The Truce Read Online Free PDF Page A

the son-in-law as a suitable postscript. In response to a non-existent inquiry on my part, the sister-in-law pointed out: ‘We don’t have children.’ ‘And we’ve been married for seven years already,’ said her husband with an apparently malicious guffaw. ‘Personally, I would like to,’ the woman explained. ‘But this one takes pleasure in avoiding them.’ It was Vignale who rescued all of us from such gynaecological and contraceptive digressions, to refer to what constituted the main attraction of the evening: the exhibition of the famous old photographs. Vignale kept them in a green
homemade envelope made out of construction paper, on which he had printed the words: ‘Photographs of Martín Santomé’. Evidently, it was an old envelope, but the writing on the front of it was recent. In the first photograph there were four people standing in front of the house on Brandzen Street. It wasn’t necessary for Vignale to say anything: when I saw the photograph my memory seemed to shake itself out and acknowledge the receipt of that yellowish image that was once sepia. The four people in the photograph were my mother, a neighbour who later moved to Spain, my father and me. I looked incredibly clumsy and foolish. ‘This photograph, did you take it?’ I asked Vignale. ‘You’re crazy,’ Vignale replied. ‘I’ve never had enough courage to hold a camera or a revolver in my hand. Falero took that photograph. Do you remember Falero?’ Vaguely, I thought. For example, I remembered that his father owned a bookshop, and that he would steal pornographic magazines, taking care later to share this fundamental aspect of French culture with us. ‘Look at this one,’ said Vignale, anxiously. I was in that photograph too, next to Blockhead. Blockhead (him I remember) was an idiot who always attached himself to us, laughed at all of our jokes, even those that weren’t funny, and wouldn’t stop following us around.
    I couldn’t remember his name, but I was sure it was Blockhead. It was the same silly expression, the same flabby skin and the same gummy hair. I let out a laugh, one of the best laughs I’ve had all year. ‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Vignale. ‘Blockhead. Look at that face,’ I replied. Then Vignale lowered his eyes, looked bashfully at his wife, in-laws, brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and then said in a hoarse voice: ‘I thought you didn’t remember that nickname. I never liked being called that.’ It took me completely by surprise. I didn’t know what to do or say. So Mario Vignale and Blockhead are one and the same? I looked at him, then looked at him again, and confirmed that he
really was stupid, cloying and ignorant. But apparently, this was about some other stupidity, some other cloyingness, some other ignorance. It wasn’t about the man called Blockhead in the photograph, how could it be? Now there is something irremediable about both Vignale and Blockhead. Then, I think I stuttered: ‘But, hey, nobody called you that to hurt your feelings. Remember that Prado used to be called “the Rabbit”.’ ‘Don’t I wish they had called me “the Rabbit”,’ said Blockhead Vignale, sadly. And we didn’t look at any more photographs.
Friday 22 March
    I ran twenty yards to catch the bus and was exhausted. When I sat down I thought I was going to faint. While struggling to take off my jacket, unbutton the collar of my shirt and make myself comfortable in order to breathe easier, I brushed the arm of a woman who was sitting next to me two or three times. Her arm was lukewarm, but not terribly thin. When I brushed her arm I experienced the velvet feel of hair, but didn’t try to find out if it was mine, hers, or both of ours. I unfolded the newspaper and began to read. She, meanwhile, had been reading an Austrian tour brochure. Little by