A Million Drops

by Victor del Arbol

  Two hours later, when he walked into his own office, exhausted, Luisa leapt up as if she’d seen a ghost. She rushed from her desk to take the crutches Gonzalo was using and gave him a hug that made him grit his teeth to keep from screaming in pain.

  “Look at you! Like one of the musicians on the Titanic.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Luisa spread her arms wide, looking around the office. Not one piece of paper on the desk, not one phone ringing. Total silence and meticulous order made it clear that his assistant had too much time on her hands and had used it to organize the chaos of the past eight years. It’s all over, her arms seemed to say.

  “You’ve come back to go down with the ship. What’s our last tune?”

  “Fuck ’em,” Gonzalo said absurdly.

  “I don’t know that one, but it sounds good.”

  He dropped into a chair and gazed warily at the immaculate office, a clear sign that going out of business was imminent. Gonzalo was struck by the thought that he’d already lost, before he’d really even started to fight. All it had taken was a few rash words spoken off-the-cuff to his father-in-law, a reckless challenge, and the old man had set the wheels in motion to end his career. No one in the city would hire him now. And the strange thing was that he didn’t really care. In spite of his confusion and anxiety about the present, Gonzalo was convinced that he’d get by. He wasn’t sure how, or when, or what he’d have to give up, but he was going to make it.

  “Make what? What are you, the prince of tides?”

  Gonzalo blushed, realizing he’d been voicing his concerns aloud.

  Luisa dropped two envelopes onto his desk. “The one on the right is the Alcázar file you asked for. Everything about him, it’s in there. Career, promotions, charges of brutality…After joining the Armed Police in 1965, his career skyrocketed, in part due to his father, Ramón Alcázar Suñer. Name ring a bell?”

  “Should it?”

  “He’s from Mieres. Isn’t that the name of your father’s village? They’re more or less the same age, and given that Mieres isn’t exactly Calcutta, they probably knew each other.”

  Gonzalo had never heard the name in his life. According to Luisa’s file, Alcázar’s father had been a bigwig in the BPS—Franco’s secret police—until 1966, when he retired as superintendent. He was known for his brutality and a lack of scruples, which yielded very positive results and therefore made him popular with the higher-ups.

  “Hold on to your seat; that’s not all. It seems that our Ramón was very well connected to one of Franco’s ministers—the minister of justice—in ’63. And do you know who that was? Fulgencio Arras—”

  “Holy shit, Lola’s grandfather.”

  “That’s right, your father-in-law’s father. Agustín and Ramón were tight. So the relationship between the Alcázar family and your father-in-law’s family dates back at least that long. And the inspector has been doing all sorts of jobs under the table for Agustín, getting paid for them.”

  “A crooked cop?”

  “That depends on whether you think of your father-in-law as a crooked attorney,” Luisa said with a wry smile. “Everything in this file is legal.”

  Gonzalo guessed what came next. “And what about what’s not in the file?”

  “Gossip, stories, hearsay. Loved by some and hated by others. When the inspector was young he was known to be as tough as his father; I suppose he wanted to live up to Daddy’s expectations. Abuse of detainees, torture, tampering with evidence, and forcing confessions to ‘solve’ cases. Some people say that was no different from what all cops did back then and that he even got himself in trouble, disciplinary action, for trying to put an end to that kind of thing. Anyway, something changed in 1972. He met a prostitute, Cecilia something-or-other, married her, and seemed to undergo a change of character. But in 1983 she died of cancer. Since then, rumor has it Alcázar’s been taking bribes in exchange for looking the other way…Some officers claim he’s saved up a nice little nest egg and now that he’s retired he’s going to live it up. But others told me that the work he did in the special unit that your sister was part of was exemplary. Dozens of arrests, lots of successful operations, well-deserved respect. Among his most notable investigations is the one he carried out in 1968, looking into your father’s disappearance. You should take a look, it’s detailed, nothing superficial about it, very professional. I don’t know what kind of officer he was, but he took that investigation very seriously. Definitely a man who’s got his bright spots and his dark corners.”

