Letters to a Stranger

by Mercedes Pinto Maldonado

  ‘Oh . . . thank you! Thank you so very much.’

  I walked towards the room, my heart thumping painfully with emotion.

  Sofas separated off a number of seating areas, some of them occupied. A man rose to his feet at the back of the room when he saw me come in. It was him.

  Overwhelmed and in shock, I covered the distance between us, his painting in my hands.

  ‘Hello, Berta,’ he said in greeting, a gentle smile on his lips.

  ‘Saúl . . . you’re here . . .’

  Trembling, I took his hand as he guided me to my seat, exploring the slender and delicate fingers of the man who fed ducks.

  My eyes never once left his face – he was more attractive than I’d imagined, and taller, stronger, more manly and . . . he had a beard now, thick and neatly trimmed, from beneath which flashed his gentle white smile. His hair was tied back, very dark still but with a few strands of grey these days, and the brown warmth of his eyes and natural tan of his skin stood out against his white coat with its mandarin collar. He seemed somewhat older than his true age, or maybe just more mature in his outlook and experience.

  ‘I came here to meet you, and you don’t know how happy I am. I could not have forgiven myself if I’d left without thanking you for everything you’ve done for me.’

  That easy smile, tender and kind, stayed on his face as he spoke, matching the glow in his eyes.

  ‘How do you know . . . ?’

  ‘A mutual friend told me about you. Berta, I don’t have much time; I shouldn’t be here at all.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said with deep regret.

  ‘I came to tell you that I’m starting a new life and I don’t want you to suffer on my behalf any longer – I’ve left behind all of my difficulties and moved on. I came today to say goodbye to Saúl forever and I want you to do the same.’

  ‘You can’t ask that of me. I don’t think I could ever forget you. You have no idea what your letters have meant to me.’

  A tear ran down my face. He leaned in and wiped it away, stroking his thumb very slowly across my cheek. He smelled like the lake, like the forest in winter and turpentine – like his paintings. I couldn’t help putting my hand over his to hold it there just a little longer.

  ‘You’re freezing . . .’ I whispered.

  ‘It’s this feeling of loss that makes me cold: you know that.’

  He drew a little closer and pressed his lips to mine. I closed my eyes and the tears flowed freely down my cheeks as we kissed, and I trembled more violently than ever.

  Then he pulled away to say goodbye.

  ‘You’re so much more beautiful than I’d imagined. It’s time for me to go now, Berta.’

  He stood up and a man on the other side of the room rose to his feet at the same time. It was Martin Baker.

  My beloved painter was almost at the door when the urge to see him one last time got the better of me. Still seated, I called out to him, ‘Saúl!’

  He turned his head for a moment while Martin continued walking to the door.

  ‘Thank you for the painting.’

  ‘Goodbye, Berta,’ he said, and smiled again.

  I got into the lift, my mind far away, the touch of his lips still on mine, savouring that one fleeting kiss. As I opened the door to my room, the sight of Alfonso pulled me out of my wonderful reverie. He sat in the shadows on a low chair, smoking. I could barely recognise him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, Berta. What do you think I’m doing here? Pedro Vidal is still out there, and your life has been in danger ever since you left Madrid. I couldn’t just do nothing. I drove like mad to get here . . . I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘I’m sorry – I’m really sorry, Alfonso, but . . . I just had to be in Paris today.’

  ‘Right . . . you know it’s a miracle you’re still alive, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I know. Teresa’s cousin followed me all the way out of Bordeaux yesterday . . .’

  ‘No, Berta, he followed you all the way to this hotel. If I hadn’t decided to come, you’d be in the same position as your darling Teresa right now. I think I need a drink from the minibar.’

  I leaned the painting against the wall, sat on the bed and switched on the lamp on the bedside table, still in my dreamlike state, still intoxicated from the intense moment I had just experienced, and unable to fathom why Alfonso was in my room.

  He poured himself a tot of something strong, then went on, a little more in control of himself. ‘Berta, if I hadn’t come to alert the gendarmes, you’d be dead right now. Pedro Vidal was arrested minutes before you left the hotel to go to the gallery. He was waiting for you and he was armed. The situation would have been a lot easier and less dangerous for everybody, even Saúl, if you hadn’t come.’

