Trafalgar (16 page)

“Ribka, we are going to make love again, because I like to make love in the morning and I like to make love and I like it with you, and then we are going to bathe together and drink coffee together and we are going to get ourselves gussied up and we are going to go look for the Wayward Youth, but first we are going to go by the clunker.”

I liked the way she laughed. Is there a bit more coffee? Thank you. This, too, may be an imposition but the occasion requires it, telling these things. When we went out to the street, cousin González was in the doorway of his house and I went up to him, I gave him my hand and I said hello, how are you, nice morning, don’t you think? And he looked at me as if I had gone crazy and Ribka and I walked off together. I don’t only carry merchandise on my trips. I take some of everything—if I tell you, I’ll never finish. I opened the clunker and we went in and started to rummage around. I gave her two clocks, a wristwatch for her to wear and a clock for her home, and I wrapped up a big clock for the municipality because the government, even if it’s municipal, has to provide an example. She wasn’t afraid and she was going to use them, but I told her to put the big one away, she wouldn’t have to keep it hidden very long. I gave her a short, yellow silk dress, very low cut and sleeveless, which I had asked a friend from Sinderastie to buy for me so as to give it to the daughter of a businessman on Dosirdoo IX to whom I owe attentions. I gave her an electric mixer, promising her she would be able to use it. No, I wasn’t sure yet, but it was reasonable to think so and, above all, I wanted to believe it. And I gave her a diamond from Quitiloe. Maybe she has sold it by now as I advised her and has gone on a luxury vacation cruise to Edessbuss and Naijale II and Ossawo. Or maybe she has kept it because I gave it to her. I like both possibilities. Then, loaded down with the packages, we went, in the most roundabout way, to a house on the outskirts of the city, where the Wayward Youth were meeting that day. She was in contact with them. She wasn’t part of the organization, because she was too independent and didn’t accept directives from the dead or from the living, but she knew all the places they met, which, as a precaution, changed every day. From time to time the dead found them, but in general they managed quite well. Good people, a few of them desperate but all of them hardheaded and fighters. Ribka told them about me and it turned out that very morning they had been looking for me in the city. I told them I needed to talk to them, the more of them the better, and that for once not to worry about the dead. They arranged to call all those they could and by midday there was a significant group, it almost looked like a demonstration. I climbed up on a table and said—quickly, because the lookouts told us the dead were already approaching—what had occurred to me. They got the idea right away and soon there was an infernal din. I tried to calm them but it was very difficult and then I thought, what do I care, it’s the first time they’ve been happy. And I hoped it wouldn’t be the last. The dead arrived and started to snoop around and make threats, but the atmosphere had changed. No one paid them much attention except for a few kids who yelled things at them, not exactly compliments. What hope can do, my God. They had become, I won’t say brave because that they had always been, but spirited and even happy. Ribka went home, I kissed her and told her good-bye, and I went to the clunker with a delegation of the Wayward Youth. I took off toward Edessbuss. And there we arrived, in full Carnival celebration. Those who were finishing their work shift in the port, put on their masks and their Zorro or Invincible Buccaneer costumes, grabbed the streamers and the perfume-sprayers and went to dance. It was a hassle trying to locate The Crazy Minstrel of the Still Waters but after traipsing through a dozen parties, we bet on his house and we waited for him there. He arrived with an odalisque and a Hungarian ballerina, very pretty, very heavily made-up, but no comparison to Ribka. Yes, he was surprised to see me, but he received me as friends are received on Edessbuss. Right there I told him I was going to make him pay for the nasty joke about selling medicines on González. To start, he had to put me in contact with the people in charge of the Roof. The poor thing, completely canned, dressed as a robot, didn’t understand much, but I introduced him to the Wayward Youth and told him they needed a few reports. Urgently, I said. We went in. He dressed, he changed, the two girls flopped down to sleep on a sofa and we left. For the Superior Institute of Technology and Environmental Protection. There, in front of a number of very agreeable individuals who were not in costume but who, I’d bet my life on it, had been until midnight at least, we laid out the case of González, which all of them knew, some of them well, others better or worse. And I proposed the solution, trembling—what if they told me it couldn’t be done? But they said yes. They not only said yes but they got excited about it and began to ring bells calling engineers, project designers, calculators, ecologists, and I don’t know who all else and an hour later they were drawing and making calculations like crazy. I won’t take up more of your time: the next day we returned to González, and behind my clunker—the poor thing looked like a rickety guide fish leading three giant sharks—came three heavy cruisers full of technicians, workmen, and building material. On González I went to Ribka’s house and I washed my hands of the affair. I made love with her that morning, that afternoon, and that night, and all the following nights, but after the first night, I had to convince her to take off the wristwatch because my back was covered in scratches. No, the husband didn’t appear. Not because he was afraid of me: the dead of González have no fear or anything; he must have been busy with the other dead trying to prevent the technicians from Edessbuss from doing their work. My friend, you can imagine that if the Edessbussianos have placed a cover over their own world, it’s easy enough for them to extend another around their camps and their men if they don’t want anyone to bother them. And I had the Aqüivanida brake, don’t forget. With the brake I neutralized half a dozen attempts, that would have come to nothing anyway, by the González dead against the González living and from then on the worthy forebears stayed in their place and resigned themselves to being like the dead on other worlds. The brake also worked on the dead for just that reason, the lack of metabolism. A week. Yes, it took them no more than a week to wrap González in an anti-comet tail, not anti-energy, Roof. After the week they left, leaving everything ready, and González sang and danced for the first time in a million years. I left, too. It would be two years before the comet passed again. If the tail didn’t touch González, and it wasn’t going to touch because the Edessbussianos swore that any comet’s tail was a joke next to the energy of Edess-Pálida, the dead were going to die for real and along with those who would die later, they would feed the worms and geraniums like any self-respecting dead person, in nice and orderly cemeteries full of cypress trees and ostentatious plaques and healthy sobbing. Before I lifted off, I saw the first sparkle of the Roof that was already functioning. I imagine it’s still working. I imagine the dead will have gradually disappeared. I imagine Ribka has an electric sewing machine and a twelve-bulb chandelier in the dining room, that she uses the mixer and the watch, the clocks. I imagine the great-great-grandmother is no longer there to guard the virginity of the lace girl. I imagine there are airplanes and aspirin. I imagine that Ribka remembers me. Yes, thank you, I never say no to such good coffee.

