Rafael Chirbes - On the Edge

Oh well, too bad. Brothers and sisters. So far, there’s been one definite disappearance (death is always definite), that of Germán, and two less strident disappearances, two subtle, gradual, stealthy escapes: that of Carmen and of Juan, familiar shadows moving in the distance, too far off for their presence to warm us: Juan sends out few signals from his nomadic and, as I imagine, turbulent existence, although perhaps, with time, he’s calmed down a little: time tames us all, calms us, sedates us, lulls us gently to sleep. When Juan last phoned, a few years ago now, it was to announce that he’d become involved in property management or something of the sort in Málaga. That’s what he told me. Everything’s fine, really good, he said in the voice of a snake-oil salesman. I’ll tell you all about it later. Put Dad on the line, will you. But Dad didn’t want to be put on the line, he made a gesture with one hand as if batting away a wasp. Dad’s not here right now, I said, he’s gone out and won’t be back until late. What’s wrong, Juan said, doesn’t he want to speak to me? I said nothing. Silence. He cleared his throat and: Well, you can both go… he began to say as he was about to hang up, one tenth of a second after I had hung up on him, without waiting to hear what it was that we could both go and do. Ever since, silence. I’m sure he was lying then too, there was no Málaga, no property to manage, no everything’s fine. He hasn’t told the truth once in his more than sixty years of existence. He could be anywhere, in La Coruña, in Bilbao, in Bangkok, dealing cards in a gambling den in the private room of a roadside casino, a cigarette in his mouth and a line of cocaine waiting for him in the toilet for when he’s finished his round; clipping his toenails in a prison cell or pressing his elbows hard into a mattress as he struggles to elicit a moan of pleasure from some international piece of ass. Or else he’s just been released from jail and is phoning someone because he senses that tomorrow he might land up in another jail, and he has to make the most of this moment when he has access to a phone booth and enough money to make a call and try and persuade someone to stand bail for him and get him out of tomorrow’s prison. The last time he came here, he turned up with a Ukrainian woman, to whom, according to him, he was married (she must have been about thirty years his junior); this, it turned out, was a lie, there had been no wedding, no happy couple, not even a relatively stable relationship: she was just a prostitute who had joined him on the journey, because he’d happened to meet her on the road a few days before, she was a whore and he was a crook, she was merely an accomplice he had brought along to assist him in whatever thieving opportunities came his way, including thieving from us. This fake couple moved in and stayed for a month or two: flies buzzing around us, repeating over and over the word “money,” because that’s what they wanted, the money that my brother said he needed in order to set up some deal that would bring him stability and us wealth. Although in order to launch this fabulous business opportunity he needed cash, moola, dough. They want money up front, he told me and my father, to set up this big deal, and because, as everyone knows, banks don’t give credit without guarantees, he wanted us to sign over all our money to the bank as a guarantee for the mountain of crisp banknotes he would receive in exchange. You just lend it to me (he had forgotten all about give me my part of the inheritance now, and I’ll sign whatever I need to sign , that trick hadn’t worked). Or, easier still, I don’t even touch your money, you sign a document saying that the bank can keep it for a fixed term while I pay back what they lend me. A kind of guarantee that wouldn’t be a guarantee, that would continue to give you interest, more or less the same as happens now, I imagine, because I’m sure you have a money-market account somewhere, don’t you? Everyone does. What I’m proposing is really simple, and you don’t have to release your money or put it at risk. It’s a kind of guarantee that doesn’t endanger your money. The smell of money — for someone who knows that it’s near, but not exactly where or how to get at it — must jangle all the other senses, because I don’t know how he could possibly imagine he was going to get a single céntimo out of our father, because there was no way he was going to fool him into doing that. No con trick, no hustle, no scam would work, no one has ever got anything out of him with kind words or begging or threats. Not even the approach of death made my father generous. What does the old fool want the money for anyway? my younger brother would ask, hoping to make me his accomplice, as if we were both driven by the same interests rather than by entirely opposing interests, what you gain I lose and vice versa: that tired old Cain and Abel story