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Short stories / Marica Campo
Marica Campo (O Incio, 1948) é escritora, mestra e creadora polifacética, con obra en poesía, narrativa e teatro. A súa poesía, en libros como Pedinche a luz prestada ou Tras as portas do rostro, destaca pola intensidade lírica e o compromiso coa memoria, a identidade e a muller. No relato e na novela aborda a realidade rural, a emigración e a loita pola dignidade.
Marica Campo (O Incio, 1948) is a writer, teacher, and multifaceted creator, with work in poetry, fiction, and theater. Her poetry, in books such as Pedinche a luz prestada or Tras as portas do rostro, stands out for its lyrical intensity and commitment to memory, identity, and women’s voices. In short stories and novels, she addresses rural life, migration, and the struggle for dignity.
Cando penso que te fuches,
negra sombra que m’asombras
ao pé dos meus cabezales
tornas facéndome mofa.
Rosalía de Castro. Follas Novas
A chuvia, furadas as calexas que a debían recoller, esvara polos muros da casa. Os meus pasos no corredor confúndense cos dela nas lousas do tellado. Á fin, somos dúas e somos unha. Son auga ou levo toda a auga do mundo a percorrerme as veas. Eles non o saben. Elas non o saben tampouco.
Non o sabe meu pai e por iso me colle en brazos coa axuda de Pedro, o meu irmán, para levarme ao médico. Como se se puidese coller no colo un río. O médico, tan sabio el, non o sabe e recéitame pílulas que, no meu estómago de auga, malia seren brancas, se converten en peixes de cores con aletas e escamas. Case nunca as tomo. Fago coma quen que si e despois cúspoas sen que me vexan. Tantos bichos nadando dentro de min desacóuganme unhas veces, e fanme cóxegas, outras, e eu escacho a gargalladas.
Non o saben miña nai nin as miñas irmás, Rosalía e Xiana. Din que as atemorizo coas risadas que ceibo. Acordo polas noites e admírome de que as sabas estean secas e quentes, como se eu non fose auga verdadeira, da que molla e fai pucharcas que despois conxela o corisco. Daquela aplaudo e berro “albízaras!”, porque é un milagre moi grande. E elas, dálle con que as esperto e que todo é un pesadelo.
Un pesadelo é que me tomen por louca e me internen nun sanatorio psiquiátrico. Din que se non me porto ben e non deixo durmir a familia, non me sacarán de alí en moito tempo. Xa o fixeron máis veces.
Non lles digo que son auga, porque ese é o meu segredo máis grande. Non lles conto que un día perdín as chaves que abrían a porta da razón de quen razoa conforme está mandado. Non lles fago saber que a miña é unha outra razón para a que eles tampouco non teñen chave.
Todo aconteceu o serán en que lle puxen nome á miña soidade. Marcharas e deixaras a túa sombra, como a camisa dunha cobra que a muda varias veces ao ano. Desde aquela tornei transparente e non puiden durmir. E -outro prodixio máis!- non consigo lavar a sombra que vai comigo e non é a miña, a mesma que non marchou contigo e é a túa.
A psiquiatra fita nos meus os seus ollos serios cando lle digo que estou asombrada. Asombrada de sombra, non de asombro. Perde a paciencia, dime que iso é unha superstición, lonxe do coñecemento científico, e escribe receitas sen parar. Que escriba o que lle pete, porque non penso engulir pílulas que despois se converten en peixes de cores no meu estómago.
Unha cousa é a loucura e outra ben distinta a sombra. Ao tío Pepe, un tío do meu bisavó, ninguén o alcumou de louco. Simplemente dicían que estaba asombrado. Todo se lle tornara medo e cautela desde que uns arrieiros maragatos, os homes da tralla como dicía a avoa, amagaran con botalo de cabeza ao río. El regresaba da feira do dezaoito en Lalín, a estrear mocidade e independencia.
Viña o rapaciño cantaruxando alegre pola Ponte das Pedras, no río Arnego, cando bateu con aqueles tres homes rudos, curtidos polo sol e pola xeada. Levaban cadansúa reata de mulas cargadas coa mercadoría que pregoaban por vilas e aldeas. Falaron entre eles baixiño, seguramente a pórse de acordo para se divertiren a conta do rapaz, e, agarrándoo polos pés, amagaron varias veces con botalo ao río. Naquel punto, o río procura camiños entre os penedos e as pedras que emerxen do seu leito. Pepe sabía ben que a caída sería mortal.
Cando chegou á casa familiar, o rapaz que saíra dela unhas horas antes, xa era outro. Non permitía que lle cortasen o cabelo e, a partir de que o cura o agarrara coa axuda doutros rapaces e lle sacara as guedellas, declaroulle unha guerra non cruenta, mais ao seu xeito encarnizada. Entraba en plena misa tocando o tambor e, no canto de se confesar con el, facíao consigo mesmo. Nun furado da parede, gardaba os seus cubertos. Para a roupa non quería botóns mercados no comercio, senón os de fío que facían as costureiras daquela. Fuxía, en fin, de todo o que lle lembrase aqueles homes vidos de fóra.
Eu tamén estou asombrada e volvinme auga transparente. É o meu xeito de me achegar ao mar da túa morte. Porque a túa morte é un mar e ti aboias nel coma unha botella con mensaxe. Que ninguén me tire desta sombra. Non quero pílulas e menos as descargas eléctricas que disque lle aplican a algúns e, por fortuna, meu pai prohibiu para o meu tratamento.
Eu fun outra antes de ser de auga. Estudaba enxeñaría agrónoma e, non sei se por casualidade ou por premonición, teimaba especializarme en hidroloxía, a materia que impartías ti.
Falabas da auga con tal paixón que eu quixen ser auga para que me amases así. Admirabas as pingas de orballo nas rosas da mañá e os trebóns a te sorprender sen chuvasqueiro nin paraugas.
Quixen ser auga e escribincho na derradeira misiva que che enviei a esta banda. A de hoxe terá que cruzar á outra beira. Naquela confeseiche o meu propósito de me botar ao río, alí onde a corrente o arrastra todo cara ao mar. O que pasou, ben o sabes. A min rescatáchesme, mais a ti non te puido rescatar ninguén.
