A Film (3000 Meters) Read online

  She rehearsed the story that had been agreed upon years ago: “One night someone knocked loudly on the door, as you did yesterday … Jepet was out to sea”—she hastened to add in order to spare her husband an interrogation. She had been terrified, had leapt out of bed, and peered out of the window … She asked what they wanted and nobody answered, but she saw a woman, her face hidden behind a headscarf, depositing a whitish bundle on the doorstep, then running off down the street … Curious, she went down to see what was in the bundle and found the baby … (“You were red, red as if you’d had chicken pox, and sucking your little fists rather than the sweet wrapped in cloth they’d put in your mouth.”) She was taken aback. She couldn’t think what to do with that little hunk of flesh smelling of the cradle and clean linen … If Jepet had been there, he’d have calmed me down … (“If he’d said, ‘Let’s keep him,’ I’d have done just that …”). She stared at Nonat with a concerned, motherly smile (“You see, then you’d have been heir to this household!”). Nonat smiled too, but said nothing. She closed her eyes, swallowed, and continued: But Jepet wasn’t there, and she had to decide … The next morning she had to go to Girona to sell hens and thought she’d take him to the Orphanage … That must have been why the baby was left in her doorway … But, before doing that, naturally she decided to make a Christian of him, as she imagined nobody else would have thought of that …

  She stopped. Nonat rasped: “And what else?”

  “What else? End of story!” She laughed pleasantly. “Would you like there to be something else? You’re not like me. I think that was enough, more than enough! If you’d have been in my place … !”

  El Senyoret was stung by his obsession.

  “For Christ’s sake, godmother! You seem to take it all so lightheartedly, you’re not thinking that I … You’ve said next to nothing. Even less than the Orphanage … And that can’t possibly be right … That cannot possibly be. Try to remember. Think hard. You must know, you do know something that can give me a clue …” And when Maria flinched imperceptibly, he redoubled his efforts: “What about the woman? What were her features like? Who was she? Everybody knows everybody in this village, and you must at least suspect …”

  But she hadn’t recognized her, she had no suspicions …

  “I’m telling you the truth, my son! She was so wrapped up and I was so bleary-eyed because I’d just jumped out of bed … Besides, she didn’t dally or let me get a look at her; she seemed to fly off, and was out of my sight in an Amen, Jesus … That’s why I couldn’t tell you anything else for certain … Now if you want to hear the gossip, what the gossip-mongers said … Who can stop those tongues when they get a whiff of something racy?”

  You can imagine how frantically Nonat rushed through that breach opened before his demented brain. Which was when the Chicken Woman quietly and warily began to tell the story that had to come to her in the yard minutes ago. Recalling the kerfuffle caused by the bastard’s birth, she recounted the rumors sparked by the disappearance of that girl who’d been abandoned by her fiancé, and while caviling and protesting she knew nothing, she suggested there might in fact be some truth in all that chatter …

  “Might be, or might not … What do we know? And God forbid I should bear false witness … What I’m telling you … was just a rumor making the rounds.”

  As Maria spoke, El Senyoret felt constricted by the metal hoops tightening around his ribs, and sweated blood and tears. Once again they were claiming he had poverty-stricken parents he should be ashamed of, and were trying to block his path and persuade him to desist from his search. It was horrendous! The opaque malevolence of chance … the cruel mockery of malign powers! However, his violent reaction soon made him see things in a fresh light. No, it was anything but random and innocent, it was a premeditated, deceitful act … And vaguely—because he couldn’t grasp a motive—he felt, he intuited an unknown factor, that wasn’t insoluble in itself, that nobody wanted to shed light on; he guessed strange elements were conspiring to mislead him, to put him off track, to keep him away from the truth, basically ravaging and destroying what he firmly believed within himself; his hunch that he came from illustrious stock … And his rebel nature surged; once again he found cold, razor-sharp words.

  “Let’s forget all the gossip, godmother … I want to know what you know and what you saw and nothing else!”

