The Plimsoll Line
Authors: Juan Gracia Armendáriz
Contents
Hispabooks Publishing, S. L. Madrid, Spain
www.hispabooks.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing by the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Copyright © 2008 by Juan Gracia Armendáriz
Originally published in Spain as
La línea Plimsoll
by Editorial Castalia, 2008
First published in English by Hispabooks, 2015
English translation copyright © by Jonathan Dunne
Copy-editing by Cecilia Ross
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ISBN 978-84-942830-9-3 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-84-943496-0-7
Legal Deposit: M-35873-2014
For my father, Carlos
, in memoriam.
Happiness, like everything human, is unstable.
Adolfo Bioy Casares
The “Plimsoll line” is a mark indicating the maximum limit to which a ship may be loaded. During the second half of the nineteenth century, shipping companies would fill their ships with loads that exceeded their capacity. In the case of shipwreck, the companies would collect the ship’s insurance settlement. This phenomenon was known in Great Britain by the name of
coffin ships
. Samuel Plimsoll (Bristol, 1824–Folkestone, 1898) gained fame for spearheading a peculiar legal battle aimed at denouncing this practice and improving conditions for seamen. In 1873 the British parliament decreed that all ships had to indicate their waterline with what has become known as the Plimsoll line or Plimsoll mark.
During the Second World War, psychologists from the US army borrowed this concept for personality tests, to measure the limit beyond which an individual could no longer be subjected to disturbing emotions. Such tests were designed to select those individuals whose Plimsoll line made them more suitable for occupying positions that demanded great emotional resilience.
Were it not for the oak forest flanking and hiding it, the house would not draw the attention of an anonymous observer, being as it is a tiny relief in the topography of the valley, little more than a banal and therefore human gesture in the landscape extending north. It could be said the house survives as a parasite, camouflaged beside a forest that now, in the midst of winter, is just a tangle of cold, black branches. That may be why the forest would only attract the attention of an observer with a certain ecological bent and would otherwise pass unnoticed. Like the house, in fact. A free-standing home with three floors and a functional, Nordic design that would have stood out several years ago, when the most expensive dwellings continued to be the old villas belonging to the capital’s middle classes—houses draped in sumptuous ivy; damp rooms; lowered blinds—and the city had yet to spread outward in sprawling residential zones. An anonymous observer could infer that the land where the house is built was once—perhaps forty or fifty years ago—an area covered in massed trees. At that time, there was nothing in the valley to suggest the fields of grain that light it up with greens, yellows, and ochers, depending on the season, or the plowing, grazing, and subsequent repopulation of pines that today are being meticulously devoured by processionary caterpillars.
The house forms a detail that is in harmony with this remaining trace of primitive woodland, stuck close to it, almost concealed, despite the iron weathervane, the chimney, and the slate roof. This mimicry seems to afford the house less protection than isolation. The anonymous observer might deduce that the house will be further concealed in a few months’ time, when the forest begins to feed on the warmth of the sun, because it will then disappear behind the shadows of foliage and the golden reflections of leaves, and only by taking an aerial photograph of the valley will it be possible to confirm that there really is a house down there, among the trees.
Safely positioned at the edge of the forest, having slowly crossed the slightly putrid stench of earth, perhaps causing a thrush dozing in the fork of a branch to fly away, the anonymous observer would judge the house’s garden to be small, even too small compared to the sylvatic proximity of the forest, and that this meanness delimited by fencing is accentuated by a lawn cut with the surprising pulchritude of a golf course, a bright green horizontality interrupted by only two objects: a hoe abandoned next to some hydrangeas, and a sack of fertilizer with part of its contents heaped in a corner. On the porch, the wicker chaise longue with its apple-green neck cushion and the binoculars suggest the presence of an inhabitant in dialogue with the surroundings. But near the table, the gardening gloves placed hand over hand in an empty plant pot, the rough-hewn cane, the ashtray overflowing with used butts, and the crossword magazine all point to leisure, even convalescence, as if the owner of these objects had nothing better to occupy his time with in winter than doing puzzles, going for walks around the area, trying out a new method for grafting hydrangeas, or keeping a watch on the movements of birds and atmospheric changes. The dirtiness of the ground—the dried leaves piled up in a corner, the bird droppings, and the muddy footprints entering and leaving the house—seems to indicate gardening activities carried out with both urgency and a lack of interest, a far cry from the serenity of spirit that would seem to be required for the maintenance of a small, bourgeois, solitary garden.
