Free All Is Silence by Manuel Rivas

didn’t transport oil or wine. He transported people! He had his agents, his
engajadores
, in Portugal. The emigrants gave him everything they had in order to get to France. And during the night, on top of some mountain, he’d tell them to get out and shout, “You’re in France, for crying out loud.
La France
, remember! Run, run!” Of course it wasn’t France. He left them sometimes on this side of the border, lost on some snowy mountaintop, without food or money, dying of cold. One day there was a collision, an accident, and they had no choice but to declare it was him since he was the one who’d been driving. He went to prison, but not for long. Nobody knows. I’m not sure there was even a court case. Evil knows how to float. It floats like fuel, just beneath the surface. And he had a tidy sum of money set aside. And partners! So when people say he was in America, you can give that country this name: the clink on Prince Street in Vigo!’
    Fins Malpica recalled the first time he’d listened to Mariscal up close. That sermon he’d spouted in the School of Indians when they discovered the stash of whisky. He tried to remember his Latin phrases, the rhetoric they were couched in.
Learn that and you’ve gained half a life. The rest is also very simple.
Oculos habent, et non videbunt.
They have eyes, and see not.
Aures habent, et non audient.
They have ears, and hear not.
    They have mouths, and speak not.
    ‘You’ll be thinking I know a lot about a man I never talk about. Well, you’re right. And do you know how I know? Because I also tried to get to France . . . Later on, when I could have gone there legally, I didn’t want to. I still had icicles on my beard from the first time. That man only ever did one good thing in his life, which is when he burned his hands in the School of Indians. They say it was on account of the books, but it was because of the desiccated animals. Even better. Desiccated makes you feel more sorry for them. Not even the fox got away. That’s what he did. God knows why.’
    Fins stared for a moment at the burn scars on his father’s hands. Lucho Malpica rolled his son’s note into a ball and flicked it across the table. The ball veered to one side and came to a halt in front of Amparo.
    ‘She’s also partly to blame,’ said Amparo suddenly.
    ‘Who?’ asked Lucho.
    ‘That loudmouth who drives him crazy, Antonio’s daughter. You should say something to Antonio. You spend all that time together out fishing.’
    Lucho glanced at his son and then at his wife. They should know by now that sorrows on a boat were for spitting into the sea. ‘What am I supposed to tell him? That he should keep her tied up at home?’
    ‘That wouldn’t be a bad idea. She’s far too wild. She’s always going barefoot. Like a beggar or something.’
    ‘It has nothing to do with us,’ remarked Lucho bitterly. He could barely hide it when a topic of conversation annoyed him. ‘Let her walk however she likes.’
    What bothered him even more, however, was a breakdown in the domestic order. And so he adopted a more conciliatory tone. ‘We do talk, from time to time. But you can’t touch Antonio’s daughter. She’s the most precious thing he has in the world. He’d do anything for her.’

14
    MALPICA HAS A small motorboat which he uses for coastal fishing. It handles well, is definitely seaworthy, but Lucho and Antonio Hortas rarely stray from their familiar marks. They have their points of reference along the coast, the main one being Cape Cons. With these marks, their eyes trace invisible lines, the coordinates of their sardine shoals for fishing. Underwater places that almost never leave them empty-handed.
    This time they go further out. Even the seabirds seem surprised by their new direction and abandon them. The boat bobs up and down, in unfamiliar territory. The men are two grafts who resist the swaying of the boat impassively. It’s Malpica who decides where they’re going, who acts as