  And, angry and angst-ridden, he tried to prompt new leads that would enable him to tie up loose ends, and find the flimsiest thread to lead him back to his origins. To no avail. Quite naturally, she piled on the futile detail, repeated what she’d already said in different guises, wandered unnerved this way and that, but never once contradicted herself or added anything crucial. Until, tired of flailing and tripping in that relentless murk, Nonat felt his spirit ebbing, as it had hours earlier, and curtailed his frenzied interrogation. And that was the moment the Chicken Woman calmly chose to introduce her next cunning ploy.

  “That woman … Your … the one they said was your mother was very pretty … She looked like the Virgin Mary … She was a good lass, like her family, and nobody ever had a bad word to say … Apart from that business … which if it were true, was certainly a blemish … But she was blinded by one of those loves that stops us from seeing what we are doing … But she wasn’t ashamed … The best proof of that was how the poor girl fled, and how nobody has ever seen her in these parts again … First they said she went to Vilafranca or Granollers, or somewhere up there. She met a baker, they liked each other, married and left for Algiers … I bet they’re still there, trying to make a bit of money … Though they were both sensible and hardworking, my feeling is their business can hardly have prospered …”

  She paused, and then as Nonat said nothing, she added affectionately: “I can see you’re upset, my son … You don’t believe it … The idea you might find parents that you’ve never known, is like being born anew … It’s true what they say: blood runs thicker than water. But don’t be taken in by my words. All that could be wind in the trees, senyor, as they say … You know there’s no stopping gossips, that they make a snowball out of the smallest flake … Before you go any further, you need to investigate properly …” She felt a sudden twinge: “If you like, I could make the first contact …”

  Nonat had drifted off, but he came around and scowled aggressively at his godmother.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m a friend of that lass’s mother and of the whole village, though, naturally, we’ve never talked about any of all that … You can imagine what a blow it was, and it didn’t really affect me, you know? But it’s different now … I’ve met you and feel sorry for you … I’ve given it some thought and I’d like to help you as much as I can. As for your father, if it really was him, forget it. He worked as a farmhand near here, and after the scandal, as people gave him the eye, he took off, and God knows where he is … But as far as she goes, we could find out more than the gospel truth. If you agree, I’ll try my luck with her grandmother and use my cunning, my soft, soft touch, and see if I get anything out of her, confirming it or not … And once you’re sure you’ve got the facts, nothing can stop you from hopping on a boat to Algiers and meeting the woman who brought you into the world … Your mother! Lucky the man who has one! And even the worst are saints in the eyes of their children … And that lass was as good as gold, she really was … I tell you! She might be on the poor side—but what’s wealth by the side of love?—her heart was so big … After what she must have suffered, you turning up will remove that thorn. As well as knowing she’ll have your support in her old age …”

  Nonat was seething with rage; white heat frying his guts. She was lying! He didn’t know why, he couldn’t imagine what hidden intent led her to playact, but he was sure he was right, he’d have wagered his life on it. He’d seen her the night before when she recognized him, and was effusive, welcoming and cheerful, opening her heart and mind … and then, when he’d explained himself, she suddenly clammed up, ent
renched herself behind evasions and enigmatic silences, and that had been a warning. And now her glances, her words, her gestures, the thoughts lurking behind her temples, were slippery like an eel; she sidestepped all his questions, zigzagged from one lie to another; she was all deceit and imagination, the sand-like figments she tried to fling into his eyes to make him lose his impetus, to blur everything. That bundle on the doorstep was fake, fake too the woman running away, fake the farmhand, fake the bakery … His godmother knew much more than she was letting on, probably the whole truth, but what she was trying to do with her foolish tales, he suspected, was to shut him off from the truth and plunge him irrevocably into the black pit of ignorance. But why would she do that, for God’s sake? There lay the key: in the reason for all her maneuvering. It must be something big and powerful for her to adopt such a cautious front. He was convinced his suspicions weren’t betraying him … His parents were classy people … Only high status and largesse could muzzle anybody like that, could guarantee such keen loyalties …

