B0040702LQ EBOK (17 page)

It was near the cemetery that I first heard poor Bieito moving
inside his coffin. (There were four pallbearers, and I was one
of them.) Did I hear it or was it my imagination? At the time
I couldn't be sure. It was such a gentle stirring! Like the
tenacious woodworm that gnaws and gnaws through the
night, that quiet movement has been gnawing at my fevered
imagination ever since.

The thing is, friends, I wasn't sure, and for that reason -
please understand, please listen - for that reason I could not,
must not, say anything.

Imagine for a moment that I was to say:

Bieito's alive.

All the heads of the old men carrying candles would go up
in astonishment and alarm. All the little children catching the
drips from the candles in their hands would come buzzing
around me.The women would crowd round the coffin. On
every lip would be a strange, amazed, murmur:

Bieito's alive, Bieito's alive.

The weeping of mother and sisters would cease, and the
brass instruments of the band intoning a solemn hymn would
miss a beat. And I would be the one who revealed it, the
saviour, the target of everyone's amazement and gratitude.
And the sun on my face would take on an unexpected
significance.

Ali! But what if later, when the coffin was opened, my
suspicions proved false? Their utter amazement would turn to
vast, macabre ridicule. The fervent gratitude of his mother
and his sisters to contempt. The hammer falling once more on
the coffin would have a unique, sinister sound in the stunned
afternoon. Do you see what I mean? That's why I said
nothing.

There was a moment when a slight expression of surprise
crossed the face of one of my fellow pallbearers, as though he
too noticed the slight stirring. But it was gone in a flash. His
face cleared again. So I said nothing.

There was a moment when I nearly spoke up. Turning to
the man by my side, and disguising the question with an
amused smile, I murmured:

`What ifBieito was alive?'

The other man laughed slyly, as though to say, `The things
you come out with!' and I deliberately widened my joker's
smile.

I also came close to saying something in the cemetery,
when we had placed the coffin on the ground and the priest
was murmuring the prayers.

`When the priest finishes,' I thought. But the priest finished and the coffin was lowered into the grave and still I
could not find the words.

When the first handful of earth, kissed by a child, fell on the
wood of the coffin inside the grave, the saving words rose to
my lips ... They were on the point of coming forth. But again
there came to my mind the near certainty of making a
horrible fool of myself and seeing the anger of the disappointed family, ifBieito turned out to be as dead as a doornail.
Moreover, speaking up at such a late stage made the whole
thing immensely more grotesque. How could I explain why I
hadn't spoken up earlier? I know, I know, you can always find
some excuse! Yes, yes, point taken! Only ... what if he
had died afterwards, after I heard him moving, and perhaps
you could tell that from some sign? Then it was a crime,
yes, a crime, to have kept silent. Already I could hear the
accusations:

`The poor soul was asking for help and didn't get it.'

`He heard the weeping, tried to sit up and couldn't ..

`He died of terror, his heart gave out when he realised he
was being lowered into his grave ...'

`Just look at the dreadful expression on his face!'

`And that idiot knew, yet he acts as if nothing had
happened, grinning like a clown.'

`Is he an imbecile or what?'

All that day, friends, I felt mad with remorse. I could see
poor Bieito clawing at the coffin lid with the absolute terror,
beyond consolation or resignation, of someone buried alive. I
even began to think that everyone could read in my bleary,
distant eyes my obsession with the crime.

So when it got to around midnight - I couldn't help it - I
set off for the cemetery, with my collar turned up and keeping
close to the shadow of the walls.

I arrived. On one side the wall was low: loose stones, held
together by ivy and brambles. I jumped over and went straight
to the place ... I lay down, put my ear to the ground and what
I heard immediately froze my blood. From deep in the earth,
desperate nails were scratching at wood. Scratching? I don't
know, I don't know. Nearby there was a hoe ... I was just
about to pick it up when I suddenly stopped. I could hear foot
steps and the sound of voices on the path near the cemetery.
There were people coming. In which case my presence there,
at that hour and with a hoe in my hand, really would seem
absurd, mad.

Was I to tell them I had let him be buried knowing he was
alive?

I fled with my collar still turned up and keeping close to the
shadow of the walls.

There was a full moon and dogs were barking in the
distance.

© Carmen Munoz Manzano Vda de Dieste

Translated by Annella McDermott

Rafael Dieste (Rianxo [A Coruna],1899-Rianxo,1981) was
from the region of Galicia in northwestern Spain. He was a
writer and philosopher, who, as well as poetry, short stories,
plays and novels, published newspaper articles and books
on mathematics and philosophy. A staunch supporter of the
Galician language, he himself wrote both in Galician and
Spanish, the latter probably in response to the fact that he spent a considerable part of his life outside Galicia. In 1939,
following the Spanish Civil War, he moved first of all to Paris
and eventually to Buenos Aires, where he lived in exile until
1961. Strongly influenced by the ideas of Tolstoy, he was
attracted by the folk culture of Galicia, in which magical
beliefs play a prominent role. Dieste's best-known works are
Dos arquivos do trasno (1926), from which this story is taken,
and Historias e invenciones de Felix Muriel (1943).

