Before going back inside the shack that served as his refuge, Elías vomited. He’d broken out in a cold sweat and had to clench his hands tightly to keep them from trembling.
Irina emerged from the shack. In the full moon, her face had a ghostly air, almost blending in with the snow. Elías straightened, ashamed, but she pretended not to notice the brownish pool of vomit on the ground or the damp stain that had formed on the front of his pants. Instead she smiled at him, and her smile was like a fire by which to warm and protect himself.
“It’s not that easy to get rid of me,” he said. He needed to fill his lungs with cold air, get away from the filth.
She paid no attention to this outburst of childish bravery. Elías had nothing to prove to her, but sometimes men needed to convince themselves that they were more than scared little boys.
“I know you saw me this morning, at the stable with the guard. I could tell by the way you looked at me.”
Elías gazed at her in silence.
“I am not a whore,” she said angrily, unnecessary cruel to herself.
Elías reddened. “You mustn’t speak like that, Irina. Not even here.”
She stared into his eyes. “Don’t worry. They’re my words, not yours. You’re just the echo.”
Something about him reminded her of her husband, a fact that scared and attracted her in equal measure. Silly idealists, capable of sacrificing everything over a question of pride. Men who seemed dry and brittle on the outside but were coursing rivers on the inside—edgy and rugged but also stubborn and hard to tame. His name was Viktor. On his detention file he was listed as a piano teacher at the state conservatory. The man was pure passion, which meant that he was free, because he feared nothing in life. Irina couldn’t forget the way he’d smiled in incredulity when they came for him, like he thought his detention was a joke. He was naïve like that, wore bright happy colors and gazed at everything in boyish wonder. A believer in the great utopias that never came to be but were always just around the corner. A Russian Jew who read Schopenhauer, recited Maupassant, Rimbaud, and Verlaine, and spent hours studying Barbusse and the French symbolists and German expressionists.
Like all dreamers, he, too, was convinced that Russia was a great land of theater, music, and literature. It would never have occurred to him to think that its men and women could be as foolish, hateful, and cruel as people anywhere. He loved the Andalusian sensitivity of García Lorca’s language, in fact preferred it to Mayakovsky, who was always so blunt and unromantic. Wine from another’s vineyard always tastes sweeter, he liked to say, only half joking. He said García Lorca suffered the disease of life, so long drawn out, with great dignity. That was why Viktor was shot: He wanted to be cured of the pain and, like Don Quixote, refused to believe that the windmills would always be stronger than those who tilted at them. Her husband died like all visionaries, convinced that the only thing that would save Man was brotherhood and not some epic destiny. But expressing that—writing and disseminating it—amounted to intolerable treason.
She had been sentenced to three years as a collaborator. How could she not have collaborated with her husband? At the bottom of Irina’s detention order, it stated that her daughter had an “unknown father.” One more humiliation, a denial of the truth that robbed her past of dignity. Anna had just started to speak when Viktor was taken away. She was a shy girl, beginning to feel her way in the world with unsure arms; sometimes her voice was like that of a baby chick, teeth chattering in the cold, and her father was the only one who could calm her. He loved his daughter with utter devotion, but when she grew up and Irina was no longer there, those who’d killed him would tell her that her father was a nobody, convince her that her mother was a whore who’d lain in a cot with a stranger—as she had with that guard, opening her legs in exchange for a bit of warmth for her daughter. When the soldier flipped Irina over, she’d been met by her daughter’s tiny eyes, which she could see through the horses’ legs, wide and incredulous. And as he grunted, thrusting, Irina smiled and told her not to cry, saying it was just a game. That was a condemnation she could not bear.
“In theory, they should have taken her from me, put her in an orphanage. But it didn’t happen. And that irregularity was the only thing the official who signed my deportation order seemed to care about. That’s the problem with bureaucrats: They refuse to see people—their faces, their hair, their skin. They never stop searching for them in absurd paperwork but can’t see that they aren’t there, that the people are right in front of them. It’s not what they do that makes them despicable but the way that they do it, dressing everything up in ridiculous language and concepts to justify themselves and clear their consciences. And this is what allows them to become killers, hiding behind their desks and reports.”
