Juan Marsé - The Calligraphy of Dreams

“No!”

Denying his real name has always been something more than a game or a joke. If she weren’t such a strange creature and almost two years older than him, he would have been happy to explain. My name is Domingo, doll, but as a child they took away the doh, the first note on the musical scale, and what was left was Mingo, which I hate. It’s a mutilated name, like my finger. They took away the musical note, but I changed just one more letter, and since then, if you want me you’ll have to come and look for me on the prairies of Arizona, far away from this shitty neighbourhood.

“It sounds almost the same, but it’s not,” he says, his gaze alternating between the shameless thigh and the lines beneath the girl’s insolent eyes, disparate elements reconciled by desire. Out of politeness, he focuses on her eyes, but not for long.

“It’s a shame,” insists Violeta.

“Why is that?”

“Because a girl I know likes you a lot.”

“Ah yes? Who might that be?”

Violeta says nothing, but meets his gaze until he is forced to lower his eyes. They fix instead on her knee and everything near it, openly and despite himself. He is sure he has more than enough energy to achieve any goal he may set himself in life, even that of becoming a celebrated pianist with only nine fingers, but at this very moment he finds himself unable to do something as simple as looking away from her raised thigh and the fold of her housecoat over her crotch.

“I’m no layabout,” he insists. “They’re trying to find me work. It could be in an important piano store …” He points to the photo of Errol Flynn. “Look, he’s got his arm like mine, and the scarf is very similar … ‘Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred!’ Do you remember? Have you seen the movie?”

Violeta has turned her right ear towards him so she can hear more clearly, and Ringo suddenly recalls that the year before, dancing with her in the street on the same night she was crowned Princess of the Fiesta, every time he thought of something to say, that small, perfumed ear would immediately be brought close to his lips. At first he thought she was pretending to be hard of hearing so that she could come closer, but when he realised she really did have difficulty, he was the one who took advantage: every so often he spoke in a low whisper so that her ear would be near him, and sometimes he even brushed the lobe with his lips. Soon afterwards, in a disconcertingly spontaneous and generous gesture, she pressed her stomach and thighs against him. And it was dancing to “Perfidy” in the darkest, highest part of the street, under a ceiling of coloured bunting rustling like leaves in the breeze, that he responded to her furtive pressure with that night’s first erection. She must remember this, even if now she pretends to be interested in something different:

“How is your wound? Does it hurt?”

“Yes, it does sometimes … Does it really interest you?”

He clenches his fist and rolls his eyes, trying to summon up a stab of pain in his phantom finger. Her mouth half-open as if she finds it hard to breathe, Violeta watches him, smiling coldly.

“Can I see it?”

“What for?” Ringo’s untamed eyes grow suspicious beneath the tilted brim of his hat. His left hand hovers over the butt of the revolver at his waist. “Why do you want to look at it, Frenchie?”

“Because I understand a bit about these things, stupid. I’m doing a course in nursing at the Santa Madrona School on Calle Escorial.” She keeps staring at him. “And what did you call me?”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s just a name I like. Have you learnt how to do injections? And can you heal with your hands, like your mother?”

“No way. I want to be a real nurse. I’ve been doing a course with the nuns at the Remedio clinic for a month now. Hadn’t you heard? So, are you going to let me have a look then?”

Ringo is still sitting on the bed, with his bandaged hand in his lap. He smiles, unwraps the bandage and shows her the missing finger.

“Look. Do you like it?”

Violeta bends down, examines it closely, then shrugs.

“So-so. It’s quite an ugly wound.”

“That’s because it hasn’t healed yet. Come closer and take a good look.”

She obeys, to get a better view of the folded centre of the stump, the small, livid scar like a little star surrounded by tiny lumps. As she does so, she carelessly rests her hand on Ringo’s knee. He stares down at the nails painted the colour of tainted silver on a warm, calm hand that is suddenly adult.

“It still hurts, you know?” he says. “And I get strange sensations. Sometimes I start picking my nose with the finger that no longer exists, or scratching my ear …”

“Ha, what a fibber!”

