A Distant Beach Read online

  “I spent New Year’s Eve with Silvia. Her parents invited me to have dinner in the restaurant and it was stupendous. Later we were at their house and in the early hours of January 1, she ceased to be a virgin. I never felt anything like it. I mean it spiritually. – Fernando always saw everything spiritually. – I want you to find a girl only so that you can feel the same thing I felt then.”

  Yes, that had been a pretty love story. But later, as always happens, some things spoiled everything. For example, the news of Silvia’s pregnancy, the vulgar insistence on the part of her parents that they should get married and the psychological pressure, on her part, that she take a good look at that marriage, something for which Fernando, obviously, was not prepared. “What am I going to do if I get married? – he wondered (he asked me) in another one of his letters. – My parents threaten to disinherit me. I have to drop out of the university and go to work as a waiter in her restaurant.”

  “Being a father does not imply being married,” I said to him.

  “Certainly – he accepted – Being a father does not imply being married. I loved her and I’ll recognize the child when it’s born, but I can’t get married. However, this is something that Silvia doesn’t intend. She thinks I’m abandoning her when she needs me the most, she thinks I’m insensitive, selfish, and I don’t know what else. The solution, as you suggest, is that we keep our relationship the same as it has been up to now and that we get married when I’m financially independent. No doubt that’s the best solution, but that’s a solution that doesn’t seem to please anybody: not Silvia nor her parents nor, of course, mine, who just want her to have an abortion and forget all about me.”

  Little by little conflicts of interest came to light in that pregnancy, something which Fernando couldn’t understand or accept. There were arguments and heated quarrels. Until one day, for some reason, they broke up. Fernando was at home then, and he turned on the gas jet and attempted suicide. His mother discovered him in time and got him to a hospital. Shortly thereafter, Silvia (who was unaware of his suicide attempt) sent Fernando a letter of reconciliation accepting all of his conditions. But this letter never reached Fernando’s hands. Teresa told Fernando that Silvia had had an abortion, and afterwards arranged a long trip abroad and saw to it that they would never see each other again.

  “At this moment – Fernando wrote me from Brighton – I am neither well nor ill. I am alone, like you, waiting for the course to begin in order to restart my routine and monotonous life. I don’t believe in anyone, not any more. You say that I will change, but I will neither change nor do I want to change. I’m afraid of falling in love, but I am at peace. Nobody interests me. Something is missing and I don’t want to know what it is. I have broken off with everything and it’s a new period in my life which is approaching. One must be prepared. I don’t know what’s waiting for me. Love is missing. Yes, that’s it. But I hang on. I also have a great friend and I lack ...”

  III

  Five o’clock in the afternoon. I had to go out to take a look at the city before nightfall. I had previously studied a plan of Cuenca in an old book of my father’s titled Picturesque cities, and although it wasn’t an up-to-date plan, I knew where I was and where I should go. First I reached the River Huécar, I walked alongside it for a while following a path to the left, and then I stopped somewhere near the San Pablo Bridge. The cold was very intense, almost unendurable, and the furious wind shook the branches of the trees. I was the only one foraging out there and I didn’t move until I saw some boys coming on bicycles. Then I retraced my steps and began to ascend the steep alleys that lead to the high part of the city. I stopped, in order to catch my breath, at every corner or every crossing and I went from one surprise to another: the ravine of the Júcar, on the left, with its houses hanging on the edge of the rocks, the secluded plazas, the labyrinthine passages that went nowhere or the variegated urban landscape that could be seen from every watchtower. Everything overwhelmed me and fascinated me.

  Finally I reached the Plaza Mayor, where there was a mob of tourists, so I passed by, hoping for a better opportunity. I ventured down adjacent alleys behind the cathedral. I came to a stop, this time on the upper level, at San Pablo Bridge, which I crossed from one end to the other. There were also a lot of tourists there, so I returned to the Plaza Mayor, where I ran into the boy and girl who had come on the same coach as I. I lowered my head and slipped away furtively in the other direction, for fear that they would see me. From a distance I stole a quick glance at them. They had positioned themselves in front of the cathedral and wouldn’t stop taking pictures one after another, looking for the best (worst) angle. Then I saw them ask someone to take a picture of them together, and this was more than I could endure. I was wondering which way I could turn my steps so as not to coincide with them, when I saw them coming directly toward me. Wounded and harassed, I dashed into a tavern.

  It was a small neighborhood tavern with three or four tables and all of them occupied, so I sat at a corner of the bar. At the other end was a television set and all the customers, most of them weekend tourists, looked at the commercials with foolish circumspection. Obviously the people were bored with walking back and forth, seeing monuments and taking pictures. I soon realized that the evening was going to be very long. I had taken a general look at the city, more or less, and now all that was left would be a repetition and going and coming through the same places or others like them. Cuenca was a beautiful city, too beautiful to visit alone, and I felt overwhelmed by such beauty. I couldn’t go back to the hostel, since it was very early, nor have dinner, since I had just eaten a couple of hours before, but neither did I want to keep on walking with no destination, nor, certainly, stay in that tavern for very long, where I couldn’t stand the presence of those stupid faces watching television. I had not yet decided what to do, when the waiter took away my cup; so I paid and went out.

