Rafael Chirbes - On the Edge

From the top of the dunes, I can see fragments of beach between the distant buildings. Since the crisis began, the frenzy of cranes, cement mixers and derricks has stopped, and the landscape swept clear. There are half-finished buildings, where work has been abandoned, and none are still under construction. None. In winter, you can walk quietly beside the sea, feeling your feet sink into the sand, almost alone, except that the solitude of the beach is an inhabited solitude: there are fishermen, as well as English and German retirees either jogging or striding along the shoreline moving their arms energetically in what they imagine to be martial fashion, but they succeed only in looking deeply weird: rapid steps, elbows close to the body and forearms stiff, or else swinging their arms vigorously back and forth; as I say, they just look rather pathetic: old people moving clumsily, mechanically, like automatons, or like lunatics throwing a completely pointless tantrum in the face of death. I find it faintly repellent, this determination among the elderly to keep fit by running from one place to another or cycling along the concrete path that skirts the beach and which is supposed to be the esplanade (that’s what local councilmen call it when they’re interviewed on the radio). Most of these winter athletes are vigorous old people who, one can’t help thinking, would be better off sitting in front of the TV in an armchair and taking stock of their past life, preparing for the big encounter, before the lights finally go out, but who decide instead to risk their lives — which are, after all, already lost and, for the most part, wasted — as well as those of others, many of which might still have some value. They pedal along these narrow paths, full of bends and hills that test their spent hearts, some cycle along the twisting local roads in groups that even spill over onto the opposite lane. Others cycle alone. It really makes me cringe to see one of those solitary, ancient cyclists huffing and puffing up a hill. The terrain is very rugged here. The mountains dominate the horizon beyond the plain and come right down to the sea to form steep cliffs. The plain only widens out toward the north, where the orchards meet the marsh and the beach. It’s an unpleasant sight, those old men hunched over the handlebars, sweating and panting; scrawny, bird-like thighs encased in tight, garish lycra, flabby bottoms drooping over the saddle or skinny ones pointing skyward like bony, avian prows. I no longer enjoy strolling by the sea, not with all the tourists, restaurants, open-air cafés, snack bars built along the seafront, where, in winter, the waves beat against the walls of the many apartment blocks, and where, each spring, trucks bring in tons of fresh sand to replenish the beach: the sea here is a dirty, violated place, where mere passing tourists, people who come from who knows where, pee, defecate or ejaculate, and into the sea are emptied the bilges and toilets of the oil tankers that dot the horizon on their way to the port of Valencia, along with the Mediterranean cruise ships laden with retirees enjoying a falsely luxurious lifestyle or, rather, an illusion of luxury — the ports of call are announced in the newspapers: Tunis, Athens, Malta, Istanbul, the Amalfi Coast, Rome-Civitavecchia, Barcelona — leaving whole tankfuls of filth in their wake. The sea is like a great lung of salty water constantly being oxygenated, and the briny wind expelled by that respiratory organ simultaneously purifies us and cleanses itself, that, at least, is how we think of the sea, a body that is always pure because it’s washed clean by every storm, but my sense now is that it’s impregnated by the kind of sticky muck that remains in a body after it’s been violated, the cement from the buildings next to the beach, the garbage that accumulates against the breakwaters built to keep the storms from carrying off the sand; to me the whole coast looks worryingly like the aftermath of a banquet; besides, you’re never free from prying eyes; as I say, I do still walk alone along the sand, but there’s no real solitude. The flatness of the beach leaves you exposed to view; you can make out the movements of other tiny human figures from a long way off, their comings and goings; you yourself provide a permanent visual display for other walkers or for those peering out of the windows of the hundreds of apartment blocks. One day, a layer of ash will fall on all of this, covering it up, an ash whose qualities we cannot as yet decipher. In its neglected state, the marsh restores some sense of privacy to me, makes me think of the “houses” we used to build as children to shield us from the eyes of our elders, places safe from prying adult eyes, where we could set up our own system of laws, play more or less forbidden games under the tablecloth, under the bed, or inside a large wardrobe. In the marsh, you can create your own world outside the real one. No one jogs, still less cycles along the muddy, potholed paths, which smell of stagnant water, rotting vegetation and the cadavers of dead animals: a snake, a bird, a rat, a dog, a boar; the locals no longer deposit the corpses of their pets here; they used to, not so long ago, but those country houses that haven’t collapsed have been refurbished and are used only as weekend retreats, and so very few animals are kept there. Customs have changed, and a different sensibility is abroad, there’s more vigilance, more neighborhood watch, the modern name for tall-tales, which has become ever more widespread. People are keen to denounce anyone committing some offense, however minor: no one would dare to ask a neighbor to lend him his van to transport the body of a dead horse or a dog. This is now considered socially reprehensible.

