Un Amor E-Book

Sara Mesa

• Herausgeber: Peirene Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 227

Beschreibung

A claustrophobic story of desire and small town unease in the vein of Dogville or Coetzee's Disgrace. Fleeing from past mistakes, Nat leaves her life in the city for the rural village of La Escapa. She rents a small house from a negligent landlord, adopts a dog and begins to work on her first literary translation. But nothing is easy: the dog is ill tempered and skittish and misunderstandings with her neighbour's thrum below the surface. When conflict arises over repairs to her house, Nat receives an unusual offer – one that tests her sense of self, challenges her prejudices, and reveals her most unexpected desires. As Nat tries to understand her decision, the community of La Escapa comes together in search of a scapegoat.

Leseprobe

123

UN AMOR

Sara Mesa

Translated from the Spanish by Katie Whittemore

4

CONTENTS

Title PageIIIIIIAbout the AuthorsCopyright

5

UN AMOR6

7

I8

9

Nightfall is when the weight descends on her, so heavy she has to sit down to catch her breath.

Outside, the silence isn’t what she expected. It isn’t true silence. There is a distant rumble, like the sound of a motorway, although the closest one is regional and three kilometres away. She hears crickets, too, and barking, a car horn, a neighbour rounding up his livestock.

The sea was nicer, but also more expensive. Out of her reach.

And what if she’d held out a little longer, saved a little more?

She would rather not think. She closes her eyes, slowly sinks into the sofa, half her body hanging off, an unnatural position that will give her a cramp if she doesn’t move soon. She realizes this. She lies down as best she can. Dozes.

Better to not think, but the thoughts come and slide through her, intertwining. She tries to release them as soon as they appear, but they accumulate there, one thought on top of another. This effort, this drive to let them go as quickly as they come, is itself a thought too intense for her brain.

When she gets the dog, it will be easier. 10

When she organizes her things and sets up her desk and tidies the area around the house. When she waters and trims – everything is so dry, so neglected. When it cools down.

It will be much better when the weather cools.

The landlord lives in Petacas, a small town a fifteen-minute drive away. He turns up two hours later than they had agreed. Nat is sweeping the porch when she hears the Jeep. She looks up, squints. The man has parked at the entrance to the property, in the middle of the road, and comes over, shuffling his feet. It’s hot. It’s noon and already the heat is dry and unpleasant.

He doesn’t apologize for being late. He smiles, shaking his head. His lips are thin, his eyes sunken. His worn coverall is splattered with grease stains. It’s hard to guess his age. His decline has nothing to do with the years, but rather with his weary expression, the way he swings his arms and bends his knees as he walks. He stops before her, puts his hands on his hips, and looks around.

‘Already getting started, eh? How was your night?’

‘Fine. Mostly. Too many mosquitoes.’

‘You’ve got a gadget there in the dresser drawer. One of those repellent things.’

‘Yeah, but there wasn’t any liquid in it.’

‘Well, sorry, kid,’ he spreads his arms wide. ‘Life in the country, eh!’

Nat does not return his smile. A bead of sweat drips from her temple. She wipes it on the back of her hand and, in that gesture, finds the strength she needs to attack. 11

‘The bedroom window doesn’t close right and the bathroom tap leaks. Not to mention how dirty everything is. It’s a lot worse than I remember.’

The landlord’s smile goes cold, gradually disappearing from his face. His jaw tenses as he prepares to reply. Nat senses that he is a man prone to anger and she wishes she could backtrack. Arms crossed, the man contends that she visited the house and was perfectly aware of its condition. If she didn’t pay attention to the details, that’s her problem, not his. He reminds her that he came down – twice – on the price. And he tells her, lastly, that he will take care of all the necessary repairs himself. Nat isn’t sure that’s a good idea, but she doesn’t argue. Nodding, she wipes away another bead of sweat.

‘It’s so hot.’

‘You going to blame me for that, too?’

The man turns around and calls to the dog that has been scratching around in the dirt near the Jeep.

‘How’s this one?’

The dog hasn’t looked up since it arrived. Skittish, it sniffs the ground, tracking like a hound. It’s a long-legged, greyish mutt with an elongated snout and rough coat. Its penis is slightly erect.

‘Well, do you like him or not?’

Nat stutters.

‘I don’t know. Is he a good dog?’

‘Sure he’s a good dog. He won’t win any beauty contests, you can see that for yourself, but you don’t care about that, do you? Isn’t that what you said, that you didn’t care? He doesn’t have fleas or anything bad. He’s young, he’s healthy. 12 And he doesn’t eat much, so you won’t have to worry about that. He’ll rummage. He takes care of himself.’

