The fabricant of fantasms

"Ha ha! Don't you recognize me? I am the servant who, in another life, called for those dogs that shattered you in 1.000 pieces."

(Roberto Arlt, «Hate from the afterlife»)

The Manolo Schuman's mind grew nourished with those heavy long play's "Hispavox" or "Belter" at 33⅓ RPM that his parents used to settle on an old turntable "Faro" brand

from those vinyl grooves that spun slowly on the infernal apparatus, emanated the canorous, terrible, theatrical and obese voices of Plácido Domingo, Lucianno Pavarrotti, Montserrat Caballè or Alfredo Kraus, Operas Bufas, Zarzuelas and Operettas that inflated the tender brains of Manolo Schuman with a surrealistic world full of improbable mirages, plethoric of baroque scenes and macaronic pronunciations.


But don't think, beautiful reader, that Manolo Schuman spent a felicitous childhood, no, neither a happy adolescence
in fact he wasn't unhappy, either, just that...he didn't feel at home in Canary Islands, where he was born.

While he still attended secondary school in the cute capital of the islands, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where he lived with his parents, he helped his father at the workshop, where they repaired radios and turntables, "Radio Schuman electrónica y audio", as the luminous cartel indicated

his father, Carlos Schuman was an obsessive audiophile, lover of any form of Opera, especially, while his mother, Magdalena Dulcesol was a sweet housewife, sweet but a bit rubbery.

As soon as Manolo Schuman could, he saved 57.000 Pesetas, and moved to Europe, in a cheap flight of Spantax , microscopic airline that had to be closed by force after 12 fatal accidents in a row (crashes), and 9.787 deaths.



Once Manolo arrived in the El Prat airport, in Barcelona, he wandered on through the city aimlessly:

after hours walking, he wondered why he chose the ticket to Barcelona, instead of Madrid, for example

stray and confused, the city that his own feet were treading looked like a cold and distant fantasy, a harpy of concrete and steel, a chimerical monster that knew well her sons, and Manolo Schuman wasn't one of them, just an intruder, a stranger in a strange land

in the ryght moment when his hopeless breath started repenting seriously about this absurd adventure, suddenly, his tired eyes stumbled upon a sober but aristocratic building, it was the Gran Teatre del Liceu (La Rambla St. Nº 51)

The streets of the afternoon that wanted to be imminent evening in Barcelona were copiously crowded, for some strange reason, why?
Everybody looked at him with that natural and repugnant mixture of calm and horror in the eyes, as the people of strange lands look at us, when we don't know what are we doing there:
their eyes seem to ask us: what are you doing here? Don't you feel lost? How many kilometers you devoured to come to see me going to the bakery of my street? (this one), I am in my town, you're not: are you insane?


 


Despite the bitter uncertainty that was running through his back brain, Manolo Schuman yet admired the heavy structure, the style, so decimonónico:
from a corner a billboard screamed, with the impersonal but invincible tone of the announces that say nothing:
 "Festival Bayreuth al Liceu"

a giant portrait of Richard Wágner illustrated the cartel.

In that moment Manolo reminded that his father spoke about Bayreuth, sometimes, the German city where Wágner lived, and developed part of his career, and about the Bayreuth Opera House, designed by Wágner himself

Manolo Schuman used to confound Bayreuth with Beirut, detail that irritated his father to the apoplexy.




With a last stare, Manolo Schuman observed the stolid front of the Teatre del Liceu, swearing he would return

twice...





With a last stare, Manolo Schuman walked away lost among the crowd, his steps became oblong as the horizontal sun of the twilight was gradually defeated by the night.



                                                                



                                                                                           §








Manolo Schuman spent some days sleeping at the "Pensión República Argentina", (a cheap and filthy hotelito ran by an obscenely capitalist guy from Buenos Aires, whose name was Daniel Abraham Rabinovich, odd guy who used to drink mate seated at the entrance, listening to the radio station specialized in finances, "Intereconomía")

The small hotel was pretty close to the Teatre del Liceu, where they needed an electrician, Manolo Schuman applied for the job, and to his surprise, he was called one week later, and engaged as assistant, due to his knowledge about amplification (?)




The Manolo Schuman's work at the theater was pretty simple, being at backstage during every gala, and assisting the chief engineer, coming and going, or monitoring some eventual soundcheck, quite an undemanding task, they paid well, and more importantly: they allowed Manolo to live in one of the subterranean rooms that the Teatre del Liceu had, so he moved immediately to live at the cavernous entrails of that enigmatic place


That was the last day Manolo Schuman lived at the Daniel Rabinovich's hotel.













Late at night, from the depths of the theater, inimaginable noises were heard

at the long and carpeted corridors and subterranean galleries, orphic sounds surrounded like whispers

that kind of noises that the mind never is sure to have heard.



Some nights, when the gala was over, and everybody left, when Manolo Schuman was the only inhabitant of the Teatre

some nights, he heard someone knocking smoothly at his room's door

when he opened the door, nobody was there

he used to stay observing through the corridor, the silence was deeper than the cosmos at night.







The days of Manolo Schuman living at the Teatre were delphic and recondite, as if he were living in a dream

close to his small room there was a small kitchen, where he usually went to boil water in a kettle, whose bottom was completely burned, to prepare his tea.

certain metallic and extremely muffled sounds seemed to come from that kitchen, especially right before the dawn.


