B0040702LQ EBOK

by Margaret Jull Costa;Annella McDermott

  `The poor soul was asking for help and didn't get it.'

  `He heard the weeping, tried to sit up and couldn't ..

  `He died of terror, his heart gave out when he realised he was being lowered into his grave ...'

  `Just look at the dreadful expression on his face!'

  `And that idiot knew, yet he acts as if nothing had happened, grinning like a clown.'

  `Is he an imbecile or what?'

  All that day, friends, I felt mad with remorse. I could see poor Bieito clawing at the coffin lid with the absolute terror, beyond consolation or resignation, of someone buried alive. I even began to think that everyone could read in my bleary, distant eyes my obsession with the crime.

  So when it got to around midnight - I couldn't help it - I set off for the cemetery, with my collar turned up and keeping close to the shadow of the walls.

  I arrived. On one side the wall was low: loose stones, held together by ivy and brambles. I jumped over and went straight to the place ... I lay down, put my ear to the ground and what I heard immediately froze my blood. From deep in the earth, desperate nails were scratching at wood. Scratching? I don't know, I don't know. Nearby there was a hoe ... I was just about to pick it up when I suddenly stopped. I could hear foot steps and the sound of voices on the path near the cemetery. There were people coming. In which case my presence there, at that hour and with a hoe in my hand, really would seem absurd, mad.

  Was I to tell them I had let him be buried knowing he was alive?

  I fled with my collar still turned up and keeping close to the shadow of the walls.

  There was a full moon and dogs were barking in the distance.

  © Carmen Munoz Manzano Vda de Dieste

  Translated by Annella McDermott

  Rafael Dieste (Rianxo [A Coruna],1899-Rianxo,1981) was from the region of Galicia in northwestern Spain. He was a writer and philosopher, who, as well as poetry, short stories, plays and novels, published newspaper articles and books on mathematics and philosophy. A staunch supporter of the Galician language, he himself wrote both in Galician and Spanish, the latter probably in response to the fact that he spent a considerable part of his life outside Galicia. In 1939, following the Spanish Civil War, he moved first of all to Paris and eventually to Buenos Aires, where he lived in exile until 1961. Strongly influenced by the ideas of Tolstoy, he was attracted by the folk culture of Galicia, in which magical beliefs play a prominent role. Dieste's best-known works are Dos arquivos do trasno (1926), from which this story is taken, and Historias e invenciones de Felix Muriel (1943).

  Hermann Keyserling has written a book, Immortality, in which he suggests that there exists around us a supernatural world of which we are unware because we lack the necessary means of perception. I'm convinced that Keyserling is right and would even add my own unanswerable arguments to his. One of the enjoyable advantages of neurasthenia is precisely the ability it gives one to catch sight of many strange beings. One cannot always see them, but one can hear and, in some measure, feel them. More than once, while writing late into the night, in the silent solitude of my study, I've had the vivid impression that an invisible being was reading over my shoulder the very words that I was writing. This has never frightened me; I experienced only the uncomfortable feeling that I was being spied upon. When this happens, I usually pick up a piece of paper and scribble on it: `Would you be so kind as to stop bothering me?' The invisible being disappears at once. I describe this experience because I know that a lot of people are troubled, in similar circumstances, by the same feeling of being watched.

  Indeed, sometimes, you can even see them. You only get a brief look and there's nothing terrifying about it, as the cowardly might imagine. Sometimes, you see only lights, different-coloured lights.

  Some people see birds; others, vague, shapeless shadows. I see only cats. For me the world of the unknown is populated with cats. They slink rapidly past, though only when I can just glimpse them out of the corner of my eye. They emerge out of one thick wall and disappear through another, or they suddenly appear at my feet. I stop and look and ... there's nothing there.

  They have never bothered me and I have absolutely nothing to reproach them with. I love cats and it does not displease me to see them padding lightly across a room, even if they are mere ghosts.

  Only once did they cause me any distress, but the cats in question were real, living, tangible cats.

  This is what happened:

  Guitian, my servant, told me that the cat had had six kittens.

  `Too many,' I said.

  `Too many,' he agreed. `I wish I could say the same about the cow. The world really isn't very well organised. What shall we do with the creatures?'

  `I don't know'

  `We'll have to kill them.'

  `Poor things!'

  Guitian raised his thick eyebrows:

  `I don't like it any more than you do, sir. I certainly couldn't bring myself to kill them.'

  I said decisively:

  `We'll give the matter some thought, Guitian.'

  And a month and a half passed. My servant complained:

  `I don't know how to get rid of the wretched brood. Together they eat enough for two whole people and they're always getting under my feet. I've tried to give them away, but nobody wants them. In other places, people just throw them into the sea, but there isn't any sea here, not even a deep river.'

  I had an idea.

  `Take them into the mountains and leave them there.'

  `All right,' he said.

  And one morning, he went out with the six cats in a basket. He walked for more than a league and clapped his hands loudly to frighten them away. The little creatures raced off, tails bristling, and stopped at a prudent distance. In the end, he drove them into a maize field.

