I rejected Francisco’s opinions (God gives no one the right to make even the most insignificant of His creatures suffer). As if reason could do anything against faith. No one had yet told me about his father’s nocturnal expeditions or his strange idea of what constituted big game; I didn’t even know at the time how my grandfather had died, nor that my father had been in prison for three years and that I’d been born during his absence. Uncle Ramón filled me in on just how much the war had influenced my life.
“Your father has always insisted that you should know nothing until you were older. ‘They,’ your father would say, meaning you and your siblings, ‘have nothing to do with it. They’ll find out soon enough. I’ll tell them how it was.’”
Later, my father did try to talk to me, but, by then, I wasn’t very interested in his stories, the delicate thread connecting us had broken. Besides, none of that information entered my discussions with Francisco. We debated more on the level of metaphysics than of history—the history that so tormented my father—and which, to us, seemed too recent, too lacking in poetry: smelly, badly ventilated rooms; the chamberpot in which my grandfather had done his business after being given an enema; sprigs of lavender and sugar warming on the stove to disguise the stench in the patient’s room; the smell of rotting entrails in the trashcan, that was what recent history meant to us. It was what we had seen and smelled at home, what we used to be and from which we wanted to escape. Far better to be in places where words do what you want them to and where blood doesn’t smell because it’s set down in ink on the page; history traps you, forces you to follow a prearranged script, one that didn’t interest me in the least:
“But how can you talk like that after reading the Bible? God doesn’t just grant the right to kill, he spends his time sowing discord among humans so that they end up killing each other. Right at the very beginning of beginnings, Genesis, there’s Cain. There are other examples too: Moses, the first supporter of liberation through violence, doesn’t hesitate to kill the man oppressing his people; the adulterer David, cruel Salomé, or that decapitator so beloved of feminists, Judith, who beheads the gallant Holofernes: his only crime was admiring her beauty, presenting her with his finest treasures, serving her the most succulent of dishes and, we assume, after all those hours spent alone in that luxurious tent, giving her a good seeing-to as well—and is that how you repay me after I placed in you the seed of the most glorious of Assyrian generals, something most women would consider the very best of gifts, namely, the possibility of engendering an heir to all my glory, and you repay me by cutting off my head? That woman wasn’t a hero, she was an ungrateful wretch and very rude too: that’s hardly the way to behave at supper, or to treat a host who receives you with open arms (appropriately enough). When someone invites you to supper, it’s not even acceptable to say you didn’t enjoy the food. Killing the owner of the household certainly doesn’t appear in any of the etiquette books. The Bible is the mother of bad manners.”
“But that’s the Old Testament God . . . no, I know you, you’re just fucking with me, carrying on. Go to hell!” says Francisco, half-smiling and dismissing me with a wave of the hand.
“The heroic story of Judith, the criminal story of Judith, the sad story of Judith, as you prefer. The adjective you choose depends on your ideology.”
The story of Judith and Holofernes is, let’s say, a story shorn of adjectives. What do you think, Liliana? You Spaniards don’t even know what a really good potato or
papa
or
patata
is. I mean, if you go to the market here, in Olba, or in Misent, which is quite a lot bigger, or go to Eroski or to Mercadona, how many types of potato do you have to choose from? Red and white, new and old, and that’s it, but in Colombia you’ll find a whole selection of different varieties on any small street stall, and each one is perfect for a particular recipe, and there are even some recipes that call for three or four different varieties, because some are floury and good for thickening stews, while others stay firm and only give when you bite into them or prick them with a fork. I’m not saying your country isn’t a more peaceable place, because it is, although it’s rapidly getting less so, but it’s boring too, things don’t have much color, much variety, and the people, well, they’re all right, I suppose, but not all of them, they call us Colombians blacks even though we’re not, I mean there
are
a few blacks in Colombia, just as there are here in Spain, the guys who sell stuff on the streets, for example, but they’re from outside Colombia, and there are others who were taken there as slaves. And they did come from Africa, like the blacks here. But we Colombians are Latin Americans and yet here they call us blacks or
conguitos
, apparently because of some ad for sweets that was on the TV years ago, which showed little fat black coffee beans with legs, dancing about, they may even have shown them wearing Colombian hats. No, they didn’t, Liliana, they called them
conguitos