‘All right,’ Nat says.

They go inside the house, review the contract, sign – she, with a careless scribble; he, ceremoniously, pressing the pen firmly to the paper. The landlord has only brought one copy, which he tucks away, assuring her that he’ll get hers to her when he can. Doesn’t matter, Nat thinks, the contract has no validity whatsoever, even the listed price isn’t real. She doesn’t bring up the problem with the window or the bathroom tap again. Neither does he. He extends his hand theatrically, narrowing his eyes as he looks at her.

‘Better for us to get along, isn’t it.’

The dog doesn’t seem to notice when the man returns to the Jeep and starts the engine. He stays in the front yard, pacing and sniffing the dry dirt. Nat calls to him, clicks her tongue and whistles, but he shows no sign of obeying.

The landlord hasn’t told her the dog’s name. If it even has one.

If asked to explain why she was there, she’d be hard pressed to come up with a convincing answer. That’s why, when the moment arrives, she hedges and babbles about a change of scenery.

‘People must think you’re crazy, right?’

The cashier chews gum as she piles Nat’s shopping on the counter. It’s the only store within a few-mile radius, an establishment with no sign where foodstuffs and hygiene products accumulate in a jumble. Shopping there is expensive and the pickings are slim, but Nat is reluctant to take 13 the car to Petacas. She rummages in her wallet and counts out the notes she needs.

The girl from the shop is in a chatty mood. Brazen, she asks Nat all about her life, making her uncomfortable. The girl wishes she could do what Nat’s done, but the opposite, she says. Move to Cárdenas, where stuff actually happens.

‘Living here sucks. There aren’t even any guys!’

She tells Nat that she used to go to high school in Petacas, but she quit. She doesn’t like studying, she’s crap at every subject. Now she helps out in the shop. Her mom gets chronic migraines, and her dad also manages the crops, so she helps out by taking care of things at the store. But as soon as she turns eighteen, she’s out of there. She could be a cashier in Cárdenas, or a nanny. She’s good with kids. The few kids who ever wind up in La Escapa, she adds with a smile.

‘This place sucks,’ she repeats.

It’s the girl who tells Nat about the people who live in the surrounding houses and farms. She tells her about the gypsy family squatting in a dilapidated farmhouse, right by the slip road to the motorway. A bus picks the kids up every morning; they’re the only kids who live in La Escapa year-round. And there’s the old couple in the yellow house. The woman is some kind of witch, the girl claims. She can predict the future and read your mind.

‘It’s creepy because she’s a little nuts,’ she laughs.

She tells Nat about the hippie in the wooden house, and the guy they call ‘The German’ even though he isn’t from Germany, and Gordo’s bar – although to call the warehouse where they serve bottles of beer a bar is, she 14 admits, a bit overboard. There are other people who come and go according to the rhythms of the countryside, day-workers hired for two-week stints or for just the day, but also whole families who have inherited houses they can’t manage to sell and live somewhere else for half the year. But you never see women on their own. Not women Nat’s age, she specifies.

‘Old ladies don’t count.’

In the first days, Nat gets confused and mixes up all that information, in part because she listened absently, in part because she’s in unfamiliar territory. La Escapa’s borders are blurry, and even though there is a relatively compact cluster of small houses – right where hers is – other buildings are scattered further away, some inhabited and others not. From the outside, Nat can’t tell whether they are homes or barns, if there are people inside or just livestock. She loses her bearings on the dirt roads and if it weren’t for the shop as a point of reference – which sometimes feels more familiar to her than the house she has rented and has been sleeping in for a week – she’d feel lost. The area isn’t even pretty, though at sunset, when the edges soften and the light turns golden, she finds a kind of beauty to cling to.

Nat takes her grocery bags and bids goodbye to the girl. But before she exits the shop, she turns and asks about the landlord. Does the girl know him? The girl puckers her lips, shakes her head slowly. No, not really, she says. He’s lived in Petacas a long time.

‘I do remember seeing him around here when I was little though. He always had a bunch of dogs and a really bad temper. Then he got married, or got together with 15 someone, and left. I guess his wife didn’t want to live in La Escapa – can’t blame her. This place is worse for girls. Even though Petacas ain’t anything special. I wouldn’t want to live there either, no way.’

