All Is Silence Read online

  ‘It’s very important to know why the senses exist. What are the eyes for? For not seeing. There’s what cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be said. And, in this last case, what cannot be said you have to suppress and keep your trap shut. What about the mouth? The mouth is for keeping quiet. That’s the funny thing about Latin, one thing leads to another.’

  Brinco understood perfectly the meaning of Mariscal’s words. But what he liked best was the way he said them. That assuredness. That manner of asserting control with a hint of scorn, which captivated and drew you in with an obscure sense of sympathy. He felt linked to him by an invisible intelligence. A force stronger than that of rebellion, but which couldn’t override it completely. Shit. His guts. The way they rumble so it seems everyone can hear. That whiny bastard, how Mariscal likes to talk. To listen to himself. The mouth is for keeping quiet.

  Víctor Rumbo made as if to leave. Started to do so.

  ‘Brinco, stay where you are. I haven’t finished yet.’

  Mariscal approached the teacher’s desk, mounted the platform and, possibly because of his position, raised his voice, giving free rein to his discourse. ‘You have to differentiate between reality and dreams. That’s the firstest thing.’ He laughed at his grammatical error. ‘The first is always the firstest.’ Then he recovered his grand gesture, his sobriety. ‘The day you get that confused, you’re lost. So walk very carefully, children. There are bad people about, people who on account of a Johnnie Walker, one miserable smuggled bottle, will hang you from a butcher’s hook.’

  Mariscal turned his gaze towards the wall with the faded Tree of History.

  ‘History started with a crime,’ he said abruptly. ‘Haven’t they taught you that yet?’

  He interrupted himself. Seemed to gauge the weight of his own words. Stared at the map on the floor and murmured tiredly, ‘Enough lessons for today!’

  The glare of lightning illuminated the ocean inside the School of Indians. They waited, but the clap of thunder held back, as if summoning all its strength to burst through the crater in the roof intact.

  ‘Home, all of you! The beams of heaven are about to cave in!’

  6

  LUCHO MALPICA WAS shaving in front of a small mirror with a diagonal crack, which hung next to the window opposite the sea. Half his face was covered in shaving foam, which he removed with the razor, leaving half Christ’s beard. From time to time he would stop and stare sombrely through the window, in search of signs in the sea and sky.

  ‘Seems like the old so-and-so has finally calmed down.’

  Into a cushion used for knitting lace, on top of the stencilled pattern, a woman’s hands, Amparo’s, stuck pins with different-coloured heads which appeared to be inventing a map of their own. The hands paused for a moment. They also were on the lookout for Malpica’s embittered voice.

  ‘How long is it since I last went fishing, Amparo?’

  ‘Some time.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A month and three days.’

  ‘Four. A month and four days.’

  Then he added a piece of information he immediately regretted. But he’d said it already. ‘Do you know where there’s a tally? In the Ultramar’s book of IOUs. That’s where they keep track of the stormy weather. Some sailors never leave that place.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have gone there to start with,’ said Amparo angrily. ‘Let them drown their sorrows at home.’

  ‘You have to do something. God knows, I wish I were in prison!’

  Amparo raised her eyes and responded with irony, ‘And me in hospital!’

  Seated at the table, Fins watched these two words, ‘prison’ and ‘hospital’, cross the tablecloth and build a strange abode in the red and white squares of the oilskin. A space that was quickly occupied by the creatures from the book he was reading, which twisted and turned and which until now had been unknown to him.

  Amparo’s hands took up their work. They moved with the urgency of arriving somewhere as soon as possible. As they managed the boxwood needles, the sound of the wood formed a musical percussion which seemed both to mark and to follow the rhythm of the man’s restless pacing, of the storm in his head.

  ‘So me in prison and you in hospital. What fun! This life is for letting off fireworks!’

  Her hands dropped to her lap. ‘You’re getting worse, Lucho. You used to have more patience. And more humour.’

  The sailor pretended to zip up his mouth. Felt guilty for the sense of unease. Attempted a smile. ‘I used to cry with one eye and laugh with the other.’

