Alberto's Lost Birthday (22 page)

Alberto nodded. He saw Néstor sitting on the ground, blood dripping from his nose onto his white shirt. He saw Néstor say something, saw his mouth move, but he couldn’t hear
the words. He sensed a rage; then he was standing over Néstor, punching and kicking him with all his strength. Then large hands grasped him and pulled him away from the boy.

‘What did he say’ – Alberto looked at Mimi – ‘to make me so angry?’

She paused, unsure whether to speak.

‘Mimi, he said something to me. What was it?’

Mimi breathed in deeply. ‘He said that your father was not your real father.’

Alberto saw the scene again, and this time he could hear Néstor’s words as they came from his mouth.

You’re a bastard
.

The old man caught his breath. He winced and closed his eyes. As Mimi watched him, Alberto rubbed his chest distractedly.

‘Are you all right?’ said Mimi, concerned.

Alberto opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘I’m fine,’ he whispered. He leant back in his chair.

‘After you left, we never spoke of it again. Néstor hid in his room for days. And although my parents asked repeatedly, neither of us said a word.’

Mimi continued, ‘A soldier came the next day to say your father’s car had been found. It had crashed and then caught fire. They gave my father your father’s papers. They were
half burnt, but they were definitely his. The soldier said your father had been thrown from the vehicle and had died in the blaze. When my father asked about you, the soldier said you must have
perished too.

‘My father wanted to go and look for himself – just in case. But the soldier said the area was very dangerous – the fighting was spreading. And he said no one inside the car
could have possibly survived. My mother pleaded with Papá not to go, and in the end he agreed.

‘I’m so sorry, Alberto. They truly thought you had died in the car. If I’d known, I would have begged my father to go and search for you. And he would have. He adored you.

‘Instead, we learnt to live with the fact that you and your father were dead. Even Néstor was upset – he blamed himself. He was only a boy. Who could have known a moment of
childish spitefulness would have such repercussions?’

Alberto frowned. Memories suddenly overwhelmed him – not just the argument, but the drive with his father and more.

Mimi reached across the table and put her hand on top of his.

Alberto looked up at her and said, ‘You wouldn’t have found me anyway.’

‘What?’ said Mimi.

‘If you and your father had come to the car to look for me, I wouldn’t have been there.’

Now he could see it. All of it. The memories were crystal clear, as if they’d been sealed in a vacuum and now released.

Alberto took a deep breath and started to speak.

‘After the fight with Néstor, my father took me to his car. We drove in silence. We were heading in the direction of the river, where he used to take us fishing.

‘But then we started talking. He asked why I hit your brother. For a long time I was silent, but he kept asking. I think he knew the answer, but he wanted me to say it. In the end, I did.
I said that Néstor had called me a bastard.

‘It was then that we missed the turning for the river. I don’t think my father noticed until we were quite a long way past it. And then he just carried on, whichever way the road
took us. He just drove. And we talked.

‘He said that it was true. That he wasn’t my real father. But that he was proud to be the man I called “Papá”. He said he had treated me as his own son, and
intended to as long as God gave him breath in his body.

‘Of course, I asked him who my father was. He said he didn’t know. My mother had had an affair, and it was a man she loved deeply, but he had left her. She had turned to my father
then, and was only a few months pregnant when he married her. He told me my mother never spoke of the man again. She had never spoken to anyone of him.

‘He said he was sorry. He was sorry about the way I had found out. He was sorry I had never been able to meet my mother or talk to her about it. He said he hoped it would not tarnish my
thoughts of my mother. He told me what a wonderful woman she was: clever and beautiful and capable of huge love.

‘I told him he was my papá. That I could never consider anyone else my father. He looked at me. He had tears in his eyes. He couldn’t speak, he was so overwhelmed with
emotion.

‘That’s when it happened. A tyre burst. You remember how old that car was? We weren’t travelling very fast, but when the tyre blew, my father wasn’t looking at the road.
He was looking at me. It all happened so fast. The car swerved, and although he tried, my father couldn’t regain control. We veered into the ditch, then bounced out and spun. That’s
when we hit the tree.

