Eloy Tizón*

About the Wedding

Translated by Kit Maude

She was going to get married, she said.

And then she started to laugh.

She’d decided to drop out of university halfway through her course, we weren’t expecting that, were we? Sofia blurted this out all in one go without stopping for breath. She said she was in love with a guy from her home town who wore pebble glasses, they were sending him to work overseas with a foreign research grant, and, rather than letting him escape, she wanted to marry him, the guy from her home town, and go with him so they could live together in Melbourne or wherever, and she was leaving all her books behind, everything else could just go to hell, she wanted to travel.

Sofia was telling us all this, and we were surprised she was telling us anything at all. We barely knew Sofia, we weren’t close, we saw her every now and again and said hello and goodbye in the lift or when we passed her in the halls of the Faculty of Education. She was always nervous, agitated, arms full of bundles of notes, blowing her fringe out of her eyes, even though it always flopped back down again. Oh, that rebellious fringe. We instinctively knew we should ignore her when we sat at the same table in the students’ canteen or in the language lab reading room.

One day, she brought a basket full of turtles into class.

We neither liked nor disliked her. She was just Sofia Ardiles, with her academic folders, her notes, her grating nervousness, her green fingernails and her untameable fringe flopping over her eyes, whereas the three of us had been friends since childhood, inseparable, from nursery school to sharing a flat at uni, always together, clones and complete opposites, the three of us like islands united by the very thing that separates them. We shared the same past – Rodrigo, Mario and Samuel – and we’d often exchange long, knowing gazes that declared: we’re close friends, we don’t need words to understand each other.

But there she was, Sofia, stubbornly insisting on inviting us to her wedding, someone’s actually getting married for once, she said to us breathlessly, blowing the fringe off her forehead, even though it fell back immediately, covering her eyes, as though this meant something, and maybe it did. Who knows? She took sheaves of papers out of her bag and solemnly, like a spy, unfolded rustling road maps to explain right there and then how to get to the wedding, along with the phone numbers of youth hostels, campsites, toll roads, bridges and bypasses, handing out thick cards printed with the dates and routes highlighted in fluorescent marker, all to persuade us to accept the invitation, please, please, please, we had to be there, anything to help make the trip to Mudela del Valle, the chosen venue for the event about 600 kilometres north of the city, easier. It’s full of mountains, rocks and cows, you can’t miss it.

Go to a stranger’s wedding? Rodrigo thought. Why not? thought Mario. The weekend of the wedding’s still a long way off, and we don’t have anything better to do, thought Samuel. We didn’t need to think twice, at the time, we’d grab any excuse to get away, a wedding is just another excuse, we said to ourselves, it’s no big deal.

Nothing special planned, no girls or exams on the horizon, so one Friday after dinner we pooled our money to buy a wedding gift for Sofia, threw three dark suits, some new shoes, white shirts and black ties into the boot of the car, filled a Thermos flask with coffee, packed the glove compartment with CDs – we didn’t want to run out of music – and set off in silence on the long journey north, on that impulsive trip to Sofia’s wedding in Mudela del Valle with no real idea as to why we were going or what we would find when we got there.

We travelled expectantly, taking turns to drive the mustard-coloured convertible Mario’s father had loaned us, telling us to take good care of it and not do anything crazy, he didn’t want to see a scratch or a dent on it, understand? Here are the keys, they glittered for a moment in his hands, Rodrigo, Mario and Samuel, the three of us inseparable friends ever since nursery.

Mustard.

The three of us shared everything, morning, noon and night, secrets and debts, joys and hangovers, books, highs and lows, Sundays sunk in gloom, days spent staring at our hands, the occasional casual girlfriend, everything in triplicate, even that unforgettable afternoon when, high on amphetamine-induced enthusiasm, we discovered the Gran Vía in Madrid with all its signs lit up against the gas-green sky and the row of buildings glinting like quartz in a chromium desert light. The light suddenly went crazy, it turned crude and stupid, it became a bipolar light, and at that very moment, right at that very moment, a Chinese woman’s hair burst into flames.

