All Is Silence Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Manuel Rivas

  Title Page

  I: Friendly Silence

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  II: Mute Silence

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Fins and Brinco are best friends, and they both adore the wild and beautiful Leda. The three young friends spend their days exploring the dunes and picking through the treasures that the sea washes on to the shores of Galicia.

  One day, as they are playing in the abandoned school on the edge of the village, they come across treasure of another kind: a huge cache of whisky hidden under a sheet. But before they can exploit their discovery a shot rings out, and a man wearing an impeccable white suit and panama hat enters the room. That day they learn the most important lesson of all: that the mouth is for keeping quiet.

  About the Author

  Manuel Rivas was born in A Coruña in 1957. He writes in the Galician language of north-west Spain. He is well known in Spain for his journalism, as well as for his prize-winning short stories and novels, which include the internationally acclaimed The Carpenter’s Pencil and Books Burn Badly. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages.

  Jonathan Dunne translates from Bulgarian, Catalan, Gallician and Spanish. He has translated six books by Manuel Rivas into English. He is the editor and translator of the two-volume Anthology of Galician Literature 1196–1981/1981–2011 and of the Poetry Review supplement Contemporary Galician Poets. His recent translations include At the End of the World: Contemporary Poetry from Bulgaria.

  ALSO BY MANUEL RIVAS

  Fiction

  The Carpenter’s Pencil

  Butterfly’s Tongue

  Vermeer’s Milkmaid

  In the Wilderness

  Books Burn Badly

  Poetry

  From Unknown to Unknown

  The Disappearance of Snow

  All Is Silence

  Manuel Rivas

  Translated from the Galician

  by Jonathan Dunne

  I Friendly Silence

  1

  ‘THE MOUTH IS not for talking. It’s for keeping quiet.’

  This was one of Mariscal’s sayings, which his father repeated like a litany and Víctor Rumbo – Brinco – recalled when the other boy saw with amazement what was in the strange package he’d pulled out of the basket and asked what he wasn’t supposed to.

  ‘What’s that then? What are you going to do?’

  ‘They have mouths, and speak not,’ replied Brinco laconically.

  The tide was out, or thinking of coming in, the calm of the waters shocked and shining, which seemed somehow strange. There were the two of them, Brinco and Fins, near the breakwater formed by the rocks, next to the lighthouse on Cape Cons, and not far from the stone crosses that commemorate lost sailors.

  In the sky, the beam from the lighthouse acting as epicentre, the seagulls pecked at the silence. There was a mocking wisdom in the way these birds kept watch. An alert grumbling. They moved off in order to come closer, drawing circles that were ever more insolent. They took this liberty, sharing with abandon a secret the rest of existence chose to ignore. Brinco glanced over at them, amused by their scandal. He knew he was the cause of their excitement. They were waiting for something. A definitive sign.

  ‘My dad knows the names of all these rocks,’ said Fins in an attempt to detach himself from the course of events. ‘The ones you can see and those you can’t.’

  Brinco had learned by now how to show contempt. He loved the taste of sentences that stung the palate.

  ‘Rocks are just a bunch of old rocks.’

  He grabbed the stick of dynamite, which was already fitted with a fuse. As if he knew what he was doing.

  ‘Your dad may be a good sailor, that I do not deny. But now you’re going to see some real fishing.’

  He finally set light to the fuse. Showed enough composure to hold the stick of dynamite in the air, in front of Fins’ face. And then chucked it skilfully over the top of the stone crosses. After a while they heard it explode in the sea.

  They waited. The gulls grew more excited, a pack on the wing, egging Brinco on with their screams, celebrating each leap he made on the rocks. Fins kept his eyes firmly on the sea.

  ‘This will be a mark of fear now.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘The fish won’t come back. Wherever someone sets off dynamite, they refuse to return.’

  ‘Why? Because your dad says so?’

  ‘Everybody knows that. It’s because of all the mess.’

  ‘Right,’ said Brinco mockingly.

  In the Ultramar he’d heard similar things and knew how best to respond. ‘I suppose you’re going to say now that fish have memory.’

  He smiled suddenly. One force overcame another inside him and it was this that articulated the smile. What came into his mouth was another saying of Mariscal’s. Guaranteed to produce a victory with Fins Malpica looking increasingly on the back foot, pale and subdued as a penitent. The son of the bearer of the cross.

  ‘If you stay poor for long,’ said Brinco with measured emphasis, ‘you end up shitting white like a seagull.’

  He knew that each of Mariscal’s sayings would sweep the board. Never failed. Though it bothered him having such a source of inspiration. There’s something funny about Mariscal and his maxims. Even if he closed his ears, they’d still lodge inside him. What gives a cherry its stalk? That’s another of his. Another one that lodged inside him. Never fails.

  Brinco and Fins sat down on a rock and stuck their bare feet in a tidal pool. In this aquarium the only life on view was the animal garden of anemones. They played at drawing their toes closer, a movement which made the false flowers shake their tentacles.

  ‘Bastards,’ said Brinco. ‘They look like flowers, but they’re really leeches.’

