The Childhood of Jesus Read online

  ‘She tells me bedtime stories.’

  ‘That’s good. Once you have learned to read by yourself, you won’t have to rely on Inés or me or anyone else. You will be able to read all the stories in the world.’

  ‘I can read, only I don’t want to. I like Inés to tell me stories.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit short-sighted? Reading will open new windows to you. What kind of stories does Inés tell you?’

  ‘Third Brother stories.’

  ‘Third Brother stories? I don’t know any of those. What are they about?’

  The boy stops, clasps his hands before him, stares into the distance, and begins to speak.

  ‘Once upon a time there were three brothers and it was winter and it was snowing and the mother said, Brothers Three, Brothers Three, I feel a great pain in my insides and I fear I am going to die unless one of you will seek out the Wise Woman who guards the precious herb of cure.

  ‘Then the First Brother said, Mother, Mother, I will find the Wise Woman. And he put on his cloak and went out in the snow and he met a fox and the fox said to him, Where are you going, Brother? and the Brother said, I am seeking the Wise Woman who guards the precious herb of cure, so I have no time to talk to you, Fox. And the fox said, Give me food and I will show you the way, and the Brother said, Out of my way, Fox, and he gave the fox a kick and went into the forest and was never heard of again.

  ‘Then the Mother said, Brothers Two, Brothers Two, I feel a great pain in my insides and I fear I am going to die unless one of you will seek out the Wise Woman who guards the precious herb of cure.

  ‘So the Second Brother said, Mother, Mother, I will go, and he put on his cloak and went out in the snow and he met a wolf and the wolf said, Give me food and I will show you the way to the Wise Woman, and the Brother said, Out of my way, Wolf, and gave him a kick and went into the forest and was never heard of again.

  ‘Then the Mother said, Third Brother, Third Brother, I feel a great pain in my insides and I fear I am going to die unless you bring me the precious herb of cure.

  ‘Then the Third Brother said, Never fear, Mother, I will find the Wise Woman and bring back the precious herb of cure. And he went out in the snow and he met a bear and the bear said, Give me food and I will show you the way to the Wise Woman. And the Third Brother said, Gladly, Bear, will I give whatever you ask. Then the bear said, Give me your heart to devour. And the Third Brother said, Gladly will I give you my heart. So he gave the bear his heart and the bear devoured it.

  ‘Then the bear showed him a secret path, and he came to the Wise Woman’s house and he knocked on the door and the Wise Woman said, Why are you bleeding, Third Brother? And the Third Brother said, I gave my heart to the bear to devour so that he would show me the way, for I must bring back the precious herb of cure that will heal my mother.

  ‘Then the Wise Woman said, Behold, here is the precious herb of cure whose name is Escamel, and because you had faith and gave up your heart to be devoured, your mother shall be healed. Follow the drops of blood back through the forest and you will find your way home.

  ‘Then the Third Brother found his way home and he said to his mother, Behold, Mother, here is the herb Escamel, and now goodbye, I must leave you because the bear has devoured my heart. And his mother tasted the herb Escamel and at once she was healed, and she said, My Son, My Son, I see you are shining with a great light, and it was true, he was shining with a great light and then he was borne up into the sky.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s all. That’s the end of the story.’

  ‘So the last brother was turned into a star and the mother was left alone.’

  The boy is silent.

  ‘I don’t like that story. The ending is too sad. Anyway, you can’t be the third brother and be borne up into the sky like a star because you are the one and only brother and therefore the first brother.’

  ‘Inés says I can have more brothers.’

  ‘Does she! And where are these brothers to come from? Does she expect me to bring them to her as I brought you?’

  ‘She says she is going to have them out of her tummy.’

  ‘Well, no woman can make children all by herself, she will need a father to help her, she ought to know that. It’s a law of nature, the same law for us as for dogs and wolves and bears. But even if she does have more sons, you will still be the first son, not the second or the third.’

  ‘No!’ The boy’s voice is angry. ‘I want to be the third son! I told Inés and she said yes. She said I can go back in her tummy and come out again.’

