Rafael Chirbes - On the Edge

This morning, however, the calm is absolute, no engines, no voices trouble the air, and the still water reflects the blue of the sky, the passing clouds and the vegetation on the shoreline, duplicating the changing landscape. While I walk, it occurs to me that my uncle taught me pretty much everything. Handling a rifle, choosing the right bait for the right fish, laying traps baited with rotten giblets that quickly fill up with crabs, setting the nets to catch eels, even what carpentry I know I learned from him. Yes, he taught me almost everything, except my despairing view of the world, the certainty that every human being is guilty as charged. That’s in the blood, my father’s blood, which I inherited along with his harsh voice and gaze. As Leonor would say: he’s a man who still believes we’re in the middle of a war and that the most interesting battle is yet to come. That’s what my father taught me, and he wouldn’t allow me even that one ounce of innocence you need if you are to aspire to anything. I was neither a sculptor nor a cabinetmaker, which the dictionary defines as a skilled joiner who works with high-quality wood, a maker of fine furniture, Renaissance writing desks like the one created by my grandfather and my father, cupboards with moldings in the form of acanthus leaves or the petals of a flower, bedheads carved with the shapes of poppies, marquetry work, rosewood bedside tables adorned with lilies or geometric art deco designs in noble oak or ebony, none of which anyone has ever asked me to make, and none of which I would have known how to make or even wanted to. So I haven’t even really been a carpenter. Ever since I abandoned art school (after all the sacrifices I’ve made, he said: I’ve given you the chance Germán never had, the chance to do what I never managed to do, later, I discovered this wasn’t strictly true — I was a substitute for Germán, and we both failed him, more fuel for his bonfire of resentments), my father never suggested we create something together, never taught me how to be my own man and become the kind of cabinetmaker who leaves behind him a few pieces of furniture that others can admire and enjoy. When I rejected his plan, he gave up on me altogether. And I gave up on myself. In his youth, my father did have aspirations, ambitions: he wanted to get a few rungs further up the ladder than his father, who had been a good cabinetmaker but, because he’d lived here and not in a big city, had lacked the opportunities to develop his skills. He had, nevertheless, left a few good pieces, some of them still in this house that has never been mine and in which, until recently, I lived like a resident in one of those old boarding houses, who’s snapped at if he uses too much water when he showers, if he turns on the heater or reads until late into the night with the bedside lamp on.

My uncle’s justification would be:

“I was just a boy, more willing than able, and I would hammer together a few things up for local people who still remembered the workshop run by your grandfather and your father and where I’d already begun to work as his assistant. During that difficult period when I was left alone, without my father, without my older brother, the people who gave me work didn’t expect much from me, they ordered things more out of solidarity with my family, or pity perhaps, than because they thought much of my abilities. They would ask me to make a shed to store their bits and pieces, or a rabbit hutch, or a pigeon roost for the roof terrace. I never made anything for inside their houses, because even in the poorest houses, those places are still considered noble somehow, and furniture represents some kind of dignity or decency. My mother and your mother both got work scrubbing floors and washing clothes, and in the fruit-picking season, they worked as packers. When your father came back, there was almost nothing left in the workshop, most of the machines and the materials had been stolen and any furniture destroyed. The walnut chair and table that your grandfather made, and the desk of course, only survived because we hid them under hay in the shed. The other bits of furniture, a wardrobe and a dresser, were also stolen and doubtless still adorn some house in Olba.”

“But didn’t my father make that furniture?”

“Your grandfather started making them, and your father did the carvings.”

“And didn’t he do anything after that?”

“As I say, we saved that furniture at the very last moment, he’d just come back from the front and was so weak he could barely stand, but between him, your grandmother and me, we managed to get it all out into the yard—”

“And what about my mother? Wasn’t she there too? Didn’t she help?”

