“Where does that minute come from?” he asked.
“Well, before, we always used to take a rest and walk the part of the circuit that goes behind the barracks. That’s what makes the difference,” answered Vergara.
“We weren’t actually walking,” Leblanc said, correcting him. “We were just running a bit more slowly.”
Ganuza decided to intervene.
“That’s the thing, you see – what started out as a joke somehow took on its own momentum.”
The Prefect felt for the crucifix he usually kept in the pocket of his cassock. He had his right hand pressed to his forehead, shading his eyes. Lord, here I am again, he thought, bending over the desk. As he had just returned from a retreat, that “again” could have been merely descriptive, but it was more like a sigh, a groan.
He squeezed the wooden cross until it dug into his hand.
“Excuse me, Brother José María, but I have to go to the toilet,” Ganuza said, getting up, then immediately sitting down again.
The office was filled with a whitish light. The Prefect was looking at the four runners without actually seeing them. The voice he could hear inside him demanded all his attention. It was his own voice, but it sounded odd to him, as if it were speaking in a vacuum: “This is what we’re going to do. When the race starts, the four of you set off at a fast pace, taking Aguiriano with you. One or two hundred yards in, when you reach the first muddy bit or the first obstacle, you, Vergara, trip him up from behind, so that he falls over. Then, when he’s on the ground, you all pile on top of him so that he can’t move. If he does get up and continue running, you had better start looking for another school. He has to lose the race, you understand, but it has to be by accident.”
The hand clutching the cross still hurt.
“And what if we break his leg?” he heard a voice ask. The question set the whitish light in the room vibrating.
He thought the question had come from Ganuza, and could not help but smile. It was absurd for Ganuza to ask such a thing. He would get left behind as soon as the race began, with no chance of stopping Aguiriano.
“Better a broken leg than have the school exposed to ridicule,” another voice said. The Prefect thought it was the voice of the spiritual director of the retreat he had just been on. “That would shame everyone in the school, especially Don Santiago.”
The whitish light in the office suddenly vanished, and he could see the four boys clearly. Each of them was looking at a different spot: Vergara at the floor, as he had been from the start; López at the ceiling; Leblanc at the window; Ganuza at the calendar on the wall. He took the crucifix out of his pocket and shifted it from hand to hand. He was weighing up the idea that had just occurred to him.
“What nonsense,” he told himself.
Free from that initial dazzle, he could think properly again. The idea of tripping up Aguiriano made no sense at all. More than a hundred runners took part in the junior section of the championship, and, with all those other runners jockeying for position, it would be very hard for Vergara, López and Aguiriano to remain together during the first hundred or two hundred yards. Besides, what would the school gain from it? Because, of course, the interests of the school came first. If they tripped Aguiriano up, he wouldn’t be the only one to fall – lots of other runners would fall too, and later everyone would learn that it had been the fault of the La Salle students. And if anyone found out it had been deliberate, then the federation would intervene. To make matters worse, López and Vergara were the sons of industrialists, and if the news got out, their fathers would demand an explanation from the head teacher, a weak man, who would be incapable of doing a decent job of defending La Salle.
He looked at the boys. His eyes felt bleary, as if he had just woken up.
“On your feet,” he said, putting the crucifix down on the desk. He got to his feet as well and walked to the door of his office.
The four boys all reacted differently. Vergara stood up at once and went over to the door, where the Prefect was standing. López got up too, but did not move. Leblanc and Ganuza stayed seated.
The Prefect opened the door.
“Line up here, all four of you,” he said and drew an imaginary line in the air.
Vergara and López were quick to obey. Then Leblanc joined them. Ganuza remained on his chair, head bowed.
“Ganuza, come here!” the Prefect said. Ganuza finally obeyed and went and stood next to the others.
Ganuza received the first slap. Leblanc the second. Vergara the third. The fourth, given to López, was the hardest.
