It is early June and I leave the aircon on high. I am driving two and a half hours from the airport to Monzón, the hometown of my wife María. My mother-in-law Pilar is to be buried this afternoon. I only brought an overnight bag with me and wore my suit on the early flight. María has been in Monzón since the previous month for the deathbed vigils. I am going for the night and flying home tomorrow at 12 noon. María and I had it planned for months, years even. Fionn, our son, is being looked after by my parents.
I drive without stopping. Maria is staying in her mother’s apartment but I can’t bring myself to stay there with her. I have a double room booked in the town’s only hotel, situated on the outskirts, beside the Mercadona we shopped in when we lived here two years ago. The hotel is close to Los Sotos, the copse of pine trees where I used to take Alicia.
After checking in, I have two hours before the funeral. I message María to say I’ve arrived but know she’ll be busy and don’t expect a response. I change my boxers and socks, splash some water on my face and brush my teeth. I am starving and walk to Dolores’s café, where everything is as it has always been: the TV on loud in the corner and Francisco, bald on top, his ponytail tied back with an orange clothes peg, sitting in the same seat. He has a small stack of coins in front of him, a glass of red wine and an open book. Jesus, Francisco, I think, there you are.
¡Hombre! he says, as he shakes my hand and gives me two kisses.
Dolores comes out from behind the counter, greets me with a huge hug and two kisses. She expresses her condolences about Pilar then says:
Pienso en ti mucho.
I lie and say I think of her too and for the first time I feel like crying, and do, just for a moment, after she takes my order—un bocadillo de tortilla y una caña. I sit at the counter, watch the news and think back to the days after Alicia died, how Dolores fed us when I moved out of the apartment and was staying in the hotel. She was always patient with me and tolerated my broken Spanish.
I take out my phone. María hasn’t seen the message. I message my mother to tell her I’ve arrived safely and ask after Fionn. I gaze up at the loud television in the corner then look back at my phone and find myself scrolling to the video Pilar made of Alicia in our local park. I haven’t watched it for a long time. I press play but when the sound of Alicia’s happy screams can be heard I turn it off as quickly as I can.
My food arrives, but despite my hunger, I don’t eat much. Dolores can see I’m a mess and pours me a shot of whiskey, then a double espresso. I go to the bathroom, where I try to sort myself out. My stomach is at me and when I take off my jacket I see sweat patches on my shirt. I wash my hands and face and in the mirror, see the state I’ve become—my chipped yellow tooth, patchy beard, scraggly hair. At the bar, I try to hand Dolores a €20 note, but she refuses, ¡Que no! ¡Que no! so I leave the money on the counter instead and promise I’ll see her before I go. We hug and I shake Franciso’s hand and I want to speak, to say something to both of them, but my mouth is completely dry and I can’t get the words out.
The sun is strong and harsh. I walk but it is hard, I am overdressed and have no idea where to go. I know, instinctively, which streets to avoid, but the town is too small and the castle is above us at every turn. In the shade, I sit on the Plaza Mayor. Around the square, men in check shirts and loose-fitting slacks are on the same benches as when we lived here two years ago. They are faces I used to see every day but haven’t thought of in a long time. These men with dogs and small cans of Ambar, drinking beside groups of African lads in flip flops, skull caps and dashikis, glued to their phones. I used to wonder about the men, what they did for money and how they ended up spending their days this way, but I have more tolerance now.
Swallows are everywhere. Golondrinas, I say to myself and remember the day on the balcony when Pilar taught me that word. She used to praise them for eating the mosquitos in summer. The balcony, with its view over the town and valley, the factories and slaughterhouses, el río Cinca, and its dry tributary el río Sosa. High on the hill above us, the castle.
I walk into the old town, with its cooler cobbled streets and rundown buildings. Down every narrow lane are stray cats sleeping in the shade. I am heading towards the Gypsy quarters when I see three death notices on the side of a building. It takes me a few seconds to remember the word in Spanish, esquelas. Pilar’s is the middle one. She is younger in the photo and smiling. I read the funeral details and check the time, then look around. Suddenly needing a memento from the day, I pull the notice from the wall, fold it neatly, put it in my pocket and walk away.
I turn back now and stop briefly on the bridge over the river, looking down the gravel path that leads to Los Sotos. I continue on towards the funeral home but Pilar’s apartment block comes into view, and I instinctively turn towards it. It is my first time being here since the accident. Nights when I can’t sleep I walk the old town of Monzón in my mind, but make sure to never arrive here. The streets and square beside the apartment are as noisy as ever with kids playing football and people milling around on bikes and scooters. I enter the courtyard of the apartment block and notice the old people on the benches staring at me. I walk in circles, staring at the ground until eventually, I look up. I feel dizzy seeing the balconies at the back of the building. It takes me a second to find Pilar’s apartment and when I do, I place my hand on the wall to steady myself.
