Backspring by Judith McCormack

Author:Judith McCormack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2015-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

If I were you, said his father, I would keep an eye out for cork trees.

Spain. How old was he? Four? Five? Hours in an old red Fiat on the way to Ronda, holding a sticky bottle of orange Sumol, his father at the wheel, his mother in the front seat. The monotony of the drive, watching endless stretches of grey-green olive trees rush by, watching the ground change colour from red to brown to yellow and then back again. As his father drove, he pointed out caper bushes, fields of withered sunflowers. The grove of cork trees, several men prying the cork bark off in sections, the tree trunks looking pale and skinned underneath.

His parents’ friends—a puffy-faced woman, a man with a guttural voice—were delighted when they arrived in the late evening. So good to see you both, and this is Eduardo? What a big boy. We have arranged everything, we will take you around, show you everything. Have some dinner, rest, and in the morning we will see everything.

They produced pumpkin soup, tripe with beans, custard tarts. Eduardo fell asleep on the floor while they talked.

In the morning, they stood in a row, near the Puente Nuevo, his mother holding his hand tightly. They could hear the Guadalevín churning three hundred feet below, but the gorge was covered in mist, a grey cloud knitted around it.

We will have breakfast, announced the man. We will show you the restaurant first, and then come back to the bridge. The mist will have burned off by then.

They ate potato omelettes at the restaurant, and drank strong coffee with milk. His mother and father admired the shape of the bar, the chairs, the granite tabletops, the poster of Oporto on the wall. (See? We will feed them, then send them on to Portugal.) The man, stocky, mild, listened to them while he flipped through a pile of invoices. His wife fished for compliments, and then waved them away.

When they returned to the bridge, the mist was still there, but it had separated into wisps. The gorge was a deep crack in the earth.

Look at that rock, said his father.

Look at that water, said his mother.

Look at that bridge, said Eduardo.

How did they make it?

Ask the architect, the man who built it three hundred years ago. A project that took thirty years.

The adult Eduardo cannot imagine this now. Surely there were moments when the man lost heart? Or interest?

When the bridge was finished, the architect had to examine it, to inspect it. Standing underneath it, looking up, did he feel a leap in his chest? Did he feel a rush of grateful dizziness? Did he stand on the bridge and stroke the roughness of its stones?

He died there. This is the story, that he fell from the bridge into the gorge. One version is that he killed himself, after completing his ultimate life’s work. Another is that he slipped and fell.

Of course, both versions are untrue. He died later in Málaga, from illness.

Still, architecture has its hazards.

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