So we left behind us the neon lights and the high plains, the abandoned, graffiti-spattered cement factories, the pine-tree-lined ring roads, the unlikely flower beds tucked between concrete blocks, the fields of sunflowers with centre partings, the blond fire of the maizefields, advancing steadily through the night, going north, inexorably north, towards Sofia and her wedding in the mountains, which, for some mysterious reason, seemed to be reeling us in, hypnotically dragging the three of us along on invisible threads, guiding us through the darkness.

The road was a conveyor belt of bonfires. Someone rolled and lit a joint, and we started to pass it around, taking turns to toke, singing songs together, one of us singing the first few notes and the others joining in, the smoke twisting up in slow spirals and opening aniseed flowers in our lungs, and suddenly it started to get really hot, don’t you think it’s hot? And we laughed for no reason, the three of us in the car, on the eve of the wedding, the end of the shared joint glowing against the dark glass like a small, motorized torch, while the night swept over the car roof. Mushrooms started to grow in the glove compartment. The motorway unfolded ahead of us, taking on the shape of a cylindrical tube that sucked and sipped at us, and the air smelled of menthol mouthwash.

The final stretch of the journey was quite a lot slower and more tiring than we’d expected; some of the local roads weren’t very well signposted or were closed for works, and we got lost a few times, circling pointlessly around, going back on ourselves, thinking we knew where we were heading. Dizzy and exhausted from all those wrong turns, we finally parked for the night to grab a brief nap in the convertible, next to a dimly lit village petrol station, a hamlet of white cubes squeezed awkwardly together at the bottom of a gloomy ravine amid the intermittent barking of dogs, a Romanesque church tower, weary muscles, the odometer spinning more and more slowly, the never-ending ribbon of road that continued to rewind in our dreams, again and again, a broken, saurian line.

Purely by chance we woke up in Mudela. We’d reached our destination precisely when we’d assumed we were irrevocably lost. We just about had time to spruce ourselves up at the petrol station, empty our bladders, change our clothes, shave quickly and run along the cobbled streets to the town hall in the centre of the main square, under the watchful eyes of locals with agricultural faces and rustic hair, to join the crowd hailing the newlyweds with cheers, whistles and confetti.

It was a beautiful May morning, barely a cloud in the sky, just the right day to recover from a tiring journey or, perhaps, for a civil marriage. Maybe the weekend wasn’t such a lost cause after all. We were at the wedding, and we were still travelling, eating up the miles, checking road maps, examining signposts and the faces of the other guests as they passed, flashing lights and savoury crackers, hard shoulders and cleavage, an intriguing combination.

Tables. Chairs. Trees with giraffe necks. A finger with surgical tape pointing at something in the distance: over there. The blue puddle of a lake in the mountains. A high, sleepy sky dominated by a huge, operatic cloud. Next to it, a more timid, blurry cloud with shifting colours, like when you look at a 3D photo without the proper glasses.

There are a lot of us, about two hundred. Four large barbecues are roasting an endless array of meat and fish. Since we don’t know anyone and no one knows us, we’re placed at the table for single people, surrounded by other single men and women, neither too close nor too far from the four-tiered wedding cake.

So the hours passed, and the sky filled with more clouds, gradually changing colour, again and again, day and night, the waters in the lake trembled and rippled and grew smooth, and we were all a little smart and a little stupid, a little handsome and a little ugly, a little quick and a little slow. In the tent lit up with paper lanterns there were jokes and games, the popping of corks, commotion and squeals from the children’s table.

Butterflies flitted in and out of the tent, fluttering about among the guests, their wings reflected momentarily in the iridescent sheen of a glass of wine or hypnotized by the glittering flash of a fork.

One of the groom’s brothers, who had his arm in a sling, went up to the podium and, in a good strong voice, recited a poem he’d written especially for the occasion. It was greeted with applause. A portly, red-nosed man in a military uniform sang a song, and all the guests joined in the chorus with more enthusiasm than skill. More applause. When night fell and the desserts were served, it was time for the toasts. We drained our glasses, the champagne flowed, the band started to play and the couples got up to dance. We took turns dancing with some very tall girls, not very pretty but very friendly, who we’d just met at the singles’ table, and who had come to support the groom, and with them we drank more Martinis than we should have and had to slip out to the portable toilets a few times, dodging the children of all ages who were running around, sprinting, playing, jumping and laughing: a rainbow of children.