  Then, thinking he could not be seen, he slung the basket over his arm and returned home with a light step. Along the way, he heard the busy rustle of shaken maize leaves. Guitian thought:

  `They're following me.'

  And he started running as fast as he could. Breathing hard, he stopped at the gate to our house and wiped away the abundant sweat from his brow. At that moment, from amongst a clump of wallflowers, a cat appeared before him, then another, and, finally, all six of them. And they started to miaow hungrily.

  My servant was sunk in gloom for several days. One day, I saw him digging a ditch by the garden wall. He looked at me with furrowed brow and said:

  `Today's the day.'

  After supper, he came into my room. He stood silently before me, his lips set in a hard line; he kept rubbing his hands together nervously, mechanically, as if trying to wipe them clean of some disgusting substance.

  `It's done!' he said.

  He was deathly pale and, although he tried to smile, it was evident that some hideous, painful emotion was beating inside him. I thought he was going to fill me in on the details of the cats' execution, out of that need to confide that all criminals feel, so I hurriedly said:

  `Don't tell me anything.'

  He nodded and left. He may have committed that cruel deed, but ... he was a good man.

  The following day, when I was taking my morning stroll about the garden, I seemed to hear a faint mewing. I remembered the poor murdered creatures and I listened.

  `It's pure obsession,' I said to myself.

  And I continued my walk. Without intending to go there, I found myself near the wall, where the dug earth indicated the place where the six corpses had been buried. And then I heard the mewing again, quite distinctly.

  I stopped, horrified. I heard more mewing.

  I ran to find Guitian. I found him in the kitchen, his head in his hands and his hair all dishevelled.

  `Guitian!' I cried.

  He raised a distraught face to me.

  `Guitian, there's a cat mewing underneath the earth in the flower border.'

  He gave a crazed smile.

  `It isn't a cat, sir.'

  `Not a cat?'

 
`It's six cats. All six of them are mewing. I heard them too.'

  He looked around him with a shudder. For a moment, I was dumbstruck.

  `What have you done, Guitian?'

  He made a vague, despairing gesture.

  `I think I have lost my soul, sir.'

  Quietly, he told me his story. He had lacked the courage to kill them. He put them in the basket to carry them to their grave and, to cut short his cruel task, he threw the basket into the grave and piled up earth on top of it.

  `Was the basket closed?'

  `Of course! If it was open, they would escape.'

  `So they're alive inside the basket.'

  `They are, sir.'

  And, appalled, we both looked away.

  Twenty-four hours later, the kittens were still mewing. To know this, I had only to look at Guitian, who was walking sombrely up and down in the remotest part of the garden.

  `They're still there then?' I asked.

  And he stopped, with his hands behind his back, and gave me a strange, hard look.

  `Can't you hear them?' he replied. `Is there a loud enough noise anywhere in the world to drown out the noise those poor wretches make? There are only five of them calling now; but the sound of their complaints reaches every corner. I hear them even with the sheets pulled up over my head, even if I move right away from the garden, even if I'm grinding coffee in the old coffee mill ...'

  There was a pause.

  `You say there are only five of them now.'

  `Yes, only five.'

  `What happened to the sixth?'

  He came over to me, eyes bulging, and said:

  `They've eaten it, sir. I'm sure of it. They must have drawn lots. After the shipwreck of the Arosa, those of us still on the raft had to draw lots too ...'

  A generous soul! He was trembling with fever.

  Maybe it was just his words that put the idea in my head, but, from then on, I too could hear the cats miaowing in every room, everywhere. I imagined them writhing around inside the crushed basket, their fur on end, their eyes shining fiercely in the thick darkness, besmirched by the earth that seeped in through the cracks.

  Four days later, they were still calling. Guitian had lost so much weight that his clogs no longer fitted him. I sought him out in the corner of the kitchen where he went to be alone with his remorse. He was counting the cats as they stopped their mewing.

  `There are two left. We must suffer for another forty-eight hours.'

  And the following dawn:

  `There's one left. Tomorrow ... it will all be over.'

  As soon as day broke, we ran out into the garden. A cat, a single cat was still mewing sadly, a tiny, mournful, heartrending sound.

  And it continued to do so for another day and another, for a week ... Against all logic, its cries grew in volume. It was no longer like the crying of a newborn babe, heard through the wall. Sometimes, it was the furious miaowing of an angry tomcat and, at others, the long, plaintive, persuasive call they utter beneath the January moon, when they are trying to convince some female cat to surrender to love.

  Our sense of horror was mounting steadily. We were living through some ghastly tale by Edgar Allen Poe. My servant had said to me:

  `This will end badly, sir.'

  We were, indeed, convinced that the whole sad story would end in catastrophe, an outcome that we could sense only confusedly.

  One afternoon, as we were walking along the road - we avoided the house and garden as much as possible - I said to the melancholy skeleton at my side:

  `Guitian, I can't understand how the poor creature' (we spoke of it with compassion and affection) `can still survive. It was buried almost a month ago; even if some air were still getting through, what can it eat? No animal could last that long in those conditions.'

  `It's eating its own tail, sir.'

  `Its own tail?'

