Chapter Ten: An Amusing Story

Nobody's Property Part Two: Madman Across the Water

Emily Cooke

Jun 03, 2022

`then read ↓`

/*Nobody’s Property, a speculative memoir, is the first offering on Stop Casting Porosity. It combines audio in the form of a legacy true-crime podcast with brief text and images responding to the podcast. The audio makes sense without the text and images but the text is not meant to stand on its own. Please listen if you have the time! Just hit ▷ above.*/

Rose stared out at the cove. Bencomo stood next to her at the windows that gave onto the patio. Rain spattered against the windows now and then, and the waves beat as hard as ever against the rocks; in a few weeks they would calm and start to deposit sand again on the pebbled beaches.

“What is she so afraid of?” she said, as much to herself as to Bencomo.

“She is afraid of dying,” he answered. “And she is afraid of finding out.”

“Afraid of me stumbling around a forest, drunk with a bum knee, wearing two pairs of jeans and a blanket like the dumbshit California girl I was. Which, yeah, is pretty much how Michael found me.”

“How could you let him do this?” Bencomo asked.

“Michael? I thought he loved me.”

“He was doing his mother’s bidding.”

“I think she loved me too, in her way.”

“Trying to keep you a prisoner?”

“That’s not so different from a lot of other mothers.”

“You told me you were the American cousin—what else have you lied about?”

She turned to him, but he stayed looking out at the sea. “You want me to tell you Iris is all yours,” she said.

“Once I thought she was all mine. But she’s neither of ours. Not anymore.” He turned and looked at her. She had been afraid to see disappointment when he looked at her, not tears. He spoke again: “After she was born, you took her home to our cottage. Our place, no one else’s. You raised her there while I was a real prisoner, on the Peninsula. You wrote to me. You sent photographs. I came to believe she was mine because you wanted her to be mine, despite what you said. I came to love her—who could not?—and my brother and his wife came to accept her as our own. And anyway it couldn’t matter—Michael could have no claim on her anymore. Why do you maintain this fiction?”

“Look at Iris,” Rose told him. “She doesn’t need anyone to send a check or wire her money or tell her to practice piano. She doesn’t belong to anyone.”

“She lives alone,” he said. “She doesn’t come to see you, and she doesn’t call.”

Rose’s Journal

What were you going to do with this fucking goat?

Michael had returned to Germany with his mother. Nothing was decided between you, but everything seemed to be understood between them. It was a relief to have them gone, but now you were here on this island, stuck in your new life which didn’t feel that different from the old life, ensconced in the princess bed, alone.

Except for the goat.

He was happy tending the fenced hillside above the orange trees, but once that was cropped down, he would need somewhere else. And you guessed that soon he would need what all the males of all the species needed. With goats, surely, the calculations would not be so complex as they were with humans. He would need to be with other goats someday soon.

You supposed that if you could get even a little bit of money for him, you could move on.

You asked about it at the fonda, where Michael’s mother had made arrangements for you to get meals and what wine they would dole out to a young single female: just enough for you to practice your Spanish without too much embarrassment. The aging lady who ran the fonda laughed when you told her you wanted to sell a male goat on Tenerife. “Do you want to sell a rock, too?” But she had an affectionate edge to her teasing and a calculating look in her eye that you hoped meant she would help you.

She gestured to a young man seated in the corner eating the octopus stew you’d also been given. “Bencomo,” she said, “come here.”

Bencomo took you to his brother’s place miles out of town, stubble and rock and salt—and goats—on a narrow shelf hung above another changeable cove. It was a journey that would have been unthinkable for any of the girls of the town, to be there unaccompanied with a young, unrelated man, but for you, the extranjera, it was acceptable, even expected. You had no family reputation and no future to uphold. You knew the Señora from the fonda would not have entrusted you to anyone the least dangerous, and this Bencomo proved to be polite and cheerful as he guided you and the goat west, away from what passed for civilization in this rocky place.

Still, you got no money. You got salt, and a kidskin purse, and a little preserved lemon, and the brother’s wife smiled at you. You felt you were among friends for the first time in a while. That was something.

On the way back to town, Bencomo pointed out to you the little stone cottage above the sea where he lived, alone.