The boy sat very still, his eyes fixed on the ashtray, as if listening to some internal event.
`That's probably the thing you sensed was about to happen,' she added.
`That's exactly what I was going to say,' he said, `the knot in my chest is gradually dissolving.'
After a while, he got up, put his arm around the girl's waist and they made their way to the bedroom kissing. From the street came a scream that penetrated the windows, but they were too busy exploring each other's bodies to notice. The pendulum clock struck ten.
Ah, well.
© Juan Jose Millis
Translated by Margaret full Costa
Juan Jose Millis (Valencia, 1946) is both a writer of short stories and novels and a journalist. His first novel, Cerbero son las sombras won the Sesamo Prize in 1974 and since then he has published Vision del ahogado (1977), Papel mojado (1983), Letra muerta (1983), El desorden de to nombre (1988), La soledad era esto (1990; winner of the Nadal Prize), Volver a casa (1990) and El orden alfabetico (1998). This story is taken from Primavera de luto y otros cuentos (1989) in which all the stories end with the same resigned, anticlimactic 'Ali, well.'
Armand ran into the workshop making a noise like a car and trampling the shavings on the floor, crunching over them as noisily as he could. He circled the carpenter's bench twice, and looked at the saws, gouges, clamps and planes hanging up, all in perfect order, each tool in its proper place (marked by the appropriate outline sketched on the wall), then went off down the passage at the end of which the actual house began. Uncle Reguard had his workshop at the back of the house and although the grown-ups always used the front entrance, Armand preferred to go in through the workshop. He was fascinated by the fact that his uncle's workshop was just behind the house. He lived in a flat and his father's workshop was on the ground floor of another building, four blocks away. His cousins all felt the same. Uncle Reguard was the only member of the family to have his house and his workshop together; there was a little room that served to separate the two, and also served as a lumber room. Immediately after it, if you were approaching from the workshop, came the dining room, with the big table, the chandelier, and the armchairs, then the corridors with doors to the other rooms.
When Armand got to the dining room the others were already there, exchanging kisses, laughing, and shouting louder and louder all the time in order to be heard; his father, his mother, his cousins, his uncle, his aunts, the other aunt and uncle, and the other group of more distant cousins, who in fact weren't cousins at all, he just called them cousins because they belonged to such distant branches of the family that he didn't know exactly how to classify them.
They ate a meal that went on for hours, then sat around afterwards, with cigar smoke filling the room. The empty champagne bottles began to pile up in the lumber room, between the house and the workshop, the aunts cut cake nonstop and the older cousins played records. The air was thick and smelled of chocolate. The younger cousins (Armand, Guinovarda, Gisela, Guitard, Llopard) asked to be allowed to get down from the table, then ran to Eguinard's room to play with the wooden houses, which had roofs and doors and windows all painted in different colours. With the door ajar, Armand could see a corner of the passageway and in that corner the harp.
It was a harp that Uncle Reguard had made thirty years ago, and it was a source of great pride in the family, because (as Armand's father always said) it showed that carpentry and instrument-making were not so very different. As far back as he could remember, Armand had seen the harp in Uncle Reguard's house, always in the same place: the corner where the passage way bent round. He found it much more beautiful than any of the drawings or photographs of other harps that he cut out of magazines and kept in a blue folder: a harp in the hands of a mythological god, a Sumerian harp topped with the carved head of an animal he was unable to identify, a badge from Ireland, two Norwegian harps (one had a dragon's head, the other the head of a woman with a blindfold over her eyes), and one made from a branch of a tree, being played by Harpo Marx.
His cousin Reguard came into the room tearful and smiling, surrounded by grown-ups congratulating him. In his right hand he had a chocolate mint ice cream; his left hand was wrapped in a bandage. It was a scene that Armand had witnessed over and over again, every time the family got together, sometimes at his house, sometimes at the house of the real cousins, occasionally in the houses of the other, distant cousins, some of whom even lived in different cities. A child always appeared with his left hand in a bandage. The bandage was thickest in the area of the ring finger: Armand knew that there was no longer a finger under the bandage, and that when the bandage came off there would be nothing there but a tiny little stump, completely healed. Once again, Armand looked round his relatives' hands. As he had gradually begun to notice some time ago, everyone over nine years of age was missing the ring finger of their left hand.