“—and we buried it in the hay, there was piles of it, right up to the roof, and then we used tools and boxes and old planks to disguise it. They came to plunder the house, although it seems ridiculous to apply a word like ‘plunder’ to a house in which there was barely enough to eat, but there were those machines and tools and, above all (some neighbor must have informed on us) the furniture carved by my grandfather — his pride and joy, his life’s work that he never finished, the treasure of a poor, wretched household, quite out of keeping with the rest of the furniture, but his plan, over time, had been to furnish the whole house, making the dining table, the beds and bedside tables, the wardrobes, he had it all there in his notebooks, he used to show me the drawings. The men who came were so drunk they spent their time chasing the chickens and hauling the rabbits out of their hutches — they didn’t even bother with the shed, with that load of old hay, assuming it wouldn’t contain anything of value.”

I looked into my uncle’s eyes and seemed to see in them what he as a child had seen.

“But what did they do?” I asked, “What had those eyes seen, Mom?”

“Nothing, just those drunks plundering the house and then walking drunkenly past the window a few times.”

“And they didn’t come back?”

“They came back to search for weapons, but, of course, there weren’t any, because we’d buried your grandfather’s hunting rifle, the one your uncle used to use, the one he gave to you, we buried it in the olive grove on the outskirts of the village. They came looking for papers and books too, but we’d burned or buried those a few days before.”

“But did they come back after that?”

“No, they never came back,” she replied sharply.

Funny, isn’t it? “Never” usually seems such a terrible word, but in those circumstances it brought hope: they would never come back. You will never come back either, Liliana, never, and I’m not sure if, in this instance, the word is terrible or hopeful, just as I don’t know if I will ever stop hearing your voice. I imagine I will: after all, in the end, everything fades, although it will take some time; as you know, bitterness lasts rather longer than love, your voice. No, today I’m not going to say anything because I don’t want to worry you, I told you I was crying over some problem I’ve got, but don’t ask what it is, like I said, I’m not going to tell you, and that’s that. But you’ve already told me, your eyes are telling me, look at me, that’s right, lift your chin and look me in the eye, you’re crying again, how can I not worry when I see you crying like that, in fact, if you don’t tell me, I’ll be even more worried, let me guess, you don’t have to say anything, just nod if I’m right. Wilson’s spent all the money again, is that it? You didn’t nod. Is it something worse? Did he hit you, you certainly shouldn’t let him get away with that, and if you report him, the state will protect you and automatically grant you Spanish citizenship. He didn’t hit you, did he? Or has he just left? Forgive me for saying so, but if he has left or if he did hit you, and even though you’ll be sad at first because he is your husband, the father of your children, and you still love him or did love him, he will have done you a big favor, because that man is more of a hindrance than a help. That’s not my view, it’s what you’ve told me yourself. You’re shaking your head. So he hasn’t left you and he hasn’t hit you. Well, whatever it is that’s happened can be sorted out, then. As I always say, neither good luck nor bad luck ever comes to stay, they stop with us for a while and then leave, head off somewhere else, have other people to deal with, other households. Luck is very fickle. Come here, no, don’t look away, let me stroke your hair, my poor child, my poor Liliana. What’s wrong? You’re still shaking your head. I don’t want to tell you the same thing all over again, I feel ashamed. But what’s there to be ashamed of, what shame can there be between father and daughter, come here, let me put my arms around you, that’s it, rest your head on my chest, you have such soft hair, thick and soft. You’re like your hair, strong and soft at the same time, because you know what suffering is, life has toughened you up. Don’t be frightened, child. That’s it, have a good cry, cry out all the sadness. Crying relieves and relaxes. Let me get my handkerchief out of my pocket and dry those tears, that’s better. It’s just that I feel so ashamed to come to you again and again with the same story, month after month, I mean, you’re under no obligation to help me, and I’d completely understand if you get fed up and tell me to go elsewhere, that it’s my problem, always the same old story: the fridge is empty, I’ve got nothing to give the kids to eat, no money to pay the rent. It gets boring, and I understand that. I’m so afraid you’ll get tired of me one day. But how can you say that, how could I ever get tired of you, you don’t get tired of a daughter, it’s not the kind of love you can pick up or put down as you wish, you carry it around with you, that’s right, have a good cry, rest your head on my chest. How much do you need this time?