XXI A HOUSE BY THE SEA
I COULD ALREADY SEE THE LIGHTS OF A VILLAGE WHEN I NOTICED an isolated house with its second-floor balcony all lit up. Drenched, seeking a place to shelter more than anything else, I entered the garden by jumping over the low wall that enclosed it. I found refuge beneath the balcony, but the wind was driving the torrential rain against me; I searched and searched until I found an unlocked door. The smell did not lie: I had entered the kitchen. I groped around and came across a hanging bag from which I extracted a piece of bread. If I could only find the salt and the cruet of olive oil. . My mouth was beginning to water, while outside the lighting and thunder and clamoring sea locked in a fierce tempest. Footsteps coming from the garden suddenly transformed into a silhouette in the doorway; the door swung inward against me as the shadow reached in to switch on the light. How I wished the ground could have swallowed me up. A man in a trench coat dripping with water — he was clearly the owner — stood there calmly looking at me. Without a word he opened a small cupboard and brought out a plate of sliced ham. If you’re hungry, eat. I see you’ve found the bread. My hunger vanished on the spot. He was neither old nor young, ageless almost. He had a high forehead — it seemed to never end — and cheeks covered with dry, dead skin. His perfectly aligned teeth were green. The look he gave me seemed to come from deep within; it was as if he were returning from another world, and encountering the real world pained him. He had a gold clover pinned to his tie. I gave him the same story: the soldiers, the war, losing my way. You certainly look lost. He said I could spend the night. There’s an extra room upstairs. He helped me light a fire. The rain buffeted the roof, claps of thunder crawled in the distance; yet the storm was fleeing. I lay down on the floor with the bedspread for a mattress. I wanted to be near the hearth. My clothes were drying on the back of a chair. I could hear water dripping on the tin roof. The crackling of the fire lulled me to sleep. I was enveloped by a sense of peace that cannot be explained. . By the low wall over which I had jumped, a boy who looked like me was blowing soap bubbles with a cane that he periodically dipped in a tin can; the bubbles hovered above a drowned girl whose body was being swept in and out by the waves. A hazy figure clutched at the bubbles that did not burst and tossed them into the air as if they were oranges, mumbling something about a vegetable patch with turnips and carrots. Many of the bubbles turned into human heads that floated upward gazing at the sky. They surged and sank with the breathing of the sea. Death, with green teeth, sat on the belly of a cloud. Seven women with feet of gold huddled together blowing seven long trumpets that spewed bubbles into the sea, while Death’s scythe awaited the order to begin reaping the floating heads. . I awoke drenched in sweat. A woman’s husky voice on the other side of the door was calling me to come down to breakfast.
Senyora Isabel, the woman with the canary, was standing by the table waiting for me. She recognized me immediately. I ate breakfast alone and then, not knowing what else to do, I stepped outside and began clearing weeds and briers. At lunch time, the Senyor of the house by the sea knocked on the window and signaled for me to come in. A blue and white gingham tablecloth covered the table, the crockery was white, the goblets of thick glass. What’s your name? As he unfolded his napkin, the man of the house by the sea asked me to stay for the week.
At night we ate in the kitchen. Senyora Isabel prepared the food for us ahead of time and sometimes we didn’t even need to heat it up. With the last bite still in our mouths we would head out for a walk. You forgot to turn off the balcony light. Leaving it on, he said, always makes me want to come home. We would sit on a rock and look at the sea. We returned as the bell in the village tower chimed at midnight, a sound that struck me as strange, for I had not heard it since the war began. We hardly spoke. One evening just as we sat down to dinner, the man of the house by the sea, circling his hand above his head, said: We are all organized energy. The entire universe is energy. Not knowing what to say, I looked away.
He showed me around. The house was large, but I won’t say much about the place because he talks about it at length in the papers he left. But I will speak of the foyer that was rather long and not very wide. On the right-hand wall, coming from the dining room, hung a coat rack with a stool on either side. In front of the coat rack was a mirror that reached almost from the floor to the ceiling; its black frame of burnished wood had a garland of roses, the largest of which was at the top, right in the middle. Scattered among the open roses were little buds, with many carefully arranged leaves around them that someone had painted green and time had partially stripped of color.
XXII A RED LIGHT
SITTING, AS ALWAYS, FACING THE SEA, WE SAW A RED LIGHT BLINKING in the distance, on the village side. Shadows were stirring on the beach not far from where we sat; they were talking, but we could not hear what they said. We noticed right away that they were dragging a rowboat toward the water. While they were still close to shore they began to flash a red light at the red light that was signaling to them from a distance. Not ten minutes had elapsed since the rowboat had headed out to sea when we heard an airplane engine. Both the light in the bay and the distant red light stopped signaling each other. Flares leapt from a large ship into the sky, streaks of fire searching for the airplane. It all ended with several explosions, followed by tongues of fire that licked the sky. The rowboat did not return and the sound of the plane faded away. A spot blazed in the middle of the sea. The bells announced midnight. Shall we go? Yes, let’s.
When we reached the house Senyor led me to the foyer. He stopped in front of the mirror and asked me more than once if I saw anything in it. I found it hard to fall asleep that night. Several times I heard him going up and down the stairs. What did he see in that cloudy mirror that was as old as the one on my mother’s wardrobe, which as a young boy I used to press against until I had no nose?
One night I made an effort not to fall asleep so I could learn what transpired during Senyor’s frequent trips up and down the stairs. I put my eye to the keyhole. The light in his bedroom was on: I could see the reflection on the dining room floor. He walked by, coughing, and suddenly came over to my door. I jumped into bed. All at once I wanted out of that house, but there was something about the look in the man’s eyes — so often filled with unease, so often appearing to beg for mercy — that made me stay. I felt sorry for him.
I had grown tired of the apprehension I experienced every night as we sat in front of the sea waiting for the stroke of midnight. And of the fear I felt on the occasions — and there had been many — when I stood before the mystery of that mirror. And I, who had always carried the religious medallions in my pocket, all dirty and crumpled, now hung them around my neck. Old Isabel also wore some, although the modesty of her dresses meant that I never saw them. But I had caught a glimpse of a black cord like the one around my neck.
Until finally one morning, Senyora Isabel pounded on my door around the time she usually arrived for work. Senyor was lying on the floor in the middle of the foyer with his eyes open, stiff as a board. He was still alive. We struggled to carry him upstairs and get him into bed. Old Isabel asked if she should send for the doctor who lived in a village some ways away. His pleading eyes went back and forth between us. I don’t want a doctor, Adrià.