Human Pages

by John Elliott

  Alive was what Fernando was. He quickly added the length and breadth of Gatar Street as far as the butcher’s shop, then on to the corner of St Bartholomew, to his explored kingdom. True, some he met on his toddle spat and talked darkly about his father, but to him that was all the same as glug, glug, glug or chew, chew, chew. His grinning mug soon made them relent.

  Passers-by, during the day, gave his mother a progress report on his travels as she soaked the chickpeas or stitched a hem. ‘He’s at Victor’s.’ ‘He’s with the cousins.’ ‘He’s tormenting Augustinetta.’ ‘He’s peed himself.’ ‘He’s been on Auntie Luisa’s roof feeding the rabbits.’ ‘Dammit! He’s more of a Simon than anything else. He’s got your eyes. The eyes of your pa. You can see it when he laughs. Right at home in Llomera that’s what he is.’

  He wailed and cried though when they took him to the fields. His bellows and sobs contorted his screwed up face. They convulsed his little frame. Tonetta and Gloria took it in turn to drag then carry him, kicking and screaming, along the ridge past Orange Miguel’s hives and down the path on the far side of the hill. The sight of the open sky seemed to send him into paroxysms of rage, nor was he pacified by their hoeing of the red earth between the drills of potatoes, or the pointed out butterflies flapping their mottled wings among the rows of tomatoes and beans. The drone of a hornet, which if it had ventured into the confines of St Roch would have been a wonder to behold, a prize to try and capture, here only provoked whimpers of fear followed by shrieks of torment. He girned and sulked and bawled all through the morning till Gloria, at the end of her patience, told him to either shut it for the love of Christ or they would leave him there for good. His hands and eyes said it all as he clutched piteously at her skirt. The sisters laughed. ‘Son,’ Gloria said, ‘you’re not going to be a countryman, are you?’ Then, realising what she had uttered, she stopped watering the plants and touched Tonetta’s arm, for Iusebio and Batiste had fought under the commander whose nom de guerre had been ‘The Countryman’—a courageous and wily captain or a ruthless and bloodthirsty destroyer, depending on whether you shared the empty plate of ‘nothing for us’ or marched with the bound up rods over your shoulder for the greater glory of the fatherland.

  Restored to his own midden, however, Nando was his old self. His chubby legs carried him from one blether about his doings to another. He was never shy in company, no matter what their age or size. Everyone was his pal, yet none more so than Paca, who kept the wine shop in Molino Street. Right from the beginning they had hit it off with a deep and mutual fascination. ‘Paca, apaca, apaca’ were among the first words he managed to form.

  The pair of them, oblivious to time, sat for hours together at her door while she waited for customers. Perched beside her on a chair, Fernando grinned contentedly up at her wrinkled, dark-brown face as she exhaled smoke from her cigarillo above his head or shelled peanuts for him to chew. Each morning, at eleven, she toasted his continued well-being with a glass of her ‘mixture’, a ferocious blend of dry anis and muscatel, which she drank, according to her, to keep herself right.

  A passing stranger would reasonably have wondered what it was they found to discuss so earnestly, for in Paca’s company Fernando took on the gravitas of a middle-aged man. One minute, while he listened to her with his head cocked to the side, he resembled a much travelled wanderer, who knows he still has far to roam, the next, nodding sagely at her observations, he assumed the guise of a learned friar, who had poked his nose into a thousand arcane and forgotten tomes.

  Day by day Paca guided him through the tongue-trippery of the ‘Three Sad Tigers’. She saddled him up so he could ride the western range with ‘Fast Draw Jim’. She told him Tarzan was an American because she had seen him dive off the Brooklyn Bridge, and that Nanook lived in a country without a name. Nearer to home, she explained why St Teresa had suffered so, poor creature, and how what’s-his-name had become St John of God, who wasn’t the same as St John of the Cross, whose dark night of the soul she described as though it had been a particularly bad bout of indigestion. ‘There are a multitude of Johns in the world,’ she averred, ‘that’s why the fair on the eve of their name is such a wonder to behold.’

