Human Pages

by John Elliott

  Three days later, they and, if truth be told, Fernando were weary of studying the supposed clues and hurtling off to the four points of Llomera’s compass without coming across anything out of the ordinary. Fernando began to nurse a growing feeling of resentment towards them and the boy, smart aleck Sonny Ayza, who had drawn them. Sonny, he thought contemptuously, what kind of name was that? Fit only for a little kid, yet this one he knew was older than himself. He screwed up the drawings into a tight ball and grasped them in his fist. By the time he reached Molino Street, he had his mind made up. Tearing them into fragments, he threw them into the open doorway of Paca’s wine shop. A hoarse male voice, he recognised as My Son’s, boomed out an expletive. He quickly took to his heels and was safely round the corner before anyone stirred to find the culprit.

  Two sheets destroyed. The remaining two presumably left in Antonetta’s bluebird tin. Two similar sheets she had discovered earlier today secreted in a book placed in her bedroom. The work of Roberto ‘Sonny’ Ayza. They had to be his. The description fitted them to a T. Agnes now felt certain he had been in the apartment prior to her arrival, that he had looked around before slipping his telltale signature, his clue, between the pages of an obscure book. And yet she might never have picked it up, unlike this stuff in front of her concerning Fernando Cheto Simon. It did not have a read me, read me, on its cover. Chance, she thought. They work by chance. Emily Brown might not have a time-obsessed white rabbit as her guide, but her, so far elusive, Chance Company contact seemed to be pointing her in some, as yet, unfathomable direction. Why had his sketches triggered off an accord with a place or a moment she could not remember or in any way visualise? She felt the skin of her scalp begin to crawl. A weird, light-headed feeling made her close her eyes. Again, suppose Mr Ayza was not only a Chance Company employee. Suppose he was . . .

  Agnes opened her eyes. Read on, she told herself. Seek and ye shall find. She was now more and more convinced that this fake biography was either a disguised autobiography or the work of someone who delighted in assuming other voices, a trait which was attributed to the young Fernando.

  So, as no one yet has found a way to stop it, time passed. The sun rose. Its warmth dispersed the morning mists. Its heat suffused the tended fields and terraces, the wild ravines and bare outcrops of mountain rock alike. Clouds formed, slow moving or scudding, and vanished. The moon divided up her quarters then did them over again, just as though she had followed her own diagram in an almanac. Faint rain turned heavy and the wind blew in the wrong direction until it remembered where it was and desisted altogether.

  The black-lined boxes, beseeching prayers for the souls of the dead, covered, as always, the twelve back pages of the regional newspaper. Their replacements, newly arrived Mirandans notified under Births, would have been heartened to read, if they had possessed that accomplishment, that the Minister for High Days and Holidays had visited X, Y and Z, in all of which he had received a rapturous acclaim. ‘Our tomatoes contain all the proteins and vitamins necessary for a healthy and active life,’ he had declared to an enthusiastic public which, on the evidence put before them, united professors of medicine with illiterate day labourers, village watchmen with heads of government departments, carers of souls with country girls who serviced lorry drivers.

  Unceasing vigilance and steely resolution ushered in a new dawn of economic and spiritual regeneration. Miranda once again found friends abroad who opened factories so that her workers could make a living, who maintained airbases in order to protect her freedom and who ventured increasingly across her borders to soak up and marvel at her unique, unrivalled folklore. Shutting one eye, she forgave her malcontents and, if on opening it, those who had been foolhardy enough to return ended up in internment camps and prison, well the leopard does not change overnight, nor does the dog stop whining without a dose of correction.

