Juan Marsé - The Calligraphy of Dreams

“I don’t like dancing …”

“Nonsense!” She taps his buttock again. “Don’t start again with your fibs, eh! You danced with Violeta at the street fiesta last year, and I could swear the two of you were quite … you know what I mean.”

“The thing is, I can’t dance very well,” he manages to mutter in a faint voice.

“Mind you, I’m not saying it as a reproach. We women don’t really care if a man can dance or not. What we really appreciate is a polite, affectionate partner. But sometimes you have that so near to you, you don’t even see it … Why do I say that? Because a sweet, romantic girl should immediately be able to spot the attentive, discreet young man who has been waiting for her all along. And my Violeta is that sort of girl. Listen, in La Lealtad she has to fight off the pests who bother her all the time, you know what I mean, she gets bored always saying no, I won’t dance with him, Mama, nor with him, he clings like a leech. The thing is, they’re so vulgar when they approach her, if you know what I mean … and the end result is that she spends the whole afternoon just sitting there, poor thing. As if they had all taken a dislike to her. But I know she’d be different with you … Go on, promise me you’ll come to the dance one of these Sundays. As a special favour, to see if we can encourage her a bit. Will you promise? Pull your trousers down a bit, or I’ll get oil on them … Can’t you hear me?”

“Yes, Señora Mir,” he says, burying his mouth still deeper into the pillow.

“But a proper promise, I mean. You have to really mean it!”

“Well, okay, I … I promise.”

Why did you do that, you dummy? Soon she’ll be asking you to take your trousers and pants off altogether, she’ll run her vengeful claws all the way down to your arsehole and stick her nails in you. Unable to prevent himself hearing her, the only thing he can do is to stubbornly persist in pressing his mouth and nose up against the pillow, where the stale smells mingle with his attacks of bad conscience. Meanwhile, she is now pummelling his back with the edge of her hands, alternating them quickly and with astonishing precision in a warm, relaxing drumming up and down from the nape of his neck almost to his buttocks. And there is a sudden fresh shower of sweat cascading from her moon-shaped face: big, hot drops that her hands quickly burst and wipe away on his skin.

“And when I think how wonderful it is to be in love when you’re young!” says Señora Mir, a quiver in her voice. “I sometimes see you in the bar, always on your own, and frankly I’m really impressed by your enthusiasm for books … it’s truly wonderful. Sitting there all afternoon, without lifting your eyes, page after page, it’s really something! It’s wonderful to see such enthusiasm in someone so young, isn’t it? I bought a novel by Vargas Vila called … Aura or the Violets , I don’t know if you know it, it’s very strong stuff, very dramatic, I bought it for Violeta because of the title, but I haven’t let her read it yet, she’s too young.” Another sigh: no knowing, he thinks, if it’s provoked by the continued efforts of her hands, or by something else. “And before I forget, just out of curiosity … have you heard of anyone who by coincidence has run into him lately, over in El Carmelo or El Guinardó …? Señor Alonso, I mean. Perhaps, sweetheart, if you chanced, and I’m not saying you ought to do it, of course, or that it is absolutely necessary, but if you should happen to see him one day, and would like to come running to tell me … or if you heard of someone who had done so. A while ago I was told he lived over that way, where the anti-aircraft batteries used to be on El Carmelo, but he always denied it … Do you think it’s normal he never told me where he lives?”

More drops of sweat falling onto his back, one after the other, heavy and warm, swept away at once by her vigorous hands as they spread the ointment.

