Rafael Chirbes - On the Edge

I rejected Francisco’s opinions (God gives no one the right to make even the most insignificant of His creatures suffer). As if reason could do anything against faith. No one had yet told me about his father’s nocturnal expeditions or his strange idea of what constituted big game; I didn’t even know at the time how my grandfather had died, nor that my father had been in prison for three years and that I’d been born during his absence. Uncle Ramón filled me in on just how much the war had influenced my life.

“Your father has always insisted that you should know nothing until you were older. ‘They,’ your father would say, meaning you and your siblings, ‘have nothing to do with it. They’ll find out soon enough. I’ll tell them how it was.’”

Later, my father did try to talk to me, but, by then, I wasn’t very interested in his stories, the delicate thread connecting us had broken. Besides, none of that information entered my discussions with Francisco. We debated more on the level of metaphysics than of history — the history that so tormented my father — and which, to us, seemed too recent, too lacking in poetry: smelly, badly ventilated rooms; the chamberpot in which my grandfather had done his business after being given an enema; sprigs of lavender and sugar warming on the stove to disguise the stench in the patient’s room; the smell of rotting entrails in the trashcan, that was what recent history meant to us. It was what we had seen and smelled at home, what we used to be and from which we wanted to escape. Far better to be in places where words do what you want them to and where blood doesn’t smell because it’s set down in ink on the page; history traps you, forces you to follow a prearranged script, one that didn’t interest me in the least:

“But how can you talk like that after reading the Bible? God doesn’t just grant the right to kill, he spends his time sowing discord among humans so that they end up killing each other. Right at the very beginning of beginnings, Genesis, there’s Cain. There are other examples too: Moses, the first supporter of liberation through violence, doesn’t hesitate to kill the man oppressing his people; the adulterer David, cruel Salomé, or that decapitator so beloved of feminists, Judith, who beheads the gallant Holofernes: his only crime was admiring her beauty, presenting her with his finest treasures, serving her the most succulent of dishes and, we assume, after all those hours spent alone in that luxurious tent, giving her a good seeing-to as well — and is that how you repay me after I placed in you the seed of the most glorious of Assyrian generals, something most women would consider the very best of gifts, namely, the possibility of engendering an heir to all my glory, and you repay me by cutting off my head? That woman wasn’t a hero, she was an ungrateful wretch and very rude too: that’s hardly the way to behave at supper, or to treat a host who receives you with open arms (appropriately enough). When someone invites you to supper, it’s not even acceptable to say you didn’t enjoy the food. Killing the owner of the household certainly doesn’t appear in any of the etiquette books. The Bible is the mother of bad manners.”

“But that’s the Old Testament God… no, I know you, you’re just fucking with me, carrying on. Go to hell!” says Francisco, half-smiling and dismissing me with a wave of the hand.

“The heroic story of Judith, the criminal story of Judith, the sad story of Judith, as you prefer. The adjective you choose depends on your ideology.”

The story of Judith and Holofernes is, let’s say, a story shorn of adjectives. What do you think, Liliana? You Spaniards don’t even know what a really good potato or papa or patata is. I mean, if you go to the market here, in Olba, or in Misent, which is quite a lot bigger, or go to Eroski or to Mercadona, how many types of potato do you have to choose from? Red and white, new and old, and that’s it, but in Colombia you’ll find a whole selection of different varieties on any small street stall, and each one is perfect for a particular recipe, and there are even some recipes that call for three or four different varieties, because some are floury and good for thickening stews, while others stay firm and only give when you bite into them or prick them with a fork. I’m not saying your country isn’t a more peaceable place, because it is, although it’s rapidly getting less so, but it’s boring too, things don’t have much color, much variety, and the people, well, they’re all right, I suppose, but not all of them, they call us Colombians blacks even though we’re not, I mean there are a few blacks in Colombia, just as there are here in Spain, the guys who sell stuff on the streets, for example, but they’re from outside Colombia, and there are others who were taken there as slaves. And they did come from Africa, like the blacks here. But we Colombians are Latin Americans and yet here they call us blacks or conguitos , apparently because of some ad for sweets that was on the TV years ago, which showed little fat black coffee beans with legs, dancing about, they may even have shown them wearing Colombian hats. No, they didn’t, Liliana, they called them conguitos because they came from Africa, from the Congo, you see, chocolate sweets or coffee beans from Africa not Colombia. Be that as it may, but now they call us Colombians conguitos , I know this because my husband told me so, he says that when he worked on a building site, that’s what they used to call the Colombian workers, conguitos, panchitos , blacks, darkies. That’s just because people are ignorant, Liliana, they have no idea. Sometimes my husband would just laugh and, at others, he’d get really angry and say that the next person who called him that would get his head smashed by a bottle. Of course, he only gets angry when he’s had a few drinks, when he’s drunk too much; otherwise, he’s really quiet, but when he drinks, he shouts and shouts until he’s so tired he goes to bed without any supper and is soon fast asleep and snoring like a pig — if you’ll pardon the expression. I wish he was more like you, quiet and polite, I’m sure you’d never shout like that or threaten anyone. The trouble is that when you get married, you’re young and full of hope, you’re not thinking clearly, because when you’re going out with someone, they only show you their best side, they might even be pretending to be good. You only really get to know the other person once you’re married. Our mothers know that and tell us it’s always been the same, exactly the same, but we young people take no notice, love blinds us and we don’t want to listen to the voice of experience because we’re stupid enough to believe we’re the very first people in the world ever to fall in love, as if we’d invented it. You’re different, though, I think that if you had got married, your wife certainly wouldn’t have been disappointed, it’s a real shame you didn’t marry, because marriage would simply have confirmed to her that she was living with a good man, why, you’re almost like a father to me, more than a father really, because my father didn’t care about us, about me and my brothers and sisters; on the contrary, he sent us out to work and got all the money he could out of us so that he could go off with his friends and spend it all on drinks in the local bar. Sometimes he wouldn’t come home for three or four days, and you can imagine the state he was in when he did come home, he’d be completely out of it, his clothes in shreds, stinking of other women, high on cocaine, and with all the money gone. You’re exactly the kind of father anyone could possibly want, and the other gentleman, your father, even though he doesn’t talk now, he’s so tall and slim, he must have been very handsome as a young man, and I’m not saying that because you’re shorter and stockier, I mean everyone’s different, but he’s so distinguished-looking — there he is not saying a word, we don’t even know what he might be thinking, my sense, though, is that he must have been very kind and polite too, you can tell from his appearance, his presence, and even though the poor thing can’t speak, you can see his good thoughts in his eyes, in the way he looks at us. You can see his kindness. You must have been a lovely family. It’s just such a shame your Mama isn’t still with us, but, of course, if she were alive, she’d be as old as your father, so better to let her rest in peace, don’t you think? I’m sure she deserves it. She’s waiting up there in heaven for you all to join her.