The moon rises among the trees. Sparklers are lit. Trails of light and shadow lick at the hands and faces of those present. A professional photographer wanders around taking snapshots on the fly, and a bunch of amateur cameras buzz and store away their digital memories for posterity.

It was after midnight when the tall girls who were friends of the groom came to sit on our laps without asking permission, and then it was us sitting on the laps of the single girls to keep the joke going or because the feast had gone on for so long that we’d forgotten what we were doing there and why and didn’t understand when they said, ‘That’s not fair! That’s cheating!’

Finally, not long before the party came to an end, someone came up behind us and covered our eyes with her hands, asking ‘Guess who?’ and there she was with her shining eyes, blowing her fringe out of the way, she seemed really excited, touching us and mussing our hair, stroking our chins and hands, and we started to tell her how beautiful she looked, but Sofia cut us off, telling us not to talk nonsense, and saying again how much she loved us, yes, she loved us all so much, especially the three of us, no, really. She hated the idea that she’d be losing us, she hated being away from us for a second, never, never, never, she’d rather lose an eye.

And then she started crying, nervously wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. She hugged us all as she said in an amusingly serious tone, ‘I’m not crying, I’m not, even if it looks like I am.’

And we squeezed her so tight that we could feel her pounding heart and pulse, and she cupped our faces with her hands and stared at us hard through the dampness of her tears, as if fascinated, frenziedly kissing our foreheads, mouths, teeth and hair, once, twice, thrice, swearing by everything sacred that we were her best friends, her soulmates, that she loved us more than anything in the world, she adored us she said, crying, coughing, hiccuping, then laughing, oh, I’m so happy, quite mad with happiness.

And she made as if to leave us. She took a few steps, then performed a kind of pirouette and came straight back, no, she couldn’t leave us, she couldn’t separate herself from us, and she kept asking if we wanted more cake, insisting that we have something more to eat and drink, we were too skinny, our hair was too long and, besides, we were her favourite guests, we mustn’t be difficult now, come on, wasn’t the cake good? We had to have some more for her sake, for Sofia, she’d loved us from the moment she saw us in the halls of the Faculty of Education, it was love at first sight.

‘You don’t want to make me angry now, do you?’

And, pretending to be offended, she shoved a huge slice of cake in our mouths, so big it barely fit, Sofia was almost choking us, we protested, our mouths full of cake, it was hard to swallow so much cream, we had to wash it down with cava and chew energetically, but we had to admit that the cake was really good, there was no denying it.

She made as if to leave, but then again changed her mind and came back because marriage was, could be, a dark, intimidating place with no simultaneous translation available, like getting dizzy or falling over, incomprehensible, like that chair there, no, like that one, but we, scruffy-haired boys, wouldn’t understand it, I’m so thirsty, I’m so hungry, I’m so everything, and there was the grief and courage involved in getting married, taking on another surname, having to live so far away from home, the fear of one day forgetting everything, our faces, and then dying alone. So she asked our permission, as a tribute to this moment, to name her children after us when they came along, Rodrigo, Mario and Samuel, and she said the names all together: rodrigomarioandsamuel.

And, moved by her own show of emotion and by the idea of those three bewildered children (as though their lives were in danger), Sofia hugged us again and kissed us on the lips, on the chin, on our eyebrows, snuffling our necks and saying once again how much she loved us, adored us, truly loved us, the three of us, she wasn’t exaggerating, no, really, and as she said this she shed tears of laughter, grief and laughter.

And then her husband with the pebble glasses came up behind her and winked at us. He put his arms around Sofia’s waist and started to nibble her ears and kiss her neck, inhaling her newly-wed scent mingled now with a little sweat, and started to dance with her, a funny dance, a silly jig, but then he started to dance for real, dancing and carrying her away little by little outside the tent, a farewell waltz, taking her away from us without her truly realizing it, they had to go, my love, my life, a taxi was waiting for them at the entrance to the venue with its headlights on and all their luggage inside, goodbye, Sofia, goodbye, and she left, still tearful and still blowing her fringe out of her eyes, waving goodbye and blowing air kisses, never tiring of being both happy and sad.

