The Dedalus Book of Spanish Fantasy

by Margaret Jull Costa

  There's no point strangling him. He stretched out comfortably on the hard mattress of my unmade bed, cleared his throat twice, rubbed his shoulders as if settling down to sleep, and then he died. I didn't need to kill him. Having nothing else to hand, I covered him with the mattress from the other bed, where my brother sleeps. The sadness that oozed out from him when we were coming up the stairs was now penetrating the room, filling it with an all-pervading chill. I was just about to sit down and think about him properly for the first time when the telephone rang, Chonita was inviting me to an improvised cold supper; then she could drive me out into the country to join my family. I rushed out, forgetting completely that it was Saturday and that I was alone in the house, forgetting that I had gone to the station and that in my bedroom a man had, well, died, I didn't kill him, though I had wanted to.

  I don't understand this feeling of anxiety. My arm hurts, both arms do, I feel an enormous weight on one side, I'm gasping for air and my breath is sour. I have woken in the middle of a nightmare. Someone, in my apartment in the city, was going through my papers, trying on my clothes, signing my name, using my pen, addressing obscene remarks to Chonita's photo and smashing the frame containing my school leaver's certificate. I woke up feeling ice cold and crying out because I saw that he was about to turn over the mattress on my bed, because then ... My God, what have I done. Three months have gone by now, and I haven't given that man a single thought. Whether I killed him. Or didn't kill him. I'm on the verge of tears trying to work out whether I did this thing that so shames and horrifies me, or if, on the contrary, it was a dream, an hallucination that comes and goes, a painful, crazed toing and froing, piercing my temples and my throat. I should leave, I will. I look at the clock: it's stopped. I peer out of the window: I cannot tell the time by the stars, which I can barely identify, and, besides, sleep overwhelms me. I go back to bed and ... Yes, there's no doubt about it: I can almost hear his voice (`I haven't felt like eating all day'), his breathless gait ('do you think the suitcases. . . ' `do you think they'll give me back the necklace'?) I don't want to remember any more. He'll be there. Perhaps his body began to stink as it decomposed and someone has noticed it. The woman upstairs has a dog and they say that dogs can sense when someone has died. It's probably been scratching at the door, and ... Another possibility is that my mother had someone go in and do the cleaning one day and they will have found him there and removed him. Or the police will have, because he was a foreigner, that is, he came into the country with a passport. He said twenty-two fifteen, rather than a quarter past ten and ... Three months have gone by. I don't know if I killed him or not. But I know that I took him home intending to kill him.

  During the journey, I tried several times to start up conversations about a corpse being found in ... a foreigner who ... Nothing. No one took any notice. Either no one knew anything about it, or else it was a frequent occurrence. When silence falls, I smother my disquiet by reciting verses to myself. `With ten cannon on either side, with a following wind and sails unfurled . . .' or `Remember the sleeping soul . . .'. I also count the beating of the wheels on the tracks, tata-tracata, tata-tracata, ten, eleven, twelve ... eighty, eighty-one ... or I watch the telegraph wires, in stiff parallel lines, rising and falling. I vomited out of the window just thinking of the smell in my room when I go in there.

  I left the station hurriedly. I kept expecting someone to call out to me, the police most likely. I didn't dare glance over at the cafe. At the newspaper stand, the little hunchback was putting on an overall and opening up the kiosk.

  No one saw me come in. The concierge's room was closed. I couldn't get the key in the lock because, in my haste, my pulse was racing, a terrifying, disorderly tumult in my wrists. I put all the lights on. Nothing has changed. No one has yet been into my room. The two mattresses, one on top of the other. I boldly removed the top one. And underneath, on the hard mattress, the one on my bed, could be seen the hollow left by a crudely human figure, blurred and imprecise around the torso and the legs, precisely delineated around the impression left by head and ears. Filling this hollow is a glittering, pearly dust. It looks like mica. A dazzling, exfoliated mica which, in the light, casts pink shadows. That was all that remained. I carefully gathered up this sediment in order to dispose of it. I brushed out the hollow left in the mattress. At least it didn't smell. When my family arrive on the next train, they won't notice a thing. Everything has gone better than I expected. I have four hours to check the house and do any tidying up that may be necessary.