“I’m so glad you’re coming to La Lealtad! Your friends from the Rosales bar will be there too, causing trouble, but you needn’t pay them any attention … oh, and do you still go up to Montaña Pelada with them?” she asks, a melancholy note in her voice. “Have you been blackberrying in Can Xirot, or to Turó de la Rovira …? No, of course not, you’re all too old for that. Now you go on your own, to read, study, think of your own things. It’s better that way, quieter. It does you good being up there, doesn’t it? Just by Parque Güell, it’s such a wonderful view … Goodness gracious me, sweetheart, do you know what’s just occurred to me? We could go up there with Violeta for a picnic, just the three of us, would you like that? You’re growing up, child, you’re a man now, you’ve even got a bit of a moustache! Do you know something: if I was a man I’d grow a moustache. Ah, and before I forget there’s a favour I wanted to ask you … I know, you must be thinking what is this, this boring woman asking me for things all the time, but there’s no-one else I can ask … Would you be so kind as to bring me a bit of rosemary and fennel the next time you walk up Montaña Pelada? I go there sometimes, but the climb tires me out, and my collection of herbs here is running low … the tarragon has already flowered. And by the way, if when you’re up there or at Can Xirot, you should happen to see Señor Alonso out for a walk, the way he used to, could you please tell him I’ve got some important news for him …? His foot needs attention, you know.”

He agrees, burying himself still deeper wherever he can, incapable of reacting. He feels her strong hands gripping the tendons round his neck, and treating them as if she wanted to turn them inside out, twist them, rearrange them. It seems as though her fingers are armed with metal thimbles. Then she moves to the top of the trolley and bends over his back, sliding her hands time and again from shoulders to buttocks, so that her midriff gently bumps against Ringo’s head, which is projecting slightly over the end of the bed, and the generosity and warmth accumulated in the well-rounded shapes hidden beneath her coat welcome his befuddled brow.

“Tell me if I hurt you, sweetheart,” he hears her purr, as fresh drops of sweat regularly splash onto his skin on the nape of his neck, his shoulder blades, the groove of his spine. “It’s an old injury from playing football, a very nasty fracture. He’s got poor circulation and is in pain day and night, you know. He needs attention, lots of attention.” Her thick, choking voice echoes in the back of her throat in a way he finds obscene. “Oh, how he enjoyed me massaging that foot of his, the rogue! If you only knew, my boy! Poor Señora Paytubi has got big, misshapen feet, with dreadful corns, she’s always asking me to give her strong massages. The poor woman’s a pain, always moaning, but I put up with her just for that, because of the big, ugly footballer’s feet she has … because … they’re like … they remind me of …”

All at once his skin is moist, as though her hands had become hot all of a sudden, and he shudders as he realises what is going on. They’re not drops of sweat dripping onto his back, of course they’re not. She’s been whimpering for some time now, and you weren’t even aware of it, because her laments and little laughs sound so alike. His muscles and tendons contract beneath hands that have lost all their strength and life, although they keep moving with a crazy insistence, as her increasingly frequent and warm tears drop onto his skin, and he hears her first, restrained sobs. When did this melodrama start, when did the tears take over? Or was it never sweat, and were they tears right from the beginning, stealthily released and camouflaged by her constant chatter, and immediately mingling with the essence of turpentine or whatever other muck she was spreading across his back? He doesn’t want to open his eyes, and keeps his mouth pressed to the pillow until he feels her burning hands skittering down from his shoulders to his dorsal muscles, trembling like wounded little animals, abandoning his back altogether and seizing his bare, stiff left foot that is cold and bloodless, massaging it, her thumbs digging into the sole, the instep, and then the toes, one by one. Taken so completely by surprise that he surrenders his foot to her without the slightest resistance, his face and his thoughts sunk into the battered pillow, with her stifled sobs reaching him as if from another world, Ringo wonders what on earth to do now, and whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to call Violeta. The hands treat his foot with a vengeful mixture of brutality and possessiveness, rough and tender, squeezing and twisting it so insistently and energetically that in the end the pain becomes unbearable. For a while he refuses to admit that Señora Mir can be obsessed by a foot in such a possessive, unhealthy manner. He prefers to think she is working in her own way, and that he has to put up with it, that possibly there is a real connection between the nerves of the foot and those in his painful back, that his foot is like Señor Alonso’s injured one. Soon though, when he feels a new, sharp twist, this time as if the hands really mean him harm, he pulls his leg up and is about to protest, when a stifled cry and the sound of glass smashing on the floor makes him raise his head and open his eyes.