  Fernando, of course, remained oblivious to his context. He continued to live each moment for its singularity before loosening the hours into his personal cargo of long clinging days and quickly expiring nights. Llomera existed for his eyes only. He drank in its streets and alleys. He ate its crannies and squares. He spat out and pissed away its cul-de-sacs, its outskirts and its vacant lots. Its inhabitants grumbled, chirruped, moaned, blasphemed and squawked from his stomach, throat and mouth, until one day, when he was twelve years old, their chatter ceased, and he painfully learned that they and his surroundings were entirely separate entities, both of which bore scant cognizance of his existence. The idyll, within which he had sheltered, turned out to be no more than a tissue of frayed gauze, easily rent asunder. The Llomera, which he had so avidly consumed, became one-dimensional before his gaze, like a painted flat in the theatre waiting to be hauled up into the flies. Deserted by scenery, scriptless and devoid of stage business, fear stepped up to its mark to fill the gap. It poked behind his eyes. It tightened his belly and scrotum, numbing his lips and legs. Silence was its watchword. Despair was its only promise. Antonetta was ill. Gravely so was the doctors’ verdict and prognosis.

  She had felt unwell for several months. After a couple of indecisive visits to the local medical assistant, she had gone on the bus to Cantellos, first to the doctor and pharmacy, then to the clinic. Their diagnoses to begin with were uncertain. Her symptoms seemed contradictory, but then her face became puffy and swollen and her eyes looked as though they had been blackened in a fight. She was in great pain when she urinated.

  In desperation, Gloria wrote to Rosario Marva, who at once forwarded money with the news that she and her husband, Sebastian, had contacted Professor Maino, a music-loving friend and specialist in women’s diseases. He promised to come to Llomera, but it was too late. Before he was able to make the journey, Antonetta collapsed on the kitchen floor and was ferried to the clinic in Cantellos in an ambulance. Within two days, she was dead. Uraemia had claimed her life. Her kidneys had failed, it transpired. Urine had mingled with her blood.

  At the burial ceremony, Fernando stared down past the lowering coffin into the meaningless space beneath, the patch of earth, which had been dug to make a grave, the space where, from now on, his mother would always be. A part of him remained there at the graveside, even when he preceded the others and walked away. The best part? He could not tell, but he sensed deep inside him he would never be able to retrieve it. A fragment of iron, wrested from somewhere in the impoverished earth, had pierced and collapsed his vision of the world and had lodged itself irredeemably in his being. He was alone, enclosed in a ravine without escape, surrounded by walls of rock too sheer for any man, let alone a boy, to climb. The knowledge that he was condemned to live in a new existence where he would never see his mother again made him shudder with cold, even though the sky was blue above him, the sun hot on his prickling neck and grasshoppers sang in the verge at his feet.

  Damn the Chetos, he thought. Fuck them all! His grandfather stayed at home because of Father Robles. All of them would rather run up the blood-red flag of ‘nothing for us’ from their measly shithole than acknowledge Antonetta’s death, and the worst of them was his own father. Blinding tears stung his eyes. He began to run, leaving the dallying knot of male mourners to straggle out beyond the cemetery wall.

  He ran and ran full tilt all the way up the hill as far as St Bartholomew, where a stitch in his side made him stop and double up. Out of nowhere, Paca’s words came back to him, ‘And your father’s a good man. Keep him in your heart.’ Angrily, he threw them from his mind. His breath came in short gulps. He felt his heart or his lungs, he was not sure which, flutter despairingly against his ribcage like a bird denied flight. ‘Stupid old arsehole,’ he muttered out loud. ‘What does she know about him?’

  The open doorway of the baker’s caught his attention as he continued upwards to St Roch. He entered on an impulse, looked quickly about, and, on seeing a small tray of madeleines on the near counter, grabbed three of them, crammed two into his mouth and scuttled out with the other one before Paco had the time to shout ou
t that he had not paid. Their taste was bland. He shoved his finger along his gums to dislodge the crumbs. The cakes did not help. He got rid of the third by dropping it into the already filled lap of Elizabeta, Vincenz’s youngest daughter, who was sitting on her doorstep shelling broad beans. She stared up in surprise, but Fernando did not stop. He was now into the short stretch of St Roch. Soon he would inevitably be at his own door, behind which his aunt and the rest of the women were gathered waiting for the men to return. The street had not changed. It rose for a bit and then levelled off as it always had done. Within its houses, on either side, and from its flat roofs, querulous questions and shouted replies assailed his eardrums. He scuffed his feet and carelessly grazed the back of his swinging hand against a wall. It had not even drawn blood. Only a short time ago, this had been his unthinking home, the place from which he started out and to which he unerringly returned. Now, as he went over what he would say to Gloria, he realised it was his prison to which, because of his youth, he was consigned.

