The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

Author:Matt Haig [Haig, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

Church

It was true.

The church in Es Cubells was a thing of clean geometric beauty. With neat lateral buttresses on either side of its cubic body, it was whitewashed to the point it dazzled. Utterly simple in its design, perched above the sea, it was transcendentally calming and I could have stared at it for hours in the afternoon sun.

As I got out of the car, Alberto was heading to a bush. ‘I really need to, how do you say in English…drain the anaconda.’

I turned away from him. ‘No one says that. Literally no one.’

‘Water my weasel, you know?’ he continued, unabashed.

He was as close to a beast as I have ever seen a man. Once he finished urinating he came to join me on the dusty path.

Before we reached the church door, I noticed a lizard by my feet. It was totally still, the way only lizards can be, and I sensed its paradoxical state of mind. Just as some languages have words others don’t have, some species have emotions humans have never known. A lizard, for instance, always seems to be in a simultaneous state of constant alertness and deep relaxation, totally in tune with its surroundings, both terrified of it all and in quiet love with it all.

You are approaching, it told me, mysteriously. You are nearly there.

‘See?’ said Alberto. ‘You now understand the thoughts of animals. That’s a gift, yes?’

‘And yet, Mr Ribas, I still don’t know your thoughts. Isn’t that interesting? Do you have more to hide than a reptile?’

‘Man, you say that like it is an insult to be compared to a reptile. Reptiles are the truest, most noble and purest of all creatures. They are full of ancient wisdom. They understand how to be. When they tell you something they are telling you many, many, many things. Their thoughts are more precise than a haiku. They…’

He stood there a considerable while, there on the hot dusty ground, in that baking shadeless heat, giving me a lecture on lizards, his accent veering from Spanish to American to a kind of English to something uniquely Alberto. And no amount of extra-sensory perception could keep me focused on what he was saying. So I stared into the distance. Beyond the cliff, beyond the juniper bushes, to the sea and its mysteries. Eventually the words stopped and he started walking again.

I knew the door was locked even before I touched it. So I told him. ‘It’s locked.’ He probably had known it too. He frowned at the door. In fact, it was more a glower. I realised, to much amusement, that he was trying – really, really trying – to open the door with his mind.

‘Listen,’ he bumbled, ‘I used to be able to do locks quite easily. But recently, my talent’s faded.’ He looked sheepish about this. As if there was something he wanted to tell me. ‘It makes us more powerful until it doesn’t. It doesn’t make us immortal.’ The tiniest crack in his defences. I could almost get inside his psyche but not quite.

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