Cold Skin

by Albert Sanchez Pinol

  “How the devil did you lug all of that in half a morning’s time?” I asked in a groggy voice.

  “You have been asleep for fifty hours,” Gruner answered as he dropped a sack of flour.

  I looked down at my hands and said dully, “I am famished.”

  “I am sure you are.”

  Gruner gave me no further sign; nevertheless, I followed him up the stairs.

  Without stopping or turning around, he said, “You didn’t hear them? Not even a bit? It was quite a near thing last night. Lately they have been more vicious than ever.” And, under his breath, “The worst of the worst.”

  He lifted the trapdoor and we entered the living quarters. He pointed to the table and chair and ordered me to sit down. I obeyed. Gruner remained standing, gazing out over the balcony and packing his pipe. I rubbed my face and leaned my elbows on the table. A dish was placed in front of me by a set of thin webbed fingers. Those hands were not human. My first reaction was to jump out of the chair with a screech of fear. My heart thundered against my chest. That was life on the island.

  “There is no need to yell,” said Gruner. “It is only pea soup.”

  Gruner smacked his lips like a peasant calling to his mule. The little beast vanished down the trapdoor. We said no more until I had finished eating.

  “Thank you for the soup.”

  “That soup was yours.”

  “Well, thank you for offering it to me.”

  “She is the one that served you.”

  The beast was neither chained nor bound. I asked, “Doesn’t she ever try to escape from the lighthouse?”

  “Does a dog ever run away from its master?”

  There was a space of silence and I couldn’t help betraying a certain animosity. “And what other abilities does she have, apart from carrying dishes and pails? Have you also taught her Latin?”

  Gruner gave me a hard stare. He didn’t want a row, but he wasn’t afraid of answering back. “No, neither Greek nor Latin. This is the only thing I have taught her” – lifting the Remington up – “and it is worth all of the classics put together.”

  “Of course,” I said, rubbing my forehead. A horrible migraine impeded me from following his words closely.

  “But if I must answer your question, I will say yes. She does have some abilities that make her invaluable. She sings whenever the toads are nearby.”

  “Sings?”

  “Sings. Like a canary.” He could not suppress a deep, macabre and very ugly shadow of a laugh. “I fancy that she brings her owner good luck. She is the best mascot to be found in these parts.”

  Nothing more was said. I sat quietly in my chair. I wasn’t thinking clearly. It was difficult for me to associate images with their corresponding words. I was as shocked and disconcerted as the survivor of an avalanche. My gaze wandered around the room: from the bed, the balcony, to Gruner’s immobile figure, and none of it had any real meaning.

  “Perhaps we should take stock,” Gruner said, mistaking my stupefaction for passivity. “Follow me.”

  We ascended the iron staircase that led up to the top floor. The beacon’s lenses were housed there, in the cupola of the lighthouse. It was a complex clockwork mechanism made from massive pieces of industrial steel. Metal axles connected the lenses to a generator in the centre of the room. The moving parts were set on a sort of miniature railway which circled the perimeter of the room. Gruner adjusted three levers and the whole thing began to move, sputtering to life with a chorus of elephantine creaking and grating.

  “As you can see, I have calibrated the angle of the lenses so as to track the lighthouse’s immediate surroundings. That way, one may spot the toads before they get too close. The angle of the lenses changes with each revolution and their beam moves back and forth from the lighthouse’s base to points farther off. One may sweep the entire forest. The beam can even reach the weather official’s house on the other extreme of the island if necessary.”

  “I am fully aware of that.”

  Even I wasn’t sure to what extent my words were a recrimination or simply a statement of fact. Gruner did not capture either meaning.

  “The beacon could be set to train steadily on the door below. But what would be the use? They would only dodge the beams. As it is, every swing of the lamp gets them scampering about. They abhor light, human or divine, as all infernal beasts do.”

  The tower was the highest elevation on the island, affording a magnificent view of our surroundings. The land spread out in the shape of a sock. The slate shingles of the weather official’s cottage stood out against the turn in the sock’s heel. All along the coast, on both sides of the island, reefs of ranging shapes and sizes speckled the ocean. One promontory extended beyond the others on the northern shore, about 100 or 150 yards into the water. On closer inspection, I saw the wrecked prow of a small ship.

