The Moors Last Sigh

down upon the souls of those-who-are,’ he said carelessly when we were seated at a parasol-shaded café table with strong black coffees and glasses of Fundador. ‘How to forgive the world for its beauty, which merely disguises its ugliness; for its gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuing, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak – whereas in reality life is a series of brutal ruptures, falling upon our defenceless heads like the blows of a woodsman’s axe?’
    ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ I said, choosing my words so as not to give offence. ‘I see that you are a man given to the contemplative life. But I have made a long journey, and it is not yet complete; my present needs do not permit me the luxury of chewing the fat …’
    Once again I had the sensation of non-existence. Helsing simply continued to speak, without giving the impression of having heard a word I had said. ‘Do you see that man?’ he said, pointing to an old and unexpectedly Spanish-looking fellow drinking beer at a bar across the street. ‘He used to be the mayor of Benengeli. During the Civil War, however, he took up the republican cause, alongside the men of Erasmo – do you know Erasmo?’ He did not wait for my reply. ‘After the war men like him, prominent citizens who had opposed Franco, were rounded up in the school at Erasmo, or in the bull-ring at Avellaneda, and shot. He decided to go into hiding. In his house there was a small alcove behind a wardrobe, and there he spent his days. At night his wife would shut the shutters and he would emerge. The only people who knew the secret were his wife, daughter and brother. His wife would walk all the way down the hid to buy food so that the locals did not see her buying enough for two. They were unable to make love because, being devout Catholics, they could not use contraceptives, and the consequences of her becoming pregnant would have been fatal for them both. This went on for thirty years, until the general amnesty.’
    ‘Thirty years in hiding!’ I burst out, gripped by the tale in spite of my fatigue. ‘What a torment that must have been!’
    ‘It was as nothing compared to what happened after he emerged,’ said Helsing. ‘For then his beloved Benengeli became the preserve of this international riff-raff; and, in addition, those of his generation who were still alive had all been Falangists, and refused to speak a single word to their old opponent. His wife died of influenza, his brother of a tumour, and his daughter married and moved away to Seville. In the end he was reduced to sitting here, among the Parasites, because there was no longer a place for him amongst his own people. So, you see, he has become a rootless foreigner, too. This is how his principles have been rewarded.’
    There was a brief lull in Helsing’s soliloquy while he contempted the mayor’s tale, and I took advantage of it to ask him the way to Vasco Miranda’s home. He looked at me with a faint puzzlement in his eyes, as if he had not quite understood what I was saying, and then, with a light, dismissive shrug, picked up his own thread.
    ‘I, too, have had a similar reward,’ he mused. ‘I fled my country when the Nazis came to power and spent a number of years travelling in South America. I am a photographer by trade. In Bolivia I made a book showing the horrors of the tin mines. In Argentina, I photographed Eva Perón once in her lifetime and again after her death. I never returned to Germany because I felt too deeply the pollution of its culture by what had happened there. I felt the absence of the Jews like a great chasm; even though I am not a Jew.’
    ‘I am half a Jew,’ I said foolishly. Helsing paid me no heed.
    ‘Eventually, in reduced financial circumstances, I came to Benengeli, because here I could afford to live simply on my small pension. When the Parasites heard that I was a German who had been in South America they began to call me “the Nazi”. That is their name for me now. So my reward for a life in opposition to certain evil ideas is to have them hung round my neck in my old age. I no longer talk to the Parasites. I no longer talk to anyone. What a rare treat it is for me to have you, sir, to converse with! The old men here were once the middle-ranking evildoers of the earth: second-rate Mafia bosses, third-rate union-busters, fourth-rate racists. The women are of the type that is excited by jackboots and disappointed