  IV

  A slow, purple darkness was gradually taking possession of the city when I went out into the street. I wanted to take another walk and look over the places that I still hadn’t seen. The city was small, or so it seemed; nevertheless, it had so many surprising perspectives, so many hidden corners on the different levels on which it was constructed, so many terraces that looked out on the Júcar or the Huécar, so many picturesque signs on balconies, facades, or roofs, whether one looked up or down, that one had the sensation of having no more than begun. But I couldn’t walk anywhere without running into the guy who was going around recording everything with his video camera or that other one who had a map in his hand and was trying to get his bearings at every step. At that hour of the evening, the city seemed fatally under the control of the tourists, and this annoyed me exceedingly. All the same, as I suspected immediately, almost all the tourists were concentrating on the same sites, so I only had to detour a little from the conventional sites to lose sight of them.

  I went back up through San Pedro Street, turning through the passages that emerged left and right, stopping at improvised watchtowers to contemplate the ravines of the Júcar or the Huécar. At the end of the street there was an old castle in ruins, and although the city ended there, I kept walking along the mountain, first by the left trail, and then by the steeper and more sinuous trail on the right, where I stopped to contemplate the panorama of the city. Houses and rocks, city and mountain; until such a point where the city was mimicked in the terrain of the mountain, so that I was difficult to tell where one began and the other ended.

  I stayed there a good while, but the cold, the loneliness, the darkness, and even the beauty of those places finally filled my heart with sadness and I decided to return.

  It was then, on coming down San Pedro Street, when I saw him. Perhaps I had seen him a moment before, and unconsciously I was following him: the same height, the same clothes, the same hair, even the same way of walking. I only needed to see his face to be sure that it was he, that it was Fernando.

  Suddenly he stopped at a corner to ask an ol
d man for a cigarette and I slowed my step so as not to approach him. Fortunately we were some distance apart and he couldn’t see me. “He doesn’t even have money for cigarettes,” I thought. Then I saw that he turned to protect the flame from the wind and when I saw his face in profile I was petrified: It was he, it was, it was Fernando!

  I stood quietly, in the middle of the sidewalk, looking fixedly at him, and when he started walking, I advanced behind him. Shortly afterwards I switched to the other sidewalk in order to see him from the side and then, as if he had guessed my intentions, he threw me a look that left me withered. That look had little to do with Fernando, I told myself, so I stood firm to avoid it. I wanted to pick up the pace and lose sight of him, but something in me impelled me to follow him. For one moment I had the feeling that every person walking in that street around us (about five or six) realized what had happened. He had not turned to look at me and I kept walking trying to maintain a distant apparent indifference. But it was evident that both of us were hanging on each other.

  We got to the Plaza Mayor and crossed it in parallel lines, just as naturally as two people who were strangers, and had no interest in each other, would coincide in an urban route. For several moments I avoided looking at him and I even tried to convince myself that really all that was an accident and that we had passed each other as people do in a city. But I couldn’t fool myself: that encounter was already marked by fate. After going through the arches of the city hall, we began to go down Alfonso VIII, and although I had managed to fall in step behind him, there was one point where we both came together on the boulevard (there were construction works on his sidewalk and a car parked on mine) and we almost rubbed against each other. At that moment we went down a street where there was no one else walking and the situation became more and more obvious. Suddenly I began to reflect. I told myself I was playing a very dangerous game. I didn’t know this guy, and if I insisted on following him, I was likely that I was in for a nasty surprise. What was I doing? What madness was this? I turned around and retraced my steps.

  But a moment later I repented of my decision and looked for that boy desperately in the maze of streets. No matter how many turns I made, I didn’t find him; so, bored and tired, I went into a bar. I ordered a beer, I took a look around and ... there was that couple from the railroad car, smiling and drinking the local drink, resoli. With that I paid and went out terrified heading for another place. Were they never going to stop rubbing my nose in their happiness?

  It was seven o’clock, only seven, but it was almost night and I had seen enough things for that day. I thought I should eat something and go back to the hostel. It was not a very interesting prospect, but I was tired and I didn’t want to keep on walking from one place to another. Besides the monuments, there was also in Cuenca a mass of pubs and discos, but I knew myself very well and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to go to one of those places alone.

  I went up Joaquin Maria Ayala, a twisted narrow alley, looking for a restaurant, and although I soon discovered that I wasn’t going to find one that way, the site was so interesting (the tourists with the video camera and the map, it seemed, hadn’t made it so far) that I kept walking. In the small Plaza de la Merced, I stopped to admire the old gloomy mansions of stone, breathing in emotionally the arcane atmosphere of the ages and then I continued through a dark alley to the Mangana Clock, where some boys were smoking hashish and drinking beer from liter bottles next to a horrible monument dedicated to the Constitution. The boys didn’t even look at me and I followed along to the other end of the esplanade, where I stopped to admire the Júcar Valley and the panorama of the city. What stupidity! I thought when I remembered Fernando’s death. What stupidity!