  ‘Inés said that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, if you can bring that off it would be a miracle. I have never heard of a big boy like you going back into his mother’s tummy, let alone coming out again. Inés must have meant something else. Maybe she was trying to say that you will always be the best beloved.’

  ‘I don’t want to be the best beloved, I want to be the third son! She promised me!’

  ‘One comes before two, David, and two before three. Inés can make promises until she is blue in the face but she can’t change that. One-two-three. It’s a law even stronger than a law of nature. It is called the law of numbers. Anyway, you only want to be the third son because the third son is the hero of these stories she tells you. There are lots of other stories where the eldest son is the hero, not the third son. There don’t even have to be three sons. There can be just one son, and he doesn’t have to have his heart devoured. Or the mother can have a daughter and no sons. There are many, many kinds of story and many kinds of hero. If you learned to read you would find that out for yourself.’

  ‘I can read, I just don’t want to. I don’t like reading.’

  ‘That’s not very smart. Besides, you are going to be six years old one of these days, and when you turn six you will have to go to school.’

  ‘Inés says I don’t have to go to school. She says I am her treasure. She says I can learn all by myself at home.’

  ‘I agree you are her treasure. She is very lucky to have found you. But are you sure you want to stay at home with Inés all the time? If you went to school you would meet other children of your age. You could learn to read properly.’

  ‘Inés says I won’t get individual attention at school.’

  ‘Individual attention! What does that mean?’

  ‘Inés says I must have individual attention because I am clever. She says that at school clever children don’t get individual attention and then they get bored.’

  ‘And what makes you think you are so clever?’

  ‘I know all the numbers. Do you want to hear them? I know 134 and I know 7 and I know’—he draws a deep breath—‘4623551 and I know 888 and I know 92 and I know—’

  ‘Stop! That’s not knowing the numbers, David. Knowing the numbers means being able to count. It means knowing the order of the numbers—which numbers come before and which come after. Later on it will also mean being able to add and subtract numbers—getting from one number to another in a single jump, without counting all the steps between. Naming numbers isn’t the same as being clever with numbers. You could stand here and name numbers all day and you wouldn’t come to the end of them, because the numbers have no end. Didn’t you know that? Didn’t Inés tell you?’

  ‘It’s not true!’

  ‘What is not true? That there is no end to the numbers? That no one can name them all?’

  ‘I can name them all.’

  ‘Very well. You say you know 888. What is the next number after 888?’

  ‘92.’

  ‘Wrong. The next number is 889. Which of the two is bigger, 888 or 889?’

  ‘888.’

  ‘Wrong. 889 is bigger because 889 comes after 888.’

  ‘How do you know? You have never been there.’

  ‘What do you mean, been there? Of course I haven’t been to 888. I don’t need to have been there to know 888 is smaller than 889. Why? Because I have learned how numbers are
constructed. I have learned the rules of arithmetic. When you go to school you will learn the rules too, and then numbers won’t any longer be such a’—he hunts for the word—‘such a complication in your life.’

  The boy does not respond, but regards him levelly. Not for a moment does he think his words pass him by. No, they are being absorbed, all of them: absorbed and rejected. Why is it that this child, so clever, so ready to make his way in the world, refuses to understand?

  ‘You have visited all the numbers, you tell me,’ he says. ‘So tell me the last number, the very last number of all. Only don’t say it is Omega. Omega doesn’t count.’

  ‘What is Omega?’

  ‘Never mind. Just don’t say Omega. Tell me the last number, the very last one.’

  The boy closes his eyes and draws a deep breath. He frowns with concentration. His lips move, but he utters no word.

  A pair of birds settle on the bough above them, murmuring together, ready to roost.

  For the first time it occurs to him that this may be not just a clever child—there are many clever children in the world—but something else, something for which at this moment he lacks the word. He reaches out and gives the boy a light shake. ‘That’s enough,’ he says. ‘That’s enough counting.’

  The boy gives a start. His eyes open, his face loses its rapt, distant look and contorts. ‘Don’t touch me!’ he screams in a strange, high-pitched voice. ‘You are making me forget! Why do you make me forget? I hate you!’