“Bah, you don’t deserve to know.” While he is reluctantly doing up the bandage again, hoping in vain that Violeta will offer to do it for him, an imaginary muscular spasm in his arm twists his mouth in a fake grimace of pain. “It’s nothing. Problems with my shoulder, I must have put it out … Bad luck follows me everywhere. And to top it all, the other day my mother and yours met by chance outside the clinic, and they have nothing better to do than to talk about than my back pains. And what do they decide? That I need a back rub! That’s why I came here, just for that, don’t imagine there’s anything else behind it …”

“Huh.”

“Yes, some evil spell has brought me here.”

“What nonsense you talk, you’re such a show-off.”

“I didn’t even expect to find you here. I know they don’t close until eight in the stationer’s where you work.”

“I don’t work there some afternoons. I already told you, I’m doing a few courses. O.K., I’ll tell my mother you’re here.”

She goes out, leaving the door ajar, and before long he hears her mother’s gravelly voice from the glassed-in verandah, muffled as if it came from the depths of a cave:

“The boy can wait,” and then, almost without transition, she shouts furiously: “And will you take that towel off, Violeta, do me a damn favour and throw it in the bin! Can’t you see it’s completely useless? How often do I have to tell you? I don’t ever want to see it in this house again! I’ve had it up to here with your insolence! Take it off at once or I’ll give you a good slap …! And bring another cushion here for Señora Elvira!”

And immediately afterwards, in an unctuous tone:

“I’m so sorry, Señora Elvira. But I’ve got a thing about that towel. I dislike it so much that if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t even want to touch it, I’d have torn it to shreds myself.”

“It’s a question of age, Vicky. I’ve taken a dislike to cannelloni, when I always used to love them.”

“It belonged to her father, he always used that towel,” says Señora Mir. Then her voice takes on a scolding tone again: “Violeta, how long is it since you’ve been to Badalona to see your grandmother? And what about your father? Have you been to see your father?”

“I haven’t had time, Mama. And I have a headache.”

“Nonsense! And that melon must be ready to throw away …”

“I’ll go tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow you’ll say the same thing.”

“But he doesn’t even recognise me, Mama! He spends the whole day doing crochet, and he doesn’t want melons or chocolate, all he asks for are balls of wool …”

“That doesn’t matter, I want you to go and see him once a week! What do you think, Señora Elvira? Is it asking too much of a daughter that she goes and visits her sick father once a week at least? He doesn’t recognise me either, the poor man …”

The sound of a door slamming silences the grating voice. Ringo leans back in the chair and looks round the small room. On the far wall there are three shelves of unpainted pine; holding more jars and tins, a few dark-coloured stones with smooth, polished surfaces, and bunches of dried herbs and stalks arranged by size and tied with blue and red ribbons that have been very carefully knotted. This effort goes beyond the strictly necessary, and seems more to do with having them look good for anyone considering them. Each of the bunches has a small piece of paper attached, labelled with green ink in a delicate hand. Tarragon, lavender, elderberry, mint, chamomile, belladonna, broom, eucalyptus, thyme, olive leaves, liquorice. On the wall is a framed photograph of Violeta at the saint’s day fiesta. She is posing very seriously with her father on the orchestra platform, only a few seconds before she burst into tears. She is about to turn sixteen, and still has pigtails and white ankle socks. She is not very attractive, and is wearing a white dress with a frilly skirt, with the Princess of the Fiesta sash across her chest, and is clutching a bunch of white roses. She is trying to smile, but can only manage a grimace. The music has been interrupted, she has just been crowned princess, and all round the platform there is an air of expectation among the couples standing with their arms round each other, waiting for the dance to continue, and among the neighbours looking on from their balconies. All of a sudden there is the sound of loud whistling, and Violeta’s face contorts with horror and sadness (although this is not in the photograph), and Ringo remembers that he and Roger, hidden somewhere among the crowd, also whistled as loud as they could, joining in the general disapproval, because the chosen princess was by no means the prettiest girl in the neighbourhood. Everybody thinks that other better-looking, more popular and friendly contestants deserved the title and crown much more than she did. They know she was chosen princess thanks to her father’s manoeuvring: not only is he the local councillor, but he is chair of the fiesta committee as well. He is a self-important braggart, always in a temper. Faced by the boos and whistles of the crowd, Violeta jumps down from the platform in tears. She buries her face in the bunch of roses, with a cloud of confetti still floating round her, and runs to seek the safety of the doorway to her home.