Queen of the South

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  That same night, when she got to her room, Teresa took a long, hot shower, and then she got drunk and lay naked on her bed, facedown—so drunk that she vomited, long arcs of bile—and fell asleep at last with one hand between her thighs, her fingers inside her sex. She could hear the distant sound of Cessnas and speedboat engines, and the voice of Luis Miguel singing from the cassette player on the night table. If they let us, if they let us, we will love each other all our lives.

  She woke up that same night, shivering in the darkness, because she had finally discovered, in a dream, what was going on in that little Mexican novel by Juan Rulfo. It was the one she’d never quite understood before, no matter how hard she’d tried. I came to Comala because I was told that my father, a certain Pedro Páramo, was living there. . . .

  ¡Híjole! The characters in that story were all dead, but they just didn’t know it.

  You’ve got a phone call,” Tony said. Teresa put the dirty glasses in the sink, set the tray on the counter, and went down to the end of the bar. It was the butt-end of a long, hot, hard day: thirsty men, women in dark sunglasses with their pussies in the sun—some of them had no shame—ordering beers and drinks all day; and her head was splitting and her feet burned from walking back and forth from the bar to the lounge chairs over the hot coals of the sand, waiting on table after table, and sweating like crazy in the blinding glare of that blast oven. It was late afternoon, and some of the bathers were beginning to leave the beach, but she still had a couple of hours of work ahead of her.

  She dried her hands on her apron and picked up the telephone. Nobody had called her since she’d gotten out of El Puerto, either at the kiosk or anywhere else, nor could she imagine why anybody would do so now. Tony must have been thinking the same thing, because he watched her out of the corner of his eye as he dried glasses and lined them up on top of the bar.

  “Hello,” she said warily.

  She recognized the voice at the first word, with no need for the person to say, It’s me. A year and a half hearing that voice day and night had engraved it in her memory. So she smiled and then laughed out loud, almost joyously. ¡Órale, mi teniente! How great to hear your voice. How’s life treating you? She was truly happy to hear that self-assured, composed tone of voice, that person who took things as they came. That person who knew herself and other people as well, because she knew how to look at them, and she had learned even more from people’s silences than from their words. At the same time, in one part of her mind, Teresa thought, Chale, I wish I could talk like that, dial a telephone number after all this time and say, How’s it hanging, Mexicanita, you silly bitch you, I hope you’ve missed me while you were screwing half of Marbella, now that nobody’s watching you. We going to see each other, or have you moved on?

  Teresa asked whether she was really out, and Patty O’Farrell laughed and said, “Of course I’m out, silly, out three days ago, and going from one home-coming to another—I don’t sleep, and then they wake me up again! And every time I catch my breath or regain consciousness I’ve tried to find your telephone number—and I finally found it, about time, huh?—so I could tell you that those fucking dyke guards could not keep the old Abbé down, and that they can finally shove the Château d’If up their asses, and that it’s about time for Edmond Dantès and his friend Faria to have a long, civilized conversation somewhere where the sun doesn’t come in through bars. So I thought you could take a bus, or a taxi if you’ve got some money, or whatever, and come to Jerez, because tomorrow they’re throwing me a little party and the truth is, without you, parties are weird. How about that, puss? Jailhouse habits are hard to break, huh? So, you coming or not?”

  It was quite a party. A party at a country house in Jerez, what the Spaniards called a cortijo, one of those places where it took you forever to get from the archway at the entrance of the grounds to the house itself, at the end of a long gravel driveway, with expensive cars parked at the door and walls of red-ocher plaster and windows with wrought-iron grilles that reminded Teresa—this is where they come from, she realized—of old Mexican haciendas. The place was like one of those houses in the magazines: rustic furniture ennobled by antiquity, dark paintings on the walls, terracotta floors, beamed ceilings. And a hundred or so guests drinking and talking in two large rooms and out on the terrace with its grape arbor extending toward the rear, a roofed bar to one side, an enormous wood-fired grill, and a pool. The sun was just setting, and the dusty dull gold light gave an almost material consistency to the warm air, out on the horizon of green vineyards softly rising and falling into the distance.

  “I like your house,” Teresa said.

  “I wish it was mine.”

  “But it belongs to your family.”

  “There’s a big difference between my family and me.”

