A Million Drops

by Victor del Arbol

  Laura’s case was still making headlines. Alcázar noticed the white whiskers poking out of the commissioner’s nostrils. The man’s jacket was too heavy, and he was sweating. It was clear he was uneasy.

  “That bastard!” Alcázar said. So he’d done it: Gonzalo had found the same wasps’ nest that his sister had and was now poking it with a stick like a dumb kid. And the wasps were buzzing furiously. The commissioner announced that the Financial Crimes Unit had just launched a far-reaching investigation to bring to light possible ties several companies might have with the Russian mafia. For now, at least, they hadn’t officially named ACASA. But that didn’t mean serious problems were not on the horizon, problems that he’d thought were behind him after Laura and Zinoviev’s deaths. It was just a matter of time until Agustín González’s name came to the fore, and then would come a few others…and then it would be his turn. Alcázar was under no illusions; he was the weakest link in the chain. The dream of living out his golden years in the Keys was slipping away by the minute.

  Alcázar waited to see if the commissioner would say any more to the journalists during the question-and-answer session, but he adhered stubbornly to his official statement, so Alcázar lost interest and changed the channel. Just at that moment, the doorbell rang, a strident buzz that caused Lukas to give a croaky, halfhearted bark that wouldn’t have scared a fly.

  Anna Akhmatova was at the door.

  “Have you seen the news?” the old woman fired point-blank.

  Alcázar licked his mustache. “Well. Certainly didn’t take you long. What’s that you’ve got there?”

  She handed him a package. “A book. In my country when you visit an old friend you haven’t seen for some time, you bring a gift.”

  “So now we’re friends? That makes me feel better.”

  Anna shot him a harsh look, and he glimpsed the enormous gulf between her expression and her soul, one concealing many things. It was like staring into a well.

  “It shouldn’t,” she replied with a half smile.

  The whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.

  Alcázar gave her a mistrustful look.

  “What do people see in strings of convoluted words? Why don’t they just say what they mean?”

  “From time to time it’s good to remember that people can be civilized and sophisticated.”

  And how far did that get you? he wondered. Those who were supposedly civilized could be terrifyingly heartless. Words and language were easily perverted, always found a way to get twisted. Alcázar eyed the woman as he put the book on a shelf. She looked fragile, small, but also strong, as though all the years amassed in her bones had hardened her. Her face still had a certain beauty, no longer that of youth but something subtler, more natural, a sort of calm that seemed to stave off the ravages of time, which was always in such a hurry to put an end to life. For most people, years go by and they become no more lucid or wise, just older. But she was not most people.

  “From what I recall, when you were younger you were neither civilized nor sophisticated.”

  “Back then I hadn’t read Proust.” She smiled.

  “I don’t understand a word that man writes,” Alcázar grumbled.

  Anna shot him a disapproving look, as though he were an ignorant little boy. And suddenly, the inspector thought he caught a glimpse of something familiar in her look, something that reminded him of his own father, Ramón Alcázar Suñer—don Ramón, as he was known in the courts, on the street, at the station.

  “Proust shows us that, in time, everything returns to its proper place.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The old woman tilted her head and licked her top lip with the tip of her tongue, as though struggling to find the words, but in the end she gave up.

  “If you don’t understand it, I can’t explain it to you,” she replied, glancing at the bookshelf. She’d seen a photo of Alcázar with his father, both in uniform, the day he graduated from the police academy.

  Lukas came over to sniff under Anna’s skirt. Over the years, she’d learned to control the uneasiness she felt whenever she was near a dog, particularly one resembling a wolf. She made sure to appear calm but didn’t pet the animal, who ambled back to his patch of sun on the floor. Alcázar poured them both coffee and they sat on the sofa, each at one end, separated by a few embroidered pillows. Alcázar watched Anna stir her coffee, pensive, until suddenly she let go of the little spoon and looked up, gave a deep sigh, and gazed at the photo of Alcázar and his father once more.