  And that was why Nonat was more sure than ever that he was right, and why, against La Gallinaire’s hopes, the precautions she’d taken to put him off track only reinforced and consolidated the deluded bastard’s hopes. Momentarily, he felt murderous impulses. If he’d followed his heart, he’d have grabbed her by the throat and choked her to death. But from very early in life, he was used to swimming against the tide, to pitting his chest against the waves, to being plunged into deep water just when he thought he’d reached a safe harbor, and he’d learned the art of self-control, of recovering his sangfroid quickly, and hiding his impulses. In that dark hour, in the midst of the storm whirling around him, he was calm enough to grasp that nothing would be gained by wreaking havoc. The woman standing before him was an honorable soul—he recognized—and wasn’t lying for the pleasure of lying, but had been obliged to do so by a power that controlled her, and, enslaved to that power, she’d die rather than speak out and yield the solution to the enigma. If he destroyed her, he might destroy his last hope of ever finding the truth … He must respect her, at least until he had lost all hope of ever extracting anything from her.

  The truth existed, and, however remote it was, however much they wanted to keep it from him, he was sure he’d discover it someday, and who knew if that woman might not prove useful …

  He ran his hand nervously through his hair, his fingers tapping his skull, like the fingers of a reed player … Then he stood up, straightened his jacket, tidied his shirt cuffs … He picked up the chair he’d been sitting on and placed it back against the wall. He looked around at the Chicken Woman … As in the Orphanage, his gaze and his voice receded into the distance, assuming the somber shadows of a chasm.

  “Godmother, you’re lying, telling me the opposite of the truth. I don’t know why … But it’s evident you’re being forced to … For the moment I intend to respect your scruples … But tomorrow will be another day …”

  Maria was dumbstruck.

  “But, my son … I’m … I’m saying that if you want …”

  Nonat laughed half-contemptuously.

  “No, though thank you very much. We should leave the farmhand and baker in Algiers in peace … They’re doing no harm … And now, godmother, please do excuse me … Who knows if we’ll meet again in the future, when perhaps your memory will be working better …”

  And after a few bland, colorless words rejecting other invitations and affectionate pleas for him to stay on at least another day, he bid farewell and left, as if he felt a desperate need to abandon that house and those folk who’d only made him taste more rancor and bitter defeat.

  His cape over his arm, with a lordly, leisurely gait, he walked down the dark side of the street, women neighbors peering inquisitively from their doorways. From hers, Maria watched him go and when he turned the corner, she went back inside and looked at her husband.

  His snarling grin had naturally faded as it was now quite pointless.

  “What did I tell you, Jepet?” she muttered gloomily. “Such a fuss about knowing who his parents were, and look how he reacted when I said they were poor … Just like when I suggested he should stay on with us … He couldn’t care less about honest people, honest souls, the salt of the earth … What he’s after is money … getting more sun than shade … He thought ill of me … He said I lied to him … So what! If he’d not fallen into the trap, if he’d not shown his intentions so clearly, perhaps I’d have taken pity on him and said something I’d regret … But, with him being like that, I was never going to do anything stupid … I did well to seal my lips … I pity poor Donya Tulita if she ever falls into his hands! There’s a glint of evil in that young man’s eyes!”

  “So, how did it go?” asked Nonat’s boss when he saw him walk into the shop.

  Nonat tried to act as naturally as possible.

  “Waste of time! The poor woman knew nothing …” and he went to his bedroom to cut the conversation short and change his clothes.

  His boss was overjoyed. She knew nothing? Thank God! I hope he’ll forget all that nonsense now … However, he soon saw Nonat’s obsession hadn’t gone away. The whole day his apprentice worked silently, anxiously, distractedly, as if he was planning a new tack, and that night he complained of a thick head, said he wanted to try to relax and walked out.

  His boss shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in disappointment.

