Manazas

The stove was eleven years old.

Axel’s dad gave it to him when he turned fifteen. It was one of those ugly things that never break: a steel plate, three legs and a burner that roared like a small plane.

That afternoon it rained half-heartedly and without stopping, that fine rain that soaks you through in twenty minutes before you’ve even noticed it’s started. They found a tool shed in the middle of a field, open on one side, with a hard dirt floor and a pile of empty sacks in a corner.

“Here,” said Hortensia. “And that’s final.”

Axel took out the pot, set up the stove and turned on the gas. He tried the igniter a couple of times, but the thing showed no sign of lighting.

“Give it here,” said Hortensia.

“No, no, this one always works.”

He hit it nine or ten more times, same again, hoping for a fluke. On the tenth the little wheel went click, went slack and started spinning in thin air.

“Oh.”

Then he saw another little creature sitting on the regulator, hands on his knees, with an expression that promised nothing good. He was a little bigger than Gorgorito, wore dungarees covered in pockets, and had hands as big as his own feet.

“It’s broken,” he said, in a very deep voice.

“I can see that.”

“I was having a look inside it.”

“I can see that.”

“I open everything up, see.” He looked down at his great big hands. “To see how it all goes. And then I close it up, and it doesn’t go any more.” He thought about it. “But I know the inside by heart now. And that I don’t forget.”

“And who are you?”

“Manazas.”

“Of course you are.”

Manazas reached for the little wheel again. Axel slid the stove to the other side of the pot.

“My dad gave me that. Hands off, come on.”

Manazas looked at his hands and stuffed them into his dungaree pockets. His elbows stuck up level with his ears.

“How am I meant to learn, then?”

“On something else today. We need to eat.”

Axel tried to catch the other two’s eyes, but Hortensia was wringing out her cardigan and Eva was watching the rain, both perfectly calm. He was getting the whole stove performance to himself.

“We’ll find a hardware shop tomorrow,” he said, louder than he needed to. “With a new flint it’s a two-minute job. For now I’ll just use a lighter.”

“Better to make a fire,” said Eva. “I’m frozen.”

“With everything soaking? Not a hope, sunshine.”

Eva was already getting up.

Eva came back from the field with an armful of twigs she’d pulled from inside a gorse bush, where the water couldn’t reach even after three days of rain. With Axel’s penknife she shaved some curls from a thick stick, piled them up and laid the fine twigs on top. She arranged the thicker ones around them, leaving gaps for the air.

“Got a lighter?”

“I’ve got two.”

“There you go, then.”

Four minutes later there was a fire going inside a shed, with the whole field dripping all around it.

“Where did you learn that?”

“Nowhere.”

“Eva.”

“Nowhere, I said. You learn it or you eat cold.”

Axel watched the branches catch. He wanted to learn how to do that. He hadn’t wanted to learn anything this much since he’d got his driving licence.

They tipped a tin of tuna and a tin of tomatoes into the pan, added a splash of oil and ate their dinner dipping bread in the sauce. Rain drummed on the corrugated roof, and Kika lay down in front of the embers, stretching out her paws.

Manazas had gone over to the pile of sacks. He was sitting on his own hands, like a kid who’s been told off, with his eyes glued to the stove.

“Hortensia,” said Eva. “About your mother’s house.”

Hortensia stopped with the bread halfway to her mouth, took a drink from the canteen and wiped her lips with the back of her hand before answering.

“It’s the house I grew up in,” she said, looking at the fire. “Right up at the top, in the mountains. Stone walls, rooms over the stable and a bread oven built against the outside wall. My father was a blacksmith. My mother was everything else.”

“So why aren’t you there?”

“Because at nineteen I came down to the city to work behind a shop counter and I met a gentleman in a tie.” She laughed through her nose. “Then my parents died, two years apart. My brother was in Germany and wanted nothing to do with a pile of old stones, and my sister sold me her share for what the notary cost. I buried my mother in the morning, signed in the afternoon and by the evening I was laying the table in the city.”

“And you’ve not been back?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Forty-one years.”

Axel sat up.

“Forty-one?”

“At first I didn’t have the time, which is what everybody says. Then it was, what for, it’ll be a ruin by now.”

She stopped there. She put her hand to her cardigan pocket, gripped the thing that went clink for a moment and left it inside.

“A ruin,” she said again. “And then it was something else. I’d gone so long without going that going meant admitting it. Walking up the hill, standing in front of the door and counting the years.”

“Yeah,” said Eva.

She said it so fast that Axel turned round.

“A cousin of mine went up a few years ago and sent me a photo,” Hortensia went on. “And I never opened it. It’s on my phone, it says ‘the house’, and there it sits.” She lifted a shoulder. “It’s silly. I know it is.”

“Let’s go, then,” said Axel.

“Oh yes, of course. And you can do my windows while you’re at it.”

“I mean it. Let’s go.”

“You two? To some village in the back of beyond to look at a ruin?”

“We’re not going anywhere in particular. I told you. So, there.”

Hortensia looked about to reply, but instead set about gathering the tins with tremendous determination, explaining how sharp the edges were and how a cousin of hers had needed seven stitches over some stupid thing like that.

Later, lying down, with Hortensia snoring, Eva spoke in the dark.

“Axel.”

“What?”

“That thing about the house. She didn’t say it for the sake of saying it.”

“I’d spotted that myself, clever clogs.”

“No. I mean she’s been thinking about it since the reservoir. Since the shoe.”

“How do you notice stuff like that?”

“By looking, clever clogs. Go to sleep.”

Axel stared at the corrugated roof. Eva had already known what was on Hortensia’s mind when they went down to the reservoir, while he’d been walking beside Eva for ten days without understanding half of what was going on with her.

Then he remembered the stove.

He went out with the head torch, picked it up off the ground and flicked the little wheel without thinking.

Spark.

He froze. Spark, spark, spark. Same as ever. He looked at the sacks. They were empty.

“Eva,” he said quietly. “It’s sparking.”

“The flint must’ve dried out,” she said, without opening her eyes. Then she rolled over, rather quickly for someone who was supposed to be asleep.

“Well, bugger me,” said Axel, out loud.

From somewhere in the pile of sacks, very quietly, came a laugh.