The Dedalus Book of Spanish Fantasy Read online

  Was Lizardi comparing the behaviour of that insect with the way life had treated the boy? For my part, I believe he was. But let us leave these lucubrations and look at what Lizardi did in fact write in the legible part of that fourth page.

  ... do not think, dear friend, that I ever abandoned or neglected him. I visited him often, always with a kind word on my lips. All in vain.

  I was still caught up in these thoughts when, at the beginning of February, one month after Javier had run away, a pure white boar appeared in the main street of Obaba. To the great amazement of those watching, it did not withdraw before the presence of people, but trotted in front of them with such calm and gentleness that it seemed more like an angelic being than a wild beast. It stopped in the square and stayed there for a while, quite still, watching a group of children playing with what remained of the previous night's fall of snow.

  The upper part of the fifth page is also damaged but not as badly as the page I have just transcribed. The dampness only affects the first three lines. It goes on:

  ... but you know what our people are like. They feel no love for animals, not even for the smallest which, being too weak to defend themselves, deserve their care and attention. In respect of this, I recall an incident that occurred shortly after my arrival in Obaba. A brilliantly coloured bird alighted on the church tower and I was looking up at it and rejoicing to think that it was our Father Himself who, in His infinite kindness, had sent me that most beautiful of His creatures as a sign of welcome, when, lo and behold, three men arrived with rifles on their shoulders ... they had shot the poor bird down before I had a chance to stop them. Such is the coldness of our people's hearts, which in no way resemble that of our good St Francis.

  They reacted in just the same way towards the white boar. They began shooting at it from windows, the braver amongst them from the square itself, and the racket they made so startled me that I came running out of the church where I happened to be at the time. They only managed to wound the animal, however, and in the midst of loud squeals, it fled back to the woods.

  Since it was a white boar, and therefore most unusual, the hunters were in a state of high excitement; they could already imagine it as a trophy. But that was not to be, at least not that day. They returned empty-handed and, faint with exhaustion, they all ended up at the inn, drinking and laughing and with great hopes for the next day. And it was then, on that first day of the hunt, that Matias confronted them with these grim words: `What you're doing is wrong. He came here with no intention of harming anyone yet you greet him with bullets. You'd be well advised to consider the consequences of your actions.'

  As you will recall from the beginning of the letter, Matias was the old man who loved the boy best and was so grieved by his disappearance that many feared he might lose his mind. And there in the inn, hearing those words and what he went on to say, no one doubted that this was exactly what had happened. For in his view, the white boar was none other than our lost boy, none other than Javier, who, because of the sad life he had led as a human being, had changed his very nature. It seems he argued his case as follows:

  `Didn't you see the way he stopped in the square to watch the boys playing in the snow? Isn't that just what Javier used to do? And, again just like Javier, didn't the boar have a purple stain around its snout.'

  Those who were present say that the old man's speech was followed by a heated discussion, with some hunters denying that the boar had any such stain and others passionately affirming that it had. Now tell me, dear friend, can you imagine anything more foolish? What kind of a person is it who raises not the slightest objection to the idea of the boy's metamorphosis and believes, therefore, that it was indeed Javier hiding beneath the boar's rough coat, and yet grows irate and argumentative over the incidental detail of a birthmark? But, as you well know, superstition still lingers in places like Obaba and just as the stars continue to shine long after they are dead, the old beliefs ...

  The first ten lines of the sixth page are completely illegible and we can learn nothing of what happened in the days following the boar's first appearance. We can, on the other hand, find out what took place later, since the latter part of page six and the whole of page seven are perfectly conserved.

  ... but one night the boar returned to Obaba and, gliding through the shadows, made its way to a solitary house situated some five hundred yards from the square. Once outside the house, it began to beat and gnaw at the door, emitting such furious grunts that the people who had been sleeping inside were dumbstruck and unable to call for help, so great was the terror that gripped them.

