Juan Ávila Laurel: By Night the Mountain Burns

There was, indeed there still is, only one cemetery on the island and everyone is buried there. Before heading for the cemetery, the priest is called, and he comes dressed in his official garments, assisted by his altar boys, at least two of them, one to carry candles, the other to carry incense. In my youth, back in my grandparents’ days, the whole church entourage would come to the house of the deceased and then leave with the coffin, followed by almost every one of the town’s inhabitants. And if it wasn’t quite every last one of them, it practically was, and it certainly included people who weren’t very close to the deceased or the deceased’s family. I remember seeing it and I remember there being so many people they wouldn’t fit in the church. But before the funeral procession made its way through the town or big village, all the children who lived along the procession route were shut up in their homes, with the windows covered over. It was said that if the funeral air, ‘the air of the dead’, came into contact with children, it killed them and took them away with whoever was being buried. Of all the terrifying things we were told about in our youth, being touched by the air of the dead was the thing that frightened us most. Children could only open the door again when their mother or another adult of the house told them it was safe to do so.

So that day someone had died, although we didn’t know who, and that friend of grandfather’s, who’d recently arrived by boat, came to tell him about it, and grandfather left his lookout and went off with him. The funeral procession had already set off but they followed along, slowly, each man walking with his hands clasped behind his back, walking along as if they knew everyone would wait for them, as if whatever had to be done at the cemetery couldn’t be done without them. As if everyone were waiting for them to arrive and deliver the final prayers in Latin, though it’s highly likely grandfather and his friend were atheists and refused to have anything to do with religion. Didn’t I say my grandfather might have been an incomer? That would explain why he wasn’t the same religion as us. I knew, from what people had told me, that incomers often didn’t go to church and that they ate people. They ate other human beings.

When we knew grandfather was far away, we older boys, and a few of the girls, got rid of the little ones and went up to grandfather’s room. We looked at each other and put fingers on lips calling for silence, even though the house was already silent, and then we carefully opened the door, just a bit, and three of us went in, two boys and one girl. We went in and opened our eyes wide. Shit! Grandfather’s secrets! The things we saw in that room only confirmed what a strange, disconcerting man he was. After seeing what was in there, we went out again, our hearts pounding, and called for silence. Our other brothers and sisters wanted to see what we’d seen, so we let them go in but, because we were nervous, for we knew we were doing something forbidden, we told them to hurry up and they rushed out wide-eyed. Then we put fingers on lips again and I knew, we all knew, what was meant by that, and we closed the door. Can anyone guess what we saw in that mysterious man’s sleeping room?

We knew grandfather would soon be home from the cemetery and so we hurried to put everything back the way we’d found it. What did we see in that room? Before I say, we ought to think for a moment about what a great friend that man who came to see him must have been. I say this because he made something happen that none of us had ever seen happen before, namely that grandfather came down from upstairs. Or did grandfather go out sometimes when we were asleep? Because, to us, grandfather leaving the house really was a big deal. And in our island’s culture, it’s believed that when something extraordinary is about to happen, there’s always a warning sign. In this case, the warning was grandfather going out with his friend to join the funeral procession, although I don’t know for sure whether they actually entered the cemetery. What happened after that was something truly extraordinary, one of the most extraordinary things that ever happened on our Atlantic Ocean island. But it wasn’t a good thing, it was very tragic, so not extraordinary in a good way. Something momentous. It might be said that we children unleashed an evil by going into grandfather’s room. I wouldn’t say that, but it is true that the momentous thing began that day, after that funeral. I don’t know if I’ll be able to remember all the details but I’ll try to, and I’ll tell you as much as I remember. But I’ll do it slowly, like telling a ghost story under a full moon, for it would be wrong to rush the telling of something so momentous.

Afterwards, when things eventually got back to normal, and in light of the visit of that friend of his, we were told that grandfather had once worked on a boat, that he’d been to many countries, even that he’d been the captain of the ship he’d visited those countries on. And that other man, the one I’ve said was supposed to be a newcomer but who we thought we’d known all our lives, was one of his travel companions, or worked with grandfather on the boat at any rate. Have I not said several times that grandfather might have been an incomer? The thing was, grandfather was so strange, that’s why people thought he was an incomer and were always talking about him, trying to work him out. And as he was our grandfather, we asked our grandmother about him, though not all at once: one at a time and on different days, according to the particular doubts each of us had. But she never told us anything that satisfied us. So we decided that she either didn’t like him or didn’t know anything about him either. Besides, if she never talked to him, it made sense that she didn’t know anything about him. She wasn’t annoyed by our questioning, for she didn’t scold us; she just didn’t answer, and she made gestures to suggest there was nothing to say. Then we tried asking her when she was eating, knowing the best time to catch someone in a good mood is to catch them eating, but she just chewed, sucked on a bone and waved her hand in the air to suggest that maybe there was something to say, but who were we to bother her about it. We were children and we knew there were some things adults couldn’t tell children, so we assumed the reason for his strange behaviour, the crazy haircut and the way he didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone, was something serious, something children couldn’t be told. Grandfather didn’t speak to us, but this didn’t bother us the way the lack of fish did, and the fact that we suffered that lack because he didn’t know any fishermen. And this on an island surrounded by waters overflowing with fish, for the sea around us had so many fish that sometimes they fell out of it onto the beaches, like mangoes falling from a tree. You’d be walking along the beach and suddenly hear a great splashing, and you looked up and saw a big fish jump in the air, chasing a number of smaller fish that jumped in the air to evade their pursuer. And all that movement and jumping told of a great quantity of fish just a few feet from where you were standing. The splashing would continue, the jumping would go on, and then the smaller fish jumped onto the sand to avoid capture. There was no need for a net or bait or a hook: the fish just landed at your feet. The most common type of fish on our shores were sardines, and they sometimes spilled onto the sand by the handful. But it wasn’t unusual to come across fish of bigger sizes that way too, like tuna, or fish from the tuna family; not fish that liked rocks and deep waters but ones that moved about in schools searching for whatever it is they search for.

Fish spilling onto the shore was nothing, nothing I tell you, compared to something similar that happened, though on a much larger scale and for reasons nobody understood. It happened less frequently, though it was regular in that it tended to happen around the same time most years, years long ago lost in time. So it was impossible to predict, but it was regular. That’s all I can say. If I’d seen it happen as an adult, I’d have tried to find out more about it, that wonder of our island’s oceans. What happened was that at a certain time, and without anyone understanding what caused it, there flowed onto all the island’s shores, onto every beach on the island, an unquantifiable number of squid. You could see them coming from way out at sea, one by one or in groups, rushing towards the shore and then onto the beach, where they stayed. Watching this curious phenomenon, it looked as if the squid had received a strange order they were determined to obey. After washing up on the beach they showed no sign of wanting to get back in the water, back to where they came from, which must have been very far away, deep out at sea, for squid weren’t common or easy to catch. Indeed it was very rare for a fisherman to catch such a specimen and it was generally thought that squid lived in a different part of the ocean, or in its extreme depths. Well that’s what we thought until this strange phenomenon occurred, this mass squid exodus, as we called it. Although it was more like a mass suicide or a mass expulsion than a mass exodus, for it surely wasn’t something those molluscs would have done voluntarily. What was it? What drew them on such a journey away from wherever they lived — and on a one-way trip at that? Was it because they were chased by predators, as happened on a smaller scale with the sardines? It was something nobody understood, for the quantities involved were truly amazing: hundreds and thousands of squid would wash up on the beaches, stranded in the sand or on rocks, and perish, never to return to the sea. What an incredible thing! What an amazing phenomenon! I’ve said it once but I’ll say it again: what was it?