  “Memory is a prodigious thing. It orders one’s life however it wants, using what it sees fit and forgetting things that get in the way as though they never existed. I’d say that’s what Proust writes about…”

  Alcázar wasn’t fooled by her measured gestures, carefully chosen words, neutral pronouncements. He’d known Anna since the summer of 1967 and knew that when she wanted to, she could be impenetrable. Her eyes bored into the inspector like pile drivers into cement.

  “Ever since Laura died, I’ve wondered what role you had in her death, and in Zinoviev’s.”

  Alcázar reacted coldly, shaking his head but not emphatically.

  “We should end this conversation. It’s getting a little dangerous.”

  “A bit late for that, Inspector. We had a deal, and I’ve kept my side of it all these years. I wasn’t the one who came to find you on the street the other day, in case you’ve forgotten; it was you who stopped me. I’m not the one stirring up shit with a stick.”

  Alcázar raised a hand to his mustache.

  “If this is an interrogation, you should have warned me. I would have called my lawyer.”

  Anna smiled indulgently.

  “Agustín González? After what’s just come out on TV, that man is finished. It’s just a matter of time. And you’ll be next, I imagine you realize that.”

  “I’ve never been threatened so politely.”

  “I’m not threatening you. I am simply trying to understand how it is that you let Elías’s son get involved in this. I warned you about Laura, and you refused to listen. And now you’re letting her brother step into quicksand that he won’t be able to get out of.”

  “May I remind you that Tania is your daughter and she was the one who approached him. If I hadn’t recognized her with Gonzalo in the security tape, I would never have come to you, I can assure you of that.”

  “Tania won’t be interfering anymore. I’ve made sure of that. But you have not answered my question.”

  “What question?”

  “Laura, and Zinoviev’s death. When the brother really starts nosing around, what is he going to find?”

  “I don’t like the way this sounds, Anna. I would never hurt Laura, never. After what happened at the lake in 1967, you should know that.”

  Anna carried their empty cups to the sink. For a few seconds she pressed her fingers against the cold marble, and then eyed Lukas. The old dog lay dozing in the slanted light streaming in through the blinds. He, at least, had managed to warm up. She turned back to face Alcázar and gazed calmly at him at length, light flickering in her eyes. She didn’t want to hurt him. But sometimes hurting people is inevitable. Even necessary. And that was a shame.

  “That prosecutor certainly seems sure of himself.”

  “Gonzalo has proof. I don’t know how he got it, but I’ve got a guess. When he was in the hospital, he was all worked up about a certain computer that was missing. I’m willing to bet it was Laura’s personal laptop, and that her Matryoshka informer gave it to him.”

  The old woman dried her hands on a dish towel. Matryoshka. Ridiculous name for an organization.

  Alcázar had caught the change in her dark eyes. She was now wearing the same look he’d seen that night at the lake, when he found her
beside Elías’s unconscious body, her shirt bloody. It looked like thin ice cracking just before it gives way under your feet.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Anna. And you’re wrong.”

  “And what am I thinking, Alcázar? That you murdered Zinoviev and then drove Laura to suicide to make it seem as if she was guilty?”

  Alcázar held her gaze. “You should get back to your bookstore, Anna. Who knows, maybe someone’s waiting for you to explain why Proust wasted all those years in search of his lost time.”

  She nodded. Alcázar walked her to the door.

  “What’s she like?” Anna asked, stopping abruptly, one hand on the doorknob.

  Alcázar pretended not to understand.

  “Caterina, his wife. What’s she like now?”

  “Old, like us. And her name isn’t Caterina anymore. It’s Esperanza.”

  “I always thought my mother would have made Elías a better wife…”

  She leaned in and gave Alcázar a butterfly kiss, swift and gentle, on the cheek. It was an affectionate gesture that seemed out of place, and it disconcerted him.

  “What was that for?”

  “Nothing wrong with a little tenderness between two lonely old souls, is there?”

  Old Lukas lifted his head on hearing the door close. He sniffed the air, recognized the acrid sweat of his master, and then, reassured, dozed off once more, muzzle between his paws.

