Gonzalo didn’t recall ever having seen this locket and had no idea what it was doing in the jacket pocket, but his mother might know. His mother. He didn’t know how to tell her that Laura had died, couldn’t imagine how she’d react to the news. At eighty-six, his mother was now frail and seemed to talk nonsense more and more often, to lose track of reality. She would be explaining something about the past and then suddenly look at her son as though she had no idea who he was. Her notion of time had become distorted, like a rubber band that stretched and shrank at will. The doctors swore it wasn’t Alzheimer’s. Esperanza still had an extraordinary memory and was as sharp as a tack. She read from her collection of Russian writers assiduously and had recently begun a series of charcoal sketches—landscapes from her childhood, still lifes, and portraits of Elías adorned the walls of her room. The problem, her caretakers said, was that his mother decided when and where she wanted to live without ever leaving the residence, imposing her will on memories, conjuring or dismissing them at whim. Despite her harsh character, she gave the caretakers no trouble and they were fond of her. She ventured out into the nearby pines with the help of a walker, sat on a bench by the sea to read, and was scrupulous about her hygiene. His mother detested having to ask for help to get into the shower or get dressed, and often, at night, she would drag herself to the bathroom to change her own diaper if she soiled it. More than once the nurses had found her the next morning on the bathroom floor, but despite their scolding, Esperanza refused to be humiliated by having them see her defecate on herself.
“Today’s not Sunday,” she said by way of greeting when he arrived.
Sundays at eight o’clock on the dot, she would sit waiting for Gonzalo to pick her up, always impeccable, as though awaiting inspection. They’d stop at the same florist each time, Esperanza would select the best roses with a fussiness that the clerk had grown accustomed to, and then they’d drive up to the lake house to lay them at a grave where the only things buried were memories. Gonzalo would leave his mother sitting beneath the fig tree that shaded the tombstone so she could be alone for a while, and he’d inspect the ruins of the old house until his mother decided it was time to leave. They always made the drive home in silence. Sometimes Esperanza cried. Gonzalo would squeeze her gnarled hand, but his mother hardly noticed. She was far, far away.
“No, it’s not Sunday.”
Through the cretonne curtains, the day seemed to wilt. The unvarying image of tall cypress trees, standing guard along the gravel path, was a sad sight in wintertime. Now, it was just tolerable. Esperanza’s eyes were battling age and exhaustion, almost at war, and still she refused to wear the glasses Gonzalo had bought her. Today she was sitting at the little bureau in her room, gripping the pencil at its tip, her long nose pressed to the yellowed sheets of paper.
“I came sooner because something terrible happened.”
“Has the world ended, is that it?” she asked, not lifting her eyes from the paper.
“Only for Laura, Mother. She’s dead.”
The old woman remained still. So fragile it was frightening to behold. Her shock seemed to siphon off what little flesh remained on her face. She tensed her neck, making prominent the corded veins struggling to course beneath her skin, which looked hollow. Esperanza let out a sort of hiccup, not even a whimper. Then she wrung her hands and went back to her drawing, though she could hardly control the pencil.
“Did you hear me?”
The old woman shook her head slowly. “She died a long time ago. All that’s left now is to bury her. So do it.”
Gonzalo turned red. “Don’t talk like that; she was your daughter.”
Esperanza closed her eyes. If she spoke that way about her daughter’s death it was only because Gonzalo was too little to remember what had happened, and she was too old to forget. She put the pencil down and turned to the light filtering in through the window. It took her quite some time to speak, and when she did, her voice seemed to come from far away.