It was Pilar who told Alicia the story, the same one she told María when she was young, how the lights of the castle at night are lit by fairies. Each time she told the story before bed, Pilar stood Alicia on a footstool on the balcony and pointed up at the castle.
That summer was so hot that we slept with the windows and balcony door open. It took me an age to fall asleep, but once I did, I slept deeply for five or six hours. There were so many sounds and noises at night—motorbikes revving, drunks arguing, kids playing football—that I didn’t register the screams below. We were woken to banging on the door. At first, I thought there was a fire and I ran to check on the kids. Fionn was in his cot, but Alicia wasn’t in her bed. María began calling Alicia’s name and running for the lift, but I kept looking. It took no time to check the whole apartment and it wasn’t long before I spotted, through the open door of the balcony, the footstool pushed against the railings and in the distance, the lights of the castle.
By the time I got downstairs, there was a blanket over Alicia. She had landed on her back on the red courtyard tiles and died with just her knickers on. Beside her body was her favourite stuffed toy, a pig. How it must have floated, at least for a little bit down the ten stories, and how intact it was.
María calls and I answer, stepping away from the courtyard. She asks me where I am. When I tell her she sounds shocked.
You’re very close.
I know, I’m on my way.
We’re all here.
Okay. Te quiero.
Te quiero también, amor.
I go directly to the funeral home, el tanatorio, a strange name I always think. We didn’t bring Alicia here. She went straight to the hospital, where they did the postmortem and investigation. I am, I remind myself, part of this family, even though I have distanced myself from the town and Pilar. When I see them all, I can feel a cruelty rise in me. I want to say something about Alicia, to provoke them, but I suppress it as I make my way along the line, hugging, kissing and shaking hands with family members I know. I reach María and my first thought is how hot she looks in her funeral clothes. We hug briefly, then I take her hand and give her a strong kiss on the cheek.
Pilar is laid out in a coffin but behind a pane of glass so I am not able to touch or kiss her. I haven’t seen her in person since the days after the accident and never, to my regret, was able to look at her on the videocalls when we moved back home. She has withered away and looks almost unrecognisable.I want to kiss her forehead, to say something to her, but it is impossible behind the glass.
With the other family members there are no questions about Fionn, work or my life in Ireland. Any talk is about Pilar, the disease, death and sadness. I remember how Spanish funerals work, how you’ll be judged if you don’t remain solemn. This suits me fine; my Spanish is rusty and I find it hard to keep conversation up.
After some prayers, the coffin is closed and moved into the hearse. I walk the five minutes to the church in the old town. Outside, there is complete silence as the hearse pulls in. I am a bit dizzy, feeling the heat more and more. I watch the family come in and take their seats in the first few pews. The traditions prevent me from being beside María and I sit next to a stranger halfway up the church.
During the ceremony I close my eyes and try hard to remember Pilar as she was before she got sick, the good times we had together in Dublin and Monzón. We took long lunches and went for walks, where she was helpful and patient with my Spanish. I hated her so much after the accident and for months, blamed her for inventing the story about the castle’s lights and showing Alicia how to stand on the footstool. I blamed myself then for not following my instinct to close the balcony door, and María for bringing us here in the first place. I always kept the balcony door closed when it was just myself and Alicia in the apartment. María and Pilar told me I was overreacting, that kids who grew up in Spain knew the dangers of balconies. I held that against María for months. Looking around the church now, I see how heartbroken her family and friends are. A sick feeling of shame surfaces, one I’ve tried to avoid for so long, of how I treated Pilar after we left Monzón. I can only imagine now the guilt and pain she must have suffered too after Alicia died.
When Pilar fell ill and began her treatment, María, an only child, wanted to be with her. María’s dad had died when she was six. I was able to work from anywhere so we all moved over. Alicia was three and wouldn’t be starting school yet and Fionn was just six months old. We rented out our place in Dublin and moved into Pilar’s tenth-floor apartment. Pilar went downhill after Alicia died. We moved back to Dublin after the accident but María came over and back for weeks at a time to look after her mother. I knew, for her own reasons, she needed to be near the site of the accident.
My body calms and cools in the church. I cry and keep my eyes closed for most of the funeral, until the shaking hands part, which isn’t light-hearted like it can be at home, but intense and serious. Outside, before the procession heads to the graveyard, María rushes over and takes my arm. She whispers that I don’t look well. There is so much I want to say to her, to apologise about how I made her and Pilar suffer with my behaviour, but I just tell her that I feel weak. The crowd is dispersing and as if she knows what I am thinking, tells me to go for a lie down, that she’ll see me later. I kiss her on the cheek and she moves over to the coffin.
