Between Eternities: And Other Writings Read online

  In fact, I know of no one who has not, at some point in his life, in some apartment he’s lived in, come to the conclusion that the upstairs neighbours are in the habit of dragging their furniture about in the wee hours or simply moving it around (beds included), and not just on one night, but almost every night. I’m sure you’ve had the same incomprehensible feeling. Are they so dissatisfied and uncertain about the position of their furniture that they have to experiment constantly, with the sofa here and the wardrobe over there, the armchairs in that corner and the tables over by the window? Now, there may well be a large number of individuals who really are in a state of hopeless indecision as to how best to furnish their bedrooms and living rooms, but it’s entirely impossible that there are so many of them that we’ve all had to put up with at least one. So what is going on? What unfathomable things do people get up to late at night, especially those who have to rise early to go to work or to take their children to school, and who do not appear to be remotely bohemian?

  If one had to deduce their nocturnal lives from the noises they make, one would conjure up the most bizarre images. I’ve lived in apartments where I became convinced that my upstairs neighbours, at some late hour of the night, started playing marbles or perhaps pétanque, because the sounds that reached me were unmistakably those of balls rolling across the parquet. With others, it seemed to me that, as soon as they arrived home, all their buttons immediately fell off and dropped to the floor, or that the pearl necklaces they were wearing suddenly broke, which, given the repetitive nature of the noise, led me to conclude that husband and wife must be mutually and respectively wrenching them off, possibly as some kind of foreplay. In an English apartment (appropriately enough) where I stayed for a month, I had the impression that I must be living underneath the little old ladies from Capra’s black comedy Arsenic and Old Lace, except that instead of killing their victims silently with poison, as the little old ladies did, the tenants evidently spent all night dismembering that day’s corpse, such was the sound of laborious sawing that came from above. Another time, I came to believe that an elderly man, shy and solitary, was in the habit, as darkness fell, of throwing large, multitudinous parties, given the bustle of footsteps (some even sounded like dance steps) that I could hear from below; this proved not to be the case, because when I did finally give in to the need to satisfy my curiosity and keep watch on the street door from my balcony, I saw not a single stranger pass – that is, not a single likely guest; this, however, did not prevent me from hearing them up above, as if they were dancing without music or else chasing each other round the room. For years, a female friend of mine had a neighbour who, as far as she was aware, always entered and left her apartment wearing sensible flat shoes; when her neighbour was at home, however, the noise made by her footsteps convinced my friend that this neighbour must immediately put on a pair of high-heeled mules, to which my friend’s imagination couldn’t resist adding a couple of pompoms to complete the image: in the end, she was utterly convinced that, each night, her discreet, sober neighbour made up for all that sober discretion by donning a negligee, the aforementioned high-heeled, pompommed mules and, possibly, some sort of diabolical underwear, even if she wasn’t expecting a visitor. I once asked some young people about the dull, continuous ‘papapam’ emanating from their apartment, as if they were working some kind of printing press, and their answer was even more bizarre than my imagined explanation: ‘Oh, we’re running an illegal whisky distillery,’ they told me.

  I’ve found out more over the years: what we take to be the sound of lunatic furniture-shifting is sometimes merely a little rough, extemporaneous vacuuming or even a feverish opening and closing of drawers. On the other hand, one cannot help wondering why people would be opening and closing drawers in the small hours, not just once or twice, but twenty times, or why they would keep banging about with some ancient, metal vacuum cleaner. Of course, in Spain, where almost no one shows any consideration for anyone, there’s nothing odd about hearing hammer blows in the middle of the night: it’s someone hanging pictures or doing minor home repairs. However, having grown accustomed over the years to hearing so many inexplicable noises, one can’t help thinking that the upstairs neighbours are, in fact, hammering nails into a coffin, and one is left with the thought: ‘I just hope it’s theirs.’

