The Childhood of Jesus Read online

‘By the whole you mean…?’

  ‘I mean first the body as body, then later the body in its ideal form.’

  ‘Won’t ordinary experience teach you that? I mean, won’t spending a few nights with a woman teach you all you need to know about the body as body?’

  The boy blushes and looks around for help. He curses himself. These stupid jokes of his!

  ‘As for the body in its ideal form,’ he presses on, ‘we will probably have to wait for the next life before we get to see that.’ He pushes the spaghetti aside half-eaten. It is too much for him, too much stodge. ‘I must go,’ he says. ‘Goodnight. I’ll see you at the docks tomorrow.’

  ‘Goodnight.’ They make no effort to detain him. And rightly so. How must he seem to them, to these fine young men, hardworking, idealistic, innocent? What can they possibly learn from the bitter miasma he gives off?

  ‘How is your boy doing?’ asks Álvaro. ‘We miss him. Have you found a school for him?’

  ‘He isn’t old enough for school yet. He is with his mother. She doesn’t want him to spend too much time with me. His affections will remain divided, she says, as long as there are two adults laying claim to him.’

  ‘But there are always two adults laying claim to us: our father and our mother. We are not bees or ants.’

  ‘That may be so. But in any case I am not David’s father. His mother is the mother but I am not the father. That is the difference. Álvaro, I find this a painful subject. Can we drop it?’

  Álvaro grips him by the arm. ‘David is no ordinary boy. Believe me, I have watched him, I know what I am speaking about. Are you sure you are acting in his best interests?’

  ‘I have handed him over to his mother. He is in her care. Why do you say he is no ordinary boy?’

  ‘You say you have handed him over, but does he really want to be handed over? Why did his mother abandon him in the first place?’

  ‘She did not abandon him. He and she were parted. For a while they lived in different spheres. I helped him to find her. He found her, and they were united. Now they have a natural relationship, that of mother and son. Whereas he and I don’t have a natural relationship. That’s all.’

  ‘If his relationship with you is not natural, what is it?’

  ‘Abstract. He has an abstract relationship with me. A relationship with someone who cares for him in the abstract but has no natural duty of care to him. What did you mean by saying he was not an ordinary boy?’

  Álvaro shakes his head. ‘Natural, abstract…It makes no sense to me. How do you think a mother and a father come together in the first place—the mother and father of the future child? Because they owe each other a natural duty? Of course not. Their paths cross haphazardly, and they fall in love. What could be less natural, more arbitrary, than that? Out of their random conjuncture a new being comes into the world, a new soul. Who, in this story, owes what to whom? I can’t say, and I’m sure you can’t either.

  ‘I used to watch you and your boy together, Simón, and I could see: he trusts you utterly. He loves you. And you love him. So why give him away? Why cut yourself off from him?’

  ‘I haven’t cut myself off from him. His mother has cut him off from me, as is her right. If I could choose, I would be with him still. But I can’t choose. I don’t have the right to choose. I have no rights in this matter.’

  Álvaro is silent, seems to withdraw into himself. ‘Tell me where I can find this woman,’ he says at last. ‘I would like to have a word with her.’

  ‘Be careful. She has a brother who is a nasty piece of work. You shouldn’t tangle with him. In fact she has two brothers, one as unpleasant as the other.’

  ‘I can take care of myself,’ says Álvaro. ‘Where will I find her?’

  ‘Her name is Inés and she has taken over my old apartment in the East Blocks: block B, number 202 on the second floor. Don’t say I sent you because that would not be true. I don’t send you. This is not my idea at all, it is your idea.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I will make it clear to her it is my idea, you have nothing to do with it.’

  The next day, during the midday break, Álvaro beckons him over. ‘I spoke to your Inés,’ he says without preamble. ‘She accepts that you can see the boy, only not yet. At the end of the month.’

  ‘That is wonderful news! How did you persuade her?’

  Álvaro waves a dismissive hand. ‘It doesn’t matter how. She says you can take him for walks. She will inform you when. She asked for your telephone number. I didn’t know it, so I gave her mine. I said I would pass on messages.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am. Please assure her that I won’t upset the boy—I mean, I won’t upset his relationship with her.’

