Letters to a Stranger

  ‘So it’s possible she’s living with someone?’

  ‘I hope to find that out tomorrow. You’ll have to be patient – these things take time . . .’

  ‘I never thought I’d be dealing with all this when I came back. I could have gone home and simply flown over to sign the papers and collect my inheritance. To be honest, I’d stopped caring about my mother and my sister long before I moved to London, but . . .’

  ‘It’s because of Saúl, isn’t it? His letters?’

  ‘At first it was just needing to get closure on my past. I went through a lot of hardship during my first few years in London, and after that I thought I’d overcome everything and become this new woman, and that I’d actually come through OK after everything I’d suffered in Spain. When they told me my mother had died, I felt absolutely nothing – maybe just annoyance at the inconvenience, which made me feel proud, thinking I’d managed to get over all that. But then as soon as I set foot in the house I grew up in . . .’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘It all came right back, you know? It was like being transported straight back to those days without love, always anxious, terrified that I hadn’t followed her orders precisely to the letter . . . You can’t imagine how hard it was growing up in that house.’

  ‘No, I can imagine,’ he said again, implying that his own childhood hadn’t been happy either.

  ‘Anyway, when I realised that the wound hadn’t healed and that the simple act of walking into that house had ripped it wide open again . . .’ I began to get emotional and he leaned in close, affectionate. ‘Well, I started to realise that the old Berta was still alive and kicking, and that, besides the paperwork relating to the inheritance, I needed to take care of some more complex issues before I left. I have to admit, I’ve almost quit Spain again a couple of times – it’s all too painful for me. I put it behind me once, and I could do the same again. But those letters . . . Knowing there’s an innocent person out there, still waiting for justice after so many years and that I’m the only one who can help . . .’

  ‘I have the feeling there’s more to it than that,’ he said, making it quite obvious that he could sense what I wasn’t saying.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Just my gut instinct as a detective. Actually, you don’t need to be a genius to notice. I knew just from how you looked at that photograph. You women, your eyes light up when you feel those butterflies in your stomach.’

  ‘You must think I’m completely ridiculous. It’s totally absurd to be attracted to someone just on the strength of their letters.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re a little naive, but I don’t think your feelings are absurd – far from it.’

  ‘Alfonso, have you ever been in love?’ Even I was surprised at my question. It must have been the alcohol.

  ‘Several times – too many, if you ask me. Falling in love is a right bastard. Sorry, I’ve never found a more apt expression than that.’

  ‘I couldn’t have said it better myself,’ I reassured him. He looked a little embarrassed and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the swear word or because of his confession.

  He drained his glass and signalled to the nearest waiter to refill it, and I finished mine as well to join him in a new glass.

  ‘The worst is when you find out all over again that love doesn’t last. Every single time leaves you more wrecked and hurt.’

  ‘At least you’ve experienced it.’

  ‘More than that, it’s given me bad indigestion. In my experience, love is to be savoured while you have it – right then the feeling is all yours, pure, unpolluted and eternal. The best love stories are the ones that end just in the nick of time, like in all those fairy tales.’ He stopped for a moment to sip the drink the waiter had just served him. ‘The prince and his beloved live happily ever after because the author cleverly cuts off the story at just the right time, thereby shunting the reality of all the arguments and accusations off into the rosy future. I don’t think too many romances can withstand that second part – apparently they exist, but I haven’t come across one for myself. We all work so hard in the early days to put out the most fabulous and desirable version of ourselves, hardly able to recognise our own features in the mirror at times, but then later on, exhausted with the colossal effort, we start to let ourselves go . . . The only love that will truly stand the test of time is platonic.’

  ‘That may be so, but it’s hard to accept that the person you love will never be within your reach,’ I told him, lost in thought, musing over my own feelings.

  ‘I swear to you that it’s nothing compared with the pain from knowing with absolute clarity that the other person doesn’t share your feelings. I need a smoke. Fancy heading out to the terrace?’

  Outside we found half a dozen tables occupied by couples and groups of friends enjoying the balmy evening over their drinks. It was a little after ten by now. Once we were sitting down, with a good amount of alcohol now coursing through our veins, we continued with our forensic examination of love and its complications.

  ‘Love is like a mischievous little imp roaming the world and causing havoc all over the place. The bastard’s always ready, wins the game every time and no one escapes unscathed from his perverse clutches. He’s certainly been lurking in the background of most of the disasters in human history.’ He spoke slowly while he thought it over, drawing on his inevitable cigarette. ‘Look around – Saúl, you, me . . .’

  ‘Alfonso,’ I said, interrupting to force him out of his reverie and to pay attention to me, ‘I’m almost thirty-five years old . . .’

  ‘No one would guess that,’ he said flirtatiously. He hadn’t given up on me, and I felt sorry for him.

  ‘It’s all happened over the last few weeks . . . Well, I’ve always believed that love was the invention of poets and department stores. I know that for many years this conviction allowed me to focus on myself so I could build an independent life and a future, but it’s only now that I feel so incredibly alive and have this new insight into every step I’ve taken in my life. Recognising that I’m so much more than just a work in progress has been a total revelation for me.’