“Now get out of here!” he told them, and they trooped out of the room, each with his hand pressed to his cheek. Ganuza was crying.
When he was left alone, the Prefect began pacing back and forth, from the door to the window, from the window to the door, ten paces there and ten paces back. Outside, the sky was grey and overcast; near Loyola station, the railway lines glinted in the dull light; the tiles on the barracks roof were an orange colour. Beyond that, the sky and the mist mingled to form a seamless curtain. The hills were invisible.
He spent a long time pacing his office. At one point, he picked up the crucifix and put it back in his pocket.
He heard a metallic whistle and went over to the window. Don Santiago was walking along the gravel path to the pelota court, followed by a line of thirty or more new students aged thirteen or fourteen. In two years’ time, possibly sooner, they would walk along that same path, not in an orderly line, but throwing pebbles and hurling insults at each other and calling Don Santiago “Plati”.
They called Don Santiago Plati and him Hippo, but it wasn’t the same thing. In Don Santiago’s case, it was a superficial matter, a way of showing their disdain for him. That was clear, even to the students themselves. However, those who called him Hippo would not be able to say – certain things took years to understand – to what extent they were driven by hatred or love or fear. And in a way, that was normal. There is a place in the heart, a nucleus, where all our feelings are jumbled up together. More than that: all our feelings came from that same original mix, and hate, love and fear were, originally, all the same, as were the bird and the reptile. How odd: the snake and the swallow, the swallow and the snake, were completely interchangeable, as were hate, love and fear.
He sat down at his desk. He felt a headache coming on, a pulsing in his temples. His green eyes grew wet with tears.
He felt like protesting to God. Why now, just when he had returned from retreat? Why shatter the peace he had found there?
He could not hold back his tears then, and he covered his face with his hands.
“Don Santiago, we were wrong about Aguiriano. I know this will be a bitter blow to you, but I have to tell you the truth.”
That is what he would say to him when he next saw him. Then he would wait ten seconds before going on, so that Don Santiago’s heart had time to assimilate those first few icy drops.
“I’m entirely to blame, Don Santiago. I was the one who suggested Aguiriano in the first place. I was the one who mentioned Zátopek. You were deceived too, but that’s because they tricked you. Do you know what they do during their training sessions, Don Santiago? Do you know what they’ve been doing up until now? The little reptiles stop running as soon as they’re out of range of your binoculars. That way, it’s impossible to calculate how long the run really takes. You’ll just have to accept the fact that La Salle won’t be taking part in the Guipúzcoa championship. I’ll talk to the head teacher and tell him to cancel the school trip and the bus.”
He shook his head angrily. No, these were misguided, childish thoughts. He would say nothing of the sort to Don Santiago. He wouldn’t cancel anything. Things had gone too far. The federation would never understand. Nor would the parents’ association. Besides, the bus company would demand a cancellation fee. And then there was the matter of the head teacher. He knew nothing about sport and distrusted all kinds of sporting competitions. He used to say: “Mens s
ana in corpore sano, yes, but what matters most is the mind.” What he cared about was having the school do well in the Coca-Cola essay competition or win prizes from the Artists’ Society of Guipúzcoa, and he was thrilled to have a champion in the school, Adrián, who also happened to be the biggest smoker in the school’s entire history. If the championship went badly, if there was a scandal, Don José María could kiss goodbye to the money he had requested for refurbishing the handball and basketball courts. The head teacher would channel the money into some other activity. No, he would say nothing. Let whatever happened happen.
It was nearly half past eleven in the morning. He pressed the button on the wall of his office to sound the bell. Then he went down into the recreation area and walked over to the spot where López, Vergara and the others usually gathered. When they came down, he would call them over and, putting a finger to his lips, would say:
“Remember, not a word of this to anyone.”
MESSAGE TO L.