  CHAPTER 16

  THE SUMMONS from Inés comes sooner than expected. The very next morning Álvaro calls him over. ‘There’s an emergency at your apartment,’ he says. ‘Inés phoned as I was leaving home. She wanted me to come over, but I told her I couldn’t spare the time. Don’t be alarmed, it has nothing to do with your boy, it’s just the plumbing. You will need tools. Take the toolbox from the shed. Hurry. She is in quite a state.’

  Inés meets him at the door, wearing (why?—it is not a cold day) a heavy overcoat. She is indeed in quite a state, quite a fury. The toilet is blocked, she says. The building supervisor came to inspect, but refused to do anything about it because (he said) she was not the legal tenant, he did not know her (he said) from a bar of soap. She telephoned her brothers at La Residencia, but they fobbed her off with excuses, being too fastidious (she says bitterly) to get their hands dirty. So this morning, as a last resort, she contacted his colleague Álvaro, who being a working man ought to know about plumbing. And now she has not Álvaro but him.

  She talks on and on, pacing angrily about the living room. She has lost weight since he last saw her. There are pinched lines at the corners of her mouth. In silence he listens; but his eyes are on the boy, who, sitting up in bed—has he only just woken up?—stares at him incredulously, as if he has come back from the land of the dead.

  He flashes the boy a smile. Hello! he mouths silently.

  The boy takes his thumb out of his mouth but does not speak. His hair, naturally curly, has been allowed to grow long. He is wearing a pale blue pyjama suit with a design in red of gambolling elephants and hippopotami.

  Inés has not ceased talking. ‘That toilet has been giving trouble ever since we moved in,’ she is saying. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the people in the flat below are to blame. I asked the supervisor to investigate downstairs, but he wouldn’t even listen to me. I have never met such a rude man. He doesn’t care that you can already smell the stink from the corridor.’

  Inés speaks of sewage without embarrassment. It strikes him as odd: if not intimate, the matter is at least delicate. Does she regard him simply as a workman come to do a job for her, someone whom she need never lay eyes on again; or is she gabbling to hide discomfiture?

  He crosses the room, opens the window, leans out. The outflow pipe from the toilet leads directly into a sewage line down the outside wall. Three metres below it is the outflow pipe from the flat downstairs.

  ‘Have you spoken to the people in number 102?’ he asks. ‘If the whole line is blocked, they will be having the same problem as you. But let me take a look at the toilet first, just in case the fault is something obvious.’ He turns to the boy. ‘Are you going to give me a hand? Isn’t it time you got up, you lazybones! Look how high the sun is in the sky!’

  The boy squirms and gives him a delighted smile. His heart lifts. How he loves this child! ‘Come here!’ he says. ‘Surely you’re not too old to give me a kiss?’

  The boy leaps out of bed and dashes over to hug him. He breathes in the deep, unwashed, milky smells. ‘I like your new pyjamas,’ he says. ‘Shall we go and inspect?’

  The toilet bowl is full nearly to the brim with water and waste. In the toolbox he has brought is a roll of steel wire. He bends the end of the wire into a ho
ok, probes blindly down the throat of the bowl, and comes up with a wad of toilet paper. ‘Have you got a potty?’ he asks the boy. ‘A pot for wee-wee?’ asks the boy. He nods. The boy scampers off and returns bearing a chamber pot draped with a cloth. A moment later Inés rushes in, snatches up the pot, and exits without a word.

  ‘Find me a plastic bag,’ he tells the boy. ‘Make sure there are no holes in it.’

  He fishes up a considerable mass of paper from the blocked pipe, but the water level does not fall. ‘Get dressed and we will go downstairs,’ he tells the boy. And to Inés: ‘If there is no one at home in 102 I will try opening the hatch at ground level. If the blockage is beyond that point, I won’t be able to do anything about it. It will be the responsibility of the local authority. But let us see.’ He pauses. ‘By the way, something like this can happen to anyone. It is no one’s fault. It is just bad luck.’