  Almost as if they had happened last night, she related the trials and tribulations of that cunning rascal, Lazarillo, born with his feet in a river, whose exploits and sayings she knew by heart. ‘Just like that other sensible fellow, Sancho, Belly by name,’ she said, as she rubbed his and then her own, ‘who had the great misfortune to be in the service of a crackbrained fool who never noticed if vittles were on the table or not.’

  Gradually, Fernando learned through her gossip the foibles and peccadilloes of the menfolk who frequented her tavern. He knew which were the misers and which were the spendthrifts, those who could hold their drink and those who were not quite right in the head. He knew the exact day each month the barber came back from the whorehouse in the city and that Uncle Carlos wasn’t really the father of the girl in the grocery store. What it all meant he did not know, but it confirmed what he had immediately sensed. Paca knew everything; everything there was to know in the whole of the world.

  Strangers, as well as neighbours, paraded through her tales. She opened up the lives and trades of pedlars, itinerant bricklayers and carpenters, cuckolded Pepe with his vanloads of second-hand clothes, tubercular Martin with his poor quality shoes displayed in expensive boxes, Toni, the gypsy, with his battered guitar, so that the possibility of lives spent beyond Llomera dangled beguilingly in front of her entranced listener.

  ‘I’d let a gypsy in,’ she said, ‘if he came and asked me first. It’s alright if they are expected, but it’s no good if they barge in unannounced. That way plenty trouble’s guaranteed. They find their way at night by the stars. They all love St Barbara and say that Christ was a black man. They’ll journey from all over to join a procession, but you won’t catch them inside a church. Never say “I’m off for a pee” in their presence, for to them that’s a dirty insult and a horrible blasphemy. Now, as I’ve often told you, I’ve only to hear someone tune up a guitar, others to clap and someone to sing the couplets, and next day I remember them all word for word.’

  As good as her word and straight from her heart, Paca passed on the couplets of songs to such effect that, in later years, whenever Fernando heard the clap and beat of palms, he could fit a dozen couplets to the tune. She sang them according to her mood. When she was happy and a light mountain breeze filtered its grace along the dark alleyway, she would tilt her head back and sway her ample hips to ‘When you come with me, where will I take you? For a walk along the royal ramparts.’ Conversely, when she was sad or money was tight she preferred the miner’s lament, ‘You told me your name was Laura, Laura by name, by name Laura. But the laurels are faithful by nature and you are not to me.’ The one that stirred Nando most, however, was ‘Two hearts were placed on the scales. One begged for justice, the other vengeance.’ The bloody image of hearts torn from their bodies intrigued him, as did the thrill of justice and vengeance, but then Paca spoilt it by winking at him and laughingly taking a slurp of her habitual ‘mixture’.

  *

  One day, as he grew older, Fernando made an important discovery. Words that were written down at home stayed the same. When Gloria or his mother read the items from a shopping list or said the title of the film shown on the poster tacked to the cinema door, they said the same thing, whereas Paca, when she saw the balloon rising above Fast Draw Jim’s head, said one time, ‘Two down and one to go,’ but later, when looking at the same balloon, changed it to, ‘Tonight, my friend, you’ll sleep with the devils.’ Studying the movement of Paca’s lips, an idea buzzed in Nando’s brain box. Paca could not read. Therefore, he must learn as soon as possible so he could show her. Reading, with what she knew already, would place her on a par with the saints. The thought frightened him a little because, as far as he could make out, saints went to special places, beside the Pope perhaps, and he did not want Paca to go away.
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ he whispered, to her bemusement.

  *

  Now it was Paca’s custom to flesh out her tales and homilies by occasionally adopting a variety of voices, and this practice began to issue from her listener’s mouth with the same unconscious ease with which he picked up a stone in the street, inspected it for a second, then casually chucked it away.

  Back at home, Antonetta, busy with ironing and the stepping stones of her own thoughts, let her son chatter on about Paca and the doings of the day, when she suddenly realised she was hearing Paca say, ‘Dirty scoundrels, they ought to be whipped. Lazy good-for-nothings!’ Followed by what could only be Luisa at the washing trough, ‘scrub, young man. Give me a pela and I’ll scrub you clean’ and then Remigio’s hoarse mutter, ‘Whore’s shit! What a fucking mess! Must I do it all myself?’ The words were piped in a child’s voice, but the intonation and the individual mannerisms were so curiously adult that, instead of rebuking him for swearing, she joined in his chuckles of delight. Like her, Fernando clearly believed the world about them was all the better for being pulled by its nose.