  “It was a Portuguese ship,” Gruner informed me before I had the chance to ask. “The wreck happened not long ago. The vessel embarked from their colony in Mozambique and was heading for southern Chile. The ship was carrying contraband. That is why it took this desolate route. The small vessel ran into trouble, and was trying to reach Bouvet Island. But it ran against the rocks.” He concluded the tale with the same indifference as if he were recalling some minor incident from childhood.

  “I suppose that, in a customary display of courtesy, you immediately came to their aid with offers of food and shelter,” I said with bitter cynicism.

  “There was nothing I could do,” he said in halfhearted defence. “The wreck happened at night, the most perilous hour for navigating around the reefs. The crew scrambled up that outcropping alongside the prow. Do you see it? It was that spot there. Naturally, they were devoured before dawn.”

  “Then how did you discover the Portuguese’s nationality, route and destination?”

  “One of them survived till morning. I don’t know how, but he managed to find refuge in a tiny cabin of the prow which still lay above water. I could see his face mashed against the porthole. We couldn’t understand each other at first. The glass was very thick; I could just see his lips move. Then the fellow went out on deck and we spoke for a few moments. The poor devil had gone mad, raving mad. In the end he was taken by a strange whim and fired on me with a revolver.” The outline of a malicious smile crossed Gruner’s face. “He mistook me for a monster. It didn’t matter; the man was a lousy shot. Then he went back down into the cabin and there he stayed, waiting for night to fall. I can still recall his face, framed by the porthole. If he had had the least bit of sense the poor devil would have saved the last bullet for himself.”

  One could criticise Gruner for many things. It was not so much the tale itself that was cruel as the tone he used to tell it. Gruner’s voice betrayed a horrifying coldness as he recounted the fate of those wretched Portuguese. He offered no personal reflections, and above all no emotions. We returned to his quarters. Gruner lectured me on the layout and defence tactics of our fortress. We were to concentrate most of our efforts on the balcony. The window slits served as both observation posts and loopholes, which controlled a 360-degree range around the lighthouse. He was not concerned about the beasts getting in through the windows. The toads would never slip through such narrow openings and the stone was too solid to break. The only way they could force an entry was through the balcony. That explained the sharpened stakes and other fortifications on the walls. Any competent marksman could defend himself against attack, no matter how intense or multitudinous.

  “Essentially, the principal danger is exposing oneself on the balcony,” I mused. “Why don’t we simply batten down the doors with those steel shutters you fashioned?”

  “In the long run it would be useless,” he said. “The toads have a superhuman strength. The steel plating would slowly weaken over time and there is nothing on the island to replace it with. Shut and barred inside, I would be reduced to a prisoner of my own defences. A hole cut in the shutters wouldn’t allow enough range to sh
oot from. No. The only solution is to keep them at bay with bullets.”

  After hearing him out, I had no choice but to accept his words as good sense. We made our way down to the ground floor. Three heavy wooden bars reinforced the already robust portal. They lay crosswise and could easily be pushed aside into deep openings cut for that purpose on each side of the entryway. Gruner was the mastermind behind the defences I was already familiar with outside.

  “They clamber around like monkeys; it is incredible,” he said with a barely contained admiration.

  Gruner’s last recourse had been to string up a web of empty tins and cord to signal their approach. The stones in the lighthouse wall were melded together with a paste of boiled paper mixed with sand. Nails and broken glass emerged jaggedly from those plastered fissures.

  “Whatever you do, never discard a rusty nail or an empty bottle,” he warned in a steely voice. “This island’s currency is glass, and nails are its most precious resource.”

  He had little else to say. I returned to the weather official’s cottage that afternoon. Compared to the lighthouse, it was a rickety and defenceless shack. Gruner had taken everything away except for my mattress. I took the mascot along with me as a precaution. It was the only way I could be sure of finding the lighthouse’s door open upon my return. But Gruner gave me no cause for complaint. He seemed to accept my presence as an established fact.

  I set the mattress down in a corner of the storeroom as soon as we returned to the lighthouse. That was where I would sleep, with my feet facing the ocean. The waves would swell over the rocks on stormy nights and crash against the building. Only stone separated me from the wild sea. But the lighthouse was a sturdy construction. To be at once so close to the crashing foam and yet protected from it provided the same soothing gratification as a security blanket. I had just finished setting my rather crude living quarters to rights when Gruner called from upstairs. His body emerged halfway out of the open trapdoor.

