Juan Marsé - The Calligraphy of Dreams

Struggling upright on the rails, Victoria Mir seems to hear only one voice among the many bombarding her with queries and reproaches. A good-looking, smartly dressed fellow with a pleasant voice and graceful, feline gestures bends down and offers her his arm: take heart, señora, are you feeling alright? Leaning on him to rise to her feet, she smiles gratefully, then recalls some massages (or perhaps more than massages) she has given him, and suddenly blurts out: “And how are those handsome legs with that blond fuzz of theirs, Señor Reich? Is your circulation any better?” and refuses help from anyone else. Unsteady but erect, she adjusts the uniform across her chest with numb fingers that smell of essence of turpentine, and immediately those same fingers flick at the curls on her forehead with a characteristically coquettish gesture. Despite being moist and with a pained look to them, her big, wide-set eyes, slightly crossed and with thin eyelashes, are completely unfocused. She stares round about her as if she does not recognise anyone. She glances rapidly at the boy.

“You, my lad,” she whispers, “you can read music, so you understand me.”

The boy is a slightly reserved-looking adolescent with a sulky expression. He is wearing tyre-soled sandals, has a pencil behind one ear, and a mop of curly hair that hangs down over his brow. Taken by surprise by Señora Mir, he takes a step back, and the book slides from under his arm. He manages to catch it before it hits the ground. Witches simply know that kind of thing, he tells himself. As happens so often in his dreams, he perceives a mixture of truth and absurdity in everything taking place in front of his eyes. Watching the nurse casting about her with a trembling hand, trying to regain her balance in the centre of the crowd, she suddenly seems like an impostor, someone who has taken over another person’s mental disarray, despair, and dreams. A few minutes earlier he had thought that her passionate surrender to the fatal tram tracks was utterly sincere, but now he no longer knows what to think. Apparently the good woman is as mad as a hatter and was determined to kill herself, and yet he is learning not to trust appearances. As he considers the truncated rails and the pantomime she has just put on for the benefit of the onlookers now climbing rather apprehensively back on to the pavement, he senses that another reality is slipping through his fingers. Would he someday be able to seize that other reality, would it be offered to him complete, without distortions, naked, free from mirages or lures?

As though this were some kind of promise he is making himself, he squeezes the battered volume tight under his arm to feel the life beating within it, secretly summoning close to his heart the dry, frozen skeleton of the leopard lying on the snow.

Oblivious to the comments and advice from her neighbours — “You shouldn’t go anywhere on your own in that state, run straight home and stop this nonsense, Victoria, just imagine if the tram cut off your legs, go to Las Ánimas and confess, that’ll make you feel better, somebody should tell your daughter, and while she’s on her way have a nice cup of lime blossom tea” — ignoring all their suggestions, Señora Mir looks askance at the grey cobbles and bits of rail like someone staring at an indecipherable sign. The boy too is gazing surreptitiously at the tracks. Chopped off, turning towards nowhere, parallel to the end and rotting half-buried in the road, passively enduring the rays of a punishing sun high in the blue sky, what attraction do these useless, forgotten scraps of iron exert? What is the meaning of the miscalculation or deceit they have inspired? Did the idea of death really touch her during those brief minutes she was stretched out on that delusion?

A generous hand brushes her elbow, and for an instant Señora Mir thinks she is being supported. She does not seem to hear any of the comments or to feel lost. She stares insistently at the rails and their truncated destiny, their strange call to her from the riverbed, and finally she looks away, refuses the help of a neighbour wanting to accompany her, and slowly sets off on her own, head down, back to her apartment. Instead, though, she walks past it, crosses the road, and continues on the opposite pavement as far as the Rosales bar. The stray mongrel that had sniffed her slippers follows at a distance. Eventually it comes to a halt and sits on its hind quarters looking in her direction and scratching its ear, while all of a sudden it gets an erection. From the bar doorway, treading without realising it in the small puddle from the block of ice, the frustrated suicide turns to exchange glances with the dog, her head tilted in exactly the same way, then disappears inside.

You don’t have to be a clairvoyant to know that Señora Mir will order a small glass of brandy, with a siphon of soda she will hardly touch.

“The devil take this country!”

In his underwear, the boy’s father flicks the torch on and off three times to show it doesn’t work, and for the third time curses his bad luck. It is as though the lack of contact of a poorly fitting battery in an old torch represents to him a degrading metaphor for the wretched country he so profoundly loathes. Alternatively, it might also seem as though he were sending a coded message to somebody hidden in the shadows, were it not for the fact that he is all alone in the bedroom, with the shutters closed. This possibility arises because, even sitting on the edge of the bed in his underpants and with socks and suspenders on his hairy legs like this, dishevelled and half-asleep, there is something of the man of action about him, refusal to accept everyday routine or grow accustomed to defeat. His alert features seem to sniff out adversity and, ready to confront it once again, he suddenly rises to his feet, puffs out his cheeks, puts the torch away in the small suitcase beside him, and starts getting dressed.

That case must already contain the revolver, the poison and the bait, thinks his son, peering through the half-open door. The boy hesitates a moment, then enters the bedroom, fists stuffed in his trouser pockets, trying to look tough.

“I want to go with you, Father. I’ll help you kill them.”

“No chance.”

He allows a few seconds to elapse, then pleads: “Please, I’d really like to.”

“No. You wouldn’t like it. You’re not old enough for that kind of work.”

“I could keep an eye out at the exit. There’s always some sneaky rat that tries to escape. I’m not frightened of them anymore, you know?”

“The answer’s still no, my boy. Besides, they’re already dead. We just have to pick them up.”

“Are you sure they’re all dead? There’s always one or two that get away.”

“Am I speaking Chinese? I said no.”

It’s a Saturday afternoon, and the boy doesn’t have school. He has an hour of music theory and piano, but although reading music and practising his scales is what he most enjoys in the world, for once he would be willing to skip his lesson.

“Why don’t you want me to go?” he whines.

“You’d faint as soon as you got inside.”

“Nonsense! I could hold the torch while you finish them off …”

His father is sitting on the bed again, his shirt half on. He scratches the palm of his hand with long, grubby nails. As he is doing this, he stares into space with such a lost, empty look that all at once he looks like a completely different person.

“Is something wrong, father?”

He reacts immediately, and stands up.

“What is wrong is that I’ve had it up to here with just about everything. I said no, and that means no.”

Glancing down at his watch, he mutters under his breath: “I overslept, godammit.”