  He is trying to make things easier for Inés, and hopes she will recognize that. But she will not meet his eyes. She is embarrassed, she is angry; more than that he cannot guess.

  Accompanied by the boy he knocks at the door of flat 102. After a long wait a bolt is withdrawn and the door opens a crack. In the half-light he can make out a dark figure, whether man or woman he cannot tell.

  ‘Good morning,’ he says. ‘I am sorry to intrude. I am from the flat above, where we have a blocked toilet. I wonder whether you are having a similar problem.’

  The door opens wider. It is a woman, old and bent, whose eyes are of a glassy greyness that suggests she cannot see.

  ‘Good morning,’ he repeats. ‘Your toilet. Are you having any problems with your toilet? Any blockages, atascos?’

  No reply. She stands stock-still, her face directed interrogatively towards him. Is she deaf as well as blind?

  The boy steps forward. ‘Abuela,’ he says. The old woman stretches out a hand, strokes his hair, explores his face. For a moment he presses confidingly against her; then he slips past into the apartment. A moment later he is back. ‘It’s clean,’ he says. ‘Their toilet is clean.’

  ‘Thank you, señora,’ he says, and bows. ‘Thank you for your assistance. I am sorry to have disturbed you.’ And to the boy: ‘Their toilet is clean, therefore—therefore what?’

  The boy frowns.

  ‘Here, downstairs, the water flows freely. There, upstairs’—he points up the flight of stairs—‘the water will not flow. Therefore what? Therefore the pipes are blocked where?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ says the boy confidently.

  ‘Good! So where should we go to fix it: upstairs or downstairs?’

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘And we go upstairs because water flows which way, up or down?’

  ‘Down.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘Always. It always flows down. And sometimes up.’

  ‘No. Never up. Always down. Such is the nature of water. The question is, how does the water get upstairs to our apartment without contradicting its nature? How does it happen that when we turn the tap or flush the toilet, water flows for us?’

  ‘Because for us it flows up.’

  ‘No. That is not a good answer. Let me put the question in a different form. How can water get to our apartment without flowing upward?’

  ‘From the sky. It falls from the sky into the taps.’

  True. Water does fall from the sky. ‘But,’ he says, and he raises a cautionary finger, ‘but how does the water get into the sky?’

  Natural philosophy. Let us see, he thinks, how much natural philosophy there is in this child.

  ‘Because the sky breathes in,’ says the child. ‘The sky breathes in’—he draws a deep breath and holds it, a smile on his face, a smile of pure intellectual delight, then dramatically he breathes out—‘and the sky breathes out.’

  The door closes. He hears the snick of the bolt being shot.

  ‘Did Inés tell you about that—about the breathing of the heavens?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you think it up all by yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And who is it in the heavens who breathes in and breathes out and makes the rain?’

  The boy is silent. He wears a frown of concentration. At last he shakes his head.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Never mind. Let’s go and tell your mother our news.’

  The tools he has brought are useless. Only the primitive length of wire holds any promise.

  ‘Why don’t the two of you go for a walk,’ he suggests to Inés. ‘What I am going to do isn’t particularly appetizing. I don’t see why our young friend should be exposed to it.’

  ‘I would prefer to call in a proper plumber,’ says Inés.

  ‘If I can’t do the job then I will go and find you a proper plumber, I promise. One way or another your toilet will be fixed.’

  ‘I don’t want to go for a walk,’ says the boy. ‘I want to help.’

  ‘Thank you, my boy, I appreciate that. But this is not the kind of work where one needs help.’

  ‘I can give you ideas.’

  He exchanges a glance with Inés. Something unspoken passes between them. My clever son! says her look.

  ‘That’s true,’ he says. ‘You are good at ideas. But alas, toilets are not receptive to ideas. Toilets are not part of the realm of ideas, they are just brute things, and working with them is nothing but brute work. So go for a walk with your mother while I get on with the job.’

  ‘Why can’t I stay?’ says the boy. ‘It’s just poo.’

  There is a new note in the boy’s voice, a note of challenge that he does not like. It is going to his head, all this praise.