  I have decided not to bother with supper. I need to remove all traces from the house. I sat down to think what I should do with this packet of human dust. Throwing it into the rubbish could prove compromising. The rag and bone men poke around in the rubbish with a stick, with a wire, and God knows what else. They spend hours and hours in the warm sun in the outlying areas, near where the main roads leave the city, selecting and classifying the things they carry about on their carts from day to day, a heavy, malodorous, dusty sadness. I will not throw my package into the rubbish. I fear the erudition of rag and bone men. I will not burn it either. I don't even know if it would burn. It's likely that heat would get rid of it. But that would involve going down to the cellar, to the boilers, and finding some excuse with which to deceive the boilerman. It would be foolish to arouse suspicion unnecessarily. I could go out and, like someone aimlessly, distractedly wandering the streets, throw it over the fence surrounding a building site, to join stones, lost rubber balls, rusty tins, dented basins, and cartons, lots of cartons, perhaps even the odd dead animal. Or else scatter it in the area that's been cleared around the new mental hospital. But that would be risky. I don't know how it might evolve and probably ... I could sit down now and study those fat tomes on Pathology, Economics, Biology, and find out what, over time, happens to human remains. But I don't much feel like it. I did leaf through one once, but I didn't understand a word: too many formulae. I haven't got time to mug up on it all now. And I have to finish this business by midnight. I have to sleep and rest, in order to be refreshed and cheerful in the morning, with all my muscles in their proper places, like new. As if nothing had happened and as if I hadn't gone to the station one Saturday as night was falling and invited a traveller to come to my house. I must be confident and calm about it: that's most important.

  It would be best to go out to the New Bridge or to the Roman bridge if there are fewer people there, and throw the package into the water. I can foresee many dangers, but for the moment it's all I can come up with. Now, sitting in the parlour, opposite a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows with real hair and genuine silver brooches, sitting underneath the enlargement of a photo of my sister Lolita's wedding, trying so hard to look genteel, the poor thing, leaning dreamily on her husband's shoulder. I can't come up with a better idea: so off to the river and be done with it. I looked at my father's graduation photograph, fifty-five lawyers from Madrid University, all with beards, and it seemed to me that all fifty-five of them were shouting to me, urging me on, almost proud of my resolution: to the river, to the river.

  Of course there are many occasions when one does not feel comfortable at home. Today is one of them. I have secured my package, painstakingly tying it up. Then I wrapped it again in an old special edition of La Voz de la Region. It's a very neat package. On the top there's the Queen of England at the celebrations held when she crossed the equator and a spinechilling report of a plane crash. On the bottom there's the society column. I remember now, as I pass the mezzanine and glance through the weddings, that I forgot to get a present ... The package, the wretched package, weighs a ton ...

