Juan Ávila Laurel - By Night the Mountain Burns

When everything was assembled, the ministrants started their orations. I suppose they were some sort of blessing of the gifts for the king. They prayed, and prayed, and prayed, in that language that wasn’t our island’s language, for I didn’t understand a word of it, and when they decided there’d been enough praying, they brought several canoes down to the sea’s edge and started to load them up with the offerings. But only things that had been there when the ministrants had started their prayers; anything brought after they’d started had to be discounted. Then a few chosen men took to sea in the biggest canoe on the island, and they paddled out a certain distance from the shore, in front of the houses. What happened out there only those men knew, those men who’d been chosen for such an important mission. Sometimes there were great piles of things to give to the Saltwater King and more than one canoe had to go out, but no matter how many there were, everything was carefully monitored by the ministrants. What people said — what those who’d been chosen for the mission reported — is that you had to close your eyes when you threw the offerings out for the king. Or you stood in the canoe with your back to the sea and threw the offerings out behind you. I always thought I could never be one of the chosen ones. I’d have suddenly sprouted an eye in the back of my neck, for there’s no way I would have been able to not look to see who took the things from the water. But you were forbidden from looking and naturally there was a punishment if you failed to observe the rule: you’d be taken away by the king and never seen again. When I was a bit older, I found it hard to believe that no man was ever curious enough to sneak a look at that phenomenon. For that’s what it was: a phenomenon. I was never told anything to make me think otherwise. I’ve already told you what was tipped into the sea. And although I find it phenomenal that no one looked, I appreciate it’s each to their own as regards wanting to know about life and what surrounds you. So the real phenomenon was not that they didn’t look but that the sea king accepted everything he was offered, which was a great quantity of things. And he really did take everything, every last thing, and it all took place not very far away from the big village, so nobody could claim there was any trickery. But was there any proof that the king accepted all he was offered, any proof that he took everything for his larder? The proof was that, of the great quantity of things tipped into the water for him, not a single item made its way back to the island. Never. Not to any of the island’s shores, not even with all the strong sea currents. What’s more, and this is why I first wanted to mention the things that were offered, while you may well question whether the king really accepted a tin plate, a lump of coal, a bottle of brandy or a padlock, for they would sink to the sea bed in seconds anyway, lots of objects wouldn’t sink even in the stormiest of seas. Bundles of firewood, bunches of bananas, a length of cloth, linen to tie about the head, packets of cigarettes, more firewood, more bananas, more cloth for the king’s robes, cloth for the robes of the king’s daughters, things that everyone knew would ordinarily float forever, come what may. None of these things came back to shore. Not that day, not the next, not ever, nor did anyone come across them out fishing in the furthermost parts of the horizon, and this in times of terrible shortage. Was it not a miracle? To be honest, I never experienced the ceremony at close quarters. I experienced it from the beach, like most of the islanders, and by helping to load the canoes when it was my turn to do so, but I never stopped considering it the single biggest mystery on the island. And like I said, of all the mysterious things on the island, it was the one I was least afraid of, for I felt confident that if the king didn’t like something, he’d make his feelings known. The whole thing was incredible, from start to finish. There’s a beach on the south of the island that’s known as The Beach of Riches, because so many things wash up on it from other shores, from other countries. One thing that’s never lacking down there is tar. The tar is good for nothing at all, except staining the beach, although men sometimes use it to fill in holes in their canoes, for although the wood they are made of won’t sink, it does sometimes have other defects. But aside from that, all the tar does is arrive from who knows where and stick to people’s feet when they walk on the beach. Wooden boards also wash up on that beach, boards with words written in foreign languages, bottles and cans too, and lots of tree trunks from trees that don’t grow on the island. And men make the most of them and build canoes out of the alien woods. But they have to be strong to do so, for the wood can be tough. Anyway, I mention that beach because you’d have thought anything rejected at the gates of the king’s palace would end up there. But nothing was ever found that was thought to be an item rejected by the Saltwater King. Never. What if someone found something but said nothing? But why would they say nothing? Nobody on the island doubted the ceremony but me! And I was young, so young that I worried that if I went on living on the island then I’d inevitably one day be chosen to go and give food to the king, and I knew my curiosity would get the better of me. I’d go, I wouldn’t be able to resist looking and that’d be the end of me. I wouldn’t be telling this story now. And just so you don’t think I’m exaggerating, I was so convinced this would happen and spent so much time imagining what life would be like there, I formed a mental image of what the king’s palace looked like. It was said that if you looked, you’d be swallowed by the waters and dumped at the bottom of the steps to the king’s palace, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist looking. That’s how you entered the palace, by going up some steps. I could draw a picture of it for you now, as if it were right there in front of me.