She tries to play with the dog, tossing him an old ball she found in the woodpile, but instead of catching it and bringing it back, the dog limps away. When she crouches beside him, putting herself on his level so he won’t be afraid, he slinks off with his tail between his legs. The dog is a piece of work, she thinks, a real rotter. Sieso, they’d call him where she comes from. It seems a good a name as any – after all, she has to call him something. It certainly describes his unpleasant nature. But Sieso is as inscrutable as he is unsociable. He hangs around, but it’s like he isn’t there at all. Why should she have to settle for a dog like that? Even the little dog in the shop, an extremely anxious chihuahua mix, is much more pleasant. All the dogs she meets on the roads – and there are tons of them – run over when she calls them. A lot of them are looking to be fed, of course, but also petted; they are nosy and curious, wanting to find out who this new girl in the neighbourhood is. Sieso doesn’t even seem interested in eating. If she feeds him, great, and if not, that’s fine too. The landlord wasn’t kidding: the animal’s upkeep is cheap. Sometimes Nat is ashamed of the antipathy she feels towards the animal. She asked for a dog and here he is. Now she cannot – must not – say – or even think – that she doesn’t want him.

One morning, she meets the hippie in the shop. That’s what the girl called him. Now she waits languidly on them 16 both, smoking a cigarette with no sense of urgency. The hippie is a little older than Nat, though he can’t be more than forty. Tall and strong, his skin is weathered by the sun and his hands are broad and cracked. His look is firm but placid. He wears his hair long, terribly cut, and his beard is on the reddish side. Why the girl calls him ‘hippie’ is something Nat has to guess. Maybe it’s his long hair or because, like Nat, he is a stranger from the city: something incomprehensible for anyone who has lived in La Escapa since childhood and can only think of escaping. The truth is, the hippie has also lived there a long time. He is, therefore, nothing new, unlike Nat. She observes him out the corner of her eye, his curt, efficient, sure movements. While she waits her turn, she runs her hand over the back of the dog he has with him. She’s a chocolate Labrador, old but undeniably elegant. The dog wags her tail and noses Nat’s crotch. The three of them laugh.

‘What a good girl,’ Nat says.

The hippie nods and holds out his hand. Then he changes his mind, withdraws it and moves in to kiss her. Just one kiss on the cheek, which causes Nat to remain with her face tilted, waiting for the second kiss that doesn’t come. He tells her his name: Píter. With an i, he specifies: P-í-t-e-r. At least that’s how he likes to spell it, except when he’s forced to write it officially. The less one writes one’s real name, the better, he jokes. It’s only good for signing cheques at the bank, for those thieves.

‘Natalia,’ she introduces herself.

Then comes the obligatory question: what is she doing in La Escapa? He’s seen her out on the trails and also saw 17 her tidying up the land around the house. Is she going to live there? Alone? Nat feels awkward. She would prefer not to be watched while she works, especially unawares, but it’s inevitable because the bounds of the property are only marked by fine wire mesh, denuded of vegetation. She tells him she’s only staying a couple of months.

‘I’ve seen the dog, too. You didn’t bring him with you, did you?’

‘How do you know?’

Píter confesses that he knows the animal. One of the landlord’s many. That dog, in fact, is probably the worst. Her landlord will pick them up from wherever and doesn’t train them, doesn’t vaccinate them, doesn’t take the slightest care of them. He uses and then abandons them. Did she ask for the dog? She can be sure the landlord has given her the most useless of the pack.

Nat considers this and the man suggests she give the dog back. There’s no reason to settle if he isn’t what she wanted. The landlord isn’t a good guy, he says, she’d be better off keeping her distance. He doesn’t like to speak badly of anyone, he insists, but the landlord is another matter. Always thinking about how to scam people.

‘I can get you a dog if you want.’

The conversation leaves Nat uneasy. Sitting on her doorstep with a lukewarm bottle of beer – the fridge, too, is on the fritz – she watches Sieso sleeping next to the fence, stretched out in the sunshine. The flies loiter on his slightly swollen belly, where blemishes of old wounds are visible.

The thought of returning him is deeply unsettling.

18 The house is a squat structure, single-storey, with windows practically level with the ground and one bedroom with two single beds. Nat wanted the landlord to take away one of the beds – she won’t need it – so she could set up a desk instead. She’d be fine with a simple board on four legs. She considers calling him but keeps putting it off. When she sees him – she’ll have to see him sooner or later – she will ask. Or hint. For the time being, she’ll work without a desk, making do with the only table, which she moves against the wall because the house is gloomy and damp, even during the day. The kitchen – little more than a countertop and hob – is so dingy that she has to turn on the overhead light just to make a cup of coffee. Outside is different. Starting at daybreak, the sun beats down on the land, and working in the yard, even first thing in the morning, is exhausting. She tries hoeing rows to plant peppers, tomatoes, carrots – whatever grows fast and easily. She read about doing it. She’s even seen a few videos that explain the process step by step. But once she’s in the dirt, she’s incapable of putting any of it into practice. She’ll have to get over her embarrassment and ask somebody. Maybe Píter.