because they came from Africa, from the Congo, you see, chocolate sweets or coffee beans from Africa not Colombia. Be that as it may, but now they call us Colombians
conguitos
, I know this because my husband told me so, he says that when he worked on a building site, that’s what they used to call the Colombian workers,
conguitos,
panchitos
, blacks, darkies. That’s just because people are ignorant, Liliana, they have no idea. Sometimes my husband would just laugh and, at others, he’d get really angry and say that the next person who called him that would get his head smashed by a bottle. Of course, he only gets angry when he’s had a few drinks, when he’s drunk too much; otherwise, he’s really quiet, but when he drinks, he shouts and shouts until he’s so tired he goes to bed without any supper and is soon fast asleep and snoring like a pig—if you’ll pardon the expression. I wish he was more like you, quiet and polite, I’m sure you’d never shout like that or threaten anyone. The trouble is that when you get married, you’re young and full of hope, you’re not thinking clearly, because when you’re going out with someone, they only show you their best side, they might even be pretending to be good. You only really get to know the other person once you’re married. Our mothers know that and tell us it’s always been the same, exactly the same, but we young people take no notice, love blinds us and we don’t want to listen to the voice of experience because we’re stupid enough to believe we’re the very first people in the world ever to fall in love, as if we’d invented it. You’re different, though, I think that if you had got married, your wife certainly wouldn’t have been disappointed, it’s a real shame you didn’t marry, because marriage would simply have confirmed to her that she was living with a good man, why, you’re almost like a father to me, more than a father really, because my father didn’t care about us, about me and my brothers and sisters; on the contrary, he sent us out to work and got all the money he could out of us so that he could go off with his friends and spend it all on drinks in the local bar. Sometimes he wouldn’t come home for three or four days, and you can imagine the state he was in when he did come home, he’d be completely out of it, his clothes in shreds, stinking of other women, high on cocaine, and with all the money gone. You’re exactly the kind of father anyone could possibly want, and the other gentleman, your father, even though he doesn’t talk now, he’s so tall and slim, he must have been very handsome as a young man, and I’m not saying that because you’re shorter and stockier, I mean everyone’s different, but he’s so distinguished-looking—there he is not saying a word, we don’t even know what he might be thinking, my sense, though, is that he must have been very kind and polite too, you can tell from his appearance, his presence, and even though the poor thing can’t speak, you can see his good thoughts in his eyes, in the way he looks at us. You can see his kindness. You must have been a lovely family. It’s just such a shame your Mama isn’t still with us, but, of course, if she were alive, she’d be as old as your father, so better to let her rest in peace, don’t you think? I’m sure she deserves it. She’s waiting up there in heaven for you all to join her.
What do these people want, what do they expect a man to do when the fridge is empty? In day-to-day living, you’re constrained by your kids, by your wife; if it wasn’t for them, you’d do all kinds of crazy things, but when you’re in really deep trouble, when you reach that final tipping point, the very opposite happens: it’s precisely your wife and kids who make you do the crazy thing that, before, they seemed to be stopping you from doing. The same people who saved you become your downfall. You ruin your life because of them. You’re capable of taking a rifle and stealing the day’s cash from the local butcher just to be able to put some chicken breasts in the fridge, have a few chicken bones to make stock and a bit of blood pudding for the stew; sausages, hamburgers, cheese triangles, yogurt. To get a packet of Ariel for the washing machine, diapers for the baby. I don’t know exactly what I would be capable of doing to you people—to you, the ones who’ve got everything—but I do have a rifle at home. I have the right licenses, so the crime of illegal possession of weapons wouldn’t appear on the sentence; homicide, murder, premeditation, execution, they might appear, but not illegal possession, because I do have a gun license. Legal possession. It was my cousin who persuaded me to take out a license, he wanted me to go hunting with him at some game reserve he’s a member of in La Mancha, near Badajoz, near Luciana and Arroba de los Montes (no, you won’t know where they are, they’re tiny villages, barely visible on the map), and at the time I could afford it, I could afford to go on little trips like that, just head off with my rifle to shoot a few partridges, the odd hare, a wild boar even. Sometimes we went hunting for boar and deer on an estate you could have spent three or four days roaming and still not have seen it all. I used to like coming back in his van, smelling of mud, grass and damp hair, of animal blood and our own sweat, smelling of wild