26
I left the house after dawn. Dark clouds crept over the rooftops, stealing the colour from the streets. As I crossed Ciudadela Park I saw the first drops hitting the trees and exploding on the path like bullets, raising eddies of dust. On the other side of the park a forest of factories and gas towers multiplied towards the horizon, the soot from the chimneys diluted in the black rain that plummeted from the sky like tears of tar. I walked along the uninviting avenue of cypress trees leading to the gates of the cemetery, the same route I had taken so many times with my father. The boss was already there. I saw him from afar, waiting patiently under the rain, at the foot of one of the large stone angels that guarded the main entrance to the graveyard. He was dressed in black and the only thing that set him apart from the hundreds of statues on the other side of the cemetery railings was his eyes. He didn’t move an eyelash until I was a few metres away. Not quite sure what to do, I raised my hand to greet him. It was cold and the wind smelled of lime and sulphur.
‘Visitors naively think that it’s always sunny and hot in this town,’ said the boss. ‘But I say that sooner or later Barcelona’s ancient, murky soul is always reflected in the sky.’
‘You should publish tourist guides instead of religious texts,’ I suggested.
‘It comes to the same thing, more or less. How have these peaceful, calm days been? Have you made progress with the work? Do you have good news for me?’
I opened my jacket and handed him a sheaf of pages. We entered the cemetery in search of a place to shelter from the rain. The boss chose an old mausoleum with a dome held up by marble columns and surrounded by angels with sharp faces and fingers that were too long. We sat on a cold stone bench. The boss gave me one of his canine smiles, his shining pupils contracting to a black point in which I could see the reflection of my own uneasy expression.
‘Relax, Martín. You make too much of the props.’
Calmly, the boss began to read the pages I had brought.
‘I think I’ll go for a walk while you read,’ I said.
Corelli didn’t bother to look up.
‘Don’t escape from me,’ he murmured.
I got away as fast as I could without making it obvious that I was doing just that, and wandered among the paths with their twists and turns. I skirted obelisks and tombs as I entered the heart of the necropolis. The tombstone was still there, marked by a vase containing only the skeleton of shrivelled flowers. Vidal had paid for the funeral and had even commissioned a pietà from a sculptor of some repute in the undertakers’ guild. She guarded the tomb, eyes looking heavenward, her hands on her chest in supplication. I knelt down by the tombstone and cleaned away the moss that had covered the letters chiselled on it.
JOSé ANTONIO MARTíN CLARéS
1875-1908
Hero of the Philippines War
His country and his friends will never forget him
‘Good morning, father,’ I said.
I watched the black rain as it slid down the face of the pietà, listened to the sound of the drops hitting the tombstones, and offered a smile to the health of those friends he’d never had and that country that had consigned him to a living death in order to enrich a handful of caciques who never knew he existed. I sat on the gravestone and put my hand on the marble.
‘Who would have guessed, eh?’
My father, who had lived on the verge of destitution, rested eternally in a bourgeois tomb. As a child I had never understood why the newspaper had decided to give him a funeral with a smart priest and hired mourners, with flowers and a resting place fit for a sugar merchant. Nobody told me it was Vidal himself who paid for the lavish funeral of the man who had died in his place, although I had always suspected as much and had attributed the gesture to that infinite kindness and generosity with which the heavens had blessed my mentor and idol.
‘I must beg your forgiveness, father. For years I hated you for leaving me here, alone. I told myself you’d got the death you deserved. That’s why I never came to see you. Forgive me.’
My father had never liked tears. He thought a man never cried for others, only for himself. And if he did, he was a coward and deserved no pity. I didn’t want to cry for him and betray him yet again.
‘I would have liked you to have seen my name in a book, even if you couldn’t read it. I would have liked you to have been here with me, to see that your son is managing to get on in life and has been able to do things that you were never allowed to do. I would have liked to have known you, father, and for you to have known me. I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I’m the stranger.’
I didn’t hear the boss approaching, but when I raised my head I saw him watching me from just a few metres away. I stood up and went over to him, like a well-trained dog. I wondered whether he knew my father was buried there and whether he had asked me to meet him in the graveyard for that very reason. My expression must have betrayed me, because the boss shook his head and put a hand on my shoulder.
‘I didn’t know, Martín. I’m sorry.’
I was not going to open that door of friendship to him. I turned away to rid myself of his gesture of sympathy and pressed my eyes shut to contain the tears of anger. I started to walk towards the exit, without him. The boss waited a few seconds and then decided to follow me. He walked beside me in silence until we reached the main gates. There I stopped and glared at him impatiently.
‘Well? Any comments?’
The boss ignored my hostile tone and smiled indulgently.
‘The work is excellent.’
‘But—’
‘If I had any observation to make it would be that you’ve hit the nail on the head by constructing the whole story from the point of view of a witness to the events, someone who feels like a victim and speaks on behalf of a people awaiting the warrior saviour. I want you to continue along those lines.’
‘You don’t think it sounds forced, contrived . . . ?’
‘On the contrary. Nothing makes us believe more than fear, the certainty of being threatened. When we feel like victims, all our actions and beliefs are legitimised, however questionable they may be. Our opponents, or simply our neighbours, stop sharing common ground with us and become our enemies. We stop being aggressors and become defenders. The envy, greed or resentment that motivates us becomes sanctified, because we tell ourselves we’re acting in self-defence. Evil, menace, those are always the preserve of the other. The first step towards believing passionately is fear. Fear of losing our identity, our life, our status or our beliefs. Fear is the gunpowder and hatred is the fuse. Dogma, the final ingredient, is only a lighted match. That is where I think your work has a hole or two.’
