Medardo Fraile - Things Look Different in the Light & Other Stories

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From one of the finest short-story writers in Spanish, this is the first anthology of his work to appear in English. Like Anton Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield, Medardo Fraile is a chronicler of the minor tragedies and triumphs of ordinary life, and each short tale opens up an entire exquisite world.

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He felt a wave of heat sweep over him, and, for a moment, his bankrupt carcass struggled to catch its breath. “Dyspnoea,” he said to himself, adding: “from the Greek δύσπνoια ” and he smiled.

He heard the key in the front door. Candela was back from doing the shopping, going to the cinema or to the hairdresser’s, visiting a friend or a lover, real or imaginary. It didn’t matter. He called to her. Behind his steamed-up glasses, his eyes were shining.

“Sit down,” he said.

She sat down and asked:

“Have you been thinking about what you’d like for your birthday?”

“No.”

There was a silence, then with a faint smile he said:

“Imagine that I’m dead…”

“What do you mean? Have you gone mad?”

“No. These things happen… or don’t… Anyway, try to imagine that I am.”

“All right, if you insist. You’re dead.”

“Now I appear to you and I say…”

“After you’re dead? How? Where? Here, in your study? Ugh!”

“Yes, I appear to you and I say: ‘Petra, do you love me?’”

“And I wouldn’t even answer because that isn’t my name and I’ve no idea who Petra is.”

“I know, but answer me anyway. Please. Is that so much to ask?”

“Oh, I see, it’s a game!”

“Yes, in a way. Petra, do you love me?”

“Yes, Elmi, I do love you. I love you very much.”

Don Anselmo gestured towards his books and papers:

“Feed my sheep.”

“Good grief! Don’t tell me there are sheep in the house now!”

Don Anselmo said again:

“Petra, do you love me?”

“Not again. I’ve told you already, haven’t I? Yes, I love you. What more do you want?”

Don Anselmo reached out one arm, made a gesture taking in the whole room, and said:

“Tend my sheep…”

Candela’s lips trembled:

“Will you stop it! Why don’t you just come right out with it and call me ignorant, call me uneducated, call me stupid! Go on! Isn’t that what you mean?”

With tears in her eyes, she leapt abruptly to her feet and left the room, slamming the door behind her.

Don Anselmo sighed and remained sitting where he was for a long time, thinking, not knowing what to do, as if struggling to find the answer to the final clue in a crossword.

PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM

I GOT OFF THE BUS and walked up the steep hill — the part of the journey I always dread — which leads me to the Cosmo Cinema. The film wasn’t due to start for an hour and a half, and so I went into the café that bears the same name and forms part of the same complex. At the bar I ordered a cheese sandwich with some ginger preserve. Oh, and a cup of tea, of course. I sat down at a table opposite the mirrors and felt suddenly surprised to see myself there, but then that always happens.

I wasn’t really hungry, but I concentrated on eating my sandwich and sipping my tea and couldn’t help but notice two coffins going over to the bar, two particularly long coffins. They were both standing up and one was clearly a woman and the other a man. The female coffin ordered a slice of ham with a tomato and lettuce salad, and the male coffin a tuna sandwich. Then — because they clearly didn’t know each other — they sat down at separate tables. I had nearly finished my sandwich when another coffin — short but very wide and possibly female — came in and ordered two bars of Nestlé chocolate and a cappuccino. Perhaps she was on a diet.

It was a Monday and there was almost no one there; in fact, one of the young women serving behind the bar spent most of the time scratching her head and yawning, and so when there were still twenty minutes to go before the film began, I slowly got up, went to the toilet — just in case — then proceeded upstairs to the cinema. The usher, the one I like best, was standing at the door and he said very politely that I would have to wait five minutes because people were still coming out from the first showing, which had begun at one o’clock.

When five minutes had passed, he apologized and waved me in, and I went to my usual seat in the second row. Two rows behind me there were only two coffins, but not the same two I had seen in the café; they were the sort — and there are many — of whom it’s very hard to say quite what they are. When I went to take my seat, the seat said “Hello”, and I looked around just to make sure no one else had noticed and then sat down as if I had heard nothing.

The music started, and I saw thirteen or fourteen coffins filing in, some in couples and others alone, as well as other cinema-goers — albeit not many — of the unclassifiable variety, who looked rather out of place and about whom I never know quite what to think, as if they were going to attack me. Well, you never can tell. One thing is certain: they were not coffins.

The lights went down and, despite the noise, I managed to sleep through the adverts, until, at last, Casablanca started, a film I’ve seen at least seven times before and which I only see again in order to hear what Ingrid Bergman says to the pianist: “Play it, Sam.” Then I feel something very deep and very remote stirring inside me and I think of Luisa, which is odd because Luisa and I never got on particularly well. Nevertheless — although quite why I’ve no idea — I always think of her and the evening we went dancing at the Pasapoga Music Hall. Anyway, that’s the only reason I go to see Casablanca , and I’ll be back at the Cosmo next week, too, because they’re showing Some Like It Hot, by that amusing director Billy Wilder, and I only watch that in order to hear the final line, when the rich, slightly effeminate little squirt of a suitor says to Jack Lemmon, “Nobody’s perfect!” I don’t even know how often I’ve seen it, certainly more often than Casablanca ; the first time was with my little niece, Emilia, when she was thirteen and had ambitions to be another Marilyn Monroe, but the poor thing never even managed to become another Bette Davis.

When the lights went up and I left the cinema, the usher helped me down the stairs to the ground floor. Ahead of me, swaying slowly, was the long female coffin, the one I’d seen in the bar. There was no sign of the male coffin. The usher took me almost to the front door and said: “Take care of yourself! See you next week!” It’s a real pleasure knowing people like him.

THE BENCH

MY SCHOOL WAS NEARBY, but to get there I had to cross the tramlines, and crossing them twice in a day made for a hazardous journey. At first, this meant holding fast to the frantic hand of my godmother, who would say: “Wait!”, “Let’s go!”, “No, not now!”, “Quick, run!” Later, I had to cross it alone, looking anxiously this way and that, first left, then right. On our side of the pavement there was a double bench with a back rest in the middle section, and immediately next to it, on the corner, was the local bar; beyond that were three doorways — the last of which was mine — and opposite we could see the ancient trees of La Moncloa.

My godmother would sometimes disappear among those trees and up the slopes of the Parque del Oeste, hand in hand with an army corporal who had been or was about to go to Africa, and to whom his rank and that posting to Africa lent an aura of bravery and manliness. As well, of course, as the added glamour of being here today and gone tomorrow. I accompanied them on a couple of occasions; once, on a short walk among the trees in the square, and once while they were standing chatting on the corner. I didn’t know who he was, whether a distant cousin or a friend of someone she knew, but he had a very slow, wheedling way of saying things, full of implied meanings and obscure expressions, as if he were trying to persuade her to do something, although quite what I didn’t know. My godmother, a young widow, was diminutive, but quite broad in the beam.

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