  ‘Maybe that’s just because it’s the first time . . .’

  ‘Yeah, well, I know it’s a love well outside the bounds of reality . . .’

  ‘They all are.’

  ‘You can’t even imagine what’s it’s meant to me to prove that I’m capable of loving someone, anyone, besides myself. Until now I’ve only felt resentment or indifference towards other people, maybe something like friendship at the most. I’ve been on the run for fifteen years, stressed out, not allowing myself a single moment for reflection, because I knew the painful emptiness I would find and that I’d be unable to fill it. And yet all of a sudden, nothing could make me happier than looking into my own heart and reflecting.’

  ‘I tell you now, that mischievous little imp could very well be strolling through Olympic Park in Washington State to tell that boy what you feel for him. I wonder how long your heart will put up with it, this feeling of yours not being reciprocated.’

  ‘I don’t know, but right now I’m very conscious of what I have because I’ve felt it so deeply – for me, living through it has been worthwhile and I’ve never seen things so clearly before. Reading Saúl’s letters has felt like being reborn. It’s madness, utter nonsense, I know that, but I can’t help it, and I don’t want to. To think that if I’d found these letters in London while I was buried in the frenzy of my job . . . No, it wouldn’t have been the same: going through this period of loneliness and waiting has been crucial for me. Life truly is full of the strangest surprises.’

  He sat for a long while ruminating while he finished his drink and his last cigarette, until finally he decided it was time to go. His face looked tired and worn.

  We said goodnight as something more than investigator and client: we’d started to build a friendship and on his side it was something a little stronger. When I got back to
my room the world seemed just as unfair and arbitrary as before, but now a bit friendlier. I undressed and climbed into bed without even thinking about where I was, and a pleasant drowsiness lulled me into sleep.

  Chapter 17

  Friday, 27 June 2014

  I ordered room service for breakfast. Another day with nothing to do and I was thrilled to think that I could spend the morning immersed in Saúl’s past. If not for the marvellous discovery of his letters, I would simply not have been able to cope with the string of tragedies I had found waiting for me here on my return from London. The words of the man from Lake Crescent had been a most effective anaesthetic – as soon as I went back to them, the pain and the weight on my shoulders disappeared completely.

  I missed Aris so much that as soon as I had finished breakfast I called the neighbour who had so kindly offered to take care of him. He told me that Aris was a delight, and that at that moment he was lying next to him as he read. I envied him the soothing company.

  I started reading without further ado and found a few letters with no more than a hundred words each. Saúl had fallen sick from the cold, down to his passion for capturing the mist, from the paint fumes and the depression he’d been prey to for years. His illness was as much mental as physical, obsessed with painting what lay hidden in the fog that oozed from the waters of the lake. In addition, his headaches were getting worse.

  Dismayed, my eyes welling with tears, I quickly picked up the next letter, hoping that Saúl had overcome this terrible crisis. My hands were shaking so much it was hard to open the envelope. It had been almost twenty days until he’d written again.

  Olympic National Park

  1 November 2005

  Dear Yolanda,

  At last, after a gap of nearly three weeks, I’ve finally found the strength to get out of bed and write to you. In between I ended up seriously ill, both physically and mentally. I don’t recall, but Dylan tells me that one night a married couple in the area went to fetch him, because they’d heard strange loud noises from my cabin. He found me lying unconscious on the floor, my forehead bleeding from where I’d banged it. I was straight away taken to hospital where I regained consciousness within a few hours.

  It’s funny because I’m starting to feel like your name is synonymous with ‘journal’.

  The headaches have gone away too, and I don’t need the pills to help me sleep any more, but I’m devastated.

  The day I came home from hospital I had a difficult talk with Dylan. We’d barely crossed the threshold when I noticed that my oils, canvases, brushes, and of course my paints, were gone. I looked at him, furious, and asked why. ‘I’m sorry, mate,’ he said, ‘but you have to wait until the summer to go back to painting in oils. The doctor was very clear on that. The fumes from the turpentine are really damaging your health.’ I told him he had no right to do that to me and who was he to take the liberty of getting rid of all my materials? Dylan reminded me that, however isolated I felt, I was not alone – that he, Nadia and Carol had been at my side throughout, taking care of me when I was raving from fever, and that I still had my mother too. That hurt me a lot . . . I don’t really know what I said but I ended up shoving him out of the cabin like he was nothing to me.

  I feel gutted about it and I’ve gone every day to the restaurant to ask his forgiveness, but he won’t speak to me – he’s really angry and hurt, of that I’m sure. No one’s been to visit me since then. And the mist is still out there, watching me, waiting for me. I know this will seem terribly selfish to you, but the truth is I don’t know if I’m hurting so much because I can’t paint or because I’ve lost my friend.

  I’ve asked one of the forest rangers to take me to the dock tomorrow so I can catch the ferry and go into Seattle to buy materials, because if I go on like this, shut up in my cabin, all alone and without my brushes . . . I’m sorry – I can’t stand this loneliness before the mist rises again.

