Carlos Gamerro - An Open Secret

“We were together for two years,” I remark.

“What did I tell you? Eat you for breakfast that one will.”

“THE DEAD DON’T ASK FOR MUCH, they’re fine with two metres of earth, a few prayers from the heart not the lips, living flowers or knick-knacks, from home, that have absorbed a lot of love. They ask so little … But then again if they’re denied it they can be ruthless. The unburied dead have no peace and therefore give no respite, and Superintendent Neri must have wished he could rescue Ezcurrita’s physical body from the bottom of the lagoon and give him a Christian burial. But it was too late by then and there was nothing he could do but leave town. No one can live with an apparition,” Ña Agripina, the healer, explained to me the afternoon I went for tea at her smart little house in the FONAVI district. “And they wonder why the Superintendent took to the bottle. I tell you Fefe, do what you like in your life but never commit an irreparable outrage against a dead man, because that is the sin that Little King Jesus talked about, that’s the sin that has no forgiveness. If we need to cling on to anything in this dark world it’s the sleep that death will eventually bring, and to go on suffering afterwards is the greatest injustice, like life without rest. But the insomnia of the dead bears no comparison with that of the living. I don’t know if you’ve heard about Superintendent Neri’s accident, he ended up ploughing into a street light on his way back from the lagoon. They say it was the bottle but I know it was Ezcurrita who appeared to him running with water in the middle of the road, Neri himself told me the time he came to ask me for something to help him sleep. Desperate he was. And it wasn’t guilt that’d made him like that, he was a policeman and it wasn’t the first time he’d killed a helpless man. Guilt merely comes from within, it isn’t that powerful. I’m telling you these things because I can see you’ve spoken with the dead, more than once, so I can tell you that the tips of Superintendent Neri’s fingers blazed in the dark with the evil light, blue like gas flames. And the lagoon couldn’t abide what they did to it either. The drowned she sends back to shore, but poor Darío, they’d sunk him in her bosom … Water can’t abide the dead. It was inevitable. You saw what the flood was like, not even the church was spared. They say it was the rains, the roads, the incline. But I know — and I’m not the only one — that the lagoon spewed up the dead man we threw into it. And we haven’t had a beach resort since, except that jetty of Don León’s stranded in the middle of the bare field in the droughts and in the floods you have to dive to find it. Anyway, as for me, I lost the taste for dipping in it after that. Neri, he couldn’t resist the temptation to make us this parting gift — before he left he just had to spit in our lagoon. And the tormented soul of Delia’s son still roams the shore, searching for who knows what. People have seen him, late at night, even people from other towns, who never heard of him. Poor Darío. Who knows, now you’re here it may bring him a little peace, right? You have to take him something Fefe. It’ll be good for him.”

“Where,” I asked in a peculiar throaty voice that came from so deep it didn’t sound like my own.

“I’ll tell you.”

“AND BY THEN I THINK SO, she’d spend practically all day there on her bench, I don’t know if anybody took her anything to eat or drink the girl did didn’t she Chesi? and people didn’t want to go that way any more they’d go all the way round the block but there was no other route to school and of course the schoolkids were curious and used to ask what was wrong with Doña Delia and it must have been one of the parents I reckon who not really knowing what to tell them and meaning no harm must’ve said Darío left town without telling his Mamá and it’s broken her heart and she’s gone crazy don’t you ever go and do anything like that and the child must’ve repeated it to his schoolmates I remember hearing it at school from my students and after that some people started calling her poor Doña Delia and others the mad hag, I swear if there’s one thing I pray for to God who’s been so good to me just one more thing I’d ask him not to let me go downhill like that or like Gloria Caramuto who can only find her way around because the town’s so small and there’s always somebody to take her back her daughter’s heart’s constantly in her mouth it is poor thing a saint she is never a complaining word don’t even dream of suggesting she should put her mother in a home they’re building one here now near Majul’s I don’t know if you’ve seen it otherwise the nearest one’s in Fuguet, and that’s what Delia needed a son to take care of her course she only had one so as not to lose her figure so they say and look where that left her. Had it been up to me I’d’ve had ten but your Uncle Rodolfo wouldn’t hear of it two’s more than enough and of course I wasn’t going to have them on my own was I. That’s what Delia was short of children are a boon and a consolation they’d’ve stopped her with Mamá please the whole town’s talking, the things she used to do, on Sunday afternoons she’d go up to the relatives of the convicts who were the only ones who’d listen to her by that stage her of all people who’d been heard to say the jailhouse ought to be moved to the outskirts of town so we wouldn’t have to face that sorry spectacle every Sunday. Ah life eh? And there were some who started on about how the police ought to do something, how it was the chief ’s responsibility to right the wrong he’d committed, but let’s face it the Superintendent wasn’t up to righting wrongs any more, all he could do was leave town.

“A FAREWELL PARTY?” I’d asked in astonishment the night before, though by that stage my credulity had been strained beyond breaking point. “Didn’t you say everyone condemned his actions?”

“The human memory moves in mysterious ways,” quipped Iturraspe, examining the flowering tip of his toothpick, tinted faintly with a watery red.

“It was at the Yacht Club,” added Licho. “I was taken on as an extra waiter, but there was no need. Half the tables were empty.”

“Ten,” specified Nene Larrieu. “When they went over to Neri’s to explain he answered It’s all right, don’t worry, you should all’ve stayed at home. You only need yourself to leave. His breath was already strong enough to knock you flat when he got there, and he downed three more bottles of red on top of that. When it came to the farewell speeches they had to pretend they couldn’t hear him chuckling to himself. Didn’t know where to put herself his missus didn’t.”

“Speeches too?” I sighed, and, before anyone could open their mouth, “No, I know, don’t say a word. My grandfather.”

“He wasn’t the only one”—Licho softened the blow. “He was joined by two or three others, each one more passionate than the last. Ease off boys, no need to roll out the red carpet, Nene was mouthing at them, and me I covered up the giggles with my empty tray. But Superintendent Neri — sorry, he was ex-Superintendent Neri by then — was wrong about one thing. Their warmth that night wasn’t hypocritical. They were genuinely glad he was leaving.”

“But he didn’t miss the opportunity for one last grand gesture, did he,” chirped Iturraspe, who’d set about applying the softened toothpick to his fingernails with greater precision. “Tell him Nene.”

“Well for a start,” began Malihuel’s infallible walking database, “the local movie house had been showing the classic western High Noon all week in a non-stop double bill with My Name Is Trinity . Who’s never dreamt at some point in their lives of throwing their badge into the dust, with the dignified contempt of Gary Cooper, at the feet of the cowardly townsfolk who didn’t deserve a sheriff like him?”