Unai Elorriaga: Plants Don't Drink Coffee

Afterwards she continued with the letter:

Do you remember Klimt, Samuel? Do you remember how we saw Gustav Klimt in Prague? We saw him in 1949 and later we found out he had died in 1918, in Vienna. Klimt died two years before I was born, but we saw him in Prague much later. We saw him in Prague 31 years after he had died. That’s why I’m writing to you, Samuel. Did you take your reading glasses? And the green socks? I hope you’re not sitting there with cold feet .

Klimt painted lots of redheads. I’d happily steal a painting like that now, a painting of a redhead. Like my sister Marina. She cut her hair with a saw once, Marina. Did you know that?

Piedad stared at her sister’s photograph. She looked at her hair first and then at her arms. She always liked her sister’s arms better than her own, because they were fatter. Marina’s hair was gray in the photograph, like her lips.

Piedad said:

“Why don’t you get married, Marina?”

“Because of my hair,” answered Marina quickly. “Because of my red hair.”

And Piedad:

“I’ve met many married redheads.”

“How many?”

And Piedad said:

“Five.”

“In England, or here?”

“In both places.”

And Marina said:

“And were their husbands handsome?”

“Four of them were.”

And Marina said:

“And were they good?”

“All five of them.”

And Marina said:

“And you, Piedad, what are Samuel and you waiting for?”

That was one of the oldest conversations that Piedad remembered. Piedad continued writing the letter:

I’ve been making calculations, Samuel. Yesterday I figured I must, at most, have 5,107 days left before I die. But most likely it’ll be fewer. Will we get married then, Samuel? Will we marry when I’m dead? Are there chapels there?

Do you still draw plans? Will you draw some for us when I die, Samuel? Have any of the houses you built burned down since you went there? Do things get burned there, like they do here? Make our house so that it won’t burn, make the kitchen small .

And your stomach, Samuel? How’s your stomach? Are you taking your pills? Do people take pills over there, Samuel?

Piedad looked at her sister’s photograph again; then at Samuel’s. Samuel was young in the photograph, but suddenly Piedad remembered him at seventy-two. When he was sick, in bed. And then she remembered herself then, sitting next to his bed, looking at the buttons on his pajamas. And this conversation came to her mind:

“Where does it hurt, Samuel?”

“My stomach,” said Samuel. “And my hair; the tips of my hair,” said Samuel. “And my eyelashes too; the tips of my eyelashes too.”

“You’re such a buffoon. And the pills, Samuel? Have you taken your stomach pills?”

“Yes, I’ve taken the stomach ones. All the stomach ones. But I think I took three too many today. Three or four. . will you stay the night, Piedad?”

“The thought of it. I never stayed when I was young and you think I’m going to stay now? What, with such an old man?”

Samuel started to laugh, painfully. Then he said:

“Do you remember where your nightgowns are, Piedad?”

“You kept my nightgowns?”

“Three. The key is on top of the lamp.”

Piedad often remembered that conversation. But she remembered another one even more often: a conversation they had when Samuel was thirty-seven and Piedad twenty-seven. It happened in 1947, in August. But she always remembered the 1947 conversation after finishing the letter; she did the same every day. And she had almost finished writing it. Since Samuel died, Piedad wrote very short letters to him.

I told Rosa and Martina why we didn’t marry, Samuel. Rosa and Martina have wanted to know for a long time. They never really asked me, but they’ve wanted to know for a long time. I sensed they did. Because they always asked strategic questions here and there, hoping I’d tell. Because they don’t understand why we didn’t marry. And I never told them until now. Yesterday I did. I gave Rosa and Martina that pleasure. It was a pleasure for me to tell them too. Because I am old, Samuel .

I saw an actor who had your ears yesterday. He was handsomer than you, it goes without saying .

See you tomorrow, Samuel. Make sure the blanket covers your stomach at night .

Piedad

She folded the page and placed it in the envelope. Then she put a stamp on it. She opened a wardrobe and put the letter inside it without moving from her chair. It was a very brown wardrobe.

Afterwards she looked at Samuel’s photograph. And she began to remember the conversation from August 1947, when Samuel was thirty-seven and she twenty-seven.

“We can’t get married, Piedad.”

“We can’t get married?”

“We can’t get married,” Samuel. “I’ve been researching my family, Piedad. My mother died at forty-six, my father at forty. My father’s sister Pilar at forty-three, and his brother, my uncle Fermin, at thirty-nine. And my grandparents were dead at forty-seven one of them, at forty-one the other, at thirty-five the other and the last one I don’t know. Don’t you see, Piedad? That’s why I started making calculations.”

“What calculations have you been making?”

“I’ve calculated that I will die at forty-one or forty-two at the latest. That’s my inheritance, Piedad. Five years at most. Do you know how many days five years are?”

“How many?”

“1,825 days. How can we get married, Piedad? That’d be a very sad wedding.”

“A very sad wedding?”

“I will have already started dying on the day we marry, Piedad. Ours would be a very sad family.”

“1,825 days,” said Piedad. And then she repeated, “1,825 days.” And then she said, “A very sad family?”

She stopped looking at Samuel’s photograph then. She got up, left the table and took her nightgown off and, naked, took three or four ballet steps around the room, at the age of eighty-two. Afterwards she laughed at herself.

Aitite Julian. Last couplet

Mateo was obsessed with Aitite Julian. More than with Aitite Julian himself, Mateo was obsessed with the 1927 competition he’d been a part of, the carpenters’ competition. Nobody knew what Aitite Julian had done in that competition: if he’d won, lost or abandoned it. Did Aitite Julian become the best carpenter in Europe? Nobody knew, and that was a bad sign. Otherwise they would remember. At least the family would.

Fausto Lada, Gur’s uncle, had told him that Don Juan, the priest, would know, because the competition took place in the church. Uncle Simon told him the same thing: he said he didn’t remember, he was a child at the time but he thought Don Juan, the priest, might know. But Mateo didn’t know Don Juan and he felt shy about asking. That’s why he asked Ball to accompany him to the vestry, to see Don Juan, like he had accompanied him to Fausto’s house. A bit later they met up with Ball’s brother at the Alangos Plaza, and the three went to the church together to pay Don Juan a visit.

On the way Mateo told Ball’s brother what the deal was with Aitite Julian, to catch him up. And this was the seventh time Mateo had explained who Julian Maldas was to someone, to Ball’s brother this time. And people were always a bit amazed by Aitite Julian’s stories, and most of them made a similar gesture with their eyebrows when they heard them.

Ball’s brother was called Esteban at home. In the street he was Beckenbauer.

At the vestry. In San Fausto’s church

Don Juan didn’t open the door, as was to be expected; Don Fermin opened it. Don Fermin was grimacing in pain, and as soon as he’d let Mateo, Ball and Esteban into the vestry, he ran towards a small door in a corner of the room saying “Just a second.” Mateo, Ball and his brother were alone in the vestry.