  “Friend, is the door securely fastened? Come up. We are about to have company.”

  The living quarters were charged with an air of battle. Gruner paced about, peering through the windows, piling up ammunition, supplies and flares. All from my baggage, of course.

  “What are you waiting for? Take up your rifle!” he said without looking at me. He who had once been an adversary was suddenly an ally in combat.

  “How can you be certain they will attack tonight?”

  “Does the Pope live in Rome?”

  We positioned ourselves on the little balcony, he to the right and I on the left. The space was ridiculously narrow. There was barely a yard separating our kneeling figures. We were surrounded by wooden spikes of varying sizes. Their points stuck out in all directions like unicorn horns. Some of them still showed traces of dried blue blood. Gruner gripped his weapon closely. A Remington and three flares lay next to him. The lighthouse’s beacon was lit up. The grating of the mechanism shifted like a pendulum above us. The lens followed its course, and the noise would become deafening when the machinery creaked above our heads, only to grow fainter as it moved away. The beam swept the surrounding rock, throwing a gleaming shaft on the edges of the forest as it turned. But there was nothing there. Branches were tossed by frigid gusts of wind. It was a rasping and unrelenting sound, utterly indifferent to the uneasiness it provoked. When the lens moved off, the landscape was plunged into a near perfect darkness.

  “How do we know they will head in this direction? The ocean is behind us. If they come by way of the water, they will probably scale the opposite side of the lighthouse.”

  “This is an island, we are surrounded by ocean. They may be beasts, but they know what doors are. Behind a door lies meat.” Gruner, noticing I was still suffering from exhaustion and a bad case of nerves, said, “Go below if you wish. Load the weapons or drink rum, as you like. I have lived through enough of these attacks on my own; your presence isn’t necessary.”

  “No, no, I can’t,” I answered, saying, “My fear is too great.”

  The tins jangled against the wall outside. “It is the wind, the wind, only the wind.” He calmed me with a steadying hand. I longed to fire my weapon at something which had yet to present itself. Gruner threw a flare, twisting his head like a chameleon. The red blaze went up into the air, describing an arc as it slowly fell. A wide swath of land was bathed in crimson. But they were nowhere to be found. A second flare went up, this time green. Still nothing. The dying glow revealed only stones and trees ravaged by the wind.

  “Mein Gott, mein Gott …” Gruner whispered suddenly.

  “There are more toads than ever.”

  “Where are they? I do not see a thing.”

  But Gruner did not answer. He might have been miles away despite being right there at my side. Gruner’s mouth hung open and he drooled like a village idiot. It was as though, rather than keeping watch on the surrounding landscape, he was peering within his own soul.

  “I cannot see a thing. Gruner! There is nothing there, what makes you say there are so many?”

  “I can tell by the way she sings,” he replied mechanically.

  The mascot had begun to intone a remotely Balinese chant. It was an indescribable melody, a music that would confound any musical scale. How many human beings since the beginning of time, since the dawn of man, had suffered the privilege of hearing that music? Were Gruner and I the only ones? Or were we joined by all those who had once faced their last reckoning? It was a horrid hymn and a barbaric psalm. But its malicious innocence was beautiful, very beautiful. It played on the entire spectrum of our emotions with a surgical precision. Our feelings were confused, stirred up, and then denied three times over. The tune seemed to take on a life of its own, independent of the singer’s. Nature had designed those chords to call forth the very depths of hell. The mascot sat cross-legged, as absent from the scene as Gruner was. They were far away, like those yet imperceptible monsters. One would have to be in the process of being born or dying to know the loneliness I felt that night, in the lighthouse.

  “There they are,” Gruner announced.