She gazed at Elías and then went to him. It was incredible, but beneath the thick layer of rot and filth on him, she felt signs of another life. She perceived, through his pores, his hair, the faint smell of soap, the lingering scent of rosemary on his neck. He had the same voice as Viktor, steady as a road with no forking paths, and asked for nothing, not even reassurance or certainty. Just as a bird doesn’t ask what its wings are for and simply spreads them to fly, Elías’s voice conveyed his unquestioning character. She could see in his good eye the same recklessness that Viktor once displayed, convinced that despite it all, standing firm and dignified was worth it. He had faith in his ideals and would surrender to them; he’d end up sacrificing his life over something as stupid as a coat.
“You look after my daughter and me. You worry about us and comfort her. I’ve seen the way you look at me. I know what you’re starting to feel.”
Elías blushed but Irina forced him to meet her gaze, lifting his chin.
“You make me feel alive, but you’ll get yourself killed by a guard, or some prisoner like Igor, over a coat, a loaf of bread, or some offense you won’t be able to tolerate. You’ll take your honor and your valor and your useless pride to the grave, but I will be left alone, and I’ll have to stay alive to take care of my daughter. I’ll have to let a guard paw me, let eyes like yours judge me, drag myself through the mud and feel dirty.”
She was crying. Elías moved closer, touched her tears and felt them burn. There was no regret or self-pity in those tears. Just life, slowly seeping out, as though asking forgiveness for having been there at all.
“I am not a whore.”
Elías smothered her words in kisses. “No, you’re not.”
“Say my name,” she begged. “Help me to exist.”
And Elías whispered into the night. “Irina.”
They made love standing up, desperate with desire. Outside their own private world, that night civilization and barbarism were one, but Elías and Irina forced the horror to retreat, like an imaginary shadow.
PART TWO
YELLOW LETTERS
10
BARCELONA, AUGUST 15, 2002
Walking into Bar Flight was like entering a time capsule, like stepping back through the years to a place where everything was frozen in the past. A cavernous bar, Flight was filled with blue smoke on nights when they held readings. Part-time poets stood on a small carpeted stage at the back to recite their verses. There was only one condition, and Uncle Velichko was adamant about it: All of the bards had to recite in Russian.
“How’s your mother?”
Uncle Velichko wasn’t actually Tania’s uncle, but his forty-plus-year friendship with her mother had earned him the title. He’d been in Tania’s life for as long as she could remember, an old man, very old—frozen in time, like his bar. Each night, when she took a seat at the bar facing the stage, he poured her a shot of vodka and asked the same question. And each time, she gave him the same answer.
“Why not cross the street and ask her yourself?” Her mother’s bookstore was less than three hundred feet away, and yet her uncle bridged the distance separating their busin
esses no more than two or three times a year. Her mother made the reverse trek even less often. She detested bars and couldn’t stand Velichko’s wistful desire to live in the past.
But Tania loved the place. The exposed brick walls were plastered with photos, most of which formed part of her uncle’s memory. There were pictures he’d cut from encyclopedias, old newspaper clippings, portraits and posters painstakingly collected and maintained over the decades. Each of them related to “his” country, not “this Russia”—which he claimed bitterly not to understand—but the heroic Russia of the war against the Nazis. Sometimes Velichko let her use the bar for her own exhibitions, and he stubbornly imposed the same condition as he did on the poets: The subject had to be Russia. But Tania fought to convince the half-deaf old man that, after all these years in Spain, it was time to show a little interest in the country that had taken them in. So, finally, he grudgingly agreed to let her “denigrate” his walls (that was the word he’d used when she hung the photos) with a couple dozen black-and-white scenes from everyday life.