  They were sitting under the grape arbor, in wooden chairs with linen-upholstered cushions, each with a glass in hand, looking at the people milling about nearby. Everything in keeping, Teresa decided, with the place and the cars at the door. At first she’d been ill at ease in her jeans and high heels and simple blouse, especially when some people looked at her strangely when she arrived, but Patty O’Farrell—in a mauve cotton dress, pretty embossed sandals, her blond hair cut short as she always wore it—reassured her. “Here,” she said, “everybody dresses the way they want to. And you look terrific. That hair pulled back so tight, with the part down the middle, looks wonderful on you. Very native. You never wore it like that in lockup.”

  “In lockup I didn’t go to any parties.”

  “Oh, yes you did!”

  And the two of them laughed, remembering. There was tequila, Teresa discovered, and alcohol of all kinds, and uniformed servants moving about with trays of hors d’oeuvres. Perfect. Two flamenco guitarists were playing at the center of a group of guests. The music, happy and melancholy at the same time, rising and falling in gusts of sound, fit the place and the landscape in the background. Sometimes the people listening clapped, and some of the young women danced, arms high, fingers snapping, heels tapping, pretending to be Gypsies, and then conversed with their companions. Teresa envied the self-possession that allowed them to move about like that, greet people, talk, smoke in that distinguished way that Patty also had, one arm across their lap, one hand holding the other elbow, the arm vertical, the smoking cigarette between their fingers. This may not have been the highest of high society, she concluded, but it was fascinating to watch them—they were so different from the people she’d met in Culiacán with Güero Dávila, thousands of years and miles from her most recent past and from what she was, or ever would be. Even Patty seemed an unreal link between those different worlds. That’s the way you’re supposed to act, she decided, and I wish I could learn how. And how nice to be able to observe it all, so unimportant and invisible that nobody even noticed you.

  Most of the male guests were over forty, with dark jackets, good shoes and watches, and informal touches—open shirts, no tie. Their skin was tanned, and not exactly from working in the fields. As for the women, there were two definite types: good-looking girls with long legs, some a little ostentatious in their clothing and jewelry, and others that were better dressed, more sober, with fewer adornments and makeup, on whom plastic surgery and money—one permitted by the other—sat very naturally. Patty’s sisters belonged to that second group: nose jobs, facelifts, blond hair with tips and streaks, that marked Andalucían accent that betokened good breeding, elegant hands that had never washed a dish, designer clothes. Around fifty the older one, forty-something the other, Teresa figured. They resembled Patty from the front—the oval faces, the way they twisted their mouths when they talked or smiled. They’d looked Teresa up and down with that same arching of the eyebrows—two circumflexes that took her in and put her down in mere seconds—before returning to their social obligations and their guests.

  “Pigs,” Patty muttered when they’d turned their backs, just as Teresa was thinking, Órale, what was I thinking, wearing this smuggler
outfit. I should have worn something else, the silver bracelets and a skirt instead of jeans and heels and this old blouse that they looked at like it was a dishrag.

  “The older one,” Patty said, “is married to a lazy idiotic bum, that pot-bellied bald guy laughing like a hyena in that group over there, and the other one kisses up to my father the way he likes it. Although the truth is, they both kiss his ass.”

  “Is your father here?”

  “Good god, of course not.” Patty crinkled her nose elegantly, her whisky on the rocks halfway to her mouth. “That old cabrón lives under glass in his apartment in Jerez. . . . He’s allergic to the country.” She laughed maliciously. “Pollen and all that.”

  “Why did you invite me?”

  Without looking at her, Patty finished raising her glass to her lips. “I thought,” she said, her lips moist, “that you’d like to have a drink with me.”

  “There are bars to have drinks in. And this is not my scene.”

  Patty set her glass down on the table and lit a cigarette, although the previous one was still burning in the ashtray.

  “Mine, either. Or at least not entirely.” She looked around contemptuously. “My sisters are absolute imbeciles—throwing a party to welcome me back into society. Instead of hiding me, they show me off, get it? That way they can act like they’re not ashamed of the lost sheep. . . . Tonight they’ll go to bed with their cunts cold and their consciences easy, like they always do.”

  “Maybe you’re being unfair to them. Maybe they’re really glad.”

  “Unfair? . . . Here?” She bit her lower lip with an unpleasant smile. “Would you believe it if I told you that nobody has yet to ask me how it was for me in prison? . . . Taboo subject. Just, Hey, sweetheart. Kiss, kiss. Like I’d been on vacation in the Caribbean.”

  Her tone was lighter than in El Puerto, Teresa thought. More flighty, frivolous; more talkative. She says the same things and in the same way, but there’s something different, as though here she feels the need to give me explanations that in our former life were unnecessary. Teresa had been watching her from the first moment, when Patty stepped away from some people to greet her, and then when she left her alone a couple of times, going and coming among the guests. It took a minute to recognize her, to really believe it was her behind those smiles, the gestures of complicity with people who were strangers to Teresa, to really believe it was Patty accepting cigarettes, inclining her head while someone lit them for her.