  Somehow, Gonzalo’s feet led him to the waterfront. He often went there when he needed to think. Ever since he was a teenager, Gonzalo had enjoyed walking out to the breakwater and sitting on a rock to contemplate the sea and watch the fishermen cast their lines in the late afternoon. There was one girl on the shore, a scarf over her shoulders. It was starting to cool off at night. The wind ruffled her hair as she stared out to sea, perhaps dreaming of being a mermaid. For a while he watched a buoy bobbing near the mouth of the estuary. The cargo ships sailing along the horizon advanced so slowly they looked stationary, the lapping of the waves was hypnotic, and the faint dark outline of Montjuïc at the far end of the coast looked almost fake. He hadn’t realized it was getting dark and the lights on the boardwalk behind him had already come on.

  A beach sweeper raked the sand, its bright lights scanning the beach as it neared a couple making out, oblivious, lost in each other. On the next bench over sat a beer vendor with his cooler, drinking the warm cans he hadn’t been able to sell during the day and softly singing drunken songs from his homeland. Two young pickpockets scouted for unsuspecting tourists until the blue flash of a police car in the distance sent them packing.

  All this was going on around him, but Gonzalo remained entirely unaffected. The world seemed unbearably ugly if he didn’t turn his back to it and gaze instead at the darkening water. What is it about the sea, he wondered, that makes everyone come to it in search of answers? Immensity, perhaps, the idea that you might become one with that vastness and disappear.

  Behind Gonzalo, leaning against a lamppost with his hands in his pockets, ex–Chief Inspector Alcázar gazed out at the same horizon, his expression gruff and jaded. He looked awful: his cheap jacket wrinkled, the knot of his tie loose, an itchy three-day beard sprouting up unevenly around his bushy gray mustache. A rough-looking homeless man approached him with an emphatic sign around his neck: I’m hungry!! As though demanding tribute. What do I care? Fuck off, thought Alcázar, though he reached into a pocket and gave the man some loose change.

  “You’ve got everyone pretty worried.”

  “How did you find me?”

  Alcázar sat down beside Gonzalo, mopping his shaved head with a handkerchief, sweat stains peeking out from under his arms. He tucked the handkerchief away and interlaced his fingers, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “Let’s just say your doorman isn’t the most discreet guy on the planet. You’re a predictable guy, Gonzalo. I hope Atxaga hasn’t realized that, or you’re in trouble.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “That’s what you told me at the hospital. And I thought I made it clear: I’m just doing my job.”

  “Trying to find Atxaga and protecting me and my family,” Gonzalo retorted mockingly.

  “That’s right.”

  “And what else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What else do you do for my father-in-law? Why you and no one else?”

  Alcázar had been studying Gonzalo since the beginning. It had been thirty-five years, and back then he was a quiet five-year-old kid, introverted and too serious for his age. Sitting between his mother and older sister on a bench at the station, he looked like he wanted to disappear. When Alcázar saw him in the hospital, he realized Gonzalo was still the kind of person who preferred to be invisible. The opposite of Laura. It was amazing to think that the two of them had the same mother and father.

  “Coincidence is an illusion, it’s just something people take comfort in. And it keeps them from digging deeper, finding the real reasons. You should try it. Make your life a little easier.”

  “It’s a bit late for that,” Gonzalo snapped.

  Alcázar stroked his mustache, eyes focused on the violet dusk as its light played on the sea. He wondered what Cecilia would think if she could see him now. If his wife was waiting for him in heaven, she’d have to use all her powers of persuasion to convince Saint Paul—her favorite—to let him in when the time came.

  “I suppose you’re right. There always comes a time when it’s too late to turn back.”

