Juan Marsé - The Calligraphy of Dreams

He sees her lying on the floor by the head of the trolley, curled up in a foetal position, weeping copiously, her fists screwed up round her eyes like those of an angry, disconsolate little girl trying to attract attention to her unhappiness, to the amorous mess, the scaly romantic infection that is her life. There’s a trace of blood on her knee, and he is still sitting up on the trolley staring at her, uncertain what to do, when the door bursts open and Violeta comes rushing in. Carefully avoiding the shards of glass, she bends over her mother and, without asking what has happened, without offering any words of comfort or telling her to stop crying, she rapidly helps her to her feet. She glances coldly at Ringo.

“Get dressed and go.”

Sitting on the trolley, he moves his leg, rotating his reddened, painful foot. Beneath it he sees that the sharpest fragment of glass still has a half torn-off label that reads: Essence of Eucalyptus .

“I didn’t do or say anything … she just fell.”

Violeta looks at him again. This time her eyes narrow as if they were burning, as if gusts of wind were making it hard for her to see, and were tensing her mouth and nostrils.

“Go away, please! Go!”

“I’ve no idea what happened to her … All of a sudden she was on the floor. Look what she did to my foot …”

It’s ruined, he is on the point of saying. Sobbing, her face buried in her hands, Señora Mir lets herself be led out by her daughter. Once they have left the verandah, Ringo sits staring at the shattered glass on the floor. While he is putting on his shirt and sandals he decides that before he leaves he’ll pick up every single piece, and not leave even the tiniest shard behind. But he soon cuts himself on his sound left hand, and opts instead to sweep them all together in a little pile, pushing them with the tip of his sandal. Leaving the verandah, he limps across the dining-room and heads down the corridor to the front door. Smeared with essence of eucalyptus ointment, his foot slides on the sole of his sandal. He has cramp all up his leg, his toes are aching, and it feels as though he has needles sticking out of his ankle: you deserve to have it broken, for being such an imbecile, you deserve to be stuck with a turned-in foot, like the ex-footballer … From one of the rooms comes the sound of discreet reproaches between mother and daughter, the occasional moan. Every time he moves his left foot he feels an excruciating pain, and he can hardly put any weight on it. I couldn’t give a damn about that woman’s problems, he tells himself, and all of a sudden something induces him to exaggerate the limp until he is dragging the foot along, producing a mocking, sinister sound that will bring back memories when it is heard by mother and daughter, wherever they have taken refuge. He has almost reached the hallway when a door leading onto the corridor opens and Violeta pokes her head out.

“Please don’t do that!”

“What?”

“Don’t drag your foot like that. Don’t do it.”

“Why not?” he says, without stopping. Over the girl’s shoulder through the half-open door he can make out an untidy bedroom, deep in a warm darkness that must be ideal for rolling around in. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you tell me to go?”

“But not limping like that, please.”

“Well, I’m going to! Who could it upset, who does it matter to?”

Although he knows he is being unfair and feels bad about it, before he reaches the front door he further accentuates his limp and gives Violeta a sideways glance full of spite and sadness, as if to say I know the crap that went on in here, don’t think I don’t, the things your mother and her lover got up to. And yet he cannot prevent the sudden appearance in his mind of the rain-soaked letter swirling round in the overflowing drain, caught between the rushing waters and his own lack of decision. For a split second, as the letter sinks yet again in the whirlpool that never stops spinning, he senses for the first time that a catastrophe is imminent, that something is silently being hatched that will cause irreparable damage.

“It’s not for me,” he hears Violeta whisper as he crosses the threshold. “Please don’t do it any more … I beg you … It’s not for me.”

*

It’s getting dark when he steps out into the street. The days are growing shorter, the light is more diffuse and deceptive, there is a cold edge to the air. Mist dims the yellowish light from the streetlamps. The squeal of a tram turning in the nearby square, a bicycle bell in the distance, the clatter of a metal shutter being lowered. He comes to a halt for a moment opposite the two rails at the street corner, obstinately persisting in their truncated curve to nowhere. Further down, a weak, bluish glow emanates from the glass entrance to the Rosales bar, barely enough to outline the stooped back of a man standing on the edge of the pavement, hands in his pockets, swaying a little as he stares down at his shoes with the bewildered air of someone who does not recognise them as his. Calle Martí is deserted. Shiny green weeds are growing in the cracks between the ruined tiles of the old pavement. As Ringo walks home, his disquiet returns, the almost physical sensation of having left something more than his tortured foot behind on Señora Mir’s trolley. Why are you still limping, dummy, when it doesn’t hurt anymore? The four-fingered hand touches the headscarf in his jacket pocket, feeling for its silky caress. For a few moments, the soft texture of the material imparts the gentle, warm feeling of a bunch of feathers to his tiny scar, until finally he resolves to undo the knot of this fine sling.

One Sunday mid-morning, at a time when he should already be in the kitchen warming milk and toasting bread for his mother’s breakfast, he is still flat out with the sheet pulled up to his nose, unsure where he is, when he hears his father’s imperious voice calling to him as if in a dream. He jumps out of bed, rapidly pulling on trousers and shirt.

Sitting at the dining-room table with a bottle of the Martell brandy he usually brings from Canfranc, pencil in hand, the Rat-catcher is busily noting something in the top corner of the back of three unstamped, crumpled letters. On one of them he writes an A, on the second a P, and on the third a V. With the other hand he scratches his pensive brow with green-tinged fingernails, all the while clutching a balloon brandy glass as if it is a natural appendage, adroitly manipulating it without it getting in the way at all.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

Ringo replies with a grunt, struggling to get his jersey on. His father puts the letters and pencil to one side, swirls the brandy round in the glass, takes a sip, and picks his old work case off the floor and examines its well-worn clasps. Then he rubs his chin, again with the hand holding the glass. He arrived from another whirlwind trip only the day before, and this morning, fresh out of the shower but still unshaven, in his grey roll-neck goalkeeper’s jersey and with his leather jacket round his shoulders, he is ready for the off again. With his bulky body leaning forward, and his backside perched on the edge of the chair, it looks as if he could set out at any moment. Things never change, thinks Ringo: however much he says how good it is to be home, the Rat-catcher always seems about to leave again.

“I need you to run an errand for me.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“I need to get mother’s breakfast …”

“I’ll do that. We’ll let her sleep in a while this morning.”

“The electric ring isn’t working. And she likes her coffee very strong and hot. She also likes toast with honey …”