yet again — when is he ever going to spend it, and on what, because there’s no money in the next world. Besides, he would conclude, he’s a communist and doesn’t believe in the after-life. I just played dumb: you can see how he treats me, I would say, he virtually keeps me on bread and water. Although I was also careful to look after number one: I don’t honestly think he’s got that much money. My brother: but the workshop’s doing well, isn’t it? Hmm, I said, meaning only so-so. Needless to say, he wasn’t going to get money out of us by feigning affection. He wasn’t going to get anything out of our father or me, because during the months he was with us, I didn’t even give him money to buy cigarettes, as he sometimes asked me to. He would say, lend me five hundred pesetas to buy some cigarettes, a coffee, a beer, we’re completely broke. Me too, I would say. I never gave him anything, but I would see them smoking (the Ukrainian woman smoked even more heavily than he did), or drinking beer in La Amistad, the bar opposite our house, and sometimes they would roll up in a taxi from Misent. I preferred not to know what they got up to, where they got their money. At any rate, as far as food goes, they didn’t go without. When it suited them, they ate with us. We did allow them that. The old man may have been strict, but in that respect he was a good father. Meals were for the whole family, everyone got the same portion of rice, greens, fish, the same slice of potato omelette that was there for anyone to take. Nothing luxurious, but nutritious. Justicialism: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. Pure Marx. But apart from that, apart from providing food, at least as long as my father kept his marbles, no one ever got a céntimo out of him. His method is very simple: he doesn’t show you the money, he doesn’t talk about it, he doesn’t think about it, it’s as if it didn’t exist, and as long as his mind was intact, it didn’t exist (we are neither exploiters nor speculators). And that’s what drove Juan crazy, knowing that it must exist, that it was there somewhere but not knowing where. He assumed there must be some money, either a lot or a little, and it drove him to distraction, smelling it: like a dog getting all worked up because it can smell the hare’s urine, skin and even the blood beating in the hare’s little heart, but can’t find the entrance to the hole where the animal is hiding. The dog pants, growls, scratches at the ground. I did know where the entrance was, I could see its mouth, but I couldn’t take one step inside. In fact, the hare wasn’t very large, it was a tiny creature hidden away in three separate holes, the Caja de Ahorros del Mediterraneo, the Banco de Santander and the Banco de Valencia. As far as I knew, there was no money in the house, no locked cashboxes, no wall safe concealed behind a painting. It was a bit like the Holy Trinity: the money was one in three, glowing dimly in three different bank accounts, that’s where the suppliers’ invoices got paid, where we deposited customers’ checks, where the electricity and water bills and the council tax had their home. And our father had exclusive use of the key to those three doors. He did as he pleased. He was the sole signatory. When, two years ago, I took out the money I needed to become a partner in Pedrós’s business and, shortly afterward, withdrew the rest in order to buy a still larger share, I was terrified by the thought that my father might suddenly regain his reason and speak and call me a thief. Although calling what I did theft is not quite accurate. It would be fairer to call it restitution, an advance on or a settlement of what he owes me, an historic debt as the politicians in the autonomous regions call it when they demand more capital transfers from the State. That I made a mistake, took too great a risk, is quite another matter, but what could I do, who could possibly have foreseen what happened, that what seemed like an unstoppable rise, a hot-air balloon, would deflate and fall to earth and burst into flames? I needed to see the tiny bit of capital I’d been saving for so many years grow larger, to see our own hot-air balloon take off and fly along with the others I could see drifting proudly across the sky, money that was as much mine as his, the fruit of our work in the carpentry workshop; I needed it to grow more quickly to ensure myself a dignified ending. I needed to pay for our euthanasia, his and mine, our place of rest, home care (or independent living to use the term invented by the social democrats my father has always so wholeheartedly loathed) or palliative care, and the deal with Pedrós would have the same effect as anabolic steroids, it would help build up our flaccid accounts: that was all, but it was my money and his, our money. I was the hare, I was my own urine and skin, I could smell my own trail, I was hunting myself. When I finally caught myself, I also lost the prey. Oh well.