Despois de aquilo ingresáronme por vez primeira. Teimaban en que me quixera suicidar e nada é máis falso. Porén, nos lles dixen o que verdadeiramente procuraba e conseguín. Ben sei que ao prezo de perderes a túa sombra e de levares a miña, a custa de non concluír nunca a nosa historia.
Cando salaio na alta noite, regresan as ameazas. Cando o amor é tanto, chámanlle loucura. Non saben que, en realidade, é sombra. Sombra, ese cuarto escuro onde se esconde a transparencia para que, máis unha vez, o misterio teña o rostro cuberto.
Puxeron calexas novas e esconderon a escopeta de balotes para que eu non as volva furar. Agora a chuvia non lambe os muros, a facer da casa unha fervenza. Todo acontece como se eu non fose auga. Secasí, son auga porque bebín un río enteiro.
2
Outra illa, outro barqueiro
Sediame eu na ermida de San Simon
e cercaronmi as ondas, que grandes son;
¡eu atendendo o meu amigo,
eu atendendo o meu amigo!
Mendinho
Había unha semana que chegara ao Sur de Galiza desde Romanía. Procedía de Râmnicu Vâlcea, na rexión de Oltenia, a máis desfavorecida daquel país. O mozo, Velkan, recolléraa nun flamante Mercedes todoterreo para levala ao aeroporto de Sibiu.
Aló, ninguén se sorprendera ao vela subir ao auto coa súa exigua equipaxe. Era habitual a escena. Primeiro un rapaz ben feito vagaba polas rúas, ao axexo dunha moza bonita. Ao pouco tempo paseaba con ela e bicábanse ás escondidas. Consolidado o namoro, a rapaza viaxaba coa ilusión de conseguir un emprego atractivo e agardar polo amado, que tardaría poucos días en seguila.
Tal como estaba previsto, recibíraa Dragos, o romanés amigo de Velkan, seica axente de modelos que a levaría a unha academia para que aprendese a desfilar. Xa pola autoestrada, Alina vixiaba o home de esguello. Máis semellaba un boxeador que alguén ocupado nas finezas da moda. Non falaba. Apenas respondía con monosílabos ás preguntas e dúbidas da rapaza. Aínda así, en ningún momento desconfiou del. Certo que non se asemellaba en nada ao seu amigo, o que ficara en Romanía e había viaxar en breve para vivir con ela.
A hora e media de traxecto desde o aeroporto déralle para entender que pasaría un tempo cunha romanesa dona dun negocio de hostalaría, que lle había ensinar o idioma do país para que se puidese entender sen maior dificultade.
Deixaran a autoestrada e, despois de circular por unha vía secundaria, enfilaran un camiño sinalado cunha frecha luminosa baixo dun letreiro, luminoso tamén, coa palabra Club e un corazón a se acender e apagar de xeito intermitente. A construción era unha illa no medio e medio dunha caivanca. Na fachada outro letreiro escintilaba un nome: Paradise.
Xa no interior, Dragos levouna a Lenuta, a empresaria, coma quen entrega un envío postal e, tras se despedir cun gruñido, abandonou o pequeno despacho da socia.
A acollida por parte desta non lle fixo presaxiar nada bo a Alina. Xa coa mosca na orella tras ver a escenografía do lugar, escoitou o monólogo da madama como a música dun pesadelo, a dubidar se todo aquilo lle estaba acontecendo a ela.
-Supoño -díxolle a muller- que non serás tan inxenua como para pensar que unha rapaciña de Râmnicu Vâlcea pode chegar aquí e comezar unha carreira de modelo. Non digo que non chegues a selo, mais terás que facer o teu percorrido coma todas. Eu mesma..., vaia, xa irás vendo. De momento terás que aceptar o que hai e o que hai é este club onde podes aprender a lingua e o oficio.
-Que oficio? -apresurouse a preguntar-. De camareira?
Lenuta mirouna de abaixo a arriba cun sorriso ambiguo e despois falou sen lle responder a pregunta:
-Vamos, que terás que cear algo. Descansas nunha butaca da saliña e, cando marchen os clientes, dormes no soto, onde está o bar, nun colchón inchábel. De momento, non traballarás máis que na limpeza porque eles non entenden o romanés. Darache para pagar os teus gastos mínimos. Despois, si. Despois, canto máis traballes, máis pronto poderás saldar a túa débeda e mesmo aforrar e alugares un apartamento ...
-De que débeda fala? -inquiriu á beira do pranto- Eu soamente estou en débeda con Velkan, que me pagou a viaxe.
-Velkan? Quen é Velkan? A viaxe financiámoscha Dragos e mais eu e de aquí non te vas até que non pagues até o último euro, agás que queiras aparecer morta nun vertedoiro de lixo -concluíu ameazante.
Daquela, a Alina xa non lle coubo dúbida de que caera nunha trapela, como tantas outras compatriotas súas das que se contaban cousas ben tristes. En realidade coidaba que o enganado fora o seu mozo e, o que se dicía seu amigo, Dragos, lle mentira miserabelmente. Aquela noite, cando ficou soa e encerrada no soto enreixado, tentou falar con el a través do móbil que el mesmo lle proporcionara. O aparello nin sequera deu sinal cando marcou primeiro o seu número e despois outros que tiña na memoria. Aínda así, non podía -ou non quería- pensar que Velkan a enganara.
Feita un mar de bágoas, rematou adormecendo polo cansazo e a tensión que tivera que soportar. Non acordou até que, xa entrada a mañá, oíu que alguén entraba. Imaxinou que sería Lenuta, mais era Dragos. Acendeu a luz para ver onde instalara tan precario leito e, desde que a localizou, apagou de novo a luz e abalanzouse sobre dela. Sen dicir palabra, valeuse da desigualdade de forzas e consumou a súa ignominia.
Pasara só unha semana, mais fora un tren infinito de instantes coma vagóns cargados de infortunio. A dúbida de se o noivo representara un papel para gañar a súa confianza e entregala á perdición. A necesidade de acreditar nel e, para poder facelo, imaxinar que algo malo lle sucedera. As malleiras por se negar a comer e por non cooperar na aprendizaxe da lingua. As visitas intempestivas do garañón, na teima de lle quebrar a vontade e sometela. A repugnancia de asear os cuartos e recoller as inmundicias. As saudades de canto deixara atrás. O continuo bater nos miolos para dar cunha saída, tanto no sentido literal coma no figurado. Precisamente, se a facían durmir no bar, situado no soto, era por estar todas as ventás enreixadas anulándolle a posibilidade de fuxir.
