Crocodile Tears
Page 17
Why is it, Ursula, that you rise to the challenge when the chips are down?
Your self-confidence is growing, your miraculous transformation has begun. You fire your most exquisite ammunition: hate.
You feel something silent moving down the street, perceive the footsteps of a shadow, smell its presence, the vulgar fragrance of a fifth person – a woman? – who until now wasn’t in the script. The policewoman? Who other than a policewoman would wear the vulgar scent of grapefruit and coconut oil? You wrinkle your nose, think up a plan, check your surroundings: there’s not a lot of light, just a twenty-five-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling that barely softens the shadows.
You answer Antinucci’s questions, you argue, ask for time, plead with him to be patient, and as you talk you get as close as you can to the door, your salvation, moving furtively, cautiously.
An irredeemably fat woman measures the distance, calculates the gap.
The garage is now a ship the moment before the storm hits.
You take two, three steps, again sense that presence, the smell of grapefruit and coconut; you now recognize a woody note. The ghostly presence draws even closer, taking olfactory form. Antinucci and his thugs must have heard something behind them or noticed the direction of your eyes, because they turn to face the entrance.
And you, Ursula, capitalize on the slightest slip, the slightest distraction to divert their attention and their gaze away from you, and in two strides you’ve made it to the iron door, shoved it open, gone through, turned round, pushed it, closed it, locked it, forced the rusty bolt into place, and now you’re running down Sebastián’s corridor, running as you hear the shots just a few yards away, on the other side of the wall, as you hear the shouts from the street, the sirens of two patrol cars, the raised voices. It’s all receding.
And I know you, I know you’ll make it to the room at the end, you’ll see the bookseller’s cat and briefly stroke its back, you’ll open the trapdoor, go down the ladder to the stone tunnel, run fifty or sixty yards, reach the stairs that lead to the door beneath Sebastián’s bookshop, enter, smooth down your hair and walk past him, maybe even wink at him, then you’ll go out into the street. All the other details will be irrelevant because you will have won.
I watch you and I love you, Ursula. You come from me, I have constructed you over many years, we’re scum, you and me both. I’ve known it ever since my body began rotting in that grave you sent me to.
El Reportero
VIOLENT ASSAULT ON ARMOURED TRUCK
at least five dead
There was a violent assault on an armoured truck in the early hours of the morning at the intersection of Rosaleda and Morera, disturbing the customary tranquillity of the humble La Chapita neighbourhood. At 9.30 a.m., a heavily armed group consisting of at least three individuals attempted to rob an armoured transit vehicle operated by Asegur.
The criminals, who intercepted the cash transport vehicle on the western outskirts of the city, are reported to have used a Nissan van. They tried to breach the security system of the truck, which was defended by guards travelling inside the vehicle. A firefight ensued, involving rifles, handguns and grenades, and concluded with the spectacular explosion both of the armoured truck and of the van used by the criminals, with the unfortunate deaths of all involved, the only exception being the leader of the gang.
The criminal in charge of the operation has been identified as Ricardo Prieto, alias the Hobo, who has an extensive criminal record and had recently escaped from the Criminal Court, where he was due to be interrogated regarding another case. He was transferred to hospital with a bullet wound to the stomach, and his prognosis is uncertain.
A witness reported that the gunfire lasted for about ten minutes, at which point the explosion occurred. “I didn’t see anything because bullets were hitting doors and windows, and I took shelter under the bed,” said Pedro Álvarez, a resident of the street where the events occurred. The final exchange of fire took place at approximately 9.40 in the morning.
Inspector Darío Clemen refuted a rumour circulating in the press regarding the participation in the attack of a well-known lawyer. According to the official, the individual was on his daily visit to the prison at the time, a fact that has been confirmed by dozens of witnesses.
Despite the rapid intervention of the fire service, all the money was completely destroyed by the explosion and the subsequent conflagration.
URSULA
It’s June, late autumn in the southern hemisphere, half past five in the evening. The sky is overcast; the clouds are grey and white, long and twisted like a mass of intestines. Rain threatens. Down there is a city lashed by freezing wind, a shoreline on a wide bay, lots of buildings, cars, people hurrying home to turn on their televisions. Night is gradually arriving from below.
