Southwesterly Wind

by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

  “I can take care of myself, Mom.”

  “You don’t know what you’re defending yourself from. You didn’t notice that Olga was one of the forms of evil. Now she’s dead. It could have been you. And there’s still this Irene, who, from what you tell me, managed to seduce the officer. There are a lot of people involved, and you can’t protect yourself alone.”

  “I don’t want you involved in this, Mom.”

  “I already am involved in this, simply because you are. Anything that has to do with you has to do with me. Even if you want to leave me out of it, I’m still affected by what affects you.”

  “I don’t want to exclude you. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Son, I bear your wounds on my own body.”

  It was late. Dona Alzira folded and unfolded the towel that she’d used to wipe down the dinner table. Even though the conversation was hard, neither of them was tense. They both talked softly, as if they were in church.

  The conversation ended as it had begun: without warning. They simply stopped talking. Dona Alzira left without saying good night. It was as if the conversation continued in silence, each in their own room.

  Seated on the bed in the same position, Gabriel rolled onto his side and fell asleep. He dreamed about his father beating on the door, crying to be let out of the bathroom.

  Although he didn’t have rigidly set work hours, Espinosa always left home at the same time. He wanted to establish a rhythm for everyone who worked under him. That morning was no different.

  As soon as he started descending the last staircase in his building, he ran into Alice sitting on the first step, waiting for him.

  “Hi. I was waiting for you.”

  “Morning. Haven’t seen you all this week.”

  A passerby seeing them leave the building together would have thought he was a father taking his daughter to school. “You’ve been having company.”

  “Have you been spying on me?”

  “I don’t need to spy on you. She doesn’t make a secret of it.”

  “True. No need for that.”

  “She’s pretty.”

  “I think so too.”

  “Are you going to marry her?”

  “Slow down there—that’s a big step.”

  “Why? She’s pretty, she likes you—I mean, she must, or she wouldn’t come over every night—and you must like her too, because it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a woman come to your apartment so many times in a row. So why not get married?”

  “Because that’s not the way it is.”

  “So how is it?”

  “We need more time.”

  “For what?”

  “To get to know each other better. Besides, just because two people go out together doesn’t mean they’re getting married.”

  “But you aren’t going out together, you’re staying in together. Isn’t that what getting married is?”

  “Not necessarily, but it can be a start.”

  “What about Neighbor? You’re not going to abandon him, are you?”

  “No. He’s ours, isn’t he?”

  “Now he’ll have to be hers as well. What if she doesn’t like him?”

  “Sweetheart, for starters, let’s call her by her name. Her name is Irene. Second, she doesn’t live with me; she just comes to see me every once in a while. Besides, neither of us has mentioned getting married, much less Neighbor.”

  “Then it’s time to talk, don’t you think?”

  “About what? Marriage or Neighbor?”

  Espinosa admired the facility with which Alice talked about subjects that seemed so complicated to adults. The girl not only spoke in theory, she gave solid examples from the adult world and from her teenage friends. Over the next two blocks, she copiously illustrated her opinions about love and marriage, then ended the conversation in the same abrupt way she’d begun it.

  “Here’s your street. Bye.”

  Espinosa turned the corner toward the station, which was at the other end of the block, while Alice continued skipping toward school. The scene made Espinosa remember the time when he’d lived in the Fátima neighborhood downtown, before his parents had moved to Copacabana. Even after they’d settled down in the Peixoto District, he’d still walked to school. Thirty years later, he’d started doing the same thing, this time with Alice. The difference now was the point of arrival.

  The week was ending in relative peace, which didn’t mean an absence of robberies, attacks, and murders; it just meant that nothing too unusual had happened. The only case that Espinosa was personally involved with was outside his jurisdiction, and he hadn’t requisitioned it. He was still a participating observer, a term he used to describe his attitude to the facts that had appeared since his first meeting with Gabriel. The term was as ambiguous as his role in the case.

  When Gabriel left for work, Dona Alzira was already gone. She’d prepared breakfast; all he had to do was turn on the coffeemaker. No note. He himself had been leaving earlier than usual, walking down the gray street past gray buildings. The neighborhood itself was gray. He got into the same subway train as a veritable army, even more somnolent than he was, of kids in public-school uniforms. When he arrived at the Copacabana station, he didn’t head straight to work; he got on a bus to Ipanema. He had more than an hour before he had to be at work. Subtracting the time it would take to get another bus back to Copacabana, he had around forty minutes for his little early-morning investigation. He didn’t usually go to Ipanema. The neighborhood’s modernity intimidated him—its residents always seemed to be a decade ahead. He’d only dared to go to the beach there once. The immodesty with which the women showed their bodies paralyzed him; he found it both fascinating and horrifying.

  He didn’t stay long. The street, near the Praça Nossa Senhora da Paz and two blocks from the beach, was one of the most expensive in Rio de Janeiro. It was a universe away from his little middle-class, ground-floor apartment in Flamengo. Irene lived well.

