“That’s not fair, Ringo.” Quique protests. “Why does it have to be my horse? Why not yours, or Chato’s?”
“Good Lord! That’s not right, it isn’t!” snorts Julito Bayo, shaking his impeccable quiff. “Lots of things here don’t make any sense, nen.”
This is the second time he has objected to how one of the tall stories is developing: up to now, he has hardly taken part, he has not been given any heroic role, and he doesn’t like it. The fact is that the stories Berta’s boy tells aren’t much appreciated by his audience. They’re not usually how most of them like adventures to be: full of dangers and furious struggles with destiny or chance, tremendous catastrophes, whirlwinds and tornados, gigantic waves and shipwrecks on the high seas, treacherous shifting sands or refined Chinese tortures, all of which they have to continuously confront, putting their lives at risk to save the girl at the very last minute. But in Ringo’s labyrinthine inventions, they are hardly ever threatened by grandiose feats or challenges, facing dangers on the edge of vertiginous ravines or cliffs, or finding themselves caught up in devastating earthquakes like the one in San Francisco, terrible fires like the one in Chicago, or furious hurricanes like the one that hit Suez, scenes they have so often enjoyed in the cinema. There is some of this in Ringo’s stories, but he’s always adding strange extras like a piano in the middle of a desert storm, a talking bird, blue rats scurrying between his father’s legs, Señor Sucre and Capitán Blay drinking their coffees with a slug of brandy on the deck of The Bounty or in the Las Ánimas parish garden, or even Ringo himself fleeing down the corridors of the luxury Ritz Hotel pursued by diamond thieves as he is about to hand invaluable jewels to a rich and beautiful guest. Secret, insidious and long-lasting links regularly spoil his stories, with incidents that are too closely based on reality and are always inappropriate and extravagant, unrelated to the logic of the adventure, leaving them strewn with loose ends and characters who have dissolved into phantoms. The more real and recognisable they are, the more ghostly they become.
“So then,” Ringo continues, staring straight at the sceptical Julito, “you jump off your father’s van, which is carrying a load of Winchester rifles, and find Winnetou. And Winnetou says: ‘Old Shatterhand and his silver mount are waiting for us to join them in the big battle on Gold Mountain. For the Apaches, it’s a sacred mountain …’”
“We already know it’s sacred,” complains Julito.
“… and Old Shatterhand, which in the Indian tongue means strong fist …”
“We know that too,” says Julito, increasingly irate. “Go on. What do I do then?”
“You rush off firing your Winchester, with your dagger in your belt.”
“Between my teeth, nen. I always carry my dagger between my teeth.”
“Alright, between your teeth. But you don’t ride along the beach to join us.”
“I don’t? Why not?”
“Because you ride day and night to Fort Apache to ask for help. Sooo theeen …” he goes on, shutting his eyes again and hesitating because he can’t see how to continue, “sooo then, a great horricane wind arises …”
“The word is hurricane.”
“It lifts the piano lid, and the piano starts playing all on its own. There is no-one at the keyboard, but you can hear ‘The Warsaw Concerto’, and there’s a big black spider crawling across the top. So then Winnetou grabs his tomahawk, because the evil Wungo-Lowgha’s final hour has arrived. Winnetou! The devil take him!” Ringo exclaims. “Only the great Apache chief is able to follow Pegamil along the beach without him realising it.”
Quique Pegamil listens warily. Clutching his knees, he draws even closer, shuffling the seat of his trousers across the grey earth. Am I going to be the traitor, he asks himself in alarm, and suggests a change:
“Listen, Ringo, how about if I ride very close to the sea where the wet sand is firmer. Then my horse wouldn’t break a leg …”
“Okay, fine, that’s a good idea.”
“For the love of God, the broken leg is neither here nor there!” protests Julito. He turns to the narrator with a mocking smile: “As far as I can tell, it’s something else that doesn’t fit.”
“What’s that?”
“One of your howlers.”
“Howler? What howler?” says Ringo, on his guard and dropping his hand to his hip.
“The Apaches can’t be camped by the sea.”
“Ah. No? And why not, clever clogs?”
“Because Arizona doesn’t have a sea or a coast. I’ve seen it on the map.”
Ringo’s eyes flash at him, and he stays silent for a few seconds. All of a sudden, Ringo feels robbed, usurped. Yet again Julito Bayo, who has always fancied himself as a leader, is trying to discredit him in the eyes of the other boys. What can he do? Hidden in a barrel of apples, Jim Hawkins sticks his head out and smiles at him: Don’t let that idiot ruin your story! Ringo takes a penknife out of his pocket and draws five mysterious parallel lines in the no-man’s land in the centre of their circle.
“So what?” he says eventually. “I can have a beach wherever I want one.”
“You can’t, nen”
“Yes I can.”
“No, you can’t.” Julito stares at him. “How many legs does a horse have?”
“A horse? Why?”
“Answer me.”
“Four.”
“Exactly. It’s got four legs. And you can’t make it have five. Do you see that?”
“Alright, and so?”
“What do you mean, and so? My God, you’ve made a howler, nen! If there’s no sea, then there’s no beach, so the Apache reservation can’t be where you say it is, capisce? And you can’t have the girl tied to a stake in the sand, because there’s no sand, capisce? So there can’t be a cliff either, we can’t swim through the waves, or gallop on the shore, or anything like that, for Chrissake!” Julito pauses, with a sneering, triumphant smile. “Have you never seen a map, or do you think we’re all as dumb as you, who doesn’t even know where America is?”
Ringo feels as though reality has burst into his world like a shockwave after an explosion (even if it is a very distant, inaudible one) and has torn something from his hands. Putting the penknife away, he stares at the lines in the dust. No-one in the group apart from him knows that a stave has five lines. He says nothing, and closes his eyes. But he’s not thinking of some urgent readjustment to the landscape of his adventure — there’s no time for that; he’s thinking about this stuck-up know-all from the Palacio de la Cultura opposite him, this kid with the fancy hairstyle and posh way of speaking. He can just see him staring open-mouthed at the coloured map on his classroom wall. He knows the toffee-nosed kid is about to define the real world to impress the others, and quietly resigns himself to the fact.
“Arizona borders to the south with Mexico, to the north with Utah, the east with New Mexico, and to the West with California,” Julito Bayo proudly recites, then adds the finishing touch: “And the capital is Phoenix. It’s true there is a desert and lots of tornados and sandstorms, but look, we’ll have to go on with your story, because the way you’re telling it makes no sense, nen, you keep putting your foot in it.” Then to the others, his chin lifted in triumph: “Come on, don’t be silly. Ringo has no idea what he’s talking about.”
The others shrug their shoulders. They couldn’t care less whether Arizona has a coast or not, in the end the Wild West is a cinema world they have made their own, and where they can do whatever they like. Who cares, they gesture, what does it matter if the coast is on the map or not? They suspect Julito is getting revenge because he’s been sent to the fort in search of help, and also probably because at the end, after they’ve fought the Apaches and rescued Violeta, he’s the one who will be discovered to be the traitor. There is always one — but the only thing that really interests them is finding out who is chosen to rescue the prisoner tied to the stake.