“On the kitchen table we used to have a fruit bowl, full of ceramic fruit: bananas, a bunch of grapes, avocados. They were so smooth, more perfect than real fruit, and they shone temptingly. But they were just painted clay. I remember a fly mistakenly landing on the fruit bowl one time. Your father was in an armchair, taking his siesta, and it flew over to his cheek and perched there for a good long while, right on his half-open lips. You were little, and you were captivated by the image, until your father closed his mouth and accidentally swallowed the fly and kept right on sleeping. You waited for it to come out but it never did. All summer, you felt guilty, convinced it would lay eggs in his stomach and that one day hundreds and thousands of flies would come out of his mouth, his ears, his nose. You had nightmares, thought he’d die a horrible death and you’d be to blame because you hadn’t dared to swat it away for fear of waking him. One afternoon I heard you tell your sister about it. You were inconsolable, crying, convinced you’d done something terrible. And I heard what she said to you. I hope you’re right and he does die. She was thirteen years old, she should have consoled you, told you not to worry, but she chose to make you believe you were a killer. That was your sister.”
“She was just being mean, kids do those things. Like when we were playing and I’d ask her to go into a tailspin to be downed by my Spitfire and she’d refuse, or when she’d run to you to tell on me for getting the bomber jacket dirty.”
Esperanza looked sidelong at her son. “Why are you bringing up this nonsense?”
“Look what I found at Laura’s apartment.” Gonzalo held out the bag he’d brought.
Esperanza came to life, moved away from the bureau and, for a few seconds, with that old aviator’s jacket in her hands, she became sixty-eight years younger. She covered her mouth with her hands and gazed at her son, eyes glimmering with the sort of nostalgia that comes only at the end of a life.
“I found this inside the jacket.” Gonzalo held out the engraved silver locket.
Esperanza’s mouth turned down in a frown, drawing attention to the downy hair that had sprouted above her lip over the years. She put pencil to paper, attempting to write, but couldn’t move. Then, abruptly, she pressed too hard and broke the lead. Her eyes began to water, tears streaming out. Gonzalo crouched before her and took her face in his cupped hands. His mother’s fat tears rolled between his fingers; she obstinately refused to look at him.
“What’s wrong, Mamá?”
“It was inevitable,” she murmured.
Disconcerted, Gonzalo gazed at the sheets of paper on the floor, the books around her bed, the pink robe hanging on a hook behind the door. Something in the room had suddenly changed. The light. It was darker, though the same radiant sky shone outside.
“What was?”
“Death,” she whispered.
Three days later Gonzalo received authorization to proceed with Laura’s burial. The coroner had been searching for traces of blood or skin belonging to Zinoviev that would tie her to his murder. He didn’t find anything, but the prosecutor thought there was sufficient evidence to prove her responsibility: He’d been chained to the post with Laura’s handcuffs, and her son’s photo was stapled over Zinoviev’s heart. Experts had been able to prove that the staples came from a gun found in a tool drawer in her apartment, and the extreme savagery of the murder suggested a strong emotional component, plus they’d found a map in her desk indicating where Zinoviev was hiding out. The fact that Laura had committed suicide just a few hours after telling Alcázar she wasn’t planning to go to jail was taken as proof of her guilt. As far as the police and prosecutor were concerned, the case was closed unless new evidence turned up.
Legally, responsibility for Laura’s body fell to Esperanza, but she refused, leaving Gonzalo with the paperwork. He didn’t know if his sister had a burial policy in her life insurance, and soon discovered that she did not, which meant he had to take care of all the preparations. There w
as no will, nor any last wishes, and Gonzalo wondered if his sister would prefer to be cremated rather than buried. Exasperated, he decided to contact Luis. After all, his ex-brother-in-law knew Laura better than anyone else.
Luis was surprised by the call. Gonzalo broke the news awkwardly, unable to find the right words. For one long minute, there was no sound on the line other than that of a photocopier.
“I’m not sure if you know, but we got divorced soon after Roberto died.”
His voice betrayed no emotion whatsoever. And yet he agreed to meet, saying he’d be at the café across from Gonzalo’s firm in an hour.
The only thing Gonzalo could say about Luis was that he liked him. He was discreet, came from a good family, and was exceedingly well educated. In short, someone whom Gonzalo had never seen as the kind of man his sister would marry. Luis had told him he lived in London now, and that he was with someone else. It had been sheer coincidence that Gonzalo had found him at the architecture firm he and two brothers ran in the upscale northern part of Barcelona. He was supervising a construction project and returning to London that night.