There is an old apartment, slightly decrepit, a room and a bed; on the bed is a woman, her face tense, her body taut on the chenille bedspread which looks vintage but is just old-fashioned. The woman has a severe expression which, from a distance, gives her the appearance of a respectable wife. The sounds from outside don’t penetrate the room; this world is cushioned, sealed off, far from the hubbub.
The woman is neither sleeping nor watching television nor listening to the radio, she is not reading a book or doing the work she has pending, she doesn’t look out the window at the dying evening, at the darkness overcoming what is left of the light, at the first raindrops hitting the glass. Lying on the bed, she waits for a call; she has been waiting for weeks.
The woman on the bed, the woman who is waiting, is Ursula.
I am Ursula.
I have a pile of abandoned translations sitting beside my bed, a display case full of figurines that haven’t been cleaned in a month, and an almost empty fridge.
The number I need is saved in my phone and I’ve asked myself a thousand times why I don’t call and bring this agony of waiting to an end, but no, I wait and I wait, I don’t really know why. The phone is like a dead mouse, abandoned on the pillow, here at my side.
Finally, the ringtone. I hear it and look outside, but dusk has transformed the window into a mirror. I hear it ringing and look at the window. I think that, after this call, it will be over: my years of measured boredom, of comfortable hatred, of going to sleep in the knowledge that, with no great effort or sorrow, the world will continue on its unchangeable course and that, when my death arrives, somebody will place a three-line announcement in the newspaper.
It’s ringing, it’s ringing.
“Hello, I was expecting your call. How did I know you were going to call? I just knew. No, I won’t say your name over the phone, I’ll be discreet. And I hope you’re not at home now, because I know someone who’s probably looking under every stone for you. Where did you get to? Tell me. All right, don’t say anything if you think that’s safer. What? You want me to wait? You’re coming over today? Now you’ve called, I’m a bundle of nerves. Bring it, all of it: the house in Carrasco, the swimming pool, the luxury cars, bring the lot, even if it has to be bit by bit. After that, we’ll see about the beach holidays beside a green sea, the weight loss clinic, the Nile cruise. Tonight we’ll dine at Rara Avis and drink a toast with the finest champagne. What’s that? You feel bad about disappearing? Don’t apologize. That’s not how I see it. You did what you could under the circumstances. We’re not gods, we do what we can. Yes, of course I always trusted you: I knew you’d come back. Our relationship is strong enough to survive any little mishaps, darling. See you in a couple of hours. Goodbye. Wait, don’t hang up, I need to tell you something else. I’m glad you called, not just because of the money, not just because of our relationship; above all, I’m glad because it shows your integrity, your decisiveness. I’m glad you called because I can’t stand weak-willed people. It’s not for nothing that they say God spits out the faint-hearted.”
And I hang up.
For a while, I wait for something to happen, for the phone to ring again, then I get up, walk over
to the window and open the curtains that cut me off from the world, raise the blinds, open the wooden shutters, open the window and allow the chilly evening air to enter. I look at the sky, the lights in apartments and cars, the illuminated adverts. The whole city is gradually lighting up, bit by bit, and the darkness floats around the creased nightdress that billows about my body. I breathe in the cold air, close my eyes.
When I shut the window I see myself reflected in the glass, my image projected over fragments of light. I hum a song. How beautiful life is, even if it’s only a pretence. I smile and run to the shower.
My shell has broken, I realize: finally, I will no longer be the person I was.
LEONILDA
Place: Police HQ, two miles from Ursula’s house.
Time: After half past five; night has almost fallen in Montevideo.
Weather: Overcast, grey and white clouds, rain.
I hear the final click as the phone call ends.
I’m sitting at the desk in my office, headphones on, ballpoint in my right hand; I’ve been here for hours, days, waiting for this call, and I don’t know how I’m going to repay the favours I owe to the technician who risked his job to tap these two lines so that I could listen to this conversation.
