Kamchatka Page 22

  In time I came to understand that stories do not end. This I owe in part to History (which I owe to papá) and in part to Biology (which I owe to mamá) and in part to Poetry (for this last bit, I alone am to blame).

  I believe that stories do not end, because even when the protagonists are dead, their actions still have an impact on the living. This is why I believe that History is like an ocean into which rivers of individual histories flow. Everything that has gone before underpins the present; we continue those stories just as those who come after us continue ours. We are bound together in a web that spans all of space – all living creatures are connected in some intimate way: a web large enough to include all those alive today, but also all those of yesterday and tomorrow.

  I believe that stories have no end, because even when one life ends, its energy gives life to others. The dead (remember the larvae) simply nourish the Earth so it can be fruitful and feed those above who, in their turn, will give life by dying. For as long as there is life in the universe, the story of each single life never ends; it is simply transformed. In dying, the life-story undergoes a shift. We are no longer a thriller, a comedy, an epic; we are a geography book, a biology book, a history book.

  73

  CONCERNING THE BEST STORIES

  The best stories are those that fascinate us as children and continue to grow with us, affording new pleasures each time we reread them. (Each time they make themselves new. Therefore, they never end.) Like the songs of the Beatles, seducing us with the yeah, yeah yeahs of ‘She Loves You’, and carefully leading us – keeping pace with our development – to the point where they can offer us a glimpse of the immensity of time itself in the orchestra’s last glissando in ‘A Day in the Life’. (The Beatles do not end either. Though the last song on the last side of their last album is called ‘The End’– the song in which they say that in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make – it’s not really the last song because there’s a song not listed on the sleeve, a short, hidden song in which Paul tells us that Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl and someday he’s going to make her his.)

  I have lots of favourite stories, but the story of King Arthur is special. I suppose that its initial attraction was obvious: I loved the knights in armour, the egalitarianism of the Round Table, the romantic idealism of the knights, the quest for the Holy Grail – the chalice from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. It was always a perfect combination of epic adventure and spiritual quest. As I grew up, I left the children’s version of the story behind and began to read the original sources: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the Grail cycle, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Growing up, in a way, is making sense of contradictions. And so I learned that a man like Arthur may have the best of intentions and still be petty, dissolute and selfish. Arthur committed incest, murdered innocent children and, overcome by private grief, forgot the public good.

  But the part that always impressed me most was the end. Sir Bedevere helping the dying Arthur onto a barque full of women dressed in black; among them, three queens, Morgan le Fay, the Queen of Northgalis and the Queen of the Wastelands. They are accompanied by Nimuë, the Lady of the Lake. Seeing Bedevere weep, Arthur tells him that he is going to the Isle of Avalon to be healed of his grievous wounds. The barque disappears as it crosses the lake. The following day Bedevere encounters a hermit at prayer next to a freshly dug grave. He asks the name of the man who lies there. The hermit replies: a man whom some women asked him to bury. Bedevere assumes it to be Arthur and decides to live out the remainder of his life here, in prayer and fasting.

  Malory then relates a version of the story in which Arthur does not die but will return when the time is right. As he tells it, the inscription on the tomb reads: ‘Here lies Arthur, the once and future king’. But since no one saw him dead, nor ever saw the grave, none can confirm that he died. Malory declines to pronounce on this eventual return: ‘I woll nat say that hit shall be so. But rather I wolde sey: here in thys worlde he chaunged hys lyff.’

  Now I believe, like Malory, that there is nothing more inspiring than the story of a man who succeeds in changing his life; in this dark world where they say that nobody can change, I can think of nothing more heroic. In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson railed against the prophets of resignation: ‘It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into Nature; that the world was finished a long time ago.’ The world is still not finished. There are still at least 5,000 million years left to go, which is why I am angered by those who claim that all possible stories have already been told, consigning the act of creation itself to the margins, relegating it to the trivial repetition of what has been done before and better, to the crumbs of what was once a banquet. The idea is as reactionary as it would be to say that all possible lives have already been lived, relegating us to the status of second-hand humans living borrowed lives. It strips us of our worth, of our hopes, and makes our passions futile. For our lives are no less important than other lives. On the contrary, our lives appear on the horizon of past lives, the lives that have ceased to be biology and become history, the lives that have cleared the path to this present, which, in that sense, is better than all the past; lives that, just like certain species, trace a path between what was and what is, offer us a bridge across the ravine to the summit of a mountain that is higher than all those that came before, but which is never the last.

  There is an image that is often used to underline how intimately the phenomena of nature are intertwined: it suggests that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can set off a chain reaction that can eventually lead a tornado to strike some distant part of the planet. If we grant a butterfly so much power, how much more power has a man who, in taking possession of the life others purport to control, changes it for the better? What tornadoes could be set off by such a change, not only among those closest to him, but in the furthest reaches of the planet? This is why, like Malory, I believe that it is enough that Arthur made good use of his chance of redemption. But when I was little, I preferred the fantastical version of the story, the one that gave me Arthur in Avalon, nursing his wounds and waiting for his time to come again.

