his food and, above all (and this is the most unpleasant bit: a zombie-tamagotchi), continues to defecate twice a day (always assuming he doesn’t have diarrhoea). She, like Juan, like Germán’s widow and children, will turn up when the corpse has finally stopped twitching and it’s time to share out the treasure hidden beneath the skull. Then they’ll come to inspect the accounts, they’ll want to see the deeds of the workshop and the house, and of the former orange grove (now a potental building plot) and the piece of land in Montdor, where I would like to build a little house to retire to alone with my dog Tom, the two of us going for walks in the countryside, him trotting ahead and constantly stopping to wait for me, as he does when we go to the marsh, the two of us getting old together. He’s four years old and could have kept me company until the end. He’s got at least another ten or twelve years of life ahead of him, or did have; now he has only what the others have. And to grow some fruit and vegetables and fill a wicker basket with loquats, peaches, cherries, apples, quinces, and adorn the center of the table with those multicolored fruits, those fruits that Liliana says we don’t have here, to put them in a bowl, a fruit bowl on the table cloth, so that when you open the door, you’re greeted by the scent of ripe fruit. They’ll come and sit in the notary’s office and confidently discuss what they believe to be their legal share of the estate, having already booked a return flight home, convinced they can afford this extravagance because of what they’re going to get of the loot (the complete cleaning out of the accounts that the industrious Carmen suspects will happen, the sale of property). The living feed and grow fat at the expense of the dead. That’s nature for you. You only have to watch those wildlife programs on the TV, huge birds pecking at their victim’s innards and squabbling among themselves; the lioness picking at the bloody flesh of the zebra. But there’s no need to look to nature for examples; the gondolas in the supermarkets — that’s what they call them, gondolas, although they are, in fact, shelves — are grim cemeteries: shoulders of dead lamb, bones and steaks from a deceased ox, the viscera of a sacrificed cow, loin of electrocuted pork, all packaged in containers made from the remains of slaughtered trees. We live off what we kill. We live from killing, from what is served up to us dead: the inheritors consume the spoils of their predecessors, which nourish and strengthen them when it’s time to take flight. The more carrion they eat, the higher and more majestic the flight. And, of course, more elegant. And none of this is in any way at odds with the natural condition of the world.
When I get home, I’ll find him still sitting in front of the television, although what mood he’ll be in is hard to predict — people with dementia are prone to mood swings — so, on some afternoons, he’ll be quietly dozing, snoring away, his head bent over his chest, while on others, he’ll look at me, eyes glinting, needle-sharp, as if he were high on drugs or something: he kicks out when he sees me, moves his head back and forth, moans or grunts, and punches me in the chest and tries to punch my face too. Regardless of his mood, I have to untie the sheet, get him out of the armchair, warm up the food, put it on the table and serve it up, you’ll be having a late lunch today, Dad, so enjoy your few remaining hours; you may or may not know it, but it’s a lovely day; nature has put on all her finery to bid us farewell; winter has disguised itself as spring for us, and the weatherman is forecasting an equally bright day tomorrow. Enjoy your vegetables: one small potato, some chard and an artichoke, because vegetables are really beneficial to your health, artichoke is a diuretic and chard is good for the heart; fortunately, the market in Olba, though small, is very well stocked, and you can supplement products from the nearby farms with imported goods, plus the packaged stuff you can buy in the big local supermarkets: the day before yesterday, I looked at the bag containing the mixture of dried fruit and nuts — Exotic Cocktail, the label said — that I was munching my way through while I watched TV with you, and it turns out that the peanuts were from China, the corn from Peru, the raisins from Argentina and only the almonds, it seems, were Spanish: a true citizen of the world, a real cosmopolitan, that packager of tidbits, who, according to the tiny lettering which, even with my glasses on, I had difficulty deciphering, is a company from near here, from Alcásser or from Picassent, a village in the province of Valencia, I can’t remember where. Once fertile villages or villages in what was the once fertile province of Valencia, which, instead of green beans, tomatoes and broad beans, now produce plastic packaging for fruit cultivated and picked eight or ten thousand miles away. They’ve become the dormitory suburbs of the industrial estates surrounding them. Places full of nobodies: abandoned factories, closed warehouses, concrete esplanades where skateboarders careen noisily past empty cans and broken bottles. Doubtless located in one of those depressing industrial estates, the warehouse that packaged the dried fruits and nuts concentrates the energies of all five continents in the form of beans, peanuts, macadamia nuts, roasted chickpeas or corn. Where had those fruits and nuts been before they reached the plastic bag, in what warehouses and in what ports were they stored and how long had they taken to get here? Which company brought them here, piled up alongside what other merchandise? Pineapples packed with cocaine, valuable tropical timber that has lent them the smell of its resins, which is why the macadamia nuts have a very faint taste of cedar or pine, a taste that a wine connoisseur like Francisco would be quick to detect. And once here, in Spain, what other cargo were they stored next to? What other aromas have they retained from their long journey? Diesel? Acrylic paint? Rubber? Rat piss? Rubber, paint, rat piss and dieseclass="underline" the smells of our contemporary