After the first couple of nights he did manage to sleep his full eight hours, but invariably awoke recalling odd details of dreams relating to what had happened in Mendoza. Strangely, they seemed mainly to be of the staircase he had climbed to Señora Goyeneche’s apartment. In his dreams he was ascending or descending at random, in the dark, fearful of what he was about to encounter on the next floor.
At the end of the month it was assumed by everybody that Ernesto Galman would be travelling once again to Mendoza but he knew that it would be impossible. To forestall any questions he waited until the day before travelling there to announce his decision. He suggested that his son, Gato, go into the city on his behalf.
Galman took the day off work and went for a drive in the countryside with his wife. He talked to her about retirement and his hopes that their son would soon be able to take over the business. He explained that he wanted a smooth transtion so that young Gato would not find the responsibility suddenly dropped onto his desk as he had himself. His wife was pleased because, whatever had been wrong with Ernesto the previous month had taken its toll. He looked older than before, more haggard, and if he had lost some weight she wasn’t sure that it was necessarily a good thing.
It was three months later that Ernesto Galman overheard his son mentioning the Restaurant San Martín to a man in their sales department. It took a considerable effort to ask, as casually as he could, what the reason was.
‘I noticed they’d stopped ordering from us,’ Gato said. ‘So I visited them last week.’
‘Is it still there?’
‘Yes. And a horrible old place it is too. I had to go and talk to some old fellow deep in the bowels of their kitchens.’
‘In the kitchens?’
His son shrugged: ‘Some joyless old fellow called Ocampo, although he laughed when I said who I was. He said he remembered you and laughed unpleasantly. I didn’t like him at all.’
Galman could hardly breathe. The room spun around him and he had to sit down. His son brought him a glass of water and then helped him back into his office. Galman stared at his telephone for a long time before looking in his contacts book and picking up the receiver.
‘Señor Ocampo, please,’ he asked when it was answered. His mouth was dry and he was shaking. As soon as he heard the man’s voice he was going to put the phone down.
‘He can’t come to the phone,’ the voice said. ‘Can I take a message?’
‘No, no message, but…’
‘Yes?’
‘Can I speak to the owner, please. Señora…’
‘Señora Goyeneche?’
‘Yes,’ he said shaking so much that he could not keep it out of his voice, and feeling so weak he could hardly keep his grip on the telephone.
‘You need another number,’ said the voice, and read it out to him slowly, insisting he read it back so that he had it correctly. It was such an effort to keep in control that when he put down the receiver he slumped onto his desk and only after several minutes managed to master himself and his emotions.
The following phone call took even more courage than the first had done. He recognised Señora Goyeneche’s wonderfully sultry voice immediately and replaced the receiver with alacrity, without saying anything.
Ernesto Galman did not know what to think. He was stunned. He was also relieved that for a half hour nobody came into his office. He allowed himself to feel a growing certainty that apparently Señora Goyeneche and Señor Ocampo were both alive after all, but his relief was tempered by a confusion over what he had seen happen. He rejoiced that he could not now be charged with murder, but how were they still alive? Somebody must have investigated after he had left and they must have received medical treatment. Why had he not called for the ambulance himself?
When he was checked upon by his son, Galman sent him away. He was thinking the situation through and trying to understand. If both of them were alive, why had they not reported him to the police? None of it made sense, and as the day wore on he became angrier with them, especially Señora Goyeneche who had undoubtedly set him up.
Galman could not concentrate on work, and when he did not eat dinner that evening his wife became concerned for him once more. He went to bed early but was obviously not sleeping. She guessed that his mood was related to his recent illness, but could not account for the relapse. She would have called out the doctor once more, but after a couple of days her husband seemed to have reached an uneasy equilibrium. He did, though, have a tendency to be uncharacteristically short-tempered one minute, and then surprisingly affectionate the next. She was at a loss to understand him because he would not discuss his problems with her.
He knew that there was only one possible way to face his torment, and that was to return to Mendoza and the Restaurant San Martín. He could not quite find the courage to simply take the bus into the city and, besides, if he said he was going there for anything other than work then his wife would want to go with him to do some shopping. And so Galman announced that he wished to make one more trip, for work, at the beginning of the month.
There were storms the night before Ernesto Galman left for the city and he did not sleep well. The next morning dawned overcast and cold but remained dry. The bus journey seemed interminable, but his old customers greeted him warmly, pleased to see him once again. From time to time over the years they had realised it was a little strange that the owner of the company himself visited them, but they all appreciated the personal touch. They were especially saddened to learn that this visit would be his last. He asked after their families and they asked after his; many had already been visited by his son, Gato. Their discussions moved on to politics and sport, they confirmed their orders and he went on his way. At one small café he was persuaded to have a meal as they showed off the talents of their new chef, and he drank a second glass of beer that he had not been meaning to accept. Another old and valued customer refused to let him go on his way without a glass of wine, and it was in good spirits that he decided to walk back towards the bus station. It was, perhaps, too hot to go all that way on foot, he decided, and the drink made him feel a little uncomfortable. Without thinking, he was approaching the Restaurant San Martín. It was only a hundred yards ahead of him on his side of the pavement.