  I went back by way of Santa María very slowly, contemplating without rushing each corner and each house. In the Plaza de la Merced, secluded and intimate, I stopped for the second time in several minutes. I could have remained there indefinitely, consoling myself with nostalgia and memories, but I heard footsteps at the end of the street and I started walking.

  It was then, when I reached a bend, that I saw him. I intended to avert my glance, but I looked at him. I also wanted to keep walking, but I believe I stopped, at least for a couple of seconds. Then I knew that something was going to happen. I saw at once that he was coming toward me. I had my hands in my pockets and I squeezed my fingers with such force that I dug my nails into my flesh.

  “Do you have a cigarette?” I heard him say to me.

  “No. I’m sorry. I don’t smoke,” I apologized clumsily.

  The two of us stood in silence, looking at each other dubiously. Chance, I thought, had put him once more in my path, and now, stupidly, I was going to let him escape. I armed myself with courage and spoke the most daring phrase I have ever spoken in my life:

  “If you like ...” I mumbled, “I can invite you to drink a glass ...”

  There was no relation between what he had asked me and what I was offering him, so I expected him to reject my invitation. But, to my surprise, he accepted quite naturally.

  “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

  I was not prepared to hear that and I didn’t know what to say.

  “Do you know an interesting place around here?” I asked finally.

  He thought about a moment and then said:

  “Yes. El Alazán.”

  We walked toward the Plaza Mayor and then we entered a dark, narrow passage where no one was walking. “This is it,” I thought. “Now he’ll pull a knife on me and demand that I give him all the money I have.” But nothing like that happened and in a few minutes we both found ourselves seated with a beer in the interior of a pub.

  Chapter Two

  I

  Suddenly I had a suspicion: What if he’s a drug addict? First of all, I had to make sure that he wasn’t. If he was, I had to try to get rid of him as soon as possible. I needed company, I needed an adventure, but not at any price.

  We were seated at a low wooden table, in a neighborhood bar with a wall-to-wall carpet and some old Irish engravings of horses. The waiter, a middle-aged man and very ceremonious, had just brought us two beers accompanied by a plate of mixed canapés, and now came the inevitable moment of conversation. We began according to requirement, with names (“My name is Justino,” he said, “but everyone calls me Tino.”) and the typical sentences: “Where are you from?” or “How old are you?” He was from Valladolid and was nineteen years old. I remembered then that he had no cigarettes, so I went to the bar, bought a pack of Virginia cigarettes and gave it to him. I thought he would thank me effusively, but he said thanks in a low voice and without looking at me. The waiter had been watching us and I realized my clumsiness too late. I didn’t know how to fix it and for several moments I didn’t dare to speak, but Tino resolved the situation admirably by lighting a cigarette and smiling at me, while he blew out the smoke with total and absolute delight. It was as if he had said, “Never mind, who cares about the waiter? Here I am, at your side, and that’s what’s important.”

  With his Army boots well polished, his hair dark and shining, the bangs falling gracefully to the right, his clothes (jeans, gray jersey, a black leather jacket) so new that they might have been recently bought in a big department store, his hands large and virile, although smooth and uncalloused, and that look of having just stepped out of the shower a moment before, it was hard to believe that a boy like that could be a kind of vagabond, such as I had imagined when I saw him ask the old man for a cigarette. Now I didn’t know what to think. On the other hand, I couldn’t deny that the boy was making efforts to behave himself. We were both looking at each other with forced friendliness, with an odd camaraderie, as if trying to conceal whatever any sign of precaution or mistrust in the other. The situation was quite absurd and we were both trying clumsily not to let it seem so. There weren’t many people in the pub and I noticed that the waiter kept watching us. Of course, it didn’t seem strange to me that he would watch us, for Tino and I made a curious
pair, and not only because of the age difference. Anyone who observed us carefully could make easy guesses about us. All the same, I wondered why a boy like that would have brought me to such a place, an establishment for older people, too expensive, too serious, and where they were playing jazz. Be that as it may, to me it was fantastic that he had chosen this place and no other. It didn’t matter to me that the waiter was watching us, and I don’t think it mattered to him either. If it had really mattered to him, he wouldn’t have brought me here. Channeled by my questions, the conversation took an abrupt turn. Tino had returned from Ronda four months ago, where he had completed his military service in the Legion, he told me. He wasn’t from Cuenca either. He was passing through with his brother. They had stopped to visit an aunt and uncle and on the following day they would return to Valladolid. But family obligations bored him, so he had gone out to take a walk. For my part, I told him I was taking a week of vacation and that this was my first visit to Cuenca. I made it clear that I was traveling in the company of a cousin (an ex-legionnaire and more ..., not something to rely on), whom I had arranged to meet a little later on. We were planning to stay a few days in Cuenca and then continue the journey to Benidorm.