Aquela noite, cando quedou soa por completo no club, aquelou o leito e deitouse de inmediato. Era cando e como mellor se sentía, encrequenada en postura fetal, acaso tentando regresar á mornura primeira.
Escoitábanse tronos a cadora máis cerca. Semellaban un exército a se achegar ao campo de batalla. Alina escondeu a cabeza baixo da manta coa que acrecentaba a calor do saco de durmir. Así, ademais de non percibir os lóstregos, minoraba a intensidade dos estralos.
Espertou de súpeto, pasadas algunhas horas, sentíndose completamente enchoupada. O nivel da auga subía por momentos. Aínda sabendo por adiantado que non tiña posibilidades de saír, tentouno e mesmo escachou varias cadeiras contra a porta, sen que esta cedese. E a auga seguía enchendo o local como unha piscina hermética, mais con teito.
Cansa e a punto de desistir, achegouse á barra co propósito de baleirar directamente unha botella de vodka ou calquera outra bebida espirituosa que achase nos andeis. Quería estar inconsciente. Foi entón cando reparou nun verme de luz que escintilaba por momentos. Era un móbil que alguén deixara alí, arrombado entre os envases de vidro medio baleiros. E a auga seguía o seu ascenso imparábel.
Por fortuna, o móbil estaba aceso. Houbo chamar á casa, mais coutouse ao pensar na avoa. Non quería que sufrise. Mellor que pensase que se escapulira por unha fírgoa da terra e desde entón moraba nunha espenuca, como as criaturas máxicas dos contos que lle relatara de nena.
En troques, chamou á súa amiga Nicoleta, que aínda que estaba en Romanía para pasar un tempo coa familia, traballaba nun xeriátrico de Madrid.
-Sobe á barra, non agardes un minuto máis -ordenoulle tras escoitar o relato da súa situación desesperada-. Eu farei o posíbel para que te localicen e axuden. Ti tranquila, dáme todos os datos que coñezas do lugar en que te atopas e mándame a localización polo móbil.
Aínda tardou en cumprir as encomendas -A luz había tempo que se fora e custáballe valerse só coa da pantalla-. Desde que o fixo, marcou o número de Velkan. Sospeitaba que non sairía con vida. Se cadra era o mellor que lle podía suceder. Porén, quería morrer sabendo. Ao outro lado, a voz do rapaz reveloulle en poucas palabras o nome do dono do móbil e, asemade, respondeulle, sen que as fixera, as preguntas que máis a atormentaban.
-Que hai, Dragos? Como me chamas a esta hora? Semella que esqueces que aquí é unha hora máis tarde. Pasou algo co material que che enviei? Segue sen se deixar domear?
Colgou. Xa sabía abondo. A auga seguía subindo.
Cando chegaron os bombeiros, Alina xa fora engulida por aquela onda de chuvia devida morte.
A prensa do día seguinte daba a noticia asegurando que se trataba dunha traballadora da noite indocumentada e, por tanto, sen contrato laboral. Ninguén sabía o seu nome. Os donos do negocio disque declaraban que non era empregada deles, que a deixaban durmir alí por axudala xa que, á fin e ao cabo, procedían do mesmo país. As autoridades competentes non sabían que existían mafias a enganar a rapazas incautas como Alina malia as continuas denuncias que lles chegaban. Mais, en realidade, o seu verdugo, como o de tantas outras, foi o monstro das mil cabezas.
3
Da memoria da auga
A alma da auga faloume na sombra a alma santa da auga
e eu escoiteina con recollemento e con amor.
Amado Nervo
Non quixera caer na soberbia, mais é preciso que desminta un tópico verbo da miña mineral persoa: a insensibilidade, ese primeiro atributo dos seres que formamos o reino das cousas que din sen vida. Sen vida eu, que son a súa fonte! Se quen fala de min seguise os mandados da fenomenoloxía, esa escola filosófica que accede ao ser dos obxectos pola análise dos fenómenos que pode observar, a súa opinión sería outra. E non, non me quero poñer pedante a citar cousas dos libros. Mais a miña filosofía é a da experiencia, a da auga clara de alma branca e a da auga negra e empezoñada, sen alma.
Como queira que son unha e son múltiple, tense falado de min de moi diversas e contraditorias maneiras. Non me sorprende. Á fin estou afeita a non ter forma fixa. Vaime na esencia esa capacidade de adaptación a quen me acolle no propio seo. Mesmo á temperatura que xoga comigo ao seu pracer. Non lle chamen inestabilidade, digan resistencia.
Do meu carácter manso ou violento, do meu amargor ou dozura, non son responsábel. Tampouco de tornar negra e perder a alma. Estas cousas son consecuencia de non ser a única habitante deste vello planeta. Vivir e convivir ten eses riscos.
O amor e mais eu movemos o mundo. Movemos o mundo e somos asemade o seu reloxo. Medimos o tempo e somos o palimpsesto sobre o que se escribe e reescribe a historia. Unha escritora neocelandesa falecida moi nova, dixo que escribir sen paixón é como escribir na auga. Entendo que defendera a necesidade da paixón para cumprir o difícil cometido de verter a alma nas palabras, mais pensar que en min as palabras morren ou se converten en papel mollado, é unha falacia.
Foron moitas e moitos os escritores que escribiron na miña pel a súa derradeira páxina e abofé que non se borrou. Como non se borrou xamais o recordo de todas as persoas que, por azar ou por propia vontade, escoitaron no meu son a anaina da despedida.
Lembro con tristura e carraxe as mortes de cantos e cantas sucumbiron no intento de chegar a unha terra de promisión. Choro todos os naufraxios reflectidos na pupila das gaivotas, as que beben o mar a convertelo en bágoas.
Carpín, fixen pranto, parinme a min mesma, chuvia ou lágrima infinita, mais aperteinos, nai, no meu inmenso colo.
