The Insufferable Gaucho (10 page)

He was
barefoot. Noticing that was like being struck by lightning. We came down Cerro
del Moro. When we passed the church of Santa Barbara, I saw him make the sign of
the cross. His immaculate footprints shone in the snow like a message from God.
I started crying. I would gladly have knelt down and kissed those crystalline
prints—the answer for which I had waited so long—but I didn’t, for fear he might
disappear down some alley. We left the center. We crossed the Plaza Mayor, and
then we crossed a bridge. The monk was walking at a steady pace, neither slowly
nor quickly, as the Church herself should proceed.
29.
We
followed the Avenida Sanjurjo, lined with plane trees, until we reached the
train station. It was stifling inside. The monk went to the bathroom and then
bought a ticket. When he came out of the bathroom, I noticed that he had put on
a pair of shoes. His ankles were as slender as sticks. He went out onto the
platform. I saw him sitting there, hanging his head, waiting and praying. I
remained standing on the platform, shivering with cold, hidden by a pillar. When
the train arrived, the monk jumped with surprising agility into one of the
carriages.
30.
When I left, on my own, I looked for his prints
in the snow, the footprints of his bare feet, but I could find no trace of them.

II. CHANCE

1.
I asked him how old he thought I was. He said
sixty, although he knew I wasn’t that old. Do I look that bad? I asked. Worse,
he said. And you think you’re in better shape? I said. How come you’re shaking,
then? Are you cold? Have you gone crazy? And why are you telling me about
Commissioner Damian Valle anyway? Is he still the commissioner? Is he still the
same? The old guy said Valle had changed a bit, but he was still a prize son of
a bitch. Is he still the commissioner? He might as well be, he said. If he wants
to do you harm, he will, even if he’s retired or dying in hospital. I thought
for a few minutes and then asked him again why he was shaking. I’m cold, he said
(the liar), and my teeth hurt. I don’t want to hear any more about Don Damian, I
said. Do you think I’m friends with that pig? Do you think I associate with
thugs? No, he said. Well I don’t want to hear any more about him.
2.
He reflected for a while. What about, I really don’t
know. Then he gave me a crust of bread. It was hard and I said if he ate food
like that it wasn’t surprising his teeth hurt. We eat better in the asylum, I
said, and that’s saying something. Get out of here, Vicente, said the old guy.
Does anyone know you’re here? Well, good for you. Make yourself scarce before
they realize. Don’t say hello to anyone. Keep your eyes on the ground and get
out of here as fast as you can.
3.
But I didn’t leave right
away. I squatted down in front of him and tried to remember the good times. My
mind was blank. It felt like something was burning in my head. The old guy
pulled his blanket tighter around him and moved his jaws as if he was chewing,
but there was nothing in his mouth. I remembered the years in the asylum: the
injections, the hosing-down, the ropes they used for tying us up at night, many
of us anyway. I saw those funny beds again, the ones with a clever system of
pulleys that can be used to hoist them into an upright position. It took me five
years to work out what they were for. The patients called them American beds.
4.
Can a human being who is used to sleeping horizontally
fall asleep in an upright position? Yes. It’s difficult at first. But if the
person is properly tied, it’s possible. That’s what the American beds were for,
sleeping vertically as well as horizontally. Not, as I originally thought, to
punish the patients, but to prevent them from choking on their own vomit and
dying.
5.
Naturally, there were patients who spoke to the
American beds. They addressed them politely. They confided in them. Some
patients were also afraid of them. Some claimed to have been winked at by a
certain bed. One patient said that another bed had raped him. A bed fucked you
up the ass? You’ve really lost it, pal! The American beds were said to walk
along the corridors at night, straight and tall, and gather to chat in the
refectory—they spoke English—and all of them attended those meetings, the beds
that were empty and the ones that weren’t, and naturally these stories were told
by the patients who for one reason or another happened to be tied to the beds on
meeting nights.
6.
Otherwise, life in the asylum was very
quiet. Shouts could be heard coming from certain restricted areas. But no one
approached those areas or opened the door or put their ear to the keyhole. The
house was quiet, and the park—tended by gardeners who were crazy too and not
allowed to leave, but not as crazy as the others—was quiet as well, and the road
you could see through the pines and the poplars was quiet, and even our
thoughts, as they occurred to us, were enveloped in a frightening silence.
7.
