The Childhood of Jesus Read online

  The lady from La Residencia perches side by side with her brother on the bed; she plucks nervously at her gloves, clears her throat. ‘Will you repeat for us what you said yesterday?’ she says. ‘Start at the beginning, the very beginning.’

  ‘If I started at the very beginning we would be here all day,’ he replies, trying to sound deliberate, trying above all to sound sane. ‘Let me rather say the following. We, David and I, came here, as everyone does, for the sake of a new life, a new beginning. What I want for David, what David wants too, is a normal life like any other youngster’s. But—it stands to reason—to lead a normal life he needs a mother, needs to be born to a mother, so to speak. I am right, am I not?’ he says, turning to the boy. ‘That is what you want. You want your very own mother.’

  The boy nods vigorously.

  ‘I have always been sure—don’t ask me why—that I would know David’s mother when I saw her; and now that I have met you I know I was right. It could not have been chance that led us to La Residencia. Some hand must have been guiding us.’

  It is Diego, he can see, who is going to be the hard nut to crack: Diego, not the woman, whose name he does not know and does not want to ask. The woman would not be here if she were not ready to be swayed.

  ‘Some unseen hand,’ he repeats. ‘Truly.’

  Diego’s gaze bores into him. Liar! it says.

  He takes a deep breath. ‘You have doubts, I can see. How can this child whom I have never laid eyes on be my child? you ask yourself. I plead with you: put doubt aside, listen instead to what your heart says. Look at him. Look at the boy. What does your heart say?’

  The young woman gives no answer, does not look at the boy at all, but turns to her brother, as if to say, Do you see? It is as I told you. Listen to this unbelievable, this mad proposal of his! What shall I do?

  In a low voice the brother speaks. ‘Is there somewhere private we can go, you and I?’

  ‘Of course. We can go outdoors.’

  He leads Diego downstairs, across the courtyard, across the lawn, to a bench in the shade of a tree. ‘Sit down,’ he says. Diego ignores the invitation. He himself sits down. ‘How can I help you?’ he says.

  Diego props a leg on the bench and leans down over him. ‘First, who are you, and why are you after my sister?’

  ‘Who I am doesn’t matter. I am not important. I am a kind of manservant. I look after the child. And I am not after your sister. I am after the child’s mother. There is a difference.’

  ‘Who is this child? Where did you pick him up? Is he your grandson? Where are his parents?’

  ‘He is neither my grandson nor my son. He and I are not kin. We were brought together by accident on the boat when he lost some documents he was carrying. But why should any of that matter? We arrive here, all of us, you, me, your sister, the boy, washed clean of the past. The boy happens to be in my care. That may not be a destiny I chose for myself, but I accept it. Over time he has come to depend on me. We have grown close. But I cannot be everything to him. I cannot be his mother.

  ‘Your sister—I am sorry, I don’t know her name—is his mother, his natural mother. I cannot explain how that happens, but it is so, it is as simple as that. And in her heart she knows it. Why else do you think she is here today? On the surface she may seem calm, but beneath the surface I can see it thrills her, this great gift, the gift of a child.’

  ‘Children are not allowed in La Residencia.’

  ‘No one would dare separate a mother from her child, no matter what the rule book says. Nor does your sister have to go on living at La Residencia. She could take over the apartment here. It is hers. I give it over to her. I will find somewhere else to live.’

  Leaning forward as if to speak confidentially, Diego gives him a sudden slap across the head. Shocked, trying to shield himself, he is struck a second blow. They are not heavy blows, but they jolt him.

  ‘Why do you do that!’ he exclaims, rising.

  ‘I am not a fool!’ hisses Diego. ‘Do you think I am a fool?’ Again he raises a threatening hand.

  ‘Not for a moment do I take you for a fool.’ He needs to placate this young man, who must be upset—as who would not be?—by this queer intervention in his life. ‘It is an unusual story, I admit. But spare a thought for the child. He is the one whose needs are paramount.’