  (2006)

  The Modest Case of the Dead Stork

  From the balcony of the apartment that I rent in Soria you can usually see two storks’ nests – at the times of year, of course, when the birds are present in the city: one on the belfry of the church of San Francisco, the other on the much smaller belfry of the Ermita de la Soledad, in the lovely park known as La Dehesa. Sometimes you can see a third nest, built on the top of a tall tree in that same park and which is, therefore, rather less stable than the first two. The person who keeps me informed of all this, and about the exploits of the respective families, is Carme, who is normally terrified of any feathered creature that comes anywhere near her – she has a particular loathing for pigeons, those vile, winged rats that get such an absurdly good press. However, she does enjoy watching birds from a distance, through a telescope she brought with her for the purpose, especially the storks on the nearer nests, who are now part of the landscape, not to say – absurd expression – part of the family. Her interest in them has even led her to buy and read a few books about storks, and whenever she takes a break from her work, she always checks on them to see how they’re getting on and at what point they are in their cycle: if they’re still waiting for their mate, if they’re building the nest or incubating, if their chicks have already been born, if they’re feeding them or giving them their first flying lessons.

  When I got to the apartment on 2 August, after a month and a half away, Carme had already arrived from Barcelona a few hours before. I had noticed a strange, rank smell as I came up the stairs, and I mentioned this as soon as I saw her. ‘You’re not going to believe it when you see what it is,’ she said, and led me to the window that opens on to the small inner courtyard, three feet by six or less. There lay a dead stork, where it must have lain for who knows how many days or weeks. It was doubtless a fairly young stork, but it had a really wide wingspan, for the chicks quickly grow to adult size. Anyway, it wasn’t just a sparrow or one of those disgusting pigeons or a nice magpie or a noisy blackbird that we – or, rather, I – could easily have picked up. The creature, we assumed, must have had the misfortune to fall when out on a trial flight, and the even worse misfortune to have fallen into our tiny courtyard, from which it would have been unable to escape, and at a time when there was no one in the apartment to lend it a hand. The many white droppings scattered around indicated that the poor thing did not die on impact. What should we do? How were we to get it out of there? Where could we deposit the corpse?

  Since our local firemen usually inspire a degree of confidence, I decided to call them. I explained the situation to the person who answered the phone, and he immediately asked: ‘Is the stork alive?’ ‘No,’ I said, somewhat taken aback, ‘I just told you, it’s been dead for a while.’ Then I realized that this absurd question was a way of washing his hands of the affair. ‘In that case, it’s nothing to do with us. If it was wounded, yes, we’d try and rescue it, but if it’s dead, then we won’t touch it.’ ‘Who should I go to for help, then?’ I asked. ‘No idea.’ Next, I tried the municipal police, some of whose officers are, in my experience, very pleasant, while others are definitely not. The person who answered turned out to belong to the latter contingent. ‘Is the stork on a public highway?’ was his surprising question. ‘No, as I said, it’s in the inner courtyard of our apartment.’ ‘Oh, well, if it’s inside a building, that’s nothing to do with us. If it was out in the street, yes, we’d come and pick it up.’ And when I asked him whom I should approach, his answer was even more shocking than the fireman’s: ‘I’ve no idea. You’d better just pick it up yourselves, stick it in a bag and throw it in the bin.’

  Fortunately, we
didn’t follow his advice. We tried the Civil Defence, who passed us on to the Civil Guard, who, in turn, put us through to Semprona, the Nature Protection Service. I think I began thus: ‘I’m not phoning about a live stork or about one that’s lying dead in the street, both of which, it seems, have people willing to take care of them, but about one whose corpse is in my apartment …’ The Semprona people behaved like perfect gentlemen and, the following morning, one of their agents duly arrived to take away the unfortunate beast (this required two enormous plastic bags, out of which poked the bird’s beak and feet). Since the stork is a protected species, he questioned us closely, asking: ‘Are you sure it was already dead when you found it?’ That afternoon, the caretaker kindly came up and disinfected the courtyard, which was full of flies, and when we told him what had happened, he said: ‘You were quite right to ignore the policeman’s advice. If you’d been spotted by the police leaving the building carrying two great bags out to the dustbin, with a beak and legs sticking out, they would immediately have assumed you’d killed the bird and promptly arrested you.’ No wonder the man at Semprona to whom I spoke on the phone had asked me the following touching question, even though he knew from the start that the bird was dead: ‘Fine, now can you tell me the stork’s address?’ Just as if the stork were a person – and a permanent resident too.