  When Cecilia was diagnosed with cancer, she accepted it—resigned but not bitter—with the quiet fatalism of her faith. She threw herself into Catholicism, attending Mass two or three times a week, surrounding herself with Bible verses, prayers, and Communion. For her sake, Alcázar pretended to feel the same devotion, putting on a performance in order to make her happy. He attended services with her at the Iglesia del Pi, waited patiently while she confessed, and when they got home he would sit down and read her Saint Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. Her favorite was the one about the power of love. As he recited, “Love is patient, love is kind,” she’d squeeze his hand and he would hide the anguish and rage he felt for a God who, as the disease progressed, had a greater and greater presence in their lives, a God to whom Cecilia showed utter devotion although He did not hear her pleas. What Alcázar hated most was watching her writhe in pain those last few weeks in bed, dying, too weak to get up, invoking His name as she cried and moaned. And He remained silent.

  There were days when Cecilia was determined to live a normal-seeming life, pretending not to notice the disease was spreading day by day, rotting her from the inside out. Occasionally they still made love, and sex took on a sort of placid quality, a slow tenderness that bore no resemblance to the excitement and excess of the early days. Before she died, Cecilia told him that death appeared to her at night and was not frightening or dramatic or violent. This vision helped her remain calm as she awaited its arrival. She asked him to pray for her and not to turn his back on God. And he promised.

  And soon after, Laura walked into his life, stepping out of a time he thought he’d left behind. Alcázar had gone back to work without mentioning that his wife had passed away, but he thought of Cecilia all the time and her death was a constant torment. He fulfilled his duties, going through the motions, stony and distant. Other people and their problems seemed a reflection of his own pain and loss. He became cynical and suspicious, taciturn and cruel. At night he’d go to the same church and sit in the last pew in the dim light of votive candles, railing against God, scrutinizing Christ’s face on the altar cross, the symbol of eternity, of the everlasting, and it tortured him—an allusion to his misfortune, his own death, his loneliness. He would stare at the cross and feel convinced that they were both damned, he and Christ, destined to stare at each other in silence for the rest of time.

  On the night be
fore Christmas Eve, a chorus of altar boys stood practicing carols at the altar of Iglesia del Pi, accompanied by a young seminarian on guitar. A young woman came in and sat beside the inspector, rousing him from his thoughts. It was Laura. She smiled nervously when she told him who she was. Alcázar froze and then sat there holding his breath for so long she got scared. They left the church and went to have coffee in Plaza del Pi, the square outside, which was often filled with painters at their easels. Everything was bright and festive, bustling with people carrying Christmas trees and nativity scenes they’d bought at Feria de Santa Lucía by the cathedral. They were oblivious of the wintry joy that filled the air. The two of them spoke at length about what happened that summer of 1967. One thing that surprised them—and made them laugh, despite the seriousness of it all—was how different their memories of the same events were.

  What had stuck in Laura’s mind were the impressions of a frightened girl arriving at the police station with her mother and younger brother to report that their father had not returned after the night of San Juan. Etched in her mind were Alcázar’s lopsided toupee and a drop of sweat that ran down the middle of his forehead and then fell onto his nose—which at the time had seemed enormous, although now she could see otherwise. She remembered the two of them speaking alone in his office, the inspector’s sleeves rolled up, one leg leaning on the corner of his wooden desk, foot jiggling anxiously.

  “Your shoelace was undone and I wanted to reach down and tie it for you, but I was so scared I didn’t dare move.”

  And, Laura continued, the inspector offered her a glass of water, but what she really wanted was one of the cigarettes he smoked nonstop. She recalled his mustache—blond at the time, now almost white—bobbing up and down as he spoke, and the way he leaned so close that their noses almost touched, like Eskimos. And the way he’d said, very quietly, “I don’t believe you. You’re lying to me, and now you’re going to tell me the truth.” She panicked, got so scared that she dug her fingernails into her palms till it hurt. Laura told him she had no idea how long they were locked in that room together, or how many times she told him the same story—that her father had gotten angry and, in one of his fits of rage, smashed up all the furniture in the shed because she’d forgotten the words of an old poem; that he’d been drunk and hit her (she showed Alcázar the scratches and bruises on her arm, knee, and neck, which, while visible, were not excessive), and then, as he did every time, he’d hugged and kissed her and asked for her forgiveness.