Texto. Extracto de libro

I.
ON THE SUBJECT OF BIEITO’S DEATH

It was near the cemetery when I heard poor Bieito stir inside the coffin. (Of the four pallbearers, I was one.) Did I hear him, or was it apprehension on my part? At the time, I couldn’t be sure. It was such a soft rustle!… Like the obstinate moth that gnaws away in the night, so that gentle rustling has gnawed away in my fervent imagination ever since.

It’s just, my friends, I wasn’t sure, and so – please understand, listen – I couldn’t, shouldn’t have said, anything.

Imagine for a moment I had said:

“Bieito’s alive.”

All the heads of the old people carrying candles would have been raised in dumb amazement. All the kids stretching out the palms of their hands beneath the dripping wax would have whirled around me. The women would have huddled next to the coffin. A stunned, unusual murmur would have slid past all the lips:

“Bieito’s alive, Bieito’s alive!…”

The mother and sisters’ lament would have fallen quiet, and soon, getting out of time, so would the weighty march being played on the brass instruments of the wind band. And I would have been the great revealer, the saviour, the focus of everyone’s astonishment and gratitude. And the sun on my face would have acquired unforeseen importance.

Ah! And what if then, when the coffin was opened, my suspicion proved to be false? All that enormous astonishment would have turned into immense, macabre ridicule. All the mother and sisters’ urgent gratitude would have turned into contempt. The hammer banging on the coffin once more would have had a sinister, unique sound in the stupefied afternoon. Do you understand? That is why I didn’t say anything.

There was a moment when the slight insinuation of a shock passed across the face of one of my fellow funereal bearers, as if he too could hear the fleeting movement. But it was only a flash. He immediately became serene. And I didn’t say anything.

There was a moment when I almost made up my mind. I turned to the one on my side and, disguising the question in an ironic smile, slipped in:

“And what if Bieito was alive?”

The other laughed mischievously, as if to say, “What things we think of,” and I deliberately broadened my ironic smile.

I was also on the verge of saying something in the cemetery, when we’d already put the box down and the priest was in full swing.

“When the priest has finished,” I thought. But the priest came to an end and the box descended into the hole without my being able to say anything.

When the first clod of earth, kissed by a child, knocked in the hole against the boards of the coffin, the saving words clambered up into my throat… They were on the verge of coming out. But then there resurfaced in my mind the virtual certainty of the horrifying ridicule and the defrauded family’s rage, should it turn out that Bieito was well and truly dead. Besides, saying it so late increased the absurdity exorbitantly. How to justify not having said so before? I know, I know, one can always explain oneself! Yes, yes, yes, as much as you like! And yet… what if he had died afterwards, after I heard him moving about, as might perhaps be obvious from some sign? A crime, yes, a crime, to have kept quiet! Hearken now to the clamour of the people…

“He asked for help and didn’t get it, poor wretch!…”

“He heard weeping, tried to get up, but couldn’t…”

“He died of fright, his heart burst when he heard himself being lowered into the ground…”

“There he is, his face all contorted from the effort!”

“And he knew all about it. Look at him standing there without a care, grinning like a clown!”

“Is he stupid or what?”

All day long, my friends, I was mad with regret. I could see poor Bieito scratching the boards in that absolute terror, beyond all consolation and consent, of those who have been buried alive. I went so far as to think they could all read the obsession for the crime in my sleepy, distant eyes.

And in the dead of night – I couldn’t help it – I made my way towards the cemetery, my lapel raised, in the shelter of the walls.

I got there. The enclosure on one side was quite low: a few poorly positioned stones held down by ivy and brambles. I stepped over it and went straight to the spot… I lay down on the ground, applied my ear, and soon what I heard froze my blood. In the bosom of the earth, some desperate nails were clawing at the boards. Clawing? I don’t know, I don’t know. There was a mattock nearby… I was just going towards it when I stopped in my tracks. On the road that passes next to the cemetery could be heard footsteps and the murmur of talking. People were coming. Then it really would have been absurd, mad, my presence there at that time, with a mattock in my hand.

Was I going to say I had let him be buried, knowing he was alive?

And I fled with my lapel raised, sticking close to the walls.

The moon was full, and the dogs wrangled in the distance.

II.
THE LIGHT IN SILENCE

I am well aware that my case should not give rise to any metaphysical news, but only to the analyses of some subtle doctor. And yet if I were a fan of conceptual intrigue, I would tell you that night was when I felt the terrible empty presence of Mr Nobody next to me for the first time. It is certainly not my intention to make you afraid, since, as for the rest, the affair was lacking in importance.