Armand was seven when he first realised that it was no coincidence that every time there was a party, one of the children had a finger cut off. Naturally,.he had noticed that the older children had a finger missing, but it seemed entirely normal. All his adult relatives had a finger missing, for reasons which escaped him and to which he was indifferent; so many things escaped his knowledge, things he knew he would not understand until he was grown up, that he paid very little attention to this issue, which was trivial in comparison to other matters that occupied his mind: the spirit of selfsacrifice of the St Bernard dog, the origins of life or the rules governing offside in football. So far as he was concerned, in order to become a teenager, leaving behind the world of the child, you had to lose the finger of your left hand. It seemed as acceptable, normal and desirable as losing your milk teeth.
When he had first gone to school, he had been surprised to see that many grown-ups still had five fingers on each hand, and they seemed unperturbed by it. This he found remarkable, odd and rather unpleasant, and he felt proud to belong to a logical family. As the months passed, contact with other children led him to think that perhaps it was some sort of coincidence that all his relatives suffered accidents to their left hand and the accidents always resulted in the loss of the ring finger. The boy sitting at the desk next to his explained that losing a finger was typical of carpenters. The carpenter in his neighbourhood (he recounted) had lost three fingers. His mother had told him that the same thing happens to lots of carpenters, because sooner or later, the blade of the circular saw lops off a finger or two. Armand knew this was not exactly the case in his family. They were carpenters, but the loss of their finger was no fault of the circular saw, and it was no accident. At nine years of age, the children were not yet carpenters, and they did not even know if they would be carpenters when they grew up; although generally speaking, from time immemorial, all the members of the family had shown a marked preference for that trade and apart from a few exceptional cases, they all ended up as carpenters.
Armand spent many nights puzzling over the matter. Was there some professional obligation to have your finger cut off? He came to a conclusion for which he would have liked confirmation: the family cut that first finger off so that the children would begin to get used to the idea. The loss of that first finger made them lose their fear of losing another. It made them realise it was not such a big deal; it gave them courage and helped them to face their work bravely. One thing still nagged at him: he had met the father of a schoolfriend from another class, who was also a carpenter, yet (as he noticed every time the man came to pick up his son from school) he had no fingers missing from his hand.
As the adults did not make a tragedy out of it and, indeed, seemed particularly happy at the time the finger was cut off (especially the parents of the child who was being amputated), Armand saw nothing tragic about it either. Until that day, two years earlier, when he had first realised that some time in their ninth year, all the members of the family had a finger cut off, and it would happen to him one day: then he felt afraid. He was in the bedroom with his cousins, playing with the wooden
houses. Eguinard, Gisela and Gimfreu had already lost a finger. Llopart and he still had five fingers, which meant that they were still children. At one point, when Eguinard stopped playing for a minute, Armand went over to him, swallowed hard and asked him what was all this business about fingers. Llopart, Gisela and Gimfreu looked round, just for a second, then carried on running in and out of the wooden houses. Eguinard asked him to repeat his question, perhaps playing for time while he thought up a reply. Armand amplified it: what was this business of the fingers; they had cut off his cousin Renguard's finger that day, and they cut off everybody's finger, sooner or later, once they reached nine. Llopart was looking at him in bewilderment. Eguinard stood up, tousled Armand's hair and gently drew him out of the room. Armand continued to insist: how come everybody in the family had the same finger missing from their left hand, and other people, who were not in the family, did not? Armand stared at Eguinard's finger, which was cut off at the base. There was a clean scar, for it had been done very well.
