Carlos Gamerro - The Islands

I started awake in the last light of day from a distressing nightmare in which I was back in the Borda, only to realise that it was true. I tried to get up at once but my body wouldn’t respond. I couldn’t lift an arm or arch a leg. It was as if I’d lain down in wet cement and now … From beside me came a barely audible murmur, continuous, fainter and fainter, dying away, getting mysteriously closer, then drifting away, as if travelling on the wind, a little flame at the edge of the candlestick, barely peeping out, while the squares of sky grew darker in the wall and the cold of the night poured in through the broken panes.

‘The Malvinas warp … the fist bottle of Turd Whorled Wart … with the cuntquest of the … whirled by Sargentina … the corrapt umpyre of the North is no lunger capable of saving it from the commonest ad vans; the thyme to act … the I’m to act … the time to tact …’

The daylight slowly faded until the half-light outside and that inside balanced, when, with a final flicker, the murmuring guttered into silence.

‘He always goes quiet when he gets to this part.’

A hazy, white shadow stood on the threshold.

‘Are you new?’ it asked me as it approached.

‘No, no. A visitor. A friend. I fell …’ I pointed to the bed, stammering that I was about to leave, trying to convince … It hushed me with the outline of a hand.

‘People often used to come and see him. His old comrades-in-arms. He talked, he was capable of talking for ten or twelve hours running, he even went on talking in his sleep, we had to medicate him to get him to stop. Are you …?’

I nodded, then realising that my gesture couldn’t be seen, I said yes through dry lips. It was as if I hadn’t spoken for days.

‘You can barely understand a word he says now.’

‘Did you know he’s here by mistake? He became aphasic and, because the military didn’t understand what he was saying, they dumped him here.’

‘Yes, I knew. I came in with him.’

‘Hang on a minute. You’re not the one with the computers? What’s your name? Fernando?’

‘Felipe. Am I still talked about?’

‘You’re a living legend. Every time we’re accused of being nothing but a dumping-ground for the walking dead, someone comes out with the lost case who’s now an authority on computers.’

‘It’s not as if I learned it here.’

‘Have you been out long?’

‘They took me out without asking me. Otherwise I might still be with you. It’s always like coming home though. I sometimes feel I was brought up here. I have memories of my life before, but I don’t feel anything; it’s as if they belonged to someone else. Maybe that’s it: I was born in the war and grew up here; one island was my dad, the other my mum.’ It was easy to speak to this disembodied voice in the dark. ‘I still have the mark of the forceps on my head.’

‘Smoke?’

I took the fag in two scissored fingers. He lit it for me. He was young, younger than us, and married, I discovered in the light of the flame. We smoked in silence, unconsciously synchronising our embers in the dark. In the bed next to us an inmate ground his teeth and mumbled in his sleep. Another was weeping and, from the rhythmic squeaking of his bed-springs, clearly trying to masturbate.

‘He never resigned himself,’ I said.

‘Did you?’

‘We all dream of going back. It’s hard to explain. I’d be crazy to want to go back. But I dream of going back.’ I paused. ‘You all do too.’

‘We do?’

‘The ones who didn’t go. Otherwise, why are you after us? You’re after us and you’re afraid of us. You imagine we know something we don’t want to tell you and you don’t want to know; you envy us because we know the way and you’re afraid of us revealing it to you. We left a precise space when we left, but we changed shape over there, and when we got back we didn’t fit into the jigsaw any more, whichever way you turned us; ten thousand of us came back — enlightened, mad, damned prophets — and here we are, roaming free from one end of the country to the other, speaking a language no one understands, pretending we’re working, playing football, screwing, but never quite here, always aware that there’s a precious and indefinable part of ourselves buried over there. In dreams, at least, we all go back to look for it. You understand? It isn’t the criminal who returns to the scene of the crime; it’s the victim, in the tyrannical hope they’ll change the unfair result that’s damaged them. Ask the English. How many of them do you think want to go back? It’s us, the losers, the crushed, who shout “We’ll be back, we’ll be back” to anyone who’ll listen. Why would the winner want a return match? Hell has left its mark on us and we think we can turn it into paradise just by going back; we wake up at night crying “Daddy, Daddy!” at the demons that laughed and speared us with their harpoons. Do you know why we keep on dressing up like this ten years after the event, why we keep meeting to organise impossible expeditions, reconstructing to the very last second all those days we’d do better to forget? We’re infected, see; like Chagas victims, we carry them in our blood and die by degrees. You’ve seen them, haven’t you? They’re just like polyps. They get a little bigger with each passing year, like those patches on the wall. Shell shock, war trauma; no, it isn’t that simple. We’re madly in love, yet we hate them. Fetishists that we are, we worship a photo, a silhouette, an old boot … It isn’t true there were survivors. There are two bites torn out of the hearts of every one of us, and they’re the exact shape of the Islands. We try to fill the holes with stuff from over here, but it’s like trying to plug them with tow. Do you know how many of us took our lives for that love?’

‘About two hundred.’

‘Not yet.’

I fell silent, as Emilio had a while ago, feeling as if my words were less intelligible than his. The doctor got up to leave.

‘Is there anyone who understands what he says?’ I headed him off.

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Nobody cares.’

‘But it is possible?’

‘I don’t think so. There’s no stable code, you understand. Although a while back something strange began to happen, I don’t know if you’ve recognised it. He always repeats the same thing.’

‘What’s that? I thought you said …’

‘No, I can’t understand it, but I can recognise it. It’s like music: the melody’s always the same and, if you make the effort, you start to pick out a few words and phrases. After that, even if you splice them and stick them onto others, they keep coming back. Haven’t you noticed how he’ll say everything in a rush, then suddenly stop?’

‘So maybe …’

‘He’s reciting.’

‘How long’s he been doing it?’

‘Two or three months, as far as I know. But the visits may have started before that. Now I come to think of it, this is the first time he’s done it without the chap coming.’ He looked at me. ‘You’re the one who came. Did he send you?’

‘Describe him to me.’

‘Fifty-something. Moustache. Military type. No uniform.’

‘Coat?’

‘Grey. Do you know who he is?’

‘Uh-huh,’ I nodded.

‘And what does he want?’

‘I have no idea. Does he come often?’

‘He doesn’t have set days. But when he comes, he stays. Sometimes for ten hours at a stretch without even getting up to go to the bathroom. He sits on your bed with a sheaf of papers and a recorder, and doesn’t leave until Emilio’s gone completely quiet.’

‘Does he write down what Emilio says to him?’ I asked in astonishment.

‘I think so. Once, when I tried to peep over his shoulder, he showed me a glimpse of his gun. Anyway, it seems to matter to him. The problem is that every visit leaves Emilio worse, squeezed like a lemon, he’s catatonic for days afterwards. I once suggested the chap should be barred. Everyone just laughed. Ah well.’ He slapped both knees purposefully at the same time. ‘I’m off home. Can I give you a lift anywhere?’