They knew who it was. They knew it was useless trying to escape.
He took possession. The large bully dusted off a chair and offered it to his superior. When he started talking, he did so in a deep voice, which was both intimate and imperative. The man was Mariscal, ‘the Authentic’, as he himself liked to be known. The other man, the one with the weapon, was Carburo, his inseparable bodyguard. Nobody used that word. He was the Curate. The Stick under Orders. The Bully. This was his name. He’d worked for a time as a butcher, and used this snippet from his CV whenever he thought it appropriate, with convincing self-esteem.
‘I shit on the keys of life, Carburo! Don’t worry, boys, don’t worry… This oaf has a taste for artillery. I’m always telling him, “Carburo, ask first. Then do what you have to.” A fortiori. These things happen. You finger the trigger, it’s the trigger that’s in charge. As the philosopher once said, with gunpowder and a kick in the balls, that was the end of man.’
Mariscal became thoughtful, his gaze fixed on the ground. The wood-carved map in relief. The work that must have gone into it, the work involved in remembering.
He raised his eyes and noticed Leda. ‘Where did this girl come from?’
‘I came from the mother who had me!’ exclaimed Leda in a rage. She was furious about the loss.
‘Kyrie eleison,’ said Mariscal after a pause. ‘And who is that saint, if one may ask?’
‘Not “is”,’ said Leda. ‘She died when I was born.’
Mariscal clicked his tongue and leaned over. He seemed now to be inspecting the trail of lights in the ceiling. You grew up well, girl, he murmured to himself. Nature is wise. Very wise. History returns, he thought, and it’s good to step aside. He recalled Adela, an employee at the canning factory where Guadalupe used to work. He didn’t stop still until he’d bought the factory. He hated the owner, the foreman, those stingy, sticky exploiters. Let them go grope their own mothers. The owner didn’t want to sell, but had no choice in the matter. And when the factory was his, he said to Guadalupe, ‘Now they can sing and eat all they like.’ But that was only for a while. He ended up employing the same foreman. Adela? Yes, Adela. Her beauty, her shyness, her resistance, her sudden yielding, her unfathomable sadness in the mezzanine after what happened happened. She shut herself up at home. Never came back to work. Somebody convinced Antonio Hortas, a poor, single sailor, to marry her and give his surname to the baby. Antonio didn’t need much convincing. Or paying. Because Antonio Hortas loved that woman. And if it was a question of horns, he didn’t mind; he knew plenty of illustrious members of the Confraternity of St Cornelius.
God keeps an eye on the devil, who’s just a poor old demon. God gives as much as he has to give.
‘Mutatis mutandis,’ murmured Mariscal, avoiding the girl’s gaze. And then recovering his tone of voice, ‘Well, troops… there’s an end to it. You heard nothing. You saw nothing. Os habent, et non loquentur. They have mouths, and speak not. Learn that and you’ve gained half a life. The rest is also very simple. Oculos habent, et non videbunt. They have eyes, and see not. Aures habent, et non audient. They have ears, and hear not.’
In the ruinous School of Indians, his voice sounded charming, velvety and hoarse. They were all ears and eyes.
He fell silent. Sized up the weight of his charm. Then added, ‘Manus habent, et non palpabunt. They have hands, and touch not. Don’t pay much attention to that. The hands are for touching and the feet are for walking. But it fits the bill when things have an owner. As is the case here.’
They listened like schoolchildren being treated to an impromptu masterclass. Here was a man acting himself and revelling in the role. He cleared his throat. Stroked his lips.
‘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.