Juan Marsé - The Calligraphy of Dreams

Listen: Don’t go out alone at night; don’t stray into neighbourhoods you don’t know. You won’t find me in any tavern or sports centre, don’t search for me in the choking city of children with no home or parents, the accursed city of blue rats.

I’m sorry to have to tell you all this, but closing my eyes and shrugging my shoulders again, as I have done until now, is something I feel I can no longer do. I’ve already hurt you enough that way. I’m overwhelmed by a strange sense of guilt for the pain I caused you without meaning to … I don’t know whether I’ll be able to explain it to you some day. No matter. Tomorrow I am leaving here for distant snow-capped mountains and valleys of shadow, and I have no notion, my love, of when I’ll be able to return, and so I cannot and should not ask you to wait for me. I want you to take care of yourself, don’t drink so much, don’t ruin your life, don’t give them any reason to gossip about you in the neighbourhood. Listen to your daughter, and you’ll see how everything works out. Up there, near the summit of Montaña Pelada, among the bushes of lavender and thyme where the wind blows, we will be happy again someday. I’ll pick herbs again for you. In spring the brightly coloured kites will dance in the blue sky once more, and you and I will see it all, we’ll climb hand-in-hand up hillsides filled with broom.

With this thought I leave you. Good luck, Vicky my love. I send you a million kisses, and may the angels watch over you as you sleep.

From someone who loves sand will never forget you,

Abel Alonso

She reads all this in one go, without a single incredulous or disapproving twist of the mouth, without showing any surprise or satisfaction, without blinking even once at any paragraph or word. Two sheets covered in a rushed, crude and pointed calligraphy, leaning dramatically over to the right as though caught in a gale or as if trying to escape beyond the edges of the paper. Two sheets of a pale, pure pink that he rescued from oblivion and that Violeta finishes reading, then folds once more and hastily replaces in the envelope. She doesn’t look at Ringo once, not even out of the corner of her eye. And then, with a faint, spiky and vengeful smile she takes the envelope in both hands, closes her eyes, and for a few interminable seconds seems determined to tear it to pieces.

“You mother didn’t want you to read it,” says Señora Paquita. “But of course, after all that’s happened …” Then, unable to contain her curiosity: “I hope it’s not bad news.”

Violeta shrugs.

“It’s arrived too late, Señora Paqui. Mama doesn’t need anything like this anymore.”

But her hands don’t move, and in the end she doesn’t tear the letter up. She undoes her coat roughly and stows the envelope in the deep pocket of her nurse’s uniform. She’s not sure whether she will let her mother read it, we’ll see, she says, getting ready to leave. She reckons that what her mother needs now is to forget, and besides, she adds in a scornful tone, in the end the famous letter is nothing but a pack of lies, disgusting memories and false promises. What else was there to expect from the penniless fraud who wrote it?

“Goodbye and thank you, Señora Paquita. In a few days we’re going to live with grandmother. Mama is going to need a lot of looking after from now on, and I can’t manage on my own. I’ll be very sorry when we have to go …”

“That’s fine, sweetheart. Be strong. Everything will work out.”

Señora Paquita herself opens the door for her. As Violeta is crossing the threshold, she glances fleetingly at Ringo.

*

Three days later, from early in the morning, a bucket and two old wooden crates overflowing with bunches of dried herbs tied up with ribbons, jars of leaves and roots, and pots containing creams and oils, stood out on the pavement awaiting the rubbish truck. Later on, two men came to load furniture and possessions into a van and Violeta went into the Rosales bar to bid farewell to Señora Paquita and her brother. Ringo wasn’t there to see or listen, but he learnt she was accompanied by a young porter from the Hospital del Mar who helped her with the move, and to whom Señora Paquita offered vermouth and olives. Less hostile and evasive than on previous occasions, Violeta reported that her mother had been transferred directly from the San Pablo hospital to her mother-in-law’s house in Badalona, that she was still in bed there, but well looked after, although she was still very ill, and that she had asked her to tell Señora Paqui how sorry she was to leave the neighbourhood, that she would miss the tavern and the nice chats she had with her, and that well, what could you do, she had thought her liver could stand it, but she had no luck there either, that’s life, isn’t it?

At eight o’clock that same day, wearing for the first time a striped overall and grey woollen gloves, Ringo starts work in Ultramarinos J. Casadeus and Brothers, a century-old establishment in Calle Aragón on the corner of Calle Bruch. Balanced on his shoulder is a big basket of foodstuffs and drinks for him to deliver to a select clientele living in the Ensanche, known for their generous tips.

It’ll only be for a while, his mother has told him, nothing bad lasts for ever. For a short while, yes, how often has he heard those well-intentioned words, at home, in the tavern, in so many places, but the truth is that in the end everything lasts until you’re ready for the knackers’ yard. More than anything else, more than the daily burden of desires and needs, even more than his fear or uncertainty over the future, he is oppressed by a vague sense of disquiet that he didn’t do what he should have, what was most appropriate and best, even though he is well aware that the best and most appropriate course of action would not have made the slightest bit of difference.

Since then the impostor has on more than one occasion imagined those flashing eyes reading the longed-for letter, the frantic movement of her eyelashes and the pursing of her fleshy lips as she paused over some sentence or other, or held her breath at this or that phrase or word that perhaps succeeded in offering her a taste of all that her passionate heart had so eagerly pursued, whether or not it was the best and most appropriate for her. Sometimes it has occurred to him it is better not to know if the letter eventually reached her, if it pleased or disappointed her, if it eased her heart and left it indifferent, if at the very least it brought her the comfort of forgetting.

One Sunday morning in August 1958, the young man still known to some of his friends as Ringo entered the Club Natación Cataluña to enquire about the benefits of membership. The club was situated on the ground floor of a building next door to the Delicias cinema, at number 218 on Travesera de Gràcia, and used the installations and pool that belonged to the Baños Populares de Barcelona. The young man was considering going for a swim there three or four times a week, at times when the swimming pool wasn’t very crowded. He had turned twenty-five, and could permit himself this small outlay. He had a steady job in a bookshop, two of his short stories had recently been published in a literary magazine, and he was planning to write his first novel. His mother was still looking after old people in the Residence on Calle Sors, at more reasonable hours these days. His father, after spending three years in Modelo prison and returning home very thin, with pulmonary emphysema and physically diminished — although just as loudmouthed and unreliable as ever, as to her great relief Alberta light of my life was able to confirm — had, thanks to the efforts of the mother superior at the Las Darderas convent, obtained the post of supervisor in a school run by the Sisters of Mary. During the breaks he was there to keep an eye on both the youngsters and on any strangers trying to sneak into the school.