  This talent remained with him as he grew older. He sharpened and refined it, even after he reckoned that Paca was only another old woman, who, like many others, clung to the sayings and superstitions of the past which, when you really thought about them, made little sense.

  He still continued to say hello to her, of course, and hang around long enough to answer her questions out of politeness. Yes, he could read and write and add and subtract and multiply and divide many columns of figures. He knew what a pyramid was and how many centilitres made a litre. Yes, he was nine now. It was very different from when he was just a kid.

  Paca looked at him and saw his impatience to be gone. She was wise enough to know how things are and must be for the young, yet she wanted to give him her blessing while there was still time. ‘Listen, my king,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘Your mother’s a good woman, a brave girl, and your father’s a good man, too. Don’t heed what anyone says. Keep him in your heart. Tonetta does. I do.’ She let go of him, and then, as she had no host to offer him, she unscrewed the top of the jar beside her and poured out a faltering stream of peanuts into his cupped hands.

  Fernando repeated, ‘Keep him in your heart,’ using Paca’s voice as he strolled off. He pressed the dry shells away from the nuts and stuffed them in his mouth. Turning the corner, he narrowly missed bumping into Vincenz and Tony Pigeon, who had stopped to argue over the run of last night’s cards. A moment later, safely out of earshot, he counterpointed Vincenz’s guttural boasts with the high-pitched squeaks of Tony’s bad luck. It seemed as though he only needed to be with someone a second to catch their way of talking, their particular turn of phrase, like a germ. Under the intuition of his tongue he was able to unlock the communal wardrobe of Llomera and slip on and off, according to his whim, someone else’s old jacket, best Sunday trousers, black mourning dress or white confirmation suit, all of which conveniently shrank to fit his diminutive frame. The one person he never sought to imitate, however, was his mother. The thought of doing it never even crossed his mind.

  This talent for mimicry naturally endeared him to his schoolmates. They repeatedly asked for his rendition of the rising and coaxing tones of their own Miss Lopez as she sought in vain for the answer to the next line of long division chalked up on the blackboard. When freed for the afternoon, while they shoved, straggled and hopped their way home, he rebuked them in the saddened voice of Mrs Vico from the big class, but then absolved their threatened punishment by reverting to his own carefree lilt.

  In the presence of adults he was much more circumspect. It was clear a part of them enjoyed his cheekiness, but the way they looked at him sideways contained an undercurrent of disapproval. Therefore, in school, when his classmates pointed at him and tugged at his arm or stabbed a pencil into the back of his neck, in the hope of getting him to take someone off, he feigned ignorance and continued to stare straight ahead with a look of benign innocence. On top of arithmetic and spelling, like the rest of us, he had begun to learn how to dissimulate successfully.

  Nor, when he went to the fields, did he dare mimic his aunt behind her back. These days they worked together happily enough: he pulling up potatoes, she watering the tomatoes and lettuces. Later, climbing up into the fork of an olive tree, he watched her sturdy, stooping figure gather up the fruit he had dislodged. From his height through the branches, he could see over the valley to the three tall chimneys of the brickworks. Gloria glanced up at him as the fall of olives stopped. ‘Work, child,’ she said. ‘Dreams are the same over there as they are here.’ Fernando obediently resumed tugging his hooked stick among the silver-green leaves. No doubt, beyond the chimneys other olive trees grew in a similar valley. Close by, another olive tree awaited him. The valley floor was covered in olive trees. As far as his aunt was concerned, when it was time to harvest olives then that was what she did without question. It was immutable. He could see the logic, yet beyond the beyond he guessed there was something else, something totally different, unconnected with the repetitive chain of what they did, having nothing in common with olive trees and brickwork chimneys, something that was not a dream but a reality. The thrill of the glimmer of escape from what he loved troubled his psyche. He redoubled his efforts. The olives rained down beneath him. ‘That’s the way,’ Gloria said approvingly. ‘A bit more and we’ll rest and eat.’

