“Do go on, worthy uncle, you’re speaking like Solomon himself.”
“Laugh if you want to, Nephew. But what, for example, do you make of this lullaby: ‘Never fall asleep in the woods, my dear; for a hunter might find you and take you for a hare.’”
“It’s obviously about the same thing. Which just goes to show that this preoccupation mothers have with losing their children must be very widespread,” said my friend.
“And there’s more. For example, what about the character of Sacamantecas? Or have you forgotten what they used to tell us when we were children? ‘Never go out alone at night or Sacamantecas will carry you off.’”
“I certainly do remember. He appeared in all my nightmares,” said my friend.
My uncle’s eyes were shining.
“Well, do I have a surprise for you! What do you think of this: All those stories were invented in the nineteenth century!”
“That I can’t swallow, Uncle,” I replied. “I can go along with you as far as the universality of the theme is concerned, and I accept that the lizard may be nothing but a variation on that theme, but as for it all starting in the nineteenth century, that I really can’t believe. With all due respect, it seems a bit of an exaggeration to me.”
“All right, fine, I agree I’ve gone too far. Maybe not every single one of the stories arose in the nineteenth century, after all there have always been mothers. But what I meant was that it was precisely in the nineteenth century that there was a boom in such stories, that was when they were developed and became popular. And that, dear nephew, is the truth.”
“And why was that? What happened to make mothers more than normally preoccupied? Tell us quickly, Uncle. If you don’t, I’ll miss my train!”
“The train! Exactly!”
My uncle was very excited.
“What about the train?”
“Will you give me three minutes to tell you?”
“It’s a quarter to nine. You’ve got until nine o’clock.”
“Right, listen carefully. The railway arrived here in the mid-nineteenth century and it represented an enormous change, a change we can’t even imagine now. Remember that the only form of transport until then had been the horse, every journey and all transportation involved horses. Right, so there everyone is with their personal quadruped at home when suddenly there’s this contraption that can reach speeds of up to eighty miles an hour. It frightened people and many of them refused to get on and travel in it. And those who did, that is, those who were brave and bold enough to get on the train, had a terrible time. First, they all felt sick. Second, they would look out of the window and be unable to see the landscape or it would look all fuzzy, like a blurred photograph.”
“Really? I don’t believe it!” I exclaimed.
“Oh I do,” affirmed my friend. “We have to bear in mind that our eyes get used to speed the minute they’re open. But that wouldn’t have been the case in those days. Not as regards the first generation of train travelers. Their eyes wouldn’t have been adapted to it.”
“This history of the train says exactly the same thing,” said my uncle, who had gotten to his feet again to show us another fat book.
“We’ve only got ten minutes, Uncle. We haven’t got time to read the whole book,” I said.
“Then I’ll go on. Well, as I was saying, the train was a real shock for those people. And so it wasn’t long before rumors began to spread; that the machine signaled the imminent arrival of the end of the world, that it caused some disease or other… that sort of thing. That was the prevailing mood when someone had the happy idea to ask this question: ‘How is it that it goes so fast?’ Answer: ‘Because they grease its wheels with a special oil.’ ‘Really? And how do they get that special oil?’ ‘How? Nothing simpler, by melting down little children. They capture any children they find wandering about here and take them to England. And there they melt them down in huge pots and …’”
“That’s what they said?”
“Yes, that’s what they said. It was the start of the industrial age and a lot of children must have gone missing while their parents were working in the factories. People just linked the two facts. And they were so convinced by that story that they took it out on the stations and started setting fire to them. Look at this photograph…”
My uncle opened the thick book containing the history of the train and showed us a photograph of a station burned to the ground. At the bottom of the photograph was written: “Martorell station after being set on fire by the women of the village.”
“The women, not the men.”
“Exactly. It was the mothers.”
“But, Uncle, how, if I may be so bold, do you link this business about the train with the story about the lizard?”
“Intertextuality, Nephew, intertextuality.”
“Be more precise, please.”
“By the shortest route, Nephew. What did we say before? We reached the conclusion that the story about the lizard and the story about Sacamantecas were one and the same, right? That they were two stories whose one aim was to protect children. Now tell me: What does the word Sacamantecas mean?”
My friend got in before me: “Someone who extracts fat or oil.”
“We could extend that definition and say: ‘Someone who extracts the fat or oil needed to grease the wheels of a train.’”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I am. Because Sacamantecas was a murderer who became famous just around the time the train arrived on the scene. As far as I know he didn’t dedicate himself to killing children, in fact his victims were all very old. But, of course, the mothers didn’t pick up on that fact. All they knew was that their children might disappear. That was their great fear. And the character of Sacamantecas grew out of that fear.”
“Not a murderer of old people, but a stealer of children.”
“Exactly. A typically nineteenth-century story, as I said before.”
“A beautiful lecture, Uncle.”
“Thank you, Nephew. And let’s hope you show greater lucidity next time. You’ve both got more than enough imagination, but you don’t reflect enough.”
“That’s just what Ismael said.”
“Well, it’s not surprising. Fancy making an accusation like that. And all because of a childish story that not even children entirely believe.”
“At least it served some purpose. Having heard your lecture, I’ll get on the train in quite a different frame of mind,” said my friend, getting up.
“What time is it?”
“Almost nine o’clock, Uncle. We have to go.”
“Come on then. I’ll walk you to the car.”
The garden was not as it had been at midday. The monotonous song of the crickets had been silenced and a very fragile white moon was now making its way across the sky. It was the quietest moment of the day.
The farewells between my uncle and my friend took longer than expected and when we set off for the station it was already a few minutes past nine.
“How many bends are there from here to the station?” asked my friend.
“Not many. It’s a very straight, flat stretch of road. I think we’ll get there in time. But be warned, I’m going to have to drive very fast.”
“As you wish. I commend my soul to your skill.”
“It hasn’t been a bad weekend, has it?”