  ‘If you don’t want him to go to school,’ he says to Inés, ‘at least let me teach him to read. He is ready for it, he will pick it up in no time.’

  There is a tiny library in the East Blocks community centre, with a couple of shelves of books: Teach Yourself Carpentry, The Art of Crocheting, One Hundred and One Summer Recipes, and so forth. But flat on its face under other books, its spine torn off, lies An Illustrated Children’s Don Quixote.

  Triumphantly he displays his find to Inés.

  ‘Who is Don Quixote?’ she asks.

  ‘A knight in armour, from the old days.’ He opens the book to the first illustration: a tall, scrawny man with the wisp of a beard, clad in a suit of armour, mounted on a tired-looking nag; beside him a tubby fellow on a donkey. Before them the road winds into the distance. ‘It’s a comedy,’ he says. ‘He will enjoy it. No one is drowned, no one is killed, not even the horse.’

  He settles down at the window with the boy on his knee. ‘You and I are going to read this book together, a page each day, sometimes two pages. First I will read the story aloud, then we will go through it word by word, looking at how the words are put together. Is that agreed?’

  The boy nods.

  ‘There was a man living in La Mancha—La Mancha is in Spain, where the Spanish language originally came from—a man no longer young but not yet old, who one day got the idea into his head that he would become a knight. So he took down the rusty suit of armour that hung on the wall, and strapped it on, and whistled for his horse, who was named Rocinante, and called his friend Sancho, and said to him, Sancho, I am of a mind to ride in search of knightly adventures—will you join me? See, there is Sancho and there is Sancho again, the same word, beginning with the big S. Try to remember the way it looks.’

  ‘What are knightly adventures?’ asks the boy.

  ‘The adventures of a caballero, a knight. Rescuing beauteous ladies in distress. Battling with ogres and giants. You will see. The book is full of knightly adventures.

  ‘Now, Don Quixote and his friend Sancho—you see, Don Quixote with the curly Q and Sancho again—had not ridden far when they beheld, standing by the roadside, a towering giant with no fewer than four arms ending in four huge fists, which he waved menacingly at the travellers.

  ‘Behold, Sancho, our first adventure, said Don Quixote. Until I have vanquished this giant no wayfarer will be safe.

  ‘Sancho gave his friend a puzzled look. I see no giant, he said. All I see is a windmill with four sails spinning in the wind.’

  ‘What is a windmill?’ asks the boy.

  ‘Look at the picture. Those big arms are the four sails of the windmill. As the sails spin in the wind, they turn the wheel, and the wheel turns a big stone inside the mill, called a millstone, and the millstone grinds wheat into flour so that the baker can bake bread for us to eat.’

  ‘But it isn’t really a windmill, is it?’ says the boy. ‘Go on.’

  ‘A windmill may be what you see, Sancho, said Don Quixote, but that is only because you have been enchanted by the sorceress Maladuta. If your eyes were unclouded, you would see a giant with four arms bestriding the road. Do you want to know what a sorceress is?’

  ‘I know about sorceresses. Go on.’

  ‘With these words Don Quixote couched his lance and clapped his spurs to the flanks of Rocinante and charged at the giant. With one of his four fists the giant easily parried Don Quixote’s lance. Ha ha ha, poor ragged knight, he laughed, do you really believe you can best me?

  ‘Then Don Quixote unsheathed his sword and charged again. But just as easily, with his second fist, the giant smote the sword aside, together with the knight and his steed.

  ‘Rocinante struggled to her feet, but as for Don Quixote, he had suffered such a blow to the head that he was quite dizzy. Alas, Sancho, said Don Quixote, unless some healing balm shall be applied to my wounds by the hand of my mistress the fair Dulcinea, I fear I will not live to see another dawn.—Nonsense, your honour, replied Sancho, it is only a bump on the head, you will be right as rain as soon as I get you away from this windmill.—Not a windmill but a giant, Sancho, said Don Quixote.—As soon as I get you away from this giant, said Sancho.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Sancho also fight the giant?’ asks the boy.

