Juan Marsé - The Calligraphy of Dreams

“Hello there, Violeta.”

“Hello.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“What …?” she tilts her head to hear him better.

“Your mother. Didn’t she come with you?”

“Is it that important to you?”

“I came to tell her something … I saw something very strange.”

“You did?”

“Yes. I need to tell your mother at once … Seriously, where is she?”

The orchestra is playing so loudly his words are drowned out. He surveys his surroundings, without success. He remembers the gang’s jokes in the Rosales bar: the mother clings to the bar, and the daughter lets herself be pawed on the balcony or in the toilets: It’s as easy as pie, kid. Violeta crosses her legs very slowly, and studiously straightens one of the pleats on her skirt. She gives him a hard look.

“Take your scarf off, will you? It makes me feel hot just looking at it. What do you have to say to my mother?”

“That there’s someone in your house. There’s a light on in the dining-room, you can see it from the street. I swear! I noticed it as I was leaving the bar. There’s somebody inside — it must be a burglar … Where is your mother?”

She stares at him, silent and thoughtful, apparently not the slightest bit alarmed.

“A light in the dining-room?”

“I swear!”

“When did you see it?”

“Just now, about a quarter of an hour ago. The time it took me to walk here.”

“Is that so?” Once again she looks thoughtful but unperturbed, with a faint smile playing across her face. She straightens another pleat on her skirt. “That’s why you came, because you think there’s a burglar in our flat?”

“Well, let’s see, I knew you two were here, didn’t I? I saw you leave home, you and your mother … What do you expect me to think, if I see a light and there’s nobody in?”

“Mama must have forgotten to switch it off.”

Ringo takes off his scarf, fetches a chair, and sits down beside her.

“Are you sure? Someone could have got in by the balcony, grabbing the rail … the Easter palm has come loose, it’s about to fall off.”

“It is?”

“He might have come back, and if he doesn’t have a key …”

“Who might have come back?”

“That man with the limp, your mother’s friend.”

“Don’t talk to me about him! I wish he were dead!”

“Well, there’s a light on in the dining-room, Violeta, I swear. We have to warn your mother. Where is she?”

“Where do you think? At the bar.” She looks at him maliciously. “I get it. You want Mama to see you, don’t you? So that she’ll know you’ve come … even if it’s only with the excuse that you’ve seen a burglar.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Because she made you promise you’d come. Do you think I didn’t know? I know all the tricks my mother gets up to.”

“What are you saying? I came because I wanted to. Nobody makes me do anything. This afternoon I intended to go to the Verdi cinema, so you see … They’re showing “The Nine-fingered Beast”, have you seen it? It’s about a pianist who has his finger cut off, and he becomes a murderer to avenge himself, but he’s still the greatest pianist in the world … He’s Peter Lorre. I was about to buy the ticket when I said to myself, this isn’t right, nano , you ought to go and warn Violeta and her mother there’s somebody in their flat.”

“You don’t say. Alright, so now you’ve warned us. But tell me this: why did you promise my mother you’d come and dance with me, when as far as I know you don’t even like dancing?”

There is no way he is going to tell her the reason. He’s not even sure of it himself. Violeta smiles mockingly and adds:

“Don’t worry, you idiot. You don’t have to dance with me if you don’t want to.”

“Of course I do. I came because of what I told you,” he insists, scrutinising her unconvinced profile, while the orchestra launches into a mambo that produces an explosion of joy and feminine squeals on the dance floor. “Aren’t you worried that a stranger has sneaked into your flat?”

Violeta turns slowly and looks him in the eye.

“Do you really not know?”

“Know what?”

“Have you really not been told?” she asks witheringly, staring at him intently, as though trying to hypnotise him. “Really and truly, you know nothing? I can’t believe it …”

“I’m telling you again, I saw a light on in your flat! Cross my heart and hope to die!”

“Alright, so there was a light. Now tell me something … What’s your father up to? What news do you have of him?”

“My father’s in France,” he says rapidly. “What’s that got to do …?”

“Well actually, it’s got a lot to do with it. If I told you he might have switched that light on, would you believe me? He has a key to the flat. Mama gave it him, and recently he’s met your mother there more than once, always after dark. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. You’re so smart.” She uncrosses her legs, then crosses them again brusquely and conclusively, and for a moment the suggestiveness of her gesture is more powerful than his poorly concealed surprise at what he has just heard. He immediately reacts as if he has been caught out, and shifts his gaze to the hands on her lap. Her long, delicate fingers, with their deliberate, enveloping movements, are fiddling with her purse. “Why did they meet in my house and in secret? I’ve no idea. Ask your mother.”

“My father’s in France, I tell you. Most likely with your uncle. And I know why …”

“I don’t want you to explain anything,” Violeta interrupts him, “I don’t want to know anything more. Thank God it was only a few days, and I hardly even noticed. He was shut up in his room the whole time and only came out at night, so don’t ask me anything, because I know nothing.”

Her eyelids flutter disagreeably: they are heavy, with thick, reddish lashes. Ringo meanwhile, still taken aback by what he has just heard, is thinking about the light on the balcony. So from time to time the Rat-catcher is to be seen around here … At any rate what matters now is that the light he saw — although he is starting to wonder whether he really did see it — is the justification for him being here, and not his blasted uneasy conscience. What on earth does anything else matter to me? Then, on the strength of a sudden impulse, he reveals an intimate wish of his, a fantasy he has been elaborating.

“One day I’m going to France. One day my father will send for my mother and me, and we’ll leave this arsehole of the world for good.”

Violeta stares at him in disbelief.

“You will? That’s good. And when is this going to happen?”

“I don’t know, it depends on a lot of things.” He lowers his voice, and adds mysteriously: “We’ll have to wait and see, and above all not go round saying anything about it, alright? Be very careful. Well anyway, since I’m here …”

Since he has come, he means to say, since he has kept his promise and she is alone and so obviously available, with her hard little breasts beneath her blouse and her apple-like knees, seated so upright on her chair and nodding her head to the music …

“Do you want to dance?”

“Ugh! I’m tired. Besides, you don’t like dancing.”

“That depends.”

He’s taken off his scarf, and doesn’t know what to do with it. After the mambo, the crooner conducts the first bars of a slow tune and tilts his head at the microphone, singing in a low, syrupy voice.

“The singer is crap,” says Ringo.

“He’s very handsome.”

“He’s got the face of a goat.”

“Well I like him.”

“And the pianist plays with a pole stuck up his arse, he thinks he’s José Iturbí or someone … and just look at the drummer. This orchestra is useless.”