Moreover, why the ring finger of the left hand and not the little finger on the right hand, or one of the index fingers? Did it relate to some question of hygiene, the meaning of which had been lost down the centuries? It was clearly an ancestral custom, but what was its origin? Had they been doing it for centuries? Or just decades? The day he turned nine, his father found him crying in bed.
`I don't want to have my finger cut off.'
`What nonsense!'
`I want to be normal like the other children in school.'
`Being normal has nothing to do with the number of fingers you have.'
He dried his son's tears, and explained that normality is a cultural construct, and therefore relative; some people cut their hair short, others let it grow, some people have a beard and a moustache, some just a moustache, some just a beard, some are clean-shaven; there are societies where both men and women shave their body hair, other societies where only the women do so. We cut our nails, which differentiates us from animals and primitive peoples, who let theirs grow long. Armand did not accept these analogies: nails and hair grow back again, fingers don't. The sun streamed in the window; father and son stared at the warm rays as they fell across the floor.
`There's no need to decide immediately.'
`I have decided, and I don't want it.'
`Why?'
`Because you can't play the harp with a finger missing.'
Even he was surprised by this reply. He had spoken the words without thinking. However, even if he didn't know it, even if the thought had never actually crossed his mind, as far as other people were concerned, including his father, it was quite possible that he might really want to be a harpist, and so he clung to the idea. A few months earlier he had seen a programme on television with Nicanor Zabaleta playing the harp and he was quite sure that you needed all your fingers. A harpist needs them all. His father looked at him gravely. He had never seen his father look so stern.
`If you like music, there are all sorts of instruments. It doesn't necessarily have to be the harp.'
`I like the harp.'
`You've got that idea into your head because of your uncle's harp. But it's not the only instrument in the world. There are plenty of others: kettledrum, bass drum, cymbals, tambourine, bongo drums, the triangle ...' Armand displayed no great enthusiasm. `I could understand if you weren't too keen on the maracas, but what about a drum kit? A drum kit is a really complex set of instruments: the bass drum, the small tom-tom, the large tom-tom, cymbals, the large cymbal. Or what would you say to the vibraphone?'
Armand felt uneasy during the next few months. A story had always been jokingly bandied round the family that, one day, a child would have his finger cut off and it would grow again after a couple of months. Some said it would be a sign of something or other, but they could never agree on what exactly. Others accepted that, one day, an amputated finger would grow again, but denied it would be a sign of anything. For Armand that story raised a new dilemma: what if he refused to let them cut his finger off, and it turned out that he was the chosen one whose finger would grow back again? What an absurd situation! By refusing he was preventing the possible fulfilment of the prophecy.
He grew obsessed with fingers. He became aware that some people wore their ring on a particular finger of their left hand. Since in his family nobody had that ring finger, they wore their ring on their little finger and when there was a wedding the priest always looked very serious when the bride and groom came to exchange rings. Once, in the street, Armand saw a stranger with his left-hand ring finger missing and he spent days trying to find out if he was some distant relative, too far removed for him to know. Did other families follow the same custom? Or other similar customs: amputating different fingers or other parts of the body, in order to ... ? What? Where was the sense in it? What did they do with the amputated fingers? Bury them? Armand imagined them buried upright, like stems of asparagus, in little finger cemeteries. Maybe they cremated them.
Gradually he began to see his parents, and his other relatives, in a new light. What sort of macabre tradition was this, and how could they accept it so unfeelingly? Since he could not trust them, he used to sleep with his left hand under his pillow, and his head on top. He had worked out that it was completely impossible for them to get hold of his finger to cut it off by raising his head, removing the pillow and taking hold of his hand, without him waking. Sometimes he would dream that despite these precautions, his parents (wearing beatific smiles) managed to lift his head and the pillow, grasp his hand, and with one deft stroke of a butcher's knife lop off his finger.