  Who doesn’t? Gonzalo thought, studying an ID photo of the inspector as a young man, balding prematurely and sporting an earlier version of that mustache. He had an intelligent but smart-aleck look about him, as though he didn’t take himself too seriously.

  “Anything else?”

  “He lives in a small apartment right in the Barrio Chino, has a blind dog named Lukas, rents videos a couple times a week—boring stuff, no porn, all westerns—and likes fishing on the breakwater. His neighbors say he plays music too loud; apparently he’s big on boleros. The guy at the supermarket below his apartment says he doesn’t buy much to drink, and he has no known vices—which of course doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have any. Maybe he secretly collects bottle caps,” Luisa said with a laugh.

  Maybe, but Gonzalo had a hunch that wasn’t the kind of hobby that would interest somebody like Alcázar. He closed the file and contemplated the envelope on the left, then glanced up at Luisa, who nodded.

  “The security camera recording from the day you were attacked. I’m not going to tell you what I had to do to get it, but let’s say you owe me one.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  Luisa shook her head, arms crossed. “Gory movies aren’t my thing.”

  Gonzalo wasn’t exactly looking forward to reliving the event either. But the recording had to show what had happened to the laptop.

  VCRs were a complete mystery to him—it would have been easier to decipher the Rosetta stone than to figure out how the player worked—so he was forced to ask Luisa for help. With the patience generally reserved for teaching simple things to old people, his assistant explained how to play, stop, and fast-forward the recording, as well as how to show it in slow motion and capture print images.

  It all happened so fast. Atxaga had shown up ten minutes before Gonzalo, walked down the parking garage ramp, and started checking out car models and license plates until he found the right SUV. Gonzalo calculated that he had already left Agustín’s office by that time and must have been speaking to Luisa about the woman in the apartment next door. Then he’d taken the elevator down.

  After that, Gonzalo himself came into the frame. He observed himself with a sense of pity; it was like watching a movie you’ve seen before and knowing that the protagonist is about to get walloped. A sad little man, he looked like a weary office worker, lost in thought, overwhelmed by the realities of everyday life. He dragged his feet, shoulders slumped, as if there were an anvil and not a laptop in the computer bag banging against his thigh.

  Atxaga suddenly appeared behind him and said something. Gonzalo turned, and the guy delivered a quick blow with whatever was in his right hand. After rewinding and studying the sequence again, carefully, Gonzalo counted no fewer than twelve kicks, punches, and blows in under a minute, not including the repeated knife jabs. Gonzalo’s stomach lurched as he relived the attack. Watching it without sound made the whole thing even more violent and horrific. There he was on the ground, by the SUV’s tires, and Atxaga just kept beating him maniacally, as though he’d spent his whole time in jail patiently stockpiling hatred and was now unleashing every ounce of it in one go. How long can it take to kill a big-boned man, to beat him to death? One second. Hours. Time doesn’t pass; it freezes. The most distressing thing about it was his utter defenselessness against the savagery. He felt sick. It was like watching one of those documentaries wh
ere the hyenas pounce on their wounded prey and mercilessly tear it apart.

  Violence of any sort made Gonzalo panic, almost paralyzed him. Alcázar had told him at the hospital that Atxaga was trying to kill him and, judging by what he saw, it was clearly true. And he might have succeeded had it not been for the headlights of the car parked right in front of Gonzalo’s suddenly starting to flash wildly on and off. Though he couldn’t hear the sound, Gonzalo deduced that the driver was also honking the horn to call attention. Luckily, it worked, and Atxaga fled.

  Then a woman stepped out of the car and rushed to his aid.

  Luisa and Gonzalo looked at each other incredulously.

  “Isn’t that the redhead from next door, the photographer?”