  For many years, Kamchatka was my Avalon.

  74

  IN WHICH WE RETURN HOME, TO FIND NOTHING BUT DARKNESS

  When we reached the quinta at midnight on Sunday, the whole neighbourhood was blacked out. Block after block, everything was in darkness. Papá parked the car 200 metres from the quinta, reversing it into the gateway of another house. That way, if there was any trouble he could easily head off in either direction. Mamá and I watched as he moved away, flashlight in hand, along the dirt path. The Midget was asleep beside me, hugging his two Goofys covered in drool. Mamá had time to chain-smoke two Jockeys before papá got back.

  ‘It looks like it’s just a power cut,’ he said, sliding behind the wheel again.

  ‘What about Lucas?’ I asked. That was all I wanted to know.

  ‘Lucas isn’t there.’

  But, for some reason, papá didn’t sound certain. As soon as he’d parked the Citroën in front of the quinta, I scrambled out and started looking all over the house for Lucas. Papá was right about there being no electricity. I moved around the house, feeling my way along the walls. When I got to our bedroom, a finger of moonlight slipping through the window made it clear that Lucas was not there. His sleeping bag was also gone. If it was just that Lucas wasn’t there, I would have been frustrated because I’d been really looking forward to seeing him, but at least he would come back. The fact that he had taken his things prompted a different kind of worry.

  Mamá said that he’d probably decided to sleep somewhere else while we were away. We could hardly blame him. When you’re on your own, you get to make your own decisions. But she said I shouldn’t worry; if Lucas intended to be away for any length of time, he would not have gone without letting us know.

  I wondered if there was a message somewhe
re in the house, somewhere that, in the darkness, we hadn’t found.

  I was on my way out to the swimming pool to check on the toads when I saw a light in the near distance.

  It flashed on and off, on and off, like a signal.

  I threw myself at Lucas and gave him a hug that winded him. He was leaning against a poplar tree. Next to him was his sleeping bag and his Japan Airlines knapsack.

  ‘What are you doing out here? Can’t you see it’s going to rain?’

  ‘I was waiting for you.’

  ‘What happened to the lights?’

  ‘There’s a power cut, the whole area is pitch dark.’

  Clearly I must have been none too satisfied by Lucas’s answer, because I tried my luck again. ‘What are you doing out here?’

  Lucas didn’t answer. He seemed more interested in papá, who had spotted us and was coming over. This pissed me off. In ignoring me, I felt as though Lucas was breaking a pact and that I therefore had every right to feel upset. But I didn’t have time to tell him how hurt I felt. Things happen faster than feelings.

  ‘You got a minute?’ Lucas asked papá.

  Instead of answering, papá sent me inside.

  ‘Go in and help your mother, she’s in there all alone with all those suitcases.’

  Unwillingly, I did as I was told. When the Midget, who had woken up and was stretching, made some inoffensive comment, I laid into him.

  He started whining and went out to the swimming pool where he found a body floating in the water. ‘Dead toad! Dead toad!’

  For some strange reason, I felt relieved. It was good to have something to do, something to keep me busy. I sent the Midget off to find some newspaper and a piece of string. I went to get a spade.

  We buried the toad at the foot of the tree, next to all the others.

  ‘It’s not really a hole,’ the Midget whispered to the little package that passed for a shroud, ‘it’s a lift. We put you in here and you go straight up to toad heaven.’

  He put the toad in the ground. I started filling in the hole. The Midget made an elegant, painstaking sign of the Cross and ran back to the house.

  I was still wrestling with the spade when Lucas came up to me. He had his sleeping bag under one arm and his Japan Airlines knapsack over his other shoulder.

  ‘I’m off, Harry.’

  ‘In this weather? You’ll get soaked!’

  ‘Your papá is going to take me to the station.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? I’m nearly finished.’

  ‘I can’t wait any longer. I should have gone ages ago, but I wanted to wait for you guys. So I could say goodbye.’

  I started hitting the ground with the spade to level it.

  ‘I’m going, Harry. And this time I won’t be coming back.’

  ‘Do you really, really have to go?’ I asked, tamping down the grave with the sole of my shoe.

  ‘Wrong question.’

  I knelt down, searching for stones to put on the grave; I didn’t want the dogs digging it up in the middle of the night.

  ‘Is this how it’s going to be, then? Ciao and I just turn around and walk away? I thought we were friends.’

  ‘But we’re never going to see each other again!’

  There was a silence, which seemed conclusive. I had my hands full of stones when Lucas said: ‘I left my orange T-shirt in the bedroom.’

  This felt like the last straw. The only reason I didn’t throw the stones at him was because I needed them for something else. ‘Go and get it yourself!’

  At some point it started to rain, but I didn’t notice. I was still on my knees; I was placing the stones in a spiral, starting at the centre and working out in wider and wider circles when I noticed mamá standing next to me.

  ‘Why won’t you say goodbye to Lucas?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to.’

