Manuel Rivas - All Is Silence

She grabbed Santiago by the arm and they ran barefoot across the sand. The sand that loved her so much now seemed to restrain their feet. When the child fell on his knees and she tried to pull him up, to Leda’s disbelief, help came from the hidden world.

‘Lie down beside him and don’t move!’ shouted Fins.

They waited for the speedboat to come alongside the shore. There were three crewmen. Two of them got ready to jump while the third kept the speedboat steady.

‘They’re not out to kill them, they’re out to kidnap them!’ exclaimed Mara.

It was time to shoot. And for the sea to lend a miraculous hand. For the reports to multiply several times over. As sometimes happens.

THE TOLLING OF the bells has to make itself heard above the seagulls’ chatter, their scandalmongering on top of St Mary’s cemetery in Noitía.

‘They’re always after people, keeping an eye out, throwing insults.’

The old sailor glances at the sky in disapproval. He is one of the few not wearing a tie, the same as his companion. The top button of his shirt squeezes his Adam’s apple. As he lifts his head, the white points of the collar grow tense. They’re dressed very similarly, in black suits and waistcoats, but the top button makes a difference. His companion’s collar is open. There’s also a contrast in the whiteness and style of their hair. His hair forms a crest ending in a summit, a kind of wick on top of his forehead. His face is heavily lined, but his seniority is somehow intemporal, as if he’s returned from another age. His partner’s hair has been carefully combed, a humid whiteness, possibly smarmed down in such a way as to conceal any bald patches. They’re both tall and upright for their years. The main difference is in the way they walk. The position of their arms. One seems to be carrying a weight. A sack. A body. His own. Without the use of hands.

‘Crows have a bad reputation, Edmundo, but theirs is a different way of knowing.’

‘Talking of birds, there was a guy in Veracruz who kept trying to tell me, “You sure know a lot about tweety birds!”’

They walk slowly, at low tide, paying careful attention to the movements of the cars, mostly high-cylinder, bringing people to the ceremony.

‘Look at that, Companion! Never mind the width, feel the quality,’ mutters Edmundo, the sailor who played Christ on the day of the Passion.

‘The bigger the better!’ replies Lucho.

When they reach the niches, they move apart from the rest of the gathering.

‘This is one of the healthiest places in the world! That’s why I came back,’ says Edmundo. ‘The niche was fully paid for.’

‘It’s certainly sunny.’

‘Great views, too.’ Edmundo wishes to encourage the Companion as best he can. He gestures towards the cemetery in contrast with the new urban buildings of irregular, exaggerated heights. ‘And just look at the skyline!’

And then in the Companion’s ear, ‘They haven’t had to sleep out before.’

‘They certainly lived the way they wanted to. At a hundred miles per hour.’

‘Or more!’

The two coffins are almost entirely obscured by ribboned wreaths. The Requiem Mass is led by the parish priest in a surplice and black stole, assisted by two other priests. ‘Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them… And upon the rest of us so that no other curse like this descends upon Noitía.’

The people cluster around the priests in an atmosphere of commotion. Together with painful, tearful expressions, there are others marked by tense vigilance. At the axis of the ceremony, on the other side of the priest, is Mariscal, guarded by the impassive Carburo.

‘As it says in the Miserere mei, Deus , David’s penitential psalm, “Have mercy upon me, O God, wash me thoroughly from my wickedness… Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”’

As he speaks, he tries not to look at anybody. This is his habit. But today is starting to be a strange day for him. He’s receiving signals about a war he would have preferred to ignore. For a moment he notices Santiago, the boy with the patch, staring at him with a single eye. A panoptic eye. An eye that sees everything. Records everything. He observes Leda, the mother, curling a strand of the boy’s hair in her fingers. On the other side is Sira. Ever since the incident on Romance beach, considered a kidnap attempt, the mother and boy have been living in the fortress of the Ultramar. He’s heard the odd rumour that Mariscal has been studying Leda’s anatomy there. For goodness’ sake! The ears are for hearing. He knows full well they’re father and daughter.

He wrote what he has to say the previous evening. He thought about it word for word. But now he’s unsure about the script. He also received a visit from Brinco last night. He’s sorry he couldn’t say no to this ridiculous idea of his. He’s ashamed to think that his faint-hearted attitude, his yieldingness, may have had a causal relationship with the payment for the funeral and the generous donation Brinco made on the spot. As he is looking around, he comes across another panoptic being, the impression of a single eye with dark glasses behind the image of a marble archangel on top of a sarcophagus. Another old acquaintance, Fins Malpica, attending the farewell ritual. He recalls what he said at his father’s funeral, ‘The sea prefers the brave ones.’ He was sorry about that death. He wasn’t a believer, he’d said to Lucho, but he’d make a first-rate Christ. And when Lucho died as a result of the dynamite, he found it impossible to ask any questions. He blamed the sea. With a favourable report he helped the boy attend a school for orphans. And receive a grant for university. He also lent a hand so he’d be accepted in the police academy. Fins never attended Mass. Just once, recently, he’d come to see the priest. Behaved impertinently. Asked who the mausoleum was for.

‘What mausoleum? It’s a pantheon.’

‘A bit bigger than the rest, isn’t it? So who’s it for?’

‘Why are you asking if you already know? Doesn’t the Brancana family have the right to a pantheon?’

‘A palace, you mean,’ Fins had replied. ‘A monument to dirty money. You should know how such filth is viewed in the beyond, but the way I see it, everything started quite differently, with a manger in Bethlehem.’

Here the priest had cut him short. Nobody had the right to lecture him on doctrine. ‘When you’ve finished, you know where the door is.’

‘Real judgement is not that meted out by men on earth. So it will be for our neighbours and brothers in faith, Fernando Inverno and Carlos Chumbo. They will have to appear before true justice. At the Last Judgement St Michael’s scales will weigh the value of souls for God. And then we will find out how much their souls weighed. All we know is that they were generous to those around them and to the Church of God.’

The priest glances over at the temple and nods to a parishioner standing at the bottom of the bell tower.

‘Every year Inverno and Chumbo made their donations to Our Lady of the Sea, the Virgin of Mount Carmel. It was Inverno who paid for the new bells. So it’s only right they should ring at his funeral.’

The bells begin to toll. Fins enjoys the sound. He thinks the historical prestige of bells is due to the fact that they don’t lie. There’s another sound that doesn’t lie in Noitía. That of the cow by the lighthouse which moos whenever the mist is so thick it swallows up the light of the beacon.

In his position, half concealed by the angel, Fins removes his dark glasses. And looks at Leda. She imitates his gesture. Slowly takes off her glasses. Closes and opens her eyes in a blink that seems timed to the bells.