I shall tell you what happened.

For some years now, I had been living in the city. In the little town where I had been born and my parents had died, from the family inheritance were left some fields, a house and, in the house, a few odd bits of furniture.

A farmhand who had been loyal all his life took care of everything. It was he who, in a poorly handwritten letter, urged me to make the trip. I myself was needed to sift through the ancient bundles of deeds in order to disentangle a conflict over boundaries.

I arrived almost at night on the disjointed carriage that regularly covered the distance between my town and the administrative centre the train passed through. Two hours of listening to the coachman’s shouts and the kicks he gave the boards of the seat in order to spur on the small, wretched horses.

In the house, a moment’s conversation with the farmhand while I wolfed down the dinner his wife served me.

After that, I was left alone to sift through papers in a spacious room – which had once been a living room – separated from my bedroom by a long corridor…

I have always been inclined to be startled. Loneliness, darkness, silence, unsettle me to this day.

That night, on being left alone – why not say it? – the unease began to dig inside my imagination.

The house with its mouldy walls and old pieces of wood, which had instilled a certain amount of fear in me as a child, full now of the glow-worms of memory, struck me as even more labyrinthine.

The low ceilings, with their badly carved beams, made the living room look longer than it really was.

What was more, the feeble glow from the candle stub I was using to light the room made its limits more imprecise, its corners more turbid.

The darkness from the corridor swept into the room in cold waves and piled up next to the walls, tightening its faint siege in order softly to smother, like a voluptuous criminal, the sleepy light.

The flickering of the flame would sometimes repel the shadows’ onslaught, but soon they would immerse the corners again in thick heaps.

Leafing through the deeds, I realized I needed to examine some notes that were in my bedroom. I stood up and left the living room with the candle still burning.

In the corridor, the darkness’s thousand claws, like bramble thorns, stuck to my clothes. But I paid no attention. A sensible man should pay no attention, even if the beating of his chest is like the din in a forge. Without flinching, I passed in front of many open doors.

Only when I got to my bedroom did I take out the box of matches and strike one on the sandpaper. I struck three with complete serenity. The third caught fire. In order to shield the flame, which a treacherous wind was on the verge of blowing out, I made a screen with my hand. Then I looked around, defiantly… Nobody.

I gathered up my notes, tossed aside the match and headed down the corridor in the direction of the living room.

Who was in there now?

I couldn’t see anybody. I could see only the glow from the candle filling the doorway. But that glow “could not be alone”. Do you understand? That red, restless light framed in the doorway, I don’t know why, gave me the strange certainty that there was somebody inside, absorbed in thoughts of inaccessible logic. Perhaps on hearing me come in, he would lift his head and direct towards me the kind of perplexed look with which intruders are received. Because that glow “was no longer mine”. It was his.

The red light could not be alone and did not belong to me.

I don’t know whether I said all of this to myself at the time. But when I got ready to enter the room, I was resolved to meet that perplexed look with dignity…

I went in. A whiplash of horror rooted me to the spot… In the sad and silent room, there was nobody.

III.
OLD WEATHERWORN

I can’t remember in which tavern of which port it was. All I know is that the curtain at the entrance was red and billowed like a sail in the night breeze. It must have been the lad from on board (he always went around with us, smoked a pipe and winked) who, seeing the curtain like that, said we had a tailwind. Another said it was pregnant. And a third, that it was a dancer. A Moorish dancer, he added, which must have been the reason we couldn’t see her legs. He was already delirious and, desperate as he was to woo the dancer, he disappeared.

The swell of conversations was surging with that happy commotion in which one no longer knows who is doing the talking, and who the listening. At some point it seems to me there was talk of the Chinese… those who filled large rivers with floating houses; and in amidst the Chinese, the English put in an appearance, and soon someone was remembering a girlfriend he had had in Cardiff and how nice it was to listen to her the way you would listen to a bird, pretending to understand (“yes, yes…”) so she would laugh and chatter some more. On the subject of women, what they are like, the best way to treat them, almost all of us had something to say. Things of little consequence, I must admit.

Some of the rowdier lot had left, and you could still hear them singing, tunefully out of tune, as they turned down some alleyway towards the docks, when Old Weatherworn, who up until that point had been very quiet, bared his teeth (I couldn’t say it was a smile) and remarked, looking at me and, more askance, at others who were round about, near his table:

“Rubbish!”

When I made as if to agree with him, though I wasn’t quite sure what rubbish he meant, he was already muttering things I couldn’t understand, as if prepared to sink back into his thoughts.