  Fins had been dividing his imagination and gaze between the print of his parents and the illustration in his book. He took advantage of his father’s sudden silence. ‘Dad, have you ever seen an Argonaut?’

  The sailor sat down at the table, next to his son. Thought about it. ‘Well, there was a Russian boat that went down once. The sailors wore heavy leather jackets. Black leather jackets. Good they were too . . .’

  ‘No, Dad. I’m not talking about people. Have a read of this: “Such cephalopods are very ugly animals. If one looks inside an Argonaut’s eyes, one sees that they are empty.”’

  Fins looked up from the book and stared at his father. Lucho’s expression was one of enormous surprise. He was running through all the sea creatures he knew. He thought about the rainbow wrasse, which some years was male and others female. He thought . . . But no, he’d never gazed into an Argonaut’s empty eyes.

  ‘That book came from the School of Indians,’ he said. He poured himself a glass of claret and emptied it in one go.

  ‘Why was it called that? School of Indians?’

  Lucho’s hurt gesture. His smile. He always made the most of this opportunity. Fins knew what he was going to say, the same old joke about playing cowboys and Indians, being an Apache and so on. But this time a flicker of pain interrupted his smile. A spasm introduced by memory.

  ‘Many from here – many! – left for America. Most were stonemasons, carpenters, bricklayers, day labourers . . . and sailors. Once they’d got themselves a bit of silver, the first thing they’d do is go and buy themselves a suit for dancing. The next thing, get together in order to set up a school. That’s what they did. All over Galicia. It was for them the Modern School. But after the war, when it was abandoned, it got this other name, School of Indians.’

  He glanced over at Amparo, who was slowly inserting pins into the cushion.

  ‘It wasn’t just any old school. It was the best school! Everything they had hoped for. Rationalist, they called it. And they sent typewriters, sewing machines, globes, microscopes, barometers . . . They even packed in a skeleton so we could learn the names of all the bones. They set up loads of schools, but this one had something special. An extraordinary idea that the floor of the school was the world. They made it out of noble wood. That floor was built by the very best carpenters and carvers. Every now and then, you’d sit in a different country.’

  He fell silent. Made an inventory. In this composition of the thinker, he held his head with such pressure, so horizontally, that he seemed to be stopping a leak in his temple.

  ‘That’s all that’s left, more or less. The floor and the skeleton.’

  He stood up and with his right forefinger started pointing at his left hand, ‘Trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate . . .’ One word jumped on top of another. Lucho Malpica was content. He noticed the fizz of memory on his lips, the fact that he could remember. That salty taste.

  ‘Do you know which is the most important bone of all? No, you don’t.’ He smacked his son on the nape. ‘The sphenoid!’

  Lucho then made a bowl with his scarred hands and declared, as if holding a human skull, ‘I can hear the teacher now. Here’s the key, the sphenoid! The bone with a chair like a Turkish bed and a bat’s wings, which opened in silence all through history to make room for the enigmatic organisation of the soul.’

  He stared at his hands in surprise, the bowl of eloquence they’d made. Then exclaim
ed in amazement at himself, ‘Blessed hosts!’

  The other two, mother and son, also stared at him in wonder. He was a taciturn type. On the quiet side. At home there was a connection between his ruminations and the knocking together of the boxwood needles. To Fins, when he became aware of it, this was a wounding sound. A chattering of the house’s teeth. But there were these moments, increasingly rare, when the sound became transfigured. And the cud showed itself.

  ‘Which parts of the world did you sit in, father?’ asked Fins with shared enthusiasm.

  Lucho Malpica suddenly changed tone. ‘I don’t want you going there.’

  ‘Any day now the sky will fall on top of you!’ added his mother.

  Lucho went over to the window to take a look at the sea. From there, he spoke to his son in an imperative tone. ‘Listen, Fins, you need to go and clean the vats again.’

  ‘He’s too big to be getting into those vats,’ remarked Amparo angrily. ‘Besides, he gets dizzy.’

  ‘Not half as much as at sea,’ mumbled Lucho.

