Juan Marsé - The Calligraphy of Dreams

“Or do you prefer something else, Ringo?” he asks in a friendly voice. “Some anchovies, perhaps?”

On display are baby squid, Russian salad, prawns, tripe, snails, mussels in tomato sauce. For a moment Ringo thinks he can see fried little birds on one of the plates with their legs sticking up, but they turn out to be sweet peppers with toothpicks in them.

“I don’t know, it’s all the same to me.”

“Those spicy potatoes look good.”

“Let’s have some then.”

He has just realised how hungry he is. Señor Alonso orders a plate of prawns as well. Behind the counter, above the shelves and rows of bottles, an ancient mirror hangs from the wall, tilting downwards. It reflects the image of the young woman dozing as she breastfeeds her baby, deaf to the racket her family is making as they guzzle beer and sangria and rowdily clap their hands and sing. She is very young: no more than a girl, with her flowery blouse and black curly hair, a sprig of jasmine woven through it.

The smiling barman pours more beer outside the glass than in it, and excuses himself halfheartedly. He says he’s only been doing this for a few days, because his uncle, who owns the place, is ill. His face is pleasant, but pockmarked; he is wearing a black shirt with a white waistcoat, and is constantly smiling and showing his rotten teeth. Señor Alonso changes his mind.

“Listen, make mine a brandy with aniseed instead.” He turns and slaps Ringo on the back. “Well, well, how are things? What’s new in your neighbourhood?”

“Everything’s the same … more or less.”

“What about the tavern? How is Señora Paquita getting on?”

“Fine.”

“And that fat lump of a brother of hers, Agustín?”

“Señor Agustín has bought a new radio for the bar.”

“Really? Fantastic.” He is still smiling thoughtfully. “And what about Violeta, eh? You like that girl, don’t you?”

“Me? Not a bit of it!”

“I can tell from the way you used to look at her. You had your eye on her, don’t tell me you didn’t.”

Ringo shrugs. He’s already pestering me, he thinks. He keeps his distance, suspicious. Señor Alonso says nothing for a while, then goes on:

“And how is her mother? How is the healer doing?”

“Oh, her. I don’t know … Fine.”

“Didn’t she and her daughter go to live in Badalona?” Ringo shakes his head. “No? She was always talking of leaving, she never felt happy in your neighbourhood. Her mother-in-law, Señora Aurora, has a flower stall in a Badalona market, and lives on her own …”

“Does she? I didn’t know that.”

“So they didn’t leave, and everything’s still the same.”

“No, señor. Something did happen.” Ringo adds in a solemn tone: “Señora Mir tried to kill herself.”

“For heaven’s sake, kid, what are you saying!”

“She threw herself under a tram. Yes, señor, she really did. Didn’t you hear about it?” he enquires, peeling a prawn. “Everyone saw it, in the street …”

“When did it happen? Where?”

‘They say the wheel braked a few inches from her head. Seriously. Less than that, señor.” Then, in a relieved voice: “Well, in the end it was nothing more than a dreadful scare. Don’t ask me, I don’t know anything more. You hear so many things; some people have nothing better to do. And it seems as if Señora Mir likes to have people talking about her … the whole day long there are comments and gossip about what she is or isn’t doing. She talks of nothing else herself, but I really don’t get to hear anything. And besides, I don’t care. I don’t believe a word of it.”

Señor Alonso is staring down at the floor, a troubled look on his face.

“Did she really do that?”

“She did; well, more or less.” He feels compelled to glance away, then clears his throat and changes the subject. “We haven’t seen you for ages in the neighbourhood, Señor Alonso.”

The older man reacts, taking a deep breath and running his hands slowly across the top of the counter.

“Oh, I don’t stay up late now like I used to!” he says with a faint smile. “That’s a thing of the past. At my age you don’t always feel like it. As you can see, I’ve gone quite rusty.”