  I should not say that the animal acted with criminal intent for I know it is wrong to attribute to animals faculties that are proper only to men. And yet I am sorely tempted to do so. How else can you explain its determination to enter the house? How else explain the damage it caused to the livestock when it saw that it could not break down the door? ... for I should tell you that, before disappearing back into the woods, the boar killed a horse and an ox kept by the inhabitants in a nearby outhouse. But I am not proud and I know that only our Father can know the true reasons behind such behaviour.

  After what had happened, the hunters' anger was roused and many who until then had remained calm decided to throw in their lot with the hunting parties that had already been established. And, as ever, old Matias was the one dissenting voice. He went out into the streets and pleaded with those setting off for the woods:

  `Leave the boar in peace! You'll only enrage him by doing this! Javier will recognise you!'

  The hunters responded with violence, forgetting it was an old man they were dealing with, an old man speaking to them, moreover, out of his delirium. Then they continued on their way. But you should not judge their rudeness and their intemperance too harshly. For, as I explained, they were quite beside themselves with terror. They feared the boar would continue to attack their livestock, livestock which is on the whole of the poorest quality, so poor it barely provides enough to feed and clothe them. But Matias had his reasons too:

  `Javier has nothing against you! He only attacks those who did him harm before!'

  Unfortunately for everyone concerned, what the old man said was not pure madness. For the family the boar had attacked was the least Christian in Obaba, its members having for generations been much given to cruelty, a propensity they gave full rein to during the recent war. Often, when they got drunk at the inn, they had made Javier the butt of their cruelty, mocking and even beating him, for evil always vents itself on the weak. But was there a connection between the two facts? Should I entirely disregard what the old man said? These were the questions I asked myself, the questions that tormented me.

  Mothers in Obaba tell their children a story in which a daughter asks her wicked father if he believes he will ever die. The father tells her that this is most unlikely because, as he explains: `I have a brother who is a lion and lives in the mountains and inside that lion is a hare and inside that hare is a dove. That dove has an egg. If someone finds that egg and breaks it on my forehead, then and only then will I die.' However, the person listening to the story knows that the little servant of the house will discover the connection between all those things and that the father, who is in fact a demon, will die. But I lacked the little servant's ingenuity and was unable to answer my own questions. Perhaps I was slow; perhaps the thread that led from the boar to Javier was more difficult to find than that linking the father's life to the dove's egg.

  However, subsequently, things happened so quickly that there was little time for reflection. For on the third day of the hunt, the boar pursued and wounded a straggler from one of the hunting parties.

  The letter continues on the eighth page of which the top half is well preserved, the sheet having been placed the other way up from the preceding pages. Of the lower part, however, about eight lines remain illegible.

  The man's companions considered that the white boar had again acted with prudence and discernment, waiting amo
ngst the leaves and watching the party until one of them, the man whom he later wounded, was alone and defenceless. Old Matias summed up the thoughts of all of them:

  `It would be best if from now on you cover your faces. Especially those of you who did Javier wrong. It's clear he wants vengeance.'

  It was on one such day that I suddenly realised that spring was upon us and that the fields were fragrant and full of the lovely flowers the Creator provides us with. But for me and for the other inhabitants of Obaba that whole garden of flowers bloomed in vain; no flower could perform its true function there, no flower could serve as a balm to our spirits. The pinks and lilies in the woods bloomed alone and died alone because no one, not the children or the women or even the most hardened of the men, dared go near them; the same fate awaited the mountain gentians, the thickets of rhododendrons, the roses and the irises. The white boar was sole master of the land on which they grew. One of the broadsheets published in your own town put it well: `A wild animal is terrorising the small village of Obaba.' And do you know how many nights it came down to visit us only to ...

  The eighth page stops here. Fortunately the next two pages are perfectly legible. In this final part of the letter, Canon Lizardi's handwriting becomes very small.

  ... what Matias had foretold came to pass with the exactitude of a prophecy. Night after night, without cease, with the resolve of one who has drawn up a plan and does not hesitate to carry it out, the white boar continued to attack the houses of those who were members of the hunting parties. Then, when panic had filled every heart, the old man came to see me at the rectory. The moment he came in, he said: `I've come to ask you a question and the sooner I have your answer the better. I want to know if I can kill the white boar?'