“Yes, nonsense…” I replied all the same, determined to put my finger on it. “They think all the world’s cases and mysteries can fit in a couple of stock phrases.”

This roused him:

“The world’s cases!… I know of a woman who even today is waiting for her husband… But she waits in vain!”

He bared his teeth once more. Whether it was pain or a smile, tenderness or rage, I do not know. That’s just how he was, Old Weatherworn. From the way he caressed his glass, empty by now, which a lively young lad came and filled and he kissed the rim of, it seemed to us he was going to tell us something, some rare example. We all fell silent and listened.

“She thought nobody would find out…” he started saying after a moment’s silence which for all of us was part of the tale, “and getting carried away, if you ask me, by those knowing looks from women who scanned her slowly from head to toe, she left first her ears open, stopping to hear things she shouldn’t, and then the doors… Gently, gently! You’ll wake the kids…”

The narrator paused and looked at us. In all our faces, he saw that we understood… He could continue.

“Poor wretch!” he said, as if considering the case very delicately. “In secret, in secret, everybody found out, all those who know about such things in towns… And that little sneak, a travelling salesman, as it happens, about whom nothing more was ever known some time later, let a couple of fools drinking at his expense come out with some witty remarks. He let them, because it tickled his fancy. While he just smiled, very discreetly… More or less as an aside, there was mention of her husband, who was far away, at sea. And that was when he said (so the story goes), ‘He may have been a brute, but he sure knew how to pick ’em! Take it from me…’ And he lowered one end of his moustache to bite it and quell some sudden desire that must have been coursing through his body… I don’t know why I linger on such details…”

“Stories need their little adornments,” said one of the company.

“That’s right, adornments, pretty, little adornments,” snorted Old Weatherworn. He drank a little, pushed the glass away and carried straight on, “One day she learnt her husband was coming home. He was nearby, in the city… She learnt he might arrive soon, when least expected, and started tidying the house so she could give him a warm welcome. Apparently she even bought some new clothes… And yet the man never quite arrived. What did arrive was two of those trunks they call ‘worlds’. And then another. And, in a letter, the thousands to pay off the debts. And then another that doubled the first. But about him, her husband, nobody had anything to report. Only questions from the women next door. ‘So, when’s he coming?’ ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow…’ Those who made it their business saw how she looked at herself in the mirror, how she moved his portrait about in its little frame of shells and periwinkles… Tomorrow, tomorrow. The little kids couldn’t get enough of rummaging in the locks of the worlds or circling about. In the end, they were able to open them, because the sailor’s oldest friend came from the city and gave them the keys… And as they rummaged inside, the stranger spoke softly to their mother.

“From the bosom of the worlds, there emerged children’s outfits, garish and smart, sweets, a little train, foreign coins, marbles – blue ones, purple ones, others the colour of silver, gold, fire… They must have been very taken aback when they showed them to their mother and saw how she burst into tears… Well, that’s the woman who’s waiting in vain. There are those who say she loved her husband.”

He fell silent for a moment. He seemed to be made of stone, stone on which dark waves, coming from afar, have deposited quivering foam. Now he was saying:

“Yes, from outside, in speech and advice, it’s easy to have good eyes, a good heart. A heart has to prove itself… For example, by not having contact, for years on end, with a woman. Just like a monk, one of those ancient desert fathers, but turning up to pull on a rope or stow away the cargo, or whatever needs doing, because the arms are still good for something; and on one of them is a flowery name that cannot be erased. A good job those Chinese did you were talking about. Yes, there are those who say she was fond of her husband, there are those who say… But not one of them would dare say so to my face!”

And suddenly Old Weatherworn, whose hand was trembling on his belt, swung his knife through the air and drove it into the table. It stood there shuddering for quite some time.

It may have been me who asked after a silence:

“Was that many years ago…?”

Old Weatherworn ran his hand over his white, shaved head and said:

“Many.”

I didn’t want to ask anything else, and we talked about the appearance of the weather.

IV.
THE OLD MAN WHO WANTED TO SEE THE TRAIN

They were from up in the mountains… From one of those villages with a wild, rustic name that lie secluded among silent peaks. A long journey they had made – on the sturdy ox cart, which creaked, groaned and lurched along uneven mountain tracks – to satisfy the old man’s whim!

A long time he had kept that desire a secret. One day, with the affected shyness of a child that asks for a sweet placed, as on an altar, on the top shelf of a cupboard, the grandfather had stammered out his caprice. He had never seen the train. He didn’t want to die without seeing the train. The daughter and son-in-law laughed good-naturedly at this crazy idea. The poor man, there were no two ways about it, had gone a bit doolally. The railway was so far away! And besides, what the hell did he care about seeing the train at his age? The grandchild, however, sided with his grandfather. And stubbornly stamped his clogs on the floor. “I want to see the train! I want to see the train!”

