Manuel Rivas - All Is Silence

The sergeant glances at the ground. Yes, there are two thousand-peseta notes.

‘Excuse me, sir. Sensu stricto , I do believe I dropped at least ten.’

And Mariscal proceeds to free the other notes, as if he’s already made the calculation.

BACK FROM UNLOADING the tobacco, Fins placed his thousand-peseta note on top of the oilskin tablecloth. His mother, Amparo, put down her knitting in surprise. His father was listening to the radio closely, making an ear trumpet with the palm of his hand. Cassius Clay, newly named Muhammad Ali, had just been stripped of his world heavyweight title due to his refusal to be inducted into the military during the Vietnam War. Lucho Malpica turned down the volume and jumped to his feet. ‘What’s this money?’

‘Mr Rumbo gave it to me for cleaning the vats.’

‘He never pays that much for cleaning vats.’

‘Well, it was about time he paid more,’ said Fins uneasily.

Lucho Malpica waved the note in front of his son’s face. ‘Don’t ever lie to me!’

The boy remained silent, feeling uncomfortable, chewing over the words of before and afterwards.

‘The worst lie of all is silence.’

‘Mr Mariscal gave it to me,’ said the boy eventually. ‘I helped unload some tobacco.’

‘That’s more like it. More than I can earn fighting with the sea for a whole damn week!’

Now two of them were chewing over the past and present.

‘Have you any idea how that bastard got rich?’

‘Wasn’t it in Cuba, before the revolution?’

‘In Cuba?’

Lucho Malpica had always dodged the issue of Mariscal. He even avoided saying his name, would take a roundabout route in the conversation, like someone sidestepping a turd. But now the issue had been blown open. And the unstoppable destination was irony.

‘What did he do in Cuba? What was his job?’

‘Wasn’t he a boxing promoter, organising fights, with a cinema or something? I don’t know, Dad, that’s what I heard.’

‘Selling peanuts in a cone. In Cuba? That guy never set foot in America.’

Lucho Malpica realised it wasn’t going to be easy to tell the story of Mariscal. Even for him, who was of the same generation, there were large areas of shade. Mariscal vanished and came back. With a shadow that grew and grew, and made him more powerful.

‘After the war, his parents worked on the black market. They’d always been involved in smuggling.’

‘Everyone was involved in smuggling,’ said Amparo suddenly. ‘Where there’s a border, there’s smuggling. Even I, as a girl, went over one time with a flat stomach and came back pregnant, God forgive me. I took over sugar and three pairs of high-heeled shoes and came back with coffee and silk. I did it once and never again. It wasn’t a sin, but it was a crime. They once shot a Portuguese kid who didn’t stop when he was supposed to. He was carrying a pair of shoes. His mother came to see where he’d fallen. There was still a trace of blood. She kneeled down, took out a scarf and wiped it up. Didn’t leave a speck. Shouted, “I don’t want any to remain here!”’

‘What you’re talking about was survival,’ said Malpica. ‘There were people who hired themselves out, smuggled things in their bellies…’

‘That’s what I was like,’ replied Amparo. ‘Though I lit a candle to St Barbara first, so it wouldn’t thunder.’

‘What I’m talking about wasn’t to feed people’s hunger. The Brancanas ran an organisation. Like today. There were lots of part-time smugglers. Smugglers for hire. Women with bellies. But the way they made their money was with wolfram. Then oil, petrol, medicine, meat. And weapons. Whatever was needed. And the mother, who’d been a maid, when she went up in the world, got it into her head that one of her children could be a bishop or a cardinal. Someone ironically suggested they could be a marshal. And she replied with evident glee, why not? A cardinal or a marshal. Which is how Mariscal the Marshal got his name. You know how quick people are on the uptake round here. So she decided to send her precious boy to the seminary. In Tui. He was no man’s fool. Always a smart one. And even then he was good at solving problems. His own and others’. He got a private room in the seminary and turned it into a marketplace. Of course there was the odd priest who shared in the profits. And that’s where he met Don Marcelo, who was also a student.’

‘Don Marcelo is of a different vintage,’ intervened Amparo.

‘All saints are endowed with manhood,’ said Malpica.

‘Don’t talk for the fair, Lucho! A good speaker is one who stays silent.’

‘I talk in round terms, keep nothing silent from the sun’s son… Oh, enough of that! It went from mouth to ear, as they say around here.’

‘Then why did he leave the seminary?’ asked Fins.

Malpica smiled at Amparo, seeking her complicity in the story.

‘He must have been there for three years. When he’s drunk, he says it was because he wanted to become pope. What he doesn’t deny is that he started a roaring trade in foodstuffs. Had a grocery store beneath his bed! There was cold and hunger. And he took advantage of the situation. He had coffee liqueur and Western novels. He always was a competent supplier. But I don’t think they chucked him out because of that. The trouble is, a chalice and image were stolen during a pilgrimage he went on as an acolyte. They found the chalice under his mattress. Nothing was ever known about the Virgin. Though he always had a taste for virgins. The family covered it up, compensated the Church with money. It all remained under wraps. As did what came afterwards.’

Fins’ father turned to the radio and slowly moved the dial in an effort to tune into some frequency. For radio waves as well, A de Meus was a place in shadow. Fins was afraid his struggle with the static would put paid to the story about Mariscal.

‘So what happened afterwards that people don’t know?’

‘He went to prison.’

‘Mariscal was in prison?’

‘That’s right. Tomás Brancana, Mariscal, was in prison. And not as a visitor either. He started by helping out in the family business, which was well established. But he was ambitious, and he found another, more lucrative activity. He got himself a tanker, but didn’t transport oil or wine. He transported people! He had his agents, his engajadores , in Portugal. The emigrants gave him everything they had in order to get to France. And during the night, on top of some mountain, he’d tell them to get out and shout, “You’re in France, for crying out loud. La France , remember! Run, run!” Of course it wasn’t France. He left them sometimes on this side of the border, lost on some snowy mountaintop, without food or money, dying of cold. One day there was a collision, an accident, and they had no choice but to declare it was him since he was the one who’d been driving. He went to prison, but not for long. Nobody knows. I’m not sure there was even a court case. Evil knows how to float. It floats like fuel, just beneath the surface. And he had a tidy sum of money set aside. And partners! So when people say he was in America, you can give that country this name: the clink on Prince Street in Vigo!’

Fins Malpica recalled the first time he’d listened to Mariscal up close. That sermon he’d spouted in the School of Indians when they discovered the stash of whisky. He tried to remember his Latin phrases, the rhetoric they were couched in. 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.

They have mouths, and speak not.