  His words filled me with fear and not just because of the brusque manner in which he spoke. For, since in his eyes there was no difference between the boy he had known and the boar currently plundering our valley, what the old man really wanted was for me to give my blessing to a crime. I must confess that I myself had my doubts on the matter. I was wrong, you will say; a simple priest has no right to doubt what has been proven by so many theologians and other wise men. But I am just an ordinary man, a small tree that has always grown in the utmost darkness, and that animal, which in its actions seemed to exhibit both understanding and free will, had me in its power.

  For all those reasons, I wanted to avoid a direct answer. I said:

  `There's no point even trying, Matias. You're an old man. You'll never catch an animal like that, one that has made fools of our best hunters.'

  `It will be easy for me,' he replied, raising his voice and not without a certain arrogance, `because I know Javier's habits.' Then he added: `Anyway that's my affair. What I want to know is whether or not I can kill the boar. You have a duty to answer me.'

  `But is it necessary? Why kill an animal which, sooner or later, will leave Obaba? Provided that ...'

  `Of course it's necessary!' he broke in almost shouting now. `Have you no pity for him? Don't you feel sorry for Javier?'

  `Matias, I wouldn't want to ...'

  But again he would not let me finish. He sat up in his chair and, after scrabbling in the bag he had with him, placed a filthy handkerchief on my table. Do you know what it contained? No, how could you? It was the bloody foot of a boar. It was a ghastly sight and I stepped back, horrified.

  `Javier is in terrible pain,' the old man began.

  I remained silent, unable to utter a word.

  `The people of Obaba are cowards,' he continued after a pause. `They don't want to meet him face to face and so they resort to snares and traps and poison. What do they care if he dies a slow and painful death? No good hunter would do that.'

  `It's only natural that they should be afraid, Matias. You're wrong to despise them for that.'

  But I wasn't convinced by what I said and it was an effort to get the words out. The old man was not listening anyway; he seemed to be in mid-soliloquy.

  `When a boar falls into a snare, it frees itself by gnawing off the trapped limb. That is the law it lives by.'

  He spoke hesitantly, breathing hard.

  `Don't you think Javier's learned fast?' he asked, looking into my eyes. The smile he gave me was that of a father proud of his son's achievements. I nodded and thought to myself how utterly justified his feelings were and that on the last day, God our Father would not have the least hesitation in bestowing on him the paternity he claimed. Yes, Matias was Javier's true father; not the one who abandoned him at birth, nor the other one who, having taken him in, treated him only with contempt.

  ,can I kill him?' the old man asked me. He had grown sombre again. As you know, dear friend, pity is an extreme form of love, the form that touches us most deeply and most strongly impels us towards goodness. And there was no doubt that Matias was speaking to me in the name of pity. He could not bear the boy's suffering to continue. It must be ended as soon as possible.

  `Yes, you can,' I said. `Killing the boar would not be a sin.

  Well done, you will say. However, bearing in mind what happened afterwards ...

  The tenth page stops at that point. The first four lines are missing on the next and last page; the rest, including the signature, is perfectly preserved.

  ... on the outskirts of Obaba, not far from this house, there is a thickly wooded gully in the form of an inverted pyramid, and at one end there is a cave that seems to penetrate deep into the earth. That was where Matias sensed the white boar was hiding. Why, you will ask, on what did he base such a supposition, a supposition that later - I will tell you now - was to prove correct? Because he knew that was what Javier used to do when he ran away from the inn. He would hide there in the cave, poor boy, with only the salamanders for company.

  But, as I said, I only knew all this when it was too late. Had I known before, I would not have given my consent to Matias. No, you can't go into that cave, I would have told him. No hunter would wait for a boar in a place like that. It's too dangerous. You'll be committing a grave sin by going there and placing your own life in mortal danger.

