Fernando Royuela - A Bad End

That year, the rebel army finished off the last centers of resistance, and Fulgencio Batista, the dictator, rather than facing defeat like a man, had no qualms about fleeing his country. That year, Federico Martín Bahamontes won the Tour de France and proudly walked onto the podium in the Parc des Princes as if his victory had been a minor feat. My mother was still beautiful, and with a lingering coquettish knack she kneaded her body with the Tokalón cream she told the truck drivers to buy in Madrid. “We’ve been married for six years, and my husband still dotes on me. He often says I’m as pretty as I was during our honeymoon. He goes too far, of course. . but he’s quite right. When I admire my skin, I see the years go by without taking their toll, ever since I’ve been caring for my skin with Tokalón cream. This is what I do at night. I apply nutritious Tokalón cream, and it tones my skin while I sleep. A light application of Tokalón day cream in the morning, and my skin is well protected for the whole day and stays white, clean, and soft,” said the advertisement for the concoction. For a few coins, my mother let the lusting hands of truck drivers wander over her on their short pleasure breaks at El Paquito’s. She didn’t overcharge, or give discounts. The establishment docked her for the use of the bed and took a commission, more than half her rate, all told, so the money she took home from frigging and cooking was no astonishing amount. “Mother, give me two pesetas for a pencil,” I’d beg her. “Don’t bother me, and use your tongue for a paintbrush,” and I’d leave not having put two words together on the blank sheet. I sometimes did so in my head, and lines came out very much in Gustavo Adolfo’s style, but they quickly slopped down the drain of oblivion and may still be swimming in the sinkholes of my memory, next to my last impressions of childhood in that village. Damned village. I would soon have to leave and never return.

It was around the feast of Saint Blaise when the storks flew back, and around Michaelmas when the musicians, an orchestra full of beat-up instruments, made their appearance and provided the village fiestas with their soundtrack. They came in a van that was ready for the junkyard, battered as it was by merciless, nonstop rumbling over the rugged fatherland. The musicians lodged in beds hired out by Aurelia La Cacharra, the owner of the bar in the plaza, and they set up the platform with their collection of instruments and sheet music next to the town hall, right in front of the rusty cross where the names of the village lads who’d died for God and Spain figured under the runny letters of the name of José Antonio, weathering the storm of oblivion. His honor the mayor also allowed a few fairground stalls, to add to the festive spirit: shooting galleries primed with leather balls stuffed full of sand whose fate was to be hurled at dummies dressed up as the enemy; churro stands shrouded in steam; and modest bingo stalls where people played for transistor radios, cookware sets, and luridly dyed propylene sponges. The orchestra played until half past midnight, and then, after the final flourishes of the national anthem, the grand finale to all that gaiety, with its da-dee-da, dee-da-dee, the bandsmen left to down a few glasses of anisette to the good health of La Cacharra, who invited them as men, musicians, and clients. “Maestro, you can really play,” she’d say, coming on to the man with baton, “you’re a fancy, filigree musician, and you should have studied in the Spanish infantry music school and not wasted your time playing all these raucous boleros in villages.” “Well, you know, my dear, I don’t know what to say. Light music is my thing — Antonio Machín and Doménico Modugno,” and he started humming the tune to Perfidy , oblivious to La Cacharra’s real intentions. Nonetheless, once glasses had been raised and spirits lifted, the musicians decided to pay a visit to El Paquito’s, where they all played their oompah-oompah symphonies on my mother, the ones best blown with mouth aligned to the thighs of the instrument. I’ve never been too keen on music, let alone the light kind. It brings back bad memories from that Michaelmas feast night that God should damn. I got my just desserts, that’s for sure, but it smelled so sweet, and I lost it — muscatel grapes, a recent storm, and clean beds — I couldn’t stop myself, and I lost it. It was the scent of disaster, sweet and juicy like the early delights of adolescence. At most, music drowns my heart in nostalgia. A maddening itch runs through me when it zings into my earholes. Music is the larynx of angels — of those in hell. Damned music, always perforating the organs of the rational mind.