A moment’s reasoning with the old man and a clip around the ear for the little one, and it all came to nothing the first time. But the scene was repeated, the priest found out about it and, with the radiant composure of an experienced abbot who understands and makes concessions, he took the part of the grandfather and grandson. What the hell! The old man was robust, seasoned by the sun and the scent of pines, and wouldn’t be too exhausted by the journey.

So it was they put a truss of hay on the cart for the old man to sit on, packed a hearty picnic in a hamper and set out early one morning until they reached the forgotten, rotten stopping place where they anxiously await the miracle.

Like the strange frolicking of white cats – or so it seemed to the child – a plume of smoke rushed into the distance, above a pinewood, and a first whistle was lost on some barren crag. Another, more piercing whistle bored a hole in the sky. And another, imperious and long, soon announced, with the trembling of earth, the proximity of the Unseen. There was the train, a line of orderly monsters, with their lofty iron captain in the lead! It grew, and it grew!

Sighs of a condemned man, white hisses, bumps, second thoughts, and at once everything fell into a great silence before the astonished eyes of an old peasant farmer and a child who had put on new clogs that day especially. It was only a brief moment’s respite. No traveller alighted. Hardly anybody looked out. Two women weighed down with baskets hastily climbed into a third-class carriage, acting more sluggishly the more they were impelled by the sense of urgency. The train seemed to suffer the impertinence of formalities when one is in a hurry. And it fled once more, oozing indifference, as if never to remember that poor, rotten stop again.

The grandson talks a lot. How fast the train went! And it didn’t have any horses. And there was a child just like him who had looked out of the window. A well-dressed child with delicate features, wearing the expression of rich kids from cities who travel by train and live in tall buildings. That child thought nothing of being on a train. What secret refinement there was in such indifference! And there was also a young lady with a thin cloth, like a spider’s cobweb, covering her face… A purple cloth.

The old man talks little. He is satisfied, but a little dejected. In that world that had flashed for an instant before him, he had glimpsed many things he had never suspected up in the high gorse fields. There were other worlds apart from his own. Bewitched, happy, enticing worlds. But for him, by now, poor thing…

Suddenly the little lad piped up:

“When I grow up, I also am going to travel by train.”

The old man’s wrinkles wove a web of sombre sadness.

The sturdy ox cart creaked, groaned and lurched all the way back to the village with the wild, rustic name that lay secluded among silent peaks.

V.
THE SUICIDE CHILD

When the innkeeper finished reading that disturbing piece of news – a child had committed suicide with a shot to the right temple – the unfamiliar tramp who had just eaten very frugally in a corner of the seaside tavern spoke, and said:

“I know the story of that child.”

He pronounced the word “child” in a very peculiar manner. So it was that the four drinkers of brandy, the five drinkers of Albariño wine and the innkeeper fell silent and listened with an inquisitive, attentive air.

“I know the story of that child,” the tramp repeated. And after an astute, well-measured pause, he began:

“Back in around 1830, a pious lady who later died of fright saw a very old old man emerge from the flowery, fragrant cemetery of her village in the nuddy. That old man had just been born. Before emerging from the womb of mother earth, he himself had chosen this type of birth. ‘How much better to go from old to young than from young to old!’ he thought, being pure spirit. Our Lord was struck by the idea. Why not give it a go? So it was that, with his consent, a skeleton was formed in the earth’s bosom. Then with worm’s flesh was made the flesh of man. And into the flesh of man seeped the gentle warmth of blood. And since everything was ready, mother earth gave birth. Gave birth to an old man in the nuddy.

“How this old man then found clothes and sustenance is very funny. He reached the gates of the city and, since he still didn’t know how to speak, the ministers, having thrown a cloak around him, took him before the judge, saying as if they themselves had been witnesses, ‘Here we bring you this poor old man who lost the power of speech from the beating he received at the hands of some no-good thieves. They even stripped him of his clothing.’

“The judge gave orders, and the old man was taken to a hospital. When he left, well clothed and fed by now, the nuns exclaimed, ‘What a strapping, fine lad you’ve become. Anyone would think you’ve lost years!’

“By this stage, he had learnt to speak a little and he became a beggar. So it was he travelled through many lands. He was over in Lourdes twice – so rejuvenated the second time that those who’d met him the first believed it was a miracle of the Virgin.