Sei que a miña chamada é difícil de rexeitar como a das sereas que atraen os navegantes para que afoguen. Explicouno ben a grande escritora galega Rosalía de Castro que máis dunha vez cantou a suxestión das ondas. Fíxoo coa viveza de quen o experimentou na propia carne. Eu dou fe de tela visto fitándome pensativa, nos seus ollos brillaba unha chispa negra de tristura. Aquí a súa confesión: ‘Co seu xordo e costante mormorío / atraime o oleaxen dese mar bravío, / cal atrái das serenas o cantar. / “Neste meu leito misterioso e frío / -dime- ven brandamente a descansar.” // El namorado está de min...¡o deño!, / i eu namorada del. / Pois saldremos co empeño, / que si el me chama sin parar, eu teño / unhas ansias mortais de apousar nel.’
Lembro a aquela outra, a do río Ouse, en Sussex da Inglaterra. Eran días de temor, de bombas e ameazas, de imposíbeis estrondos dentro da cabeza. Enchera os petos de pedras antes de camiñar até facer parte do meu fluír. Ameina. Amei a lenda dos seus días, patrimonio na brétema. Chamábase Virginia.
Xamais esquecerei a outra, Alfonsina, a dos pés pequenos e a ferida incurábel. A onde eu son atlántica e arxentina, moito ao sur do Trópico de Capricornio, chegou fráxil e desamparada, como unha nena na procura do abrazo da nai. Falaba da ama de cría, dos cabalos de mar, da luz da lámpada e un edredón de musgo sobre o leito. Non contarei se se despenou desde unha rocha, se afundiu en min coma un cetáceo, ou se foi deixando pegadas sobre a area, a se mergullar moi paseniño. Non o contarei porque tamén ela é unha lenda a esvaecer na propia cerrazón, como lle din aló á néboa.
Así mesmo no Atlántico, esta vez no sur de África, na Baía das Tres Áncoras de Cidade do Cabo, chegou a min unha muller nova, chea de cicatrices e humanidade. Poeta.
Corrían os tempos do apartheid, contra o que ela loitaba. Porén, o seu pai era autoritario, racista e tamén poeta, se é que a poesía pode casar cun desalmado, censor oficial para máis proba. Após 29 anos da súa ausencia, o primeiro presidente negro do país, aquel que pasara tantos anos no cárcere, inaugurou o parlamento democrático cun seu poema: “O neno (o que mataron dun disparo os soldados de Nyanga)”. No punto de se botar ao mar, cando lle presentaron, tal nun desfile, os momentos máis aciagos da súa curta existencia, os mesmos que ergueran o muro da súa desesperación, foi o recordo daquel rapaciño negro o máis doloroso. A fuxir dunha manifestación, fora cazado coma un pombo por un soldado branco. Con el morto nos brazos desesperaba a nai. O eco dos seus choros aínda lle petaban no tímpano coma martelos feroces no instante do adeus.
Ela chamábase Ingrid e o seu apelido era Jonker. O pai, Abraham, ao coñecer a noticia da morte, dixo: “Polo que a min toca, pódena volver botar ao mar”.
Como non hei ser amarga case sempre, se recollo tanta dor e tantas bágoas? A chuvia vai aos ríos e os ríos van ao mar alimentaren a máis potente metáfora da vida. Secasí, o termo real, a propia vida, son eu. Eu, repito, medida do tempo xunto co amor. Podería seguir contando e non parar. Asomarse á miña memoria é asomarse a moitas mortes. Aínda así, paga a pena. Onde estou eu -perdoen a inmodestia, mais é unha verdade incuestionábel-, onde estou eu sempre é posíbel que floreza un paraíso e que a música da terra compita coa das estrelas.
Fútbol galáctico
O señor Pedro deulle una patada a unha lata de Coca-Cola que alguén guindara desde un automóbil. “Porco!”, berráralle; mais o condutor continuara a súa marcha, coa música a todo volume. Os paxaros que peteiraban nos froitos dunha cerdeira nova saíron voando.
Camiñando torpemente, o vello, a se apoiar nunha vara longa, talvez unha aguillada devida caxato, camiñou cara á lata que estaba uns metros máis aló e, lonxe de lle dar outra patada como lle pedía o corpo, recolleuna para tirala ao contedor do lixo.
Sempre soñara con ser futbolista. De neno endexamais tivera unha pelota de verdade, das de coiro, aquelas que levaban unha cámara dentro, como as rodas dos automóbiles. Xogaban, el e os seus compañeiros, cun envurullo de trapos que, se ben non daba botes, voaba até a portería que construíran con dous paus chantados e un horizontal a facer de largueiro.
El era o mellor e sabíao, por iso lle chamaban Pelé, coma o do Brasil, que gañou tres mundiais e foi considerado por moitos o mellor futbolista de todos os tempos. Cando neno, el e os seus colegas xogaban cos pés nus nos descampados e rúas da cidade de Três Corações.
Tiña o retrato do seu ídolo e dalgúns xogadores máis. Estaban apegados á parte de atrás duns espelliños de peto que lles daba un farrapeiro dos Vilares de Guitiriz a cambio de ferragachos, cerellos ou uns céntimos de peseta. Eran o seu tesouro e agachábao nunha caixa de pemento enferruxada. Aínda agora, de vello, acudía ao alpendre onde antano gardaban a herba seca para comprobar que seguía alí, como a súa nenez ancorada naquel soño non cumprido.
Os seus netos, desde Barcelona, contábanlle por teléfono que xogaban no equipo do colexio. Cando acudían á aldea nos veráns, levaban un balón dos de verdade, mais os de agora xa sen cámara interna. Contaban que viran xogar a Messi co mesmo abraio de quen topar cun extraterrestre. O avó, que tamén o coñecía pola televisión, dicíalles que el nunca vira xogar ao seu heroe, Pelé, mais que tiña seguido moitas das súas fazañas pola radio da taberna, na voz de Matías Prats Cañete, o pai do Matías Prats actual, tamén xornalista na televisión.
Mais o señor Pedro nunca lle deu unha patada ao balón dos netos. Dáballelas, pola contra, a cantos obxectos se prestaban para substituír o que os cronistas deportivos chamaban esférico. Era como se sospeitase que algo morrería nel cando a punta do seu calzado tocase unha pelota real.