  ‘I’m so glad I came before you could stop me . . . Alfonso, I saw him – he came all the way here. I just left him.’

  ‘I know. I was raising a glass to you both all on my own up here, and I know he was waiting for you in the hotel lounge.’

  ‘You were at the exhibition? You saw him? Did you talk to him?’

  ‘Yes, but only for a few minutes. It was complicated, but that doesn’t matter now . . .’

  ‘What do you mean it doesn’t matter? What do you know about Saúl? What are you hiding?’

  ‘Nothing – I don’t know anything that you don’t know. I said hello to him and Martin Baker because I was at the exhibition just like you, and I know he was waiting for you because I ran into him at the entrance to the hotel. That’s all.

  ‘Listen, Berta, in a few hours Saúl will be flying back to the US. He came here on a fake passport, and we couldn’t risk—’

  ‘No, Saúl’s not going back to the US. He’s left everything behind to start a new life,’ I said, lost in thought.

  ‘I’m very happy for him,’ he replied, and then took a long, pensive drag of his cigarette, ‘and I’m so very sorry for you.’

  ‘I’m happy for him too, but you don’t know how desperately it hurts to know that I’ll never see him again.’ Grief overwhelmed me and the tears started to flow.

  Alfonso didn’t speak until I was a little more collected. ‘Would you like to get something to eat while I fill you in on everything that’s happened while you’ve been away? I know a sensational restaurant a short walk from here.’

  I forced a wavering smile and accepted his invitation.

  It was a lovely night and we sat outdoors on the terrace of a typical Parisian restaurant. Deep within, I felt torn to shreds, holding back the tears with the feeling that nothing would ever be the same again, the bittersweet taste of his farewell kiss still lingering on my skin: he had said goodbye to me forever. From that moment on, he had shut the door on his past and set off down a road full of fresh possibilities, but left behind a woman who felt newly forged from the fire, and enormously fortunate to have touched the soul of the man from Lake Crescent – softening a little the grief of that goodbye. Since my departure from London, the hand of fate had once again intervened to condense such a mixed bag of emotions into one place and time that part of me nonetheless remained anxious to hear the news that Alfonso was waiting to tell me.

  He ordered the best wine on the menu. We clinked our glasses beneath the myriad twinkling stars and began to talk.

  ‘So tell me, what’s been happening?’

  Just as I was doing, he pulled himself together as much as he was able and said, ‘We’re almost at the finishing line. It’s only a matter of days until it’s all over. In case something happened to her, Teresa left a written statement exposing the involvement of her cousin and your sister in Bodo’s disappearance, as well as her fear that Pedro Vidal might attack her or your niece.’

  ‘Teresa . . . All the suffering and secrets she took with her to the grave . . .’ I murmured, after downing my glass of wine in one.

  ‘Yolanda has been arrested. She made her statement this morning . . .’

 
; ‘She was in Madrid?’

  This news was so startling that it finally succeeded in capturing my attention.

  ‘So it seems. I also found out that . . .’ He hesitated, as though searching for the best way to say something without causing me too much pain.

  ‘What?’ I pressed, sensing that I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say.

  ‘Do you know why your mother’s little sitting room next to her bedroom doesn’t have a window?’

  He waited for my response. I could think of only one possible reason and it was so dark I couldn’t even say it out loud. In the meantime, he drained his wine and refilled the glass. Our meal still lay untouched on our plates.

  ‘In the cavity beyond that wall facing the garden . . . Well, according to Yolanda’s statement, that’s where Fabián’s body is. She defended herself by blaming your mother for all the crimes and exposing all her dirty laundry, as if she were merely another victim. Fabián is walled up in your mother’s sitting room. I expect the police will have found the body by now.’

  ‘But that’s ghastly . . . I can’t believe I grew up in that house . . . How could my mother have spent hours in that room every night before going to sleep? What kind of human being brought me into this world? It’s horrible . . . I understand it all now – I guess that was the bargaining chip my sister used to get whatever she wanted from Alberta . . . I need water . . .’ I whispered, feeling sick with the shock.

  Alfonso poured the water from the carafe and handed me the glass. ‘Easy now, Berta, all of that happened a long time ago. There’s no need to torture yourself with it now.’