When he heard that there was to be another family gettogether on the following Sunday, he flew into a panic. For the first time, he was a candidate for losing a finger. Out of all the cousins, he and Guitard were the most likely cases. Both had reached nine years of age. He three months earlier, Guitard seven. If it went by seniority, then it was Guitard's turn. However, the amputations were not always done in order of age, so it might very well- be him.
Sunday came and neither of them lost a finger, instead it was Teodard, a cousin who wasn't even nine yet (he had a month to go) and so in theory was not even in the running. Guitard was furious. It was his finger that should have been cut off, not his cousin's. It was explained that the event had been brought forward for a very simple reason: Teodard's mother was expecting a baby and they wanted to get it over with, so that when the new baby was born they would not have to be thinking about the amputation of the older child's finger. Armand was fascinated by Guitard's indignation. He asked him if he did not mind his finger being cut off. Why should he mind? On the contrary, not only could he not see any problem, he was astonished by Armand's question.
`It's not your head they cut off. Just a finger, and not even the most important one.'
Guitard was dying to be a grown-up: which is why, at the next family get-together, he ran into the room where the other children were playing with a train set, triumphantly brandishing his bandaged hand.
When the new little cousin was born (they named him Abelard), there was great agitation, whispered comments, then sudden silences, whenever a child came into the room. Naturally, this secretiveness aroused Armand's curiosity. Yet three days went by before he found out that Abelard had been born with six fingers on his left hand.
The whole family was alarmed. What were they to do when Abelard reached nine? If they cut off a finger, he would have ten, not nine like everyone else. Some took the view that this might be seen as unfair, and that he would have to lose two fingers, to be on the same footing as the rest of the family. However, others felt it was too much to cut off two of his fingers if the rest of the family lost just one. Only one should be cut off. That is what had always been done, and there was no reason to change the custom. The arguments branched off into other areas, expanded, came back to the point of departure. Finally they reached the obvious conclusion, that this was an exceptional case, and, as such, demanded an exceptional solution. Moreover
, there was no need for haste. There was a long time to go before Abelard would be nine, when the decision would have to be taken.
This comforting stance collapsed, however, a few weeks later, when little cousin Gerarda was born: again with an extra finger, which again was on her left hand. The case therefore was no longer exceptional and the first serious doubts were raised. Postponing the decision until Abelard and Gerarda were nine no longer made sense. An uncle, who was a shorthand typist and keen on French jazz, was brave enough to ask if there was any point in carrying on with that absurd tradition. It was the provocation the family needed. The reaction was unanimous. A tradition going back centuries could not be questioned just because two children happened to be born with six fingers. The dissident was made to feel that his question was unnecessary and inopportune and, with great solemnity and resolve, the date was fixed for the next gettogether, in one month's time, at the beginning of December.
A week later, however, came the news that in Barbastro a third cousin (more or less removed) had been born with six fingers. Suddenly it became clear that it was inappropriate to speak of chance and that putting off the decision for nine years would not solve anything. Some members of the family took the view that there was no need for alarm: the appearance in the family of children with six fingers on one hand was the product of a logical evolution. Uncle Reguard himself suggested that many centuries (some said millennia) of cutting off the left-hand ring finger were eventually giving rise to a mutation whereby, in order to compensate for the finger they would lose at nine, they were being given an extra finger at birth. This idea was considered absurd by other members of the family, who rejected the notion that such a large mutation could take place over a short period such as centuries or millennia. Actually, it was irrelevant who was right. For the first time, there was a profound schism within the family, capable of splitting it apart. On one side, those who believed that children born with six fingers had to have two fingers removed (the ring finger, as usual, and this new finger between the ring finger and the middle finger which has no name) and that there was no need to wait till the children were nine; instead it should be done now, as a show of force to stifle dissent. On the other side, those who held that if tradition dictated the removal of one finger, then no matter what anatomical modifications appeared, they should carry on being faithful to the tradition and cut off just one finger. When the debate was at its height, a third stance, initially a minority one, was adopted by the shorthand typist uncle and two sisters-in-law, who denounced the custom itself as an act of barbarity.
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