  It was. Tania. The face in the image on-screen was frozen, a stone wall, totally impenetrable, and Gonzalo’s eyes swept over it like the shadow of the setting sun. That didn’t change anything, just made him see it in a new light.

  The red lightbulb in the darkroom blinked on and off a few times. That meant someone was at the door. Tania washed her hands in the sink and glanced quickly at the last set of photos she’d placed in the developer. It would take a few minutes before she could see them clearly. She walked out, and there stood her mother.

  “We have to talk.” Anna Akhmatova spoke Russian only when she was seriously upset about something. Tania listened, surprised; it took her a second to adjust to the language of her youth.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, her syntax awkward and rusty.

  Anna calmly smoothed the folds of her skirt, looking around at the mess in her daughter’s small room. She asked herself what she’d done wrong for Tania never to consider emptying even one of the many ashtrays strewn around.

  “Gonzalo Gil.”

  Tania felt a pang in her stomach but managed to cover.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied, not batting an eye.

  Anna didn’t fall for it. Words carried weight in the moment they were spoken and became lighter as time passed, trailing off. She sighed, exasperated.

  “What do you think you’re doing, going anywhere near him? We had an agreement. You promised me.”

  Tania felt her neck tingling. It was her butterfly wings—they wanted to fly away.

  “I’m telling you, Mamá, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The old woman glared at her daughter, who was smoking beside the selected works of Gorky. She’d long ago given up trying to convince Tania that if she couldn’t give up the filthy habit, she should at least not do it anywhere near Anna’s beloved books. She often wondered what Martin would think of Tania. He’d always been such a skittish Brit, flitting around like a bird in a cage. Neither of them would ever have guessed that the one time they slept together would produce a girl as beautiful and full of life as Tania.

  “I begged you to stay away from him. Why are you so hardheaded?”

  Tania realized it was pointless to keep lying. “If I hadn’t been there, that man would have beaten him to death.”

  Anna took off her tortoiseshell glasses and began polishing them with a cloth. She kept staring at them, even after the lenses were spotless, not sure whether to put them back on and hide her deeply wrinkled eyes.

  “That man has a life, and it’s his alone. Neither you nor I has the right to get involved in it.”

  “But he’s being deceived.”

  “No, he’s not. He made the decision to forget, and he’s got every right to do so. I wish Laura had done the same.”

  Tania exhaled heavily, blowing smoke and looking around for an empty ashtray. Not finding one, she tapped ash into the palm of her hand and thought fleetingly about the photos she had left in the darkroom. They must have fully developed by now, must have revealed their secrets.

  “How did you know I saw him?”

  The old woman made no reply, ruminating as she looked at her daughter. She made a face, puckering her lipstick-caked lips as she thought of Alcázar, who had approached her in the middle of the street just an hour earlier. He’d greeted her naturally, as if they were close friends, as if it hadn’t been thirty-five years since they’d last seen each other. Going for a walk around the neighborhood, he told her stories about its streets as if the two of them were out sightseeing, and then he suddenly stopped and looked at her with those eyes that Anna had almost managed to forget. That was when he’d told her about the security recording and what it meant that her daughter appeared in it. Did Anna understand? he wanted to know. Did she understand how reckless Tania had been?

  Yes, Anna understood perfectly, but her naïve daughter did not.

  “You have no idea what you’ve just unleashed, Tania.”

  13

  MOSCOW, JANUARY 1934

  Vasili Arsenievich Velichko nodded his head, as if anyone could see him, and slowly hung up the phone. For a few seconds he sat there, cradling the handset, pensive. From the window of his tiny office in hangar twenty-two each morning, he could follow the construction on the Great Canal, the progress being made to join the Volga and Moskva rivers. The project fascinated him as an engineer, but more than that, as a Muscovite and Party member, it thrilled him. The ingenious plan, intended to supply the city with water and provide access to five seas, was gargantuan. It is both awesome and unbelievable, what man is capable of, he thought, as he prepared to write his daily column for On Guard, the newspaper of the Osoaviakhim, the paramilitary organization that created reserves for the armed forces.