“Having acquired enough experience, he decided the best thing would be to keep that strange condition that made him younger the more years went by a secret. That way, without anybody knowing, bar one or two loyal friends, he could live his true life better.

“He worked as an old man and became rich so he could live at ease when young. From the age of fifty to fifteen, his life was as happy as can be imagined. He pleased the girls more and more and hooked up with lots of them, including the prettiest. Some say there was even a princess… But of that I cannot be certain.

“When he reached childhood, his life began to get complicated. The surprise with which people watched him sauntering into shops to buy sweets and toys frightened him. The odd pickpocket with cap pulled low followed him along many a winding street. And there were times he ate his sweets while trembling with anguish, tears in his eyes and syrup on his lips. The last time I came across him – he was eight by then – he looked very sad. And besides, the memories of old age weighed so heavily on his youthful spirit!

“A tremendous obsession began to assail him day and night. In a few years’ time, he would be picked up in some forgotten alley. By a rich, childless woman, perhaps. And then… Who knew what would happen after that! Breastfeeding, outings in a pram, a rattle in his tender hand. And at the end… Oh! The ending didn’t bear thinking about. To fulfil his destiny of a man living back to front and retreat into the rich woman’s bosom – perhaps when she was asleep – in order there to fade away until he became first a leech, then a louse, and finally a tiny seed…”

The tramp got up very pensively, hands in his pockets, and took a few steps, all overcome by bitterness. Eventually, he said:

“I can understand, yes, I can understand why the poor lad would shoot himself in the temple.”

The four drinkers of brandy believed. The five drinkers of Albariño wine smiled and doubted. The innkeeper denied. And just when they were arguing most heatedly, the innkeeper suddenly stood on tiptoe and glanced around with wide open eyes. The tramp had disappeared without paying.

VI.
ON THE DEATH OF ESTRELIÑA

Her name was Estreliña, and she was very diligent and pretty.

Her mother would say to her, “Go to the fountain, Estreliña.”

And Estreliña would go to the fountain.

Her mother would say to her, “Go to the orchard, Estreliña, and tell Daddy to stop pruning and come and have his lunch.”

And Estreliña would run off, happy to be on an errand, and call to her father.

Her father would say to her, “Stay still, Estreliña, the dog is going to bite you.”

And Estreliña would stay still, her whole face ablaze, smiling.

And her marriageable sister would say to her, “Go to school, Estreliña.”

And Estreliña would take her primer and, very upright and content, make her way to school.

And so it continued.

And when the other kids saw her, they would shout from far away, “Estreliña! Estreliña!”

And Estreliña would run in their direction, nibbling on a bun, and give them a piece, and they would play puss in the corner.

And sometimes, very early, a child would pass beneath her window and say, “Estreliña!”

And Estreliña, smiling as if nothing had happened, would show her face in the window for a moment. A moment, not more. And the child would run off laughing, as if it had been up to some mischief.

And so it continued.

And one day Estreliña died. She was in the coffin, as pretty as always, looking as if nothing had happened.

And her mother, and her marriageable sister, wept behind the coffin. Her marriageable sister wept and recalled the little things little Estreliña would do every day.

And her mother hardly said a thing.

Only from time to time, measuring and supporting her marriageable daughter’s lament, would she say:

“Estreliña, go to the fountain. Estreliña, go to the orchard. Estreliña, go to school… Estreliña yesterday! Estreliña today! Estreliña tomorrow!”

VII.
ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN TWENTY-SIX

I woke up, raised my head and… what crazy anguish, my friends! My forehead knocked against a surface, smooth and cold as if polished by the hard horns of Evil. My hands – oh, hands, humble bowmen of the spirit in darkness! – went up and encountered the same smooth, cold surface. My knees as well, and soon my whole body, wriggling about in that metal niche with all the desperation of a caged snake. I lay there, afterwards, trembling like a little child, letting myself be cradled by the immense drowsiness weighing down on my eyelids. When I came to once more, I wanted to overcome my misfortune. I shall never forget the thoughts of that moment. Traditional consolations, which had so diligently huddled next to my pain, disappeared in silence, as if ashamed of their own impotence. The last to leave, I must confess, not without some embarrassment, was the consolation of – what shall I call it? Aesthetics? Never mind. I had to take refuge in conformity, and also in that welcoming half-sleep backing up the itchiness in my eyes.

It was then this certainty, I cannot say how, came to assert itself in my mind. I haven’t been buried alive. I am in this niche in order to carry out a weighty mission.