The two of them were in love, and they floated off into their future lives together enveloped in the smell of the fading flowers in the centrepieces, the bottles of champagne, the smoke from the candles and the marijuana and all the terrible music issuing from the speakers, wedding music, neither good nor bad, just rather hollow and horrible, the kind that if you’re not very careful can scratch at your heart and make it bleed.

A pear-shaped little boy, dead tired, fell asleep in his chair, slumped against the backrest, and a wooden old lady, who looked as though she were made entirely of sacking and umbrella frames, pointed her finger at him and said, ‘So innocent.’

A few groups were starting to leave, they were going away, hugging each other and slapping backs, endless farewells that lasted hours, the groups began to break up, it was getting late, and the children had to go to bed: it would soon be dawn.

The army man with the red nose applauds the moon. A guest leaves and then comes back to get her shawl. She crosses the empty tent, picks up her shawl, takes a last swig from a randomly selected glass, then goes back the way she came.

The champagne continued to flow happily, the musicians went on playing as if they were engaged in a fight with each other, but something was broken. It was obvious the party was coming to an end. The aftermath of Sofia’s wedding was like that of an earthquake, with overturned chairs and tablecloths stained with circles of wine, leftovers from the banquet left steaming among the ruins. When the bride and groom disappeared from view, we sat silently at the singletons’ table for a while, drinking without knowing what to say, and then someone suggested going out to greet the new day together, yes, why not?

And together we got up – why not? – and left the tent in the company of those three tall girls who were growing taller and more beautiful by the second, laughing uproariously for no good reason, constantly jumping around on long legs clad in purple silk stockings, their thighs flashing.

We stumbled along the lake shore with the three single goddesses on our arms, laden with glasses and bottles of vodka and whisky and gin and all the experience of the wedding in our eyes, and, outside, the dawn’s red glaze started to spread like a kind of gel, tinging our cheekbones a soft, almost alien lilac. It felt like twilight. It was a pleasure to breathe in and out, letting the cool air clear our minds. We dropped down onto the grass. The girls protested, they were so cold in their strappy dresses, and, without a word, all three of us took off our jackets at the same time and like old-fashioned gentlemen draped them over the girls’ bare shoulders to keep them warm.

They must have really appreciated that noble gesture because they thanked us by rubbing their perfumed heads against our chests, kissing our lips tenderly and furiously. And, for a while, that’s what we did, kissing and exploring each other with our tongues, it was just a naughty, innocent game, meaningless messing around, or so we thought at the time, too blind to guess that there might be a future when a silhouette would emerge from behind the scenes and drag us offstage.

We looked at the tree trunks and the clouds, the beaks of the birds and the fireflies, the mirror of the little lake and the rocks large and small. We were, we suddenly realized, the only people left at the party, ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts, half-finished glasses, unfinished stories, crumpled cushions, melted ice, the final embers of a human adventure that had begun a long way from there, a long time before.

Why don’t we go to Portugal? one of the girls suggested, and this was such a crazy, delightful idea that it had to be considered, yes, it was very tempting, suddenly a fragment of an intricately patterned mosaic wall appeared before us, a glass of vinho verde, the murmur of a fountain in the cloister of some luminous convent, the Atlantic sky open to the sea, gravely wounded by seagulls and palm trees, the scribbled lines of electric cables and a tram struggling, panting, up a steep, almost impossibly narrow rua, all kinds of things. The syllables of Por-tu-gal knocked around in our heads, Portugal folded into three equal parts like a letter held in the hand of a passer-by (fate?) to be dropped into the nearest postbox, because the important thing wasn’t staying or getting to or being anywhere, but prolonging the journey a little longer so that we’d always be anticipating what was to come and never looking back.

A new day was dawning, and before continuing our journey to the mosaics we spent a while lying all together in the wet grass of the meadow under the starry firmament of mid-May with our wine glasses resting on our stomachs and invisible crab claws pinching us all over inside, as we watched the quiet dawn from the shore of a calm lake, feeling pretty drunk and exhausted, with a kind of melancholy dancing around in the pit of the stomach, but a feeling of euphoria too, at how well everything had turned out, flawless, perfect, we all agreed that it had been well worth it. The light was like crinkled muslin. This was how our friend Sofia’s wedding in Mudela came to an end, with the six of us lying very still, enjoying the moment, listening to the world breathe, the seamless silence broken only by a distant cricket.