People were dancing boleros in the plaza—“ Clock, don’t mark the hour, my life is at an end ”— cumbias , mambos, and Gypsy paso dobles . Lightbulbs were casting festive sparks on men’s shoulders like electric flakes of dandruff, and dotting the women’s long tresses with pinheads of light. I was watching the dance, hidden under the orchestra platform beneath the patched canvas covering the iron supports. I’d yet to acquire that need to parade my deformities on the dance floor to earn my bread, as would later be the case. Fiestas don’t want misfortune, they keep the grotesque out of sight and frighten off the monstrous with guffaws of laughter. I was banned from dancing. Juan Felipe, the village idiot, bounced up and down without taking his feet off the ground, like a coiled spring of flesh dangling a thread of green spittle in time with the music. People generally pitied him and threw him crusts soaked in wine; that was his good fortune. The poor idiot. Between bounces he laughed in my direction, and his smile gave my hideout away. Poor idiot. From time to time, the lads went over and dropped bits of cabbage leaf on the back of his neck, and he laughed at their bit of fun in exchange for Saci sweets. “Don’t look this way, you idiot,” I whispered softly, signaling to him to clear off, but he was stubbornly intent on keeping an eye on me. If he gave away my hiding place, the lads would most likely beat me with sticks for a spot of fresh entertainment, so I decided to throw a stone at him, and my aim was so brilliant I cracked the center of his forehead. Juan Felipe the idiot fell to the ground in front of the orchestra like a sack of invertebrate flesh and blood. The musicians carried on playing, and nobody registered what I’d done. My deed boosted my courage, which was just what I needed. The shadows shielded me. I had successfully done the deed, and the shadows shielded me. Providence upped my valor. They rushed the idiot Juan Felipe off on their shoulders so the doctor could examine his latest gift, and on a high, I decided once again to shape my destiny.

Soppily swaying her hips, little Margarita was dancing boleros on little Santomás’s arm. I was closely observing their movements from my shadowy shelter, and with every step they took, I heartily wished they would die. I shut my eyes tight, as if the pressure from my eyelids might make my dreams come true, but the second I opened them, there they were still leaning into each other as much as decorum and respect would allow. “Dance, dance and be damned,” I winged those words their way and laughed my head off at the worm-eaten smoothness of their corpses floating in the lava storming my imagination. The gash opened by Sergeant Ceballos the day I approached his daughter with lines from Gustavo Adolfo had healed by now. Subsequently I’d kept my distance as instructed, scrupulously so, as fear warranted. Far off and over time, my adolescent feelings had transformed into ones that were less spurious and hence lustier, a lust illuminated by the phallus thrusting like a lighthouse of flesh between my legs. Now I was only interested in that girl for the primary matter of her body. I was only attracted by her elemental female smell, her circular hips, the curve of her buttocks, the extraordinary slopes of her breasts, so many magnets to my eyes. So much pampered softness within hands’ reach! I wanted to be swept up and buried in the prairie of her skin now carpeted by down as fresh as filaments of sun at daybreak. I wanted to explore that uncharted ecosystem and descend to the bubbling spring of her Nile with the morbid rapture of a great explorer. I wanted to enter her caverns of flesh and discover unimaginable treasures, make them mine, spread myself therein. The night sounded beautiful, the orchestra was melting the wax in my ears with an interminable repertoire of songs that were horrible when played, and even worse when sung. Everything was ripe for me to go into action, which is what I did. Tired of dancing, little Margarita had sat down on a stone bench to seek refuge in the gossip of other girls. Busty and bosomy, they were all amorous intrigue. Away from his little beauty, little Santomás was exercising his virility, shying at the dummies in the shooting gallery. A gang of youths joined him, all tainted by impure, adolescent thoughts, all on the brink of infamy. “Tonight I’m going to lay Juani, just look at those red-hot cheeks of hers!” I emerged from my hideaway, my mind made up. The glowing bulbs highlighted my movements, but the way my aim had struck that idiot Juan Felipe on the forehead filled me with courage, and I felt I was flying across the plaza. In fact, my bandy legs were tripping clumsily toward the girls, and that was what they could see: an approaching dwarf, a deformed creature cutting a path between the legs of the dancers, narrowly escaping being squashed. “Look, it’s Gregorito, I reckon he’s coming over.” “That eyesore wouldn’t dare, my father’s threatened him, and he’ll pickle him if he comes within a yard of me.” When girls get their periods, their hearts coarsen and they become puking brats ready to vent their ire on the most hallowed feelings of men. It’s a law of life. “Just look at that pole poking from his pants, it must be like a donkey’s, he’s a disgusting dwarf, if he comes any nearer, I’ll scream.” A hop, skip and a jump, and I landed in front of the girls. They were grinning viciously. I didn’t open my mouth; I didn’t have the extra ounce of strength that required. I simply stretched my arm out as far as I could and pinched little Margarita’s right breast, swiftly, quickly, like a driver honking before he crashes. She slumped off the bench and let out a hysterical, piercing shriek. “Aah, aah! The dwarf touched me, that dirty little dwarf touched me!”