‘Magnus …’ he says, repeating this name several times in an enfeebled voice before he finally opens his eyes. His fever has dropped and slowly he regains consciousness. He sees a woman sitting at his bedside. At first he does not recognize her. She did not appear in his visions. It is May Gleanerstones.
When the patient arrived at the hospital, all that was found on him was the novel by Juan Rulfo and Terence Gleaner-stones’ visiting card, no other document. So a call was put through to the hotel number written on the card and the Gleanerstones came at once, but they could not provide much information. They only knew the young man’s first name and were not sure of having correctly remembered his family name. They were puzzled to hear this English student speaking German in his delirium. They also thought he occasionally uttered some phrases in yet another language, but were unable to identify it.
The new book May had given him was already very much the worse for wear. It was obvious from its dog-eared and in some places crumpled pages that it had been handled without care, avidly read and reread. Without any further hesitation she started to read the book herself, her imperfect knowledge of Spanish galvanized by curiosity. The narrative disconcerted her, with no other characters but souls in torment tossed about in the void, interweaving snatches of dialogue, a whirligig of echoes escaped from beyond the grave and wandering like fireflies through Comala’s long sleepless night. ‘Is this how the dead speak to us?’ she wondered. Terence replied indirectly, saying this is how memory speaks to us, in a continuous repetitive undertone, so low, so indistinct, like that of the blood in our veins, we do not hear it. But there are books written in such a way that at times they have the effect on some readers of those big shells you can press against your ear and suddenly hear the sound of your own blood quietly roaring in the conch. The sound of the ocean, the wind, your own heart. Sighs from limbo. Adam has read this book, one that, for others, tells only a strange confused story they cannot get to grips with, and it is as though he had put the book to his ear. A hollowed-out, furrowed, bottomless pit of book in which a plethora of echoes started whispering.
Unable to wait for the young man to regain consciousness, Terence had to return to San Francisco for business reasons. May stayed behind, feeling close to this stranger lying in a hospital bed. What a peculiar lad though! He saves her life, and the next day puts his own in peril by going out walking, bareheaded, in the sun because he is completely obsessed with a book he has read. However, this book is one she gave him, so she feels partly responsible. Mainly, she is extremely intrigued by this young Englishman. So reserved when they had dinner together, in his delirium he speaks, shouts in other languages. Finally, something she dares not really admit to herself, she is even more attracted to this young man for having seen him fight his demons in bed, his hair damp with sweat, his breathing throaty, as in lovemaking. And she wants to take the place of those demons he had to contend with in his fever, and lie with him on a bed, smell him on her skin, feel the entire weight of his body on her own, hear his heavy breathing on her neck.
‘Magnus? Who is Magnus?’ asks May, leaning toward Adam.
‘I am,’ he says.
‘And Adam? What’s become of him? Has he stayed behind in Comala?’ she continues, sensing the young man has lost himself in the book, but not really knowing whether his mind is still wandering or he is talking sensibly.
‘Since you’ve read the novel, you know that Juan Preciado is in fact already dead when the story begins. Well, in my own way I too was dead. Adam Schmalker was a delusion. It was natural he should collapse on the edge of the slope, and evaporate in the sun. It had gone on only too long.’
This reply leaves her perplexed for she is not sure she quite follows its skewed logic, but she is in no further doubt this decidedly disconcerting young man is in full possession of his wits, indeed that he has acquired greater lucidity in his wandering delirium.
‘I have the bizarre impression of understanding what you are going through and at the same not understanding at all,’ she says eventually. ‘When you’re completely recovered I’d like you to explain to me who you are.’
He smiles with a weary bitter expression for he too, more than anyone else, would like to know who he is. For the time being, he only knows who he is not, never was and will never again believe himself to be: the Dunkeltals’ son. A deliverance. But he feels bereft — of his borrowed name, his false relationship — with the name of a teddy bear for his sole substituted identity. A name that as in the past he assumes for want of a better.
Magnus. Alias Magnus. By this fanciful designation he decides to enter at last the age of manhood.
Sequence
‘My mother,’ I said. ‘My mother’s dead.’
‘So that’s why her voice sounded so weak, as if it had to travel a great distance. Now I understand. And when did that happen, that she died?…
‘Oh yes, I came close to being your mother. She never told you anything about that?’
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Pàramo
Fragment 13
Magnus’s body, the smell of his skin, the taste of his lips, the throatiness of his breathing in the climax of love-making — May soon has enjoyment of these pleasures. She falls hopelessly in love with this young man eleven years her junior. It is this difference in age, and the fear he may one day lose interest in her in favour of younger women, that makes her apprehensive, but what she fears most of all is the strength of her physical attraction to him, her insatiable and jealous desire. She feels pinioned by this violent longing for him, enthralled by this unexpected love that has completely taken possession of her. She has always set out to be strong, free from all constraint. She has had many lovers since the day she married Terence at the age of eighteen, but none has ever conquered her in such a way before. She was always able to remain in control of the situation. But now she is defenceless. However, she has enough pride and shrewdness not to betray to Magnus the state of dependence to which he has unwittingly reduced her. With charm and gaiety she does her utmost to retain her allure for him.
Magnus in fact has no inkling of how hard May is battling against the passion he has aroused in her, and he himself is not allowing full freedom to his own amorous feelings for he cannot envisage a lasting relationship. The Gleanerstones seem to form too close a couple to leave room for anyone else. But these fears of delusion and heartbreak are groundless since Terence is May’s husband in name only. He is a very chaste spouse, she explains with laughter, and very accommodating, because he prefers men, and has affairs only with male lovers. Their marriage is a contract that has satisfied both of them since the outset. A very flexible contract, based on respect and affection, strengthened over the years by a deep mutual understanding. Terence and May are cousins. This marriage offered one of them the cloak of respectability required by his social class, and the other an escape from the family yoke and a freedom she had dreamed of since childhood. While they remain discreet about their short-lived affairs, any new lover who becomes at all important to them is always introduced to the other spouse. If a friendship develops between those two, nothing better; otherwise, the liaison is conducted in private and ends in its own good time without compromising the couple’s relationship with each other. For the past two years Terence has had a companion, Scott, with whom he is very much in love, and for whom May has a very high regard. She explains all this straightforwardly, as if this kind of married relationship were a matter of course. And, at first a little disconcerted, Magnus soon finds that he has a place of complete integrity within this couple at once united and independent of each other.