  He got down on his knees by the hearth in order to stoke the fire. At his back, the smoke imitated the seascape, taking the form of mists and storm clouds. ‘What do you want me to do, woman? Rumbo asked me. I can’t tell him no.’

  ‘Well, it’s about time you learned to say no once in a while!’

  Lucho ignored his wife. If only she knew the times he’d had to say no. He decided to speak to his son, and did so vehemently. ‘Listen, Fins! Don’t go telling anyone about your absences. If you talk about it, you’ll never get a job. Understand? Don’t ever talk about it. Ever! Not even to the walls.’

  Amparo took up her work and the boxwood needles resounded again like the house’s anguished inner music. There was now a thread connecting the lacemaker’s imagination and the way the needles knocked together. In Amparo’s mind, seeing what she’d seen, there were new and old times. On occasion, the new times even gave birth to the old. Which was why she preferred not to let the memories show themselves. The shadowy mouths had had their say. When she was a girl, anyone who suffered from epileptic fits or prolonged absences ended up being considered mad. A simple nickname like that could land you in the madhouse.

  A great-aunt had died there. Back when each internee had a number tattooed on their skin. There had even been professional loony hunters who’d visited remote villages and poor districts in covered wagons like cages, searching for suitable candidates. The Church, in league with some powerful families, had founded a hospital. And the administration took money from the local councils according to the number of internees. The more loonies, the better.

  Oh yes. She knew what she was talking about. Which was why she kept quiet. And her fingers ran further away.

  7

  FINS HEARD THE door knocker and knew who was at the door. Three knocks in succession, followed by another. The knocker was a metal hand. A hand Lucho Malpica had found in Corcubión Estuary. He said it came from the Liverpool, which had sunk in 1846. He’d cleaned off the rust and polished it very carefully – like a real hand, he said – until it shone again like metal. According to him, the hand of the knocker was the most valuable object in the house. Whenever he came home drunk from one of his personal shipwrecks, he’d stroke the hand, taking care not to bang it.

  The three knocks were repeated, followed by another. His mother also knew who this Morse code belonged to. She stopped her knitting and gazed at the door with distrust.

  Fins ran to open it. It was her. Leda Hortas.

  He had no chance to ask questions. She pulled at him excitedly. First with her eyes. Then she grabbed hold of his arm. Even she wasn’t aware of how strong she could be.

  ‘Come on! Run!’

  She let go and started running barefoot towards the beach. Fins didn’t have time to close the door. When he heard his mother’s voice again, he didn’t want to. He knew she’d be sitting down, muttering, ‘Nine Moons!’

  ‘Where are we going, Leda? What’s up?’

  But no, she wouldn’t stop. Her legs, dark feet, pale heels, seemed to grow as they ran. They laboured their way up the side of the largest primary dune, between corridors of storm, until they reached the top.

  She was beside herself, her eyes wide open. ‘Look, Fins!’

  ‘My God! It cannot be!’

  ‘That’s nothing.’

  The beach near where they were was covered in oranges discarded by the sea. The two youngsters remained motionless. Grafted on to the sand. Feeling the Bermuda grass, being tickled by the spikes of marram. In amazement. Turned to wind.

  It was a while before Leda and Fins heard the sound of heavy machinery. They were about to jump down the vertical face of sand. Touch the mirage with their hands.

  From the top of the dune they saw the lorry making its way with difficulty along the dirt track. It stopped in the clearing at the end of the road, in an area used for extracting sand. A man and a boy got out of the cabin. They knew them both very well. The elder one was Rumbo, who was in charge of the Ultramar. The younger, Brinco. In the trailer three others, Inverno, Chumbo and Chelín, unloaded some baskets or panniers with which to collect the fruit.

  Brinco pretended not to notice them. They realised he was pretending.

  That’s what he was like, thought Fins. When he was absorbed in his own things, he was absorbed in his own things. He’d get annoyed if you stuck your nose in. Turn invisible. Deaf. Mute. But when he wanted your interest, your attention, there was no way of getting rid of him.

  At Rumbo’s orders, the group started gathering the oranges the sea had brought in from the listing-over of some ship.