  `As you know, cats' tails keep growing, especially when they're young, like the poor creature in there. It will eat a little each day and each day another bit will grow'

  `That's ridiculous, Guitian.'

  `What else can the poor wretch do, sir?'

  `Guitian.'

  `Yes, sir.'

  `We've got to do something. . .'

  `What?'

  `We've got to ... finish the creature off.,

  `But how?'

  'We'll tamp down the earth covering its body.'

  `I don't know if I've got it in me to do that.'

  `I'll help you. Shall we do it now?'

  He drew one hand across his brow, and said:

  `Yes, let's finish it.'

  We ran to the garden. In the toolshed we found the tamper that was used to smooth the paths, and we carried it off to the terrible, familiar place by the garden wall.

  I fell back a little, shaken by some vague, supernatural idea.

  `Go on then!' I ordered.

  The man lifted the tamper, still uncertain.

  `Go on!' I shouted boldly.

  And the heavy instrument fell upon the earth with a dull thud. His eyes wild, his mouth set in a grimace, Guitian rained down blows on the earth, all the while crying:

  `Forgive me, forgive me, poor creature! Unlucky martyr, more martyred than all the martyrs put together! Forgive me, forgive me! Please die! I'm killing you for your own good, poor, sad creature. I'm only following my master's orders!'

  I had to flee the scene, because I thought I might go mad.

  From that moment, the cat miaowed more obstinately and furiously than ever.

  A devastated Guitian came to me and said:

  `Sir, I've come to say goodbye.'

  I nodded.

  `I understand, my faithful friend, I understand. This tor- tnent has become unbearable.'

  `If you mean the miaowing of the six cats - because now the six of them have started up again - I've some good news for you. In half an hour, they can miaow all they like, because I won't hear them.'

  `Are you leaving the village?'

  `I'm going to kill myself, sir. I can't stand it any longer. They have poisoned my life, as the priest said when the doctors forbade him to have more than six helpings at mealtimes. I just wanted to ask you if you would mind very much if I hanged myself from that chestnut tree near the gate. It doesn't really matter to me which tree I use, but that one is the strongest.'

  `My friend,' I said, moved, `choose whichever tree you like, even the peach tree, although you know how badly it reacts to having its branches broken. But since it's you ... Before I let you do it, though, I have a proposal.'

  `There's nothing more to be done.'

  `Let's fight one last battle.'

  `No Goodbye, sir. Enjoy life ... if you can.'

  He left.

  `Guitian,' I shouted from the gate, `we've got one final card to play.'

  `What's that?'

  `Why don't we dig them up?'

  He hesitated for a moment. Then I dragged him with me and placed a hoe in his hand. The miaowing was more terrifying than ever, like a spine-chilling concerto. We dug and dug ... We thought we would encounter monstrous, shapeless creatures covered in earth, their eyes too ... We dug and dug ...

  The hoe struck the crumbling, rotten basket.

  We dug again.

  And there was the small, jumbled pile of cats, their bodies beginning to mingle with the earth. They were all quite dead, putrefying and ... silent.

  Translated by Margaret full Costa

  Wenceslao Fernandez Florez (La Coruna, 1885 - Madrid, 1964) started out as a journalist on various Galician newspapers and then moved to Madrid where he achieved fame with his chronicles of parliamentary life: Acotaciones de un oyente published in the Madrid newspaper ABC. His books - including Volvoreta (1917), El secreto de Barba Azul (1923) and Las siete columnas (1926) - were immensely popular in their day, though his work is now little known. His many incursions into the world of the fantastic produced a large number of remarkable short stories and novels, including La casa de la lluvia (1925)
, Fantasmas (1930) and El bosque animado (1943). This story is taken from Visiones de neurastenia (1924).

  I hope my readers will forgive me if I write Hell with a capital H. I also write Devil, Cemetery and Cathedral with capitals, just to be different. We so rarely use capital letters. Of a gentleman whose surname was Carballo, but who wrote it Carvallo, they say he did so in order to save on ink.

  Now I chanced to find myself in the town of Ferreira in 1945, the year that the Second World War ended. Everyone was talking about what had happened. When the new gravedigger set about opening a niche in the Cemetery, he had nearly had to demolish the tomb next to it. He had to lay it completely open. And .. .

  To his great surprise, he saw that in the tomb to the right there was a skeleton lying outside the coffin ... and the coffin was empty. The frontal bone of the skull was caved in and two ribs were broken. Otherwise, the skeleton was that of a small man.

  The gravedigger reported the case to the mayor and the mayor imparted the news to the Investigating Magistrate who immediately ordered an official investigation.

  Incidentally, calling the town Ferreira is a mere convention. It could just as easily be Monforte, Ribadavia or Orense.

  According to records in the Municipal Archive, the remains belonged to a man who had been buried in 1918, at the time of the flu epidemic, and the gravedigger was nicknamed Foulmouth because he was always cursing.

  With that sparse information, I began my investigation, and my stay in Ferreira lasted for three months. When I finished, I wrote a report which I sent to the Royal Academy of History. But the years passed and I received no reply from the Academy, not even a word, either directly or indirectly, which forced me to conclude that the Academy must think me mad.