“Personally, I don’t like them,” he said, scrutinizing the photos with a look that said he’d made up his mind a priori. “But other people seem to; you’ve already sold several. I don’t understand why people buy photographs rather than take them.”
That was typical of his reasoning. After all, he was still an obstinate old Siberian, tough as salt fish.
“For the same reason they buy books and paintings, Uncle Vasili. Because everyone appreciates art, but not everyone is inspired to create it.”
The old man shrugged his drooping shoulders, uncomprehending, as though this were a mystery never to be resolved, and then tossed a dish towel over his shoulder and concentrated on the glass he was polishing.
“You should find a husband, a good man to take care of you,” he declared, as though this were the only logical conclusion. “Someday you’re going to have to get married. It’s fine to be a rolling stone, passing through other people’s beds, but everything gets old.”
Tania smiled, recalling the last conversation they’d had about her single status and her sex life, which was too promiscuous for her uncle’s liking. At least on this, he was in total agreement with her mother. Often it seemed to be a two-pronged nagging attack, as if they’d rehearsed it.
“I’m waiting for my white knight,” she replied teasingly.
“And I’m waiting for my Soviet hero’s medal, but it’s never going to come, no matter how long I give it,” Velichko grumbled.
Tania had never seriously contemplated getting married or living with someone. Maybe it had to do with the fact that she and her mother had always been on their own and things had gone all right for them without a man. She couldn’t recall the last time her mother had brought someone home. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had lovers; she was and always had been her own woman, mistress of her destiny, and very attractive, but she tried to be discreet and keep all of that separate from her personal life. And as for Tania’s private life, she didn’t really know what to think. The closest she’d come to a proper relationship was when she was twenty years old, and that hadn’t been with a man. She’d never spoken to her mother or uncle about Ruth, the fine arts professor. Anna’s liberal streak had its limits, and Uncle Vasili’s was nonexistent.
Ruth was half West Indian and half European, with stunningly beautiful copper skin. She was also ten years older than Tania and had seduced her—or perhaps Tania had let herself be seduced—with breathtaking ease. They toyed with the idea of moving to Holland together, but things never progressed after a stormy, torrid vacation in the land of canals. Ruth was passionate and quick to anger, and Tania was as proud and stubborn as her mother, so it didn’t last. What remained of that trip were memories of their amazing sex and blazing arguments, and the butterfly tattooed on her neck. There had been other women and men after that, but nothing serious. Tania was strangely impervious to people’s emotions. She never thought it was the right time to commit, never felt the need to take things to a deeper level.
Until she met Gonzalo.
Furtively, she pulled from her pocket the photo she’d snapped of him sitting on a bench, staring into space, and studied it for some time. What did she see in him? He wasn’t handsome or even attractive, at least not by the standards she’d adhered to until then. Remorseful, withdrawn, he looked like the kind of man who views life as an accident and has nothing significant to show for it. And yet, behind those glasses and that veneer of restraint, something shone, a distant glimmer in the depths of his faded green eyes. Gonzalo Gil was an enigma, like a photograph whose mystery is revealed only once it’s been developed. She’d seen something in him, one of those little things that go unnoticed by most people but that she’d felt compelled to immortalize in a picture. He was one of those men whose potential had not been realized, and yet there was something real, pulsating beneath his anodyne gray façade. She wanted to find out what lay behind the apparent fragility, to discover what he kept locked beneath the surface.
The room was dark, the only light a bare red bulb above the door. The blinds were drawn, but through the crack beneath the door, pale light filtered in from the hallway. He felt an intense pressure on his chest, as though a boulder had been deposited on his rib cage. It was Lola’s head, resting there. She was listening to his heartbeat. Her eyes were open, staring at him like a cat in search of attention. It had been years since she’d looked at him like that. Although half asleep, he felt her stroke his messy hair, awkwardly tucking it out of his eyes, her fingers unaccustomed to demonstrations of affection. She sat up and chastely kissed his dry lips, barely brushing against them.
“Sleep, my love. I’m here.”
Where were his glasses?
