Juan Marsé - The Calligraphy of Dreams

Leaving the square behind, he falls over three times because he insists on walking along the edge of the pavement in a state of high euphoria. Even the rain seems to him like a blessing. Aren’t those two shiny dots the red eyes of a rat staring at him from the black opening of a sewer? Greetings, comrade rat, let’s be friends, soon we’ll be swimming together in the shadows! Shortly afterwards he stops to urinate against the wall of the empty lot of Can Compte, in the darkest part of Calle Escorial, but before his hands reach his flies he realises they have been unbuttoned all this time, possibly all night, since long before he went down into the public lavatory on the Ramblas, perhaps ever since he left home to go and sit outside the entrance to the Rosales bar … Well, and so what, enjoying the rain on his face, eyes closed and his mouth open, you’ve lived your first night of whoring in the Barrio Chino, and by chance you’ve experienced more surprises and emotions than you bargained for. He still feels nauseous and disorientated, but the future is where it should be, everything is where it should be, including the book of short stories he instinctively gropes for in the baggy jacket pocket: yet again he can hear thunder crashing over the endless savannah, the horizon lit by distant flashes of lightning, he can hear the roar of the leopard lost on the summit, sniffing at its own solitary, frozen death, the crunch of its paws in the snow … A tune is rattling around his head, but again he cannot identify it. Hooded and hunched in the rain, he tries to make out the golden stream of urine as it mixes with the rain, and beneath his muddy feet he catches again a glimpse of a subterranean world full of rats and slimy tunnels, of regurgitated, pestilent waters, and he tries to find himself in an image of himself watching over the disturbing girl sleeping forever in future time. He is thinking that perhaps this image holds the answer to everything, an explanation for the world, when he suddenly feels an empty sensation in the pit of his stomach, and from out of the shadows he has a sense of foreboding that sends his hand shooting to his inside pocket.

A split second later, he turns his head and thinks he sees the pink envelope floating in the rush of filthy water sweeping along the gutter. Ghost-like and fleeting, the letter comes to a halt for a moment by the open drain, then spins round on itself as it is about to be swallowed up. Face down, then face up, the water has almost completely erased the name of the person to whom it was addressed. The swirling torrent holds it up for a moment, long enough for him to be able to bend down and save it, but without knowing why, he does not move as the rain lashes down, and watches as it spins like a carousel, round and round, shrouded by the cloudy water, until all at once the drain finally swallows it and it disappears into the abyss.

“Farewell, Señora Mir.”

“ Halt, bullet! ” declares the solemn but kindly-looking Sacred Heart of Jesus that peers out at visitors from its plaque on the front door of the apartment. It was nailed there six years earlier by the ex-Blue Division combatant Ramón Mir in a gesture of thanks for his having returned from the Eastern Front miraculously safe and sound. That day, using the butt of his pistol, and with a mixture of patriotic fervour and wounded manhood, muttering prayers of gratitude for having been spared a Bolshevik bullet, he hammered in the nails of an inadmissible, secret and vengeful rancour, and then polished the plaque with a cloth until it shone. Nowadays the life-saving image is somewhat dented and chipped at the edges, and the finger pointing to the flaming red heart shows signs of rust. The bright colours have faded, and the divine finger’s rusty tip contaminates not only the radiant organ but also the kind eyes that seem to be saying to Ringo now: Don’t worry, my boy, nobody in this house will call you to account for what happened, because nobody will ever know, least of all the person the letter was meant for, who would most likely die of heartbreak if she ever found out.

Straightening the sling round his arm, Ringo prepares to ring the bell. He could never have imagined that one day he would call at this door and put himself in the hands of Señora Mir, the last person in the world he wants to see. Despite the fact that there is no reason she should find out about his night-time encounter with Señor Alonso, and still less about the stupid errand he had given him, because he hasn’t mentioned that even to El Quique, and even though he thinks that what happened could easily be remedied (he could go the very next day to look for the lame ex-footballer, who would be bound to understand and forgive him, and possibly might even write another letter and entrust that to him) he cannot rid himself of a vague sense of unease, an enervating melancholy. This is why, when he comments to his mother that his shoulder and back are hurting more and more, and she recommends he has a good back rub with alcohol, he is immediately on his guard.

“I don’t need any back rub! I’ll soon be completely fine!”

In his opinion, the persistent pain is down to his habit of sleeping on his right side. His mother does not agree. She says the pain is due, among other things, to the fact that he stubbornly continues to wear his arm in a sling far longer than necessary, because he enjoys going out with it like that, doubtless because he wants to show off to some girl or other. Why is he still playing games? The wound has healed, the hand is no longer swollen, and the scruffy bandage which he himself has been changing in recent days is also unnecessary. He retorts that it’s precisely now that he most needs the support of the sling, because his shoulder aches terribly, and so does his back.

“On the contrary,” his mother scolds him. “It hurts terribly because you keep your arm up from the moment you get up to when you go back to bed. That’s not a normal posture, Son. I ran into Victoria yesterday as I was leaving the clinic, I told her about it and we agreed you’d go and see her.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes! And don’t play any more games. A good back rub and you’ll no longer feel like going around showing off in my pretty scarf. Victoria is delighted. In fact, she told me she wanted to talk to you.”

“To me? What for?”

“I’ve no idea.”

She can’t want anything from me, he thinks quickly, and yet again reassures himself: there’s no way she can know we came across that lame guy in the Barrio Chino … not unless that sex-mad El Quique started bragging in the bar.

“She wouldn’t say,” his mother goes on, “but she winked at me while she was powdering her nose, and I could guess …”

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to go!”

“My goodness, she isn’t going to eat you!” She smiles as she adds: “Do you know something? I could swear she was thinking of her daughter. I bet she wants to find her a boyfriend, so you should be flattered.”

“What are you talking about? Is that why you’re forcing me to go to her place? Look, my shoulder hardly hurts at all! See how well I can move my arm!”

“I don’t want to hear any more complaints.” Her voice hardens. “Victoria has generously offered her services, and you should be grateful. A good back rub isn’t going to hurt you; quite the opposite. Besides,” she adds in a weary tone, “I’ve heard she’s losing clients. They haven’t called on her at all at the residence for ages now, they say she isn’t as good as she used to be. The poor woman is going through a bad patch, and I don’t want her to think we’ve lost faith. So you’re going to see her … Come on, Son, be reasonable for once.”