Free All Is Silence by Manuel Rivas Page B

mind? Do they know he suffers from the
petit mal
, has absences?
    Like now.
    He can see his father shaving himself. The mirror, which has a diagonal crack, reflects two faces. His mother asking. Not asking.
    ‘And that?’
    ‘It has time to grow. From now until Easter.’
    Without a beard, his father looks strange. Like another. The reverse of what he is. All the bones on his face appear bereft of bandages.

15
    THE RADIO IS broadcasting the Holy Rosary. The litany sounds sometimes when the radio is turned on at dusk, but it never usually gets a response. Not from the mouths. Possibly from the intentional beating of the knitting needles. Fins rereads a piece of headed paper:
    LA DIVINA PASTORA
    NAVY SOCIAL INSTITUTION
    School for Sea Orphans
    Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz)
    Is that someone knocking at the door? Fins stirs in discomfort. Stands up. Looks at the radio. The lamp on the dial which gleams with the intensity of a beacon in the open sea. The trembling of the cloth covering the loudspeaker like skin. The memory of his father’s fingers fishing in the short waves, tautening the dial like a fishing line. He’s listening carefully. Turns to him with a smile. ‘Do you know what he said? “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.”’ Fins glances at his mother.
    ‘It’s the static,’ says Amparo. ‘Pray with me. It won’t hurt!’
    He should go to see her. Her dad is still in hospital. All his skin burned off. Eight hours being beaten by the sea. From rock to rock. He has pneumonia as well. He should go to see her.
    ‘I should go and see Antonio.’
    ‘He’s still in the municipal hospital. I’ll go. He’ll get over it. He was saved.’
    Her silence finishes the sentence: ‘He was saved, but your father wasn’t.’
    ‘At least now he may have more luck with her.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Haven’t you seen her? Riding around on the other’s motorbike, in a tight embrace. You have your head in the clouds.’
    ‘Brinco was given a motorbike. He’s trying it out. What’s wrong with that? The other day he took me for a ride.’
    ‘But she’s a woman. She’s a woman by now! She has to look after her father. She can’t be a source of gossip.’
    Fins has always had the impression that his mother has various voices. Two at least. She keeps the rough one for Nine Moons. She sometimes tries to be polite, but when Leda comes to visit, she always ends up falling silent. It’s too much for her.
    ‘It’s the last night. Pray a little with me, child.’
    Lord, have mercy . . . Lord, have mercy.
    Christ, hear us . . . Christ, hear us.
    Fins resists, moves his lips, but is unable to find his voice. Slowly he notices how the saliva kneads his words. Feels well. The litany wets its feet, steps on the soft sand, closes its eyes. Opens them. He thinks he hears someone knocking at the door again. His look pulls him in that direction. He suddenly stands up. Opens the door. The wind in the fig tree. The screeching of the sea. His mother’s rosary. Outside in, inside out, everything sounds like a single litany. The unmoved hand. Made of metal and green rust. From the
Liverpool
. He’d like to be able to pull it off. To take it with him. Three and one.
    Holy Virgin of virgins, pray for us.
    Mother of divine grace, pray for us.
    ‘Tomorrow you have to get up early. To arrive in time for the train, you have to catch the first bus. Why don’t you go to bed? I’m not sleepy.’
    And she gets the expression of her feelings messed up. She wants to cry, but comes out with a twisted smile instead. ‘It’s the night of the widow.’
    ‘Good night, mother.’
    ‘Son . . .’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Don’t forget to take It.’
    It’s funny. His mother never wants to call things, medicines or illnesses, by their name. She doesn’t even call dynamite dynamite. She says ‘the thing that killed him’. In his case, Luminal is ‘the thing for absences’.
    ‘I’ll send It to you every month. Dr Fonseca promised me.