  He got to his desk only five minutes late. He put his coat on the back of his chair and checked the lists of suppliers he had to see that day. Since Olga’s death, the workplace environment had changed significantly. It had taken on a certain sadness. His colleagues had noted a small change in Gabriel’s behavior: he’d started wearing a tie. He still wore jeans and a sport jacket, but he’d incorporated a tie into the ensemble, one of the many he’d inherited from his father. The outfit didn’t look bad on him. People said it went well with the quieter, more serious manner he’d adopted since his friend’s death.

  The nights Espinosa spent with Irene seemed to block his access to her inner self. In bed, their skin, muscles, and smells joined with glances and words. Did corporal proximity and emotional intimacy belong to two different worlds? The body can submit to minute investigations, but the more affection is involved, the more emotional entanglements appear, until even the lover’s body itself becomes mysterious. That was how Espinosa felt when the signals from Irene’s body no longer seemed like a guarantee of access to her interiority. Not because his love had become less intense or focused, but precisely the contrary: because the limits between bodies and subjects had been blurred. What bothered him most of all was the surprising fact that after a certain point the figures of Olga and Irene melded together into an indiscernible being. He felt like he was sleeping with one of two twins, without knowing which one.

  He was all the more disturbed when he tried to separate them in his memory and they stubbornly stayed together as a single image. They were the same height, the same age, had the same skin color and body type, even though Irene was slimmer than Olga, who seemed stronger; but there was no question that their faces were different, not only because of the cut and color of their hair, but also because of their features. Mouth, nose, and eyes, beautiful in both women, were definitely different. Finally, it would be crazy to say they were the same just because he couldn’t tell them apart or, worse, because he imagined them as one and the same. He knew how much
his mind tended to wander, how he let his penchant for fantasy dominate his brain, but he also knew he wasn’t crazy. At least not enough to confuse two different people, especially when one of them was dead.

  After lunch, he walked to the beach. The sea was churning and restless; the waves broke violently and the wind lashed the huts on the beach. It was the southwesterly, starting to blow again.

  It was windy throughout the afternoon. At night, Irene didn’t come by or call. When he tried to reach her, the answering machine picked up. He fell asleep little inclined to optimism about the weekend.

  The next morning, at a reasonable hour, the doorbell rang.

  “Ready to go visit Neighbor?”

  The southwesterly had covered the sky with gray clouds, but Alice’s eyes seemed like two smiling blue lighthouses. “Well? Did you talk to her about Neighbor?”

  “I didn’t see her yesterday.”

  “Ah.”

  “What does that mean, ‘ah’?”

  “I mean, ah, isn’t that something.”

  “Ah.”

  “Now you’re imitating me.”

  “I’ll never be able to imitate you because I’ll never be able to reproduce your charm.”

  “Now you’re just adulating me.”

  “I like that term. Adulating. Have you been reading the books I lent you?”

  “Of course. Or do you think I’d give them back to you without reading them? Some of them I don’t read, it’s true. I mean, I don’t read them all the way through. They’re boring. But most of them I read and like.”

  “I’ll be more careful in my selection. I’ll try to eliminate the boring ones. If you tell me which ones are boring, it’ll make it easier.”

  They walked a whole block in silence.

  “Did she stand you up?”

  “Who? Irene?”

  “Is there someone else?”

  “She didn’t stand me up because we didn’t have anything planned.”

  “Here we are.”

  The dogs’ owner greeted them with her usual cordiality. As did the mother. The trusting way Neighbor put his round, warm tummy in Espinosa’s hand, sniffing around for fingers to lick, showed that he had no idea what human beings were capable of. The litter was growing fast. Soon, the pups would have to be weaned. Luckily, there were fewer puppies than teats, so everyone had guaranteed access to food. Alice, sitting on the ground while the puppies tried to jump up onto her legs, was regarded with affection by the babies’ mother, who took advantage of the distraction to get up and stretch.

  They were halfway home when it started to rain. It rained throughout the rest of the weekend.

  It was the second weekend Irene had spent outside of Rio. The first time, her excuse—a business trip to São Paulo—hadn’t sounded convincing, but Espinosa hadn’t given it much thought. This time, after spending the rainy weekend home alone, he felt differently. But he didn’t feel like asking for explanations, perhaps because Irene didn’t. owe him any.

  Monday was still gray, but the rain had let up. He spent the morning dealing with paperwork. During lunch, he decided to go talk to Olga’s parents, a decision he had been putting off for fear of meddling in the investigation in Tijuca. On the phone, he underlined the fact that the visit wasn’t official, though he couldn’t avoid mentioning that he was a policeman—moreover, the policeman with whom Olga, together with Gabriel and Irene, had met just before her death.

  He didn’t know exactly what he hoped to accomplish, since the case was being handled in another precinct, and since he didn’t have access to the depositions gathered after the girl’s death. He did have knowledge of the links between Olga and Gabriel and Gabriel and the Chilean, who had also died violently, unquestionably murdered. They agreed to meet that afternoon; the officer would pay a visit to the couple in Tijuca.