‘When we stopped, Papá was lying across the wheel, and his head was bleeding. I could smell petrol. I couldn’t open the door, so I climbed out of the window. I ran to my
father’s door and started pulling at it, but it was stuck. The smell of petrol was strong, and I remembered Papá had been to the village when the last fuel delivery had been made. The
car had nearly a full tank. Under the battered bonnet, I could see a flicker. I knew it was a flame.

‘I realized I had to get my father out of the car. I was screaming and shouting at him to wake up. After what seemed like an eternity, he lifted his head and turned to me. I shouted at him
to open the door. He moved so slowly I was frantic. But he reached down to the handle on the inside, and as I pulled on the door, it flew open.

‘Right at that moment, the front of the car burst into flames. Papá was too groggy to move, so I pulled him from the front seat and onto the road. I was still dragging him when the
car exploded. The force blew both of us backwards. I hit my head and must have been unconscious for a while. I don’t know how long it was, but when I woke up, Papá was on top of
me.

‘I wriggled out from under him, calling his name. But the moment I saw him, I knew he was dead. He had taken the brunt of the blast, and his body had shielded me. He was horribly burnt. I
could barely look at him.

‘I think I screamed. I remember calling for help – I don’t know how long for. But the road was completely empty. We had been driving for hours, and I had no idea where we were
or how I could get help.

‘Then I realized no one could help my father now anyway. I sat down beside him and lifted his bloody head onto my lap. I put my arms around him and held his burnt body. I cried. I sobbed
and I rocked his poor, broken body. I grieved for everything I had lost – all the family I would never know, and the one man who was truly my father.’

Alberto can see his father lying in his arms. He can feel his arms, stiff and sore. His father has been dead for some time. It’s late and the sun is sinking in the sky. With one last kiss
on his father’s head, he stands and turns. He walks away from the road and into the bushes. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he has to get away from this terrible scene.

Through the bushes and across the fields the child Alberto walks. He doesn’t stop. The gorse scratches his legs, and he stumbles many times, but he keeps walking. The night becomes black
and he can barely see his feet, but he keeps going.

His mind is a whirl. His father is dead. But he wasn’t his father. Who is his father? Should he go home? It isn’t his home anymore. Not now his father is dead. He has no mother and
no father. He is an orphan.

He shakes his head as he walks, but the thoughts refuse to go away; instead, they shout at him, and the longer he walks, the more confused the thoughts become.

He finally stops for a moment and shuts his eyes. He takes himself inside his head. He sees his thoughts. They clatter and crash into each other. He realizes he doesn’t want to think these
thoughts anymore. He doesn’t want to think about anything anymore. He screws his eyes very tight and looks at the thoughts. As he concentrates, the thoughts soften and swirl around his head.
And then, quite purposefully, he sends them away. One by one, they disappear into a mist. His mind becomes blank. Now he doesn’t know what to think, what to feel.

Suddenly, he hears talking. He realizes he is near a road and he creeps behind a bush and kneels down. He keeps very still. It is a group of men, soldiers, passing by. They are talking about
food. He wonders if he is hungry but can’t feel anything.

Waiting for the men to pass by, he is aware of leaves and twigs rubbing against his bare legs. He is just about to stand after the men have passed by when he hears more footsteps. He puts his
head down and remains as still as he can.

Suddenly, something lands on his head. He senses more than feels his hair singeing and realizes it is a cigarette. Instinctively, he flicks it off his head. Then he holds his breath, staying as
still as he can. He knows his life depends on it.

‘Show yourself,’ instructs a man’s voice. He doesn’t move. What should he do? His mind is blank. He does what he is told.

He clambers out of the bushes. He follows the orders and stands where he is instructed. With a sharp click, a flame lights up all their faces. He sees a pale man with freckles and a young man
pointing a gun at him. They both wear black hats and dark uniforms.

