On the Edge (37 page)

It isn’t true what they tell you, that you come from nothing and will leave with nothing. You had something when you arrived, Francisco: a fine cradle, linen diapers, a warm bottle, possibly a wet nurse, and certainly, shortly afterward, a nanny or a governess. After school, I would often see you and your brothers picnicking in the park beneath the watchful eye of that woman wearing a white apron. Not that this explains very much. What matters isn’t how you come into the world or how you leave it, but what you are like now: if you have to worry about essentials or if they just come to you naturally, if things fall into your hands or slip through your fingers—or, worse still, if you never get them at all, if your whole life is a struggle to obtain what you know you can’t have. That is the poison. You’re pursued by what you can’t have. What matters isn’t the beginning and the end of the play, curtain-up-curtain-down, but the play itself, how it evolves—life; demagogues like my father tell you that what matters is the beginning—the social class you come from: that’s what revolutionaries tell you—or the ending—the four last things—death, judgment, heaven and hell: that’s what priests tell you, as people like Francisco do in a way. In both cases, the end—which, for Francisco, was, initially, revolution, and latterly, the creation of a modern, cosmopolitan society—justifies the means, like some modern form of casuistry. Ideologues tell you that it’s a matter of beginnings and endings, which are, in any case, inextricably linked, because for the less favored classes, the suffering of every day also finds its justification in the ending, and both sides devalue the one thing that is of any real value, namely, life itself, the moment: that’s what my Uncle Ramón used to say after he was widowed: he made no distinction between revolutionaries and priests, he had lost the ability to choose, to evaluate, the whole world was part of a thick, malignant drool; that’s what he thought, but it didn’t sour his nature as it did my father’s. His despair was strictly for internal use only. Saying that at the end of the road we’re all going to die alone and, as Machado said, with very little baggage, is rather like the fable of the fox and the grapes. It’s accepting that you won’t pick the grapes because you can’t reach them. You tell yourself: why pick something that’s too green to eat today and that, in a few days’ time, will be rotten: you deny yourself the pleasure of possession, of savoring the moment, why have anything if death will take it all away? But what about the icy milkshakes you take out of the fridge on broiling hot August afternoons, the tender steak you slap on the grill when you have friends over in the winter, or the air-conditioning that cools you while I’m frantically working away in the unbreathable atmosphere of the workshop? Don’t tell me that those things, however transient, are of no importance, I mean they may only last about as long as a cool drink stays cool in summer, but are you really saying those things don’t matter? Of course they do, imagine the construction worker on a roof in the August sun, the man cement-spraying the walls of a swimming pool in forty degrees of heat, or me sweating over a saw because the workshop budget would never stretch to having air-conditioning installed, and you, Francisco, sitting under an air conditioner or on a recliner on the deck of your yacht, enjoying the sea breeze and sipping a single-malt whisky: you’re not going to tell me there’s no difference, vanity of vanities, all is vanity, that’s what you used to say when you were a Christian and an excitable worker-priest in the making. It’s a lie, as you now know and, as you also know, not even the priests believe it, although, for some, faith does manage to override common sense. Faith didn’t remove your ability to take action. You fled from the seminary, you ran at a gallop. You saw the essential contradiction in Catholicism: if you’re convinced that everything will return to dust, why build those huge churches, marble upon marble upon marble. Marble floors, marble columns, marble façades. The mosaics and coffered ceilings and frescos and gold leaf; the gold and marble altars: Travertine, Carrara, Paros; onyx and marble, red and pink and serpentine and green; lapis lazuli and white ivory, and more gold and cedarwood and mahogany, and yet you’re telling me that everything turns to dust once you’ve slammed down the double six on the marble table top at the end of a game of dominoes, when we’re left alone at the bar and you tell me—the friend whose shoulder you can cry on—how disappointed you are, how unhappy. Obviously we are dust and to dust will return, but all in good time—we
will
return to dust, but you, Francisco, are afraid that death will take away your material pleasures, that the grim reaper will prevent you from going back to your yacht on another luminous day like today, when the sea is utterly calm and blue as blue; in the air, only the crystalline breath of the mistral; or that death might not allow you to eat one last partridge in brine garnished with caramelized shallots, garlic, black pepper and a bay leaf, while, for me, in this workshop, which is blazing hot in summer and damp in winter, the wait for death seems very long and I call on death to see if I can finally get some rest. That’s how you need to think, Francisco, if you want us to be real friends, as we once were, you need to start thinking frankly and not hypocritically: watch me eat the grapes, little fox. Yes, me, I’m eating them: see how the pips crack between my teeth, how the sweet juice trickles from the corners of my mouth, how I chew and suck and enjoy. They’re muscat grapes. The pleasure of desire and the pleasure of the act. If you’re starving, you can’t even allow yourself to feel desire, you cut desire off at the root because it’s such a painful reminder of everything you lack, while for me—rolling in money as I am—it’s the door through which I pass into real life: that’s why I cultivate my desire, feed it, postpone the moment of fulfillment, it is the ample vestibule that precedes pure pleasure, a warehouse set apart from the one in which dire need is stored. I prolong desire, just as, when I’m having sex, I prolong the moment before I come, because I prepare meticulously for that small explosion, I make the foreplay last as long as possible so that my orgasm is all the more intense. I enjoy the thirst for possession, and I enjoy, above all, the moment when I quench that thirst, when desire explodes, when that little spring bursts forth, God, it’s good that little death,
la petite mort,
that holds you captive for a moment, then returns you back to earth: I think that’s what the French call it,
la petite mort
