The Low Voices

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WE WERE ALONE, María and I, hugging in the bathroom. Fugitives from terror, we hid in the dark chamber. On stormy days, you could hear the sea’s roar. Today it was the rusty, asthmatic mutter of the cistern. Finally, we heard her voice. Calling for us. With unease, to begin with. Then with growing anxiety. We had to respond. Show signs of life. But she took the initiative. We heard her panting, hurried footsteps, the eager sniffing of someone picking up a scent. María drew back the bolt. My mother pushed open the door, bringing the light with her, a storm still in her eyes. Her fear was that of someone who comes home and finds no trace of the children she left playing calmly. Our fear was more primitive than that. It was our first fear.

My mother, Carme, worked as a milkmaid. We rented the ground floor of a house on Marola Street, in the district of Monte Alto in A Coruña. My father had recently returned from South America, from La Guaira, where he’d worked in construction, scaling the summits of buildings and climbing the sky on fragile scaffolding. A quick emigration, just enough time to save the money to buy a plot of land. Many years later, in his old age, he confessed a weakness, he who wasn’t in the habit of opening up his secret zone: he suffered from vertigo. All his life, he’d had vertigo. And a large part of that life had been spent on building sites, as a bricklayer’s mate and finally as a master builder. Never, until he retired, did he confide in anyone. About his vertigo. About the fact he felt horror inside when he was down on the ground, looking up, and above all when he was up in the air, looking down. Panic from the very first step. But his foot always went in search of the second step. And the second step always led to the third.

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