She sits down in the evening to translate for an hour or two. She can never quite concentrate. Maybe she requires an adaptation period, she tells herself, no need to obsess yet. To clear her head, she takes walks around the surrounding area. No matter how much she calls him, Sieso refuses to accompany her, and so she goes alone, listening to music on her earphones. When she sees someone else approaching, she speeds up and sometimes jogs a bit. She prefers to go 19 unnoticed, not be forced to introduce herself or chat, even if that means pretending to exercise.

Cork oaks, holm oaks and olive trees stud the drought-ridden terrain. The rock-rose, sticky and unassuming, are the only flowers to dot the land. The monotony of the fields is broken up only by the mass of El Glauco, a low mountain of bush and shrub that looks like it’s been sketched in charcoal on a naked sky. On El Glauco, it is said, there are still foxes and wild boar, though the hunters who go up only come back with strings of quail and rabbit on their belts. It’s a spooky mountain, Nat thinks, quickly dismissing the thought. Why spooky? Glauco is an ugly name, for sure; she supposes it must come from its pale, wan colour. The word glauco reminds her of a diseased eye, with conjunctivitis, or elderly eyes, glassy and red, almost tarnished. She realizes she’s letting herself be influenced by the meaning of glaucoma. Coincidentally, the word glauco has appeared in the book she is attempting to translate, as an adjective attributed to the main character, the fearsome father who at a certain point unleashes an injurious imprecation at one of his sons, while he, according to the text, fixes him with a glaucous gaze. At first, Nat thought of an eye infection, but later understood that a glaucous gaze is simply an empty, inexpressive look, the kind in which the pupil appears dead, almost opaque. What, then, is the correct meaning? Light green, blueish green, sickly, dim, distant? She will have to orient the rest of the paragraph around the term she chooses. Opting for a literal translation without understanding the genuine spirit of the sentence would be like cheating. 20

Despite all her walking and physical labour, she sleeps poorly at night. She doesn’t dare open the windows. Not just because of the mosquitoes, which eat her alive despite all the products she bought. She’s also found spiders and salamanders inside the house; horrified, she even discovered a centipede in one of her shoes. A different morning, she finds the kitchen overrun with ants because she left food on the counter. During the day, she is besieged by flies, both in and outside the house. Can anything be done? she wonders. Or is this just the country, as her landlord would say? No matter how much she cleans, everything is dirty. She sweeps and sweeps but the dust comes in through the cracks and accumulates in the corners. If she at least had a fan for sleeping, she thinks, she could close the windows and everything would be more comfortable. She would wake up rested and with more energy to clean, translate, and work in the garden – or on her plans for the garden, more like.

She decides to go to Petacas to buy one. While she’s at it, she thinks, she might as well get some tools. A hoe, buckets, a shovel, pruning shears, a sieve, and a few other things. She can always figure out the exact names of what she needs.

She knows nothing about tools.

She is surprised by the activity in Petacas. It takes her a while to find parking; the layout of the roads is so chaotic and the signage so contradictory that, once you enter the town, an unexpected detour can easily take you right out of it again. The houses are modest, their façades worse for wear and mostly plain, but there are some brick buildings, 21 too, up to six storeys tall and distributed arbitrarily here and there. The businesses are clustered around the main square; the town hall – an ostentatious building with large eaves and stained-glass windows – is surrounded by small bars and corner shops run by Chinese families selling everything under the sun. Nat buys a small fan at one of them. Then she wanders in search of a hardware store, reluctant to ask for directions. She is struck by the neglected appearance of the women, who go around with dishevelled hair, wearing sandals. Lots of the men – even the old ones – are wearing tank tops. There are just a few children, and they’re unsupervised, licking ice lollies, scampering, rolling on the ground. The people – men, women, kids, all loud and sloppy – look strangely alike. Inbreeding, Nat thinks. Her landlord fits in perfectly.

She is worried about running into him, but it’s Píter, not the landlord, whom she meets in the hardware store. She is happy to see him: someone she knows, someone friendly, someone finally smiling at her and coming over. What are you doing here, he asks. Nat shows him the box with the fan and he scowls. Why didn’t she ask the landlord? It’s his responsibility to keep the property in habitable condition. Not air conditioning, of course, but a fan at least.

‘Or you could have asked me. That’s what neighbours are for.’