The man who walked into the café seemed totally different from the one Gonzalo had once known. At first Luis hardly spoke, it was as though they’d never met. His straight-cut stylish suit and impeccable hair—carefully coiffed back—gave him a supremely self-confident air. His watch, cuff links, and Italian shoes announced one of those men who aspire to own the world. He’d gained weight, not in the same way as Gonzalo but in a way that went with his naturally tan skin: outdoor sports, sailing, the kind of thing people in his world did for an adrenaline rush. But despite his wardrobe, Gonzalo intuited that somewhere in him lurked the veil of darkness: A patina of sadness peeked out of his dark eyes against his will, one he’d never be able to shake.
It was utterly absurd, but Gonzalo felt compassion for this man whom women eyed with barely concealed lust and men observed with suspicion. He was charming, any way you looked at it. The kind of person who makes you believe that it’s you who shines bright as a star, when in fact it’s only the residue of his own glimmer.
They exchanged a few platitudes, unable to shake the awkwardness of an encounter neither of them knew how to handle. Luis seemed more anxious, his unease notable in the exasperating lethargy of his movements, in the way he set his coffee cup down on the saucer, in the precise way he asked and answered questions without altering the mask he wore.
“I think she’d prefer cremation. Our son is in the El Bosque columbarium. That’s where she’d want to be. Needless to say, I’ll cover all the costs.”
Gonzalo hadn’t had enough time even to cry for his sister, to accept that she was gone, much less think about funeral expenses. For now, Laura’s death was something that others spoke of with an air of remorse and that he accepted as though it were part of a performance in which he felt ill at ease. That very morning he’d stopped before a shop window that had a cookbook on display and remembered that Laura made fruit salad like no one else. It was something that seemed so simple, but it wasn’t. You couldn’t just peel fruit and let it sit in its juices, or add a pinch of sugar (Laura added cinnamon). She said the secret lay in the way you combined things—acidic with sweet, pulpy textures with softer ones, for instance banana with grapefruit. You had to select the best pieces and allow them to marinate for just the right amount of time, no more, no less.
He didn’t understand why his ex-brother-in-law was talking about funeral costs.
“She never told me how you met; I was wondering what sort of chance occurrence drew your fates together.”
For a few seconds Luis’s face lit up with the warmth of near-forgotten joy.
He’d met Laura in Kabul. His father had business to conduct there and Luis had taken advantage of the fact to accompany him and tour the country on a dusty old Guzzi motorcycle laden with saddlebags. He looked like a brigand, with his filthy skin and huge biker glasses on his forehead. Luis liked to imitate the locals, so he wore billowy clothes and covered his head in a traditional Afghan pakol. His guide was a short man with weatherbeaten skin, two cartridge belts of high-caliber bullets strapped across his chest, and an old Kalashnikov on his back. Luis had forgotten the man’s name but not the fact that he smiled with the openness of a person who’s unafraid of life, half of his teeth missing. That guide was the one who’d told him about a little inn on the Khyber Pass between Pakistan and Afghanistan where Europeans often stopped. Women, too, the guide had said, winking.
The first time he saw Laura, she was sitting out on a stone and adobe patio, contemplating the dusk as it spread over a rocky, ocher-colored desert. She seemed absorbed, so far removed from that physical space that she could have been a beautiful statue, sculpted a thousand years ago. “I heard there was a Spanish woman here.” She gave him a classic look, annoyed at the interruption, and then turned back to continue gazing out at the desert. And then Luis got the urge to sit beside her, to be infused with whatever truth seemed to connect her to the landscape. An urge that maybe he should have checked.
