Juan Marsé - The Calligraphy of Dreams

A door opening somewhere allows Ringo to hear the gruff voice once more:

“… and is he sleeping okay now, at least? Can’t you hear me? I’m asking you if your father is sleeping well at least … Can you hear me, Violeta?”

“He says that every day he wakes up tired with dirty fingernails.”

“Dirty fingernails?”

“He says he cleans them every night before he goes to bed, but that when he wakes up they’re dirty, and he can’t bear it …That’s what he says.”

“There you are then: go and clean his fingernails! Now go into the kitchen and put the eucalyptus on to boil. And get rid of that rag of a towel if you don’t want me to do something worse than your father did!”

“Ugh! And whose fault would it be if you did that, Mama, whose fault?”

“Get out of here, I said! Shameless hussy! And clean the shelves and tell me what we need!”

Shortly afterwards, her voice takes on a wheedling tone, with a self-pitying edge to it. Even so, Ringo can always sense an unhealthy vibration, a perverse strand to her deep, growling, almost masculine voice that seems so unsuited to a fat, empty-headed and flighty woman like Señora Mir.

“… it was a pistol he brought from over there, Señora Elvira, from those distant, godforsaken lands. The doctor said he’d removed the bullet from his head cleanly … Stuff and nonsense! I’ve always thought the damned bullet is still stuck in his noddle, and is spinning round and round so much it won’t let him sleep. Prussia is to blame! they say he shouts at night. The poor fellow no longer knows what he’s saying, because he was never in Prussia, he was in Russia. No, I could swear they never took that bullet out …”

“Don’t be so silly, woman. If they hadn’t taken it out, he’d be dead by now.”

“I’ve been wrong so often in my life, Señora Elvira! God forgive me, but sometimes I think it would have been better if Ramón had died right there, outside the church … The man in the sanatorium isn’t my husband. And he wasn’t for the last few days he lived in this house.”

As if he has heard her and wants to say something, Señor Mir suddenly emerges from the shadows of the corridor, finger raised as if demanding attention because he has something important to say. He advances trembling towards the two women in his underpants, limping the way Señor Alonso does, with a bloody bandage round his head, the big service pistol in his hand and his field glasses hanging across his chest … This is how Ringo imagines him, killing time as he sits on the bed, listening closely. He stares at a big jar full of eucalyptus leaves, and knows they are from a tree in Parque Güell; he can still see Señora Mir collecting them from the lower branches, her chubby bare arms raised, surrounded by leaves like curved daggers; then he hears voices from the verandah once more:

“… the thing is, my veins are a disaster, Vicky. I don’t know what to do, I daren’t even look at my legs. Nothing is any use: elastic stockings, nylons, crutches or no crutches …”

“What you have, Señora Elvira, are varicose and thread veins; nothing serious. I’ll give you a cream. If you’d seen Señor Alonso’s leg the first time he came, and especially his foot …”

“How strange that someone as lame as him doesn’t use a stick, don’t you think?”

“He doesn’t need one. It’s only a slight limp, and besides, it favours him. It looks very distinguished, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Seeing as he’s so tall and handsome, with such good taste in clothes and that proud head of white hair of his …”

“Goodness, you can be so naive, Vicky! And you talk such rubbish! All that sort of thing has brought you nothing but disappointment. How have you let so many men ruin your life?”

“Ay, Señora Elvira, what am I to do? Look, I’ve always been a passionate woman. No-one can live without a bit of affection, can they?”

“Ten more minutes and it’s your turn,” announces Violeta as she comes in, eyes lowered, her hair loose and the towel in her hands. She folds it carefully. She bends at the foot of the bed and, crouching there for a few moments in a slow, self-absorbed gesture, slides her hand with its shiny nails over the blue, frayed surface of the neatly folded towel and then tucks it under the mattress and sits on it. Taking a brush out of her housecoat pocket, she smiles an enigmatic smile and starts furiously brushing her tangled, damp hair.

“Didn’t she just tell you to throw that towel in the bin? Why don’t you obey your mother?” Ringo asks jokingly, although he adds something unexpected: “We all have something to hide, don’t we?”

“I don’t hide anything that isn’t mine.”

“Want to know something? One night I was coming home, and it was pouring with rain, with thunder and lightning, and I saw a dead bird being swept away down a drain …”

“So what?”

“So nothing. My stuff. Stuff and nonsense.”

“You talk just for the sake of it, don’t you? You’re not all there sometimes, are you, kid?”

“And what about you? Do you keep any other secrets under the mattress? Lipstick? A photo of Coletes …?”

Once again he bites his tongue, although she doesn’t appear to have heard him. He remembers that the year before Violeta was meant to be crazy about a boy from Calle Legalidad, who for some reason he never discovered was known as El Coletes. After smooching with her for almost two months, he had dropped her like a stone. According to El Quique, who had seen the two of them at it in a dark alleyway, the boy had done everything with her apart from sticking it in. Now Violeta doesn’t even blink when she hears his name, and so Ringo turns his attention to the shelves with the herbs and jars on them, and pretends he is suddenly interested:

“Wow, take a look at that lot! What are those stones for?”

“They’re hot stones. Mama will put some on your back, and you’ve no idea what it’s like. They burn you know, smart guy.”

“Yeah, I believe you. There are heaps of stones like them on Montaña Pelada … And I think there’s a lot of nonsense about all this. Señora Paquita thinks your mother doesn’t use oil to prepare the herbs anymore even if she says she does, because olive oil is very expensive, and so she makes her potions with heaven knows what.”

“Yes, of course. With billy-goat tails probably. Smart, aren’t you? Such a smart guy.”

She throws the brush onto the bed and stands up, takes a small notebook and a pencil stub out of her pocket, examines the glass jars on the stands, and writes something down. The pencil has got coloured ink in it, and whenever she sucks it before making a new note, it leaves her lips purple. Ringo watches her silently. She soon finishes and sits on the bed again, picks up the brush and goes on brushing her hair furiously, her purple lips half-open. She stands up when she hears her mother calling from the corridor as she accompanies Señora Elvira and her son to the front door. Violeta! That daughter of mine is never there when I need her. Her patient recommendations to the old woman mingle with the tapping of the crutches and her son’s observations on how useless her footwear is. There is the sound of the door closing, then of another opening and closing.

“The torture is awaiting you in the dispensary, kid,” says Violeta. “You can go in now.”

“Where?”

“To the verandah. Sit there and wait.”

“And your mother?”

“She’ll be there straightaway.” She opens the door and stands aside to let him through, her eyes lowered, her hip thrust forward. “You can go now.”

“Are you coming with me?”

Violeta shakes her head and returns slowly to the bed, her back straight above her enticing buttocks, fluffing her reddish locks with her hand. She explains in a bored voice that she has to work in the kitchen, where she has to mix the herbs, pound them in the mortar, then boil them over a low flame. She also prepares peppers for dyes, peels potatoes and sweet potatoes, grinds grains, and cleans lentils.