  (2010)

  Lady with Bombs

  By the time you read these words, the Madrid Book Fair will be over, but I’m writing before it has even begun, and my one wish for the book-signing sessions is that they should be more like the ones I first attended, more than thirty-nine years ago, when I was not yet twenty. Well, at least in one respect. Then, nearly four decades ago, I signed very few books, and most of those were for the relatives and friends who were kind enough to visit the stand, and the truth is that there’s something rather embarrassing and sad about sitting there, twiddling your thumbs and desperately trying to look as if you really didn’t care that so few people are buying your book. What bothers me now are the manners and attitudes of some of the people who stand in line to get a book signed, although I realize that the more people there are, the more likelihood there is of encountering some troublesome, arbitrary, rude individual. So perhaps I shouldn’t complain.

  It is nonetheless true that nowadays, as in other areas of public life, one does tend to come across some very touchy, even aggressive, people. There have always been eccentric readers, and I’ve occasionally been asked to sign not one of my own books (which are the only ones I have the right or the desire to sign), but some classic text that I admire – by Stevenson or Conrad, Dumas or Shakespeare – or by a writer who happens to be a friend. At the recent book fair in Barcelona, for example, I found myself signing copies of my father’s memoirs, as well as Pomponio Flato by Eduardo Mendoza and The Siege by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. I didn’t even object to making my mark, with an indelible felt-tip pen, on someone’s e-book holder, which the owner will doubtless curse in future, when he sees the same name appearing over and over, regardless of what he’s reading on the wretched gadget, until, of course, he replaces it with another more advanced model, doubtless in the next six months to a year. Such whimsical requests are fairly acceptable, others less so, especially when accompanied by nastiness and rudeness.

  Once, again at the book fair in Barcelona, a woman handed me a rose with a piece of paper wrapped round the stem. The paper contained a string of insults, which the donor, doubtless to her great satisfaction, watched me read. Last year, in Madrid, another, rather ‘striking’ woman appeared, striking in the sense that she was well dressed (as regards how much her clothes must have cost, rather than in the sense she intended), relatively young and quite good-looking (although not as good-looking as she thought she was). She took a thick book out of her bag and said: ‘I’d like you to sign this.’ I looked at the spine and saw that it was a copy of the Bible. I said: ‘I’m sorry, I only sign books in which I’ve been personally involved, be it as author, translator or publisher, although even in the latter case, I prefer not to.’ ‘And are you sure you’re not personally involved with this one? I think you are,’ she insisted. ‘No, I’m quite sure. I would have been pleased to have written certain parts of it or to have witnessed some of the episodes it describes, but, believe me, I had nothing whatsoever to do with it.’ ‘Not even in attacking it?’ I began to see where she was going with this. ‘I doubt that anyone could ever inflict much harm on such an enduring work,’ I replied. She set aside the weighty tome and removed from her purse a small box, only slightly larger than a matchbox. She was clearly well prepared, armed and equipped. ‘Would you sign this for me, then?’ I took a closer look and read on the lid the words: ‘Stink bombs’. You have to remain calm at a book fair, where your role is really almost that of a sales clerk. ‘I’m sorry, but I had nothing to do with making these either. As I said, I only sign things for which I am responsible.’ ‘But you throw stink bombs every week.’ I assumed she was referring to this column, and one has to accept criticisms, favourable or otherwise. ‘Well, that depends on one’s sense of smell. But, as I say, I had no part in making this little box.’ She then leaned her elbows on my pile of books, thus blocking the way for all the other people waiting in line, and declared: ‘I’m not moving from here until you sign that box and the Bible.’ ‘Well, you’re in for a long wait, then,’ I said, with ill-disguised irritation now, ‘because I’m not going to sign either of them.’