boar during the whole journey on cold, clear winter days or on misty, drizzly days, the smell of bitter coffee, brandy, or coffee with a dash of rum (we always used to make three or four stops en route); sometimes, too, we’d come back stinking of whores, because we’d call in at a cathouse along the way, near Albacete, then, when you got home, you’d take off your shoes, take what you’d caught out of your game bag, and have a good long shower so that your wife wouldn’t smell the whore’s lipstick and make-up on your neck or between your legs, or that really penetrating cologne they always wear, never taking account of the fact that most of us have wives, and that a wife can smell a whore at fifty paces. What more could you ask for? Well, Esteban has taken me with him to the marsh now and then: come on, Julio, we’ll spend the morning there, have lunch, and with a bit of luck, we’ll bring back an eel or a duck, but it’s not the same, the marsh is so confined, and muddy and smelly, whereas out in the open, with fields disappearing off into the distance, one hill after another, you can breathe freely. We could manage then. I could cope. We never imagined the shit we’d be in now, when you don’t know who to borrow money from next, and it’s so embarrassing walking around and seeing the look of alarm on the face of any acquaintance when he sees you coming and crosses the road pretending he hasn’t seen you, because he’s sure you’re going to touch him for a loan the way you did a couple of weeks before. It really gets to you, spending all day plotting, going over and over things in your head, wondering how you’re going to get by on your 400 euros of family assistance and the 600 euros your wife earns, and doing endless calculations that never work out, always more debits than credits, however you juggle the figures, how are you going to pay for the books and the other things for the kids’ school, which went up to 700 euros this year, then there’s the new uniform, because last year’s is too small and, besides, it’s worn out, shoes, car insurance, mortgage, municipal taxes, it all feeds into the same nightmare, a nightmare you never suspected when things were going well, but which, as soon as everything goes pear-shaped, becomes your sole preoccupation: how to fill the fridge. It’s only when you’ve lost everything that you realize you have to eat every day, isn’t that ridiculous? Of course you have to eat. Everyone knows that. When conditions are normal, you don’t even notice, but when you haven’t so much as a euro in your pocket, it becomes your one great obsession: you have to eat
every single day
. You have to put food on the table, and the children have to take their little carton of juice to school as well as a sandwich filled with mortadella or with tuna, out of that small round metal tin containing just a few scraps, barely enough; and this isn’t just today, it’s every day, because every day they have to have their afternoon snack and every day they have to eat supper. And the little one has to have her diaper changed every morning. I go to bed and dream that I’m drowning, then sit bolt upright, scrabbling for air and screaming. My wife gets frightened. Whatever’s wrong? I thought I heard a burglar, I say, but that’s not it, I take the anxiety to bed with me, because what used not to be a problem at all has turned into four daily problems that I have to find some way of solving one after the other: breakfast, lunch, snacks and supper. Could you spare a bit of money (addressed to one of the acquaintances who didn’t have time to cross the road when he saw me). I can’t afford to buy a loaf of bread or the children’s juice. They can’t go to school with nothing. It breaks my heart when I hear them say to my wife: Mama, there’s no more yogurt, no more cookies, no more cakes. I tiptoe out of the house, close the door behind me as quietly as I can, get into the car (don’t waste gas now, the tank’s almost empty, and how am I going to fill it up), drive to the first bit of wasteland I come to and weep. I sit there on my own, weeping. About the children asking for juice and my wife shouting at me and telling me to do something, because she can’t stand it any more; I can’t perform miracles, that cruel cow says to me—encouragingly—as if this was all my fault. Get your ass off the sofa. The other little girl: Mama, look, my brother’s eaten all the bread and you can’t make me my snack. And they take to school a little bottle of tap water with strict instructions not to remove the label, so that it looks as if they’re drinking mineral water, because it’s healthier, when the other kids have all got their pineapple juice or orange juice or multi-fruit juice with added vitamins and calcium and who knows what else, every enriched juice box costs one euro at the supermarket. How do I pay for that, if there isn’t even enough money to buy potatoes? It’s three months since Esteban stopped paying us, and when I pick up my unemployment benefit, I can accept that my family will only be able to buy the cheaper juice, but there are many days when there isn’t even enough money for that: tap water with a posh label on the bottle or a few drops of squeezed orange juice if it’s in a bottle bearing the label Zumosol.