  But God chose not to enlighten me. I made a mistake when confronted by a question whose rights or wrongs I could not hope to fathom and, later, there was no time to remedy the situation. The events I will now recount happened all in a rush, the way boulders, once their support has gone, hurtle headlong down hillsides. In fact, it was all over in a matter of hours.

  When Matias left, I went into the church and it was there that I heard what, at the time and to my great astonishment, sounded like an explosion. At first I could not establish the origin of such a loud noise, so unusual in Obaba. It was certainly not from a rifle, I thought.

  `Unless the shot were fired in a cave!' I exclaimed. I knew at once that I was right. With God's help, I had guessed what had happened.

  Matias was already dead when I reached the gully. He was lying face down at the entrance to the cave itself, his rifle still in his hand. A few yards away, further inside the cave, lay the white boar, panting and losing blood from a wound in its neck.

  Then, amidst the panting, I thought I heard a voice. I listened more carefully and what do you think I heard? The word that any boy would have cried out at such a moment: `Mother!' Before my very eyes, the boar lay there groaning and whimpering and saying over and over: `Mother, mother' ... pure illusion, you will say, the imaginings of a weary, overwrought man; and that is what I tell myself when I remember all I have read in science books or when I recall what faith requires us to believe. Nevertheless, I cannot forget what I saw and heard in that cave. Because then, dear God, I had to pick up a stone and finish him off. I could not leave him there to bleed to death, to suffer; I had to act as honourably as the old man would have done.

  I can go no further and I will end here. I am, as you see, a broken man. You would be doing me the greatest favour by coming here to visit me! I have spent three years in Obaba. Is that not enough solitude for any man?

  With that qu
estion - and the signature that follows it - both letter and exposition end. I would not, however, wish to conclude my work without reference to a fact which, after several conversations with the present inhabitants of Obaba, seems to me significant. It concerns the matter of Lizardi's paternity. Many of those who spoke to me state that Javier was, without a doubt, his son, a belief which, in my view, a second reading of the document certainly tends to substantiate. That fact would also explain why the letter never left the rectory where it was written. A canon like Lizardi would never dare send a confession from which, in the end, he had omitted the one essential detail.

  © Bernardo Atxaga

  Translated by Margaret full Costa

  Bernardo Atxaga is the pseudonym of Jose Irazu Garmendia (Asteasu, Euzkadi, 1951). He is the best known of contemporary Basque writers and has done an enormous amount to promote the Basque language and its literature in post-Franco Spain. He has written short stories and novels for children and adults, as well as poetry and songs. Two of his novels: Gizona bere bakardadean (1994) and Zeru horiek (1996) (The Lone Man and The Lone Woman, tr. Margaret Jull Costa, Harvill, 1996 and 1999) deal with the social and political situation in the Basque country. This story is taken from Obabakoak (1989; Obabakoak, tr. Margaret Jull Costa, Hutchinson, 1992), a collection of twenty-six stories, some independent, some interconnecting. In Spain it won the National Prize for Literature and the Critics' Prize and has, to date, been translated into twenty-one other languages. Other works include Bi anai (1995), Behi Euskaldun Baten Memoriak (1992) and Lista de locos y otros alfabetos (1998).

  To my fiancee, who told me the story

  This was in the days when people still celebrated Carnival. In other words, many years ago. Not that it matters, you won't believe what I am about to tell you anyway. His name was Arturo, Arturo Gomez Landeiro. He was not bad-looking really; the only thing that obstructed his path through life was his large nose. It wasn't exactly huge, but it was a bit larger than normal. Because of it he toyed with the idea of becoming a sailor. But his mother wouldn't let him. The surprising thing is that the story I'm about to relate should have happened to him. I've often wondered why, but never managed to find an answer. It seems that extraordinary things can happen to anyone; what matters is how you react to the surprise. If Arturo Gomez had been an exceptional man I wouldn't be writing this; he would have undertaken to recount the story himself, or he would have investigated further. But he took fright, so I have to be the one to tell it, because I can never keep anything to myself.