I’ve parked the SUV next to the water, climbed up the slight incline to the right that conceals the vehicle from view and, from there, I’ve been contemplating a landscape partially concealed by mist and by the smoke from the bonfires in the orchards, where they’ve been pruning the orange trees. The smoke lends a watercolor quality to the sunny winter morning: the greens of the past months have been replaced by yellows and coppery browns, the light has a quality that is, at once, delicate and sharp; it emphasizes the shapes of the distant buildings, making them seem nearer, just a stone’s throw away; it carves a chiseled line around the whitewashed walls of the huts — some of which still have brick chimneys — where the rice-growers on the edge of the lagoon store their agricultural equipment, including their irrigators. In summer and at certain times of day, the water takes on the earthy color of tea, but on this sunny winter morning, it’s an intense blue, in marked contrast with the dun-brown of the dry scrub and the reedbeds: the lagoon seems to have gone back to being a bay open to the sea, a status it lost centuries ago. Where it touches the water, the sand of the dunes glitters, becoming a multitude of shining particles, like gold, mica, silver. I’m aware of the subtle, stimulating vitality of the morning, a morning that gives one a sense that everything that is about to disappear is being made anew. Even I seem to have been infected by a youthful air that makes the whole situation utterly absurd. What am I up to? What am I about to do? The beauty of the place lends an unexpected slant to the whole situation, a sort of false euphoria that overlays the gloom into which I am about to plunge and that has been waiting in the wings. I walk along with a spring in my step, pushing aside the reeds that brush my face. The shifting wind — a cold, almost imperceptible mistral that seems to cut through the air like a cheese wire — mitigates the marshy smells, mingling or alternating the sickly aromas from the stagnant water with the salty pangs carried on the breeze from the nearby sea, and with the hushed breathing of the grass, a damp emanation from the night dew that is fast evaporating beneath the warm breath of the sun. Flocks of sparrows cross the sky in formations that look as if they had been drawn by a geometrician. A distant rifle shot rings out. Someone is shooting ducks or the wild boar that come down from the mountain to drink or to hide their litter among the reeds, although they usually only arrive as dusk is coming on. I’ve watched them at sunset with my Uncle Ramón. Next to the road, at the top of the dune that runs alongside it to the left, is a well. How often have I lifted the wooden lid as I’m doing now? As soon as I do, a moist exhalation rises up from within, I can see the wall thick with maidenhair ferns, I take the bucket down from its metal hook, throw it into the well and hear a watery splash as the bucket hits bottom. As I struggle with the rope, the pulley above my head creaks and, from down below comes the echoing slosh of water as it overflows the bucket each time I give a tug on the rope. The metal bucket emerges misted with the cold water, which I drink, scooping it out with my hands, which, in turn, grow numb and intensely red. I splash my face, feeling the shock of sharp crystals on my skin. This clear, cold water bears no resemblance to the slimy stuff you get in the lagoon. When we used to drink it or pour it over our heads on hot summer days, I was always astonished at how cool the well water was and it still surprises me that, despite the depth of the well, it’s completely untouched by the salt sea nearby. What limestone corridors does it follow? How did my uncle know that down there, beneath the marshy mud, was a layer of rock and, beneath that, flowing water: the knowledge of old country folk, of water diviners who have passed on their experience, but who also have a nervous system able or trained to pick up energies and vibrations that we never notice. The well connects with some of those underground rivers born out of the rain that seeps through the calcareous rock of the nearby mountains and that then follow their subterranean course for dozens of miles beneath the sea. There are places where a fisherman can throw a bucket into the sea and find fresh water to drink. Yet, all around me lies dark, boggy earth composed of thousands of years of rotten vegetation.