O día en que aquel bárbaro do auto lanzou a lata de Coca-Cola e espantou os paxaros coa música a todo volume, sentiu con tal forza o peso dos anos, que decidiu que chegara o momento de cumprir o seu soño. “Agora ou nunca”, dixo para os seus adentros.
A aldea ficara deserta. Só as fins de semana, se non estaba lonxe, viña algunha xente da que restaurara as casas para habitalas un par de días. Os de lonxe, entre eles os seus, nas vacacións de verán. Ás casas en ruínas soamente acudían as fantasmas dos recordos do señor Pedro. O señor Pedro semellaba o derradeiro habitante do mundo, a termar dun esteo invisíbel que xa abalaba co vento.
Caía a tarde e, no outeiro de poñente, o Sol era unha gran bola dourada. “É o teu balón de ouro”, ouviu o home, e a voz era a que tería un soño se falase. “Camiña cara a el, non te deteñas”. E o señor Pedro camiñou en liña recta cara aquel trofeo que ninguén lle recoñecera antes. Non sentía os pés nin precisaba da vara, como se tivese ás a lle nacer non se sabe onde. E chegou. Chegou e colleu o Sol na man. Por vez primeira acariñou un balón auténtico e, no campo das galaxias, xoga agora un partido interminábel coas estrelas.
Marica Campo naceu no Incio (Lugo) en 1948. É unha escritora moitas veces premiada e en diversos xéneros, como o Premio de Poesía Concello de Vilalba no 1998, o Premio de Narrativa Concello de Vilalba no 2001, o Premio de Poesía Fiz Vergara Vilariño de 2001, o Premio da Asociación de Escritores en Lingua Galega de Literatura Infantil e Xuvenil no 2007 e o de Poesía no 2008. En 2o21 gañou o Premio Follas Novas do Libro Galego polo libro mellor editado. En 2022 gañou o Premio Cultura Galega das Letras e en 2023 foi nomeada Lucense do ano. A listaxe é moito máis longa.
Campo é, portanto, destra no manexo do verso, do teatro e da narrativa - conto e novela - tanto para adultos como para menores. O amplo abano da súa creatividade é testemuña dunha escritora que bebe de máis dunha fonte: da súa terra natal - a serra lucense - e da contorna e historia galegas. Na súa obra atopamos a fidelidade ao autóctono, ao mundo mítico-lendario-histórico-espiritual da Galiza e, como base, mostra un compromiso coa realidade da muller, moitas veces expresada con intimismo e unha resistencia abraiante.
Estes catro contos foron escollidos pola autora; abranguen elementos citados nesta breve presentación - elementos que aseguran a herdanza cultural que Marica Campo nos oferece e que nos seguirá brindando no futuro. Obra imprescindíbel dunha boa e xenerosa para entendermos a literatura galega.
Just when I think you’ve left,
dark shadow that creates a dark maze
beside my pillow,
you return, making fun of me.
~ Rosalía de Castro, New Leaves
The rain running through the troughs that were supposed to hold it, runs down the walls of the house. My steps along the hall blend with the rain pounding on the stone slabs of the roof. In the end, there are two of us and we are only one. I am water or I have all the water in the world running through my veins. My footsteps don’t know that. My veins don’t know that either.
My father doesn’t know that and that’s why he picks me up with the help of my brother Pedro to take me to the doctor. As if a river could be picked up and held. The doctor, who was very intelligent, doesn’t know that, so he prescribes pills that in my stomach full of water, even though they’re white, turn into colored fish with fins and scales. I hardly ever take the pills; I pretend I do and afterward I spit them out without being caught. All those animals swimming around inside me sometimes make me nervous and other times they tickle, I break into gales of laughter.
My mother and my sisters, Rosalía and Xiana, don’t know about this. They say my bursts of laughing frighten them. I wake up at night and am amazed to find the sheets are dry and warm, as if I weren’t really water, the kind that gets things wet and makes puddles that freeze afterward if there’s a cold wind. Then I clap my hands and cry “Hurray!” Because it’s a real miracle. Then they just complain about how I wake them up and it’s all a nightmare.
One nightmare is about how they think I’m crazy and put me in an insane asylum. They tell me if I don’t behave and don’t let the rest of the family sleep it’ll be a long time before they let me out of there. They did that a lot.
I don’t tell them I am water because that’s my biggest secret. I don’t tell them that one day I lost the keys to the door to sanity of that a person who thinks the way she’s supposed to has. I don’t reveal that my type of sanity is different and they don’t have the key to that door.
Everything happened that evening when I gave my loneliness a name. You had gone, leaving your shadow like a snake sheds its skin and leaves it behind several times a year. From that time on I was transparent and couldn’t sleep. And - another miracle! - I can’t wash away the shadow that’s always with me and isn’t mine and I didn’t manage to leave with you and is yours.
The psychiatrist looks closely into my deep eyes when I tell her I’m shadowy. Shadowed as in having a shadow, not as dark or shaken. She gets upset with me, tells me that’s superstition, has nothing to do with scientific theory, then doles out endless prescriptions. Let her write all she wants, because I’m not going to swallow pills that are going to turn into colored fish in my stomach afterward.
One thing is insanity; having a shadow is very different. Uncle Pepe, my great-grandfather’s uncle, they never called him crazy. They simply said he had been affected by the darkness. Everything had turned into fear and caution with him since some maragato<7em> mule drivers from León, men with a whip, as my grandmother used to say, threatened to throw him headfirst into the river. He had been coming back from the country fair always held in Lalín on the 18th, showing off his youth and independence.
The fellow was walking along, humming a happy tune, in Ponte das Pedras on the Arnego River, when he ran into those three bullies whose skin was reddened by sun and frost. Each of them had a team of mules laden with merchandise they’d been peddling around towns and villages. They spoke in low voices among themselves, most likely hatching a plan to make fun of the lad and, grabbing him by the feet, they threatened several times to throw him into the river. At that spot the river grows wider among the rocky outcrops and the stones that stick up out of its bed. Pepe knew full well that a fall there would be fatal.
