Borderlands (200 pages) is Xosé Luís Méndez Ferrín’s most recent story collection and it won him both the Galician and the Spanish Critics’ Prizes when it came out in 1991. The title in Galician, Arraianos, refers to the raia or line between Galicia and Portugal and could be a reference to border lands, people or stories. The book might be called Borders or Bordering. The quote at the beginning of the book by Portuguese philologist Manuel Rodrigues Lapa seems to indicate people.

The collection contains ten stories in all. In the first, ‘Lobosandaus’, a schoolteacher, the nephew of the Canon Penitentiary of Ourense Cathedral, travels to the small border town of Lobosandaus, where he lodges with the innkeeper, Aparecida, and her good-for-nothing husband, the local mayor, Luís. His arrival is swiftly followed by the supposed suicide of the local gelder, Nicasio Remuñán, whom the schoolteacher had taken a liking to. The two figures he doesn’t like are the priest, Don Plácido Mazaira, whom he finds cold, and the doctor, Luís Lorenzo, who seems to despise living in the country. When he is not teaching, he spends much of his time at the inn, around the kitchen range, with lots of travelling salesmen, listening to the local gossip supplied by the young servant girl Clamoriñas and the old servant Hixinio. He learns that Aparecida and Luís have a son, Turelo, who is married to Dorinda, and a sickly daughter, Obdulia, who is bedridden. Once, on his way to the lavatory, he bumps into the tall, thin figure of Obdulia with her pale face and shrunken eyes. He begins to feel a certain dislike for the inhabitants of the town, all of whom seem to him to have cow eyes. Only the buxom figure of Dorinda still holds an attraction for him.

One day, with a slight improvement in the weather, Obdulia suddenly rises from her sick-bed and begins to strut about, drinking wine and talking with a powerful, manly voice. With Turelo away in Portugal, Obdulia is caught in a straw loft, having her way with Dorinda. She then appears on the balcony of a house in the main square and holds forth on the agrarian cause and the abolition of fiefdom. Everyone comes to the conclusion that Obdulia has been possessed by the spirit of the gelder, Nicasio Remuñán, who had a fascination for Dorinda. One morning, however, Obdulia is found hanging in the same cedar copse by the river where Nicasio Remuñán had been found. The general feeling is that Turelo has murdered them both out of jealousy for his wife, but he is possessed in turn by the gelder’s spirit and begins to make passionate love to his wife and to strut about town in the same manner. Unable to endure this possession of his body, Turelo hangs himself in the copse by the river. The story ends with the schoolteacher feeling a similar attraction for Dorinda. He is afraid he is the next to be possessed by the gelder’s spirit and pleads with his uncle to come and rescue him.

In ‘Blue Tights’, two hearty young men set out on horseback to woo two sisters who live in a house a little set apart from the rest of the village. The house has a tinplate eagle on its roof. The two sisters are reputed to be witches. They are orphans and live alone. When the two men arrive, the sisters seem to have been expecting them. They invite them into the kitchen and they while away the time together next to the hearth, eventually, as the night progresses, falling asleep. They are woken by the neighing of the horses. The sisters seem afraid. The fire has died down, so one of the sisters goes to fetch more wood, and the men see that under her skirt she is wearing blue woollen tights above her knees and has blackened skin. They make fun of them, and the sisters kick them out, hoping that the night will eat them up. On their way back to their village, they laugh about the story they’re going to tell about the sisters, but suddenly a thick, dirty mist descends, the world explodes like a soap bubble and they have the feeling the night really is eating them up. When day returns, they find themselves back at the shack belonging to the sisters.

In ‘Flax’, Misia is a young woman who has lost one leg. She is sick of her life in Ourense and prefers to live in the village, on the border with Portugal. Her only friend there is a young man called N., who brings her gifts, a mole which he says is a rabbit, or wine with honey. They touch one another. Misia is jealous of the other women, the ones who gather at night to spin the flax into linen and who make fun of N. the simpleton. She is furious with him one morning for leaving her alone to spend time with the spinners and for letting the fire die down. She has a horror of Ourense, of sitting and making conversation with tutors and visitors, and feels unable to speak. She also has a horror from the past, an air-raid shelter in Madrid, where perhaps she lost her leg and her parents.

In ‘The Monk of Diabelle’, a monk from Celanova Monastery is convinced that the future of the Couto Mixto, some borderlands between Galicia and Portugal, lies in a Federal Republic of Portugal and not with the Spanish Crown. He is infuriated by the machinations of the president of the Spanish Section of the Boundary Commission, Fidencio Bourman, who he thinks has duped the head of the Portuguese Section, Leão Cabreira, by suggesting that he preside over the commission and by plying him with sherry. All his loyalty lies with the secretary of the Portuguese Section, Guilherme António da Silva Couvreur, whose ideals he shares. However, they are unable to prevail over Bourman and his lackey; Couvreur is removed from his post, and the monk of Diabelle takes to the hills, gathering a band of burglars and highwaymen around him and killing supporters of the Liberals and the Bourbons. He is eventually captured in a cowherd’s hut and sentenced to death by garrotte in Ourense. His last wish – to write a letter to Couvreur – is denied.

