“Don’t you recognize us?” asked my friend. “We talked to you yesterday.”
Mr. Smith looked down at his hat. And then, in contrite tones, said:
“I drank a lot yesterday. Too much. It’s just as well Laura Sligo stayed in Dublin.”
“Why didn’t she come? I would love to have met her again!”
Now it was my uncle’s turn to ask a question. He clearly wanted to change the subject.
“Pottery!”
“Pottery?”
“Laura Sligo is always learning something. At the moment it’s pottery. And she told me that she didn’t want to miss her classes and that, well, she preferred to stay at home. She’s like that, a very stubborn woman.” We all smiled, including Ismael.
“So, do you want to see the house where you were born or not?” asked my uncle.
He was calmer now, but he wanted to be alone with his visitor.
“Lead on!” said Mr. Smith, putting on his hat. And the two of them walked back down the path to the door of the house.
Watching them move off, my friend and I considered the minor mystery we had stumbled upon twelve hours before to have been solved. Now we knew who he was, that Mr. Smith we had met in the highway café. He was Samuel Tellería Uribe, the son of a rich emigrant from Obaba; a determined man who had left first for Amazonas and then for Dublin. He was a good sort, he had class. My friend and I were pleased to have met him.
But the dancer had brought us not only the white-haired old man, he had also brought us Ismael and his presence in the garden soon began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Leaning on the hood of his red Lancia he was looking at us out of the corner of his eye, smiling, mocking our curiosity.
The smile said: “You want to know what sort of a person I am, don’t you?”
“Yes, we do,” our look in turn replied. “But that’s not all we want to know. We’d like to know what lies behind this mania of yours for lizards. And don’t flatter yourself, don’t imagine you impress us. Maybe last night on the road you frightened us a little, because we were tired and didn’t expect to see you there with a lizard in your hands. But not now. It’s daylight now and the song of the crickets has a very calming effect. You can begin when you like, we’re ready to hear your story.”
The three of us sat down in the shade of the magnolia tree and poured some wine into the small glasses. Ismael — in even more honeyed tones than usual — asked if we wanted a cigarette.
“It was you I saw yesterday, wasn’t it? In a car, at about three in the morning, coming around the bend near the quarry, I mean. It was, wasn’t it?” he asked, once we’d lit our cigarettes. He was no slouch when it came to interpreting glances.
“Yes, it was,” we confessed. “And if you don’t mind, we’d like to know a bit about what we thought we saw there.”
“What do you mean?”
He leaned back and waited. His mouth twisted a little as he inhaled the smoke from his cigarette.
I didn’t beat around the bush, I fired a question straight at him: “What were you doing there, holding a lizard?”
“Ah, so that’s it. So you saw me.” He laughed. The situation seemed to amuse him. “Naturally. Of course you did,” he went on. “That’s why you drove past me at top speed, because you wanted to get away from there as fast as possible. Yes, I know what you thought…”
He fell silent for a moment. Again he inhaled smoke from his cigarette and again his lips twisted.
“You think I’m sick, that I went mad after that business with Albino María. You think my obsession with lizards dates from then, and that’s why I’m always messing around with the nasty creatures—”
“What we want to know is what you use them for,” I broke in.
“What for? Haven’t you guessed? Why, to do to others what I did to Albino María. Is that clear enough?”
We let him laugh. After a pause, he leaned a little toward us and went on:
“If you don’t mind my saying, you’re the ones who are mad, not me. Because you’d have to be completely mad to swallow that story about lizards. Who else would believe they can crawl into your ear and then eat your brains? Only children and madmen…”
He paused for a moment to catch his breath and looked at us smugly. He thought he had won.
“Doctors believe it too, not just children and madmen,” my friend put in. “The species Lacerta viridis can damage the brain and cause idiocy. Or at any rate, that’s what it says in the books. And I’ll tell you another thing. What we saw last night wasn’t at all normal. There’s nothing normal about coming across a person holding a lizard at three in the morning on a lonely road.”
Ismael changed his expression and tried a new approach. But it wasn’t the cautious one you’d expect in someone who had just been put in his place by a specialist on the subject, by a doctor. On the contrary, Ismael began to speak like someone who, having listened to a patent ignoramus, feels like showing off.
“I could speak at length about Lacerta viridis,” he began, “but the subject is too complex to deal with in a few minutes. All I will say is that the Lacerta viridis indigenous to our country bears no resemblance whatsoever to that of South America. The only thing they have in common is their name. But, anyway, there’s no point in pursuing that topic now. I would prefer to clear up the other matter. You say it’s not normal to come across someone holding a lizard, and you’re right. Unfortunately it isn’t normal. The normal thing is simply to run over any lizard we find lying defenseless on the road; just drive over it with your car and squash it. That’s why we are as we are.”
I recalled the half-wild Ismael of my primary school days and I couldn’t get over my amazement. It was true what the old primary school photo had said. Life certainly is full of changes. In my uncle’s garden, Ismael was holding forth like a professor, with authority and rhetorical style. My friend and I didn’t know how best to resist his reasoning.
“But why do you still trap lizards? You still haven’t explained that.”
“I don’t trap them, I collect them. To save them, of course.”
“To save them?”
But this time we were only pretending to be amazed. We hadn’t forgotten the remark Ismael had made about the seascape hanging on the wall of his pub, and you didn’t have to be a genius to grasp what he meant by “saving” them. My friend and I began to feel ridiculous.
“I belong to a society,” Ismael began, by way of explanation. “We look after endangered species. I look after lizards. They’re in a very bad way. A lot of them are dying from the insecticides farmers use. The one last night was very sick. I took it back to the hut, but I don’t know… I don’t know if it will survive.”
“You’ve got a hut?” my friend asked.
“Yes, right here, next to the church. It’s like a little hospital. And do you know who looks after everything when I’m working?”
We shook our heads.
“Albino María. He really loves lizards. Even more than I do. And I give him a little money for the work he does.”
He was looking at me and smiling as he spoke. But I felt incapable of saying anything. I was speechless.
Fortunately, at that point my uncle interrupted the conversation.
“Are you all right out there?” he called to us from the door to the house.
“Fine! The shade from this tree is wonderful!” Naturally it was Ismael who replied.
“We’ll have to change the program. Samuel has just gotten into the bath. How do you feel about having lunch at half past two?”
“Whatever suits you best, Uncle. We’re in no hurry.”
I wasn’t telling the truth, for my one desire at that moment was to be somewhere else, but… how can you avoid lying when the truth is impossible to explain? My uncle could never imagine the conversation taking place at that table.