  ‘Because Sancho is not a knight. He is not a knight, therefore he has no sword or lance, just a pocketknife for peeling potatoes. All he can do—as we will see tomorrow—is to load Don Quixote onto his donkey and convey him to the nearest inn to rest and recover.’

  ‘But why doesn’t Sancho hit the giant?’

  ‘Because Sancho knows the giant is really a windmill, and you can’t fight against a windmill. A windmill is not a living thing.’

  ‘He’s not a windmill, he’s a giant! He’s only a windmill in the picture.’

  He puts down the book. ‘David,’ he says, ‘Don Quixote is an unusual book. To the lady in the library who lent it to us it looks like a simple book for children, but in truth it isn’t simple at all. It presents the world to us through two pairs of eyes, Don Quixote’s eyes and Sancho’s eyes. To Don Quixote, it is a giant he is fighting. To Sancho, it is a windmill. Most of us—not you, perhaps, but most of us nevertheless—will agree with Sancho that it is a windmill. That includes the artist who drew a picture of a windmill. But it also includes the man who wrote the book.’

  ‘Who wrote the book?’

  ‘A man named Benengeli.’

  ‘Does he live in the library?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It is not impossible, but I would say it is unlikely. I certainly haven’t noticed him there. He would be easy to recognize. He wears a long robe and has a turban on his head. ‘

  ‘Why are we reading Bengeli’s book?’

  ‘Benengeli. Because I came across it in the library. Because I thought you might enjoy it. Because it will be good for your Spanish. What else do you want to know?’

  The boy is silent.

  ‘Let us stop there and go on tomorrow with the next adventure of Don Quixote and Sancho. By tomorrow I will expect you to be able to point out Sancho with the big S and Don Quixote with the curly Q.’

  ‘It’s not the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho. It’s the adventures of Don Quixote.’

  CHAPTER 19

  ONE OF the larger freighters has arrived at the docks, what Álvaro calls a double-belly freighter, with holds fore and aft. The dockers split into two crews. He, Simón, joins the fore crew.

  At mid-morning on the first day of the
unloading, down in the hold, he hears commotion on the deck and the shrilling of a whistle. ‘That’s the fire signal,’ says one of his companions. ‘Let’s get out quick!’

  He smells smoke even as they scramble up the ladder. It comes billowing up from the aft hold. ‘All out!’ bellows Álvaro from his position on the bridge beside the ship’s master. ‘All ashore!’

  No sooner have the stevedores hauled up their ladders than the ship’s crew drag the huge hatch covers to.

  ‘Aren’t they going to put out the fire?’ he asks.

  ‘They are starving it,’ replies his companion. ‘In an hour or two it will be dead. But the cargo will be ruined, no doubt about that. We may as well dump it to the fishes.’

  The stevedores gather on the quayside. Álvaro begins to call the roll. ‘Adriano…Agustín…Alexandre…’ ‘Here…Here…Here…’ come the responses. Until he reaches Marciano. ‘Marciano…’ Silence. ‘Has anyone seen Marciano?’ Silence. From the sealed hatch a wisp of smoke drifts into the windless air.

  The sailors drag the hatch covers off again. At once they are enveloped in dense grey smoke. ‘Close up!’ commands the ship’s master; and to Álvaro, ‘If your man is there, it’s all up with him.’

  ‘We are not abandoning him,’ says Álvaro. ‘I will go down.’

  ‘Not while I am in command you won’t.’

  At noon the aft hatch covers are briefly reopened. The smoke is as thick as ever. The captain orders the hold to be flooded. The dockers are dismissed.

  He recounts the day’s events to Inés. ‘As for Marciano, we won’t know for sure until they pump the hold dry in the morning,’ he says.

  ‘What won’t you know about Marciano? What happened to him?’ asks the boy, coming in on the conversation.

  ‘My guess is that he fell asleep. He was careless and breathed in too much smoke. If you take in too much smoke you grow weak and dizzy and fall asleep.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I am afraid to say you don’t wake up in this life.’