He slowed his steps and looked behind. Visiting the restaurant was the reason he was meant to be in the city, but he had allowed himself to forget this. He wondered, now, whether he shouldn’t just return to San Juan and try and forget about it altogether.
To go back and around the whole city block would not add a great deal to his walk, but he wondered if a taxi was a better idea. He moved to the edge of the pavement but in neither direction did there appear to be any. Automatically he was still walking towards the restaurant and so he stopped himself. Another pedestrian bumped into him and called him a fool, which he resented. He felt angry, and then turned the emotion towards the restaurant. He questioned why he was having to change the habits of thirty years to such an extent that he could not even walk down this particular street? He was the one, he reasoned, who had been badly abused in the whole affair. He walked on, though without any great resolution, and just a few feet before the façade of the restaurant he stopped.
It was no longer there. Or, rather, it had changed completely. There seemed to simply be two huge sheets of plate glass behind which was the antiseptic interior of a modern bar. He walked slowly up to it, incredulous. Everything had been ripped out, and the walls, floor and even the ceiling was covered in something like textured stainless steel. It was one big open space, busy with young people. There were flashing screens showing rock musicians posing with guitars and the thud, thud, thud of music that made the huge windows vibrate.
Ernesto Galman looked around to see if he was on the right street. There could be no doubt that the Restaurant San Martín had been gutted and modernised. He stood back and looked at the garish sign that now proclaimed it to be the ‘Bar San Martín’.
Before he could register who’
s arm was through his own, a young woman was pulling him back across the pavement to the door, laughing, and calling him ‘Silly Señor Galman’ and ‘Funny Señor Ernesto’. He had to watch his footing as he was dragged into the bar because he nearly fell over. The music was loud and insistent and the woman had to shout at him.
‘We owe all this to you!’ she was saying, pulling him towards the bar.
‘Señora Goyeneche?’ he asked, but knew he was wrong. In the bright interior he could see that this woman was young, her skin almost flawless and obviously free of cosmetics. He remembered that Señora Goyeneche had a daughter but he was sure that there was meant to have been something wrong with her. This lithe young woman was not in the least disabled. He didn’t know what to say to her. From behind the bar two champagne flutes were produced and filled.
‘This is what we always drink together, isn’t it! Drink!’ she ordered, and he found himself doing as he was told.
‘But who are you?’ he managed to shout over the music.
‘Silly Señor Galman,’ she laughed. ‘I am Mercedes! And look, here is my love, Bernard!’
The man approaching them was young and good looking and had a distinct resemblance to Bernard Ocampo. It was as if the years and the excess flesh had fallen off the man. Ernesto found himself awkwardly embraced.
‘More wine for Señor Galman!’ he bellowed to the young woman, too close to Ernesto’s ear.
‘But what has happened?’ he asked. ‘What happened to Mercedes Goyeneche and Bernard Ocampo?’
They both looked amused, raising their eyebrows at one another.
‘Not so loud!’ said the man, embarrassed. ‘There is a secret between us, no?’
Ernesto nodded vigorously. He had forgotten himself. He had somehow hoped that these two might be the couple he had shot. For a moment he had allowed himself to think that the memories had been false, a fiction, or at least misremembered.
As if the man had read his mind he put his arm around Galman and said ‘We must talk, upstairs. Bring your drink.’
Galman was escorted by the young man to the door at the back of the bar. Like the restaurant, the hallway had been modernised. The old staircase had been ripped out and replaced by one engineered in steel with disconcerting glass treads. It all seemed lighter and not nearly as narrow as before. He prepared himself for the changes wrought upon the apartment on the first floor, but then asked himself why had he returned at all? And why was he allowing them to lead him up the stairs? He realised that he was shaking, sweating and far too hot.
The apartment, as he guessed, had also been modernised. It was light and airy with just a few items of contemporary and uncomfortable-looking furniture isolated on an expanse of highly-polished light wood-flooring.
‘I’m so pleased you came back,’ said the man.
‘We’re so pleased,’ the woman corrected him.
Ernesto took a mouthful of wine so that he didn’t have to say anything, and as he looked around the room the woman refilled his glass with the bottle she had brought up with her.
‘You would like an explanation,’ she said gravely, and he was able to croak his agreement.
The young man sat down in a chair of steel and leather:
‘Ernesto Galman,’ the man said, and then frowned. ‘Do you not like what we’ve done to the building?’
‘Well,’ he started to say, but couldn’t think of words that wouldn’t be impolite.
‘Of course he doesn’t,’ said the woman, ‘but it can never again be how he would like it.’
She walked up to him and pressed her hands over his eyes. She exerted pressure and it was all he could do not to fall backwards. Then she gently let go and they were back in the room as he remembered it from before. Standing in front of him was the original of Mercedes Goyeneche, and sitting down was the Bernard Ocampo that he recognised.
‘But how?’ he asked frowning so profoundly that the woman laughed at him.
