Carlos Gamerro - The Islands

‘For several nights that merged into the darkness of our daytime concealment we travelled north, fleeing from the spring across a Europe of puddles and rubble, dragging the suitcase that at the last moment my father had forced me to empty of its toys to load it with the jewels and little pieces of gold he’d managed to amass. For several days we lived in the hull of a bombed-out boat, drenched by the drizzle and the grey swell of the sea, until one night, some men as frightened as we were helped us to embark. The ship was bound for Argentina and, when we arrived, that suitcase was the only luggage we brought with us.’

He paused, conclusively. The story was over. I looked around me in confusion. The sky over the river had filled with aggressive stars that looked down on us in scorn from their niches on high. It was as if the last floor of the tower had detached itself from the rest and, like a satellite, was floating out of orbit, all contact with the Earth lost. With an effort I fixed my eyes again on the creature perched on the desk. Perhaps it was better to kill him after all. He was like a dog with a broken spine: irretrievable and capable of snapping at anyone that tried to help him.

‘If you take the brightest star as the centre and draw radii like the spokes in a bicycle wheel to the edges of the sky, and draw a spiral away from the centre through each of the surrounding stars, what shape are you left with?’

‘It’s hard to picture it.’

‘A spider-web. A spider-web stretched across the black vault of the heavens, the constellations caught in it like insects sucked dry. And at the centre, at that point of maximum light …’

‘What.’

‘God. The spider.’

‘Haven’t you found out who was sending the anonymous letters yet?’

He’d stood the acrylic prism on end, like a bonsai monolith, and was leaning towards it slightly, in an attitude of reverence. He picked up a few dry leaves from around the dead bonsai and piled them at its base, as if preparing an offering.

‘That man, Cuervo, no doubt. His messages keep arriving like the light from many of those stars up there that no longer exist. Have a look at his swansong.’

He was holding out a piece of continuous feed, identical to the other two.

Farewell, my boys! My dearest friends, farewell!

My body feels, my soul doth weep to see

Your sweet desires depriv’d my company,

For Tamerlán, the scourge of God, must die.

‘Did he confess to your men?’

‘No. He didn’t have time. You know.’ He blew a raspberry. ‘We found that in his things,’ he said, pointing to it. ‘Same handwriting.’

It was peeping out of the pile of papers I’d seen them carry out of Cuervo’s, just by what was left of the Zen garden, which, with half its sand tipped out and the other half scratched as if by a cat and full of fag ends and balls of paper, looked more like a common spittoon. It was an orange Gloria Brand exercise book, identical to the one in my possession, but much newer and shinier. I opened it and examined its pages in the light of the monitors. It began at the same date as the other one, 15th April 1992, and went up to 28th May, the day after the crime:

15th April 1992

— We spoke at length of our days in the Islands. When he was lost in the mist, he wandered

aimlessly until he came across a smallholding, where, thanks to his mastery of English, he was able to persuade the Kelpers to take him in. He spent several weeks fighting for his life, cared for by the couple’s young daughter, who remained by his bedside day and night, watching over him, restoring not just his health, but his will to live, which his father had mutilated to the point of leading him to seek death in the war. The couple had accepted him at first thinking to ingratiate themselves with the Argentinian authorities, but they soon grew genuinely fond of him and began to treat him as one of their own. There is no need to say what this meant to our young hero, whose father’s slights and insults had been the only domestic warmth he had ever known. Providentially, the farm’s radio was broken, and this gave them the time they needed to warm to the young man before they found out that the war was over. One day they saw a group of soldiers approaching along the road, but imagine their surprise when they realised from their uniforms and faces that they were English. They did not hesitate. The enemy soldiers were deceived by the young Argentinian’s fair complexion and excellent English, and the couple introduced him as their son-in-law. In a few short months he was. It was some time since the English ships had left the last load of prisoners on the mainland, and he decided to stay. Free at last, in this new land he would give his children what his father had never given to him.

28th April 1992

— Fausto went on telling me about his life

in Malvinas. Catherine’s fertile womb soon bore him two infants: Nigel, in 1984, and little Cynthia, two years later. He adopted the Kelpers’ customs and dress and, as he adapted to his new world, the pain the memories of the old one brought him faded. With time, he thought, surrounded by so much affection, perhaps he would manage to forget and, perhaps, even to forgive. But fate, as cruel as the man who had taught him what pain was, did not wish it so. The plane carrying Catherine, Nigel and Cynthia back from a trip to England crashed in the Atlantic and disappeared without a trace, a victim presumably of some fundamentalist attack.

1st May 1992

– ‘I prayed for death,’ Fausto told me during those days, ‘but my prayers went unanswered. When I managed to pull myself together from the madness of my early grief, I realised I would no longer be able to remain in that land. I shall go back one day, I thought at that moment, but shall not do so alone. I shall come back to my own kind and show them the only real way to make the Islands ours. Cathy, Nigel and Cynthia will not have died in vain. Their love will close the wounds and bring peace to our two warring peoples. I shall return to Argentina and organise the ultimate recovery of the Islands.’

16th May 1992

– ‘When I reached my country,’ Fausto told me last night, ‘I almost didn’t recognise it. It had changed so much. While I lived happily on the Islands, I would refuse to read the news that sometimes appeared in the local newspapers; I would cover my ears when they said something on the radio. My imagination had filled in the

gaps. In my innocence, I had supposed that the experience of war would have been of some use to us, taught us a new love of country and of the brave officers and men who had given so much to defend it. Instead I found a land devastated, as if the war had taken place here and not there, with a society undermined to the core by petty vengefulness and the excesses of democracy, where the heroes of my youth had been first vilified and ridiculed, then — more cruelly still — forgotten. Therefore my first objective was to seek you out, to meet you all again, for I knew that no one else would want to hear or help me. You, Major X, had been like a father to me during the days of the war and, like a father, you were the first I sought out on my return. Apart from that experience, unshareable with others, we had something else in common: hatred of the same man and the desire to wreak revenge for the many wrongs he had done us: the man that had the effrontery to claim to be your friend and my progenitor.’

A spicy, autumnal smell tickled my nostrils. I looked up. Tamerlán had added some screwed-up pages from Ameghino to the pile of ombú leaves at the foot of the erect prism and had set fire to them. The acrid smoke from the bonfire filled the room and, as the tongues of fire began to lap at the corners of the prism, was joined by the more nauseating smell of burning plastic. There was another page to read.