In certain respects, the living was easy. Sometimes we’d
look at each other and feel privileged. We’re crazy, we’re innocent. The only
thing that spoiled that feeling was anticipation, when there was something to
anticipate. But most of the patients had a remedy for that: ass-fucking the
weaker ones or getting ass-fucked. Did I do that? we used to say. Did I really
do that? And then we’d smile and change the subject. The doctors, the lofty
physicians, had no idea, and as long as we didn’t bother the nurses and the
aides, they turned a blind eye. We did get carried away a few times. Man is an
animal.
8.
That’s what I used to think sometimes. The thought
formed in the center of my brain. And I concentrated on that thought until my
mind went blank. Sometimes, at the beginning, I could hear something like
tangling cables. Electrical cables or snakes. But as a rule, especially as those
scenes receded into the past, my mind would go blank: no noises, no images, no
words, no breakwaters of words.
9.
Anyway, I’ve never assumed
that I’m smarter than anybody else. I’ve never been an intellectual show-off. If
I’d been to school, I’d be a lawyer or a judge now. Or the inventor of a new,
improved American bed! I have words, that much I humbly admit. But I don’t make
a big deal about it. And just as I have words, I have silence. You’re as silent
as a cat, the old guy told me when I was still a kid, though he was old already
then.
10.
I wasn’t born here. According to the old guy, I was
born in Zaragoza and my mother had no choice but to come and live in this city.
One city or another, it makes no difference to me. If I hadn’t been poor, I
would have been able to study here. It doesn’t matter! I learned to read. That’s
enough! Best not to dwell on that subject. I could have got married here too. I
met a girl who was called, I forget, she had a typical girl’s name, and at one
point I could have married her. Then I met another girl, older than me, a
foreigner like me, from somewhere in the south, Andalusia or Murcia, a slut who
was always in a bad mood. I could have started a family with her too, made a
home, but I was destined for other things, and so was the slut.
11.
Sometimes I found the city stifling. Too small. I felt
as if I was locked in a crossword puzzle.
12.
Around that time
I made up my mind to start begging at church doors. I would arrive at ten and
take up my position on the cathedral steps or go to the church of San Jeremías,
in the Calle José Antonio, or the church of Santa Barbara, which was my
favorite, in the Calle Salamanca, and sometimes, before settling down on the
steps of Santa Barbara to begin my day’s work, I would go to the ten o’clock
mass and pray with all my might—it was like laughing silently, laughing,
laughing, happy to be alive, and the more I prayed, the more I laughed—that was
my way of opening myself to divine penetration, and my laughter was not a sign
of disrespect or the laughter of an unbeliever: on the contrary, it was the
clamorous laughter of a lamb trembling before its Creator.
13.
After that, I would go to Confession, recount my mishaps and misfortunes, take
Communion and finally, before returning to the steps, I would stop for a few
moments in front of the picture of St. Barbara. Why was she always depicted with
a peacock and a tower? A peacock and a tower. What did it mean?
14.
One afternoon I asked the priest. Why are you
interested in such things? he asked me in turn. I don’t know, Father, curiosity,
I replied. You know it’s a bad habit, don’t you, curiosity? he said. I know,
Father, but my curiosity is pure, I always pray to St. Barbara. That’s good, my
son, said the priest, St. Barbara is kind to the poor, you keep praying to her.
But I want to know about the peacock and the tower, I said. The peacock, said
the priest, is the symbol of immortality. As for the tower, did you notice it
has three windows? The windows are there to illustrate the saint’s words; she
said that light poured into her cell and her soul through the windows of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Do you understand?
15.
I
didn’t get an education, Father, but I have common sense and I can work things
out, I replied.
16.
Then I went to take my place, the place
that was rightfully mine, and I begged until the church doors were closed. I
always kept one coin in the palm of my hand. The others in my pocket. And I
endured hunger, while people ate bread and pieces of sausage or cheese in front
of me. I thought. I thought and studied without moving from those steps.
17.
And so I learned that the father of St. Barbara, a
powerful man named Dioscurus, shut her up in a tower, imprisoned her because she
was being pursued by suitors. And I learned that, before entering that tower,
St. Barbara baptized herself with water from a tank or a trough or a pond in
which farmers stored rainwater. And I learned that she escaped from the tower,
the tower with three windows to let the light in, but was arrested and brought
before a judge. And the judge condemned her to death.
18.
All
the teachings of the priests are cold. Cold soup. Cold tea. Blankets that don’t
keep you warm in the depths of winter.
19.
Get out of here,
Vicente, said the old guy, his jaws working all the while. As if he was chewing
sunflower seeds. Get some clothes to make you blend in and go, before the
commissioner finds out.
20.
I put my hand in my pocket and
counted the coins. It had begun to snow. I said goodbye to the old guy and went
out into the street.
