Juan Marsé - The Calligraphy of Dreams

“Because that Domitila is a donkey!”

“But what did she mean?”

“Nothing. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Don’t listen to her, my love.”

One day, long before this, his grandmother had told him that on his tenth birthday his mother would tell him a great secret. She said it with a smile, although her black eyelashes were moist, and he has never forgotten it, although for some inexplicable reason he has never reminded her or his mother of this promise.

The school is a large, airy building on the outskirts of the village by the main road out to Llorens and El Vendrell. It is closed for the holidays. The teacher, Señor Benito Ruiz y Montalvo, has come in to check whether the carpenter has carried out the work he asked him to do, replacing some boards on the teacher’s platform and repairing a window. Ringo’s grandmother could have gone to find him at the chemist’s any day after lunch, because he and the chemist Granota always play chess at the back of the shop, or after Mass on Sunday, but she doesn’t want anyone else to hear what she has to say to him. Although it’s a long time until the start of term, she wants to ask for the boy to be enrolled as soon as possible — only for three or four months, she tells him, I’ll be looking after him this winter, his parents are having a hard time in Barcelona …

“Who isn’t, my dear Tecla,” the teacher sympathises, testing the platform with his foot. “Who isn’t, at times like these.”

“Please can you seat him with the other children, Señor Benito? It’s not good for him to be out on his own at all hours.”

“No, you’re right, Tecla, it’s not good.” He looks at the boy with mock severity. “We know he’s a fine boy, we’ve been keeping an eye on him. Hmm, a child with a rich interior life, isn’t he?”

His grandmother responds with a grunt. “A rich interior life”, what nonsense this man talks. The boy is staring at the big blackboard, the wood stove with its black, twisted flue, the map of Spain, the ink-stained desks, Señor Benito’s blue shirt with the red spider sewn on its pocket, and on the wall the portraits of the Caudillo and José Antonio flanking a crucifix whose figure of Christ has a foot missing.

“Well, there’s just one problem,” says the teacher. “As far as I am aware, this youngster has not yet been legally adopted. Therefore …”

“It’s been impossible to do it before now,” his grandmother says in a low voice. “The war was to blame.”

“So we will have to enrol him under his real names …”

“Shhh!” his grandmother interrupts him. Señor Benito bites his tongue, but it’s too late. And his immediate excuse, voiced out loud, only makes things worse: he thought the child must have been aware by now of his real family origins. Shhh! the grandmother insists, and orders her grandson to go out and play. He clings to her black skirts and refuses to budge. Why does he have a foot missing? he asks, staring at the crucifix. Then the teacher, jabbing at him with a huge, imperious finger that is ink-stained but has a pink, clean and well-trimmed nail, points to a desk at the back of the room and orders him to go and sit there. He takes the grandmother by the arm and the two move off into a corner, although this does not make much difference. However quietly they speak, their voices echo through the empty classroom, and besides, Winnetou can understand the language of the blue man just by reading his lips. Nothing simpler.

“We’ll tell him everything when he’s ten,” his grandmother whispers. “That’s what his mother wanted. If she were here, she would have explained it to him already, but she wasn’t able to come.”

“What does ‘interior life’ mean, Grandma?” Ringo asks from his back-row desk. “Where’s his other foot?”

“Be quiet, child, don’t cause trouble.”

“So you haven’t told the poor boy anything yet,” Señor Benito grumbles. “A big mistake, Tecla, a big mistake! And, in addition, he’s not yet been legally adopted. For whatever reason, and that is something that does not concern me of course, the proper procedure was not followed at the correct time, and as a result to all effects and purposes this child still has the surnames of his biological parents …”

“What does biological mean, Grandma?”

“Will you be quiet a moment, for pity’s sake!”

“In consequence we will have to enrol him under his real surnames,” the teacher continues. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing else I can do. And frankly, Tecla, I’m amazed that Pep and Berta haven’t yet told the boy the truth.”

“What are biological parents?”

“Never you mind! Señor Benito is telling me about the books you’re going to need …”

“That’s right,” says the teacher, adopting a professorial tone. “We’re talking about biogenesis, my boy, a difficult subject you’re too young to study as yet, if you follow me.”

Señor Benito has a thin mouth, the delicate jaws of a ruminant, and the vacant gaze of Zampabollos the Glutton. In that second, he falls backwards stiff as a board with his eyes rolled up, while Ringo blows the smoke from the barrel of his revolver and twirls it back into its holster. Crouching in the back row, he clutches the edges of the desk with both hands as if it was about to take off, and studies the school teacher’s wry grimace with the wise eyes of Old Shatterhand. Any moment now and I’ll be off again out on to the plains with the faithful Winnetou and his four braves …

“Are you telling me that to come to your school my grandson has to change surnames?” says his grandmother, her voice deepening. “That when they do the register he’s going to have to hear different family names? Family names he’s never heard before, or his friends …?”

“What I’m telling you, Tecla, is that I, to my great regret, am obliged to enrol him with his real family surnames. That’s the only way I can accept him into the school, it is a sine qua non .”

“But couldn’t you turn a blind eye for three months, Señor Benito? Who’s going to take you to task for it, with all those important Falangist friends of yours?”

“Oh, Tecla, these days we need all the friends we can get! I’d like to help you, but do you realise what you’re asking? I can’t shut my eyes to something so irregular that I bear so much responsibility for. What happens if there’s an inspection? Because it’s a matter of how shall I put it, of a blood anomaly …”

“What on earth are you saying? It’s not as if it’s an illness, or something against the regime!”

“Of course not, woman. I mean that the relationship is not a blood one, and therefore it is anomalous, and that has to be pointed out … Those in charge now keep a very tight control, as you know. Besides, who is to blame for this situation?” He glances out of the corner of his eye at the boy, who is crouching in his desk like a wild beast about to pounce, and lowers his voice still further. “After all this time, how is it that his stepfather still hasn’t officially requested the adoption?”

“What does ‘stepfather’ mean, Grandma?” Ringo demands to know, stamping his feet on the floor.

“His feet are cold,” she says, to excuse his behaviour. “The boy is always going round with cold feet. I have to light a fire for him in mid-afternoon.” She turns and gives him a stern look. “Behave now, or I’ll be seriously angry! Don’t cause trouble or pretend you’re a Red Indian.”

She knows when Winnetou is with her grandson. How does she know? Every time she hears the boy muttering as he walks alongside her, in a world of his own and with his eyes half-closed, coming or going from the vines along the white track, or while he is helping her silently to bring in firewood, collect grass for the rabbits, or has his head down shelling almonds in the kitchen; whenever to escape routine or boredom a strange babble she can’t understand emerges from his lips, she knows he is mouthing the words of Red Indians he has come across in the comics his mother brings him from Barcelona.