A Necessary Action (8 page)

The young corporal with the shiny boots looked thoughtfully at the engine through a glass-bottomed box. He got one of his men to let down a drag-rope, but soon saw that it was not worth it. Then he sounded the depth and shook his head. When the barque returned, the member of parliament’s daughter was standing on the jetty, looking at him coldly and challengingly.

The cabo knew exactly how long it would take to get hold of a diver or a frogman from the provincial capital, and his smile was not entirely convincing. Thirty seconds later he happened to think of Ramon.

It was in the middle of the siesta and the Alemany brothers were lying asleep in the room behind the kitchen when the cabo came in. He shook Ramon awake and said: ‘General Moscardo’s daughter has lost an outboard engine out at the approaches. Can you get it up?’

‘Of course,’ said Ramon, blinking drowsily. ‘I’ll dive with stones.’

Santiago had woken and sat up.

‘How far down is it lying?’

‘Twenty, twenty-five feet, and they must have it up at once.’

‘Not for nothing, I hope,’ said Santiago.

‘No,’ said the cabo, ‘the General is sure to pay.’

‘And that trouble in the bar?’ said Santiago.

‘That can be forgotten,’ said the cabo, looking at the ceiling, ‘as long as the engine is really got up.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes, sure.’

Santiago went over to the door and called: ‘Francisca, come here.’

His sister came in. She was a shy virgin of twenty-four, who had already grown too fat and had lost most of her freshness. Every time Santiago saw her, he was filled with loathing. He was convinced that they would never marry her off.

‘I want you to hear what the cabo has to say,’ he said. ‘He says that Ramon won’t be prosecuted for that row in the bar, as it appears he is innocent if he dives down to get a motor-boat engine. Didn’t you say that?’

‘Yes, perhaps that’s what I said,’ said the cabo sourly.

Then he turned irritably to Ramon.

‘Hurry now. It’s urgent.’

Ramon remained lying on his bed and looked at his brother.

‘Shall I?’ he asked.

‘Yes, come on, let’s go.’

‘You needn’t come,’ the cabo said to Santiago.

‘Try stopping me.’

Both the girl from Madrid and the young Portuguese came with them in the barque. They thought it was all beginning to be exciting now and when all was said and done perhaps it had not been such a silly thing to have gone and lost the engine.

‘Look how small and squat and muscular he is, and all hairy,’ said the member of parliament’s daughter, when Ramon pulled off his clothes.

Santiago heard her but did not react. He was busy studying the sea bed through the glass-bottomed box.

‘Twenty-four feet!’ he snorted. ‘Let’s skip this, Ramon.’

‘Forty feet, they plumbed,’ said the girl from Madrid.

Santiago looked contemptuously at the cabo.

‘Take us back,’ he said.

‘I can try,’ said Ramon, peering down into the water.

‘Think about Jacinto’s bar,’ said the cabo, drumming with his gloved fingers on the railing.

‘It’ll probably work,’ said Ramon.

Santiago peered down again.

‘D’you think so?’ he said.

‘Yes, I think it’ll work.’

Santiago leant close to his brother and whispered into his ear:

‘Try, but don’t take any risks. If you feel it’s not going to work, then drop the stone at once and come up. Do you hear what I say, at once …’

Ramon nodded. He lifted the large stone up from the bottom of the boat, took it in his arms and climbed over the railing.

‘This is fascinating,’ whispered the girl from Madrid.

Aloud she said: ‘I really do hope he gets it up. It’s my engine and it was awfully expensive.’

‘It’s my brother,’ said Santiago, looking bitterly at her.

‘Let me look,’ she said hastily, getting down on her knees on the bottom of the boat. ‘Give me that thing.’

Santiago gave her the glass-bottomed box. It was calm and in the clear water he could still see Ramon without the help of the box. The white figure grew slowly smaller and smaller. Time seemed to come to a halt and the seconds grew long and clear.

‘I think he’s got it, no, I don’t know,’ said the girl excitedly.

Santiago thought: Damned idiot, he’d go on down to a hundred feet with that stone if it was that deep. And if the engine is stuck, he’ll stay there until he drowns.

He was drenched with sweat.

‘It won’t work,’ said the Portuguese.

