Rafael Chirbes - On the Edge

Neither the pain of loss — knowing that I will never really have anything of my own — nor the peace that seems to fill me bear any resemblance to the sense of repose felt by a mother when she finally gives birth, when something that was part of her, that lived and breathed thanks to her, suddenly begins to breathe on its own, to move independently, to live its own life. The empty space inside her is the beginning of something, a willing surrender, whereas what I’m experiencing is an ending: the piles of wood, the motionless machines, the silent workshop, they’re still there, not that I’m allowed in, because they’ve sealed the doors to stop me taking anything away, as if a load of planks would be of any use to me where I’m going. Not that it matters. I can close my eyes and see it all, not just the machines, the equipment, the small glazed office and the steps up to it, the filing cabinets and the desk carved by my cabinetmaker grandfather or by my carpenter father with ambitions to be a sculptor (I’ve never really known who made that desk, it was, for some reason, kept a deep dark secret). No, I could see every bit of wood in the stores as well, every plank: I have a horribly photographic memory, which was a real boon over the years when it came to finding what I needed in that shambolic workshop, and which is now — all too vividly — helping me to feel what an unfortunate wretch I am; because when I look at all those things, I don’t see something I myself created in order to give back to life, I see only what I’ve buried. Once they’ve been used, the roadside whores are thrown back in the gutter. When a driver abandons them, they become available again to give pleasure to others, to provide some sexual release for the drivers who park their cars or vans next to the reedbeds, half-hidden away, their license plates covered by vegetation so that no one will recognize them. Being spotted haggling with a whore at the roadside means being accepted as a companion in the last circle of hell, a being unable to control his lust — or, far worse, a wretch unable to control his money, who can afford nothing better — and thus condemned to catch one of the many infectious diseases transmitted by those women. And what else is a bankrupt business but a transmissible disease that has never given pleasure to anyone? Clients and providers pretend never to have had anything to do with it, they conceal all previous connections, because even the mere suspicion of contact contaminates: having sent invoices or delivery notes or IOUs bearing that name, having exchanged letters of credit, having supplied materials, all those things make you a suspect being. I’m talking about the business, but I could just as easily be talking about myself. How many years have I spent in this godforsaken place? I remove the judicial seals and — what the fuck — tear off the orange tape crisscrossing the door connecting the workshop and the house, then once again contemplate the workshop, the machines, the stacks of wood. I sit down at the desk in the office or on one of the stools in the storeroom, surrounded by all those materials, which are even more like corpses than me, useless and abandoned and just about to begin the process of putrefaction. It will all be put up for sale at risible prices at the next auction, and probably won’t even find a buyer. The instability of things, the emptiness of words. Yes, my eldest son will only eat hamburgers and he’d eat them all the time if he could, he’s always on me to buy them. I refuse, of course, but I know he buys them anyway with the pocket money I give him, even though I give him a hard time, because he’s really fat, I mean, he’s only twelve and he weighs almost as much as that great fool of a father of his, he’s actually obese, and that’s a reason nowadays for them to take your child away from you if a teacher reports you; children want nothing but pizzas and pasta. And do you know why children like pasta so much? No, how could you if you don’t have children of your own? She says: you don’t have children of your own, as if I were some very meek domestic animal, as incapable of causing harm as of giving pleasure; and her words fill me with a sense of worthlessness that restores to Leonor the guilt from which death should have freed her. A carpenter is expected to be a peaceable fellow, a cuckolded St. Joseph, “they,” the others, have to manage businesses, cope with stress, do dirty jobs in a factory, dangerous jobs on a building site, exciting work at a lawyer’s desk, and they think of carpentry as a harmless profession, with the golden filter of the sun gilding the sawdust floating in the air, like the splinters of gold from a goldsmith’s chisel, the pleasant, soothing smell of wood, pinewood, cedarwood, resin, even the smell of glue is pleasing to the nose: all lies and clichés of course. Even the most serious accidents seem relatively minor in a carpenter’s workshop, not like truckdrivers who might get burned to a crisp inside their cab; or bricklayers who fall from scaffolding sixty feet up and land on the pavement, their head split open like a melon; or metalworkers who, tragically, trip and fall into a blast furnace: here, at most, you might inadvertently saw off your finger tip or bring the hammer down on your thumbnail, minor wounds received during a domestic war and that further consolidate your image as a peaceable man who has honed his skills in honest toil, as if the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” didn’t apply to you, simply because you’re incapable of killing anyone.

I put down an ace of spades and reach out to pick up the cards scattered on the small green baize mat in the middle of the table, and, as I do so, I brush Francisco’s hand. That almost imperceptible contact evokes an image. In the dark of the movie theater, Leonor nibbles my ear, licks it, pokes her warm, firm tongue inside, where it echoes, half-crackle, half-murmur. That damp, moving warmth tickles the cartilage, and that warm, vibrant, sticky feeling spreads like a shudder through the rest of my body and makes me catch my breath, or to be more precise, gives me a hard-on, it’s true, and I am panting like a steam engine. Francisco laughs at something he has just said, and which I didn’t even hear, as he throws down his two remaining cards, admitting defeat. This evening he has spoken with unusual frankness. Normally, if he criticizes someone, he avoids naming names. He says “him” or “that guy.” He leaves an apparent freedom of interpretation to his listener who he has just injected with a dose of poison. He places the burden of guilt on him: it’s up to the listener to put a name or a face to “that guy,” and thus become the thinker of evil thoughts, the betrayer. He merely provides the clues, much as one buckles on one’s seat belt in the car — just in case. Or as if he were speaking with the knowledge that someone has turned on a tape-recorder or placed a microphone in a hole in the plaster ceiling or underneath the table. He must have learned these linguistic precautions at the courses he attended when he was a member of the JOC or the JEC.

Justino stubbornly returns to the leitmotiv I’m trying hard to avoid:

“Tomás’ problem has always been his wife, but then that goes for all of us.”

And looking thoughtful, like someone who has just made a discovery and is pondering what exactly it might mean, he goes on:

“The clifftop house with the infinity swimming pool must have cost him a fortune, and then there’s the designer furniture, and the Gucci and the Prada. I’m not just saying this, I’m not inventing it. She herself tells you when you meet her.”

“She tells you ? Amparo tells you that she’s wearing clothes from Prada? Are you buying them for her?” asks Bernal.

More laughter.

“No, of course she doesn’t tell me , because I don’t talk about clothes with her (I’d like to, but she won’t), but she tells my wife. She does it very casually, while she’s talking about something else, dropping a name here and there, and if you were to ask my wife what all those bits and pieces were worth on The Price is Right , she’d win hands down. You know what women are like. They see a woman wearing a nice blouse and it’s, Minuccia, silk, three hundred and twenty euros, from Vanités, Avenida Orts in Misent; or Marqués de Dos Aguas in Valencia; or Madison Avenue in New York. Ah, but those shoes are fake Blahnik, only a hundred and fifty euros. Identical to the real thing and, if you press me, I’d say they were better finished too, but they’re as false as Judas.”