  ‘Take a look, Víctor. The sea is a veritable mine,’ said Rumbo. ‘It gives out everything. Without a single shovelful of manure! You don’t have to fertilise it, like the blasted earth.’

  Leda jumped down the vertical face and marched towards the group of harvesters. Fins always had the impression that his feet sank in the sand more than hers. She didn’t sink, she seemed to walk on the surface. Especially when she had an objective in mind. A destination.

  ‘These oranges are mine!’ she shouted. ‘I saw them first!’

  Rumbo and his companions stopped working. Stared at her in amazement. Except for Brinco. Brinco turned his back on them. Sometimes, when he got annoyed, he’d say, ‘You’re always sniffing at other people’s farts.’ But now he preferred not to see them.

  The girl squared up to the boss. ‘You know the rules. A shipwreck’s remains belong to the one who finds them.’

  Rumbo gazed at her with a mixture of amusement and confusion. ‘How much is the cargo worth then, girl?’

  ‘A lot!’

  Leda took in the possessions on the beach with her hands. There were still oranges emerging from the foam. ‘Although I’m not sure yet if I want to sell them.’

  Rumbo pulled a coin out of his pocket. ‘Here you go. For the trouble of seeing.’

  ‘What the hell is that? That’s a piece of shit, Mr Rumbo!’ said Leda.

  The man held the coin between his thumb and forefinger and twirled it mysteriously in front of Leda. ‘Close your eyes.’

  Leda did as she was told. Fins wasn’t sure what was going on. Rumbo flicked the coin in the air and called to the others, ‘Now you’ll see!’

  Rumbo crouched down. Let his hands slide along Leda’s naked legs, from the knees downwards, grabbed her right foot, which was bare, and placed it on top of the coin. All the others were waiting, Brinco as well, who’d returned from the land of the invisible.

  Rumbo was absorbed in his experiment and murmured, ‘Now you’ll see, yes, now you’ll see what a woman’s skin is like.’

  Then, out loud, ‘Tell me, girl, heads or tails?’

  Leda still hadn’t opened her eyes. Without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Tails!’

  She moved her foot and uncovered the coin. It was tails. They could see the imperial eagle. Rumbo had a quick look at the other side, Franco’s head, where it said Caudillo of Sp
ain by the grace of God.

  ‘She’s right. It is tails!’

  The group of workers burst out laughing. Rumbo produced a wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a hundred-peseta note with the image of the beautiful Fuensanta painted by Romero de Torres. ‘Take this. A darkie! The most popular in the whole of Spain! Lots of people keep these stuffed in their mattresses.’

  Then, addressing the others, ‘Now you see what a woman’s skin is like. Even the skin on her foot! This one was born wise. She’ll be rich one day. It’s written in the stars.’

  Leda placed the back of her thumb on her mouth. Quickly made the sign of the cross. And spat in the direction of the sea.

  ‘Poor I won’t be.’

  8

  TO BE IN the dark and scratch darkness with a broom. The dark’s boundary smells acrid. This is his work. To scratch the crust of shadows. He feels drunk and dirty inside. Possessed by a putrid intoxication. But his instinct tells him to climb the slope and exit through what resembles a fleshy mouth, opening and closing for him. He lies face up on the stony ground. Out of breath to start with. Then, in and out of his body, he feels a tingle like never before. As if, for a moment, all the attention of the cosmos is centred on him.

  He gets up. Looks at the mouth of hell. The great vat. He’s still holding the small broom in his hand. His arms and face are covered in grime spread by his sweat. He’s wearing old, patched-up clothes stained by the work of cleaning. He feels better, even attracted by the mouth, by the now succulent memory of the dizzy spell and his escape.

  It has been a day of great heat, of burning noon. In the yard of the Ultramar the sun is still strong, but the large gate at the end frames a hazy sea, a depression spreading along the coast. Fins Malpica blinks. Finally comes to completely. And swings towards the mouth of the other huge vat, next to the one he’s been cleaning.

  ‘Brinco! Hey, Brinco! Can you hear me? Can you hear me or not? Víctor! Brinco!’