Chapter 3

Before we go and run those errands, let me take Pat’s raincoat. Those clouds I can see trough the window might bring us some rain today. Now, let’s unroll the scale and get down to the floor. Avner enjoys lampooning and fooling around with the fact that I live somewhere in between. I keep on waiting for him to finish the sentence, but he never does.

Whenever I happen to show myself at the boat-house and I try to hang out —most of the times he is busy with his computer or phoning Helen or just doing nothing, which is a funny way of being busy in which Avner masterly occupies himself— or he catches a simple glance of my legs hanging down up on the branches where I read my books, he says that I am always up in the middle, too, and jokes about me being the only person in Northgate who lives in a point five state of things, which makes a half-person of myself. I guess this piece of information must mean something very funny to him, for he’s the number guy. His laugh is so deep when he talks about it that one can even picture the happy kid he once was in him. So long ago.

Well, it’s true that I officially live up in the border, floating between 108 and 109 in Main Street. And I guess that would make my current address 108’5 in Main Street, but I don’t know why in the name of god he insists on calling me “the cloven countess”. Even when I have already read the Italo Calvino novel, I don’t quite get it. I really loved the story, with all those metaphoric remarks about people’s soul, but still…

I reckon it has something to do with my house in the tree as well. I’ve been briefed about the title The baron on trees by Avner too, but I haven’t had the chance to get it anywhere —we have no bookshop in Northgate, I am afraid—, even though this is one of the best books in the history of the modern literature, according to him. He left his in London, but he has promised me he will send a copy as soon as he gets back. To the city, I mean.

But let’s forget Avner’s intellectual scams and let us start somewhere. Having mentioned number 109 —Pat’s yellow boat-house— and before getting to Harrington’s store at 107, it sounds logical not to skip 108, which happens to be my place.

In fact, it’s my parents’s.

They came to live in Northgate from the city when I was fifteen. My dad used to say they’d had enough of London, after having spent the last twenty years of their lives catching the subway and running everywhere and paying double for everything. So they ended up buying a house by the sea, far away from their London life. Still, they had to go every now and then to the city, but they could do most part of their jobs at home on remote. ‘One of the good things Covid left us’, I remember my mom saying when I was around —which wasn’t very often, as I was left behind as a boarder at Eton— and she was sipping her coffee in the early morning, while she started the computer. I remember her warm smile fading behind the coffee fumes, too. I would love to introduce them to you, but they are not currently available —the things we invent to avoid the word dead, uh?—. Which reminds me that one day I will have to talk to you about the incident.

But not today.

I don’t feel like talking about that right now.

As I said, colours are a serious matter here in Northgate. Knowing it, my parents decided their house should be purple. Yes, Pope-like purple, in all its power and glory. But they soon realised they didn’t have much in common with Norhgaters and they finally made up their mind about leaving it without colour. So my parents’s house is concrete colour, which is not a colour at all.

It’s a pretty showy house, now that I think of. As I recall it —it’s a long time since I don’t go inside—, in the house are a lot of valuable paintings. They hang on the walls without a single framework. They loved marble, so they ordered it with a touch of purplish veins everywhere. Floors, bathroom walls. They even had a domestic intelligent service, with a clap-your-hands-light system. A golden glittering statue and a fountain and, of course, a swimming pool the size of a pond. Can you picture a golden reproduction of the Winged Victory of Samothrace right in the middle of the front yard, between the main gate and that wonderful oak?

Well, it’s there.

I mean, up the branches, in the treetop.

Yes, there. No. In, I said.

At the west side, partially suspended over my parent’s lot, over the fence. That small wooden cottage. Oh, can’t you see it yet? Up up up. Look up on the trunk that grows behind the fence, on old Pat’s plot. And now, to the left. It’s right there, over that magnificent branch: that’s where I live, in fact. Yeah, the house on the tree.

It has a couple of windows and a front door. I have to duck a little bit to get in or out. I would roughly say I like living up there and in between the two properties, but that would provoke Avner’s laugh, maybe because it was his tree-house when he was a child. And I don’t know what Father would have said about it, to be honest, ‘cause I don’t even have a bathroom or a kitchenette or something up there —not even electricity. The cottage is just a small room with a futon and some basic furniture: a low bookcase and a couple of camping lamps and a carpet. I love the carpet, which was probably bought at Mantua on a windy day, as old Pat used to say. Maybe one of his journeys, but later on I discovered it in a short story by Virginia Woolf. And now I know Mantua has no harbour either. But old Pat was full of stories like that. Anyway, I don’t need much more these days, Dad, I promise.

But please let me cut to the chase and avoid the family issues. It’s the least I can do now that I am alone in the world. And please, please, don’t feel sorry for me, cause I don’t feel much at ease with the patronizing stuff.

The only thing you need to know by now it’s that I live at the tree-house and the fact that Pat took me in right after the incident, which was such a nice thing to do, even more when my parents sued him. He insisted on a room with view to the ocean at his own boat-house —‘now that Avner boy is no longer here’, he said—, but my head was shaven and I guess I was confused and I… well, I had a difficult time, in short, so when I saw the tree-house —which has a nice view as well: sometimes I wake up and peep through the window and I swear Pat’s boat house is about to pull the anchor up and cast off— I thought that was such a convenient place. There weren’t the best of times for me, but I learned so much and I am so grateful to have stayed around enough time in old Pat’s company, even when he is gone now as well. Yeah, I know. Anyone could say that my life is a tragedy. But you are not anyone, are you?

However, and before closing the door and leaving my cloven tree-house behind, maybe I should shed light about a couple of things:

1. Yes, my dad sued old Pat. He didn’t like having a tree-house pending over his property. Pat tried to explain to him that he constructed it for his grandson, Avner, long time before any house were built there. He tried to explain how difficult was to raise the kid, who somehow decided to climb the tree and not to set a foot on the soil again. He tried to explain that the only way he could convince him to do it was starting to build a tree- house where he could live. But my father did not meet Avner, so he never knew what on earth old Pat was talking about. Neither do I. I guess what I want to emphasize is how kind of Pat was to take me in when the incident happened.

2. It was there, up in the tree house, where I saw Avner for the first time. I mean, he was —still is, in fact— inside a golden framework, standing in a picture, next to a youngish Pat. Let me describe you the photograph: a handsome 17-year-old Avner with stupidly long hair holds a brand new compass in his hands. Pat shows a triumphant smile on his face, like saying ‘This is my boy, oh, Lord, he’s the future’. And take a look at Avner’s eyes: he is right at the top of the mountain.

King of the world.

Gosh, how his eyes have changed.

© Enrique Armenteros Caballero, 2025

Have you read it?

What do you think about it?

Please, write to enriquearmenteroscaballero@gmail.com

and let me know. Thank you!

————————————

¿Has leído hasta aquí?

¿Qué te parece?

Por favor, escribe a enriquearmenteroscaballero@gmail.com

y cuéntame. Gracias.