B0040702LQ EBOK (19 page)

Bieito Fernandez was the hardest-working tailor in Ferreira.
According to the rumourmongers, he had grown rich, indeed
very rich, by lending money at twelve per cent interest. He
had given his children a good start in life: he had four sons
and one daughter. The eldest son was studying medicine in
Santiago and one day brought a musical group composed of
fellow students on a visit to Ferreira, and was even feted by the
mayor. He was feted for his good looks too, which he got
from his mother.

Bieito was positively drooling, as they say, when he saw
Bieito Junior leaving the local social club in the company of the
notary's son and the nephew of the owner of the local hotel.

His mother would ask him who he had danced with at the
club. Was it that nice blonde girl: the daughter of the Secretary
to the Town Hall, or the girl from the corner shop whose
father had made more than two million reales exporting
chestnuts and hams to France?

Bieito junior's father was definitely drooling.

Then in 1918, the flu epidemic started and carried off
thousands to the next world. The gravedigger, Foulmouth,
couldn't cope with all the graves he had to dig.

They called him Foulmouth because he didn't have a
good word to say about anyone. When a monk was buried, he
was told that the man had died `in the odour of sanctity';
Foulmouth replied that he had buried him himself and that
the monk had stunk to high heaven.

`He reeked of rotting flesh, just like everyone else.'

One day, during the time of the epidemic, he had to dig
seven graves. He went to the mayor and said:

`Look, Don Juan, I can't cope with all this work and I get
paid a pittance. You'd better make my eldest son my assistant;
he's seventeen now'

The mayor deemed his request to be a fair one.

`So be it. You shall each wear a peaked cap bearing an `M'
and an `S' standing for Municipal Services, because you both
serve the municipality.'

Foulmouth showed his teeth and smiled much as a gorilla
might smile. There wasn't an uglier man for twenty leagues
around. He had a short, fat neck.

Once, a man said to him: `You haven't got much to thank
God for' and Foulmouth stabbed him and almost killed him.

If the father was proud of the cap he had to wear, his son,
Benjamin, was even prouder. He would go into the taverns
just to show it off. When he arrived, the other boys would
cover their noses with their hands, and when he left, they
would say: `Foulmouth's son stinks of rotting flesh.'

Everyone in Ferreira knew that the tailor Bieito had fallen
ill with the flu and that it had turned into pneumonia. He
died one Wednesday.

Foulmouth had it in for him, probably because Bieito had
taken him to court once over some money he owed him for a
suit he had made.

They buried him on the Thursday. He was laid out at
home for just twenty-four hours.

Some said:

`There's never been a better year for doctors, priests and
pharmacists.'

Foulmouth and Benjamin buried the pharmacist first.
While they were covering him with spadefuls of earth, the
gravedigger said:

`You could have kept a whole family on what this greedy
pig shelled out on cakes. I hope he spends the next hundred
years in Purgatory.'

Then came the body of the tailor Bieito. The cortege
consisted only of the priest, the altar boy and about twenty
or so followers. The gravedigger rubbed his hands and
smiled. The priest read the prayer for the dead and blessed the earth that the gravedigger and his son were throwing
onto the coffin.

At that same moment, they noticed a great cloud of
smoke in the sky. A little boy appeared at the Cemetery gates
shouting:

`The priest's house is burning down!'

When the priest heard those words, he took off his chasuble
and stood there in his robe, yelling:

`I just hope that jar of notes I left on the mantelpiece hasn't
caught fire.'

And with that he bounded off, leaping over the graves.
There was no one left in the Cemetery.

Foulmouth was roaring with laughter.

`It would just serve that old moneylender right as well, if all
his thousand real notes burned up. He did nothing but hoard
them all his life.'

Father and son picked up the wine bottle and each took a
long swig.

`Your turn now, tailor. We don't want you complaining that
you haven't got enough earth on you.'

The same boy who had come to the Cemetery gates
before, shouted:

`It's Raposa's oven that's on fire!'

But, by then, the Cemetery was empty.

When the gravedigger picked up the hoe, he saw that
Bieito had got out of his coffin.

`I thought you were supposed to be dead, tailor. Everyone
they bring here has got to be properly dead.'

`With a certificate signed by the relevant authority,' added
his son.

Bieito said in a plaintive voice:

`Would you mind very much explaining to me what's
going on? What am I doing here wearing a Franciscan habit?

`We haven't got time for explanations, we've got too
much work to do. We still have a lot of other unfortunates to
bury.'

But the son saw things differently and he asked Bieito:

`Have you got a certificate from Satan to say you've been resuscitated? Because if you haven't, there's nothing we can
do. It's back into the grave with you.'

`Can't you see I'm alive?'

`Alive? You got the flu which developed into pneumonia
and you died. Or do you think you know more than the
doctor who wrote out your death certificate?'

And he dealt Bieito such a blow on the head with the hoe
that he split his head open.

`Finish him off, Benjamin, finish him off.'

`I'm an obedient son, so I will.'

And he hit Bieito so hard that he crushed his skull and his
brains spilled out.

`Now cover him up with plenty of earth, that's it.'

I certainly had my work cut out for me, thanks to that
wretch Foulmouth.

© Concepcion Fole Otero and Editorial Galaxia, S.A.

Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

Anxel Fole (Lugo, 1903 - Lugo, 1986) was a writer and
journalist and, until the outbreak of Civil War in 1936,
worked with the Partido Galleguista (the Galician party). His
writing is steeped in the world of rural Galicia and his stories
are often retellings of stories he himself was told: tales of rural
grotesques, ghosts, mysteries and premonitions. He wrote in
both Galician and Castilian, his best-known works being:
A lus do candil (1953), Terra brava (1955) Contos da neboa (1973)
and Historias que ninguen cre (1981).This story was originally
published in Galician as `De como o xastre Bieito volveu pro
inferno' in Contos da neboa (1973).

Supper was served at ten beneath the solemn gold of the
candelabra. The six of us sat down at the table. Everything,
the china, the gleaming cutlery, ourselves, had its double in
the glass table top. I was the first to notice that the sinister
pane of glass reflected back at us not six faces but seven. The
intruding face was situated to the right, slightly towards the
centre, between Miguel and Mercedes. It could have been
there for several days. The glass hadn't been cleaned since
Saturday, we had no proof - the maid was new - that the
cleaning had been carried out particularly thoroughly, and we
all know how easy it is to eat mechanically, not once, but
many times, without pausing to look for your double in the
glass. So it was perfectly possible that the face had been there
for five or six days. Other questions arose: had it been there for
twenty-four hours every day? during that time had its position at the table varied? had the face been different every day?
Not forgetting, of course, the most immediate and obvious
questions: the identity of the face and the reason for its
unusual presence there. I think the moment has come to
describe the object of our questions. The face could have
been about thirty or thirty-five. Everything about it bespoke
serenity or, rather, indifference. Its regular features belonged to
an individual of the male gender. It had blond hair. Beneath
the arch of the eyebrows, you could just make out a pair of
dark eyes. Was it looking at us? I moved my hand in front of
the face; it took no notice. Perhaps it was pretending. I did not
dare to touch it, even though I knew that to do so might make
it disappear. After all, it was a living face. Removing the glass
would be another solution, though I was quick to see that it
would be a false one. The face might remain stuck to the glass
or rise up from the bare table. I found neither of those two possibilities to my liking, not to mention the awful sense of
mutilation that would mark any such ceremony. Anyway, the
face did not appear to be hostile. It clearly wanted nothing
from us - if indeed it had even noticed our presence - only to
remain in the place where, to our astonishment, we had found
it. We would have to move our supper to the drawing-room. I
hesitated for a moment on the threshold: obviously we would
have to close the door, but I felt uneasy about switching off all
the lights. The thought that this otherwise harmless measure
might put the face to flight prompted me instead to abandon
it to the half-light. That was a mistake, for, night after night, it
remained on the glass. For us, eating in the drawing-room
became a habit. Eventually, we abandoned the dining room -
almost always closed and in darkness - to the face. The last
time I went in there, I didn't actually see it. Dust had accumulated on the table, forming the kind of vegetation you normally find under beds. Grown accustomed to the dark, the
dining room seemed strangely opaque. In that neglected, dirty
state, there was a wildness about it. Maybe the face isn't even
there any more.

© Pere Gimferrer

Translated by Margaret full Costa

Pere Gimferrer (Barcelona, 1945) published two books of
poetry in Castilian - Arde el mar (1966), for which he won the
Premio Nacional de Poesia, and La muerte en Beverley Hills
(1968). Subsequently he has written exclusively in Catalan,
translating his own work into Castilian. His novel Fortuny
won the Spanish Critics' Prize in 1983. Amongst his publications since then are Mascarada (1996) and L'agent provocador
(1998). He has also written a book of film criticism as well as
essays on Magritte, Ernst, Miro, Toulouse-Lautrec and De
Chirico (published in English by Academy Editions). `A Face'
is one of five stories in the fantastic genre which he wrote in
1965, four of them published in the magazine Papeles de Son
Armadans and one in the literary review Insula.