Having abandoned the shelter of the last branches and become reconciled to the north wind beating the leaves, the observer might judge that there is indeed nothing extraordinary about the porch, including the Mexican ceramic plates under which, on a canvas chair, a fat tabby cat is taking a nap, adding a domestic touch of quietude to the entrance. Despite the cold, the animal keeps watch, between its eyelids, over the lawn’s perfect horizontality, suppressing its atavistic desire to hunt beneath a falsely stoic attitude and waiting for the mole’s snout to appear over by the hydrangeas, maybe, or perhaps on the other side, next to the heap of fertilizer. Two nights previously, it felt the mole digging with the muffled beat of displaced earth, drawn by the watery odor of earthworms, which have proliferated recently in the garden. It narrows its gaze in order to calm its predatory anxiety and shades its eyes, which are a poisonous green color, from the evening light. It will catch the sapping mole, maybe not today or tomorrow, but it will eventually gnaw its leathery flesh, put it to death as it has so many other rodents that, having arrived from the other side of the fence, have been trying for some time to annex the garden to their natural hunting grounds. It will not kill it out of a spirit of service or hygiene but in order to indulge a need that is in no way satisfied by the infrequent, puerile games its owner proposes on rare afternoons by throwing a ball of aluminum foil down the hallway. Nor does the stray dog that hangs around in the vain hope the man will toss it some leftovers sate the neutered cat’s now slender impulses. The mutt contents itself with barking raucously from the other side of the fence, revealing chipped canines and a ribcage stuck to its skin, and the cat simply gazes out from the chaise longue in the knowledge the dog will soon grow tired, its lower lip dripping with large gobbets of saliva, its barks grown hoarse and weak. Then, less out of a desire to make a futile gesture of territoriality than to fulfill an ancient ritual of natural enmity, the cat abandons its post, arches its back, bristles, and takes a few steps to one side, thereby reigniting the dog’s agonizing barks, in order to slope off in search of somewhere quieter. Now, however, lying on the deckchair, it merely licks its fur in the certainty the mole will satisfy its waning predatory instincts, having discovered, with a prick to its feline sense of pride, that the blackbirds—those birds that were once the object of its juvenile, venatorial leaps and whose population it has decimated over the years—have taken to mocking its sluggish approaches and flying off without alarm, safely out of reach. After various unsuccessful attempts, it stopped attending to its hurt pride and directed its hunting abilities toward less skillful opponents. Since then, moles, moths, and the odd grasshopper have been more than enough to fulfill its athletic aspirations. It senses the anonymous observer approaching in the evening light, moving diagonally toward the column on the porch, but that shadow attracts its attention about as much as a man out for a Sunday walk, or a mushroom forager. It notices the observer without a flicker of surprise, with the classist, feline haughtiness it shows Jeremías whenever he bursts into the house, filling it with the stench of brandy, gasoline, and the elements, depositing his toolbox on the kitchen table, and saying
kitty, kitty
to it while rubbing his fingers together as if in search of a tip. It could be said the observer is a guest of the light, a visage of air.
Viewed from the porch by pressing one’s nose against the glass and shading one’s eyes with one’s hand, it can be seen that the inside of the house is not crude but combines good taste and ostentation. The living room looks to the observer like the late reflection of a personality divided against itself, obliged to unite inclinations that can only be reconciled with difficulty—social acceptance, whose calling cards are the English liquor cabinet, a terracotta, a silver tray, and a zebra skin spread out on the floor; and cultured, not to say progressive, heterodoxy, an impulse championed by a vaguely phallic aluminum sculpture and a white, spherical bust like an ostrich egg, the image of which is doubled by the entryway mirror. The house could well be a candidate nominated to feature in some glossy publication specializing in interior design. “Risky And Conventional,” “Avant-Garde Without The Razzmatazz,” or “Tradition And Gestural Daring” might be the title of such a report.
Inside, the arrangement of objects is overseen by the portrait of a woman with an asymmetrical face, prominent forehead, and rounded shoulders whose gaze, although austere, does not express matriarchal severity so much as it does orphanhood, a feature that seems to extend to the tension in the arms and the hands resting on the lap of her blue dress. In contrast with other, smaller paintings flanking it on the wall—St Mark’s Square in Venice glimpsed through the mist; a seascape with small boats on an ocean of impossible transparencies—the anonymous observer would judge the portrait to be inaccurate but faithful, in keeping with the atmosphere of a house that offers itself as readily to the light as to the dark. In fact, outside, the sunlight declines rapidly, casting the room into sudden shadow, as if somebody had turned down the spotlights at an exhibition, because in the distance, several storm clouds like soiled cotton balls have detached themselves from the ridge of mountains, a solid, violet line rising oblivious to the protection it affords the valley, to which it nevertheless grants the privilege of a microclimate combining Atlantic bucolicism and Mediterranean luminosity. This may have been one of the reasons that drove the owner to build a home out of town at a time when nobody in the city dared commit such mortgaging madness, and that may have been what determined where the house was to be erected, in a no-man’s-land between an alfalfa field and an oak forest. The ravine already existed—a spit of bags, pieces of rubble, and rusty machine parts, overrun by nettles—but, quite logically, the owner must have thought the ugliness of the ravine would be offset by the proximity of the oaks. Besides, it was possible to access the highway via a local road that started at the gas station and ended four miles further on, next to a tiny, abandoned railway station that freight trains passed through without stopping. Furthermore, the forest was so close it was possible to touch the branches of the trees from the windows. In reality, the house is a solitary spot, like a small island, and shouldn’t draw the attention of an anonymous observer at all.