In ‘Elastic Boots’, a man is on the run from the Civil Guard because of his political beliefs. He hides in the cesspit he himself has dug next to the family’s brick house in the village of Auguela. He only comes out at night to wash, eat and change his clothes. The hardest time is the winter. Two civil guards arrive. One of them, the sergeant, who has this blond moustache and mild smile, makes friends with the man’s daughter, bringing her presents. She grows fond of him, but whenever he asks her where her father is hiding, she looks down at his black boots held in place by U-shaped elastic and feels sick. Eventually, a larger group of civil guards arrive in the village. They rape the man’s wife and he gives himself up. The sergeant is annoyed with the man’s daughter because, while he knew where the man was hiding, he had wanted her to tell him herself, so that she would be plagued by remorse.

In ‘The Castle on the Moors’, Lieutenant Kleist loves being on guard duty on summer nights. He leaves the watchtower and inspects the other sentry posts before making his way to the officers’ quarters, where he coincides with Colonel Junquera. Junquera rebukes him for not helping him in his research with the twelve mastiffs that he keeps in the kennels, the castle’s old dungeons. He goes down to the kennels where, upon playing Mozart’s Turkish March and opening a bottle of perfume, one of the mastiffs attacks a dummy that looks just like Lieutenant Kleist. The next day, there will be a grand parade to celebrate their National Day, which will include a display by the dogs. When the band strikes up the Turkish March, Junquera expects one of the dogs to attack Kleist and rip out his throat, at which point he himself will shoot the dog dead and order an inquiry.

In ‘Them’, a group of four Falangists, led by Fernando, go to the village of Bande for breakfast, having taken part in the dawn purge of Marxists and trade unionists. The narrator knew Fernando as a boy, when everyone was scared of him and one time, at a picnic, he put a dead blackbird in the paella. Over breakfast, Fernando asks the Porter about his wife. The Porter says his wife is sad because their seven-year-old son has lice. Fernando asks if there is someone in the village who resents them and might have put the evil eye on their son. The Porter responds that there is a woman whose son works on the railways. Fernando hates the men who work on the railways because they are unionists and suggests paying the woman a visit. They beat the woman up, and Fernando wants to know where her son is hiding, but she refuses to tell him, so he kills her with the butt of his pistol and sets fire to her house. As they leave, the four Falangists notice that their skin has begun to itch and they have lice.

In ‘Adosinda Horrified’, Luísa Armesto visits an archive in the middle of Ourense, where she consults a tenth-century manuscript in which is contained the Vision of Adosinda, one of the female descendants of Count Hermenegildo, in which there is an old man dressed in white with a golden belt, and seven gold bowls, which gradually disappear, and a Beast with seven heads, and an eagle, Cirus, proclaiming Rebellion from the skies. The vision is reminiscent of the Book of Revelation. Luísa remembers her own past, amorous encounters, and leaves the library, closing the manuscript and shutting the characters from the vision up inside.

In ‘The Militant Fantasizes’, a maquis or guerrilla fighter in the mountains on the border with Portugal dreams of a different outcome to the Nationalist uprising in his native Ourense. He imagines that he and his friends overpower the Nationalist forces and are able to remain loyal to the Republic. When he wakes up, he feels cheated and remembers how many of his friends have been shot or have had to flee. He himself is protecting his comrades while they go down to pick up the supplies of food and tobacco that the Portuguese have left them.

In the last story, ‘The Old House of Arranhão’, a godfather sends his godson to visit the manor house that belonged to his ancestors. There is a terrible tragedy connected with this house. It was inhabited by a rich man, Eduardo, and his elder wife, Carlota. Eduardo had invited a student friend, the Captain, to come to modernize the house and to design and create some new gardens. Carlota had asked if she could invite her niece, Otilia. And a fateful quadrilateral had opened up between them. Eduardo had fallen in love with Otilia, Carlota with the Captain, but Eduardo and the Captain had taken part in masculine games of affection when they were students, and perhaps even Otilia had succumbed to the Captain’s embrace. One night, Eduardo had visited his wife’s chamber as if he was not her husband. They had lain together, each thinking about their other lover, and a child had been conceived, who had then drowned in the lake. Otilia had died of sadness, Eduardo had taken his own life, the Captain had left to fight and die under Wellington, and Carlota had eked out her days in the house. Now the godson has been sent by his godfather to break the fateful quadrilateral by his presence.

Borderlands is the most recent of numerous collections of short stories written by this author. His stories deal with mythical places, cruelty in the world, a lack of decency, fatal attraction and treachery, centring on the line that divides Galicia and Portugal. Cruel characters populate these stories, and their actions are strange by any normal standards. The language is rich, and quite often the narrator’s voice changes from the first to the third person and back again, adding to the sense of displacement. Undoubtedly, this collection was very influential on Galician literature at the turn of the century. It has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese and merited several literary awards, including the Spanish and Galician Critics’ Prizes.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne