B0040702LQ EBOK (21 page)

The shooting gallery was located in the stern, to starboard: a
brilliantly lit wooden stall painted with red and green
stripes.The hollow eggs, glass butterflies and clay pipes went
round and round in front of the black backcloth. For target
shooters, there were two sets of those horizontal zinc tubes
with bits of cardboard at the end, which always look like
telescopes that have swallowed a star. A blue-and-yellow celluloid ball bobbed up and down on the plume of water spouting
from a fountain. There was a cutout skeleton that performed a
ghostly, dislocated tarantella when hit between the eye
sockets. A black woman, made out of cardboard, writhed
about like Josephine Baker when a bullet struck her belly
button.There were other dolls as well ...

A man and a woman, dressed up like circus sharpshooters,
were loading the pistols and rifles.That was where Arcadio
found Prince Emilio. He was the one who, to the great admiration of onlookers, never failed to shatter the hollow eggs, the
glass butterflies and the clay pipes. He was a superb shot, the
bullet seemed to follow his eye exactly. And he stood and
moved so elegantly. Now he was taking on the skeleton.
Arcadio went over to the stall. The Prince aimed, fired and the
mechanism broke into a crazy dance of vertebrae and bones.
Everyone applauded and laughed.Then the man who ran the
stall pressed a button and restored everything to its proper
place. La Molinari was at the Prince's side, exclaiming
enthusiastically:

`That's amazing! I've never seen anyone shoot better than
that.'

And the Prince replied modestly:

`Mere child's play, Lina.'

`Now try and hit the black woman.'

`All right.'

The Prince hit the black woman in the navel and the black
woman danced. There was applause and loud laughter. Suddenly, though, the Prince turned pale, and the hand holding
the pistol shook. Amongst the `audience' he had just spotted
the ironic gaze of Strong. The Prince turned from white to
scarlet, and the mocking curl of his lips became an angry
scowl.

`Come on, set up the targets, quickly!'

They loaded a rifle for him. He fired, once, twice, several
times, aiming through the tube at the cardboard rectangle.
The shots reverberated in the metal chamber with a thunderous roar.

`Bring it over here.'

The man pushed the target round on some rails.There was
a crown of holes and, in the middle, a cross. The Prince, deaf
to the applause and oblivious to the kiss blown to him by La
Molinari, took the target and held it up against the light so
that everyone could see the perfection of the design he had
made with the bullet holes; holding it out to the blond
gentleman, he said:

`Could you do the same?'

It was a challenge. Arcadio feared for the Prince. The Prince's
eyes blazed, but the look in Strong's eyes was purely and
simply one of pity. Everyone awaited the Englishman's
response. Anxiously. Everyone had sensed that there was
some kind of duel or drama going on between the two men.
The wheel stopped abruptly, as did the music. Around the
shooting gallery a profound silence fell; one could hear in the
distance the dull tumult of another party in full swing.
Nazarof, Lorenzi, Mr Steinert and Don Manuelin suddenly
appeared at Arcadio's side.They were panting. They had
run there, in obedience to some mysterious order. And
Commander Wolf, the superintendent and the purser had
also inexplicably appeared. Strong took a while to reply. He
did so with a placid, pitying smile, and reached out to take the
Prince's trophy in one pale, perfect hand. Meanwhile, all the passengers from the staterooms were flocking to that part of
the deck, pushing and shoving, all anxious to get close to
Prince Emilio and to the stranger, for, apart from `the seven',
no one knew Angel Strong's name nor who he was. He took
the pierced piece of card. He looked at it, held it up to the
lights on the stall, so that everyone could see it, radiant ...
And while he was slowly giving it back to the illustrious
marksman, he said:

`That's nothing.'

The Prince could not contain himself.

`Nothing! Now look here, I'm the sort who could hit
William Tell's apple, or miss it altogether if necessary ...'

Strong retorted:

`I'm the sort that never misses. This is just a game. You've
hit every target on the stall and left none for me.'

`What about this one?'

The Prince struck his own chest, or, rather, his shirt front.

`A challenge? No, sir. We'll just have to look for a more
difficult target.'

Paying no heed to the Prince's impatience or to the murmurings and shouts that warned of the crowd's hostility
towards him, he looked up, opened his eyes wide and stared at
the moon.

`Give me a pistol! I'll take the moon as my target.'

La Molinari let out a musical laugh. Others followed suit.
Some whistled.

`He's a fraud!'

`He's making fun of us!'

`Go on, shoot then!'

`Ladies, gentlemen ...' said the Commander calmly.

The Prince was trembling with rage, Arcadio with fear.
Mr Steinert was paler than the moon itself. Lorenzi was the
colour of quicksilver. And the laughter had frozen on Don
Manuelin's lips.

`Gentlemen, let him do it. Let him shoot at the moon and
hit it. He is neither a fraud nor a madman. Give him a pistol,
now!' said a cracked, hysterical voice. It belonged to Dr
Demetrius.

The stallholder looked at the Commander and hesitated,
the empty gun in his hand.

`Load it!'

And turning to the group, the Commander said:

`Gentlemen, why all this upset? You mistake a mere joke
for a threat. It's all right,Your Majesty. Calm yourself, doctor. I
myself will place the gun in the gentleman's hand.'

He did so. Angel Strong stretched out his arm, screwed up
one eye and aimed at the vast, perfect moon. The moon was
not a silver moon, but blonde, almost golden. The stars
encircling it were growing pale, its gold dripped onto the
waters of the sea. It was a beautiful moon, young and
lovely, that did not deserve to die. Inexorably - and smiling
diabolically - Strong was aiming between its eyes - the
moon's large, grey eyes, the eyes of one in love.

`One, two ...'the commander was saying.

When he said `three', the shot was fired. And everyone - all
those who could withstand the terrible lurch the ship gave, as
if it were about to be sucked under by a sudden whirlwind; all
those who could withstand the apocalyptic yet harmonious
din, a sound like a vast glass tower crumbling - everyone
witnessed the marvel of seeing the moon pierced, cracked,
shattered like a mirror by a bullet. Phosphorescent fragments
of moon were sinking into the ocean. The light from the
moon and stars was replaced by a profound, icy gloom.
Almost all the witnesses to the catastrophe were lying on the
floor, some stiff as corpses, others in the grip of an epileptic fit.
Mournful voices and cries of terror arose while the Amphitrite
righted itself, recovered its equilibrium and regained its
previous solid stillness, like an islet newly born out of the
stormy womb of the sea. Meanwhile, Angel Strong was laughing. He alone was roaring with laughter. No one had the
strength to rebuke him or to stop his laughter. Then, suddenly,
as if the feeble, terrified crowd filled him with pity or disdain,
he said:

`Don't worry, I've got plenty of spare moons.'

And then the second marvel happened. With the skill and
dexterity of a magician he drew from the inside pocket of his dinner jacket a small, shining disc, which he stroked and
turned in his fingers, before throwing it into the air. They
saw the disc describe a perfect parabola and then watched it
growing and growing until it was the same illusory size as the
moon. The disc came to rest in exactly the spot where the
moon had been. And there it was once more, the blonde,
almost golden moon dripping its honey onto the sea.

Translated by Margaret full Costa

Alberto Insua (Havana, 1885-Madrid, 1963) was the
pseudonym of Alberto Galt y Escobar. Born of a Spanish
father and a Cuban mother, Insua was educated by Jesuits in
Havana and only came to Spain when he was fifteen. There
he studied law, but soon became immersed in the worlds of
literature and journalism. During the First World War, he was
correspondent in Paris for the Madrid newspaper ABC and,
after the war, was awarded the Legion of Honour by the
French government. The openly erotic nature of his first
novel, La mujerfacil (1909) caused a huge scandal and the book
became a bestseller. El negro que tenia el alma blanca (1922) was
his most famous work and was adapted for both stage and
screen. He wrote more than seventy novels, as well as two
volumes of memoirs (Memorias, 1951-52). This story is taken
from a novel entitled El barco embrujado (1929).

Ever since then, death has continued its slow, tenacious
advance through the foundations and the interior beams of
the house. Calmly. Unhurriedly. Pitilessly. In only four
years, the ivy has buried the oven and the grainstore, and
the woodworm has entirely eaten away the beams supporting the doorway and the shed. In only four years, the ivy
and the woodworm have destroyed the work of a whole
family, a whole century. And now the two are advancing
together, along the rotting wood in the old corridor and
the roof, searching out the last substances that still bear the
house's weight and memory. Those old substances, tired,
yellow - like the rain falling on the mill that night, like my
heart now and my memory - which, one day, possibly very
soon now, will also decay into nothing and collapse, at last,
into the snow, perhaps with me still inside the house.