  I’ll write back soon.

  Saúl

  I would have run to the lake without rest to stop him, convince him that he needed to wait until spring and to keep him company and offer the comfort he needed so badly. I was tormented by the thought that he might have got sick again with the headaches and the madness that the turpentine had caused, and that they had taken him to hospital unconscious.

  My empathy for this man who was not only a stranger, but who had lived another nine years following on from this incident and who was probably a very different person now, was like being gripped by a madness parallel to his own. The more letters I read, the better I understood him, and the more I loved him the greater became my desperation to break down the barrier of time and space that kept us apart. I remembered what Alfonso had said the night before: ‘I wonder how long your heart will put up with this feeling not being reciprocated.’ I was starting to wonder myself.

  My phone pinged while thinking about this, Saúl’s most recent confession in my hands. It was the audio file Alfonso had promised to send. I took a deep breath to clear my thoughts and pressed play. It was only part of the conversation, the part he thought would interest me, I guess. It confirmed what the detective had told me: at first the witness was against going on record because of how many years had passed, but finally he concluded that the man in the photograph could easily be the one who had put the body on the yacht that night. What Alfonso hadn’t told me was that he had withheld the information that the guy in the photograph was not the same person the witness had identified in the police line-up, which would have proved without a doubt that he had meant to entrap him. If he had made it plain that the guy in the photo was not the same man, the witness would almost certainly have denied the resemblance. His statement was likely to be ruled inadmissible in any potential court proceedings because of Alfonso’s little subterfuge.

  Suddenly the danger that surrounded me became all too real again. I was meddling in a matter completely shrouded in lies, blackmail, unexplained disappearances, maybe even murder . . . with the involvement of people known for their lack of any heart or scruples. I must have posed a considerable threat to them and knew they’d not hesitate to resort to any method to shut me up. But somehow I also felt strong in my determination to fight the battle, sure in the knowledge that my very vulnerability would serve to protect me and keep me vigilant.

  Yes, I had changed all right during my time in London. No one remains the same after fifteen years – the passing of every single day moulds and shapes us, leaving its mark on our mind and body. The young girl who left Madrid in 1999 would have been terrified in a situation of such great peril. She’d have kept herself out of sight, holed up all alone in her room with only Neca for comfort, until she could no longer stand it and ran away. With her mind all in pieces, she certainly wouldn’t have had the capacity to fall in love. Whether it was indeed the power of love that had given me strength or the isolation forced on me by this chaste passion, it did not rule out the possibility that the man by the lake had stolen away at least part of my common sense. Well, it’s true, is it not, that the greatest achievements come from people labelled as nothing better than idle dreamers? Isn’t it the irrational obsession with a fantasy that helps turn it into reality? I thought of Saúl’s preoccupation with capturing the very soul of the mist, and his readiness to follow his vision even to the detriment of his own health. Judging from the heap of letters still waiting to be read, he was still alive and must finally have succeeded somehow in distilling the essence of the fog in his paintings.

  I was sure that every day of my thirty-four years had led me towards falling in love to this degree, and even if it proved nothing more than a wild dream, who was I to care? If I hadn’t fallen so hard, right now I’d have been seeing to the running of my restaurant – the place was always booked out on Fridays. Poor Brandon, I thought, he must be completely overwhelmed, dishing out the orders left, right and centre in both dining room and kitchen. It also struck me that being the owner of a thriving business, albeit one so popular with its clients, w
as simply no longer the central goal of my life. What now occupied my thoughts was whether Saúl had found the patience to wait for the return of good weather to start painting in oils again – or I suppose I should say, whether nine years ago he had managed to find that patience. What a nonsense it all was – I still had trouble comprehending that his letters came from a time dead and past.

  I settled down to read one more before heading out for lunch.

  Olympic National Park

  18 November 2005

  Yolanda, my dear confessor,

  It’s been tough but I’m resisting temptation. Dylan found out that I’d gone to Seattle to buy materials for my painting, and swallowed his wounded pride to come and talk with me to dissuade me from ever doing something so stupid again. That same night he came over with everything he’d taken away while I was sick. He made one thing very clear: that if I so much as took the lid off a tube of paint before the fine weather came and I could paint outdoors, there’d be no more second chances – I would lose his friendship and that of the others for good. He was so firm and determined, more than ready to carry out this threat. I tried to impress on him the cruelty of what he was asking, that I could only be free from my obsession when I had conquered the mist of the lake and put it on the canvas, but he grabbed me by the arm and forced me over to the window.

  ‘Take a good look out there – what do you see?’ he asked me.

  I answered, ‘That same unrelenting mist. It’s like an impenetrable brick wall . . .’

  ‘No, mate, what you see is only in your mind. It’s been clear for days and the sun is shining, just like it was in the days before you passed out. Do you see now why you can’t go back to painting in oils or open a single tube of paint till you get better and the spring comes? You’re hallucinating, Saúl. You can’t trust your mind right now.’