When he got home, the boy who’d left a few hours before was utterly changed. He wouldn’t let them cut his hair and after the priest grabbed him he swore he’d get back at them, and in his own brutal way. He walked right into the middle of mass playing the drum and instead of confessing to the priest he confessed himself. He kept his silverware in a niche in the wall. He didn’t want store-bought buttons for his clothing, only the cloth ones the seamstresses back then made. In fact, he avoided everything that reminded him of those men who had come from somewhere else.
I too have my own darkness and have turned into transparent water. It’s my way of reaching the sea where you died. Because your death is a sea and you are floating in it like a bottle with a message inside. I don’t want anybody to take me from this shadow. I don’t want pills and much less the electric shocks they supposedly apply to some people and that fortunately my father forbid them to use to treat me.
I was different before I became water. I was studying agricultural engineering and I don’t know if it was a choice or a premonition; I was determined to study hydrology, the subject you taught.
You talked about water with such passion that I wanted to be water so you would run your hand along me that way. You admired the drops of mist on the roses in the morning and the rainstorms that surprised you without a raincoat or umbrella.
I wanted to be water and wrote that to you in the last letter I sent you from this side. The letter I’m writing today will have to cross over to the other shore. In that other one I confessed the plan I had to throw myself into the river at the spot where the current drags everything out to the sea. You know exactly what happened. You rescued me, yes, but nobody was able to rescue you.
After that they put me in the asylum the first time. They were convinced I wanted to commit suicide and nothing could be farter from the truth. However, I didn’t tell them what I really wanted to do, so I was successful. I know full well that the price of your losing your shadow and taking mine with you, is having our story, one that never ends.
When I sob in the middle of the night, the threats return. When love is that strong they call it madness. They don’t know that it’s actually shadow. Shadow, that dark room where transparency hides so mystery's face can be covered once more.
They installed new troughs and hid the shotgun so I wouldn’t put holes in them again. Now the rain doesn’t lick at the walls, turning the house into a waterfall. Everything just keeps happening as if I weren’t water. Maybe I’m water because I drank an entire river.
2.
Another island, another boatman
I was sitting by the shore of Saint Simon
and the waves surrounded me
how high they were,
there I was, waiting for my friend.
~ Mendinho
She’d come to the southern part of Galiza from Romania a week ago. He was from Râmnicu Vâlcea, in the region of Oltenia, the one that was the worst off in that country. The young fellow, named Velkan, picked her up in a fancy all-terrain Mercedes to take her to the Sibiu airport.
Nobody was surprised there to see her get into the car with her small suitcase; it was a common occurrence. First a good-looking young man would roam the streets looking for a pretty girl. Soon they’d be strolling along together and kissing when people couldn’t see them. Once the courtship was established, the girl went away with the illusion of finding a good job and waiting for her lover, who would follow her a few days later.
Just as planned, Velkan’s Romanian friend Dragos had picked her up. Maybe he was an agent for models who would take her to an academy where she’d learn to walk on fashion runways. Once on the road, Alina watched the man out of the corner of her eye. He looked more like a boxer than someone involved in the niceties of fashion. He didn’t speak. He merely replied in monosyllables to the girl’s questions and uncertainties. Even so, she didn’t distrust him at all; it was true he didn’t seem like her friend at all, like the one who’d stayed behind in Romania and would soon travel to be with her.
In the hour and a half drive from the airport she learned that she would be spending some time with a Romanian woman who ran a place of lodging and would teach her the language of the country so she could communicate without much difficulty.
They left the highway and, after driving along a side road they took a route marked by an illuminated arrow. Below the arrow it was also illuminated, with the word Club and a heart that blinked on and off. The building was an island in the very center of a hollow. On the front was another sign with the twinkling word Paradise.
Once inside, Dragos took her to Lenuta, the woman in charge of the establishment, like someone delivering a letter, and after bidding farewell with a grunt, he left the coworker’s office.
The woman’s welcome didn’t bode well in Alina’s opinion. Already on alert after seeing the interior of the place, she listened to the woman’s monologue as if it were the music in a nightmare, wondering if all that was happening to her.
“I suppose ,” the woman told her, “that you’re not so naïve as to think that a young friend of Râmnicu Vâlcea would come here to start a modeling career. I’m not saying you won’t be able to become a model, but you’ll have to follow the same route as all the others. Even I… well, you’ll have to wait and see. For the time being, you’ll have to face the facts and the fact is there’s the club here where you can learn the language and the profession.”
“What profession?” she asked quickly. “As a waitress?”
Lenuta looked her from head to toes with an ambiguous smile and spoke without answering the question:
“Well, you have to have a bit of supper. You can rest in an easy chair in the living room and when the customers leave you’ll sleep in the basement where the bar is, on an inflatable mattress. For the time being you’ll only do cleaning because they don’t understand Romanian. It’ll earn you enough to pay for your basic expenses. After that, yes. After that, the more you work, the sooner you’ll pay off your debt and even save some so you can rent an apartment.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, on the verge of tears. “I only owe Velkan, who paid for my trip.”
“Velkan? Who’s Velkan? Dragos and I paid for your trip and you’re not leaving here until you’ve paid back every euro, unless you want to end up dead, in a garbage heap,” she concluded, her tone menacing.
Then Alina was certain she’d fallen into a trap, like so many other girls from her country they talked about, saying very sad things. In fact, she thought her boyfriend was the one who’d been fooled and that the one who called himself his friend, Dragos, had told him a terrible lie. That night, when she found herself alone and shut up in the basement with its gratings, she tried to speak with him using the cell phone he’d given her. The phone didn’t even have a signal when she dialed his number the first time, and then other numbers that were in the contacts. Even so, she couldn’t - or wouldn’t - believe that Velkan had deceived her.
Drowning in her own tears, she ended up falling asleep due to weariness and the tension she’d had to endure. She didn’t wake up until mid-morning, when she heard someone entering. She thought it must be Lenuta, but it was Dragos. He turned on the light to see where the very precarious bed had been installed and once he’d located her, he turned the light off again and hurled himself on top of her. Without a word, he used the difference in strength to carry out his conquest.