  His plea has no effect: Diego glares as belligerently as before. He plays his last card. ‘Come on, Diego,’ he says, ‘look into your heart! If there is goodwill in your heart, surely you will not keep a child from his mother!’

  ‘It’s not for you to doubt my goodwill,’ says Diego.

  ‘Then prove it! Come back with me and prove to the child how much goodwill you are capable of. Come!’ And he rises and takes Diego’s arm.

  A strange spectacle greets them. Diego’s sister is kneeling on the bed with her back to them, straddling the boy—who lies flat on his back beneath her—her dress hoisted up to allow a glimpse of solid, rather heavy thighs. ‘Where is the spider, where is the spider…?’ she croons in a high, thin voice. Her fingers drift down his chest to his belt buckle; she tickles him, convulsing him in helpless laughter.

  ‘We are back,’ he announces in a loud voice. She scrambles off the bed, her face flushed.

  ‘Inés and I are playing a game,’ says the boy.

  Inés! So that is the name! And in the name the essence!

  ‘Inés!’ says the brother, and beckons to her curtly. Smoothing her dress down, she hurries after him. From the corridor come furious whisperings.

  Inés comes marching back, her brother trailing behind. ‘We want you to go through all of it again,’ she says.

  ‘You want me to repeat my proposal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well. I propose that you become David’s mother. I give up all claim to him (he has a claim on me, but that is a different matter). I will sign any paper you put before me to confirm it. You and he can live together as mother and child. It can happen as soon as you like.’

  Diego gives an exasperated snort. ‘This is all nonsense!’ he exclaims. ‘You can’t be this child’s mother, he already has a mother, the mother he was born to! Without his mother’s permission you can’t adopt him. Listen to me!’

  He exchanges a silent glance with Inés. ‘I want him,’ she says, addressing not him but her brother. ‘I want him,’ she repeats. ‘But we can’t stay at La Residencia.’

  ‘As I told your brother, you are welcome to move in here. It can happen today. I will move out at once. This will be your new home.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ says the boy.

  ‘I won’t go far, my boy. I will go and stay with Elena and Fidel. You and your mother can come visiting whenever you like.’

  ‘I want you to stay here,’ says the boy.

  ‘That is sweet of you, but I can’t come between you and your mother. From now on, you and she are going to be together. You will be a family. I can’t be part of that family. But I will be a helper, a servant and a helper. I promise.’ He turns to Inés. ‘Are we agreed?’

  ‘Yes.’ Now that she has made up her mind, Inés has become quite imperious. ‘We will come back tomorrow. We will bring our dog. Will your neighbours object to a dog?’

  ‘They would not dare.’

  By the time Inés and her brother return the next morning, he has swept the floors, scrubbed the tiles, changed the sheets; his own belongings are bundled up and ready to go.

  Diego heads the incoming procession, bearing a large suitcase on his shoulder. He drops it on the bed. ‘There’s more to come,’ he announces ominously. And indeed there is: a trunk, even larger, and a stack of bedclothes that include a vast eiderdown bedcover.

  He, Simón, does not linger over his leavetaking. ‘Be good,’ he tells the boy. ‘He doesn’t eat cucumber,’ he tells Inés. ‘And leave a light on when he goes to bed, he doesn’t like to sleep in the dark.’

  She gives no sign of having heard him. ‘It’s cold in here,’
she says, rubbing her hands together. ‘Is it always so cold?’

  ‘I’ll buy an electric fire. I’ll bring it in the next day or two.’ To Diego he offers his hand, which Diego reluctantly takes. Then he picks up his bundle and without a backward glance strides off.

  He had announced he would be staying with Elena, but in fact he has no such plan. He makes his way to the docks, deserted over the weekend, and stows his belongings in the little hut off Wharf Two where the men keep their gear. Then he walks back to the Blocks and knocks at Elena’s door. ‘Hello,’ he calls, ‘can you and I have a chat?’

  Over tea he outlines to her the new dispensation. ‘I am sure David will flourish now that he has a mother to look after him. It wasn’t good for him to be brought up just by me. He was under too much pressure to become a little man himself. A child needs his childhood, don’t you think?’

