the bare rocks of the plain, then eastward, toward the coast, along the shabby roads of rural Spain, on and on, until he brings them to the flowered streets of Valencia and at last into the shadowy interior of a small kiosk, where . . .
. . . during the last years of his life, El Cepa, the unmurdered, toiled in his tiny, suffocating space, remembering or not the dusty streets of Cuenca, and selling lottery tickets for life’s least deadly game of chance. And thus did he remain, El Cepa, still undead, but locked in the casket of his booth, and with each hot breath, struggling in that darkness to outlive his crime.
I closed the book and recalled that when I’d first read it all those many years ago, I’d found nothing particularly striking in that final passage. For that reason it seemed strange to me that these same stark words now quite inexplicably moved me. For here was Julian’s sense of life’s cruel randomness, life a lottery upon whose uncontrollable outcome everything depended, how because this streetcar stopped on this particular corner at this particular moment, nothing for this particular human being would ever be the same.
But was this all that was to be found at the end of Julian’s first book?
I considered all the books and articles that had followed The Tortures of Cuenca, a life’s work whose dark subject matter I had always laid at the foot of some mental oddity little different from the obsession of stamp collectors or people who grow orchids.
Loretta had once said that Julian’s books always ended like the tolling of a bell. But had that really been his concluding mood? Or was it rather, as it seemed at the end of The Tortures of Cuenca, a sense of life as a grim trickster whose cruel twists and turns none of us can avoid.
I closed the book, then, on impulse opened it again, this time to the dedication Julian had written so many years before: For Philip, sole witness to my crime . I had always thought this entirely tongue-in-cheek. But now, given the life that had subsequently come to my friend, and the terrible way by which he’d ended it, I couldn’t help but wonder if this strange dedication, haunting as it seemed to me now, pointed to some different, darker, and perhaps still-unsolved crime.
I recalled the final passage once again, my mind now focused on its concluding line: to outlive his crime.
In the book’s dedication I’d been singled out as the sole witness to Julian’s crime, but I could think of no such offense, no crime I’d ever witnessed. But had there been one that I hadn’t recognized or discovered, a crime that Julian, too, had struggled to outlive but failed?
Part II
The Eyes of Oradour
6
”I can’t stop thinking about Julian,” I told Loretta.
She’d come into the city as she always did on the anniversary of her son’s death. He’d loved Central Park, and during the earlier stages of his illness, before he’d been confined to a wheelchair, they’d sometimes come here to sit and watch passersby, and even from time to time, when he’d still been able to do it, to stroll around the pond, as Loretta and I were now doing.
“It feels like I’m always in the presence of an unquiet ghost,” I added as we walked over to a nearby bench and sat down.
“Well, he was unquiet, that’s for sure,” Loretta said. “Usually he came home quite tired, but this time was different. It was as if some vicious little animal were clawing around inside him.”
I glanced out into the park, where scores of strollers were making their way along its deeply shaded paths. “My mind keeps bringing things to the surface. Little bits of memory that swirl and coalesce and pick up other little bits.”
She clearly saw the troubling aspect of this. “What little bits?” she asked.
“That dedication in his first book, for example,” I said. “That I was the ‘sole witness’ to his crime.” I shrugged. “I don’t remember witnessing any crime. I thought he meant his
. . . during the last years of his life, El Cepa, the unmurdered, toiled in his tiny, suffocating space, remembering or not the dusty streets of Cuenca, and selling lottery tickets for life’s least deadly game of chance. And thus did he remain, El Cepa, still undead, but locked in the casket of his booth, and with each hot breath, struggling in that darkness to outlive his crime.
I closed the book and recalled that when I’d first read it all those many years ago, I’d found nothing particularly striking in that final passage. For that reason it seemed strange to me that these same stark words now quite inexplicably moved me. For here was Julian’s sense of life’s cruel randomness, life a lottery upon whose uncontrollable outcome everything depended, how because this streetcar stopped on this particular corner at this particular moment, nothing for this particular human being would ever be the same.
But was this all that was to be found at the end of Julian’s first book?
I considered all the books and articles that had followed The Tortures of Cuenca, a life’s work whose dark subject matter I had always laid at the foot of some mental oddity little different from the obsession of stamp collectors or people who grow orchids.
Loretta had once said that Julian’s books always ended like the tolling of a bell. But had that really been his concluding mood? Or was it rather, as it seemed at the end of The Tortures of Cuenca, a sense of life as a grim trickster whose cruel twists and turns none of us can avoid.
I closed the book, then, on impulse opened it again, this time to the dedication Julian had written so many years before: For Philip, sole witness to my crime . I had always thought this entirely tongue-in-cheek. But now, given the life that had subsequently come to my friend, and the terrible way by which he’d ended it, I couldn’t help but wonder if this strange dedication, haunting as it seemed to me now, pointed to some different, darker, and perhaps still-unsolved crime.
I recalled the final passage once again, my mind now focused on its concluding line: to outlive his crime.
In the book’s dedication I’d been singled out as the sole witness to Julian’s crime, but I could think of no such offense, no crime I’d ever witnessed. But had there been one that I hadn’t recognized or discovered, a crime that Julian, too, had struggled to outlive but failed?
Part II
The Eyes of Oradour
6
”I can’t stop thinking about Julian,” I told Loretta.
She’d come into the city as she always did on the anniversary of her son’s death. He’d loved Central Park, and during the earlier stages of his illness, before he’d been confined to a wheelchair, they’d sometimes come here to sit and watch passersby, and even from time to time, when he’d still been able to do it, to stroll around the pond, as Loretta and I were now doing.
“It feels like I’m always in the presence of an unquiet ghost,” I added as we walked over to a nearby bench and sat down.
“Well, he was unquiet, that’s for sure,” Loretta said. “Usually he came home quite tired, but this time was different. It was as if some vicious little animal were clawing around inside him.”
I glanced out into the park, where scores of strollers were making their way along its deeply shaded paths. “My mind keeps bringing things to the surface. Little bits of memory that swirl and coalesce and pick up other little bits.”
She clearly saw the troubling aspect of this. “What little bits?” she asked.
“That dedication in his first book, for example,” I said. “That I was the ‘sole witness’ to his crime.” I shrugged. “I don’t remember witnessing any crime. I thought he meant his
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