My head down, and tie loosened, I walk away into the early afternoon sun. I have no idea what María and her family will do after the burial as there is no reception or meal planned. The hotel is straight in front of me, but I dip into Mercadona and buy four cans of Ambar and a ready-made empanada, and head for Los Sotos. I open my first can as I go down the embankment and immediately feel the shade of the huge pine trees. I brought Alicia here on weekend mornings, before the sun became too strong, and we’d play hide-and-seek and have picnics.
By the river, there are two pilgrims bathing their feet in the water, their backpacks with conchas attached. El Camino de Santiago runs through here, one of the offshoot trails. I can hear them speaking English so I say hello and they ask me to join them. Mark is English and Astrid is Dutch. They refuse any empanada but take a beer and tell me where they are going, where they’ve been and why they are on the Camino. It is nice to be able to express myself without thinking or making mistakes. I tell them about Pilar’s funeral, taking the funeral notice from my pocket, and then, because I know we’ll never meet again, tell them about Alicia and how we scattered some of her ashes here in the river. We toast and hug and then they pack up and leave. Around me, the park has filled with families and a group of old men are playing petanca in the shade. I have my last beer watching the river.
At the hotel reception, I see a missed call from my mother, but I don’t call back. I head for my room but in the lift there is a sign for live music in the rooftop bar so instead I go straight to the top floor. There are couches dotted around, a small swimming pool and deck chairs far too close to the railings. A lad with a guitar is singing on a small stage and there is a decent crowd. I perch on a high stool at the bar and order a caña. The sun is going down as he sings ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ and finishes with ‘Hey Jude’.
My body settles for the first time today. I am tippling away the whole time and starting to feel a bit drunk. When the singer finishes, I shake his hand and afterwards, for the first time, look over the railings at the town and the valley. My heart beats faster as I follow the path, el sendero, where Mark and Astrid walked a few hours ago and the tall pine trees of Los Sotos beside the flowing Cinca. I have no plan, but behind me on the stage a duo is starting, so I stay. They go straight into a high-tempo song; their accents are South American but I am not able to place them. All the people who were nodding along to the songs in English are now up and dancing. It is almost dark and I remember how quickly the night lands here, how suddenly and harshly everything goes black. I am feeling it now. I order a gin and tonic, and stand in front of my stool, and in my own way, dance to the music.
There are families of all ages dancing, some with girls of seven or eight years old. I watch them and know this is my lot now, calculating girls’ ages and wondering where Alicia would be. I sit back down, take out my phone, stick in my earbuds and go straight to the video of Pilar. Alicia and I used to watch it together: Pilar was over for a visit and bringing Alicia to crèche one morning, walking through our local park in Dublin. ¡Que verde! ¡Que verde! Pilar is saying, and they scream together when they spot a squirrel climbing a tree. Alicia’s tottering legs move up the path and I’ve forgotten about that jacket she used to wear and wonder what we did with all her clothes. Sometimes I think I have forgotten everything. I miss having Alicia’s small body in my life, lifting her up. Suddenly Fionn comes to mind, older soon than Alicia will ever be, and it is him now, it has to be all about him.
I order another gin and tonic and watch the video again. A message comes through from María, but I don’t open it. People on the rooftop are singing and I take out my earbuds to listen. The band is playing a song María and I love, ‘Cuando Calienta el Sol’, and the crowd are joining in. When the chorus hits, I sing along too and immediately start crying, thinking about the times in the kitchen we’d dance and sing to this with Alicia. I haven’t heard it since she died.
Across the bar, I see María enter. She is still in her mourning clothes but her hair is loosened now and she looks more like herself. She is looking around and for a second, I think about hiding myself somewhere, but I stay where I am. I don’t wave or call out to her either and continue swaying to the music, knowing she’ll spot me soon. She sees me and I watch her cross the dance floor. Up close, I can see how drained she is and it hits me how distant I’ve been, how isolated she must be in her grief. She mouths the words of the song and moves her hips slowly as we meet in front of the musicians. People are dancing close and we do the same and I think of the times I haven’t allowed myself to dance with her when she wanted me to: the early years at bars and parties but more recently, at that wedding in Celbridge. It was a year after Alicia, and our first night out since the accident.
A sick feeling comes into my stomach when I think again of how I treated her and Pilar: the drinking, the silence and absence. I go to whisper something in her ear but she shushes me and lays her head on my chest. It has been so long since we held each other.
I look over María’s shoulder. Behind her, out there, Los Sotos is dark; higher up, the lights of the castle have come on. And I know the time and the story, but I have no idea how everything will end.