  ‘I can’t believe my ears,’ replies Elena. ‘A child is not like a chick that you can stuff under the wing of some strange hen to raise. How could you hand David over to someone you have never laid eyes on before, some woman who is probably acting on a whim and will lose interest before the week is over and want to give him back?’

  ‘Please, Elena, don’t pass judgment on this Inés before you have met her. She is not acting on a whim; on the contrary, I believe she is acting under a force stronger than herself. I am counting on you to help us, to help her. She is in unknown territory; she has no experience of motherhood.’

  ‘I am not passing judgment on this Inés of yours. If she asks for help, I will give it. But she is not your boy’s mother and you should stop calling her that.’

  ‘Elena, she is his mother. I arrived in this land bare of everything save one rock-solid conviction: that I would know the boy’s mother when I saw her. And the moment I beheld Inés I knew it was she.’

  ‘You followed an intuition?’

  ‘More than that. A conviction.’

  ‘A conviction, an intuition, a delusion—what is the difference when it cannot be questioned? Has it occurred to you that if we all lived by our intuitions the world would fall into chaos?’

  ‘I don’t see why that follows. And what is wrong with a little chaos now and again if good follows from it?’

  Elena shrugs. ‘I don’t want to get into an argument. Your son missed his lesson today. It is not the first lesson he has missed. If he is going to give up his music, please let me know.’

  ‘That is no longer for me to decide. And once again, he is not my son, I am not his father.’

  ‘Really? You keep denying it, but sometimes I wonder. I say no more. Where are you going to spend tonight? In the bosom of your new-found family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want to sleep here?’

  He rises from the table. ‘Thank you, but I have made other arrangements.’

  Considering that the doves nesting in the gutter scratch and rustle and coo without cease, he sleeps quite well that night, on his bed of sacks in his little hideout. He goes without breakfast, yet is able to work a full day and feel fine at the end of it, if a little ethereal, a little ghostly.

  Álvaro asks after the boy, and so touched is he by Álvaro’s concern that for a moment he considers telling him the good news, the news that the boy’s mother has been found. But then, mindful of Elena’s reaction to the very same news, he checks himself and tells a lie: David has been taken by his teacher to a big music concourse.

  A music concourse, says Álvaro, looking dubious: what is that, and where is it being held?

  No idea, he replies, and changes the subject.

  It would be a pity, it seems to him, if the boy were to lose touch with Álvaro and never again see his friend El Rey the draft horse. He hopes that, once she has strengthened her bond with him, Inés will allow the boy to visit the docks. The past is so shrouded in clouds of forgetting that he cannot be sure his memories are true memories rather than mere stories he makes up; but he does know that he would have loved it if, as a child, he had been allowed to set off of a morning in the company of grown men and spend the day helping them load and unload great ships. A dose of the real cannot but be good for the child, it seems to him, so long as the dose is not too sudden or too large.

  He had intended to call at Naranjas for supplies, but he has left it too late: by the time he gets there the shop is closed. Hungry, and lonely too, he knocks once again at Elena’s door. The door is opened by Fidel, in his pyjamas. ‘Hello, young Fidel,’ he says, ‘may I come in?’

  Elena is sitting at the table, sewing. She does not greet him, does not raise her eyes from her work.

  ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Is something wrong? Has something happened?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘David can’t come here any more,’ says Fidel. ‘The new lady says he can’t come.’

  ‘The new lady,’ says Elena, ‘has announced that your son is not allowed to play with Fidel.’

  ‘But why?’

  She shrugs.

  ‘Give her time to settle down,’ he says. ‘Being a mother is new to her. She is bound to be a little erratic at first.’

  ‘Erratic?’

  ‘Erratic in her judgments. Over-cautious.’

  ‘Like forbidding David to play with his friends?’

  ‘She does not know you or Fidel. Once she gets to know you, she will see what a good influence you are.’

  ‘And how do you propose that she get to know us?’

  ‘You and she are bound to bump into each other. You are neighbours, after all.’

  ‘We’ll see. Have you eaten?’