Only a week had passed, but it had been a series of moment like train cars filled with misfortune. That doubt regarding whether her boyfriend had acted to gain her trust and then deliver her to that fate. The need to trust him, and to do that, to imagine something bad had happened to him. The beatings because she refused to eat or cooperate to learn the language. The inopportune visits of the madman, bent on taming her and forcing her to submit. The disgust at cleaning the rooms and picking up the trash left behind. The longing for all she’d left behind. Constantly wracking her brains to find a way to escape, both literally and figuratively. If they made her sleep in the bar in the basement, it was precisely because there were gratings on all the windows that escape was impossible.
That night, when she was all alone in the club, she made the bed and laid down immediately. That was when she felt best, curled up in a fetal position, perhaps in search of that first soft feeling.
Then there was thunder; it moved closer and closer. It sounded like an army approaching the battlefield. Alina drew her head under the blanket she used to warm the sleeping bag. That way she couldn’t see the flashes of lightning and the thundering was less.
After a few hours, she awoke suddenly and saw she was completely drenched. The water level kept rising. Although she knew right then there was no escape, she tried, even smashing a few chairs against the door without making it budge. But the water kept filling the space as if it were a closed-in swimming pool, except with a ceiling.
Tired and about to give up, she went to the bar planning to drink a whole bottle of vodka or any other alcoholic beverage she could find on the shelves. She wanted to black out. Then she saw a small line of light flickering on and off. It was a cell phone left behind by someone among the half-empty bottles. And the water kept rising without stopping.
Luckily the phone was on. She needed to call home, but stopped when she thought of her grandmother, not wanting her to suffer. It was better to let her think she’d escaped by slipping into a crack in the earth and had been living in a cave since then, like the magical creatures in the stories she’d heard as a little girl.
Instead, she called her friend Nicoleta who, although she was in Romania to spend time with her family, was working in a geriatric center in Madrid.
“Get up on the bar, don’t wait a minute to do it,” ordered her friend when she learned of her desperate situation. I’ll do everything I can to let them know where you are so they can help you. Stay calm and tell me all you can about where you’re located and text me the coordinates.”
It took her a while to carry out the instructions. The electricity had gone out some time ago and it was hard to make things out with only the screen of the phone. Once she’d done that, she dialed Velkan’s number. She didn’t expect to get out alive. Maybe it was the best thing that could happen to her. Still, she wanted to know before she died. On the other end, the young man’s voice told her who the phone’s owner was and also answered the questions that tormented her the most.
How’s it going, Dragos? Why are you calling at this hour? You must have forgotten it’s an hour later here. Did anything happen with the material I sent you? Can’t you tame her?
When the firefighters arrived, Alina had been swallowed up by that deadly flood of rain.
The next day the paper reported the news, saying she was a prostitute who was undocumented and thereby had no work permit. Nobody knew her name. The owners of the business declared she wasn’t one of their employees, they’d just let her sleep there to help her out since she was, after all, from the same country as they were. The authorities who were involved didn’t know there were mafias that tricked careless young women, despite the continuous accusations they received. But the fact was, her executioner, like the executioner of so many other women, had been the monster with a thousand heads.
3.
From Water’s Memory
The water’s soul spoke to me in shadow of the holy spirit of water
and I listened to it in seclusion and peace
Amado Nervo
I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I need to clarify something regarding my mineral nature: insensitivity, that primary characteristic of those of us who belong to the kingdom considered to belong to those who are not living. Not living, yet I am their source! If those who speak of me followed the principles of phenomenology, the school of philosophy that analyzes the nature of objects according to their observable phenomena, their opinion would be quite different. And no, I don’t want to sound pedantic by quoting things from books. But my philosophy derives from experience, the one that comes from the clear water of the pure soul and the one that comes from dark, poisonous water that has no soul.
Be that as it may, I am one and I am many, I’ve been spoken of in many different and contradictory ways. It doesn’t surprise me. In the end I’m used to not having a set shape. It’s part of what I am to be able to adapt myself to the person who takes me in. Even to the temperature that plays with me at will. Don’t call it instability, call it resistance.
I am not responsible for my meek or violent nature, my bitterness or sweetness. Nor for turning dark and losing my soul. These things are the consequences of not being the only inhabitant of this ancient planet. To live and live together has those risks.
Love and I make the world go round. We make the world go round and are also its mechanism of time. We measure time and are the palimpsest on which history is written and rewritten. A writer from New Zealand who died very young, said that writing without passion is like writing on water. I know she was defending the need for passion in order to insert one’s soul into words, but to think that words die in me or become just wet paper is just a fallacy.
Many writers, women and men, wrote their last page on my skin and I can tell you they weren’t erased. Just like the memory of so many people who, by chance or by their own choice, heard the lullaby of farewell in my sound, was never erased.
I recall with sadness and anger the deaths of many men and women who perished in the attempt to reach a promised land. I weep for all the shipwrecks reflected in the eyes of seagulls who drink the sea and transform it into tears.
I keened, I wailed, I gave birth to myself, as rain or infinite weeping, but I gave them motherly embrace, in my immense breast.
I know my call is difficult to turn a deaf ear to, like the call of the sirens that beckon to sailors so they will drown. The great Galician writer Rosalía de Castro explained it well when more than once she sang of the waves’ call. She wrote with the knowledge of one who lived it in her own body. I can testify to the way she looked at me thoughtfully, a black spark of sadness shining in her eyes. This is her confession: ‘with its voiceless, constant murmur/the wave of that wild sea calls to me,/like the call of the sirens’ song./ “In this cold, mysterious bed of mine/-it says to me- come softly to your repose.”// He is in love with me… this curse!,/and I am in love with him./So let us go forth to our goal,/since if he summons me without ceasing, I have a mortal desire to rest in him’.
I remember that other one, the one by the Ouse River in Sussex, England. Those were days of terror, bombs, threats, of unbelievable thunderings in the brain. She her filled my pockets with stones before moving forward to become part of my current. I loved her and I loved the legend of her days, patrimony in the mist. Her name was Virginia.
I’ll never forget the other one, Alfonsina, the one who had small feet and an wound that couldn’t be healed. There where I am Atlantic and Argentinian, far south of the Tropic of Capricorn, she arrived fragile and unprotected, like a little girl looking for a mother’s embrace. She spoke of the wet nurse, of seahorses, the lamplight, and a blanket of moss on the bed. I won’t say whether she fell from a high rock, whether she sunk into me like a cetacean, or whether she went away leaving footsteps in the sand, to submerge herself slowly into the water. I won’t say because she too is a legend that disappears into her own cerrazón, as they call the fog there.
