On two occasions, I opened the front door and stood, looking defiantly out at the night, until the dawn dew invaded my half-naked body with profound, unstoppable shiverings and shakings. On more than three occasions, I opened the door that gives onto the garden and boldly peered behind the trees and among the bushes; I even fell over in the darkness, staggered, somewhat bruised, to my feet and heard incomprehensible, impossible voices coming from a nearby field where the children play on sunny days.
Tonight, if you can call it night, I finally saw something. It must have been about three or four in the morning, and the bell rang, the bell that both kills me and keeps me alive, and, even in my exhausted state, I still had strength enough to half open the blind at the balcony window and there, at last, I saw it, parked right outside the front door, a very long car, black I think, which then moved off very slowly, almost silently, before, with strange solemnity, turning the corner of my street, and that was all it took: that brief presence of only a few seconds was enough to bring me relief, to leave my body feeling lighter and calmer, and then I found myself back in my bed, quite unafraid now, and sure that this time I would sleep really deeply, far deeper than I ever have before.
LAST RITES
DON ANSELMO’S WIFE calls him Elmi. Anselmo sounded to her old-fashioned, like the name of an ointment, and she often said to him:
“Elmi, it’s such a shame they didn’t christen you Luis Anselmo or some such thing. It sounds better, more modern somehow…”
For decades now, Don Anselmo had thought of his wife as a small, insignificant thing with chicken thighs and tightly curled, straight-from-the-hairdresser hair, and, as with curly endives, he always felt there was a slight bitterness about her. When he met her, she called herself Candela, and that’s what he called her, too, even though her name was Candelaria.
Candela thought of Elmi as her own personal bear, because of his slight paunch, which, on some nights, she would stroke just to show that she wasn’t afraid of him, although she would have been delighted if Elmi the bear had surprised her occasionally by taking a good swipe at her or biting her hand off.
Don Anselmo had been a studious and rather ingenuous youth, and the many pages of the many books he had read drove him into a paroxysm of communicative enthusiasm, which he immediately transmitted to the young people who studied under him, but never to his wife, whom he referred to privately as blotting paper.
Candela could not see the point or the interest in knowing that their neighbour’s greyhound, although born in Madrid, was, in fact, of French origin and went by the Latin name of Canis gallicus, or that, without the benefit of many centuries of history, she would never have inherited words — or lexical items, as Elmi called them — which she used almost every day, such as rag, step, drama, alcove or tomato.
Don Anselmo spent hours working in his study, sometimes even forgetting to loosen his tie or take off his waistcoat or jacket. This is what he most enjoyed doing, but, for some days now, he had been bothered by the thought of his approaching birthday, which Candela always insisted on celebrating in the entirely selfish and entirely erroneous belief that it would be fun. He always put up with it, the wasted day, the cake and the candles, the banal comments from the inevitable relatives, the unnecessary presents, the vacant smiles and the glasses of champagne accompanied by a raucous rendering of that ‘Happy Birthday to You’ nonsense. He knew that happiness, if it existed, was something else and not that fraudulent, bogus, foreign idea of “the birthday party”.
He looked around him and saw his papers scattered about on a chair, on his desk, in files, in order and in disorder; his filing cabinets full of documents and letters; his books lined up on the shelves or forming towers of Babel on the floor. He was about to turn sixty-eight, and when he departed this world, Candela would summon one of his former students, the most handsome or the least intelligent, to make sense of everything in that room, or else she would sell his books to an antiquarian or second-hand bookseller and either throw his papers in the bin or sell them by the kilo.
He felt a wave of heat sweep over him, and, for a moment, his bankrupt carcass struggled to catch its breath. “Dyspnoea,” he said to himself, adding: “from the Greek δύσπνoια” and he smiled.
He heard the key in the front door. Candela was back from doing the shopping, going to the cinema or to the hairdresser’s, visiting a friend or a lover, real or imaginary. It didn’t matter. He called to her. Behind his steamed-up glasses, his eyes were shining.
“Sit down,” he said.
She sat down and asked:
“Have you been thinking about what you’d like for your birthday?”
“No.”
There was a silence, then with a faint smile he said:
“Imagine that I’m dead…”
“What do you mean? Have you gone mad?”
“No. These things happen… or don’t… Anyway, try to imagine that I am.”
“All right, if you insist. You’re dead.”
“Now I appear to you and I say…”
“After you’re dead? How? Where? Here, in your study? Ugh!”
“Yes, I appear to you and I say: ‘Petra, do you love me?’”
“And I wouldn’t even answer because that isn’t my name and I’ve no idea who Petra is.”
“I know, but answer me anyway. Please. Is that so much to ask?”
“Oh, I see, it’s a game!”
“Yes, in a way. Petra, do you love me?”
“Yes, Elmi, I do love you. I love you very much.”
Don Anselmo gestured towards his books and papers:
“Feed my sheep.”
“Good grief! Don’t tell me there are sheep in the house now!”
Don Anselmo said again:
“Petra, do you love me?”
“Not again. I’ve told you already, haven’t I? Yes, I love you. What more do you want?”
Don Anselmo reached out one arm, made a gesture taking in the whole room, and said:
“Tend my sheep…”
Candela’s lips trembled:
“Will you stop it! Why don’t you just come right out with it and call me ignorant, call me uneducated, call me stupid! Go on! Isn’t that what you mean?”
With tears in her eyes, she leapt abruptly to her feet and left the room, slamming the door behind her.
Don Anselmo sighed and remained sitting where he was for a long time, thinking, not knowing what to do, as if struggling to find the answer to the final clue in a crossword.
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
I GOT OFF THE BUS and walked up the steep hill — the part of the journey I always dread — which leads me to the Cosmo Cinema. The film wasn’t due to start for an hour and a half, and so I went into the café that bears the same name and forms part of the same complex. At the bar I ordered a cheese sandwich with some ginger preserve. Oh, and a cup of tea, of course. I sat down at a table opposite the mirrors and felt suddenly surprised to see myself there, but then that always happens.
I wasn’t really hungry, but I concentrated on eating my sandwich and sipping my tea and couldn’t help but notice two coffins going over to the bar, two particularly long coffins. They were both standing up and one was clearly a woman and the other a man. The female coffin ordered a slice of ham with a tomato and lettuce salad, and the male coffin a tuna sandwich. Then — because they clearly didn’t know each other — they sat down at separate tables. I had nearly finished my sandwich when another coffin — short but very wide and possibly female — came in and ordered two bars of Nestlé chocolate and a cappuccino. Perhaps she was on a diet.