, at least I seem to recall reading or hearing that somewhere. When the journey is over, yes, we will both die, each on our appointed day and at our appointed hour, but you will leave without having lived, while I will have lived my life to the full: that’s the difference between us; I will be dust, but, as Quevedo says, I will be dust in love: dust that has eaten, drunk and fucked royally, a dust rich in nutrients, an opulent concentration of the very best that human beings have produced; and maybe, who knows, dust has a memory, a memory that floats obstinately, eternally, above time, and consoles us with the thought that at least we drained life to the very last drop, it’s either that or we’re desperately unfortunate and we will be plagued for all eternity by the knowledge that life passed us by without our having had the chance to enjoy it. That’s how you should talk to me, Francisco—show me that what I have is just so much trash and that the sooner the wind rises and carries it all away, the better for everyone, and here I am, saying this to you today as I stand on the shore of the lagoon and gaze out over the water made still more beautiful by the blue sky, as if nature wanted to seduce me into playing with her for a little longer; and yet, I can assure you that, even while gazing on all this beauty, I feel eager to know what it will be like to cross the threshold and step into the kingdom of shadows, yes, to cross that threshold for good.

From the top of the dunes, I can see fragments of beach between the distant buildings. Since the crisis began, the frenzy of cranes, cement mixers and derricks has stopped, and the landscape swept clear. There are half-finished buildings, where work has been abandoned, and none are still under construction. None. In winter, you can walk quietly beside the sea, feeling your feet sink into the sand, almost alone, except that the solitude of the beach is an inhabited solitude: there are fishermen, as well as English and German retirees either jogging or striding along the shoreline moving their arms energetically in what they imagine to be martial fashion, but they succeed only in looking deeply weird: rapid steps, elbows close to the body and forearms stiff, or else swinging their arms vigorously back and forth; as I say, they just look rather pathetic: old people moving clumsily, mechanically, like automatons, or like lunatics throwing a completely pointless tantrum in the face of death. I find it faintly repellent, this determination among the elderly to keep fit by running from one place to another or cycling along the concrete path that skirts the beach and which is supposed to be the esplanade (that’s what local councilmen call it when they’re interviewed on the radio). Most of these winter athletes are vigorous old people who, one can’t help thinking, would be better off sitting in front of the TV in an armchair and taking stock of their past life, preparing for the big encounter, before the lights finally go out, but who decide instead to risk their lives—which are, after all, already lost and, for the most part, wasted—as well as those of others, many of which might still have some value. They pedal along these narrow paths, full of bends and hills that test their spent hearts, some cycle along the twisting local roads in groups that even spill over onto the opposite lane. Others cycle alone. It really makes me cringe to see one of those solitary, ancient cyclists huffing and puffing up a hill. The terrain is very rugged here. The mountains dominate the horizon beyond the plain and come right down to the sea to form steep cliffs. The plain only widens out toward the north, where the orchards meet the marsh and the beach. It’s an unpleasant sight, those old men hunched over the handlebars, sweating and panting; scrawny, bird-like thighs encased in tight, garish lycra, flabby bottoms drooping over the saddle or skinny ones pointing skyward like bony, avian prows. I no longer enjoy strolling by the sea, not with all the tourists, restaurants, open-air cafés, snack bars built along the seafront, where, in winter, the waves beat against the walls of the many apartment blocks, and where, each spring, trucks bring in tons of fresh sand to replenish the beach: the sea here is a dirty, violated place, where mere passing tourists, people who come from who knows where, pee, defecate or ejaculate, and into the sea are emptied the bilges and toilets of the oil tankers that dot the horizon on their way to the port of Valencia, along with the Mediterranean cruise ships laden with retirees enjoying a falsely luxurious lifestyle or, rather, an illusion of luxury—the ports of call are announced in the newspapers: Tunis, Athens, Malta, Istanbul, the Amalfi Coast, Rome-Civitavecchia, Barcelona—leaving whole tankfuls of filth in their wake. The sea is like a great lung of salty water constantly being oxygenated, and the briny wind expelled by that respiratory organ simultaneously purifies us and cleanses itself, that, at least, is how we think of the sea, a body that is always pure because it’s washed clean by every storm, but my sense now is that it’s impregnated by the kind of sticky muck that remains in a body after it’s been violated, the cement from the buildings next to the beach, the garbage that accumulates against the breakwaters built to keep the storms from carrying off the sand; to me the whole coast looks worryingly like the aftermath of a banquet; besides, you’re never free from prying eyes; as I say, I do still walk alone along the sand, but there’s no real solitude. The flatness of the beach leaves you exposed to view; you can make out the movements of other tiny human figures from a long way off, their comings and goings; you yourself provide a permanent visual display for other walkers or for those peering out of the windows of the hundreds of apartment blocks. One day, a layer of ash will fall on all of this, covering it up, an ash whose qualities we cannot as yet decipher. In its neglected state, the marsh restores some sense of privacy to me, makes me think of the “houses” we used to build as children to shield us from the eyes of our elders, places safe from prying adult eyes, where we could set up our own system of laws, play more or less forbidden games under the tablecloth, under the bed, or inside a large wardrobe. In the marsh, you can create your own world outside the real one. No one jogs, still less cycles along the muddy, potholed paths, which smell of stagnant water, rotting vegetation and the cadavers of dead animals: a snake, a bird, a rat, a dog, a boar; the locals no longer deposit the corpses of their pets here; they used to, not so long ago, but those country houses that haven’t collapsed have been refurbished and are used only as weekend retreats, and so very few animals are kept there. Customs have changed, and a different sensibility is abroad, there’s more vigilance, more neighborhood watch, the modern name for tall-tales, which has become ever more widespread. People are keen to denounce anyone committing some offense, however minor: no one would dare to ask a neighbor to lend him his van to transport the body of a dead horse or a dog. This is now considered socially reprehensible.