  ‘No. The shops were closed by the time I got there.’

  ‘You mean Naranjas. Naranjas is closed on Mondays, I could have told you that. I can offer you a bowl of soup, if you don’t mind a repeat of last night. Where are you living now?’

  ‘I have a room near the docks. It’s a bit primitive, but it will do for the time being.’

  Elena warms up the pot of soup and cuts bread for him. He tries to eat slowly, though in fact his appetite is wolfish.

  ‘You can’t stay the night, I’m afraid,’ she says. ‘You know why.’

  ‘Of course. I’m not asking to stay. My new quarters are perfectly comfortable.’

  ‘You have been expelled, haven’t you? From your home. That’s the truth, I can see it. You poor thing. Cut off from your boy, whom you love so much.’

  He gets up from the table. ‘It has to be,’ he says. ‘It’s the nature of things. Thank you for the meal.’

  ‘Come again tomorrow. I’ll feed you. It’s the least I can do. Feed you and console you. Though I think you have made a mistake.’

  He takes his leave. He ought to go straight to his new home at the docks. But he hesitates, then crosses the courtyard, climbs the stairs, and taps softly at the door of his old apartment. There is a crack of light under the door: Inés must still be up. After a long wait he taps again. ‘Inés?’ he whispers.

  A hand’s breadth away on the other side he hears her: ‘Who is there?’

  ‘It’s Simón. Can I come in?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Can I see him? Just for a minute.’

  ‘He’s asleep.’

  ‘I won’t wake him. I just want to see him.’

  Silence. He tries the door. It is locked. A moment later the light clicks off.

  CHAPTER 11

  BY TAKING up residence at the docks he is probably infringing some regulation or other. That does not concern him. However, he does not want Álvaro to find out, for out of the goodness of his heart Álvaro is then bound to feel he has to offer him a home. So before leaving the toolshed each morning he takes care to tuck his few possessions away in the rafters where they will not be seen.

  Keeping neat and clean is a problem. He visits the gymnasium at the East Blocks to shower; he washes his clothes by hand and hangs them on the East Blocks lines. He has no qualms about this—he is, after all, still on the list of residents—but out of
prudence, not wishing to run into Inés, he pays his visits only after dark.

  A week passes during which he gives all his energies to his work. Then on the Friday, with his pockets full of money, he knocks at the door of his old apartment.

  The door is thrown open by a smiling Inés. Her face falls when she sees him. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she says. ‘We are just on our way out.’

  From behind her the boy emerges. There is something odd about his appearance. It is not just that he wears a new white shirt (in fact more blouse than shirt—it has a frilly front and hangs over his pants): he stands clutching Inés’s skirt, not responding to his greeting, staring at him with great eyes.

  Has something happened? Has it been a calamitous mistake to hand him over to this woman? And why does he tolerate this eccentric, girlish blouse—he who has been so attached to his little-man outfit, his coat and cap and lace-up boots? For the boots are gone too, replaced by shoes: blue shoes with straps instead of laces, and brass buttons on the side.

  ‘Lucky I caught you, in that case,’ he says, trying to keep his tone light. ‘I have brought the electric heater I promised.’

  Inés casts a dubious eye on the little one-bar heater he holds out. ‘At La Residencia there is an open fire in each apartment,’ she says. ‘A man brings logs every evening and makes the fire.’ She pauses abstractedly. ‘It is lovely.’

  ‘I am sorry. It must be a comedown, having to live in the Blocks.’ He turns to the boy. ‘So you are going out for the evening. And where is it you are going?’

  The boy does not answer directly, but casts a look up to his new mother as if to say, You tell him.

  ‘We’re going to La Residencia for the weekend,’ says Inés. And as though to confirm her, Diego, dressed in tennis whites, comes striding up the corridor.

  ‘That’s nice,’ he says. ‘I thought they didn’t allow children at La Residencia. I thought that was the rule.’

  ‘That is the rule,’ says Diego. ‘But it’s a free weekend for the staff. There is no one to check.’

  ‘No one checks,’ Inés echoes.