  In the street. There are still a lot of people about. That's because it's the start of the fine weather and everyone is out walking, trying to make the evening last as long as possible. Everything is alight, contented, a sudden, frank outpouring. I plunge down the pavements, gladly drinking in their healthy vitality, shopwindows full of light, my package weighing heavy in my arms, clothes shops, piles
of socks, jackets, raincoats, end of season sale, a large U Certificate on the hoarding outside the Odeon cinema, depicting an allegory of the Wild West, the sheriffs star dangling drunkenly from one corner, and Pedrell the florist's, a mean little place selling clay flowerpots from Catalonia and scrawny carnations kept deceitfully erect with wire. Soil and seeds for sale. The miracle of Casa Simon's radiant shopfront: bottles of liqueur, cognac, wine, bottles of every size and shape, and the photographs by Lumiere; I always stop to look in the window and try to decide who's pretty and who's ugly in the photos, I've seen him somewhere or other, she's the woman I saw that day on the stairs, pulling up her stockings, and from this angle he looks just like ... I hold the package more tightly under my arm. What did he look like? He could be any of them. The same surprised, shackled look, an identical degree of resignation. The jeweller's, a dazzling flight of lights, the shop selling leather and sports goods, skates, skis, rifles, nets, thermos flasks, sets of folding cutlery, plastic cups, picnic baskets, shoes for hiking and cycling, tennis balls: Sensible. Economical. Use a Remington electric shaver, suitable for all voltages. Shoeshops, pharmacies, hardware stores, the package still weighing heavy in my arms; another cakeshop, over the door, the name Suchard flashing on and off, a clock above it. A cafe full of young people, the windows open, cigarette smoke gusting forth, laughter and jokes from the table by the window, occupied by students and vulgar women plastered in makeup. I can't go in, even though someone calls to me, because of this package. The river is still a long way off and the package is very heavy and, from time to time, I have to stop. That man over there, I can see him raising his hand to his hat, I sense that he's going to ask me about my father, the usual tiresome vacuities: When did you get back? What a surprise! How did you enjoy the last three months? And I can't say that I've spent the last three months like this, shut up at home, remembering nothing. The bookshop. I linger for a moment at the window, novels by Pierre Loti, Jose Maria de Pereda, Padre Colonial something by Shakespeare, the collection of Araluce Classics. The usual rubbish. The Winkler Encyclopaedia. All the Science and Art of the World for just a few reasonable instalments. Learn about electricity. Surgical pathology, First Year, by the professor who teaches the subject. My package. (Good evening, how are you, All the best, Nice to see you, Give my regards to your family.) There are too many people. A bar: someone emerges drunk, cursing, and starts throwing up just by the door. The policemen on duty continue walking along on the opposite pavement, completely unmoved, then surreptitiously duck down the next street. The silence of a steep street with no shops in it. The woman selling newspapers by the railings round the monument to Columbus: La Noche! All the football pool results! A convent bell; a pallid, distant grief drops asleep above the flowering acacia trees. Children playing in a circle. The bell. A strident, speeding car. Ring-a-ring o' roses. Another car. The bell. A pocket full of posies. The light on a balcony goes on in a dark facade and someone yells: Conchita! Paquito! Time for bed, you've been playing out there long enough. The damp neglect of the now black street that leads to the bridge. Tourist posters hiding in the darkness. Cold. My package, I'm going to throw the package in the water. At the last roundabout, by the entrance to Las Rondas, the arrows on the road mark vague distances heading off into the night. To the frontier, 6 kilometres. Cars: queue to the right.

  I put the package down on the ground for a moment, to rest. By the light of a tram, it looked enormous, pulsating. I tried to hum a little tune, but I couldn't. The river is close now. Onward.

  I've walked along this avenue leading to the New Bridge so often. Whenever I have, the palms of my hands always tingle with a secret happiness. The rows of trees, the lights of the petrol station, the white arrows on the asphalt indicating the directions, the notices stating how much weight the bridge can take ... All so familiar, so mine. And now I read everything, lingering over every letter; I look at it all as if bidding it a final, abandoned farewell, my teeth wet with sad saliva. My package. It's so heavy. I'm going to throw a ... I should say `man' into the river. And nothing changes. The clumps of rhododendrons are the same as last year and the lights on the jetty blink amongst the blaring music from the gramophone. All the same. Only I am more ... I don't know what. I've killed a man. Now I am sure that I killed him. The trees tell me so with a bow that only I understand; I know it from the way the lovers fall suddenly silent as they huddle together on the benches as I pass.

  Surrounded by silence, for the first time since I set foot in the street, when I left the house with ... And now I realise that perhaps I have been too hasty. I should have found out more about the dust I swept up from the mattress ... Even by just looking in the encyclopaedia, under Decomposition. There was bound to be something about it there. I should have read the article on the Soul too, just in case. It was thoughtless of me, but what's done is done. I can feel the cool air from the river. My skin prickles and I stop on the edge of the pavement: I didn't check all the rooms in the house. And what if ...? Oh, honestly, a dead body can't move, and, besides, it was still on my bed. Where I found it. No, no, I mustn't go back now. The river is so close And in a few moments ...