I’ve parked the SUV next to the water, climbed up the slight incline to the right that conceals the vehicle from view and, from there, I’ve been contemplating a landscape partially concealed by mist and by the smoke from the bonfires in the orchards, where they’ve been pruning the orange trees. The smoke lends a watercolor quality to the sunny winter morning: the greens of the past months have been replaced by yellows and coppery browns, the light has a quality that is, at once, delicate and sharp; it emphasizes the shapes of the distant buildings, making them seem nearer, just a stone’s throw away; it carves a chiseled line around the whitewashed walls of the huts—some of which still have brick chimneys—where the rice-growers on the edge of the lagoon store their agricultural equipment, including their irrigators. In summer and at certain times of day, the water takes on the earthy color of tea, but on this sunny winter morning, it’s an intense blue, in marked contrast with the dun-brown of the dry scrub and the reedbeds: the lagoon seems to have gone back to being a bay open to the sea, a status it lost centuries ago. Where it touches the water, the sand of the dunes glitters, becoming a multitude of shining particles, like gold, mica, silver. I’m aware of the subtle, stimulating vitality of the morning, a morning that gives one a sense that everything that is about to disappear is being made anew. Even I seem to have been infected by a youthful air that makes the whole situation utterly absurd. What am I up to? What am I about to do? The beauty of the place lends an unexpected slant to the whole situation, a sort of false euphoria that overlays the gloom into which I am about to plunge and that has been waiting in the wings. I walk along with a spring in my step, pushing aside the reeds that brush my face. The shifting wind—a cold, almost imperceptible mistral that seems to cut through the air like a cheese wire—mitigates the marshy smells, mingling or alternating the sickly aromas from the stagnant water with the salty pangs carried on the breeze from the nearby sea, and with the hushed breathing of the grass, a damp emanation from the night dew that is fast evaporating beneath the warm breath of the sun. Flocks of sparrows cross the sky in formations that look as if they had been drawn by a geometrician. A distant rifle shot rings out. Someone is shooting ducks or the wild boar that come down from the mountain to drink or to hide their litter among the reeds, although they usually only arrive as dusk is coming on. I’ve watched them at sunset with my Uncle Ramón. Next to the road, at the top of the dune that runs alongside it to the left, is a well. How often have I lifted the wooden lid as I’m doing now? As soon as I do, a moist exhalation rises up from within, I can see the wall thick with maidenhair ferns, I take the bucket down from its metal hook, throw it into the well and hear a watery splash as the bucket hits bottom. As I struggle with the rope, the pulley above my head creaks and, from down below comes the echoing slosh of water as it overflows the bucket each time I give a tug on the rope. The metal bucket emerges misted with the cold water, which I drink, scooping it out with my hands, which, in turn, grow numb and intensely red. I splash my face, feeling the shock of sharp crystals on my skin. This clear, cold water bears no resemblance to the slimy stuff you get in the lagoon. When we used to drink it or pour it over our heads on hot summer days, I was always astonished at how cool the well water was and it still surprises me that, despite the depth of the well, it’s completely untouched by the salt sea nearby. What limestone corridors does it follow? How did my uncle know that down there, beneath the marshy mud, was a layer of rock and, beneath that, flowing water: the knowledge of old country folk, of water diviners who have passed on their experience, but who also have a nervous system able or trained to pick up energies and vibrations that we never notice. The well connects with some of those underground rivers born out of the rain that seeps through the calcareous rock of the nearby mountains and that then follow their subterranean course for dozens of miles beneath the sea. There are places where a fisherman can throw a bucket into the sea and find fresh water to drink. Yet, all around me lies dark, boggy earth composed of thousands of years of rotten vegetation.