  Another different voice, more astringent than its predecessors, yet perhaps still the fabrication of a single author. A mother’s death and an absent husband. ‘Yours in sisterhood, Elizabeth Kerry.’ A girl called Elizabeta who had received an unexpected cake. Clearly Antonetta was not Sula, nor was Batiste Cheto René Darshel, her missing father, but the parallels were too marked to be coincidental. Either that or I’m going crazy, Agnes laughed. I’m starting to submit to the Emily Brown in me. Hold on until tomorrow, she told herself. The scheduled programme is guiding me to the ex-detective, Alakhin. Emily Brown will meet him, but Agnes Darshel will also confront her so-called sister and the thumbnail sketch artist, Mr Sonny Ayza. Satisfied with the future plan, she picked up the final extract, wriggled herself into a more comfortable position and read on.

  *

  Two months later, a stranger called. Before she even attempted the ascent of St Roch, the available female population had her in their sights. Observations and opinions quickly formed: on her own, a foreigner by dress and complexion, of a certain age, heavy-hipped, sashaying behind, heels too high for the cobbles, fulsome make-up, extravagant rings, a whore? No, abroad they all looked like that and besides she did not have the telltale stare, the yes I’m truly here glint in her eye, instead just a gentle inclination of her head, her auburn hair tied up under her white and gold patterned headscarf. Where was she going? Was this a chance tourist wandering through, a sign of things to come perhaps, or had she a purpose, some connection she was waiting to make?

  In answer, she finally stopped in front of the closed door of number 48 and knocked. Old Luisa looked up from her chair across the street and called out, ‘Wait! She’s out. Wait!’

  She motioned downwards with her shaking hands, but the woman understood and said in halting Mirandan, ‘How long time?’

  ‘A little. Ten minutes.’ Again the old woman signalled, showing ten raised fingers.

  The news of the arrival reached Gloria before she turned the corner on her way back from the grocery store. She laid her pannier down against the wall and scrutinised the visitor from top to toe. ‘You’re looking for something?’

  The woman nodded and smiled. ‘Someone. You are Gloria?’ she struggled with the surname then gave up. ‘I have,’ she pointed to her handbag, ‘a thing for her.’

  ‘I’m Gloria. You’d better come inside. Too many people can see you here. The whole place is busy trying to work out who you are.’

  They sat awkwardly across from one another at the table. The visitor handed over a sealed envelope, which Gloria, keeping her eyes on her, slowly opened. She took out the twenty green notes it contained.

  ‘My name is Thérèse. I’m a friend of Batiste. He’s broken heart he’s not here in that time. He is at the farm.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Gloria said furiously, slinging down the money. ‘That disgrace will get us all killed with his stupid games. He doesn’t keep in contact. He provides nothing for years and when it’s too late he does this. He’s not a man. Just because he can get it up he thinks he can do what he likes, but he’s not a proper man. Oh, bloody hell!’ Gloria began to cry softly, then, remembering she had a guest in the house, said brusquely, ‘Would you like something? Something to eat or drink?’

  Thérèse was about to say no, but thinking it might ease the situation she said, ‘Yes. Whatever you have. Thank you.’

  Gloria rose and put out a plate of almond biscuits which had been overlooked after the funeral. ‘Are you his woman?’

  Thérèse shook her head. ‘No. It’s not that. It’s safer for him to travel with me. You understand?’

  It was Gloria’s turn to shake her head. ‘People are dead. My husband died. Now Antonetta’s dead. No. I don’t understand. What is it he wants?’

  ‘To see his son.’

  *

  As dusk seeped swiftly down the street, Gloria and Fernando accompanied Thérèse to the Simca she had parked by the wall at the foot of the oval steps. The local guards were still at the barracks and it was too early for any night patrols on the road.

