Obabakoak (36 page)

My friend and I hurried off in search of the magnolia tree and then, seated comfortably in the center of its shade, we settled down to make small talk, as required by the program. Our conversation, which began with predictable remarks about the oppressive heat and the drought, drifted off into thoughts about the unusual tree sheltering us.

“You only ever find magnolia trees in the gardens of houses built by rich Spanish emigrants returned from South America,” my friend remarked.

“They must bring them back as a souvenir. It’s the same with palm trees.”

“As a souvenir? I’m not so sure about that. I can’t imagine one of those rich men looking out at his garden and feeling nostalgic for his days in Panama or Venezuela.”

“Why else would they bring them?”

“Because they needed a symbol of the wealth they’d accumulated out there. They couldn’t come back to their village and set themselves up in a normal house. They needed to show their fellow countrymen that they had triumphed, that it had been worthwhile emigrating.”

“Well, I don’t know, you may be right…”

“How odd. I thought young people today were always so certain about everything,” my uncle said, interrupting us. He was carrying the tray with the aperitif. “Rhine wine, small glasses, Spanish olives, anchovies from Bermeo…” he recited as he placed one thing after another on the table. “Well, what do you think?”

“You may belong to the nineteenth century, Uncle, but one must concede that there are some things you do very well.”

“Is the wine good?” he asked when we’d tried it.

“Very good and very cool.”

“Well, I’m glad,” he said, sitting down opposite us, a suspicious look in his eye. “And may one know what you were talking about?”

“Don’t look at us like that, Uncle, we’ve been very good. Not a single word about literature has passed our lips. Cross my heart.”

“What were you talking about, then, if you don’t mind my asking?”

My friend said that he didn’t mind in the least and repeated our discussion about the magnolia tree.

“Not a bad subject,” my uncle said thoughtfully.

“What do you think, Uncle?”

“I don’t know much about it, to be honest, because I bought the house exactly as it is now, garden and all. But I do know that those first-generation emigrants, the ones who left their village for the first time and headed off to South America, were genuinely dazzled by the landscape and by the people they found there. And that later, when they returned home, they always tried to bring something back with them from that world.”

“So you agree with me, then, that they brought the magnolias and the palm trees with them as souvenirs, to have something to look at when they felt nostalgic for South America,” I said.

“No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t think they brought anything with them as a souvenir. There’s no sadness when you return home, but there is a desire to show people things. Let me explain what I mean. The man who built this house…”

“His name was Tellería, wasn’t it?” I said.

“That’s right, José Tellería. He sailed across the ocean and within ten years he was a rich man. I think he owned every textile shop in Montevideo. And when he came back to Obaba after those ten years, he brought with him a kind of sample book of everything he’d seen in Uruguay. He didn’t just bring the seeds of these trees here, he also brought masses of animals: parrots, lorikeets, monkeys…”

“Monkeys too? I didn’t know that,” I said.

“Didn’t you? They were really famous around these parts. Because of course at that time no one in Obaba had ever seen a monkey, not even in photographs. They hadn’t seen such brightly colored birds before either but in the end they were just birds with wings and beaks, and so rather less amazing. But the monkeys, looking for all the world like hairy children… what’s more, one of those monkeys, Alberto, a chimpanzee that Tellería used to dress up in a vest and baggy trousers, used to work in a circus in Montevideo and he could turn somersaults and knew all kinds of tricks. The people who came to see the monkey wet themselves laughing and I don’t mean to be vulgar, for that was literally what happened. They would stand around the garden fence and after watching for a few minutes, would have to rush off and relieve themselves. But in the end, Alberto and his companions became so famous that Tellería had to keep them indoors.”

“Why did he have to keep them indoors?” my friend asked, exchanging a knowing look with me. I was slower on the uptake than him, however, and had not yet made the connection between Tellería’s chimpanzee and a certain monkey from Montevideo I had first heard mentioned in a highway café, and so I failed to understand his message. I needed a few more minutes in order—as Gautier would have said—to hear the steps of the dancer drawing near.