What mission was this? Without realizing, I began to stroke my chin – I can’t remember whether it was bearded or not – with a highly meditative and perhaps conceited air.

Sleep was overwhelming me. From far away, faint and indecisive, there came small snowflakes of memory.

“Yes, anything is possible,” the doctor had said with that smile of physicians well versed in orientalism. At that point, the clock, insomniac and delirious, had struck an absurd hour.

Anything is possible, anything is possible… Had I, then, slept for ten thousand years?

I came to at once.

Yes, that was it. There could be no doubt. I recalled no illness or other circumstance leading up to death or a funeral.

All right then. Let’s say that was the case. The doctor must have provided me with the means to get out of the niche and see what the world was like in the year 11926.

My hands rummaged shakily in the bottom of my pockets. A watch, a thermometer, a box of matches, a tobacco pouch, a pistol, an electric torch, a sealed letter… a key!

I examined the top of the niche with the torch on and soon came across an intricate keyhole. The key fitted.

My joy was as big as the greatest horror. So many, new forces leapt about inside my soul and got so mixed up in search of facts to calm their strained, painful impetus they almost wiped me out. I wasn’t a man buried alive. I was a “most ancient” culture buried alive. I was an archsolitary spirit. What can have happened to my parents, to my most ancient friends, to that most ancient warm and fair young maiden? Not being able to tell them what I saw, not being able to dazzle them with my account of the most excellent, perfect, miraculous sovereignty of the men – colonizers of the stars, perhaps – whose footsteps I thought I could hear above me, saddened me somewhat. And the doctor? Poor doctor, magnificent, heroic, most spiritual doctor, rotten in the ground, having sent me across the immense parabola of ten thousand years! I burst into tears, trembling with a mixture of tenderness and happiness.

Who knows how long I would have remained like that, still and content, had I not noticed, above my forehead, a little needle like that of a clock bringing its indicative point around to the symbol for death so fashionable back in the twentieth century: a skull and crossbones? I understood. It must have been set in motion by the movement I made when I woke up from my millenary sleep and meant my stay in the niche had to end before the needle made the gesture for silence on top of the skull’s teeth. A little sign next to the circuit the needle had travelled around confirmed what I had suspected:

Once the normal rhythm of functions has been re-established, the provision of… (and here there was a chemical formula I didn’t understand) will be exhausted in a single revolution of the needle and your life will be in danger.

I gathered together all my strength in a tightly packed sheaf and inserted the key in the lock.

How shall I describe the crypt – I shall call it that – where I found myself on exiting the niche?

I cannot see its limits very well. All that appears before my memory is a nicely carved stone corner with a barrel, and next to it the creaking door I pushed… Was there then a short staircase leading to a corridor? Followed by a small reception room with three doors, one of them very low (that’s the one I went through), more staircases and corridors, and at some point water in the middle? Things like that, I seem to recall, but the images are uncertain and not always the same. You shouldn’t set much store by them.

I must now bring you up to date with the secret of that sealed envelope, which I opened carefully, repressing my desire, as you can well imagine. It contained two crucially important documents.

In one of them, the doctor gave me the advice I should follow closely for my life, which had been compromised by the fearful experiment, not to ebb away in a matter of years (months, perhaps, or days, or even hours!).

The other was a long, very respectful and dignified letter addressed to the doctors of the year 11926.

They both bore the same date – Compostela, 1926 – and the same name – Dr Nóvoa Santos. Signed with a flourish.

I read the documents, free by now, out in the open, somewhat superficially and absent-mindedly, glancing up from time to time with growing astonishment. Because Compostela, my friends, had disappeared.

I stuffed the papers in my pockets with such bewildered haste that I crumpled them and started dashing from side to side of the uncultivated, deserted landscape. I leapt onto a small elevation dotted with crags, and from the top of one of them gazed at the distance all around. A bolt of surprise caused me to hear my own articulate voice for the first time in ten thousand years. “The sea!” I shouted. There it was, and not so far away. Sparkling, merry… But also deserted. No sails or plumes of smoke indicated the presence of man. How had it got there? In a single fervent, furious bound, or very slowly, over a span of centuries? This wasn’t the time to be thinking about such things, and I came down from the summit, first towards the valley, then…

How much happier I had been in the bosom of the niche than afterwards! I had been walking for many hours, following the sun’s path, and the pangs of hunger, while excruciating, were not as bad as a suspicion that had begun to dig its nails into my imagination, growing in competition with my normal steadfast optimism. I didn’t want to believe it, but I was going to have no choice but to accept it: the earth had to be deserted. And I, the only survivor. A conceited, mocked survivor. All alone in the world. How the stars would make fun of me when night came! How they would wink at each other! But maybe not. Perhaps they would greet me with a glittering hurrah! Perhaps they would sing their Pythagorean requiem to me, as I lay on the rocky ground, the pallor of death on my features. This thought gave me the strength to carry on walking.