  ‘You’ll be sorry later.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘I know. Believe me, I know.’

  ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’

  Suddenly mamá was down on the ground next to me, kneeling on the wet Earth. She put her hands on my shoulders and forced me to turn and face her.

  ‘Look at me. Look at me!’ she said, holding my face as I struggled to turn away. ‘You can’t keep on shutting yourself in. It’s horrible when you get hurt, I know, nobody likes it; we’d all like to have a suit of armour to protect us from suffering. But if you build a wall to protect yourself from the world outside, you end up realizing you’ve shut yourself in. Don’t shut yourself in, darling. It’s better to suffer than to feel nothing at all. If you spend your life in a suit of armour, you’ll miss out on the best things! Promise me something… promise me you won’t miss out on a single thing, not one… Will you promise me that?’

  I roughly drew my face away. I was sick of the wrong questions, of suicidal toads, of my mother talking gibberish, which, as you’ve seen, did not stop when it rained. But if I thought my rejection would force my mother to admit defeat, I was wrong. Even soaking wet, this woman saw motherhood as a test of endurance.

  ‘Do you know the worst pain I’ve ever felt?’ (She didn’t wait for me to answer, but just went on.) ‘Pain so bad I thought I’d die, I swear. I couldn’t bear it. But I had consciously chosen to suffer this pain. I had two choices: I could choose to do what I wanted, knowing I would suffer, or I could choose not to suffer and be left with nothing. And I made the right choice. The suffering I went through was worse than anything I’ve ever known, but I came through it and I was happier than I’ve ever been. And I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. Do you know what it was? Do you know what I’m talking about?’

  I didn’t want to answer, but I was intrigued by this unfamiliar fragment of the family legend. Which story was this one? What had happened to mamá, what suffering? Was there some scar she’d never mentioned?

  ‘I’m talking about you. I’m talking about when I had you, dummy.’

  When I got back to my room, I realized what Lucas had been trying to say when he said goodbye. I’d thought he was asking me to go and fetch his T-shirt, but it wasn’t that. Lucas knew how much I loved the fluorescent orange, the print that felt like rubber, the incredible drawing of the motorbike. That was why he’d left it on my bed, clean and carefully laid out in all its splendour. He had given it to me.

  I ran down the driveway as far as the road, but he was gone.

  75

  IN WHICH I MAKE MY DEBUT AS AN ESCAPE ARTIST

  Trains lend themselves to daydreaming. It must be something about the jolting, the rhythmic clacking, the drone of the refreshment sellers the same the world over – a lullaby of the post-industrial world. Or maybe it has something to do with the idea of letting yourself be carried away: you pay your fare and surrender yourself to the machine and by the time you realize it – whether you’re sitting in a carriage or standing crushed by the crowd – your thoughts have already carried you away. Or maybe such speculation is unnecessary, maybe a daydream is simply a logical extension of the train itself, the very idea of it. After all, several tons of metal hurtling at top speed along a straight line is an idea that could only have occurred to someone in a dream, someone deep in an extraordinary dream, the sort of dream that only a train can produce.

  I like it when the train is travelling on an elevated track, because I can see the roofs of the houses. People treat roofs as though they did not exist. They toss all the things they no longer want onto their roofs – rusty tricycles, children’s paddling pools, empty bird cages, tins of paint, the skirting boards they never get around to fitting, the tiles left over from a renovation. They also use them to put out of sight those things they don’t want to deal with: the washing line of damp clothes that includes an oversized bra, the illicit TV connection, the chimneys pouring out their brazen black smoke. I know you’re not supposed to notice these things, that they’ve been placed there so that they won’t be seen, but
I like noticing things other people ignore: they speak to me, and, besides, it’s not my fault, it’s the train’s!

  On this, my very first train journey, I am heading to Buenos Aires. I leave from the same station that Lucas left from a few hours earlier. The knowledge that I am duplicating his every movement – getting a ticket, waiting for the train, choosing a carriage – makes me feel close to him, but the feeling is fleeting. Once aboard I don’t recognize anything or anyone. The carriages seem unfinished, as though someone had taken them out of the oven too soon. There are too many people ignoring each other. The seats are filthy and broken. Worse still, I spot a man who terrifies me. He is holding his newspaper in one hand, and his little finger is suspiciously stiff. When we get to the next station I change carriages, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. There are more and more people. I’m drowning in a sea of elbows and armpits. I manage to poke my head above the tangle of limbs, almost throwing myself onto a woman who is still – sleeping – her mouth hanging open. Through the window, the city seems to be running away as fast as its legs will carry it.

  The night that Lucas left, I decided that the time had come to prove myself as an escape artist. I had been working out the plan in my mind for some time. To carry it out, I would require perfect self-control. Once I began, there could be no turning back. To the escape artist, this last rule is crucial: when the bolt shoots home, the lid of the trunk closes and there are thousands of tons of water above his head, an escape artist has no time for second thoughts. There is no way back; the only way is forward. Escape is the only option.