  That lad was on the wrong road, as plain as God was in heaven! But he didn’t know what he could do to change that …

  Nonat wandered around Girona until late into the night. At first full of activity and noise, the city gradually quieted down until the sounds seemed to subside altogether. The only signs of life were the glare of artificial light, the thunderous revving of a saloon car, and people going in and out of a downtown café.

  Air didn’t seem to circulate down the narrow streets of tall, brown houses; enchanted layers of cold, as in a cave, hung between heaven and earth and thick, sticky patches of damp stained the walls’ invisible flagstones and cobbles, as if sweating in a protracted death throe. Now and then the monotonous black countryside was broken by a bend in the road that opened up a large, gleaming sapphire eye; a moonless tract of sky dotted with tremulous stars … Or else, the walls’ precipitous sides were jarred by an unknown cataclysm and seemed to crash down on El Senyoret, that bird in the night, and imprison him in a long, low ravine where he struggled to breathe and his footsteps echoed, treacherously betraying him … The arches of an arcade bore the bulky weight of the buildings in a square, resisting gravity like the shoulders of Atlas … Further on, a random noise or the sharp edge of a street corner made his heart thud with instinctive panic, as if a hand wielding a cruel weapon was about to emerge from the murky depths and a gruff voice, buzzing like a crazed hornet, would bawl the terrifying classic: Your money or your life! Then came the graceful, sturdy silhouette of the belfry of Sant Feliu looming out of the gloom and laying a finger of dense shadow across the sky’s translucent darkness … And later, the arch of a bridge, swelling up from ground level, bestrode the river, peering at the muddy water trickling turbidly beneath, sullen and silent like a shabby tramp, boxed in between cheap and nasty buildings that systematically turned their backs on the water, displaying all the ugliness that stifled the poetry rather than illuminating and ennobling their façades, as opulent Venice would do with its fairy-like touch. . .

  Staggering from one side to the other, like the arcades in the square, like a miniature Atlas, carrying the weight of a world on his shoulders, Nonat had walked almost the whole of Girona, and, feeling tense after expending so much energy, calm on the outside, raging like one of the shop’s furnaces on the inside, he returned home in the early hours, when Girona’s roosters cock-a-doodled to each other from one end of the city to the other, from one gallery to another, and carts began to stir, their wheels and axles squeaking lethargically …

  His boss, an upright fellow, heard him come in, thought the worst, and, re
gretting another uneasy moment his protégé had made him suffer, muttered between sheet and pillow: “God forbid, God forbid, he’s not satisfied with wasting his money, now he’s damaging his health … He must have found a den of nymphs, or the Four Horsemen are after him …”

  However, as we have seen, neither youthful distractions, knuckles or fake cards had consumed the young lad’s time. In that closed city, walled in its pious solemnity, he had merely been trying to discover the seed of the secret folly, misfortune, or sin to which he owed his life. From one street to another, like someone turning the pages of a memoir, he’d been rifling the memories dormant in the tales he’d heard over the last few days, rumors of sins, big and small, sullying the names of distinguished families, of all the impurities, that in life’s seething ferment surface daily in a big city and are swept benignly or malevolently away by that great colander of dross. As a little boy, tortured by the enigma of his origins, his ears had eagerly seized on the stories, slander, or nonsense that reached them, and had zealously hoarded them like a collection of precious stones, and on that nervy, restless night, he had stood in front of every suspect house, scouring his mind for every detail, marrying dates and eras, weighing up possibilities … But, after long, exhausting hours, as he retired to his home like the cold light of a firefly meandering between tombstones, he had felt a fresh sense of disappointment, but then new hope lit up … He would never find anything there. The novelettish episodes he’d cherished were too thin or rehearsed for him to be in doubt, some far too old, others far too obvious, their provenance only too visible, to be at all connected to himself.

  No need to underline that he wasn’t abandoning the higher echelons, rather he would consider only a very select band of suspects; he was jettisoning everything else, scorned with Olympian disdain.