The sun was low by now, and the day was growing cold.

Three figures on the brow of a scorched mound: a tree, a man and a child. The three of them silhouetted against a red evening sky. A man and a child! Yearning to turn into a bundle of festive fireworks, I started running towards them. Inhabitants of the great Perfect City, which wouldn’t be far away, I surmised. And still running, I didn’t stop laughing nervously, full of this explosive childish glee.

As I got closer, I was struck by something – a lump hanging off a branch of the tree, swaying gently, but erratically. I carried on, more deliberately now…

I still couldn’t make out the lineaments of that thing. I didn’t want to give credence, so abruptly like that, to the admonitions of horror and carried on smiling, with this fixed smile, as I rummaged in my mind for an explanation that would furnish me with some encouragement. Certainly, that thing hanging off the tree was a human leg… But pretend, no doubt. The man had to be the master and the child, his disciple. Teaching under the open sky. How wonderful! It couldn’t be any other way in the year 11926.

But no. There was no other explanation. The man and the child were gorging themselves, sinking angry, greedy teeth into the slices they were cutting off the bloody leg. I was rooted to the spot, motionless, watching in dumb amazement, a few feet away, how they stuffed themselves.

Suddenly, they raised their eyes and saw me. They dropped their slices and started shouting things I couldn’t understand. A new and simple fact presented itself to me in a flash: over a period of ten thousand years, the evolution of languages made it unlikely I would be able to communicate with men of that kind. And I decided the best thing was to flee.

Beneath the blackness of that failure, how the deepest questions were rephrased in my spirit! Good and evil, heroism, saintliness, wisdom, God… There was no time to think.

I ran, letting myself be carried by the slope of the hill. Behind me, it wasn’t just two people coming. There was a deafening horde chattering furiously – who knows in what jargon? – and throwing stones so they would roll after me. How the stars would weep when they saw my pulverized body at nightfall! In leaps, rolls and tumbles, being pursued all the time, I covered a lot of difficult ground, all the way down to the seashore, which was fearful and imprecise in the shadow of dusk.

On one side, degraded man; on the other, the same sea as always. With tears in my eyes – whether of sorrow, fear or rage, I cannot say – I took out the pistol and fired two shots.

I was about to fire the third when a third knock shook the house… and I awoke. I awoke at once, shivering with cold. A trickle of moist light filtered in through a crack in the windows.

On the flagstones in the street, the rhythm of clogs and the cry of every morning:

“Who will buy my milk!”

Sad, comforting and strange…

VIII.
THE KNIGHT’S DRAMA

The scene is filled by a chessboard beneath a sky with stars and a large moon, half obscured from time to time by the passing of a stormcloud. When the curtain rises, all the pieces can be seen, each of them in position, except for the King’s White Knight.

The black king: Are you all there?

A black pawn, standing stiffly to attention: We are, sir, yes.

The white king: Are you all there?

The king’s white bishop, after a silence and seeing nobody is going to speak: There’s one missing here… The Knight on my side.

The white king: That Knight, that Knight!… He always has to be the same! And now, as if he wanted to complicate the stars’ speech even more, making out he’s some kind of soothsayer…

A white pawn, lively and chatty: Would you like me to go and fetch him?

The other white pawns, laughing mockingly: Oh, he’s a brave one! Let him go then! He’s only going to get bitten!…

The white bishop: All this chit-chat! Tell those boys to be quiet! To the King, craning his neck: I think that’s him coming.

The lively pawn: That’s right, boys, little boys… And who goes in front? And who’s the first to let himself be swallowed up? All this chit-chat… All this pride, you mean! Afterwards, in the box, we’re all one.

The bishop: Watch out! He’s coming!

Beneath the impulse of the shadow that carries him to his destiny, the King’s White Knight arrives, with a few lazy swerves, in one of which he knocks over the talkative Pawn.

The pawn: Not so fast! He stands up indignantly.

The white king, to the Knight: You always have to be the same! Why on earth did it take you so long to come? The Knight withdraws into himself. May I know, dear Knight, why it is you don’t answer the questions you’re being asked? I am asking you!

The white bishop, intervening diplomatically, half in jest: It seems he doesn’t want to be a Knight… He wants to be a Bishop.

