The Manual of Darkness (46 page)

She walks slowly to the bedroom. The bed, as always, is unmade and there are orderly piles of clothes on the chest of drawers. Only the grey outline where the picture frames hung attest to the presence of the removal men. Alicia sits down on the bed. She looks at Lauren Bacall. What you must have seen, hanging there, she thinks. She has to get round to watching that film. Without knowing why, she imagines Víctor to be somewhat passive. Irina, the consummate professional, devotes herself to giving him the pleasure agreed upon. Irina dressed, undressed, sucking, stroking. Irina listening. Alicia imagines Irina listening, after sex probably, relaxed, all defences stripped away, to stories from inside the fortress. Click, click. She is still holding the Parker pen. She lies back on the bed. Closes her eyes. Jealousy spurs her imagination: Víctor is whispering things in her ear. Nothing to do with his blindness. He is telling her about his childhood, about his father, telling her how he came to learn magic. Then she imagines Víctor’s weightless body on top of her. She has never made love to a man as skinny as he is. She imagines she can feel his bones. She sits up suddenly, as though she has just woken from some unfathomable dream. She has work to do. She is paid to work, just like Irina, and they share a similar objective: Víctor’s well-being. The light of your life.

She picks up a clean change of clothes, making sure not to
disturb the order of the piles. Before leaving the apartment, she goes into the bathroom and puts into her bag the three small bottles of Bach’s Flower Remedies.

‘I
’ve brought you a couple of things to keep you occupied,’ Alicia announces as she comes into the room. ‘One is your favourite film.’ She places a portable DVD player in Víctor’s lap and rummages in her bag. ‘I thought we might watch it together.’

While she busies herself, plugging in the machine and putting in the DVD, Víctor cannot hide his excitement and starts telling her everything he knows about the film, what happened before, during and after the filming, but Alicia puts a hand on his shoulder and asks him to wait, to save all the details for the end, to let her watch it without knowing anything.

Next come the practical issues. The player is set on Víctor’s lap with the screen turned to face Alicia, who is standing next to him. They each take one earpiece, which forces Alicia to bend down because the cable is too short for her to stand upright. It is not very comfortable. She pulls a chair next to the bed and sits down. This is better, though now she has to crane her neck because the seat is lower than the bed. The Warner Brothers’ logo appears, a voice announcing the title in Spanish, and Víctor immediately whips out his headphones. He refuses to listen to a dubbed version of the film. Alicia presses various buttons to get back to the menu and changes the set-up. They start again.

‘Here comes Humphrey,’ she says. ‘He’s wearing trousers so short you can see his ankles.’

‘… a sailor’s cap cocked to the right,’ Víctor chimes in, ‘black shoes, dark socks, a white shirt, a scarf knotted round his throat, his jacket slung over his shoulder. He’s walking through a crowd of people, goes up to a booth and buys a one-day fishing licence.
It costs him five francs, the official folds it in three, hands it to Bogart and tells him … Want me to go on?’

‘OK, I get the message, you don’t need a running commentary.’

‘Thanks. I’d like to imagine I’m in a cinema.’

‘All right … wait there a minute.’

Alicia pauses the film, walks over to the window, rolls down the blind then makes her way back to the chair. She is about to sit down, but changes her mind.

‘Shift over a bit,’ she says, nudging Víctor’s elbow.

She takes off her shoes, lies down next to him on the bed and presses play. He is under the sheet; she on top. Their shoulders touch, their heads are almost pressed together. For what feels like an age, Alicia has to bite her lip to stop commenting on how strange it is that all the actors are shorter than Bogart, how unconvincing she finds the fishing scenes, her feeling that the plot and the atmosphere have been lifted wholesale from
Casablanca
.

‘The music’s not bad,’ she concedes.