21.
I walked aimlessly. With no
destination. Standing in the Calle Corona, I looked at the Church of Santa
Barbara. I prayed a bit. St. Barbara, have pity on me, I said. My left arm had
gone to sleep. I was hungry. I wanted to die. But not for good. Maybe I just
wanted to sleep. My teeth were chattering. St. Barbara, have pity on your
servant.
22.
When they decapitated her, I mean when they cut
St. Barbara’s head off, her executioners were struck by a bolt of lightning. And
what about the judge who sentenced her? And her father who locked her up? The
lightning struck, but first there was a clap of thunder. Or the other way
around. Great. My God, my God, my God.
23.
I didn’t go any
closer. I was happy to look at the church from a distance and then I walked on,
heading for a bar where in my day you used to be able to get a cheap meal. I
couldn’t find it. I went into a bakery and got a baguette. Then I jumped a wall
and ate it, out of sight of prying eyes. I know it’s forbidden to jump over
walls and eat in abandoned gardens or derelict houses, because it isn’t safe. A
beam could fall on you, Commissioner Damian Valle told me. Also, it’s private
property. It might be a shit-heap, crawling with spiders and rats, but it will
go on being private property until the end of time. And a beam could fall on
your head and destroy that exceptional skull of yours, said Commissioner Damian
Valle.
24.
When I’d finished eating, I jumped back over the
wall into the street. Suddenly I felt sad. I don’t know if it was the snow or
what. Recently, eating gets me down. I’m not sad when I’m actually eating, but
afterward, sitting on a brick, watching snowflakes fall into the abandoned
garden—I don’t know. Despair and anguish. So I slapped my legs and got walking.
The streets started to empty out. I spent some time looking in store windows.
But I was pretending. What I was really doing was looking for my reflection in
each pane of glass. Then the windows came to an end and there were only
stairways. I hung my head and climbed. A street. Then the parish church of the
Conception. Then the church of San Bernardo. Then the walls and, after that, the
fort. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. I was on Cerro del Moro. I remembered the
old man’s words: Go, go, don’t let them catch you again, you poor bastard. All
the bad things I did. St. Barbara, have pity on me, have pity on your poor son.
I remembered there was a woman who lived in one of those alleys. I decided to
visit her and ask for a bowl of soup, an old sweater she didn’t need any more,
and a bit of money to buy a train ticket. Where did that woman live? The alleys
kept getting narrower. I saw a big door and knocked. No one answered. I pushed
the door open and walked in: a patio. Someone had forgotten to take in the
washing and now the snow was falling on those yellowish clothes. I made my way
through the shirts and underpants to a door with a bronze knocker that looked
like a handle. I stroked the knocker, but I didn’t knock. I pushed the door
open. Outside, night was falling hurriedly. My mind was blank. The snowflakes
made a sizzling sound. I kept going. I couldn’t remember that corridor, I
couldn’t remember the name of the woman—she was a slut, but kind-hearted; she
did wrong but she felt bad about it—I couldn’t remember that darkness, that
windowless tower. But then I saw a door ajar and slipped through the opening.
I’d come to a kind of granary, with sacks piled up to the roof. There was a bed
in one corner. I saw a child stretched out on the bed. He was naked and
shivering. I took the knife out of my pocket. I saw a friar sitting at a table.
His face was covered by a hood; he was leaning forward, intently reading a
missal. Why was the child naked? Wasn’t there even a blanket in that room? Why
was the friar reading his missal instead of kneeling down and asking for
forgiveness. Everything goes haywire at some point. The friar looked at me, said
something; I replied. Don’t come near me, I said. Then I stabbed him with the
knife. Both of us groaned for a while until he fell silent. But I had to be
sure, so I stabbed him again. Then I killed the child. Quickly, for God’s sake!
Then I sat down on the bed and shivered for a while. Enough. I had to go. My
clothes were spattered with blood. I looked through the friar’s pockets and
found some money. There were some sweet potatoes on the table. I ate one. Good
and sweet. While I was eating the sweet potato, I opened a closet. Sacks of
onions and potatoes. But there was also a clean habit on a hanger. I got
undressed. It was so cold. After checking each pocket, so as not to leave any
incriminating evidence, I put my clothes and my shoes in a bag, and tied it to
my belt. Fuck you, Damian Valle. That was when I realized I was leaving my
footprints all around the room. The soles of my feet were covered with blood.
While continuing to move around, I carefully examined the prints. Suddenly I
felt like laughing. They were dance steps. The footprints of St. Vitus.
Footprints leading nowhere. But I knew where to go.