‘Please clarify one thing: are you looking for a faith or a dogma?’
‘It’s not enough that people should believe. They must believe what we want them to believe. And they must not question it or listen to the voice of whoever questions it. Dogma must form part of identity itself. Whoever questions it is our enemy. He is evil. And it is our right and our duty to confront and destroy him. It is the only road to salvation. Believe in order to survive.’
I sighed and looked away, nodding reluctantly.
‘You don’t looked convinced, Martín. Tell me what you’re thinking. Do you think I’m mistaken?’
‘I don’t know. I think you are simplifying things in a dangerous way. Your whole speech sounds like a stratagem for generating and channelling hatred.’
‘The adjective you were going to use was not “dangerous” but “repugnant”, but I won’t hold that against you.’
‘Why should we reduce faith to an act of rejection and blind obedience? Is it not possible to believe in values of acceptance, of harmony?’
The boss smiled. He was enjoying himself.
‘It is possible to believe in anything, Martín, be it the free market or even the tooth fairy. We can even believe that we don’t believe in anything, as you do, which is the greatest credulity of them all. Am I right?’
‘The customer is always right. What is the other hole you see in the story?’
‘I miss having a villain. Whether we realise it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favouring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Nothing arouses a passion for dogma more than a good antagonist. And the more unlikely, the better.’
‘I thought that role would work better in the abstract. The antagonist would be the non-believer, the alien, the one outside the group.’
‘Yes, but I’d you like you to be more specific. It’s difficult to hate an idea. That requires a certain intellectual discipline and a slightly obsessive, sick mind. There aren’t too many of those. It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognisable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group . . . anything.’
The boss’s flawless cynicism could even get the better of me. I gave a despondent sigh.
‘Don’t pretend to be a model citizen now, Martín. It’s all the same to you and we need a villain in this vaudeville. You should know that better than anyone. There is no drama without a conflict.’
‘What sort of villain would you like? A tyrant invader? A false prophet? The bogeyman?’
‘I’ll leave the outfit to you. Any of the usual suspects suits me. One of the functions of our villain must be to allow us to adopt the role of the victim and claim our moral superiority. We project onto him all those things we are incapable of recognising in ourselves, things we demonise according to our particular interests. It’s the basic arithmetic of the Pharisees. I keep telling you: you need to read the Bible. All the answers you’re looking for are in there.’
‘I’m on the case.’
‘All you have to do is convince the sanctimonious that they are free of all sin and they’ll start throwing stones, or bombs, with gusto. In fact, it doesn’t take much, because they can be convinced with the bare minimum of encouragement and excuses. I don’t know whether I’m making myself clear.’
‘You are making yourself abundantly clear. Your arguments have the subtlety of a blast furnace.’
‘I’m not sure I like that condescending tone, Martín. Does this mean you think this project isn’t on a par with your moral or intellectual purity?’
‘Not at all,’ I mumbled faint-heartedly.
‘What is it, then, something tickling your conscience, dear friend?’
‘The usual thing. I’m not sure I’m the nihilist you need.’
‘Nobody is. Nihilism is an attitude, not a doctrine. Place the flame from a candle under the testicles of a nihilist and notice how quickly he sees the light of existence. Something else is bothering you.’
I raised my head and summoned up the most defiant tone I was capable of, looking the boss in the eye.
‘Perhaps what’s bothering me is that I understand everything you say, but I don’t feel it.’
‘Do I pay you to have feelings?’
‘Sometimes feeling and thinking are one and the same. The idea is yours, not mine.’
The boss smiled, and allowed a dramatic pause, like a schoolteacher preparing the lethal sword thrust with which to silence an unruly pupil.
‘And what do you feel, Martín?’
The irony and disdain in his voice encouraged me and I gave vent to the humiliation accumulated during all those months in his shadow. Anger and shame at feeling terrified by his presence and allowing his poisonous speeches. Anger and shame because he had proved to me that, even if I would rather believe the only thing I had in me was despair, my soul was as petty and miserable as his sewer humanism claimed. Anger and shame at feeling, knowing, that he was always right, especially when it hurt to accept that.
‘I’ve asked you a question, Martín. What is it you feel?’
‘I feel that the best course would be to leave things as they are and give you back your money. I feel that, whatever it is you are proposing with this absurd venture, I’d rather not take part in it. And, above all, I feel regret for ever having met you.’
The boss lowered his eyelids and sank into a long silence. He turned and walked a few steps towards the cemetery gates. I watched his dark silhouette outlined against the marble garden, a motionless shape under the rain. I felt afraid, a murky fear that was beginning to grow inside me, inspiring a childish wish to beg forgiveness and accept any punishment in exchange for not having to bear that silence. And I felt disgust. At his presence and, in particular, at myself.
The boss turned round and came over to me again. He stopped just centimetres from me and put his face close to mine. I felt his cold breath on my skin and drowned in his black, bottomless eyes. This time his voice and his tone were like ice, devoid of that studied humanity that peppered his conversation and his gestures.
‘I will only tell you once. You fulfil your obligations and I’ll fulfil mine. It’s the only thing you can and must feel.’
I was not aware that I was nodding repeatedly until the boss pulled the sheaf of papers from his pocket and handed it to me. He let the pages fall before I was able to catch them and a gust of wind swept them away, scattering them near the cemetery gates. I rushed to recover them from the rain, but some of the pages had fallen into puddles and were bleeding in the water, the words coming off the paper in filaments. I gathered them together in a fistful of wet paper. When I looked up again, the boss had gone.