“He had to keep them indoors because the house was becoming a place of pilgrimage,” my uncle explained. “Hundreds of people must have come to see the monkeys and wet themselves laughing. At first Tellería was happy, delighted to see how much everyone enjoyed his South American sample book. But after about three months he got fed up with all the hooha and, from then on, he only exhibited them on Obaba feast days.”

“Did you ever see them, Uncle?” asked my friend.

“More or less. I did see the monkeys, but I was very young. The fact is I haven’t told you the story as I remember it but as a friend of mine from Montevideo remembered it.”

“Oh yes, and who was he?” my friend asked insistently.

“Samuel Tellería Uribe, the rich man’s son. Samuel emigrated to South America too, not to make his fortune like his father, but in search of adventure, with the idea of exploring Amazonas. He was one of the group of people I knew in Montevideo who used to get together at the Café Real and that’s when he told me the story. I’d almost completely forgotten it until now.”

My friend turned around and looked at me again.
Did I realize what was happening?
Yes, at last I did, I was beginning to hear the dancer’s steps.
Montevideo, Monkey, Amazonas
… those three words all pointed to the same person.

“Where does Samuel live now? In Dublin?” my friend asked.

My uncle looked at him wide-eyed.

“Well, yes, he does actually. That’s how I come to be living in this house. Because Samuel sold it to me when he got married to Laura, an Irish girl. But how do you know that?”

“Aren’t you expecting a visit from him, Uncle?” we asked.

“He’s always saying he’ll come, but I haven’t had a letter from him in ages. But what’s all this about? Why have you both got that odd expression on your faces?”

We didn’t have an odd expression on our faces. We were just smiling.

“Now, dear uncle, you really are going to be astonished. Your friend Samuel Tellería Uribe…”

But we didn’t have time to finish the sentence. Before we could do so, the dancer gave his final steps and jumped onto the glass. Twice in fact.

We heard a car approaching the house and, shortly afterward, a red Lancia drove into the garden and two men got out.

“Ismael
and
Mr. Smith!” said my friend and I in amazement.

“Samuel!” exclaimed my uncle, even more amazed. And getting up from the table, he went over to embrace his old friend.

WHAT DID HE WANT
to do first? Would he like to see the house? Hadn’t he brought any luggage? Did he still remember Obaba after all these years? What should they do then, go indoors or drink a little white wine first? How come he’d turned up in that young man’s car… ? My uncle’s questions piled up around him, bogged him down. Being a man accustomed to programs and ceremonies, unexpected visits upset him.

“I can see his heart beating from here. It’s jumping up and down in his chest like a young chick in a box,” I whispered to my friend.

“And what about Mr. Smith? Have you seen the state he’s in?”

The old man, all six foot five of him, kept bending toward my uncle, turning his hat around and around in his hands and ceaselessly nodding his white head. He barely had time to reply to all my uncle’s questions. He seemed more embarrassed than upset.

“Why don’t we give them a hand? If they carry on like this, they’ll both go under,” my friend said. We left the shade of the magnolia tree and stepped out into the sun.

But Ismael beat us to it. He was the one to interrupt the animated conversation between the two men. Addressing my uncle, he began in honeyed tones to explain:

“I was driving along in my car when I saw him lying on his back in an apple orchard. In fact I got out of the car because I was worried. I thought something had happened to him. But not at all. He was just calmly, deeply asleep. And when he told me he was born here, I gave him a lift.”

“You did well,” said my uncle.

“Yes, many thanks. It was very kind of you,” said Mr. Smith. “There were no taxis about and so I lay down to sleep on the grass. But anyway…”

“You should have come with us!” we said. But it would seem he remembered nothing of the previous night, and he looked mystified.

“Don’t you recognize us?” asked my friend. “We talked to you yesterday.”

Mr. Smith looked down at his hat. And then, in contrite tones, said:

“I drank a lot yesterday. Too much. It’s just as well Laura Sligo stayed in Dublin.”

“Why didn’t she come? I would love to have met her again!”

Now it was my uncle’s turn to ask a question. He clearly wanted to change the subject.

“Pottery!”

“Pottery?”

“Laura Sligo is always learning something. At the moment it’s pottery. And she told me that she didn’t want to miss her classes and that, well, she preferred to stay at home. She’s like that, a very stubborn woman.” We all smiled, including Ismael.