Víctor doesn’t answer. Perhaps, with the earpiece in, he didn’t hear her. Or maybe he’s just concentrating. Alicia finds it difficult to understand why it’s so important to him, this film about a bad-tempered fisherman and an old drunk ripping off an irritating Yank on a fishing trip. It is precisely thirteen minutes before Bacall shows up. Or, more precisely, her voice. ‘Anybody got a match?’ She could have said ‘It’s seven o’clock.’ It doesn’t matter. It is her voice, rather than the words she says, which exudes sex. Alicia hears the words in stereo, because a split second before she speaks, Víctor says the line aloud: ‘
Anybody got a match
?’ Alicia looks at Víctor. The light from the screen casts shadows on his face. He turns towards her for a moment, as though he wants to share with her a complicity he has cherished for years: now you’ll see; this is the good bit. Alicia envies Bacall’s long, slender fingers in the few glorious seconds while she opens the matchbook, strikes a match and brings it up to her face to make sure that the camera catches the fire in her eyes.

If these people were real, it would be impossible to fall in love with them. He would stink of petrol and raw fish. She is a petty thief on the run from God knows what. It is the light which transforms them into gods. Alicia does not want to miss anything
that happens on the screen, but she gives Víctor a sidelong glance, watches as his lips mouth every line of dialogue, even sing along with Bacall. Slightly out of tune, because the earphone means he can’t hear his own voice. But he is happy. It is a blessed memory. They kiss for the first time. She initiates everything. She sits on his lap and kisses him. A real kiss. Not just lips pressed together, eyes closed, camera trained on the backs of their heads as in most of the films back then. He speaks, she speaks, then she kisses him again. The kisses are short, but passionate, intense. Alicia does not dare to look at Víctor now. He can tell they are kissing only by the silence that interrupts the dialogue. And because he knows the film by heart. Silence is the sound of the light. Sharing it like this feels almost indecent.

The end comes. Bacall goes over to the pianist to say goodbye. He interrupts the song he’s playing and asks her: ‘Hey, Slim, are you still happy?’ and, as one, Bacall and Víctor reply, ‘What do you think?’ She turns towards the camera and walks away. The pianist plays a cheery phrase. She responds by swinging her hips gently, clearing a path through the crowded bar. For three seconds, the whole world sways with her hips. Today, we’re going to work on the impossible. Imagine you are happy and move. Float, damn it. The camera closes on the pianist; roll the credits. Alicia reaches out and turns off the DVD. They sit there in complete darkness. If she leans her head a little it would be resting on his shoulder. Víctor’s beard would tickle her forehead. It is several minutes before she breaks the silence.

‘I’m not sure I understand the title,’ she says, eventually.

‘It’s about a chance.’

‘Sorry? What?’

‘About having or not having a chance. It’s explained in the book. They changed a lot of things in the film. In fact the two are completely different. She doesn’t even appear in the book. And he dies at the end. He’s shot in the belly and bleeds to death on the deck of the boat. Two men show up to help him and ask what happened. He starts to say something, but he’s too weak. A man. He says those words several times: a man. The two guys think he’s about to describe his killer, until he finally manages to say, “A man alone ain’t got no … chance.” They dropped the scene in the
film, but I suppose they wouldn’t have dared change the title.’

‘No chance of what?’

‘How do I know? That’s all he says. Of salvation, I suppose, of surviving.’

‘Oh.’

‘You said you’ve brought me two things?’

As though this sudden change of subject puts an end to the reason they’re here, alone in the dark, Alicia sits up and puts her feet on the floor.

‘I’m afraid you’re not going to like the other thing as much.’

‘Try me, Slim.’

‘Don’t call me Slim.’

Walking blindly towards the window should prove no problem for Alicia, but she is barefoot and stubs her little toe against one of the wheels of the bed. Víctor hears her swear, then the sound of the blind being yanked up. Alicia comes back to the bed, searches through her bag for a minute then says:

‘Here, take this. Use both hands.’

She puts a small block of wood in his right hand and a sheet of sandpaper in his left. Víctor strokes the paper, can feel the different texture of each side.

‘What do I need sandpaper for?’

‘Who knows. If you still refuse to do magic, you could be a carpenter. No, but seriously …’ Alicia swallows before going on. ‘It’s an important exercise. The way your hand moves when you’re sanding is very similar to the way it moves when you’re using a cane.’

‘A cane,’ Víctor echoes. ‘The white cane.’

‘Yes. In theory you should do it on a table, but you can practise in bed. The idea is to turn the block of wood into a dice. In the workshops at ONCE, we even ask people to put tacks in it to represent the numbers on each side, but I’ll be happy if you just sand the edges.’

