The reader will be aware that during the 1918 flu epidemic gravediggers and undertakers had a great deal of work to do, as did the doctors, the priests and the pharmacists.
In 1918, for example, in Lugo, the gravediggers would normally bury two people a day, but a month and a half into the epidemic, they were burying twelve or fourteen a day. In Ferreira it was much the same.
Bieito Fernandez was the hardest-working tailor in Ferreira. According to the rumourmongers, he had grown rich, indeed very rich, by lending money at twelve per cent interest. He had given his children a good start in life: he had four sons and one daughter. The eldest son was studying medicine in Santiago and one day brought a musical group composed of fellow students on a visit to Ferreira, and was even feted by the mayor. He was feted for his good looks too, which he got from his mother.
Bieito was positively drooling, as they say, when he saw Bieito Junior leaving the local social club in the company of the notary's son and the nephew of the owner of the local hotel.
His mother would ask him who he had danced with at the club. Was it that nice blonde girl: the daughter of the Secretary to the Town Hall, or the girl from the corner shop whose father had made more than two million reales exporting chestnuts and hams to France?
Bieito junior's father was definitely drooling.
Then in 1918, the flu epidemic started and carried off thousands to the next world. The gravedigger, Foulmouth, couldn't cope with all the graves he had to dig.
They called him Foulmouth because he didn't have a good word to say about anyone. When a monk was buried, he was told that the man had died `in the odour of sanctity'; Foulmouth replied that he had buried him himself and that the monk had stunk to high heaven.
`He reeked of rotting flesh, just like everyone else.'
One day, during the time of the epidemic, he had to dig seven graves. He went to the mayor and said:
`Look, Don Juan, I can't cope with all this work and I get paid a pittance. You'd better make my eldest son my assistant; he's seventeen now'
The mayor deemed his request to be a fair one.
`So be it. You shall each wear a peaked cap bearing an `M' and an `S' standing for Municipal Services, because you both serve the municipality.'
Foulmouth showed his teeth and smiled much as a gorilla might smile. There wasn't an uglier man for twenty leagues around. He had a short, fat neck.
Once, a man said to him: `You haven't got much to thank God for' and Foulmouth stabbed him and almost killed him.
If the father was proud of the cap he had to wear, his son, Benjamin, was even prouder. He would go into the taverns just to show it off. When he arrived, the other boys would cover their noses with their hands, and when he left, they would say: `Foulmouth's son stinks of rotting flesh.'
Everyone in Ferreira knew that the tailor Bieito had fallen ill with the flu and that it had turned into pneumonia. He died one Wednesday.
Foulmouth had it in for him, probably because Bieito had taken him to court once over some money he owed him for a suit he had made.
They buried him on the Thursday. He was laid out at home for just twenty-four hours.
Some said:
`There's never been a better year for doctors, priests and pharmacists.'
Foulmouth and Benjamin buried the pharmacist first. While they were covering him with spadefuls of earth, the gravedigger said:
`You could have kept a whole family on what this greedy pig shelled out on cakes. I hope he spends the next hundred years in Purgatory.'
Then came the body of the tailor Bieito. The cortege consisted only of the priest, the altar boy and about twenty or so followers. The gravedigger rubbed his hands and smiled. The priest read the prayer for the dead and blessed the earth that the gravedigger and his son were throwing onto the coffin.
At that same moment, they noticed a great cloud of smoke in the sky. A little boy appeared at the Cemetery gates shouting:
`The priest's house is burning down!'
When the priest heard those words, he took off his chasuble and stood there in his robe, yelling:
`I just hope that jar of notes I left on the mantelpiece hasn't caught fire.'
And with that he bounded off, leaping over the graves. There was no one left in the Cemetery.
Foulmouth was roaring with laughter.
`It would just serve that old moneylender right as well, if all his thousand real notes burned up. He did nothing but hoard them all his life.'
Father and son picked up the wine bottle and each took a long swig.
`Your turn now, tailor. We don't want you complaining that you haven't got enough earth on you.'