Nat looks for an excuse. She’s happy to buy one, she says. When she leaves La Escapa, she’ll take it with her. He looks at her sideways, pretending not to believe her.

‘And what did you come here to buy? Tools to fix everything he left broken?’ 22

Nat shakes her head.

‘No. Stuff for the garden.’

‘You’re going to plant a garden?’

‘Well, just something basic… Peppers and aubergines, I guess they’re easy. I at least want to try.’

Píter takes her by the arm and steps closer.

‘Don’t buy anything,’ he whispers.

He tells her that he can lend her all the tools she needs. He says, too, that she might as well forget the idea of a garden. Nothing’s grown on her land in years; the soil is totally depleted; it would take days and days of hard work to get it into shape. If she insists – Nat hangs on that word, insists – he could lend her a hand, but he absolutely advises against it. Although he speaks smoothly, Píter’s voice contains indisputable certainty, an expert’s confidence. Nat nods, waits for him to finish his shopping. Cables, adaptors, screws, a pair of pliers: all very professional, very specific, nothing at all like the cloudiness she moves in.

Outside, Píter walks next to her at a sportive pace, straight but flexible. His way of moving is so elegant, so different from the people around them, that Nat is proud to be walking alongside him: the kind of pride associated with legitimacy. When he points out the windows at the town hall, the spell is broken.

‘Pretty, aren’t they? I made them myself.’

The windows clash terribly with the building’s exposed brick, but she is all praise: they suit it perfectly, she says. Píter looks at her appreciatively. Precisely, he says, that’s what he seeks, that his work be appropriate to its context. 23

‘Petacas isn’t the prettiest place in the world, but, to the extent they can, people should work to make their surroundings more beautiful, don’t you think?’

‘So, you’re a…’ Nat doesn’t know what you call a person who makes stained-glass windows.

‘A glazier? Yes. Well, more than a glazier. You could say I’m a glass and colour artisan. Like, I don’t just do windows.’

‘Of course.’ Nat smiles.

They have a beer in one of the bars on the square. The beer is ice-cold and goes down easy. Píter observes her closely – too closely, she thinks – but his eyes are sweet and that softens her discomfort. The conversation returns to the landlord – that cheeky bastard, he repeats – the tools and her barren plot. He insists on lending her what she needs. Just a matter of tidying the yard, clearing it for a table and some lawn chairs, then planting a few oleanders and yuccas, or some succulents suitable for the harsh climate. There’s a huge nursery near Petacas, very cheap. If she wants, they can go together someday. Her plans for a vegetable garden appear to be scrapped. She doesn’t even mention them again.

She devotes the next few days to the exterior part of the house. She rises early to avoid the heat, but even so, she sweats nonstop, and a grubby feeling stays with her all day. She scrubs the porch, scrapes, sands and stains the pergola’s wood floor and beams, prunes the withered branches that run rampant, pulls weeds and removes bag after bag of rubbish – papers, dry leaves, metal, plastic, empty cans, 24 more broken branches. The final result is basically a wide expanse of cracked dirt. If the house were hers, she thinks, she would put in a lawn, and maybe the oleanders Píter recommended – they would make a natural fence to shelter her from prying eyes. But that’s dumb: the house isn’t hers and she’s not going to all that effort for nothing.

One morning, the gypsy from the village limits pokes her head in the gate and asks if Nat wants any flowerpots.

‘I got tons,’ she says.

She sells Nat a whole bunch for cheap. They’re all old, but Nat isn’t bothered by the chips on the glazed pots or the mildew on the terracotta ones. There are two huge urns as well, and once they’re scrubbed clean, they strike her as lovely. Since they’re quite heavy, the gypsy’s husband helps her carry them home, accompanied by two of their three sons. Nat likes that family. They’re rowdy and good-natured, they don’t go around complaining all day like the shopgirl. The kids pet Sieso and, for the first time, she sees the dog wag his tail and turn in a circle with an instinct to play.

‘Just take some cuttings when you’re out and about and you’ll have the garden ready in no time,’ the husband says as he’s leaving. ‘You don’t need the nursery.’

It’s true. Nat picks plants from nearby houses, many of them empty, branches that poke through the fences around the properties and whose loss doesn’t pose any problem to the owners. Nevertheless, Píter is annoyed when he finds out. Was that really necessary? Didn’t he tell her there was a nursery nearby, a super cheap one? He could have given her a bunch of cuttings himself, whole plants even. 25 In fact, he gives her a hardy cactus already budding with fuchsia flowers. Nat reluctantly places it by the door. It’s a marvellous specimen but its mere presence soaks up all the attention.