  ‘Their mouth is also their bottom,’ said Fins. ‘It’s the same hole, their mouth and bottom.’

  The other boy stared at him in amazement. Was about to proffer some rebuke. But thought better of it and remained quiet. Fins Malpica knew much more than he did about fish and animals. And all the rest. At least in school. So Brinco decided to catch something in the pool and stuff it inside his mouth. He closed his mouth and kept his face swollen like a lung. Then he opened it and produced a tiny, live crab on his tongue.

  ‘How long can you hold your breath?’

  ‘I don’t know. About half an hour or so.’

  Fins became thoughtful. Smiled
inside. This was the game with Brinco, you had to let yourself lose in order to keep him happy. Pretend you were a fool.

  ‘Half an hour?’ said Fins. ‘That’s not much.’

  It was the first time they’d laughed together since reaching Cape Cons. Brinco stood up and gazed out to sea. With this movement, shielding his eyes with his hand, the din in the sky grew louder. The fierce screams pierced the atmosphere at its weakest point. The first dead fish turned up in the foam, as if parboiled by the sea. Brinco goes after them with his net. Their intestines are all over the place. In the attritional palm of his hand, the contrast between the silver gleam of their skin and the blood of their gills is greater.

  ‘You see? Now is that, or is that not, a miracle?’

  2

  HE WAS THE son of Jesus Christ. The son of Lucho Malpica. People would say, ‘That’s Lucho’s son’ or, identifying him with his mother, ‘That’s Amparo’s son.’ But he was better known because of his father. Among other things, his father had spent the last few years playing Christ on the day of the Passion, Good Friday. When he was younger, he’d taken the part of a Roman soldier. He’d even held the whip with which to lash the back of Edmundo Sirgal, the Christ before him, who’d also been a sailor. But Edmundo had left for the oil rigs in the North Sea. The first year he’d managed to return in order to be crucified. But then there’d been some problem. People leave and sometimes you lose touch. What was needed was a new Christ, and Lucho Malpica was the obvious choice. There was another bearded gentleman who could have done it, Moimenta, but he had one Michelin too many. As the priest pointed out, ‘Christ, Christ can be anyone, but he shouldn’t be fat. A good Christ isn’t fat, he’s all fibre.’ And there was Lucho Malpica, strong and thin as a rake. Of the same constitution as the wooden cross on his shoulder.

  ‘The Companion? He’s half pagan, Don Marcelo,’ said a bore from the confraternity.

  ‘Like them all. But the way he plays Christ is first class! Straight out of Zurbarán!’

  Malpica didn’t stay still. Burned with speed. Brave as well, his guts in the palm of his hand. His son, Félix – Fins to us – was more like his mother. A bit nostalgic. He had his days, of course. We all have our spring tides and neap tides. He had those days when he turned into a zombie, fell quiet. Absorbed in silence.

  The point is he was respectful towards his father, but had his confidence. He never asked for his father or Dad. He asked for Lucho Malpica. Outside the house, this sailor was a kind of third man, something separate from son and father. The boy was forced to protect him. Look out for him. Whenever he saw him coming home drunk, he’d run to the door and help him upstairs, put him to bed like a stowaway, so there wouldn’t be trouble at home; his mother had no time for these minor shipwrecks. Once, on the road to Calvary, his mother had said, ‘Don’t call him Lucho when he’s carrying the cross.’ For Fins, as a boy, it’d been an honour to watch his father being crucified with the crown of thorns, the smear of blood on his forehead, that blond beard, tunic with the golden belt, sandals. His attention was drawn especially to the sandals, since this wasn’t a type of footwear worn by men in Noitía. There were women who wore them in summer. One holidaymaker in particular who stayed with her husband at the Ultramar. And painted her toenails. Nails that shone with oyster enamel. Nickel-plated nails. All the boys roundabout, pretending to scrabble on the ground for coins. All because of the woman from Madrid with the painted toenails.

  Christ’s toes had tufts of hair, nails like limpets, and, despite the sandals, doubled over to cling to the ground as when walking on the surface of rocks. Before the procession he called Fins to one side: ‘Pop over to the Ultramar and tell Rumbo to give you a bottle of holy water.’ He already knew this wasn’t water from the stoup. No, he didn’t say anything to his mother. No need to worry her. He’d done the job of Cana before. So he applied grease to his shins and ran as fast as he could. On the way back, he decided to take a sip. Just a moistener. To see what it tasted like. If they all swore by it, there must be something about it. And he could do with a pick-up on a day like this. He felt his entrails, and the reverse of his eyeballs, ignite. He breathed in deeply. As the fresh air doused that inner fire, he corked the bottle, wrapped it in the brown paper and pleaded with his feet to arrive in time before his father had lifted the cross.

  Back at the procession, he shouted with delight, ‘Dad, Dad!’

  And his mother murmured, ‘Don’t call him that, not when he’s holding the cross.’

  How well he did it, what conviction he put into his performance.