The same boy who had come to the Cemetery gates before, shouted:
`It's Raposa's oven that's on fire!'
But, by then, the Cemetery was empty.
When the gravedigger picked up the hoe, he saw that Bieito had got out of his coffin.
`I thought you were supposed to be dead, tailor. Everyone they bring here has got to be properly dead.'
`With a certificate signed by the relevant authority,' added his son.
Bieito said in a plaintive voice:
`Would you mind very much explaining to me what's going on? What am I doing here wearing a Franciscan habit?
`We haven't got time for explanations, we've got too much work to do. We still have a lot of other unfortunates to bury.'
But the son saw things differently and he asked Bieito:
`Have you got a certificate from Satan to say you've been resuscitated? Because if you haven't, there's nothing we can do. It's back into the grave with you.'
`Can't you see I'm alive?'
`Alive? You got the flu which developed into pneumonia and you died. Or do you think you know more than the doctor who wrote out your death certificate?'
And he dealt Bieito such a blow on the head with the hoe that he split his head open.
`Finish him off, Benjamin, finish him off.'
`I'm an obedient son, so I will.'
And he hit Bieito so hard that he crushed his skull and his brains spilled out.
`Now cover him up with plenty of earth, that's it.'
I certainly had my work cut out for me, thanks to that wretch Foulmouth.
© Concepcion Fole Otero and Editorial Galaxia, S.A.
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa
Anxel Fole (Lugo, 1903 - Lugo, 1986) was a writer and journalist and, until the outbreak of Civil War in 1936, worked with the Partido Galleguista (the Galician party). His writing is steeped in the world of rural Galicia and his stories are often retellings of stories he himself was told: tales of rural grotesques, ghosts, mysteries and premonitions. He wrote in both Galician and Castilian, his best-known works being: A lus do candil (1953), Terra brava (1955) Contos da neboa (1973) and Historias que ninguen cre (1981).This story was originally published in Galician as `De como o xastre Bieito volveu pro inferno' in Contos da neboa (1973).
Supper was served at ten beneath the solemn gold of the candelabra. The six of us sat down at the table. Everything, the china, the gleaming cutlery, ourselves, had its double in the glass table top. I was the first to notice that the sinister pane of glass reflected back at us not six faces but seven. The intruding face was situated to the right, slightly towards the centre, between Miguel and Mercedes. It could have been there for several days. The glass hadn't been cleaned since Saturday, we had no proof - the maid was new - that the cleaning had been carried out particularly thoroughly, and we all know how easy it is to eat mechanically, not once, but many times, without pausing to look for your double in the glass. So it was perfectly possible that the face had been there for five or six days. Other questions arose: had it been there for twenty-four hours every day? during that time had its position at the table varied? had the face been different every day? Not forgetting, of course, the most immediate and obvious questions: the identity of the face and the reason for its unusual presence there. I think the moment has come to
describe the object of our questions. The face could have been about thirty or thirty-five. Everything about it bespoke serenity or, rather, indifference. Its regular features belonged to an individual of the male gender. It had blond hair. Beneath the arch of the eyebrows, you could just make out a pair of dark eyes. Was it looking at us? I moved my hand in front of the face; it took no notice. Perhaps it was pretending. I did not dare to touch it, even though I knew that to do so might make it disappear. After all, it was a living face. Removing the glass would be another solution, though I was quick to see that it would be a false one. The face might remain stuck to the glass or rise up from the bare table. I found neither of those two possibilities to my liking, not to mention the awful sense of mutilation that would mark any such ceremony. Anyway, the face did not appear to be hostile. It clearly wanted nothing from us - if indeed it had even noticed our presence - only to remain in the place where, to our astonishment, we had found it. We would have to move our supper to the drawing-room. I hesitated for a moment on the threshold: obviously we would have to close the door, but I felt uneasy about switching off all the lights. The thought that this otherwise harmless measure might put the face to flight prompted me instead to abandon it to the half-light. That was a mistake, for, night after night, it remained on the glass. For us, eating in the drawing-room became a habit. Eventually, we abandoned the dining room - almost always closed and in darkness - to the face. The last time I went in there, I didn't actually see it. Dust had accumulated on the table, forming the kind of vegetation you normally find under beds. Grown accustomed to the dark, the dining room seemed strangely opaque. In that neglected, dirty state, there was a wildness about it. Maybe the face isn't even there any more.