  ‘Toilets are just toilets, but poo is not just poo,’ he says. ‘There are certain things that are not just themselves, not all the time. Poo is one of them.’

  Inés tugs at the boy’s hand. She is blushing furiously. ‘Come!’ she says.

  The boy shakes his head. ‘It’s my poo,’ he says. ‘I want to stay!’

  ‘It was your poo. But you evacuated it. You got rid of it. It’s not yours any more. You no longer have a right to it.’

  Inés gives a snort and retires to the kitchen.

  ‘Once it gets into the sewer pipes it is no one’s poo,’ he goes on. ‘In the sewers it joins all the other people’s poo and becomes general poo.’

  ‘Then why is Inés cross?’

  Inés. Is that what he calls her: not Mummy, not Mother?

  ‘She is embarrassed. People don’t like to talk about poo. Poo is smelly. Poo is full of bacteria. Poo isn’t good for you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘It’s her poo too. Why is she cross?’

  ‘She is not cross, she is just sensitive. Some people are sensitive, that is their nature, you can’t ask why. But there is no need to be sensitive, because, as I told you, from a certain point it is no one’s poo in particular, it is just poo. Talk to any plumber and he will tell you the same. The plumber doesn’t look at poo and say to himself, How interesting, who would have thought that señor X or señora Y would have poo like that! It’s like an undertaker. An undertaker doesn’t say to himself, How interesting!…’ He stops. I am getting carried away, he thinks, I am talking too much.

  ‘What’s an undertaker?’ asks the boy.

  ‘An undertaker undertakes the care of dead bodies. He is like a plumber. He sees that dead bodies are sent to the right place.’

  And now you are going to ask, What is a dead body?

  ‘What are dead bodies?’ asks the boy.

  ‘Dead bodies are bodies that have been afflicted with death, that we no longer have a use for. But we don’t have to be troubled about death. After death there is always another life. You have seen that. We human beings are fortunate in that respect. We are not like poo that has to stay behind and be mixed again with the earth.’

  ‘What are we like?’

  ‘What are we like if we are
not like poo? We are like ideas. Ideas never die. You will learn that at school.’

  ‘But we make poo.’

  ‘That is true. We partake of the ideal but we also make poo. That is because we have a double nature. I don’t know how to put it more simply.’

  The boy is silent. Let him chew on that, he thinks. He kneels down beside the toilet bowl, rolls his sleeve up as high as it will go. ‘Go for a walk with your mother,’ he says. ‘Go on.’

  ‘And the undertaker?’ says the boy.

  ‘The undertaker? Undertaking is just a job like any other. The undertaker is no different from us. He too has a double nature.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘Not right now. We have other things to do right now. Next time we go to the city I will see if we can find an undertaker’s shop. Then you can have a look.’

  ‘Can we look at dead bodies?’

  ‘No, certainly not. Death is a private matter. Undertaking is a discreet profession. Undertakers don’t show off dead bodies to the public. Now that is enough of that.’ He probes with the wire into the back of the bowl. Somehow he must make the wire follow the S of the trap. If the blockage is not in the trap, then it must be at the junction outside. If that is the case, he has no idea how to fix it. He will have to give up and find a plumber. Or the idea of a plumber.

  The water, in which clots of Inés’s poo still float, closes over his hand, his wrist, his forearm. He forces the wire along the S-bend. Antibacterial soap, he thinks: I will need to wash with antibacterial soap afterwards, brushing scrupulously under the nails. Because poo is just poo, because bacteria are just bacteria.

  He does not feel like a being with a double nature. He feels like a man fishing for an obstruction in a sewage pipe, using primitive tools.

  He withdraws his arm, withdraws the wire. The hook at the end has flattened out. He forms the hook again.

  ‘You can use a fork,’ says the boy.

  ‘A fork is too short.’

  ‘You can use the long fork in the kitchen. You can bend it.’

  ‘Show me what you mean.’

  The boy trots away, comes back with the long fork that was in the apartment when they arrived, that he has never had a use for. ‘You can bend it if you are strong,’ says the boy.