‘Señor Galman,’ she said. ‘You are living right here, right now, are you not?’
She waited for him to nod in agreement before continuing.
‘You are on a planet so perfectly balanced in the solar system that it produces not only life on earth, not only human life, but you, personally.’
‘How amazing is that?’ Ocampo asked him seriously.
Galman nodded, unwillingly because he did not know where this was leading or how it came to explain what had happened.
‘In all the millennia that the universe has existed,’ she continued, ‘and will exist, it happens to be exactly the moment, right now, when you happen to be alive. What are the odds, eh? They’re too remote to bother calculating. So, how do we explain this?’
Galman shook his head dumbly.
‘All this is an illusion,’ she explained, and put her hands back over his eyes as before. He allowed her to do so, bracing himself against the pressure once more. When she removed her hands he was again looking upon the younger woman and man.
‘The passing of time is an illusion,’ the young woman smiled. ‘Life and death are illusions. I am Mercedes Goyeneche and this is Bernard Ocampo. We allowed ourselves to get old because we knew no better. I didn’t want to, of course.’
‘What about your disabled daughter?’ Galman blurted out.
‘We are, or were, a part of one another.’
‘You’ve taken over her body? Her youth?’
‘No, no,’ she insisted. ‘We were aspects of the same person. There is something of me, and her, and her daughter, and my mother, all here in me now.’
‘We have found our way backstage,’ Ocampo said. ‘We have discovered how the Master Magician tricks us into believing in the world of decay and death—of passing time. We know how the illusion is created and we are no longer bound by it.’
‘Oh.’
‘To cheat the fanciful notions of life and death we had to go through that charade with you. I am so sorry, but we needed our fate to be bound together with a stranger who would remain alive and aging. Now, the least we can do is the same for you. Would you like to find your way backstage?’
‘I, I don’t know,’ he stammered, looking from the woman to the man and back again.
‘It’s easily done,’ Ocampo said, and jumped up from his chair. He walked casually over to a desk and pulled something out. As he then walked over to Galman he seemed to be excited; to be about to offer a gift. What he was holding was a gun.
‘Oh, Gato,’ Madam Galman cried, waking him the folowing morning. ‘It is you father. He is dead!’
The young man rubbed his eyes and took a few moments to work out where he was. He tried to find the sense in what the woman had been saying to him before she had collapsed into helpless sobbing.
‘My father dead? How?’ he asked sitting up in the narrow bed and reaching out to console her. ‘Where?’
Everything seemed familiar but wrong. The woman managed to control herself and explained, ‘He didn’t come back from San Juan last night. The police arrived a few minutes ago. They told me he was shot.’
The young man did not know what to say. He felt the stubble on his face and looked down at hands that were almost familiar. They were not his, but he knew that he would get used to them. He was sure that he was the one who had been shot in San Juan the previous day. He was scared, but excited. He felt full of youth and vitality.
He saw the look of horror on Madam Galman’s face and it took a few moments to understand that it was because he was laughing. Ernesto Galman was dead and he was laughing.
Another Perspective
She was an odd-looking, insubstantial little thing; ill at ease in their company, sipping determinedly at a sparkling water that didn’t seem to get any lower in her glass. Her attention was firmly fixed upon it.
‘And what do you do?’ Scott asked.
Her sister, Hattie, replied for her:
‘Kate’s not working at the moment. She’s been ill.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ he
replied. ‘On the mend, I hope?’
It wasn’t meant to be at all interrogative, but that’s obviously how Hattie took his comment.
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘No, of course not,’ he apologised. Hattie glared at him, and he tried to cover his apparent faux pas by picking up and drinking from his empty wine glass. He knew that his cheeks had flushed red; they did it all too easily. He wanted to add ‘I was just trying to make conversation, trying to include Kate,’ but the moment had passed.
He was intrigued by Hattie’s sister, though. She looked like a ghost, in an old-fashioned dress that didn’t seem to fit, her hair long and loose, her face unmade-up. They had been in the restaurant for a half hour that Saturday lunchtime and she had said hardly a word beyond ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when asked whether she wanted to sit on a certain chair, was she comfortable, and if she wanted a drink.
A short while later though she spoke unprompted:
‘I have to go out for a cigarette,’ she said quietly, and got up from the table.
‘Don’t be too long,’ Hattie told her. ‘It’s chilly out there.’ And then Hattie continued to tell Terrance about something that had happened at work.
Scott looked around, hoping to catch somebody else’s eye, but they were all listening to Hattie’s story. Nobody else seemed to have noticed what had happened. He wasn’t surprised that Kate had felt the need to ask her sister’s permission to leave for a cigarette, but what was amazing was that Hattie had said yes, and without any comment. She was continually railing against the habit when others admitted to the addiction, which was one of the reasons he had recently given up himself. He had been trying to ingratiate himself with Hattie at the time and he was now pleased that he hadn’t succeeded. He had come to realise that she was a bully. He could see that any relationship he had hoped for would have been doomed to failure.
Leave Your Sleep Page 9