  He expected to find an elderly couple and was surprised to find himself talking to two people barely older than he was. The tragedy had left its marks, and he could see that the couple’s watches had stopped on the morning their daughter died.

  “I’d like to make it clear that my visit is strictly unofficial. The accident happened outside my jurisdiction, and I’m not investigating the circumstances in which she died.”

  “Then why are you interested, Officer?”

  “Because I met Olga when I was investigating a case that had nothing to do with her, but in which she offered her testimony in support of a colleague from work. They came to the station for an off-the-record conversation.”

  “She told us about it. The guy’s name is Gabriel.”

  “That’s right. Truth be told, there wasn’t a case; nothing had happened, except a fortune-teller had been scaring him. Olga only came by to testify that her colleague was in good mental health.”

  “I’m still not sure why you’re interested in the circumstances of my daughter’s death, Officer,” the father said, raising his voice.

  “I can imagine how much pain you are going through, and I know how hard it is to speak about the subject, but I’d like you to tell me what Olga said about Gabriel and our meeting at the station.”

  The father made an effort at composure. “I guess it’s worse if we don’t say anything, hoping that our daughter’s death will be less real that way. What do you want to know?”

  “What she told you.”

  “Not much. She said she went to the station, that you were nice, totally different from the image she had of policemen, and that it had all ended with your calming everyone down.”

  “Did she say who was there?”

  “She said who was at the meeting.”

  “And?”

  “What do you want to know? The names?”

  “Please.”

  “You, the guy, her, and Irene.”

  “Did you already know Irene?”

  “Of course, for years. We didn’t think they were still friends.” His voice changed from sadness to irritation.

  “Honey, don’t get annoyed, it doesn’t matter anymore,” Olga’s mother said, but her voice also held a trace of anger.

  “What doesn’t matter anymore?” Espinosa asked.

  “Everything,” the mother responded. “Since it can’t bring Olga back.”

  “Is there anything that you’d like to mention with regards to Irene?”

  “Officer, we still don’t understand why you’re asking us these questions. Is there something about our daughter’s death that we haven’t heard? There’s no reason for us to sit talking about her and her friends just to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “You’re right. The truth is that I have little to say. My discomfort comes from a group of facts and persons linked to Olga’s death. Two people linked to Gabriel, but who didn’t know each other, have died violent deaths. One was Olga. Another was a foreigner named Hidalgo, killed by a shot to his face. I don’t mean that Gabriel killed both of them—he has a solid alibi for Olga’s death—but I don’t believe in coincidences, especially when they involve murders.”

  “Are you trying to suggest that our daughter was murdered?”

  “No. I am saying that the foreigner was murdered. As for your daughter, I still don’t know anything. Now will you tell me what you were avoiding mentioning about her friend Irene?”

  “We never thought Irene was a good person for her to hang around with.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Olga was always a girl with high moral principles, and Irene had somewhat advanced ideas about how a woman should behave in today’s society.” The father was now responding to Espinosa’s questions.

  “And what ideas were these?”

  “Ideas about relationships between people,” the mother answered, clearly defending the image of her daughter. “Officer, our daughter was raised here in Tijuca, a conservative neighborhood, with different friends than the kids in Ipanema. But that was only true when she went to school here close to home. When she went to college, we couldn’t be sure who she was spending time with. I don’t t
hink I should have interfered in her social life—she was a grown-up, and there was no reason for us to keep asking her whom she was seeing, if she had a boyfriend, stuff like that. When she graduated and moved to São Paulo with Irene, we really lost any control over that kind of thing.”

  “She lived in São Paulo with Irene?”

  “For a year. Then she came back. It seems they had a fight.”

  “Why did they go to São Paulo?”

  “They said there were more professional opportunities there. They were probably right. But there was something I didn’t like about it, and I didn’t know what it was. I still don’t. Now it doesn’t matter.”

  “She never told you about the time she spent in São Paulo?”

  “Very little. We only talked with her about purely functional, practical matters, nothing about herself or her relationship with Irene. Even when she got back, she didn’t say anything. We were the ones who figured they’d had a fight.”

  “And what impression do you have of Irene?”

  “None. We’ve never seen her.”

  “Never?”

  “No. We got the feeling she didn’t want to meet us, and that Olga didn’t want us to meet her. We only found out that they were friends again when Olga told us about the meeting at the station.”

  Espinosa sat for a while in silence. The couple waited for him to say something. He didn’t. When the silence became uncomfortable, Olga’s father asked a question.

  “Officer, do you think our daughter was murdered?”

  “It’s a remote hypothesis, very remote. Everything seems to indicate that it was a tragic accident.”

  “You wouldn’t have come all the way up here to talk to us if there wasn’t some reasonable doubt about her death.”

  “I promise that if I learn anything that can shed definitive light on her death, I’ll come tell you personally. I ask you just one favor. Don’t mention this conversation to anyone. For all intents and purposes, I was never here. You can be sure of one thing: I was deeply touched by Olga’s death, and I’ll do everything to figure out what happened. Thank you for seeing me.”