  The invasion of the island had taken place at some point unseen. They emerged from the forest. Packs of monsters swarmed on both sides of the road. One could sense their presence more than see them. I could hear their voices: the sound of gargling amplified a hundred, two hundred or perhaps five hundred times over. They advanced slowly. I could begin to distinguish shapes as the gargling grew ever louder. Dear God, those deep groans made one think of someone vomiting acid. The mascot had stopped singing behind us. And for an instant it seemed as though the beasts were abandoning the lighthouse. They had been brought to a halt by the beacon’s sweep. Then the mass suddenly pushed forward, a unified horde. They scurried and leaped, their heads bobbing at different heights. Inevitably, a bevy of monsters were picked out by the beam’s glare as the troop advanced. I fired a scattered volley. Some shrieked and many fled, but most stayed on course. The situation called for heavy artillery. I continued to blast away frantically until Gruner seized my rifle barrel. The metal was burning hot, but the skin on his palm went unscathed.

  “What the devil are you doing? Have you lost your wits? How many nights shall we hold out if you waste our ammunition so freely? We have no need for fireworks. Hold your fire until I shoot!”

  I was about to receive a macabre lesson. A swarm of monsters clustered around the door. Although the beasts could not break in or scale the walls, they were able to form spontaneous towers by clambering over each other’s backs. All one could see was a confused tangle of arms, legs and naked torsos. A mountain of flesh rose higher as they chaotically climbed on top of each other. Gruner held back, exhibiting a steely composure which quite horrified me. He did not take aim until their claws were practically scratching at the barricade of wooden stakes. The blast burst a monster’s skull, letting fly a shrapnel-like spray of bone and brain tissue.

  “Now that is how it is done!” roared Gruner. “Look to your right!
”

  A similar squirming pile rose beneath me. I had to shoot several beasts down before the living structure toppled. They shrieked and howled like hyenas as small bands bore the cadavers away.

  “Don’t fire on the deserters, it saves on bullets,” Gruner advised. “When provided with enough meat, they simply devour one another.”

  His words proved to be correct. Each time a tower fell, the swarm of monsters resembled a crushed anthill. Packs of beasts collected the dead and left the scene. The mass soon dispersed. Constancy was not one of their virtues. As they returned to the murky deep, their parting calls sounded like a gaggle of wild geese.

  “Honk, honk,” Gruner mimicked disdainfully, “honk, honk! It is always the same,” he said, talking as much to himself as to me. “Killing a few of them is enough to keep the rest at bay. They try to do away with good old Gruner, but they end up feasting on their own dead. Toads, vile toads.”

  That victory marked a turning point in our war. We still spotted two of them the following evening, although they kept their distance. Only moving shadows could be discerned on the second night. Finally, on my third night in the lighthouse, I experienced the first vigil in which not a single monster appeared. Curiously enough, it was not our most tranquil evening. Neither of us got any rest until dawn. Experience had taught Gruner that, given the toads’ unpredictable nature, they were capable of attacking at any moment. “This is not a Prussian train timetable,” he warned.

  I had set up permanent residence on the ground floor of the lighthouse. In the evenings, I would climb the stairs to take up my watch on the balcony. As the days passed, Gruner and I settled into a curious sort of coexistence. Who was that man? He had no more vestiges of a weather official left about him as one would find in any other wizened castaway. He was egotistical and gruff as a wild cat, his lack of sociability not so much a response to his self-imposed exile as a sublimation of already existing tendencies. Despite all of his barbarity and undeniably vulgar manners, Gruner often displayed the character of a penniless aristocrat. The man was brusque, but loyal in his own way. He also possessed a lively intelligence, no matter how odd the description may sound. Gruner looked his canniest while filling his pipe. He would pack the bowl with a savage glare, keenly aware all the while of his surroundings. In those moments, he resembled an Enlightenment philosopher, putting up barriers through the sheer force of his imagination. He was the epitome of a man whose knowledge was circumscribed to a single truth, albeit a fundamental one. His was the virtue of narrowing a problem down to its essentials. Gruner was so effective at simplifying matters one could say he was capable of getting to the root of whatever matter was in question. His mind was lucid and serene whenever faced with practical concerns. He had survived thanks to an unequalled skill in that realm. Occasionally, however, his appearance would degenerate to the questionable standards of a Cossack deserter. Gruner was a supremely physical man whose hygiene left much to be desired. He munched away in true bovine fashion as he ate. His heavy breathing could be heard several yards away. He also had visionary moments, losing himself in myths of his own construction. With every gesture of disdain, Gruner made it clear that he was not made for this world; the world was made for him. The man was just like a mad Caesar, hearing the pounding hooves of invisible horses and decapitating them by the thousands.