Rafael Chirbes - On the Edge

My older brother Germán and I weren’t alike either; a variant on the same Biblical theme, Cain and Abel, dark and light, although, in this case, I was the bat who survived, while he died of incurable lung cancer (and he didn’t even smoke). Right from the start, he said he didn’t want to be a carpenter. He liked mechanical things, taking cars and motorbikes apart and putting them back together again. Initially, my father was adamantly opposed, but finally gave in and helped Germán open a garage which ended up in the hands of Germán’s wife and her brothers, an unseemly, rather tawdry ending. It’s hard to understand how that young woman, Laura (apparently her father named her after the film, which came out the year she was born, she was seven or eight years younger than my brother), who was apparently so in love, always taking my brother’s arm and giving him sloppy kisses, how that cheerful, helpful girl, so ready to help with the lunch and serve at table, always so house-proud and considerate, especially when it came to our family, giving my mother presents and calling her Mama, kissing my father and calling him Papa, the only one who could ever kiss him without him groaning and who could get his eyes to fill with tears when he received her gift of socks or a sweater, how that same selfless, hard-working woman became the one to cut all ties with our family as soon as Germán died. She’d been almost as ruthless with her husband when she found out that his cancer was terminal. She became cool and indifferent toward us, her in-laws, and even toward him. My mother took better care of Germán than she did, for she was too busy during his final days, rushing about between the land registry and the bank, from the notary to the lawyer’s office, determined not to leave any loose ends, and getting my brother to sign papers when he was almost too weak to hold a pen. She even phoned up my father to get him to sign a few documents too. It’s for the children’s sake, she said, by way of justification. In the end, she managed to keep the garage and the house my brother had set up with our father’s money. For several years, my father had to continue paying the mortgage. So, what was it all about, then, the soft voice (she wasn’t remotely like the highly stylized Gene Tierney who’d played Laura in the film, she was short and chubby, but with a very animated face), the domestic hyperactivity whenever they came to lunch at our house, the eagerness to lay the table, to smooth and iron the table cloth, and help in the kitchen, the charming, industrious little ant who called my parents Mama and Papa, and kissed my brother and straightened his collar and patted his bottom, put her arms around his waist, intertwined her fingers with his while she gazed adoringly into his eyes. Was it all an act? Are we all just actors, who might at any moment grow tired of the role we’re playing and remove our disguise? Or are there also real people? But what does that mean? What does “real people” mean? And if it means nothing, is nothing, what sense is there in life? What happens to us if real people don’t exist? We tend to think that people’s true nature comes out at decisive moments, when the going gets tough, when they’re pushed to the limit. The moment for heroes and saints. And yet, strange though it may seem, at such moments, human behavior is usually neither exemplary nor encouraging. The group who elbow their way to the head of the line where the concert tickets are being handed out; the spectators who flee the burning theater, trampling over the weaker members of the audience, not even noticing them, the child, the withered flesh of the old man, crushed beneath the soles of the anxious fugitives, pierced by the heels of young women elegantly dressed for an evening out; the honest citizens, including the women — from middle- and working-class families, there’s no difference — who use their oars to furiously beat back the other shipwreck victims trying to clamber into the overcrowded lifeboat. It’s every man for himself. As we know, Dad, it’s not hard to arrive at the point where you are now; day after day, life insists on proving you right. The great human family. Of the two grandchildren your older son gave you, we haven’t heard a word — they’ve vanished. My mother would occasionally weep for them: I do have grandchildren, but it’s as if they had never existed. That shameless hussy (she was a hussy now, no longer my dear, I’ve put some croquettes by for you so that you can fry them up later this evening when you get home, because the children love them freshly cooked, nice and hot ), that shameless hussy, my mother would say, she took them from me. She stole them. Just as she stole everything that belongs to our son. Just as she stole what was ours.

