Brendán Godínez lost his fine manners, for not copying Rimbaudo and saying his delicacy.
He was one of those people - very rare in Spain, where most people don't give a damn about looking like a lout or a brute, because there will always be others who will pull on the rough choice - who were extremely concerned that someone might speak ill of them in the future or when they have died.
As if they were taking care of their biography at all times and before any witness, ignoring that only the spiteful, the opportunists and the gossips are now biographers.
A whore, a friend of a friend, had once summed it up for him like this: "You, to be captivating, lack a bit of vulgarity."
Brendán would have answered "Don't even dream about it", but he didn't want to be stern with Del Biombo: "Well, we would have to think about it a lot, we barely know each other".
To her surprise, she replied nonchalantly, “Well, that's fine.
Nor did I expect anything else”;
and she sounded as if she had reproached him: "You men always shy away from your responsibilities."
She then added: “It doesn't matter.
I'll give him up for adoption."
That chilled Godínez's blood more than if he had announced a second abortion followed by a second excommunication.
“A son of mine, a daughter of mine?
Without knowing into whose hands he will fall or what life will be his lot?
Before I would keep it."
That didn't seem like a bad prospect.
He saw himself with a girl who would help him take care of his sisters, his sister-in-law and his friends, and that she would love him unconditionally.
And with relief he thought:
"And besides, this crazy woman would be out of the game."
Immediately she regretted describing her that way to herself, as if she could hear him and find a pretext to say that Brendán had despised her with a disgusting paternalistic formula.
“Would you keep it?
But it would be Spanish, then, ”Catherine argued, and in her voice there was a hint of superiority, as if she believed that the least American would be better than any Spaniard, no matter how educated.
Brendán thought the same, but the other way around.
Deep down, those from the former colonies seemed rudimentary to him.
"Do you see something wrong?"
"Nerd.
It's just that you'd have to pay for my travels when she came to visit him.
I will never be rich enough for such an expense."
Godínez mentally raised his hands to his head: “This woman is going to be difficult to get rid of,
who would send me…?”
Once the spigot was turned on real or invented flaws, he found them by the handful, and couldn't help imagining what a long marriage to her would be like, especially in a southern state (Americans constantly change places).
He saw himself sitting on a porch passing the dead hours in a hammock with beer cans, ravaged by the humidity and heat and wearing a hideous overalls.
He saw her with intimidating breasts, serving several children in a dirty kitchen, with unwashed pans.
Of course that was a cliché taken from the movies, but a shiver ran through his entire body.
especially in a southern state (Americans constantly change places).
He saw himself sitting on a porch passing the dead hours in a hammock with beer cans, ravaged by the humidity and heat and wearing a hideous overalls.
He saw her with intimidating breasts, serving several children in a dirty kitchen, with unwashed pans.
Of course that was a cliché taken from the movies, but a shiver ran through his entire body.
especially in a southern state (Americans constantly change places).
He saw himself sitting on a porch passing the dead hours in a hammock with beer cans, ravaged by the humidity and heat and wearing a hideous overalls.
He saw her with intimidating breasts, serving several children in a dirty kitchen, with unwashed pans.
Of course that was a cliché taken from the movies, but a shiver ran through his entire body.
"Oh yeah?
If you gave him up for adoption, you wouldn't be allowed to visit him."
"But if he lived with you it would be different."
And he added her, moving on to a disturbing indicative present: "After all, I'm his mother."
That completely sank him.
"Well, well, let's wait and see what happens.
You are not the mother of anyone, and, as far as I know, you may not even be pregnant.
She smiled at him, and this time she didn't kiss her front teeth, but the molars with the inside of her cheeks.
As beautiful and desirable as she was, Brendan couldn't stand a woman who made so many mouth noises.
"Okay, let's wait.
For now let's not worry and let's go home.
Now there is no risk."
Brendán thought: “Not crazy”.
But he only came up with a rather macabre excuse: “I can't today.
I have to get up early to accompany my father to choose a new tombstone for my mother,
the old one has been destroyed by vandals.
And if I don't go with him, she will collapse in the graveyard."
Despite that sounding so unlikely, everyone accepts that duties towards the dead are a priority.
Brendán Godínez needed advice from someone more experienced.
He couldn't pin that story on his father.
Like Del Biombo, he was a practicing Catholic and considered abortion inexcusable.
But yes to Juan Benet, who had introduced him to his thesis or whatever.
He called him and asked if he could see him urgently.
“I have a brochure to tell you.
Or maybe it becomes pathos.”
Although Benet did not appreciate serials or the pathetic in literature (he hated Dostoyevsky), he knew that life abounds in both scourges and the truth is that he could not resist listening to a promising story in which he could also have a hand.
So he made an appointment with him at his chalet on Calle Pisuerga late in the afternoon, when the two of them left work.
"And now what's the matter with you, not so young Brendan?" He blurted out as soon as they had sat down.
"What screw have you messed up now?"
It was not the first time that the not so young man had come to him with a concern.
Godínez cleared his throat and started without further ado: “Do you remember that student of your work with whom I met here at the beginning of the summer?”
“The erudite Del Biombo?” said Benet sarcastically.
“How could I not remember?
She subjected me to an unrepeatable third degree.
I will never do anyone's job again.
What's wrong with her?"
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