Carlos Gamerro - An Open Secret

“I remember you well,” she says to me the moment I walk through the door, I sit down and thank her for the tea and petits fours she’s honoured me with. “Your grandmother called me once to cure your bellyache. No, not by pulling the skin on your back; the seamstress’s tape measure. It works every time. Don’t you remember? Darío often used to come and see me yes,” she remarks, sipping her sweet tea from a blue cup. “Potions for the girls he used to ask me for most of all, concoctions for his binges, balms for the occasional dose of clap. He was as young as you now. You have to watch out for the drugs Fefe,” she says to me without pausing, in the same amiable monotone of tea and petits fours. “The spirit of the drugs is climbing up your back like a creeper. You can carry on with the marijuana for now, better not drop her all of a sudden ’cause she gets very jealous, but watch out for the others, especially the mineral ones. Minerals are terribly ruthless, they’re capable of anything just to live a while. What was it you had in your head? A bullet?”

“A piece of helmet.”

“He came to see me that week, but the moment he walked in I realised the die was cast,” she returned to our initial topic of conversation in the same natural tone, making me wonder if I hadn’t hallucinated her warnings about drugs, which would have had the paradoxical effect of confirming how apt they were. “The work was advanced, the web”—she interlaced her fingers with their varnished nails to illustrate—“extremely dense, too many people behind it. His shield had already been pierced, he came to me too late. The only thing he could do I told him was to get away before the net closed. The circle I told him had a break in it — the road to Fuguet. Above all he had to stay away from the lagoon, from water. Everything mineral aspires to the condition of the vegetable. And the vegetable to the condition of animals, and animals want to be people. That little girl the other night she’s a vampire. She’s already sucked the lifeblood out of the Lugozzi boy like sucking on a marrowbone. If you feel the urge to see her again pay it no mind, it isn’t coming from you. It’s she who’s calling you. Put the photo of your wife and son next to your skin over your heart and hold it there. He couldn’t say no when a woman called to him. He couldn’t even say no, not even to Mother Death. What could I do? He turned to me the way you have but he came too late. Don’t repeat his mistakes Fefe. Don’t let the new moon find you in town the way it found him. When the new moon caught up with him there was nothing left to do. You were in touch with Gloria a while ago weren’t you. I can see her every time you smile. Send her my regards when you see her again. And don’t pull such a scared face. Nothing of what you confide to me, nothing of what you don’t confide to me but I can see anyway — you know what I’m talking about — goes any further than this,” she said and traced the outline of the round table with her finger.

“AND ONE DAY at noon on my way to the lagoon I cross the square at siesta time, sun beating down, and I see some kids playing and for some reason or other I stop and watch them. It was like hide-and-seek but in reverse — they were all counting and one was hiding. The one hiding ‘was Ezcurra’ and had to get to the Comandante’s statue before the others caught him. See what it was like Fefe?” Iturraspe asks me one of those afternoons in the bar. “Even the kids knew.”

“’CAUSE THAT’S WHAT BEGAN TO HAPPEN, in the middle of the week,” Carlitos “Turquito” Majul, heir to the old general stores of Babil “Turco” Majul, the one over by the watchtower, tells me in the gym. The exercise is a shoulder press and this time it’s me who’s being spotted. My body still aches from last time. “Ezcurrita might have been lots of things but slow on the uptake he wasn’t and it began to dawn on him something was afoot. Now even his friends crossed the street to avoid him and when he came into Dad’s place say for cigarettes everyone in the queue’d stop talking. I remember him sitting at the table in Los Tocayos — one of the last images I have of him — his feet stretched out the way he always used to, drinking a beer on his own and smoking with his head down trying to work things out. He looked up in hope when he saw me and I signalled to him I’d be right back, but I didn’t show up again. Behind his back there were these two lads playing Foosball sort of robotically ’cause they couldn’t take their eyes off him. He must’ve been the only one in town who didn’t know by that stage — and his mother of course, who unfortunately was out of town. People were running from him like the plague and nobody had the common decency to at least tell him why. Till somebody plucked up the courage, or maybe it was more than one, I hope so, I don’t know what you’ve heard. They say there was a letter too, my old man used to say.”

“Wouldn’t he be able to remember who sent it if we asked him?”

“The only thing he remembers these days is Syria,” he replies, helping me to stow the weights I’m groaning under.

“KNOW WHAT THE FUNNIEST THING IS?” Carmen Sayago, the reformed ex-police officer will ask the day my promise to buy him some drinks clinches his decision to visit our table in Los Tocayos. “The Ezcurra lad came to us of his own accord. Someone must’ve tipped him off and he went right up to the Superintendent there and then. Ended up shouting at each other they did; there was — must still be — a window in the door to the chief ’s office, it’s always open in summer and you can hear everything through it. The second Ezcurra stepped inside he squared up to the Superintendent he Did I hear you’ve been asking about me around town? If there’s something you want to check on about me why don’t you come and ask me to my face? I’ve got nothing to hide and if the law has a score to settle with me I want to know about it he rattles off and the Superintendent when he can get a word in edgeways says to him a bit sad like The law’s got nothing to do with it lad, things have changed around here too. Or don’t you know what’s going on everywhere? And Ezcurra goes You can’t compare, those are communists and guerrillas. I’m one of the most influential figures in the town, not some spade who you can push around. You mess with me and you’ll end up with the whole town against you I give you my word and the Super goes Let’s see if I can talk some sense into you lad, there’s a time to defend your honour and another to save your sorry ass and I reckon you’re mixing them up but it wasn’t any use and I don’t know if you ever met Ezcurra but there was nobody could hold a candle to him for pig-headedness, even on his way out he turns round and I was born here he says to him, my mother was born here and my grandfather too. We built this town from nothing and now you, who breeze in through one door and out through another, you’re playing the big boss? Keep on messing with me and you’ll be the one who ends up leaving! Screamed at him he did in front of everybody and though the Super tried to laugh it off afterwards saying What a fucking joke and shaking his head this one’s as much chance of saving himself as a headless chicken, but if you ask me he never forgave him for that one. But in a way he was right, don’t you reckon Chief? I don’t mean it was right what they did to the Ezcurra lad but he was sort of asking for it. Going and squaring up to the chief of police like that right in headquarters just when the other one held his life in the balance and was making up his mind.”

“And wasn’t that going to get him into trouble?” I’ll intervene when the ex-corporal pauses to practise an avid piece of cunnilingus on his upturned glass of caña .