My sister’s children helped somewhat to assuage the resurgence of maternal feelings that grandchildren tend to provoke in women. At least she had them, even though they were far away, in Barcelona. At least they came to see her sometimes. She never spoke ill of her daughter, but I know that it pained her never to have been invited to their house in Barcelona. Not once. Either because they found her presence bothersome and didn’t know what to do with her in the big city, or — as Carmen herself said — because their house really was too small. My mother interpreted this as indifference, but that, in turn, became a stimulus. Suffering diverted her, gave meaning to time, gave focus; and it allowed her to complain, to give vent to her bitterness: her grandchildren were there and she, their grandmother, was here, 300 endless miles away. She would knit sweaters for them, buy them jackets, and I imagine that my sister gave these away to some needy child or neighbor, provincial sweaters and cardigans and old-fashioned jackets that no one with any ambition would dream of wearing in the big city. She never saw Germán’s children again, they didn’t even come to her funeral, I can’t remember now if they were still living in Misent when she died, because that was where my brother moved to when he got married and where he’d set up his business. I know they don’t live there any more. My sister-in-law sold the house and the garage years ago when she remarried — the garage went to one of Leonor’s brothers — and then the whole family moved away, possibly to Madrid. Needless to say, I never saw them again either. I imagine they’ll remember us, though, when they find out that my father is dead and that I have no heirs. Then they’ll be happy enough to sit down with the rest of the family to divide up the spoils. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren, if there are any, there must be some, and Carmen’s children and grandchildren (I know she has grandchildren, not that she’s ever brought them here to visit, I’ve only seen photos — she blames her daughters-in-law, well, you know what they’re like ). The dish we make by frying up the leftovers from the previous day’s meal is called ropavieja , old clothes. That’s what Germán’s family will be eating when they come; they’ll meet their aunt and uncle: Uncle Juan (who was born after me), the ne’er-do-well, who will arrive from some far-flung part of the world to join them in the notary’s office; they’ll meet their Aunt Carmen and the cousins and nephews from Barcelona, they’ll greet each other gladly, exchange phone numbers, addresses, all of them in excellent spirits, looking forward to the prospect of the money that will come to them from the division of spoils, the sale of the house and the carpentry workshop, a magnificent plot right in the middle of the village, although don’t even think of selling it now, there’s no point, prices are at rock bottom; but they’ll be pleased at the valuation placed on the land in Montdor, even though the price of land up there is in free fall: it’s worth only a third of what you would have paid for it six or seven years ago, but it’s still a decent sum of money; they’ll be pleased, too, about the orange grove that my father tended until not that long ago, land now reclassified as suitable for development, but which, like everything else, would be almost impossible to sell at the moment. The old man was unlucky even in death, they’ll remark jovially as they sit in the funeral home parlor, the coffin containing my father’s body safe behind a discreetly drawn curtain, because, although the funeral home has done an excellent job, he really isn’t a pretty sight. Our father was always a complainer, a sourpuss, his once favorite daughter will say. And Uncle Juan, the ne’er-do-well, will call him a miser, an egotist, remembering all the times that his father ignored his cries for help. For a few hours, the surviving brother and sister, the nephews, the children and grandchildren of Carmen and Germán, will all be drawn closer by greed, until they discover that the coffers are empty and there’s nothing left in the bank, and that the land and the house and the workshop no longer belong to the family, then that sense of fraternal togetherness will rapidly evaporate and family ties will be replaced by documents from the holding company set up for legal reasons, by requests for a special levy to pay for a lawyer ( a good lawyer , one of them, possibly Germán’s widow, will say— we need the very best, remember we’re up against the banks here, and things are looking really black ), by arguments because the restless, ne’er-do-well brother will, of course, think that what his sister in Barcelona and her offspring are proposing is far too expensive (that’s probably why her husband comes along too, you don’t think I’d let you go there alone, do you , in order to keep a close eye on the business, two pairs of eyes are better than one), and by the children and possible grandchildren and the wife of the husband who has been lying in a grave in Misent for years now. And after a while, after the initial skirmishes, and after looking at the problem from every possible angle, the great battle will commence, the family Waterloo, a return to the natural human state, everyone pitted against everyone else, ruthlessly and unreservedly, using every weapon available, siblings against siblings, siblings-in-law against siblings-in-law, aunts and uncles against nieces and nephews, grandchildren against grandparents, cousins locked in combat, with no holds barred, because the prospect of their getting anything at all is now highly unlikely (don’t forget, we’re up against the banks, it’s a very tricky business ), and they’ve had no luck with the legal steps they’ve taken so far, despite the exorbitant lawyer’s fees (they dropped the one I suggested as the best option, Germán’s widow will say, because they didn’t like the way things were going to be shared out, honestly, they’re cheap jerks even when it comes to acquiring money, and they chose this lawyer, not me, and he’s turned out to be not only more expensive, but an out-and-out crook), and the inevitable suspicions that there’s some kind of agreement between one section of the family and the lawyer, an agreement intended to plunder the others; and on and on it goes, the great family war by other means and in other places, the cold, damp Ardennes, dusty El Alamein. And once they’re convinced that the only thing they’re going to inherit are debts, and that what they’re defending is a ruin (the scene now is more like Monte Casino in May 1945, a scorched landscape in which all that remains are blackened walls, stinking corpses and half a dozen dying men), the holding company will be dissolved and they’ll part with no hard feelings. Then, the ne’er-do-well brother will distribute kisses all round, just in case he can still touch one of them for a loan, an advance, a supper or a place at the dinner table and a warm bed, now that he has their addresses and, above all, their phone numbers and email addresses, the cat-flaps through which modern-day intruders creep; anyway, kisses all round and let’s say goodbye like brothers and sisters, with no hard feelings. All that’s left is despair and disillusionment with the family in which they had invested so much hope, and which, for a moment, they even thought would require the occasional get-together, just to enjoy the warmth of belonging to a clan: we don’t want to meet in Madrid, where you live, or in Barcelona, where we live, so why don’t we meet up once a year somewhere halfway between the two, like Zaragoza or Teruel, for example, the Monasterio de Piedra is gorgeous, isn’t it, Pedro? (Carmen addresses this rhetorical question to her husband.) We were there a couple of years ago and we saw the waterfall and, as I was saying, it was just lovely; we could meet once a year to have a great meal together (presumably spending any remnants of the booty they manage to scrape together). It seems incredible, such selfishness between brothers and sisters, between cousins, blood of our blood, my sister Carmen will complain to her closest friends once back in Barcelona. I can’t believe they could be so stingy, she will say charitably, angelically. It wasn’t a very enlightening experience for the children. Or was it? Perhaps it’s best that they learn what life is really like.