© Pere Gimferrer
Translated by Margaret full Costa
Pere Gimferrer (Barcelona, 1945) published two books of poetry in Castilian - Arde el mar (1966), for which he won the Premio Nacional de Poesia, and La muerte en Beverley Hills (1968). Subsequently he has written exclusively in Catalan, translating his own work into Castilian. His novel Fortuny won the Spanish Critics' Prize in 1983. Amongst his publications since then are Mascarada (1996) and L'agent provocador (1998). He has also written a book of film criticism as well as essays on Magritte, Ernst, Miro, Toulouse-Lautrec and De Chirico (published in English by Academy Editions). `A Face' is one of five stories in the fantastic genre which he wrote in 1965, four of them published in the magazine Papeles de Son Armadans and one in the literary review Insula.
I'm a fan of magic realism, an avid reader of Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende and their illustrious followers. I love novels and stories that are rich in fantastical characters and fabulous happenings: wise grandmothers, blood falling as rain, flying children, galleons mysteriously stranded amidst the greenery of the virgin jungle. These `romans de pays chauds', as they were labelled by one defender of outmoded, anaemic literary values, represent fresh energy and vitality, and bring an element of poetry into the prosaic narrowness of our lives. So, when I heard the tale of the Thousand Minus One Nights of my esteemed colleague from the Circle, with its reference to the stork's nest next to the little house Eusebio rented in the Alcazaba district, by the mechouar, I recalled certain paragraphs by my fellow Spaniard, All Bey, on the subject of these migratory waders whose company he enjoyed in Marrakech thanks to the Sultan's credulity.
According to an old Moroccan tradition, Berber peasants believe that storks are human beings who adopt that form temporarily in order to travel and experience other lands, and then, when they return to their own country, they recover their original shape. So, on my arrival in Marrakech in pursuit of the elusive Eusebio, I decided to abandon risky and fruitless enquiries, and with the help of the historian Hamid Triki I made my way to the ancient stork refuge next to the Mosque of Ibn Yusef.
After a great deal of searching and asking for directions, I came upon Dar Belarx and managed to find the guide. Encouraged by my generous tip, he produced a bunch of keys and led me through a side door, along a gloomy corridor and into a large, magnificent patio, though dirty and neglected. Heaps of rubble covered the central area, adorned with a fountain; but the fine arcades, the mouldings in the side rooms and the tile friezes had resisted the ravages of time. There were piles of feathers and pigeon droppings, and even the recent corpse of one of those birds, attracted, like her companions, by the silence and benevolence of the spot. The refuge had been closed up a century earlier, on the death of a grandson of its founder.
I mentioned to my escort the legend of the stork-men. To my great surprise, he corrected my terminology. It was no legend, but the absolute truth. He himself knew someone who emigrated in that fashion to Europe and returned home a few months later, having recovered his former shape. The man lived in that very alley, and my guide needed no prompting to introduce me to him.
The quick-change artist - how else to describe him? - was a placid, serene old man, of a very similar appearance to the one my colleagues have attributed to Eusebio, with intensely blue eyes and a carefully-tended white beard, sitting at the door of his house, his right hand resting on the handle of his stick. To avoid any boring preamble I will let him tell his own story; I don't know if it's true, or his own invention, or taken from folklore.