The white knight, snorting: That’s all that fits inside a Bishop’s pear-shaped, twisted noggin! Who ever heard me say such a thing, even in dreams? With a superhorse’s guffaw: A Bishop, me!

The white king, imposing and smiling, with a friendly glance towards the Bishop and a conciliatory lowering of his eyelids towards the Knight: Be quiet, dear Bishop, and let our friend, the Knight, say what he knows better than anyone.

The white knight: I don’t want to be a Knight, a Knight and nothing but a Knight, but nor do I want to be a Bishop, or a Pawn, or a Rook, or a Kkkk… He stops himself in time before the King and Queen’s inflamed, aggravated gaze and, instead of saying “or a King”, fakes a cough and continues: I want to be something that is at once Knight and Bishop and Pawn and Rook and…

The white king, piqued once more: And King? Go on, speak! And King?

The white bishop, half to rescue the Knight from a difficult situation, half to make fun of him: No, he wasn’t going to say such a thing, your Majesty. He was going to say… White, isn’t that so?

The queen, abruptly: White! There’s no respect even for White anymore! She lifts her eyes to the heavens, where the omens are mixed.

The white knight, on the slippery slope of daring confessions by now: That’s right! White as well!

The king: There’s no understanding him. Who knows where he’s been?

The queen: Or in what company… To the Knight on her side: You’re not like your brother, are you?

The queen’s white knight: No, milady, no. The same stick, the same shape, and I don’t understand him.

The queen: You do well. Nor do I. And yet, without me, everything goes downhill.

The Black King is heard bellowing impatiently.

The black king: So what! Are you coming out or not?

The blackies: Come on then, palefaces! They let out a whoop.

The blondies: Just you wait, firebrands! They let out a whoop.

The white king: Enough of that. Silence! Forward, that Pawn. Careful now! Just one step!

The pawn: Have the customs changed? Wasn’t it always two?

The white king: One, I tell you! That’s it, very good.

The pawn: It’s not a bad idea. Blackie over there is having to think about it… He took just one step as well! Didn’t take you long to learn, did it, blockhead?

The king: Shut up, worm. Now you, his cousin, forward. Two steps and hold firm, without fear of the corner-cutter who’s trying to catch you unawares. You, metaphysical Knight, one leap in the direction of the Rook. Don’t let the one over there know what it is you’re planning. Defend me well! Keep it up, everyone! Each to his own!

There follows a succession of orders and speeches.

The king’s bishop, to the Rook: The Knight reckons those things only fit inside his bonce. Me too… If you could see how I envy you your destiny. The way you travel along that broad road without having to slip through the crack of corners, like me…

The rook: And if only you knew how I envy you that lance with which you pierce from afar…

The bishop: And me, those broad hips of yours…

A pawn who’s listening in: Well, I felt the Rook’s broad hips weighing so heavily on top of me once I thought they were mine.

The rook: You know that’s true? I also have felt the Bishop on the other side burrowing with such persistence I got to thinking his lance was mine somehow.

The pawn: And once, I recall, I felt so many paths passing over me that, the more I was a Pawn, the more I thought the whole game was just little old me.

Another pawn: So many paths!… You’re heading for trouble on the one you’re on. They’re calling for you!

The first one: Here I come.

The bishop: To be the whole Game! It might not be so bad… If I were the whole Game, what a bishop’s, bishopy-bishop’s game it would be! Bish, bosh, bash! Checkmate. It’s over.

Suddenly there’s the astonished grumbling of myriad pieces. Orders are interrupted, stammered out. The moon is covered. Darkness.

The king, from the height of the ruckus: Keep still now! Nobody move from where he is. The lanterns! Come on, come on! To a sleepy Rook: What is it! Can’t you hear me?

The rook: So long forgotten, motionless, I had myself a little nap. Taking out his lit lantern and peering into the distance: What stage is the Game at? What’s going to happen? What’s happening?

The bishop, craning his neck: Nothing now. It’s the end.

The lively pawn: The King’s Knight suddenly galloped off of his own accord and went to die at the feet of the Black Queen! If you ask me, he committed suicide!…

The white queen, to the Rook still holding his lantern aloft, like a lighthouse: You don’t need to shine that thing anymore. If only everyone could be content being what they are, as I am content being the White Queen!

The rook, blowing out his lantern and putting it away: Quite so, quite so… I think I’ll have myself another sleep.

The murmuring of pieces gradually fades, sinking into stupefied silence, and all the pieces become stiff and quiet, just as if they were made of wood. As the moon, yellow now and sullen, reappears, the curtain falls.