Those subterranean redoutes looked, basically, like a sick hospital of province, the walls of the kitchen were all covered with white azulejos, the corridors were oval like irregular tubes, with rugose walls and without any light


Manolo Schuman spent most of his days in those gothic caverns, until the 16th of July of 1.986, the day of the inundation.




En efecto: at 8:56 AM of that day, an irrational inundation rushed into the catacombs of the Teatre del Liceu, like a river out of control coming from nowhere, which filled those subterranean basements completely.


Nobody ever knew where the flood came from
the alluvion was devastating, and Manolo Schuman was the only person in those galleries, in that moment

the simple idea, envisioning his room suddenly inundated, his submersed and desperate fight to reach the doors, and escape toward the surface (doors that must have become impossible to open, due to the pressure of the water), the incomparable panic of waking up under water, tranced in asphyxia (if he was sleeping), all this represented the vision of a sad and horrifying subaquatic drama.


It took several days to drain those ample and funest basements, making the water flow off by means of hydraulic processes
the corpse of Manolo Schuman never was found, never, at all.

The detail of the water never was explained, it was salt water, like the water of the sea

the director of the theater, Normo Plá, he lost his mind 2 days after the catastrophe, his son had to substitute him, because the surface of the theater was seriously damaged, too, the stage, the splendid heavy curtains, and the Arabian carpets that covered the walls, everything was destroyed by the flood

because the director of the theater, Normo Plá, he lost his mind 2 days after the catastrophe.




The Teatre del Liceu never was the same again, a sad atmosphere surrounded every gala, the tenors and the sopranos walked on the reconstructed stage like obese ghosts, every aria sounded erratic, absurd, disgusting

because the representations became phantasmal and tenebrous, and the orchestra sounded opaque, like a melancholic meeting of Banshies, or Sylvans playing their faded instruments in a forest full of consternation.



A few days after the tragic event, a sort of white and metallic cabinet was found, in a retired room of the basements, it was like a big refrigerator that nobody had seen there before, possibly brought by some assistant.
Apparently it had a door, though nobody paid attention to it.

For some reason psychophonies started to be perceived at the theater, abstruse noïses coming from some indistinct place, like rare bombinations sounding in horrid assonance

sibilances, distant murmurations, tautophonical, repetitive, always tenuous, sounding at times orinasal, as French nasal vowels

unexpected whispers that ended brusquely in silences deeper than a cemetery at night

dull resonances becoming more and more intense, to fade suddenly in metallic chirps

deformed laughter.


Like a disease without therapy, the noises got increased along the days
the weeks

the months


the unearthly path of the theater and its spectral galas continued, as the psychophonies became more and more evident and enigmatic, until one evening

the evening of the 8 of January of 1.987
an exceptionally cold evening, with snowfall over Barcelona, which is not impossible, but is pretty unusual.

An exceptionally cold evening, while a pompous and elephantiac staging of "Un ballo in maschera" was being performed onstage

the evening of the 8 of January of 1.987, when, as the opera was represented, deep down, into the sinister catacombs of the theater, the noïses acquired a violence like never before

an Uruguayan assistant -Juan Carlos Mareco- who was boiling water to prepare his mate, realized that the psychophonies came from a diminutive chamber
he finally identified the place where the sound came from

the place, THE PLACE, THE PLACE

a diminutive chamber?

Yes

it came from a diminutive chamber, the noise

But...a chamber? Diminutive?

I said "yes", from a diminutive chamber they came, the psychophonies



a chamber

a diminutive chamber

a chamber a chamber! aaAAAH HAHA HA!


Obsessed, Juan Carlos Mareco left the mate on the table, and walked like a zombi toward the diminutive chamber, looking for the noïse

like a frenzied dragonfly of summer looking for the cold light of a fluorescent lamp, "Philips", Master 18w/965 Made in Holland.



It was the room of the white cabinet, Mareco, stolid, opened the door

as soon as Juan Carlos Mareco opened that fatidical door, his eyes were redirected, automatically and involuntarily to the white and metallic cabinet

his eyes were not subject to control of the volition, his eyes were controlled now by the intriguing cabinet

fixed his eyes, -Mareco had-, fixed on the absurd apparatus, like an insane observing a fridge.





Decided, Juan Carlos Mareco walked toward the metallic cabinet, a rotting and repugnant smell filled the room to the nausea, the noises coming directly from the rectangular cabinet were infernal, equivocal, misleading, mixing the wisdom of the human word, with the lowest bestiality
like 1.002 voices of daimons in Hell


Mareco stopped suddenly his march at 30 cm of the object, and with the automatic determination of the idiot, opened the white, metallic döör with a brusque movement of his right hand, which sounded like a muffled slap





what his eyes observed into that cabinet could be anything, his retina received an image that his brain couldn't understand: for 5 seconds, he stayed petrified and dumbfounded


then




then, a scream, denaturalized by the horror escaped from the depths of his throat, which resounded all over the theater:
































seated into the cabinet, the putrid corpse of Manolo Schuman seemed to stare at his unexpected visitor with the semi-hollow cavity of his glassy eyes, while his bony hands activated 100.000 interruptors, moved by the centrifugal energy of the machine itself.