He sank back down into a fetal, liquid darkness.
“He should be dead.”
“But he’s not.”
“It’s a miracle.”
The word miracle gouged his consciousness like a spike. Wake up.
Harsh light penetrated his eyelids. He blinked and opened his eyes, then immediately wanted to close them again. Reality, sharp and sudden, in his parched mouth. He tried to move his neck and felt the orthopedic brace restrain him, forcing him to keep his eyes on a blue recessed light fixture on the ceiling. A low ceiling. He heard voices murmuring quietly, whispering.
“Nobody can believe it. It’s a miracle.”
That word again. Shock, suddenly penetrating the fog of his brain. Laura was dead. He, apparently, was not. Gonzalo stirred beneath the coarse sheets. He wanted them to go, to leave him alone. Too late. A nurse noticed him wake up and was now by his side, taking his pulse or maybe just holding his lifeless wrist, an IV sticking out of it.
“How are you feeling?”
She smelled like…What did she smell like? Starched uniform, antiseptic soap, disease, and a faint trace of life outside the hospital: beer, tapas, cigarettes. Like the resurrected, he thought sardonically. He wasn’t at death’s door, but her almost lashless eyes, ringed by dark circles, watched him as though he was.
“What happened?”
The nurse shot a glance toward the foot of the bed. A stranger sat observing him, arms crossed over a short-sleeved shirt whose buttons were straining at the man’s paunch, threatening to pop off. Alcázar.
“They got you good. You’ll be pissing the color of a good Bordeaux for a while, but you were lucky,” he said, mustache waggling side to side.
The nurse concurred. Eight stitches at the base of his skull, cervical sprain, four broken ribs, bruising all over his body, and three stab wounds so deep that he had internal hemorrhaging. They’d already operated on him twice, and for a time things had been touch-and-go in the ICU. But now he was out of danger.
Gonzalo felt around beneath the sheet. They’d inserted a catheter.
He asked for water. The nurse brought a plastic cup to his swollen lips. He took a short sip, o
bserving Alcázar over the top of the cup.
“What are you doing here, Inspector?”
“Worrying about you.” He sounded sincere.
Gonzalo had to go back to sleep. Rest. It was so nice, that state of unconsciousness.
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
He barely heard the inspector’s voice, melting. Gonzalo nodded. Or thought he did.
His sleep was becoming less deep and dense, the darkness less safe and comforting. Pain was becoming a constant presence, like the images of what had happened: the attack in the garage, Atxaga’s face disfigured by rage. He was regaining feeling.
“That’s a good sign,” said the doctor, who came by each morning. “You’re coming back to life.”
Well, life hurt—a lot—and the painkillers were no longer killing his pain.
And then one morning as the nurse helped him sit up, placing a pillow behind him so that he could eat his first breakfast (juice and a greenish puree that he vomited up), his mind suddenly cleared and he shouted in alarm.
“The laptop!”
“Excuse me?”
Siaka, the Matryoshka, the merger with his father-in-law…The computer. He’d had it on him when Atxaga attacked him.
“The stuff I had on me the day I was attacked—where is it?”
“I don’t know. I imagine that’s a question for the police.”
A question for Alcázar.
That very afternoon the inspector came again, at the same time. He’d become a discreet yet familiar presence over the course of those days. He sat in an armchair at the foot of the bed for fifteen minutes but didn’t give the impression that his visits were an obligation, more like a field study, Gonzalo being the subject of his detailed investigation. Most of the time Gonzalo was either exhausted or asleep, but this didn’t seem to bother the inspector. To the contrary, he’d relax in the chair, cross his legs, and simply watch him. Sometimes Gonzalo pretended to be asleep so as not to face the scrutiny. There was something disconcerting about Alcázar and he couldn’t put his finger on it; he was like a crossroads with no signs indicating what lay down each path. But that afternoon Gonzalo’s desperation to find out what had happened to the laptop forced him to communicate.
A Million Drops Page 20