Unai Elorriaga: Plants Don't Drink Coffee

My uncle says the goalposts are a bigger problem. Because you need goalposts on rugby fields; they’re like soccer ones but taller, they go up and up. Goalposts on rugby fields are very tall, very long, and Uncle Simon told us that’s the biggest problem in terms of making the rugby field. And he told us Gur had an idea to make the goalposts. Gur thought we could use lampposts: two lampposts on one side and two on the other. And my uncle said Gur’s wasn’t such a bad idea, but it was very difficult to steal lampposts in this town. He told us Gur and him had looked at lampposts, but they’re all very firmly stuck to the ground and have lots of cables inside, and it’s very difficult to take lampposts out of the ground and bring them to golf courses.

He said it was easier to steal railroad tracks. There are railroad tracks at the station and they use them to make trains roll on top of them. But some railroad tracks aren’t being used, and they’re piled up on a corner of the station, and they’re very long, and my uncle says they are very good to make goalposts with, and it’s very easy to get inside the train station and take them. He said Gur and he will get inside the train station tomorrow, at night. Or the day after tomorrow, at night.

Uncle Simon says the rugby field will be ready soon, but we need ladders now. Lots of ladders, maybe a hundred. I don’t know what they need the ladders for, because Uncle Simon didn’t explain that, but he asks everybody for ladders now. And he brings them here, and there are lots of ladders in the attic, one on top of another, and maybe there are twenty. But Uncle Simon says we need more, one hundred maybe. I don’t know why he needs the ladders to make a rugby field.

Iñes told me all the corkboards are full and we don’t need to catch any more insects. She said we have caught lots and lots and lots of insects and the corkboards look fantastic, but it would be a great pity not to catch the blue dragonfly. And she said we have to catch the blue dragonfly and there’s no way around it. She said we’ll go to the ponds, and next to the soccer field, and to Borue, only to look for the blue dragonfly. We won’t catch beetles and we won’t catch grasshoppers. She said we’re going to be looking for the blue dragonfly until the end of the summer.

Now Iñes is writing the names of the insects, on the corkboards. Iñes finds the names in a book. A woman wrote the book, a woman with a very strange name. The name is: Doctor Helgar Reichholf-Riehm. When Iñes is looking for the names of the insects I look at the cover of the book, and that’s what it says there: Doctor Helgar Reichholf-Riehm. I’ve read the name of Doctor Helgar Reichholf-Riehm often, one hundred times maybe. That’s why I know it by heart. Also, there’s a photograph of a very fat spider in the middle of the cover. And underneath, in very small letters, it says: “With Professor Gerhard Jurzitza from Karlsruhe’s help in the chapter on dragonflies.” It says that in very small letters. And Jurzitza is a name that’s a bit funny.

I have to ask Iñes something, but I always forget: about sweat. Because there’s this thing that happens to me with sweat: I can’t think. Because when we play soccer we start sweating, and when I start sweating I can’t think well. I can’t think like I think when I am normal. Because my head is hot, and my ears and my eyes, and I think badly. I can’t be an intelligent person when I’m sweating. That’s why I think that when I catch the blue dragonfly I won’t sweat again, forever. That’s what I think. I have to ask Iñes that.

When I catch the blue dragonfly I will show it to Dad, because they’re going to bring him home again from hospital. Aunt Martina told me. I don’t know if they have lions or panthers or cheetahs in Madagascar. Maybe I’ll ask Iñes. Because Dad asked me, When are we going to Madagascar, Tomas? And I told him Tomorrow.

Piedad. Last couplet.

The first letter Piedad sent Samuel Mud she wrote at eleven o’clock in the morning, on April 5, 1940, in England. She sat at her table every day at eleven o’clock for that purpose, to write a letter to Samuel. She kept doing it after Samuel died. And on April 5, 1940, the day she wrote her first letter to Samuel Mud, Piedad had an iodine stain in her elbow; she’d gotten it at the hospital the night before. And every day, since 1940, when she sat at the table where she wrote letters to Samuel, Piedad stained her elbow with iodine using a brown paintbrush. And she made the stain the same shape it was that April 5, 1940: the shape of a streetlight.

And, like she did on April 5, 1940, Piedad put two photographs on the table: of Samuel and of her sister Marina. And, every now and then she would look at one of them very intently and resolutely, and say something. And whoever she addressed in the photograph answered her. And that’s how Piedad remembered the conversations of the past. She could remember conversations that had taken place forty years before, every word of them without fail. And, for example, she would tell her sister:

“Any news, Marina?”

And her sister Marina:

“I’ve been to Eldas today, with a boy. He was handsome.”

“Well then.”

And her sister Marina:

“Handsomer than your Samuel.”

And Piedad:

“Did he have a moustache?”

And her sister Marina: “No.”

And Piedad remembered conversations like that when she looked at the photographs. Piedad was twenty-four and Marina twenty-two on the day they spoke like that, thirty-seven years before Marina died. Marina was a little uglier than Piedad, but she always wore white gloves.

Afterwards Piedad started writing letters to Samuel. Piedad always started her letters in the exact same way since Samuel died:

Samuel:

It’s been 18 years, 5 months and 4 days since you died .

What’s the weather like there, Samuel, is it summer or winter? It’s summer for us. Can you see the sun there? And thunder? How do you hear thunder? Just like we do? Did you hear the thunderstorm yesterday, Samuel?

We were at Rosa’s yesterday, in the sewing room, like always. Rosa, Martina, Mila and Dolores were there. Martina, Mila and Dolores have kids. Mila and Dolores both have doctor and lawyer kids. And Dolores’ grandchild plays tennis all over Europe .

There is this boy who is often at the sewing room lately. Rosa and Martina’s nephew. He lies on the ground and collects needles, this nephew of Rosa and Martina. And sometimes he asks: What is arthritis, Auntie?

Piedad stopped writing and stared at Samuel’s photograph. She remembered a conversation from fifty-three years before. It was a mad conversation. Truth be told, Piedad and Samuel were very good at mad conversations. Especially in summer. Especially if a Southerly wind was blowing.

Piedad said:

“Prague? And what will we do in Prague, Samuel?”

“See the Eiffel Tower.”

“The Eiffel Tower? The Eiffel Tower is in Paris, Samuel.”

“But they’ll have postcards of the Eiffel Tower in Prague. They have postcards of the Eiffel Tower everywhere in the world. How many shall we buy, of these postcards?”

“Four,” Piedad.

“Four postcards of the Eiffel Tower,” Samuel.

And Piedad said:

“Then I would like to see the leaning tower of Pisa as well, since we’re in Prague.”

“Another four postcards of the leaning tower of Pisa. . and another one with the Colossus of Rhodes. How much does a postcard cost in Prague, Piedad?”

“Seven sesterces.”

And Samuel and Piedad had lots of conversations like that; Samuel liked conversations like those, and Piedad could remember them word by word fifty-three years later, while looking at his photograph. Piedad was very fond of Samuel’s quirkiness, especially in summer.