  *

  When he was around eleven years old, Fernando’s growing curiosity about his father’s relations began to trouble the equilibrium of his daily life. Unlike the families close at hand with whom he made friends or temporary enemies, they were a complete mystery. None of them ever appeared in Llomera, as far as he could make out.

  He badgered his mother for details, but beyond the listing of their names, Rafael, his grandfather, Guillermina, his grandmother, Jacinta, his aunt, and his two cousins, Lupe and Milagra, both of whom went to school in Cirit, her information was scant and unsatisfactory.

  ‘But why don’t they come to see us?’ he put to her.

  ‘They bide where they are. They’re a law unto themselves.’

  ‘Don’t they like me if they’re my grandparents?’

  ‘I’m the one they don’t like. They would have taken you in if I’d given you up to them. Something I’d never do.’

  The scary thought of that having actually happened, of an alternative life where he grew up among strangers without the comfort of his mother beside him, disturbed yet intrigued his inquisitive mind. Accordingly, he pressed on with repeated questions about them until one day, for the sake of peace, Antonetta announced that they would beard the famous Chetos in their lair.

  Three mornings later, Remigio, on his run to Cantellos, dropped them off at the foot of the stony track, which wound uphill to the smallholding.

  Guillermina, sitting on a stool in the yard, was busy skinning a rabbit when they finally appeared in view over the crest. Without returning their greeting, she completed her work and then stared long and hard at Antonetta before turning her gaze to Fernando, who returned it with a hesitant smile. ‘You’ve brought him I see,’ she muttered.

  ‘Only on a visit. It was his wish.’

  Guillermina laughed bitterly, ‘What good’s a visit? We’re not ones for visits here. A son who comes home and chooses to screw a wanton girl but can’t spare the time to find his way here and see his own mother, that’s a visit.’

  ‘You know it was too dangerous. If he had been picked up here, Rafael would have been arrested as well. Anyhow, it’s not your grandson’s fault.’

  ‘There’s nothing for you here. If you intend to keep the boy then do it. He’s no part of us. You’ve wasted your journey.’ The old lady brushed the rabbit skin from her lap and, gripping the dark-red carcase, got to her feet.

  Fernando, for once tongue-tied, looked perplexedly at his mother. Antonetta, her face flushed, took his hand and turned to go.

  ‘No. Wait.�
�� A woman’s voice came from inside the kitchen. Batiste’s sister, Jacinta, emerged into the doorway. ‘Let the boy stay, mother, if he wants to. Do you want to stay, son?’

  Fernando shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Jacinta smiled at him, but Guillermina’s face was unrelenting. He sensed the throb of his mother’s suppressed anger beating within her. ‘I need a pee,’ he whispered. Antonetta pointed behind the fig tree in the corner. Guillermina took the rabbit indoors as he scurried off. The dribble and then the stream of his urine splashed up and down the twisted bark. Peering round, he saw the two women talking.

  ‘Have you heard from him?’

  Antonetta nodded.

  ‘Is he well?’

  ‘Yes, well enough. I haven’t heard for a while, and it’s only rarely. Someone else forwards news.’

  ‘Whore’s shit! We’ll both be old before Batiste comes back again. None of us will be the same. Why don’t you find a new man? I wouldn’t blame you.’

  Antonetta shook her head. ‘Where’s Rafael?’

  ‘Up top with Lupe and Milagra. I’ll be taking them some food soon. Want to come? You’d like to see your cousins, wouldn’t you?’ she said, as Fernando rejoined them.

  Now his mind was made up. It had not been before. He had not known whether he wanted to go or to stay. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I want to go home. I’m not a Cheto. I’m a Simon.’

  Fernando remained unnaturally quiet on the long trudge back to Llomera. He wandered its streets alone as he slowly munched at the thick slice of bread rubbed with oil and tomato, which his aunt had given him on their return. ‘Keep him in your heart,’ Paca’s words from all that time ago would not leave his brain. He tried imitating Guillermina’s scowl and Jacinta’s sing-song modulation, but neither dispelled his hurt. Coming back round into St Bartholomew, he scuffed away the little circle of marbles two younger kids were playing with. ‘I’m Fernando Simon,’ he said, bunching up his fists as he looked from one frightened face to the other. ‘Remember that!’ It did not help.