`Some forty years ago, my wife - may she be with God! - managed to get a contract to work in a thread mill in France and so she emigrated in order to improve our modest fortunes, leaving me behind to take care of the children. At first, we received regular news of her, together with a postal order representing her savings for the month; but gradually the money began to arrive on its own, with no accompanying letter. This strange, long silence, pregnant with fears and doubts, plunged me into a profound melancholy. My own letters went unanswered; as did my requests for her to telephone. I wrote enquiring after her to a neighbour who had also gone to work in a thread mill in the same area. Her laconic telegram - `all well your wife working' - far from dispelling my unease, only increased it. If all was so well, why the silence? Had she forgotten her position as wife and mother of four children? At night I would toss and turn in my bed, unable to sleep. Meanwhile, the chances of getting a passport had decreased: the economic crisis and unemployment in the Christian countries meant all doors were closed to foreigners, and the French consulate did not issue tourist visas to poor artisans like me: a humble cobbler. They asked me for a bank reference and goodness knows what else. In short: I had to give up the idea. But I still yearned to make the trip and one day, as I was gazing at the storks nesting on the top of the walls of the royal palace, I thought to myself, if only I could be like them and fly, to where my wife is working in her thread mill in faraway Epinal. As though led by a presentiment, I went to see my eldest brother: I told him I had decided to go to Europe and I gave him temporary charge of the care and education of my children. That uneasy period of my life came to a sudden end.
The next day, I was on my way with a flight of storks, in a state of bliss and delight difficult to express in words. The world was both tiny and immense: landscapes and towns like toys, seas glinting like mirrors, white mountains ... Height, weightlessness, speed of movement, made me feel superior to humans, slow as tortoises, tiny as insects. I was flying with a sense of utter happiness towards the prosperous and enlightened continent from which Christians had ventured forth in order, apparently, to educate us, and incidentally offer us work, distracted by the rapture of soaring from the precise purpose of my journey. Those were weeks of freedom and contentment, untrammelled by borders and official stamps. Carrying no papers of any kind, we crossed the boundaries of separate territories, we broke their petty laws, eluded customs barriers and police checks, laughed at the mean discrimination represented by visas. Once we had passed a huge chain of mountains, covered with snow like the Atlas range, the view changed: the fields were greener, woods more frequent and thicker, the towns with ochre tiles gave way to others with roofs of grey slate. We were following the course of a river on whose banks stood cities an
d factories. A few days later, after many a long day's flight, halting by night on towers and belfries, I felt my drive weaken, I could not keep up with my companions, I was falling hopelessly behind, I could scarcely move my wings. Unable even to hover, I nearly plummeted to the ground, but landed-as-best I could in a garden.
My appearance startled the owner of the house, a Frenchman of about forty who was pruning some trees and trimming the lawn with shears. `Look, Aicha, a stork,' he cried. The name of my beloved wife set my heart fluttering wildly. Who was this fellow, and how dare he address her so intimately? When she appeared at the door, I was ready to faint. I kept staring at her and my eyes flooded with tears. `That's incredible,' she said in French. `There are lots of them in my country. I'm sure that's where it's come from.' She came over to me, without recognising me, and stroked my feathers. `How tame it is! It has probably fallen ill and can't fly on. I'm going to take care of it and feed it raw fish. Where I come from they say it brings good luck; it's a guest out of the blue and it deserves our respect and hospitality.'
Aicha's sweet, welcoming words, instead of easing my pain, increased it. Her use of `our' and her obvious intimacy with the man confirmed my suspicions: she was living with him as man and wife, sharing his bed and table. Still bewildered, and full of bitterness, I wondered whether they had children. I was afraid I might hear a baby crying, and I scrutinised the washing line, fortunately without spotting any nappies or baby clothes. But the sense of superiority and pride I had previously felt, up in the sky, gave way to feelings of impotence and rage. I was two steps away from my wife and her lover, incapable of responding to her adultery, with my awkward wader's movements and my discordant squawks. The affection and maternal instinct Aicha showed, her eagerness to care for me, choose my food, build me a kind of nest on the roof of a shed, degraded, rather than exalted, my temporary status as a bird. The sight of me reminded her of home, she covered me with kisses and caresses, but at night when they both came back from work - she from her thread mill, he from a branch of a major bank - they would go inside and close the door, leaving me standing one-legged on my nest.
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