  Vasili had trouble concentrating enough to carry out the task expected of him. His concerns of the past few days had left him sleepless, and he still hadn’t gotten used to this new post in Tushino. He knew that he should be grateful: Forming part of the instructors’ corps at the Osoaviakhim School of Aviation and providing the political and intellectual training for future pilots was a job many would never have dared dream of at the age of twenty. But he missed his apartment by the Kremlin. Despite his attempt to brighten up his office with books and a few pictures that he’d brought from his last posting, he still found the airfield hangar depressing, especially when the sun wasn’t out and fog blanketed the river.

  If it was raining as well, like today, the railroad cars on the opposite shore had a ghostly look, the noise from factories and sawmills bored into his head, and the barges’ whistles brought to mind images of ships sailing to the underworld. In this state of mind, it was impossible to convincingly enumerate the virtues of the Five-Year Plan, or to sing the praises of the Central Committee that had launched it.

  Velichko smiled tiredly, imagining what his mother would say if she could hear what he was thinking: You must be the only fool who still believes what he writes. Maybe he was, he thought with a touch of pride. He believed in Stalin, trusted him, although he’d seen the man only once, giving the closing remarks on Workers’ Day the year before. To be sure, Stalin hadn’t been a brilliant speaker, and he was rather a coarse man, compact. Yet he’d managed to rouse all those present with his single-minded determination. Not everyone, however, agreed. There were plenty of unfavorable rumors about Party members, purges, and power struggles, an all-out dirty war in which the line between friend and enemy was blurry. You had to have eyes in the back of your head to keep from making a false step.

  He tried to stop thinking like this; it verged on insanity. What he needed to do was to convince himself of the worthiness of what the Party was doing: changing their massive country forever. But the phone call he’d just received weighed on him and he didn’t know how to react; he was vacillating between his convictions and the need to be prudent, between the courage of a young idealist and the self-censure of a civil servant aspiring to progress in his career, which showed every indication of taking off provided that he didn’t do anything stupid.

  Finally, knowing there was no turning back, he wrote two words: Óstrov Smerti. Immediate
ly, he was tempted to crumple up the paper or, better yet, burn it so that no one would ever find out he’d written such a thing. But what he did instead was put it in a drawer beside his pack of cigarettes, the ink pad and stamps he used to accept or reject recruits, and his revolver. Next he solemnly donned his combat jacket, ensuring that the Voroshilov Paratroopers and first-class marksman badges on his chest were properly shined. Before walking out of the office, he made sure to remove his round glasses and slip them into a pocket. His mother said they made him look boyish, and an ambitious instructor at Osoaviakhim flight-training school could not afford to give that impression. He wanted to instill the same predatory fear he’d experienced in the halls of the Central Committee, and for a time he’d even tried growing a mustache, but he lacked the gravitas and gray hair required to pull it off successfully. All in good time.

  It had stopped raining, but that wasn’t necessarily good news. The sky was clearing quickly, which meant that soon the temperature would drop several degrees. No doubt it would snow before nightfall, leaving the roads impassable. Then the snow would turn into a compact layer of dirty ice that would put everything on hold. Velichko detested the motionlessness of the landscape when everything was frozen, hated seeing his breath, hearing the crunch of snow beneath his feet or tires, seeing icicles hanging from the bridges and quivering trees. He pulled up the collar of his tabard and strode confidently across the airfield’s runway, leaving behind the hangars that were used as classrooms for various subjects.

  A few recruits were doing a simulation, jumping off of a wooden turret to practice landing position as if having dived from their planes. Behind the perimeter fence where the gliders were kept, a couple of instructors explained how to disassemble a rotor to a large group of students. It was not uncommon for women to be in the ranks of hopeful mechanics and technicians, pilots, and paratroopers. Yes, this is what we want, Velichko thought, lighting his hundredth cigarette of the morning: a more just and equal society. This is why we made the revolution.