  ‘Oh my God . . . All these days, alone, sleeping with a dead body just down the hall . . . What a cold-hearted bitch she was . . . What about my sister then – why did they arrest her? What did Teresa’s letter say?’

  ‘That Yolanda was the one who paid Pedro Vidal to fake the death of her husband. It’s a very detailed statement in which she explains that Yolanda’s real intention was to kill him herself and frame Saúl, but Bodo found out about her plan and made a deal with her: he gave her more money than she’d be entitled to as his widow and could carry on with her life, with the caveat that she’d let him go and thereby escape his own financial difficulties, along with all the suspicions the police were starting to come up with over his dodgy business dealings. I’d say those two were pretty well matched.’

  ‘So . . . he’s alive. My father is alive.’

  ‘Very likely, it seems. They’ve already issued an arrest warrant.’

  ‘Do you realise that I’m the daughter of two totally unscrupulous criminals?’ I asked him, and turned my face away, hiding my shame and the tears that I could no longer hold back.

  ‘Berta, look at me,’ he said tenderly. I turned back towards him, my gaze still lowered. ‘Look at me,’ he repeated, and finally I did. ‘You are nothing like them. Ever since you were young you’ve been yourself, and you rebelled in your own way against everything around you. You aren’t anything like your sister either – you never went along with her fun and games and you never, ever stopped striving to live with integrity. You’ve even been able to fall in love with a guy just from reading his letters. In what way is that being anything like them?’

  ‘I can’t go back to that house, I just can’t. This is all too much for me.’

  ‘You have to be strong and be there to defend what’s yours: your house and your past. Besides, you owe it to the most innocent people in all of this: Saúl and Teresa.’

  ‘It’s funny – at one point I got suspicious of Teresa, and in the end it turned out she was the bravest person I knew. She was by our side all of our lives only to lose her own life in such a dreadful way . . . And what will happen to Saúl now?’

  Alfonso reached across the table to take my hands. His hands were as cold as Saúl’s had been when he dried my tears. It must have been the same thing happening to him: that dreadful feeling of loss . . . ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll get him back his freedom; I’ll help you. But right now you need to return to Madrid to help with the investigation. This nightmare will be over very soon, I promise you.’

  ‘It won’t be easy to get over these last few weeks. I know I’ll never be the same again,’ I answered, very conscious of how much it hurt him that we’d met under such unhappy circumstances.

  ‘It’s a pity you’re sad on a beautiful night like this.’

  ‘It’s a pity the stars dare to shine so brightly on such a sad night; it should be mourning the loss of the man by the lake,’ I answered.

  ‘It’s bloody hard, I know . . . Do you realise how stunning you look tonight? I’ve never met a woman so well suited to grieving.’

  In his own way, he too was saying goodbye to an affair of the heart that would never meet its potential.

  I was overpowered by a deep compassion for the pair of us – right now we were both feeling the pain of a love that could not be. It seemed so unfair that we hadn’t met at another time when things were right . . . Alfonso loved me with all his heart and would have given anything to have me in his life, just as I would have done for Saúl. I remembered our night together at the Hilton, his tenderness and generosity, and how honestly and bravely he had borne the harsh disappointment of my loving someone else. Just like Saúl, he too had gone on a dangerous journey for my sake, in order to save my life. He deserved my love, but I had already given myself to another. Right now we were two warriors defeated in battle, having given everything we had. We had so much in common . . . We had bet everything on love and both of us had lost.

  ‘What’s going to become of us once all this is over?’

  ‘Well, we’ll always have Paris.’

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With thanks to you, most generous reader, for reaching this final page. You have stood by me since my first story and supported me every step along the way – without you my literary career would not have been possible.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mercedes Pinto Maldonado was born in Granada, though she now lives in Málaga, Spain. She studied medicine, but left the field to devote herself to literature. She is currently working full-time on writing, reading, and creating novels. She is considered a humanist writer who can use any genre as the framework for her stories. Her website is www.mercedespinto.com.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Photo © 2018, Michelle Gray Photography

  Jennie Erikson graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle with a BA in history and anthropology. She earned an MA in medieval archaeology from the University of York in England and has worked on excavation sites on Easter Island, in Jordan, England and the western United States.

  Jennie lives in Colorado with her husband, where she reviews history books for her website (www.historybookreviews.com) and reads voraciously on every historical subject she can find.