“I already know,” I said. “Trafalgar.”

“Yes, the son of Juan José Medrano and poor Merceditas. I don’t understand how she allowed her only son to be given that outlandish name. Well, I always suspected Medrano was a Mason.”

“But Josefina, what does Freemasonry have to do with the Battle of Trafalgar?”

“Ah, I don’t know, sweetie, but you can’t deny that the Masons purposely gave their children names that didn’t appear in the calendar of saints.”

“Doctor Medrano was probably an admirer of Nelson,” I said, pinning all my hopes on Trafalgar’s old man’s interest in the great events of history.

“What I can assure you,” said my Aunt Josefina, “is that Merceditas Herrera was a saint, and so refined and discreet.”

“And Doctor Medrano, what was he like?”

“A great doctor,” she opened another scone and spread orange marmalade on it. “Good-looking and congenial as well. And very cultured.”

There was a quarter-second silence before the last statement: the word
cultured
is slippery with my Aunt Josefina and one has to step carefully.

“Trafalgar is also good-looking and congenial,” I said, “but I don’t know if he’s cultured. He knows a ton of strange things.”

“It’s true, he’s congenial, very congenial and friendly. And very considerate with an old lady like me. Now, I think good-looking is an exaggeration. His nose is too long, just like poor Merceditas’. And don’t tell me that mustache isn’t a little ridiculous. A man looks much tidier if clean-shaven, thank goodness your sons have gotten over the beard and mustache phase. But I have to admit that the boy is elegant: he had on a dark gray suit, very well cut, and a white shirt and a serious tie, not like some of your extravagant friends who look like. I don’t even know what they look like.”

“Would you like a little more tea?”

“No, no, please, you’ve already made me drink too much, but it was delicious and I have overdone it. That was Thursday or Friday, I’m not sure. I went into the Burgundy because I was fainting with hunger: I was coming from a meeting of the board of directors of the Society of Friends of the Museum, so it was Thursday, of course, because Friday was the engagement party of María Luisa’s daughter, and you know Thursday is Amelia’s afternoon off, and frankly I had no desire to go home and start making tea. There weren’t many people and I sat down far away from the door, where there wouldn’t be a draft, and when they were serving my tea the Medrano boy came in. He came over to say hello, so kind. At first I couldn’t place him and I was about to ask him who he was when I realized he was Merceditas Herrera’s son. It was so unsettling, seeing him standing there beside the table, but although I am old enough to do certain things, you understand that a lady never invites a man, even though he’s
so
much younger than she is, to sit at her table.”

An “Oh, no?” escaped me.

My Aunt Josefina sighed, I would almost say she blew out air, and great-grandmother’s eyes stopped me cold.

“I do know customs have evolved,” she said, “and in a few cases for the better, and in many others unfortunately for the worse, but there are things that do not change and you should know that.”

I smiled because I love her a lot and because I hope I can get to eighty-four years old with the same confidence she has and learn to control my eyes the way she does although mine aren’t even a tenth as pretty.

“And you let poor Trafalgar go?”

“No. He was very correct and he asked my permission to keep me company if I wasn’t waiting for anyone. I told him to sit down and he ordered coffee. It’s appalling how that boy drinks coffee. I don’t know how he doesn’t ruin his stomach. I haven’t tasted coffee in years.”

She doesn’t smoke either, of course. And she drinks a quarter glass of rosé with every dinner and another quarter glass, only of extra-dry champagne, at Christmas and New Year’s.

“He didn’t tell you if he was going to come by here?”

“No, he didn’t say, but it seems unlikely. He was going, I think the next day, I’m not really sure where, it must be Japan, I imagine, because he said he was going to buy silks. A shame he devotes himself to commerce and didn’t follow his father’s path: it was a disappointment to poor Merceditas. But he’s doing very well, isn’t he?”

“He’s doing fabulously. He has truckloads of dough.”

“I sincerely hope you don’t use that language outside your home. It is unbecoming. Of course, it would be best if you never used it, but that’s evidently hopeless. You’re as stubborn as your father.”

“Yes, my old man, I mean my father, was stubborn, but he was a gentleman.”

“True. I don’t know how he spoke when he was among other men, that doesn’t matter, but he never said anything inappropriate in public.”

“If you heard Trafalgar talk, you’d have an attack.”

“I don’t see why. With me, he was most agreeable. Neither affected nor hoity-toity—no need for that—but very careful.”

“He’s a hypocritical cretin.” That I didn’t say, I just thought it.

“And he has,” said my Aunt Josefina, “a special charm for telling the most outlandish things. What an imagination.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Obviously, maybe it’s not all imagination. It gives you the impression that he is telling the truth, but so embellished that at first glance you could think it was a big lie. I’ll tell you I spent a very entertaining interval. How is it possible that when I arrived home Amelia was already back and was worried at my delay? The poor thing had called Cuca’s house, and Mimi’s and Virginia’s to see if I was there. I had to start in on the phone calls to calm them all down.”