  ‘What a Christ, so verisimilar!’ he heard Exile remark to Dr Fonseca. In Noitía, everyone had a second name. Not exactly a nickname. Like having two faces, two identities. Or three. Because Exile was also Lame. And both were the schoolteacher, Basilio Barbeito.

  How well he did it, Lucho Malpica. His face contorted with pain, but also dignified, with ‘historic distance’ as Exile would say, the look of one who knows that the flatterers of yesterday will be the deniers of tomorrow. He even stumbled during the procession.

  The weight he carried was great. Some of the lashes, owing to the theatrical enthusiasm of his tormentors, ended up really hurting. And then, along the way, that canticle of women: ‘Forgive your people, Lord! Forgive your people, forgive, Lord! Do not be eternally angry.’ Exile pointed out that the celestial scenography helped. There was always a passing storm cloud on hand to eclipse the sun.

  ‘Verisimilar. All they need now is to actually kill him.’

  ‘What a horrendous song!’ complained Dr Fonseca. ‘A people on its knees, sick with guilt, pleading with God for a smile. A crumb of happiness.’

  ‘Yes, but don’t believe it. There’s always a touch of irony in what the people do,’ remarked Exile. ‘Notice it’s only the women who are singing.’

  Ecce Homo glanced over at his son and winked his left eye. This image would remain engraved on the boy’s memory. Together with the teacher’s admiring comment. So verisimilar! He sensed what it could mean, but not entirely. It had something to do with the truth, but was somehow superior to the truth. One notch above it. He kept a hold of this word so he could use it to define what most surprised him, amazed him, filled him with desire. Having finally embraced Leda, having finally been able to take that step, leave the islands and advance towards her, that body from the Tenebrous Sea, what he thought was it couldn’t possibly be true. It was all so barbarous, so free, so verisimilar.

  3

  WITH THE SWAYING of the coffin, in that dark, enclosed space, Fins found it difficult to breathe.

  The space was a real coffin floating on the sea, not far from the shore where the waves break and foam. Like a barge, it was tethered by a rope which Brinco held on to. He pulled on the rope, bringing the coffin closer and then letting it go with the ebb and flow of the waters. Next to him, on the sand, were caskets, some broken, some intact, strange moribund containers, their red lining on view, perplexed remains of a shipwreck in the beyond.

  This game began to unsettle him. To calm down, as he did whenever he felt himself suffocating, Fins timed his agitated breathing to the sound and rhythm of the beating waves.

  He counted ten inhalations. And shouted, ‘Brinco, Brinco! Get me out of here, you bastard!’

  He waited. He didn’t hear a voice or notice any special movement that might indicate his call was being heeded. Sometimes he’d talk to himself. He thought this was another peculiarity of his, a further derivation of the petit mal. But when one discovers a fault, one normally tries to find out to what extent that fault is commonplace. And he’d come to the conclusion that everybody spoke to themselves. His mother. His father. The fishwives. The gatherers of shellfish and seaweed. The washerwomen. The milkmaid. The navvy. Blind Birimbau. The priest. Exile. Dr Fonseca on his solitary walks. The man in charge of the Ultramar, Brinco’s dad, whenever he was polishing the glasses. Mariscal after knocking the ice cubes together in his glass of whisky. Leda with bare feet on the frill
of the waves. Everybody seemed to do it.

  ‘What a bastard. I’m going to tear your soul from your body. All the worms off your head.’

  He deliberately banged his forehead against the coffin lid. Started shouting again, at the limit of his strength by now. An international cry for help. ‘Víctor, you son of a bitch!’

  He reconsidered. There was another possibility. One that made him really mad, ‘I curse the father who made you, Brinco!’

  Well, if that didn’t arouse an immediate response, he would have to give up. He took a deep breath. Dreamed that Nine Moons had come to lend him a hand. And along the seashore, barefoot, playing at walking the high wire with her flip-flops in her hand, Leda arrived. She was balancing a basket on her head, crammed full of sea urchins.

  When he saw the girl, Brinco tugged the coffin towards the shore.

  ‘What are you doing? That brings bad luck.’

  Brinco brought his forefinger to his mouth to make her be quiet. Leda deposited her basket on the sand and hurried over to see the remains of futuristic death scattered all over the beach.

  ‘Stop messing around and help!’ said the boy.

  Leda paid attention and helped to pull on the rope until the floating coffin was back on firm ground.

  ‘Inside is a disgusting insect,’ mocked Brinco. ‘Come and see!’

  Leda peered over with curiosity, but also with distrust.

  Brinco lifted the lid of the box. Fins remained motionless, pale-faced, holding his breath, his arms tied to his body with a tightly fastened belt, eyes closed, in the posture of the deceased.

  Leda stared at him in amazement, unable to speak.

  ‘Are you getting up or not, Calamity?’ mocked Brinco. ‘Our Lady of the Sea is here to see you.’

  Fins opened his eyes. And met Leda’s astonished expression. She kneeled down and stared at him with eyes wide open, glistening slightly, but also suddenly filled with joy. What she came out with was a protest, ‘You’re a couple of idiots. Death is hardly a game.’