  Thérèse followed the Urtela signpost. Fernando said, ‘You’re going the wrong way,’ but was silenced as his aunt’s fingers dug into his wrist. Her skin was sweating slightly and he noticed that her breathing was irregular. He would have preferred to have sat in front with the foreign woman. It was the first time he had met a foreigner, never mind riding in a foreign car. When he had arrived home, Gloria, after his astonishment at seeing a female stranger in the house, had taken him aside and had explained that they were going to see his father and that, no matter what happened, he must not tell a soul. Part of him then had not wanted to go. He had even considered running off. The rest of him, however, had thrilled with an intensity he had found disturbing. Anyway, he had known by the implacable look in his aunt’s eyes that running away was not going to work. It seemed he was destined to meet his father.

  Now in front of him, Thérèse’s hair smelt nice. He saw, as she shifted her head to look in the mirror, there was a tiny mole below the lobe of her right ear. Unlike his aunt, she was not used to the open air. He imagined her skin as pale and cool, yet warm at the same time. The interior of the car had its own smell: a mixture of unfamiliar tobacco, gasoline and plastic-covered seating. He laid his cheek against the back of the seat. A word bubbled in his mind: clandestine. He was on a clandestine journey, like the time when he had stolen into his mother’s room, opened the drawer and felt about, aware of the smell of her clothes, the memory of which now filled him with shame, to find his father’s ill-written notes in the bluebird tin. That smell of her clothes, which was not the smell of the seat sticking to his ear, or of Gloria, or of himself or Thérèse, lingered in his nostrils now, in spite of the finality of the grave, in spite of the hole he had watched them covering over. The car tyres drummed loudly on a change of road surface. Beside him, Gloria’s lips were moving silently. No, he would never tell anyone what he alone knew.

  Before they came to Ligac, Thérèse took a right turn. A bridge and a dried-up riverbed showed in their headlights. She changed down and began the twisting ascent round the shoulder of a mountain, sounding her horn to warn any oncoming traffic as she swung the vehicle into the hairpin bends. Gloria’s body stiffened at each shrill toot, but they were alone on the road. On the other side, they dropped down towards Cirit and started their westerly route back.

  Fernando was glad of the lengthy detour. Travelling in this car appealed to him. He was going along roads he had never gone along before, passing places he had never been, seeing trees, slopes and rocks picked out in a beam of light, while all around in the darkness lay an unknown landscape whose configuration he could only guess at as being more of the same. It was the same way he had thought about his father, when he had bothered to give him a thought, not as a man like others he knew, Remigio or Tony Pigeon for example, or even his grandfather, Rafael. They were all solid and filled in, whereas Batiste was only a name, a word people said, a being, but a bein
g without flesh, without hands, teeth or legs, reduced to a sound like a sigh, the banging of a door, the rattle of a stick trailed against the railings, the sound you wished was not there when you closed your eyes in bed.

  Thérèse checked twice in the rear-view mirror before she braked to enter the dirt track that led to the farm. Ahead of them, the house lay in darkness, all its windows tightly shuttered. When Thérèse stopped the engine and they got out in the same silence that had enwrapped them during their journey, part of the Plough shone through the ragged cover of cloud. A familiar whiff of wood smoke and wet sacks greeted them as Lupe unbolted the door in answer to Thérèse’s repeated, intermittent knock. Fernando wriggled away from Gloria’s restraining hand and shot down the passage and into the room where the whole Cheto family were gathered. Milagra was standing inside the doorway. She bent clumsily to kiss his cheek as he brushed past her. Three empty chairs were placed round the corner of the table. His heart was beating fast. Where was Batiste? His brain seemed unable to take in what his eyes were seeing. He felt his cheeks grow red hot. They must look scarlet, but now he knew where his father was. He was the unfamiliar man sitting between Rafael and Guillermina and Thérèse.

  Behind him, Gloria muttered a hello to the company. The figure, who he was now seeing for the first time, spoke to her and to Thérèse. Fernando waited. Time seemed to abate. He felt the pressure of his aunt’s hand guiding him forward, but his legs did not want to comply. He was transfixed by the eyes of a face, which regarded him without curiosity, almost as if they did not see him at all, almost as if his presence was down to someone else, someone with no connection to the family. Then the eyes turned away and the lips spoke to Rafael, and he found he was sitting down beside his aunt.