Grandfather made one last big effort, and he went very close to the cliff edge and made wild gestures and roared in a voice nobody had heard before, and somehow he made himself heard by the man who was paddling, paddling one of grandmother’s daughters back from collecting food piled up at the plantation. The canoeman saw grandfather and knew something must be seriously amiss for him to have left the upstairs where he lived. That he’d left the upstairs was enough on its own, but grandfather had also gone down to the beach, the one by the cemetery, a beach used for practically nothing. Well, nothing I care to mention. Some things are best left unsaid. Although the beach was also used for something else, something I can mention, because a bit further out, in front of the islet, the waves broke and boys who were grown-up and daring went out on chest boards or in canoes to glide on them. They paddled out to the islet, either on chest boards, which were the remains of broken canoes, or in canoes themselves, although without actually getting inside them. They paddled out to the mightiest waves and then waited for one to break and glided in on them, fast, all the way in to the beach. They did this at low tide. And because of those breaking waves, anyone there not for gliding usually went round the islet on the open side, and this was what grandfather wanted to avoid. Which was why he had to get the canoeman, who might have been his son-in-law, to hear him. And grandfather managed to make himself heard and managed to avoid the canoeman paddling around the open side, but then there were the waves to contend with. As I said, the waves broke in front of that islet and only the most skilled and experienced canoemen dared paddle through them in a canoe with a load, never mind a canoe with a woman sitting in it. Of those skilled and experienced canoemen there was one who stood out in particular, one who went further than all the rest in his daring. I remember his name, but what’s the point in me telling you his name if I haven’t even told you my grandfather’s name? So anyway, there was a situation that my grandfather wanted to avoid at all costs and that was his daughter and the canoeman interrupting the ceremony in front of everyone. And when the canoeman saw grandfather on the shore, so very far from the upstairs where he lived, the canoeman knew something must be seriously amiss. Grandfather made gestures for them to come in from the water right away, and the canoeman, who might have been his son-in-law, obeyed. The canoeman may well have been aware of the ceremony taking place on the island that day after all, for as I said, the announcement had been made to everyone. Either way, grandfather called him in and, because he knew what the bay was like there, knew about the waves breaking one after the other as they rolled in to shore, he was worried about what could happen to his daughter, the canoeman, the canoe and its load. And so by the time we’d reached him, grandfather had taken his trousers off and gone a little way into the water to wait for the canoe. Imagine how worried he must have been to have done that. It was the first time any of us had seen him so much as splash in the water. The first time in our lives, which although we were young was still a long time given that we lived on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by sea. Furthermore, it was very dangerous to enter the sea when a canoe was coming in on a beach where the waves were so wild. It was very dangerous because the canoe could easily smash into him, for the whole operation depended on whether the canoeman, who may have been grandfather’s son-in-law, could master a canoe in the waves. In order to glide a canoe in on those waves and keep the boat upright, the canoeman had to be very skilled with his paddle. And in this situation, gliding a canoe in on the waves was especially inadvisable, because the canoe had a full load and a woman sitting in it, and the woman would have a terrible time if the canoeman lost control and fell in the water. If that were to happen, the woman would be in serious trouble because on our island women didn’t know how to paddle canoes, nor did girls ever go out to glide in the waves on chest boards. Grandmother’s daughter, one of our mothers, was therefore in great danger. Which was why grandfather took his trousers off and waded out into the water, to try and slow down the rapid approach of the canoe as it glided in on the waves. This was also very dangerous, but anyway, into the water he went, and by the time we’d reached him, he was in up to his knees. We could have shouted for him to come back but he was worried and determined to deal with the situation. The waves became more frequent and some of them came in very high, so from time to time grandfather had to backtrack to avoid getting soaked. As he moved further out, the water grew deeper and reached to higher parts of his body, and so he had to hitch up his shirt to avoid it getting wet. I thought he might as well have taken it off, as he was practically naked without his trousers on anyway. Our hearts raced, for we knew something terrible could happen. We were only little and so we couldn’t help, at least we couldn’t help the canoe reach the sand without coming to any harm. And our grandfather, having hoisted up his shirt so as not to get it wet, revealed something plastic he had strapped to one of his sides. The right side, I think. Yes, something strapped there, which wasn’t a part of his clothing and wasn’t part of his body. It was something that seemed to be covering a hole. We saw it clearly. We were surprised to see it, for we knew hardly anything about the man. What was it?