‘Yes, yes! He’s coming now. Terrific,’ said the girl.

Santiago saw his brother through the water. The blurred white figure grew larger, slowly. Unendurably slowly.

He won’t make it, thought Santiago. If anything happens to him, I’ll chuck this whole mob into the sea.

‘Drop it, drop it, for God’s sake,’ he whispered. ‘Drop their stupid little toy and who cares what happens to it.’

‘Come on, come on, good boy, oh, come on!’ said the girl from Madrid.

Ramon’s black head shot out of the water and at the same moment Santiago grabbed his arm.

The civil guard caught hold of the engine and the cabo made
his contribution by wetting his uniform jacket right up to the shoulder.

‘Good, oh, goodie,’ said the girl, clapping her hands.

Ramon was waving his arms about desperately and his breath was coming in great rasps. The Portuguese helped drag him over the railing and lie him down on the bottom of the boat. Santiago knelt down beside his brother and stayed there until they had come round the lighthouse.

‘Fascinating,’ said the girl quietly to her fiancé. ‘Did you see, like an animal, with only one aim in mind …’

When they arrived back, Ramon was able to stand up again. He was still very pale in the face, breathing heavily and raspingly, and Santiago had to help him up the jetty.

The fun was over. The glow in the girl’s eyes had gone.

‘Have you got any loose change on you?’ she said to her fiancé.

The man dug into his pocket and drew out a fistful of coins and small notes. He held them out, almost shamefacedly, and Santiago took them hesitantly.

‘Well, goodbye then,’ said the General’s daughter.

She stopped for a moment in front of Ramon, looked him up and down and smiled at him in a way that could mean many things.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ said Santiago.

He put his arm round his brother and they walked towards the fish-van.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘My head’s aching again. How much did we get?’

‘Don’t know. Couple of hundred, perhaps.’

‘Not bad. That’s more than we usually earn from your mysterious affairs.’

‘Huh … and we don’t do that just for money, anyhow.’

‘No, of course not. Did you see what a girl she was? You, she’d make a good tail, wouldn’t she? Think of tearing off those trousers of hers and … She was even better than the Norwegian woman!’

‘How you talk, little brother,’ said Santiago, looking round seriously.

Then he bent down and began winding the starting-handle of the old Ford.

At the beginning of December the weather changed. The temperature rose swiftly and the wind dropped. It was just as hot as in the height of summer and the few resident foreigners in the puerto began bathing again. The fishing boats, which had been in harbour a couple of weeks because of the bad weather, went out to sea and made good catches. In the town up in the mountains, the heat lay heavily and immobile between the stone walls. It was hard to work in the daytime and the hot nights did not lend themselves to sleep.

The good weather lasted for two weeks.

When the sun went down, the heat became more and more apparent, as if it had been materialized into something dry and black and dusty and it closed in even more round the houses and people.

The inhabitants of the house in Barrio Son Jofre had eaten and were sitting out on the steps. They were smoking and looking out into the darkness in silence.

They had not done any work, but had spent nearly the whole day in the puerto, lying stretched out in the shade of a cliff about two strides from the water. When they had gone back, they had felt rested and refreshed, with a dawning desire to work, but now this had already gone and they knew it would be a long time before the night would bring them any relief.

Siglinde shifted restlessly and crushed her cigarette out between her fingers.

‘I can’t stand this silent dark heat tonight too,’ she said. ‘Let’s go down to the puerto again, where at least there’s a slight breeze. It seems to be easier to breathe when you’re nearer the water, somehow.’

‘It’ll be better in an hour or two,’ said Dan Pedersen.

‘It’s just those hours I don’t want. If you’re not coming, I’m going down by myself.’

‘You daren’t.’

‘Why not?’

She sounded genuinely surprised.

‘You can hardly start the truck.’

‘You’ve no idea what I can and can’t do.’

They all three went, as usual with Dan and Siglinde in the front and Willi Mohr on the bench behind.