A few minutes earlier, I’d thought that Saturn and every other cursed planet was aligned against me. First, Clemen had ordered me – this time shouting and threatening to have me arrested – to abandon the investigation into the hold-up of the armoured truck; second, I was unable to obtain official authorization to investigate Antinucci because, according to my superiors, there wasn’t the slightest link between the explosions and the lawyer (and I’ll be lucky, they say, if he doesn’t file a complaint against me for entering a private home without a judicial order); and third, to cap it all off, the kid in the bookshop, who I questioned unofficially, told me he’d been renting the garage for years to a woman who lives in the neighbourhood and who he scarcely knows, and that he didn’t hear any suspicious noises that morning.
I look at the piece of paper in front of me. The words of the conversation I’ve just listened to don’t mean anything; they don’t mean anything yet.
Despite all the setbacks, I had a hunch and a couple of clues that kept me going. I tied up loose ends, talked to the locals, observed the neighbourhood during my time off, took photos, did the painstaking work of a typical Capricorn faced with a challenge, working under restrictions and with so many questions to answer. And now I know that the woman who rents the garage from the bookseller is the same one I saw in the car with Antinucci, the woman with the pink handbag, the one he went into the garage with, although I don’t know what they were doing there or why she fled, let alone how she managed to disappear into thin air before I arrived with my men. I also know that she lives in a building on the corner of Treinta y Tres and Sarandí; I see her going past every morning while I have my breakfast in the bar on the corner, the one directly opposite her house, and I’m sure she’s the same woman who appears in the photo Ursula López took from the window of her apartment on Villa Biarritz Park, a few days before she was murdered. What’s more, I’ve confirmed – and this confuses me – that this woman in the Old Town is also called Ursula López, just like the one in Villa Biarritz. There are still too many questions, still too much work left to do, but I’m a Capricorn, a silent, hard-working, obstinate woman. And very, very patient.
And today, just as I was growing desperate, the miracle occurred: the phone that I needed to ring, rang.
A few moments ago, I heard the click of the end of the conversation between Ursula and this man whose identity I don’t know, and I can still hear the opaque, monotonous, infinite tone that indicates that the line is free.
I pull off the headphones and throw them onto the desk. I sit up, with my back straight against the chair, put the ballpoint down next to the paper and read what I’ve just written, notes made with sharp, black, rapid strokes:
Rara Avis
She knew he’d come back?
The money
I scan the lines, from top to bottom, from bottom to top until I know them by heart, until they start to merge, to blur on the paper, and I push it to one side in annoyance.
I can’t stop mentally repeating the final words of the conversation, the quotation from Revelation, I can’t help recognizing a sign, can’t help feeling that dart aimed straight at my own heart. It hurts, but I try to relax and lean on the desk, holding my head in my hands and closing my eyes, concentrating on myself, on my professional life, on my private life, on that frontier where police captain and woman merge, and I tell myself that what she said, what Ursula said to the man who called her, is so very true: God spits out the faint-hearted.
About the Author
Mercedes Rosende was born in 1958 in Montevideo, Uruguay. She is a lawyer and a journalist when not writing fiction. She has won many prizes for her novels and short stories. In 2005 she won the Premio Municipal de Narrativa for Demasiados blues, in 2008 the National Literature Prize for La muerte tendrá tus ojos and in 2019 the LiBeraturpreis in Germany for Crocodile Tears. She lives in Montevideo.
Copyright
BITTER LEMON PRESS
First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by
Bitter Lemon Press, 47 Wilmington Square, London WC1X 0ET
www.bitterlemonpress.com
First published in Spanish in 2016 as
EL MISERERE DE LOS COCODRILOS by Estuario editore, Montevideo
© 2016, Mercedes Rosende
English translation © Tim Gutteridge, 2021
This translation is published by arrangement with Ampi Margini
Literary Agency and with the authorization of Mercedes Rosende
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher
The moral rights of the author and the translator have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988
All the characters and events described in this novel are imaginary and any similarity with real people or events is purely coincidental
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978–1–913394–431
eBook ISBN USC 978–1–913394–448
eBook ISBN ROW 978–1–913394–455
Bitter Lemon Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance
of the Arts Council of England and of Programa IDA
Typeset by Tetragon, London
Printed and bound by the CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR 0 4YY