‘But you already know I’m not going to do it.’

Alicia pretends she hasn’t heard. She leans down and presses the button that raises the head of the bed.

‘You’ll be more comfortable like that. Hold the wood in your left hand and move the sandpaper with your right. The most
important thing is that your shoulder and your arm shouldn’t move. You just move your wrist. That way you’ll learn …’

‘Alicia.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve just told you, I’m not doing it.’

‘It’s not hard. It’s just an exercise. And it’s not as if you’ve much else to do.’

‘Not this. Not the cane.’

‘It’s important. Very important. In fact, if you’d learned to use it earlier, you wouldn’t be in this situation.’

‘Really? You think I could have fought off the motorbike with my cane? What are you going to do, attach a bayonet to the end of it so I can stab the first bastard who comes too close? Why don’t you just hang a bell around my neck. Like they used to do with lepers.’

‘Víctor …’

Alicia doesn’t want to continue this discussion. She’s getting to know Víctor. There are a dozen arguments she could recite, all intended to overcome the initial reluctance all blind people feel about using a cane, but she knows it would be futile.

‘I went to your apartment yesterday.’

‘Oh. Did you bring me the flower remedies?’

She takes the bottles out of her bag and hands them to him. He opens one and empties the entire contents of the dropper on to his tongue.

‘There’s not even a table any more, Víctor.’

‘I know,’ he says, then adds, ‘I like this one. It must be the walnut.’

‘But you didn’t empty out the studio.’

‘I forgot. Since I never go in there … I hope you left the light on.’

‘Víctor, I’m being serious here. Please tell me the reason you didn’t have it cleared out is because you’re thinking about the possibility of working again some day. Working. Performing magic. Earning a living like everyone else. And if you have too much money, then give some to charity. Because you have to do something.’

‘A man.’

‘What? Víctor!’

‘A man alone ain’t got no chance.’

‘Enough of the movies. Tell me if …’

‘All the things in the workshop were for Galván, Alicia. We spent two years together, recreating those relics of the nineteenth century with our bare hands for a magic show. He wanted to set up a museum and I decided to hang on to them so I could give them to him. But the nineteenth century is the past. Galván is the past. My hands are the past. And a little bird told me I’m supposed to break with the past. Isn’t there a flower remedy for that?’

He opens another phial, opens his mouth and theatrically sticks out his tongue. Alicia grabs his wrist to stop him.

‘No.’

‘You’re hurting me.’

Alicia relaxes her grip but does not let go.

‘It’s no use, the flower remedies, the sandpaper, even me, none of it is any use unless you’re prepared to sacrifice something …’

‘The thing is, I’ve already sacrificed a great deal. I’ve sacrificed my eyes.’

‘I’m going, Víctor.’

Alicia opens her hand and Víctor’s arm falls. The liquid in the dropper spills on to the sheets.

‘But you’ll be back tomorrow.’

‘Don’t count on it.’

‘OK. Well, I’ll be here …’

Alicia picks up her bag and leaves, not even stopping to take the DVD player, the phials, the headphones, the cables. Let him sort them out. Let him ask a nurse. A man. A man alone …

L
earn these lines by heart, Víctor: ‘
Come husbands all attend my tale, come wives and widows in your glory, come children all, and hush your wails, and harken while I tell my story
.’ Or make something up. It’s not difficult. All you need is one verse to attract attention, after that just come up with a list of easy rhymes. Here’s a few suggestions: wander rhymes with squander, dark with stark, and blindness rhymes with kindness, the word ‘more’ is useful because it rhymes with whore and door and also more or less with drawer – the rhymes don’t have to be exact. According to tradition, you need a stanza apologising for any error, which, obviously, rhymes with terror, and likewise spoon with moon and June, repentance and sentence. Make a mental note that the last verse of the ballad should be: ‘
This ballad that you’ve heard me tell is in this chapbook here set down, which for tuppence I do sell that you may give it to any man and call him blessed
.’ You’re allowed to raise the price to account for inflation. Tales of crime and passion sell for a lot more these days. But at least you’ll be able to make a living.