  In a few moments. And that's the worst thing about this ridiculous stubbornness of mine. In a few moments it will be worse than now. Much worse. I am going to throw a man, or what remains of him, into the river. A man, with his hands, his sorrows, his problems, his prejudices. I don't know how to swim, my friends look at me contemptuously when they find out, and I'm going to throw a man into the water. Perhaps he doesn't know how to swim either. I'm going to plunge him in, wrapped in newspaper, with all the news of the day, political parties, crimes, United Nations fiascos, sixteen dead on the Israeli frontier, the meat prices for the whole week and Gina Lollobrigida's latest film. Into the water. He'll soon rot. I don't know, I haven't been able to ask anyone, if that dust resembling mica will float, dissolve, precipitate, submerge, form compounds, encourage algae, or ... Who knows. The only certainty is that I don't know how to swim, maybe he didn't either. But his hands would have been accustomed to waving hello or goodbye, to winding up children's clockwork toys, to peeling mandarins. The fish will eat those hands. The light is on in the customs shed. The customs men are playing cards on a rickety table, and a few glasses of wine leave large rings on the surface. One of the men calls trumps and the other, pushing back his cap, unleashes a curse. A few runnynosed gypsy children are watching, enthralled, as the cards are placed on the table, jacks, threes, aces, the occasional queen, the four kings with their crowns firmly on their heads. A car races by, overtaking me. A brief, neutral good evening directed at me; they go on playing. He too would have said Good evening and he would have doubtless enjoyed counting the circles left by the strong wine on the table and comparing them and, evoking some outdoor bar, when he was a student, when he saw similar circles one evening, now yellow with memories, perhaps with a pretty, willing young girl. I'm drowning. Now I can clearly hear the hum of the sluices and the obstinate knocking of the water against the sides of the Sunday boats. On some afternoon, somewhere, he would have gone down to a river and heard that persistent gurgle, violins, damp, a few towers looming on the shore, lights on the bridge, a woman gesturing obscenely to him from the balustrade. He probably wouldn't have gone with her, he seemed such a pathetic chap. He had pale eyes. I don't know how to swim, yet I'm going to throw him into the water. That man, as innocent as me; that man, who, doubtless, one dull Sunday, after dozing for a while in an armchair, drank a glass of cognac to set himself up, to keep him going, on to the next thing and let's see what happens, and he would have gone slowly out into the streets to see faces and shopwindows, and towers and advertisements, and the promising farther ends of the long streets, when the chill five o'clock air bursts upon the paving stones and doorways, and hearing the song of a young single woman behind a window or in a courtyard, and watching the little boys leaving the children's session at the cinema and peeing by the side of the road, seeing who can pee furthest, to the hor
ror of the little girls, and then he would have knocked at a door, I can almost see it now, it could be my front door, but I can't see who opens it ... No, I can't possibly have killed a man like that, who used to say Good evening, and Always and Never and Later, or simply Oh well!, perhaps he was a fan of costume dramas, he probably smoked black tobacco and drank rum, or was interested in the history of Latin America. Because I killed him, I did: he died of my wanting so much to kill him ... But the package drops into the water, it fell quickly, confirming the second law of motion governing acceleration and the principle of When an object is totally or partially immersed in a fluid, it experiences an upthrust equal to ... circular waves, getting gradually lighter, dragged along by the current, and a fleeting struggle to relive innumerable remembered returns, the night at the station, the five clocks on the way home, the journey, many other journeys, the sleepy clarity experienced that time with my first girlfriend, endless exams, the broken nose I got when I fought Pedro Juarez for the photograph of Jeannette Macdonald, and the foolish, white joy of my first communion, and more things and people that he had never recalled, now present, pointlessly and randomly restored to him, the waves on the river superimposed on those of a far distant beach, all blue, the little bucket leaving the sand in ordered geometric patterns, the water that goes and never comes back, cold, damp, everything black now, becoming lost in the depths of the river, a deep sigh, a star smooth again on the calm surface, a compact, gradually hardening solitude closing in above the hum of the sluices.