‘What’s your name?’ demands the pale man. The way he talks is strange. He doesn’t sound the same as people Alberto knows.

‘Alberto.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘I walked.’

‘Where from?’

Thoughts try to return. They force against the thin wall he has formed to keep them out. They push and push trying to get back in.
Where from?
they insist.
Where are you from? Who
are you, and where are you from?

With all the effort he can muster, Alberto pushes them out of his mind. He will not think of those things again. He will never let those thoughts back.

And suddenly the soldier is holding him. He realizes he is crying, and with a sense of relief, he collapses into the man’s body.

When he has cried his fill, the pale man gives the young soldier an instruction. The young soldier takes his hand, and as he looks up, he sees the pale soldier smile, even in the dark.
Obediently, he is led away.

After a short time walking, the young man says to him, ‘Alberto, eh? What’s your second name?’

‘Romero.’ He can say that without letting the thoughts back in, but he knows he can’t say – can’t remember – anything more or else the thoughts will
return.

Then more questions. Where does he live? Where was he going? Where are his family? What was he doing walking in the dark?

He has a dim memory of a car, but he says nothing.

The memory skips and he is walking again. This time he is with the one they call El Rubio. They are walking in comfortable silence.

He listens to the quiet stamp of their footsteps and the swishing of the grass as it flicks past their legs. He is enjoying each moment, concentrating on all of his senses and filling his mind
with this peaceful moment.

‘Alberto, are you sure you can’t remember anything about your home?’ the soldier asks.

He finds he cannot. He tries gently to see if there are any memories, but with relief, he realizes they have gone. Completely gone.

‘No, nothing,’ he says.

‘Not even your mamá?’

Suddenly, he hears his own voice shout,
Mimi!
The memories bubble up again, but he stamps down on them, before they can grow.

The soldier pushes him with more questions. But he finds the more he is prodded for information, the more doors close in his mind. Everything is carefully locked away.

The soldier gives up and for a while they talk easily about his home in England, his strange accent and his sunshine-yellow hair. The Englishman tries to explain why he is fighting in the war.
As he listens to talk of a battle for fairness against cruelty, he sees a boy push a girl over. He flies at the boy and hits him in the face.

He realizes he is standing still, and the soldier is talking to him. With reluctance he explains, ‘I just had a memory.’

‘What was it?’

‘I hit another boy,’ he replies.

‘Why?’

He sees the boy push the girl again, but this time she falls and falls and disappears into black. There’s nothing there. The memory has gone.

‘I don’t know,’ he says honestly.

The soldier is talking, but he isn’t listening. For the first time, he is trying to remember. He tries to see the scene where he hit another boy. But it’s not there. He tries to find
something else in his memory – names, places, a home. But there’s nothing there. He has dispelled them all. It’s not quite as comforting as it should be.

Now the Englishman is talking about fighting and throws an easy punch at his shoulder. He punches the man half-heartedly in the leg. The soldier then shows him how to hit properly, how to hold
his hand in a fist.

Remember this, he thinks then. Remember this moment with the Englishman – this is something to remember. This is a new memory.

Time skips by again. He is standing in a churchyard. A door is open, flooding light onto him and the soldier. They both stand in front of a priest. He is tall and bespectacled.
The priest gives the Englishman a long look, turns to him, then back to the soldier.

In his long robes, the cleric steps forward and puts a hand on his head. He in turn looks to Rubio. After a moment, the man with the yellow hair smiles and winks at him. He relaxes. He is
leaving one man he trusts and is in the care of another. He smiles at the Englishman before the priest leads him into the church.

The church feels safe and warm. The priest introduces himself as Father Francisco. Then, without speaking, the priest takes him to a tiny bedroom. There, he pulls back the covers on the bed,
takes off the boy’s jacket and boots, and helps him climb in. Then all is black.

When the sunlight reappears, he sees another soldier. This soldier is wearing an officer’s khaki uniform. The officer and Father Francisco are having a discussion –
it’s very heated; they both seem angry. As he watches, the officer spits in the priest’s face.