What he says doesn’t make sense, thinks Ringo, because neither in the Rosales bar nor at Señora Mir’s when they were together was he known for staying up late. Ringo studies the long, bony hands with their prominent blue veins between the knuckles as they rest calmly on the bleach-scoured wooden counter, and beyond them the man as he lowers his head again, lost in gloomy thoughts. But this only lasts a moment. He straightens up, and says brightly, if in a slightly strained voice:

“Do you know what’s what, lad? What has to happen, happens, and that’s all there is to it. And it so happens that recently I’ve decided I don’t want any more bad news, or nastiness, or whatever. Yes, damn and blast it, that’s enough sadness, I told myself, quite enough of that, kid. I like to call myself kid, you know, even though I’m not of an age for it. Perhaps it’s because I spend whole days among a crowd of kids,” he concludes, his voice tailing off, then falls silent for a while. All at once he slaps himself on the forehead and exclaims: “Caramba, I was forgetting! Do you mind waiting here a few minutes? I’ve got to sort something out, but I’ll be right back … Order another beer, or anything you like, it’s on me. Listen, my friend,” he says, searching for the barman, “serve the boy whatever he wants.” He limps off towards the door: “I won’t be five minutes!”

Half an hour and three beers later, Ringo wonders how he can have been so naïve, and his mind is filled with all kinds of suspicions. But the mirror’s spell is more powerful than all the rest, and keeps him tied to the bar counter facing five small empty plates: he’s wolfed down one of prawns, another of cockles, two spicy potatoes and a Russian salad. He does a mental calculation and realizes that altogether tonight he has drunk five beers — three here and two with El Quique, plus two small glasses of wine he sneaked in Los Cabales, not counting the beer in the doorway at the Rosales bar before setting out on this adventure. He feels more than tipsy, secretly transgressive, almost euphoric; he thinks he must already have been drunk when Señor Alonso accosted him outside, pretending it was by accident. What was behind it? Possibly nothing. The fact is, if he doesn’t come back, Ringo has no idea how he’s going to be able to pay for what he’s had. But why would that lame, rusty fellow leave him in the lurch; where would that get him? To restore a sense of normality, he asks the barman for another beer and a plate of Russian salad.

“Oh, and would you have a bit of bread too?”

The barman’s easy way of dealing with the gypsy clan, serving them and joining in the fun from time to time, occasionally paying close attention to the breastfeeding mother, suggests he must in some way be related to them. The mirror, weaver of shadows and blotches of quicksilver, encloses an arcane, dark atmosphere that seems to have nothing to do with the tavern or to reflect what is in it, apart from the sleeping girl with the baby clamped to her breast. It reminds him of a strange, disturbing film in which a bedroom mirror (a larger, cleaner mirror than this one) suddenly no longer reflected the room where it was hanging, but a very different one, with a different atmosphere and decor, another marriage bed and furniture from another era, a silent bedroom lost in time, where a crime had apparently been committed.

The more he stares at it, the more incredibly beautiful and sensual the girl appears, the more confused everything around her; the dark barrel the chair back is resting against is not clear in the mirror, nor is the old bullfight poster pinned to the wall, only her and the child at her breast, and the maternal tenderness of her hands rocking him in his sleep. But the mirror offers only a partial view of them, and so Ringo moves along the bar slightly to frame the image properly, to fix it and record in his memory something he knows he will never forget: the chance transfiguration of the beauty of the girl’s face, her head to one side with the lips half-open and her purple, drooping eyelids closed, her child-like arms enfolding the baby, the persistent gentle grip of her hands rocking him, the precariously balanced chair. All around her, the rest of her family go on talking incessantly, and their nasal voices are like the buzz of a swarm of bees. The baby must have finished suckling by now and be asleep as well, he thinks, he doesn’t seem to be so tightly fixed to the nipple, and now he can see a bit of the tip of the breast behind the bald head lolling to one side. All this is in the mirror and seems stable and real, far from the deceitful quicksilver blotches and the phantom world of the tavern and its unexpected gypsy atmosphere. It all seems far removed from the contingent, blurred remainder of the scene, and he can sense in his blood the fascination of the future, something impossible to define but more tangible, intense and lived than real life, an internal exaltation that gains sustenance from good omens and unknown opportunities. He has often imagined how exciting life could be thanks to his lucky star, but he has never felt it to be so naturally possible as it is tonight, so certain and clear. Here he can glimpse all the signs that one day are destined to mark his desires and achievements; not only does he firmly believe this, but he can see and assume it so intensely and nervously that he even starts to be wary of his surroundings, as if somebody might be lurking in the shadows, ready to snatch these prospects from him.