“If I’d resisted the temptation to brush her arm with my elbow, my life would probably have followed the easy path awaiting me on my return home. Back then I was engaged to a childhood friend, the daughter of some of my father’s associates. I’d go to the United States to do a master’s in architecture and have precious twins who would one day inherit the family empire. Had I not inserted myself between Laura and her view of the desert, we’d each have gone on our way, in our own bubbles, without interfering in the other’s life.” Luis stroked the coffee cup as though thinking of something he’d reflected on before. “It all starts with something simple. The first drop to fall starts breaking down the stone, right?”
Gonzalo didn’t know how to respond. Maybe it was true: change, disaster, revolution, resurrection—it all started somewhere, at some seemingly trivial point.
Luis leaned back in his chair and stroked his palm, as though dusting off an old manuscript where his memories were written.
“The eighties were not a good time to be traveling there, especially for women. The Soviets had occupied Afghanistan and the warlords weren’t about to accept their rule. But Laura never worried about the future. She lived those early years with such intensity, traveling and writing for a historical magazine. And even though she supplemented her income by working as a Russian interpreter for the pro-Soviet government, she had no qualms about traveling to the other side of the country to interview the warlords fighting the invaders.”
Gonzalo got a fleeting image of the games they’d played as kids, of his sister refusing to let herself be beaten in any fight, real or pretend, with other children.
“She was really special,” he agreed, smiling with long-overdue pride. Luis nodded emphatically in agreement.
“Laura was the kind of woman you’d turn to look at on the street, no matter how old she was. She was beautiful. More than beautiful—extraordinary. I think what made her so different was her determination, it really changed the whole atmosphere of a place. She had this irrepressible urge to live that was infectious. Being alive wasn’t enough; she wanted to turn everything she did into some sort of miracle.”
They looked at each other in surprise, as though, after an affirmation like that, it made no sense that the two of them were sitting there talking about her funeral. Luis had married Laura just ten months after meeting her, and he didn’t regret how hasty the wedding had been despite the arguments it had led to in his family. His parents and friends were so complacent, so satisfied with themselves and their lives; he could never make them see that having Laura by his side meant living life to the fullest, that the only thing that mattered was giving themselves to each other.
Luis raised his head, like a Roman senator worthy of Michelangelo, and his eyes glimmered; he seemed filled with a despairing sort of melancholy.
“She brought into the world the one thing I loved mo
st: our son. He set the benchmark for total fulfillment. You have kids, you know what I’m talking about.”
Gonzalo looked away. Luis’s words forced him to confront his own limitations as a father. He thought of his daughter, Patricia. It was true that until he held her in his arms he’d never actually felt what it was to be alive. His little girl was his rock, the place where all his feelings, fears, and hopes resided. But when he thought about Javier, those feelings were hazy and complicated: Love and tenderness were tangled up in a ball of reproach and resentment.
“Laura and I put everything we had into to our little boy. Everything we did, everything we thought, our plans for the future—it all revolved around him. I worked my tail off in order to build something that would make his world a little more comfortable, and his arrival even succeeded in reuniting my family. My parents accepted Laura graciously, proud and happy to have a grandson to hold.” Luis fell silent for a few seconds, searching for the words to express what he was about to say; he hesitated, tried to begin, faltered, and then looked at Gonzalo as though imploring him for help. “Laura always loved you so much, Gonzalo, she never stopped thinking about you. When Roberto was born, I suggested it might be a good time to make peace with you and your mother. I never understood—and she always refused to tell me—why you’d fallen out.”
Gonzalo didn’t know either, at least not exactly. He did know that if you once loved someone, your hatred and rancor for them were all the stronger, so when discord erupted in their family, it had been too much for all of them. Perhaps it was Laura’s decision to leave her brilliant career as a historian and journalist in order to join the police, a move their mother found incomprehensible given what her husband had gone through over the course of sixty years of struggle. Or maybe it was the article Laura published about her father in 1992, destroying his legend. Their mother never forgave her, just as Gonzalo never accepted Laura’s reproach when he married the daughter of a well-known Franco militant. Laura detested Lola’s family as much as Lola came to hate Laura.
A Million Drops Page 5