‘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.’
Leda touched Fins’ eyelids with her fingertips.
‘A game? He was dead,’ said Brinco. ‘You should have seen him. He went all pale and stiff… Blimey, Fins! You looked just like a corpse.’
Leda watched Fins, sounding him with her eyes, as if she wanted to share a secret with his body. ‘It’s nothing. They’re just absences.’
‘Absences?’
‘Yes, absences, that’s what they’re called. Absences. It’s nothing. And don’t go blabbering about it!’
The girl looked up and soon changed her tone. ‘And these coffins?’
‘They have an owner already.’
‘That wouldn’t be your dad by any chance?’
‘What’s wrong with that? He saw them first.’
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ exclaimed Leda ironically. ‘He’s always the first.’
Brinco’s expression turned sour. ‘You have to be awake when others are sleeping.’
Leda glared at him, still mocking, ‘Of course you do. That’s why they say your dad goes around howling at night.’
He’d have liked to fight her. They’d done this once, played at fighting. The three of them. Whenever he sees her, he starts to feel difficulty breathing. Fury rising in his body. The thumping of his heart injecting a burning red neon light into his eyes. She’s prettier when she’s silent. She doesn’t know that the mouth is for keeping quiet.
‘You better be careful what things you howl, Nine Moons.’
‘One day someone will tear your soul from your body,’ she replied. Whenever she got mad, she spoke differently. In a voice with shadow.
‘You’ve plenty of tongue, but you don’t scare me.’
‘They’ll pluck the worms from your head one by one.’
Fins rose from the coffin, suddenly wide awake, and quickly made to change the subject. ‘So is it true you’re going to sell these coffins at the inn?’
‘We sell lots there,’ said Brinco. ‘Anyway, you shut up, you’re dead.’
4
THE MAIN BEACH in Noitía was shaped like a half-moon. To the south lay the fishing district of San Telmo, which had grown as a shoot of the village which started it all, A de Meus, with its stone houses and sea-painted doors and windows. Further south were the disused salting places and the last drying place of octopus and eel. There, sheltered from the widows’ wind, the ramp of the first harbour was preserved. After the rocks of Balea Point came Corveiro Bay. In the middle of it all, the town, spilling new buildings like scattered dominoes. Between San Telmo and Noitía, following the coastal road and before reaching the bridge at Lavandeira da Noite, was Chafariz Cross. From there started a smaller road which climbed uphill to the Ultramar inn, bar, shop, cellar, with its adjoining dance hall and cinema Paris-Noitía.
The far north, where the river Mor and its reed bed formed a natural border, was still untouched. This was a zone of dunes, the oldest with abundant vegetation to leeward, with a predominance of the bluey-green patience of sea holly. The front line of dunes was very steep, where the vanguard of the storm hit first. At the top of these dunes, tied down with the long hair of Bermuda grass, rose a crest of marram grass against the wind. Further north, protected by a natural armour of rocks, was another, more isolated beach. But anyone looking for it, after a pine grove to the rear of dead dunes, would find the emblazoned gate and walls of Romance Manor.
Which is why the vans stopped before that, at one end of the half-moon, where there were barely any bathers even in summer, except on a public holiday. Most holidaymakers didn’t make it past the reeds. But people in vans were not holidaymakers. They were something else. Some arrived at other times of the year. Like these two, this couple, who’d left their van in a corner at the end of the track used as a car park, at the start of the dunes. It was a Volkswagen which had been fitted out as a caravan and painted the colours of the rainbow, with curtains on the windows.
Leda didn’t say a word. She was used to doing things like this, of her own free will and on the quiet. What Fins and Brinco did was follow her. They clambered up the inside of a dune until they were confronted by the sea. Hidden by the crest of marram grass, they could see without being seen. There they were, the couple. Rather than swimming, they played at moving away and coming closer with their bodies. In the waves, in foamy whirlpools, attempting not to lose their footing. In the end, both man and woman emerged from the sea. They were holding hands and ran laughing over the sand in the direction of the dunes. They were both tall and slim. She had long, blond hair. It was a luminous day with a young, springy kind of light which glistened on the sea. To the spies, what they were seeing resembled a hypnotic mirage.
‘They’re hippies,’ said Brinco with a certain contempt. ‘I heard about them in the Ultramar.’
And Leda murmured, ‘Well, they look Dutch or something to me.’
‘Ssssssssh!’
Amid laughter, Fins told them to be quiet. The couple, seeking somewhere to hide, came closer to the peeping Toms. The lovers caressed each other with their bodies, but also with the ebb and flow of their breath, their words.
‘Ohouijet’aimejet’aimeaussibeaucouptuestplusbellequelesoleil tu m’embrasses.’
‘Ohouioucefeudetapeautuvienstuvienstumetues tu me fais du bien.’
The accelerated pleasure of bodies on sand, that pleasurable violence, the throbbing of their whispers, unsettled the sentinels. Fins ducked down and leaned against the inner slope of the dune, and the other two copied him.
‘That was French,’ said the red-faced Fins in a whisper.
‘Who cares?’ said Brinco. ‘You can understand everything.’
It was Leda who decided to take one last look. And what she saw was the torso of the woman on top of the man, astride him, copulating, lifting her head to the sky and stopping all the wind, tensing her body, filling the horizon, everything an attentive gaze could take in. At the highest point, the woman closed her eyes, and so did Leda.
Then Leda started rolling downhill. And Fins and Brinco had no choice but to follow her.
‘If they’re hippies, I suppose they’d be talking hippy.’
They’d already passed the bridge by the reeds, but were still a little nervous. Their bodies had yet to settle in their bodies. From time to time a mouth would let out a blast. They didn’t talk about what they’d seen, but what they’d heard.
The other two burst out laughing. Leda didn’t like it.
‘I was only joking!’
‘No you weren’t,’ said Brinco in order to wind her up. And he continued the joke: ‘Hippies speak hippy!’
‘You’re a couple of idiots. You’ve a screw loose.’
‘Don’t get mad,’ said Fins. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’