  Eventually, she was gently removed by the very patient bookseller, Javier, and a few ‘heavies’ who turned up when they noticed she was making a scene. When she was some distance away, and while I was dealing with other readers, I noticed that some policemen were asking to see her ID card and I heard her shouting. ‘You’re asking me for my ID, rather than that gentleman over there!’ she yelled, pointing at me. ‘That man’s a political agitator!’ When I left, an hour or so later, she was still there, still shouting. At least she didn’t let off her stink bombs at the fair. Let’s hope she doesn’t turn up again this year, even better equipped. The way things are going in this country, any public appearance carries with it a slight risk. Even for writers. Even if it’s only a risk to one’s olfactory glands.

  (2010)

  A Horrific Nightmare

  After the killing of thirty-two people at Virginia Tech, in a town ominously named Blacksburg, by one mad-as-hell megalomaniac in possession of a private arsenal, the only way that we Europeans can get some idea of the dangers that daily await each citizen of the United States is to imagine a scenario where US rules governing the purchase and possession of firearms also applied on this side of the Atlantic and that, as in America, 40 per cent of all households would have at least one weapon, one in four households would keep a pistol in a drawer, and it would be considered perfectly normal for one in three Europeans to be armed. If we focus on Spain alone, this would mean that if the largest superpower has 270 million inhabitants and about 190 million deadly weapons in private hands, here the number of weapons would be around 32 million.

  You have to imagine, too, that not a few of these fortunate owners would routinely carry their small arms with them, in their raincoat pocket, in the glove compartment of the car, or in a holster under their arm. Needless to say, any unjustified use of the weapon would be properly punished, as it is in the United States. The problem is that, however hard they came down on the madman who fired without due motive, in the heat of the moment or in a fit of passion, the shots would already have been fired, the bullets would have penetrated, causing irreversible damage, with the dead person dead and no one able to bring him or her back to life. You would also have to imagine that, as is the case in the state of Virginia and in a few other states, almost the only limitation on buying a firearm (apart from the odd little thing like having to prove that you have a clean police record) would be that at least one month must pass between purchases. So each citizen could buy a maximum of twelve new weapons a year, which means that, after a period of five years,
a keen marksman would have only sixty weapons. ‘Hey,’ the guy would say, ‘it’s the first of the month, I’m going to get me that grenade-launcher I need.’

  You have to imagine, therefore, that in this frequently ill-tempered country of ours, the driver boxed in by someone else’s double-parking and who passes the time honking his horn and annoying the whole neighbourhood could just as easily resort to gunshots, as could the fellow whose paintwork gets scraped and who leaps out of his car, fuming. Wife-batterers (as I write, twenty-two women have been killed so far this year) would have at their disposal not only their bare hands, petrol, knives and baseball bats with which to vent their fury on their victims, they would also be free to nip into a gunsmith’s whenever they fancied and purchase a Barrett M90 with a telescopic lens as a way of getting round a restraining order. Gang members, neo-Nazis, and right-wing football hooligans would all have more than a dozen weapons each – accumulated patiently, month by month – not to mention the constant temptation to make use of them. Gunsmiths and the National Gun Association would agree with the views of the man who sold weapons to the Blacksburg nutter, namely, that if guns had been allowed on campus, there would have been far fewer deaths, because someone would have shot the psychopath halfway through his slaughter. Can you imagine Spaniards practising at home, like Jack Palance in Shane, to see who’s quickest on the draw, just in case? This same sales clerk was even more clear-sighted when it came to defending the Second Amendment to the American Constitution, of only a couple of centuries ago, and which allows the population to bear arms: ‘Look, lady,’ he said to this newspaper’s correspondent, ‘if it wasn’t for my right to bear arms, I’d be speaking in a British accent and you’d be talking German.’ It requires a little thought to work out what he meant, but now I get it: the United States would still be a British colony and Spain would have been invaded by the Nazis, because, as everyone knows, it was freelance militiamen wearing Daniel Boone hats who defeated Hitler; Churchill and Stalin had nothing to do with it.