RENO, DECEMBER 9, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, after the Thanksgiving supper at Mary Lore’s house (she’s the director of the C.B.S.), our youngest daughter wanted to go home as soon as possible to see if the raccoon had returned to the garden. She must have a sixth sense or something, because when we arrived at College Drive and went out onto the porch at the back, there were the raccoon’s two yellow eyes. We hadn’t seen him for months.
It’s very cold here at the moment. Every morning it’s minus seven, minus four or minus eight. Sometimes it snows, but not much. Perhaps it’s hard for our raccoon to find food in these conditions, and perhaps he’s come back to our house because of our daughters’ subversive hearts, for they ignore all the warnings about not feeding wild animals and are always leaving biscuits for him next to the hut.
I had no such premonitions during supper, but the caramelised red peppers troubled my head – and not my stomach, as they do with many people – and I’ve spent two weeks writing about the memories they awoke in me, including memories of Adrián and those two rich kids from the cross-country team, López and Vergara. Do you ever hear from them? I haven’t seen them since.
We went to Borders today and I happened upon a book of photographs entitled The Way We Were, published by the University of Toronto. The book tries to draw a comparison between the fate of the Canadian soldiers who fought in the Second World War, in particular those who took part in the Normandy invasion, and that of people nowadays or a few years ago. For example, there’s a black-and-white photograph of the beach at Dieppe, taken in 1944: dozens of dead soldiers lying on the sand in postures no living being would ever adopt. Tanks on fire. Half-sunken landing craft marooned on the shore. Then, on the next page, a photograph of the same Dieppe beach, but taken in the 1980s: a family enjoying the sun, a couple sitting under a sunshade reading magazines, children building a sandcastle. In the sea, a group of young people playing in the waves. After leafing through the book, I thought: What we call “fate” is all a matter of timing. Everything depends on which thicker line crosses our thinner line. Of course, it’s easy enough to accept that truth in Reno. It wouldn’t be so easy if I was in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Since coming back from Borders, I’ve been reading Bruce Laxalt’s poems. I learned at the Thanksgiving supper that he’s very ill, and the text on the back cover confirms this. He says that in 2003, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. One of his poems, a love poem, is actually called “Diagnosis Day”: “… Our eyes meet warily on an unbargained-for shore. In yours, I see the days after. You in mine the days before. And then, in each other’s, the day itself, on which our futures will meet and part.”
An anecdote to conclude my record of our visit to Borders. As I was looking at The Way We Were, I was approached by a beggar apparently taking refuge from the cold. He pointed to himself and said: “Vietnam, Mekong Delta.” For some reason, I responded by giving him the thumbs-up. He reacted by giving me the thumbs-down and saying: “No, it was terrible. We lost!”
DECEMBER 15
MISSING DOG
I was walking down Washington Street after taking the girls to school, and I stopped to read a notice attached to the lamp posts. “Missing dog. His name is Chetos and he’s eleven months old. He’s a pit bull with a blue nose. He’s very sweet and gentle. We miss him and want him back. He’s wearing a red collar, with no chip. Please get in touch.”
The notice affected me deeply. I know it was a banal event, and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day. Missing dog. His name is Chetos …
DECEMBER 17
CONVERSATION
At around ten in the morning, Dennis sent me a link, adding: “The spider is getting closer.”
I clicked on the link and up came the online edition of the Reno Gazette-Journal reporting another sexual assault. It had taken place near the university. The victim was a twenty-two-year-old female student. The attacker had forced her to get into his car and give him oral sex.
I went to Dennis’s office. He told me Earle had been talking to the police chief on campus.
“They’re really worried. The attacker seems to be a professional rapist.”
I didn’t understand what he meant by a “professional rapist”.
“Apparently, he prepares carefully for these attacks,” Dennis explained. “He obviously knows that to get his D.N.A. all that’s needed is a single hair, and so he shaves his pubic region.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Oh, and I have a message for you from Jeff,” Dennis said, tapping at his keyboard. “I’m forwarding it to you now. He’s asking you to send him a text in Basque so that he can set it in a particular font, Menhart, I think.”
