The Carpenter's Pencil by Rivas Manuel
Author:Rivas, Manuel [Rivas, Manuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC032000, FIC019000, FIC056000, FIC014000
ISBN: 9781468305258
Publisher: Overlook
Published: 2002-08-01T00:00:00+00:00
15
MARISA MALLO LOOKED IN THE DIRECTION OF THE monkey puzzle and felt, in turn, the weight of another’s eyes. That majestic specimen planted in the ground of her grandfather’s country home dominated the valley and reached the sky with its huge, vegetal steps.
The dogs had come out to welcome her. They recognized her smell and fought over it with savage delight. In leaps and bounds, they showed off the visitor, like a precious conquest. But Marisa had never felt that other sensation, of being spied on by the monkey puzzle.
“So you’re back again, are you, girl?” it said to her from on high.
As she made her way towards the house, she felt the trees in blossom were scrutinizing her as well, next to the path of white pebbles. As if the camellias were giving each other a nudge and the Chinese magnolias were whispering gently.
Somehow that world belonged to her. It had been both her playground and hideaway. There, something her grandfather had particularly wanted, she had made her debut in society with an exotic party in the Fronteira tradition. She laughed with ironic melancholy just to remember it.
Her grandfather, Benito Mallo, sat with her by his side beneath the vine arbour, presiding at the long banquet table. So long in her mind’s eye that the white of the tablecloths merged at the edges with the foliage of the garden. Next to his grandchild, that red-haired girl already blossoming into a beautiful woman, Benito Mallo smiled with satisfaction. It was the first time he had managed to assemble all the so-called bigwigs. There, in pride of place, were the people who despised him most, the town’s top pedigree, meekly rendering thanks. There were the bishop and the priests, including the parish priest who had singled him out from the pulpit one day as the captain of sinners. There were the border-guard chiefs, the very ones who had sworn when he was an audacious nobody to hang him upside down from the bridge, so that the eels could pick out his eyes. But something had happened to reality. It was still the same. The same values, the same laws, the same God. Only that Benito Mallo had crossed the border, had got rich from smuggling. Coffee, oil and bacalao were talked about. But the popular imagination knew more: the tons of copper amassed by means of electric cables that terminated in a handle turning day and night; the jewellery that came across in the cattle’s stomachs; the silk carried by a legion of falsely-pregnant women; the weapons bestowing honours on a dead man in a coffin.
Benito Mallo had attained that level of wealth at which people stop asking where it has come from. He had forged a legend. The country boy who wore cut suits made in Coruña. Who bought a Ford with leather-covered seats where the hens laid their clutches. Who had taps made of gold but went to the toilet on the hillside and cleaned himself with cabbage leaves. Who gave his lovers fake banknotes.
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