Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio*

The Recidivist

Old, almost toothless, grizzled and bedraggled, worn-out, sick, tired of living and of going hungry, the wolf felt that the hour had come for him, finally, to go and rest his head on the Creator’s lap. Night and day, he travelled along ever remoter and more godforsaken tracks, ever craggier mountains, ever steeper and more precipitous hills, to the place where, suddenly, the fearsome roar of the hurricane, up among those ridges carved out of ice, became, as he entered the thick cupola of mist, like a voice muffled in soft cotton wool: the white silence of the Eternal Heights. There, no sooner had he raised his eyes – his sight blurred, partly because of age, partly because his eyes were still stinging after the recent blizzard, partly because they were filled with tears that were a mixture of self-pity and gratitude – no sooner had he glimpsed the golden gates to the Mount of Beatitudes than he heard the piercing, crystalline voice of the guard saying:

‘How dare you even approach these sacrosanct gates with your mouth still bloody from your last cruel repast, you murderer.’

Dumbfounded by such a reception and plunged into unbearable grief, the wolf turned tail and walked back along the path it had cost him such pain and effort to travel, returning to the earth, to his usual haunts and hunting grounds, except that now he behaved quite differently: he no longer slew sheep or even lambs, something which the loss of his teeth had, besides, long since prevented him from doing; he even abstained from eating carrion or gnawing at bones that younger wolves with better teeth might have thought unworthy of their attention. Now, determined not to touch any food that even remotely resembled meat, he was forced to become a pillager of villages and farmhouses, a snapper-up of lunch packs and picnics. His few remaining teeth, albeit almost worn down to the gums, did, however, allow him to chew bread, fresh bread when fortune smiled on him, but more often than not the dry, stale variety. Under this new regime, in the fields and the vast woods of his native hills, he continued to cling on to life for another whole cycle of winters and summers, until, doubly exhausted and doubly desirous of rest after this second round of what had already been a very long existence, he again felt that the time had come when he deserved, finally, to rest his head on the Creator’s lap. If the climb up to the Eternal Heights had been hard the first time, how much harder must it have been now, had it not been for the fact that the decrease in his physical strength was compensated for, to a greater or lesser extent, by an increase in his yearning for rest and beatitude. And he did once more reach the Eternal Heights, although, by then, his sight had become so poor that he didn’t even notice he had reached the golden gates when the hoped-for voice of the angel on guard rang out:

‘So you’re back again, intent on offending by your mere presence the dignity of those who, by their merits, have made themselves worthy of passing through these gates and enjoying Eternal Beatitude, as if you, too, were a worthy candidate. How dare you? You burglar of bakeries, you plunderer of pantries, you looter of larders. Get out of here! Skedaddle as you usually do, since you’ve more than demonstrated your talent for skedaddling, undaunted by traps or fences or dogs or rifles!’

Who can gauge the desolation, bitterness, abandonment, wretchedness, hunger, frailty, illness and mange of the many long, miserable years that followed? Now he dared only nibble, with his now entirely toothless gums, the curly tops of lettuces, or use the tip of his tongue to lick off the syrup-sweet drop hanging from the bottom of figs still on the tree, or lap up, one by one, the circular stains left by the cheeses on the shelves of an empty pantry. When he walked now he left no mark, like a shadow, for he was so thin and light that the weight of his paws was not enough to crush anything underfoot. Another long procession of years went past and, as was perhaps inevitable, the day dawned for the third time when the wolf considered that the hour had come for him, finally, to rest his head on the lap of the Creator.

He set off then, invisible and weightless as a shadow, and he was, indeed, the colour of a shadow, except in the few parts where the mange had not caused his fur to fall out; and where some fur remained, it was completely white, as if his whole body had turned to mange, to shadow, to nothing, leaving in those white hairs only the call of the snows, the pressing, inextinguishable longing for the Eternal Heights. If the climb had been almost too much for an old wolf on those two previous journeys, you can imagine the urgency of the impulse that set him on that path again for a third time, bearing in mind that the first and, one might say, natural old age of that first journey was now overlaid with a second and even a third old age; imagine, then, the superhuman effort required for him to make the journey yet again. Treading gently, softly, humbly, he could now only just make out the gates to the Mount of Beatitudes; leaning his chest on the threshold, he first lowered himself down on his haunches, stretched out his front legs, so that they were parallel with his chest, and rested his head on them. Just then, as he suspected would happen, he heard the metallic voice of the angel on guard and the very words he had so dreaded hearing:

‘Well, thanks to your own stubbornness, you have reached a situation that could and should have been avoided and which is equally undesirable for us both. You knew this perfectly well the very first time or surely you must have guessed; you knew this even better the second time and were proven right; and yet, despite all, you have insisted on coming back a third time! So be it! If that’s what you want. Now you will leave as you did before, but this time you will never return. Not because you’re a murderer. Not because you’re a thief, but because you’re a wolf.’