“So, do you want to see the house where you were born or not?” asked my uncle.

He was calmer now, but he wanted to be alone with his visitor.

“Lead on!” said Mr. Smith, putting on his hat. And the two of them walked back down the path to the door of the house.

Watching them move off, my friend and I considered the minor mystery we had stumbled upon twelve hours before to have been solved. Now we knew who he was, that Mr. Smith we had met in the highway café. He was Samuel Tellería Uribe, the son of a rich emigrant from Obaba; a determined man who had left first for Amazonas and then for Dublin. He was a good sort, he had class. My friend and I were pleased to have met him.

But the dancer had brought us not only the white-haired old man, he had also brought us Ismael and his presence in the garden soon began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Leaning on the hood of his red Lancia he was looking at us out of the corner of his eye, smiling, mocking our curiosity.

The smile said: “You want to know what sort of a person I am, don’t you?”

“Yes, we do,” our look in turn replied. “But that’s not all we want to know. We’d like to know what lies behind this mania of yours for lizards. And don’t flatter yourself, don’t imagine you impress us. Maybe last night on the road you frightened us a little, because we were tired and didn’t expect to see you there with a lizard in your hands. But not now. It’s daylight now and the song of the crickets has a very calming effect. You can begin when you like, we’re ready to hear your story.”

The three of us sat down in the shade of the magnolia tree and poured some wine into the small glasses. Ismael—in even more honeyed tones than usual—asked if we wanted a cigarette.

“It was you I saw yesterday, wasn’t it? In a car, at about three in the morning, coming around the bend near the quarry, I mean. It was, wasn’t it?” he asked, once we’d lit our cigarettes. He was no slouch when it came to interpreting glances.

“Yes, it was,” we confessed. “And if you don’t mind, we’d like to know a bit about what we thought we saw there.”

“What do you mean?”

He leaned back and waited. His mouth twisted a little as he inhaled the smoke from his cigarette.

I didn’t beat around the bush, I fired a question straight at him: “What were you doing there, holding a lizard?”

“Ah, so that’s it. So you saw me.” He laughed. The situation seemed to amuse him. “Naturally. Of course you did,” he went on. “That’s why you drove past me at top speed, because you wanted to get away from there as fast as possible. Yes, I know what you thought…”

He fell silent for a moment. Again he inhaled smoke from his cigarette and again his lips twisted.

“You think I’m sick, that I went mad after that business with Albino María. You think my obsession with lizards dates from then, and that’s why I’m always messing around with the nasty creatures—”

“What we want to know is what you use them for,” I broke in.

“What for? Haven’t you guessed? Why, to do to others what I did to Albino María. Is that clear enough?”

We let him laugh. After a pause, he leaned a little toward us and went on:

“If you don’t mind my saying, you’re the ones who are mad, not me. Because you’d have to be completely mad to swallow that story about lizards. Who else would believe they can crawl into your ear and then eat your brains? Only children and madmen…”

He paused for a moment to catch his breath and looked at us smugly. He thought he had won.

“Doctors believe it too, not just children and madmen,” my friend put in. “The species
Lacerta viridis
can damage the brain and cause idiocy. Or at any rate, that’s what it says in the books. And I’ll tell you another thing. What we saw last night wasn’t at all normal. There’s nothing normal about coming across a person holding a lizard at three in the morning on a lonely road.”

Ismael changed his expression and tried a new approach. But it wasn’t the cautious one you’d expect in someone who had just been put in his place by a specialist on the subject, by a doctor. On the contrary, Ismael began to speak like someone who, having listened to a patent ignoramus, feels like showing off.

“I could speak at length about
Lacerta viridis,
” he began, “but the subject is too complex to deal with in a few minutes. All I will say is that the
Lacerta viridis
indigenous to our country bears no resemblance whatsoever to that of South America. The only thing they have in common is their name. But, anyway, there’s no point in pursuing that topic now. I would prefer to clear up the other matter. You say it’s not normal to come across someone holding a lizard, and you’re right. Unfortunately it isn’t normal. The normal thing is simply to run over any lizard we find lying defenseless on the road; just drive over it with your car and squash it. That’s why we are as we are.”