The
ring-ring
brings the telephone back to life with the vibrations of a mechanical insect, a black beetle that spreads its wings and flies over the side table, dodges the blue sofa, crosses the dining table, bounces against the old earthenware, passes in front of the mute gesture of the woman in the portrait, at the height of her chin—it could be said the woman’s eyes follow the beetle’s precocious flight—and then heads diagonally across the living room in order to finally ascend the stairwell leading to the third floor of the house. Up there, another telephone replies in a shriller tone. The beetle returns to the living room, flying along the ground with no time to stop, because the telephone starts ringing again and the other phone upstairs replies to its call after a short delay. The process is repeated another two times without anybody picking up the phone, at which the beetle, feeling exhausted and being followed attentively by the gaze of the woman in the portrait, returns to its quietude as an object on the table. A weary voice reads out a message on the answering machine tape. “
Hello, I can’t come to the phone right now. If you’d like to leave a message, please do so after the tone. Thanks
.” An automatic beep announces the start of the recording. On the other end of the line, there is the background noise of street sounds, prominent among them the wailing of a siren. Somebody clears their throat, allows a few seconds to pass until the sound of the siren disappears in the traffic of the city. “
Hi, it’s Ana. I’m sorry I couldn’t go and see you at the clinic, but we have to meet. I spoke to my lawyer yesterday. He says now is a good time to find a buyer, interest rates are going to come down, and apparently that will boost the property market. He says it won’t be difficult to find somebody interested in the house and we can ask for a good price. You know I don’t understand much about these things, so it would be good if we could talk as soon as possible . .
.” There is a syncopated hum. The car horns add an impression of urgency to the woman’s words. “
I think my battery is running out. Why don’t you buy yourself a cell phone, like everybody else, or get an email account? I hope you’re OK. Call me. Talk to you soon
.” The tape stops, and a second beep indicates the end of the message. The silence of the room takes on a more obvious presence, and everything would settle back into tepid penumbra were it not for the fact that on a corner of the side table, next to the beetle and the answering machine, a red light is blinking.
The anonymous observer could deduce that the tone of the message does not coincide with the features of the woman in the portrait, as if in the time that has elapsed between the painting of the portrait and the phone call, the woman had undergone an intimate metamorphosis, the effects of which have already surfaced in her voice and features, in such a way that the portrait would need to be retouched in order to remain faithful to its model. This change is no doubt reflected in the sonorous tone of her voice, which is surely not what it was when she posed in a blue dress, with bare shoulders, three hours a week for a month in the studio of a local painter. That face would seem to require a less youthful voice, one without a trace of humor. On the table in the entryway, various photographs have been arranged in a fan shape, a feminine touch that does not, however, appear to extend to the atmosphere of the house, as if the woman in the portrait were a gaunt presence whose shadow is projected only on small, mute objects that, from corners, drawers, and cupboards, in nooks and crannies, seem to want to vindicate her through a bond of silence. The ringing of the phone has died down in the living room, absorbed by the density of the shadows. It could be said that the space of the living room has returned to its previous, precarious equilibrium.
There may be nobody at home; if there is somebody, it’s impossible to tell, and the anonymous observer could stop now at the photographs in the entryway with the same attitude that might be adopted by an inopportune visitor—rocking on his feet, his hands clasped behind him, feeling a little embarrassed because his arrival has interrupted a family meal, an intrusion he attempts to mitigate by gazing at the faces in the photographs, apparently oblivious to the fragments of conversation and domestic noise proceeding from the dining table—who, once his visit is over, takes his leave, asking them to forgive the interruption and enjoy their meal, his hand raised in the doorway. But now there are no familial clinks of plates and forks, no traces of words or laughter, and unlike any other visitor, the observer remains in the entryway, gazing at the family photographs, there being nothing to indicate he has any intention of leaving.