“That’s right. I promised him I’d do that at the Thanksgiving supper.”
“Just send him the text and that will be that,” Dennis said. Then he looked out of the window and said in a different tone of voice: “In a way, Jeff is lucky. His whole life centres around fonts. They create a barrier between him and the world.”
“We were thinking of spending the Christmas vacation in San Francisco,” I said. “Perhaps I should tell Jeff. It would be good to see something other than the usual tourist sights.”
Dennis put his hand to his chin.
“No, don’t do that,” he said at last. “Jeff wouldn’t be a very good guide to the city. As you saw at Thanksgiving, he doesn’t know how to behave around other people. Besides, he finds children annoying.”
He looked up and smiled.
“So you’re off to San Francisco. An excellent idea.”
“How about you? Are you going anywhere?”
“Bob wants to go to Tonopah to visit a mine, and I’m tagging along.”
“Sounds interesting,” I said. “I bought a book about the history of boxing, and it mentions Tonopah as a place where Jack Dempsey fought when he was world champion. There must have been a lot of money in the town then.”
“It’s a military installation now. They don’t live off gold and silver any more, but uranium and plutonium. It’s a test base for bomber pilots.”
He again changed the subject.
“Be careful on the drive to San Francisco. Crossing the Sierra Nevada at this time of year can be problematic. Be sure to check the weather forecast.”
“We will,” I said.
“And another thing,” he went on. “When you’re in San Francisco, don’t leave the girls alone. There will be plenty of spiders around there too. There’s a plague of them in America. Maybe that explains the success of Lolita.”
DECEMBER 23
ON THE WAY TO SAN FRANCISCO
From Reno to San Francisco is over two hundred miles, fifty of which are through the Sierra Nevada, at an altitude of over six and a half thousand feet, regardless of whether you take the I-80, passing through Truckee, or the US-50, which skirts round Lake Tahoe, or travel by train. Potentially, it’s the most dangerous stretch, because of the mists and sudden gusts of wind; then, as you approach the first Ca
lifornian city, Sacramento, the journey becomes really pleasant.
Earle advised us not to bother with the train, because it came all the way from Chicago and was almost always delayed.
“I wouldn’t recommend going via Lake Tahoe either. It’s the prettiest route, but we’re in December now, and the road is quite an empty one. Best take the I-80 – that way, if it snows, some truck is sure to come along to rescue you and your fragile little Ford.”
The words “fragile” and “rescue” emerged from his lips with a certain emphasis.
In the days before the journey, I kept a close eye on the website showing the temperatures near Lake Tahoe. On December 20, the maximum was 5 degrees C, the minimum minus 9. The following day it was even colder, with a minimum of minus 12 degrees. On December 22, on the eve of our trip, the minimum was minus 7 and the maximum, at midday, was 6 degrees. The forecast for the 23rd wasn’t too bad. They predicted a rise in temperatures and clear skies. There was only a 0.5 per cent possibility of precipitation in the form of rain or snow. I told Ángela.
“Reading Scott’s diaries has marked you for life,” she said. “We’re going to San Francisco, you know, not the South Pole.”
Ángela’s sense of humour was becoming more and more like Earle’s.
We left Reno at ten o’clock in the morning. As forecast, the skies were blue, and the thermometer in our house read 35 degrees F, about 2 degrees C. When we got onto the I-80, we sat back in our seats; the girls plugged the D.V.D. player into the car’s cigarette lighter and Ángela and I began drinking the coffee we had bought at the gas station in Virginia Street. It was such a joy to feel the bright sunlight in our eyes, and to leave behind us the spider prowling around our part of town.
We drove up the first hills and reached the frontier between California and Nevada. The border patrol guards only checked vehicles carrying plants or animals, and so we went straight through, only stopping for a moment. The traffic lights indicating the risk of snow were green.
Nevada Days Page 19
