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

“There’ve been so many San Franciscos. I suppose it’s so as not to confuse him with all the others.”

“And why do you kiss him every night?”

“Because he’s the saint who was always saying ‘Praise God!’, which is what I used to say sometimes. And what better thing to say! I’d never even heard of him until María Antonia, Doña Carmen’s cook… you remember Doña Carmen, don’t you? The lady who used to give you sweets whenever you came to the village? Well, María Antonia lived for a long time in Argentina and, when she lost her husband, she came back to the village with her son, and she used to praise San Francisco Solano to the skies; she told me he was the most important saint in all of South America and that whenever he saw a bird he’d never seen before or a tall, ancient tree, or a fine, broad, fast-flowing river or a range of vast mountains, or any one of the many marvels they have out there, he would gaze up at the heavens and say: ‘Praise God!’ And I really liked that…”

“And is that why you kiss him?”

“Yes, and because I asked him for something once and he granted my wish.”

“What wish was that?”

“Don’t be so nosy… Remember, curiosity killed the cat… All right, I’ll tell you. Your Grandpa and me wanted to have children, but when more than two years had passed and there were still no children in sight, I began to lose hope. Then, one day, it occurred to me to ask María Antonia’s saint, and it worked, because your uncle Raúl was born.”

“You mean it was a miracle.”

“Well, I don’t know about a miracle, dear, but yes, maybe you’re right, because having children is a kind of miracle. The thing is that miracles happen so often, they seem normal to us, the morning comes and then the night, the sun and the moon rise and set, the earth gives us harvest after harvest, and we say, ‘I’ll do that tomorrow’ and tomorrow we’re still alive to do it. Yes, dear, you’re right: reality is a miracle…”

Mama was bustling about in the kitchen and heard what her mother said.

“But, Mother, if reality was a miracle, it wouldn’t be reality.”

My grandmother looked doubtful for a moment and did not respond. Then, as if talking to herself, she muttered:

“I don’t know… and neither do you. No one knows. Time passes and brings with it new ideas… and ideas pass, too…”

Quite oblivious to her great age, I was constantly pestering her with questions, and Mama was always telling me off:

“You’ll make her dizzy with all your questioning. Leave her alone!”

But one day, when my parents had gone out and Grandma and I were alone, I asked her one last question, although I didn’t know then that it would be the last:

“And what about Grandpa’s letter, why do you keep reading it? You must know it by heart.”

“Almost. But that’s not really the point, dear. I read it because it’s so lovely, that’s all. At the time he wrote it, he saw in me everything he wanted to see in me… and I was probably never like that at all. I mean, in the letter he compares me to a radiant dawn, to a rose, and says he has built a nest for my voice in his heart! What nonsense! Love turned him into a poet. One day you’ll enjoy nonsense like that, too. You’ll see. Then we got married and, needless to say, we had our ups and downs… because that’s what life is like. But we loved each other…”

One morning, she tried to get out of bed and failed. That was the first time we had ever seen her confined to bed, and she kept apologizing — her breathing laboured, her voice weak.

The doctor arrived and, after he had examined my grandmother, he took Mama out into the corridor and said:

“She’s very ill. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do. So…”

“But what’s wrong with her?”

“The years… the years kill us, without the aid of any grave illness.”

Mama took out her handkerchief and dried her tears.

“Will she suffer much?”

“No. She may not even realize. It’s better like that. I’m sorry.”

My grandmother remained in the same state for two more days, never complaining, apparently concentrating entirely on her breathing.

My father phoned the office to tell them he wouldn’t be coming in, and then they phoned Uncle Raúl, and my mother talked for some time to him and his wife Julia, who both arrived at the house the next day. Papa kept pacing up and down as if he didn’t know what to do, and then went down to the kiosk to buy a newspaper. Then he dropped into a café for a coffee and returned at midday, and my mother, who couldn’t stand his pacing, said:

“Go to work, will you! If there’s any change, I’ll call you.”

He duly went to work and got back home gone eight o’clock. And that night, from one o’clock on, when we heard Grandma apparently muttering to herself, the three of us went into her room and, abandoning all attempts to sleep, sat with her.

I was so terrified that she would utter the last shout, that I barely shed a tear; I really didn’t want to hear it.

My grandmother died three hours later and passed into the next world as easily as if she were passing from one room to the next through an open door.

She didn’t shout, and, after she had taken her last breath, the house was quite different. The air, grown stale with our wakeful watchfulness, seemed filled with the solemnity of a requiem, and the slightest noise, the scraping of a chair on the floor, seemed to scratch that silence made up of suppressed sobs; even with the lights lit, darkness reigned, and the smell of wax impregnated a night grown suicidal and shadowless, and yet, at the same time, black and eternal. And I understood then how much a lifeless body has to say to us.

I felt cold, my eyes were itchy and heavy with sleep. I opened the balcony window, leant on the balustrade and took a deep breath. A car sped past with its headlights on. The wounding light of dawn was already sidling onto the rooftops, and then, suddenly, I heard an anguished cry stabbing the air and pressed both hands to my breast in horror. I looked fearfully up at the sky and, in the darkness, I thought I saw a bird flying away… I didn’t mention this to anyone, because my parents wouldn’t even have paused to wonder if it was true. And I wanted it to be true… I wanted that shout to have come from her. Because my grandmother never lied. Do such strange coincidences exist? Does anyone know?

This translation is dedicated to the memory of Medardo Fraile, whom I knew for far too short a time. I would also like to thank his wife Janet and daughter Andrea for their enthusiasm and help in translating the stories, Javier Jiménez-Ugarte, who encouraged me to find a UK publisher for the stories, Annella McDermott for her invaluable advice, and Ben Sherriff, who was, as always, my first reader.