Again in the Atlantic, this time in South Africa, in Three Anchor Bay in Cape Town, a new woman came to me, full of scars and humanity. A poet. It was during apartheid, which she fought against. However, her father was authoritarian, racist, and also a poet, if one can say poetry can go along with a heartless person and, what’s more, acts as a censor. After twenty-nine years of absence, the first black president of the country, the one who spent so many years in prison, inaugurated the democratic parliament with one of her poems: “The child who was shot dead and killed by soldiers of Nyanga.” Just before she threw herself into the sea when, like a parade, the darkest moments of her short life came to her, the same ones that had built the wall of her desperation the most painful memory, the one of that little black boy, appeared. Running away from the demonstration, he had been hunted down by a white soldier. Carrying the dead boy in her arms, his mother was desperate. The echo of her weeping still pounded in her ears like mad hammers at the moment of farewell.
Her name was Ingrid and her surname was Jonker. His father, Abraham, when her the news of the death, said: “As fas as I’m concerned, they can toss her into the sea.”
How can I not be bitter most of the time when I receive so much pain and so many tears? The rain goes into the rivers and the rivers flow into the sea to feed the most powerful metaphors of life. Maybe I am the real end, life itself. I repeat. I, along with love, the measure of time. I could keep saying this without ever stopping. To look into my memory is to look into many deaths. Even so, it’s worth doing. Where I am - forgive the lack of modesty, but it’s an unquestionable truth - , wherever I am, a paradise can blossom and the music of the world competes with the stars.
Soccer in the Stars
Old Pedro kicked at a can of Coca-Cola that somebody had tossed from a car. “You pig!” he shouted, but the driver kept going, the music going full blast on his radio. The birds that were pecking at the fruit on a cherry tree flew off.
Shuffling along, leaning on a long walking stick, perhaps a cattle prod that had been made into a staff, then walked toward the can that was a few feet up ahead and, rather than giving it another kick as he felt like doing, he picked it up so he could throw it in the trash container.
He’d always dreamed of being a soccer player. When he was a boy, he’d never had a real ball, one made of leather, the ones that have an empty space inside, like all the cars. He and his friends played with a bundle of rags tied in a knot that maybe didn’t bounce, but at least would soar toward the goal they’d fashioned out of two sticks stuck in the ground with a horizontal one that served as a crossbar.
He was the best and he knew it, which was why they called him Pelé, like the player from Brazil who won three world cups and was considered to be the best soccer player of all time by a lot of people. When Pelé was a boy, he and his friends played barefoot in the vacant fields and the streets of Três Corações city.
Pedro had a photo of his idol and some of other players. They were stuck on the back of some hand mirrors that a ragpicker from Vilares de Guitiriz gave them in exchange for odds and ends, scraps of cloth, or a few pennies. They were his treasure and he kept them hidden away in a rusty pepper box. Even now, as an old man, he’d go to the shed where they used to store the hay just to make sure they were still there, as if his childhood were still there inside it, held fast in a dream that had never come true.
From Barcelona his grandchildren told him on the phone that they played on their school team. When they came back to the village in the summer, they brought a real soccer ball with them, but it was the modern one that didn’t have an air chamber inside. They’d tell him how they’d seen Messi play, their amazement as great as if they’d seen an alien. Their grandfather, who also knew that player from television, told them he’d never seen his hero Pelé play, but he’d followed a lot of his accomplishments on the radio in the tavern, ones reported by Matías Prats Cañete, father of Matías Prats who was a reporter now on television.
But Old Pedro never kicked the ball that belonged to his grandsons. Instead, he’d kick he’d kick all the objects he could find that could take the place of what the sports announcers called “the sphere.” It was as if he knew something inside him would die if the toe of his shoe were to touch a real soccer ball.
Then that idiot in the car had thrown the Coca-Cola can out the window and frightened the birds with the music that was blasting. He felt the weight of his years was so strong that he decided the time had come to fulfill his dream. He said to himself, “It’s now or never.”
The village was empty now. If it wasn’t too far for them to travel, a few people who’d restored some of the houses came to stay for a couple of days, but only on weekends. The ones who lived far away, among them members of his own family, came during summer vacation. Only the ghosts of Old Pedro’s memories would return to the houses that were in ruins. Old Pedro resembled the last inhabitant in the world, supported by an invisible stake that wobbled in the wind.
The afternoon was nearly over; over the hill to the west, the Sun lay like a big golden ball. “It’s your gold ball,” the man heard, and the voice a dream would have if it could speak. “Walk toward it, and don’t stop.” And Old Pedro walked in a straight line toward that trophy nobody had ever offered him. He couldn’t feel his feet and didn’t need the staff, as if wings had sprouted on him somewhere. At last he had reached it, he was there. He reached it and grabbed the Sun with his hand. For the first time ever he hugged a real soccer ball and now, on the playing field of the galaxies, he’s now playing and endless match with the stars.
Marica Campo was born in O Incio (Lugo) in 1948. She is a frequent recipient of awards, in different genres such as: Prize for Poetry of the Concello de Vilalba in 1998, Prize for Narrative of the Concello de Vilalba in 2001, Prize for Poetry Fiz Vergara Vilariño in 2001, o Premio for Children and Young Readers of the Association of Writers in the Galician Language in 2007 and for Poetry in 2008. In 2021 she was awarded the Follas Novas prize for best-edited book. In 2022 she won the Galician Woman of Letters and in 2023 she was named Lucense of the Year. The actual list is much longer.
Thus Campo is a skilled writer of verse, theater, and narrative - short story as well as narrative - for both adults and children. Her wide range of creativity is testimony to a writer who draws from more than one source - her native sierra of Lugo - and also the Galician context with its history. In her writing we see a faithfulness to the autochthonous, to the mythical-legendary-historical-spiritual world of Galicia, all with the foundation of a commitment to women’s reality, often expressed through the intimate and an amazing resistance.
These four stories were chosen by the author; they include the elements just cited in this brief presentation - elements that ensure the cultural heritage offered to us by Marica Campo and that she will continue to offer us in the future. It is the writing of a good and generous person that is required reading for those who wish to understand Galician literature.