Hermann Keyserling has written a book, Immortality, in which
he suggests that there exists around us a supernatural world of
which we are unware because we lack the necessary means of
perception. I'm convinced that Keyserling is right and would
even add my own unanswerable arguments to his. One of the
enjoyable advantages of neurasthenia is precisely the ability it
gives one to catch sight of many strange beings. One cannot
always see them, but one can hear and, in some measure, feel
them. More than once, while writing late into the night, in
the silent solitude of my study, I've had the vivid impression
that an invisible being was reading over my shoulder the very
words that I was writing. This has never frightened me; I
experienced only the uncomfortable feeling that I was being
spied upon. When this happens, I usually pick up a piece of
paper and scribble on it: `Would you be so kind as to stop
bothering me?' The invisible being disappears at once. I
describe this experience because I know that a lot of people
are troubled, in similar circumstances, by the same feeling of
being watched.

Indeed, sometimes, you can even see them. You only get
a brief look and there's nothing terrifying about it, as the
cowardly might imagine. Sometimes, you see only lights,
different-coloured lights.

Some people see birds; others, vague, shapeless shadows. I
see only cats. For me the world of the unknown is populated
with cats. They slink rapidly past, though only when I can just
glimpse them out of the corner of my eye. They emerge out
of one thick wall and disappear through another, or they
suddenly appear at my feet. I stop and look and ... there's
nothing there.

They have never bothered me and I have absolutely nothing to reproach them with. I love cats and it does not displease me
to see them padding lightly across a room, even if they are
mere ghosts.

Only once did they cause me any distress, but the cats in
question were real, living, tangible cats.

This is what happened:

Guitian, my servant, told me that the cat had had six kittens.

`Too many,' I said.

`Too many,' he agreed. `I wish I could say the same about
the cow. The world really isn't very well organised. What shall
we do with the creatures?'

`I don't know'

`We'll have to kill them.'

`Poor things!'

Guitian raised his thick eyebrows:

`I don't like it any more than you do, sir. I certainly couldn't
bring myself to kill them.'

I said decisively:

`We'll give the matter some thought, Guitian.'

And a month and a half passed. My servant complained:

`I don't know how to get rid of the wretched brood.
Together they eat enough for two whole people and they're
always getting under my feet. I've tried to give them away, but
nobody wants them. In other places, people just throw them
into the sea, but there isn't any sea here, not even a deep river.'

I had an idea.

`Take them into the mountains and leave them there.'

`All right,' he said.

And one morning, he went out with the six cats in a basket.
He walked for more than a league and clapped his hands
loudly to frighten them away. The little creatures raced off,
tails bristling, and stopped at a prudent distance. In the end, he
drove them into a maize field.

Then, thinking he could not be seen, he slung the basket
over his arm and returned home with a light step. Along the
way, he heard the busy rustle of shaken maize leaves. Guitian
thought:

`They're following me.'

And he started running as fast as he could. Breathing hard,
he stopped at the gate to our house and wiped away the
abundant sweat from his brow. At that moment, from amongst
a clump of wallflowers, a cat appeared before him, then
another, and, finally, all six of them. And they started to miaow
hungrily.

My servant was sunk in gloom for several days. One day, I
saw him digging a ditch by the garden wall. He looked at me
with furrowed brow and said:

`Today's the day.'

After supper, he came into my room. He stood silently
before me, his lips set in a hard line; he kept rubbing his hands
together nervously, mechanically, as if trying to wipe them
clean of some disgusting substance.

`It's done!' he said.

He was deathly pale and, although he tried to smile, it was
evident that some hideous, painful emotion was beating inside
him. I thought he was going to fill me in on the details of the
cats' execution, out of that need to confide that all criminals
feel, so I hurriedly said:

`Don't tell me anything.'

He nodded and left. He may have committed that cruel
deed, but ... he was a good man.

The following day, when I was taking my morning
stroll about the garden, I seemed to hear a faint mewing. I
remembered the poor murdered creatures and I listened.

`It's pure obsession,' I said to myself.

And I continued my walk. Without intending to go there, I
found myself near the wall, where the dug earth indicated the
place where the six corpses had been buried. And then I heard
the mewing again, quite distinctly.

I stopped, horrified. I heard more mewing.

I ran to find Guitian. I found him in the kitchen, his head in
his hands and his hair all dishevelled.

`Guitian!' I cried.

He raised a distraught face to me.

`Guitian, there's a cat mewing underneath the earth in the
flower border.'

He gave a crazed smile.

`It isn't a cat, sir.'

`Not a cat?'

`It's six cats. All six of them are mewing. I heard them too.'

He looked around him with a shudder. For a moment, I
was dumbstruck.

`What have you done, Guitian?'

He made a vague, despairing gesture.

`I think I have lost my soul, sir.'

Quietly, he told me his story. He had lacked the courage to
kill them. He put them in the basket to carry them to their
grave and, to cut short his cruel task, he threw the basket into
the grave and piled up earth on top of it.