Halfway to the puerto, Dan Pedersen ran over a sheep and killed it. The whole flock was standing quite still on the road beyond a sharp bend and as the camioneta had its engine switched off, the meeting was equally surprising for both parties. Dan braked sharply but it was no use. The nearest animal was knocked over by the bumper and fell partly under the front wheel. Only a few days before, the mail bus had killed fifteen sheep at once in exactly the same way. The shepherd was a weak-minded old man who had sold most of his bells and had not got the sense to keep the flock moving along the edges of the road. So it was not a very serious accident, but the sheep, a ewe, was undoubtedly dead and lay on its back with pitifully splayed legs. The shepherd came up to the truck and jabbered excitedly as he gesticulated with his gnarled stick. The sheep-dog crept up to bite Dan Pedersen’s leg. Dan swore and kicked out at it.

‘Yes, yes, we’ll pay you tomorrow,’ he said irritably. ‘We’ll go up to the owner and pay him. But we’ll damn well have the meat in that case.’

The shepherd jabbered on in his almost incomprehensible dialect.

Two civil guards came up out of the darkness and shone their torches. When the shepherd caught sight of them, he stopped abruptly and seemed to sink into his rags. He stood there with his head down, as if waiting to be beaten. His whole body was shaking, but perhaps that was just old age.

‘We must apologize,’ said one of the civil guards. ‘Sheep should not be on the road and they’re supposed to have proper bells on them.’

The other one went up to the shepherd, lifted his head by putting his finger under his chin, and barked a few sentences in gutteral Catalonian. Then he boxed the old man’s ears and the old man began to weep.

Dan Pedersen and Willi Mohr climbed up into the camioneta again.

The civil guards saluted.

The truck rolled on.

Five minutes later the bay opened out before them and they saw the scattered lights of the puerto. Out at sea they could see
the petrol lamps of the calamary boats like a pearl necklace of etched white points of light against the dark water.

Dan Pedersen let the camioneta free-wheel until it stopped by itself in the middle of the quay.

They sat down outside one of the bars facing the harbour and ordered vermouth and iced-water. It was a trifle cooler here, and it smelt of the sea.

They had only been sitting there five minutes when Santiago and Ramon came sauntering along the quay. They shook hands, pulled out two cane chairs and sat down at the table.

Dan Pedersen went into the bar and fetched a chess set, placed the board between himself and Santiago and began to set out the pieces.

Willi Mohr sipped carefully at his vermouth as he watched the others.

Ramon looked listless and depressed, although he hurried to smile when he felt himself observed. Several times he held his forehead and the back of his head as if he were trying to loosen an invisible noose. Now and again he looked covetously at Siglinde’s naked feet and long bare legs.

Siglinde kept shifting her body as if she were uncomfortable and she kept changing the position of her legs. Sometimes her eyes flickered from one person to another. In between she looked at Dan, her eyes running down the length of his body and often resting on his face or hands. She seemed nervous. Perhaps it’s the heat, thought Willi Mohr, who had no great experience of women.

The chess game was rather uneven at first. Dan Pedersen made some inspired moves in the middle of the game and took several pieces. A moment later he grew careless and lost a piece. Then he concentrated and played coldly and systematically to make the most of his lead.

Willi Mohr gradually went over to watching only his opponent.

Santiago saw that he was losing and his situation worsened slowly and inexorably, but he did not give up. The look in his eyes deepened and grew more and more ill-humoured. He made no more mistakes, but it was already too late. For each move he was driven nearer and nearer to the impotence which is one of the logical conclusions of this nerve-racking game.

Not until Dan Pedersen took his queen with his freed pawn, did Santiago give up.

Willi Mohr had the impression that he would have done almost anything to hinder his defeat.

‘Did you win?’ said Ramon.

Santiago shook his head and his brother’s face clouded. When he noticed that Willi Mohr was looking at him, he laughed again.

‘You played well today,’ said Dan Pedersen magnanimously. ‘I slackened off for a while, I know, but you played well all the same. But you concentrated too late.’

They shook hands and Santiago smiled, not very convincingly.

Dan Pedersen put the chessmen away, got up and took the set into the bar.

Siglinde irritably changed the position of her legs again and let her eyes follow him.

It was quiet in the puerto and everyone was waiting for the small cool breeze from the sea. Only a few people were still sitting outside the cafés facing the harbour. It would soon be one o’clock and the bar-owners with no more customers had begun to close up.