  When Patty returned and they went out to sit on the terrace, Teresa finally began to recognize her. And it was true that now she explained things more, justified them, as if unsure that Teresa would understand, or—the thought now struck Teresa—approve.

  That possibility gave her something to think about. Maybe, she ventured after some reflection, the personal legends that work behind bars don’t work on the outside, and once you’re out you have to establish who you are all over again. Confirm it in the light of the street. Maybe Lieutenant O’Farrell is nobody here, or not what she really wants to be. And maybe, also, she’s afraid that I’ll realize that. My advantage is that I never knew what or who I was while I was on the inside, and so maybe that’s why I’m not worried about what or who I am outside. I’ve got nothing to explain to anybody. Nothing to convince anybody about. Nothing to prove.

  “You still haven’t told me what I’m doing here,” Teresa said.

  Patty shrugged. The sun was lower now on the horizon, turning the air scarlet. Her short blond hair was set on fire in that light.

  “I will—in due time.” She half closed her eyes, looking into the distance. “For now, just enjoy this.”

  Maybe the change in Patty had some simple explanation, thought Teresa. A lieutenant without any troops, a retired general whose prestige goes unrecognized in the civilian world. Maybe she’s invited me here because she needs me. Because I respect her and I know that period in her life, and these people don’t. As far as they’re concerned, she’s just a society girl with a drug problem, a black sheep that these people—this family, this class—take in and tolerate because they never renounce their own in public, even if they hate them or hold them in contempt. Maybe that’s why she needs company so much. She needs a witness. Somebody that knows, and that sees all this, and that can keep her mouth shut. Down deep, life is very fucking simple: You can divide people into those you’re obliged to make conversation with while you have a drink, and those you can drink with for hours without saying a word, like Güero Dávila did in that cantina in Culiacán. People who know, or intuit, enough for there to be no need for words, and who’re behind you even if they’re not totally with you. They’re just there. And maybe this is that case, although I have no idea where that takes us. To what new variant on the word “solitude.”

  “To your health, Lieutenant.”

  “And to yours, Mexicana.”

  They clinked glasses. Teresa looked around, enjoying the fragrance of the tequila. In a group of guests near the pool she saw a tall young man—so tall he stood out from everyone around him. He was thin, with very black hair, slicked back and glistening, long and curly at the neck. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt with no tie, shiny black shoes. The pronounced jaw and big curved nose gave him an interesting profile, like a skinny eagle. A guy with class, she thought. Like those super-Spaniard types one imagines from days gone by, aristocrats and hidalgos and all that—Malinche must have gone over to the other side for some reason—who probably never actually existed.

  “Nice people here,” Teresa said.

  Patty turned to follow her eyes. “Oh god,” she groaned. “Boring and more boring.”

  “They’re your friends.”

  “I don’t have any friends, my dear.” Her voice had hardened a notch, more like in the old days.

  “Chíngale”—Teresa pulled her head back as though dodging a blow—“I thought you and I were.”

  Patty looked at her wordlessly and took a sip of her drink. Her eyes seemed to be laughing; there were wrinkles all around them. She finished her whisky, put the glass down on the table, and brought her cigarette to her lips without saying anything.

  “Anyway,” said Teresa after a moment, “the music is nice and the house is beautiful. They were worth the trip.” She looked distractedly at the eagle-faced man, and once again Patty followed her gaze.

  “Yeah? . . . Well, I hope you don’t resign yourself to so little. Because this is nothing in comparison to what you could have.”

  Hundreds of crickets were chirping in the darkness. A lovely moon was rising, illuminating the grapevines, silvering every leaf; the walk lay white and curving before them. Behind them the lights of the enormous country house glimmered. The remains of the party had been cleared and the downstairs put in order for some time already, and now the mansion was silent. The last guests had said their good nights and Patty’s sisters and brother-in-law were on their way back to Jerez after a nice heart-to-heart talk with Patty on the terrace, discussing her plans for the future, everyone uncomfortable and wanting the conversation over with. And the Lieutenant was right to the end—no one mentioned, even in passing, Patty’s years in El Puerto de Santa María. Teresa, whom Patty had insisted stay over, wondered what in the world her former rackmate had on her mind that night.

  Both of them had drunk quite a bit that evening, but not enough. So as silent servants had gone about magically eliminating all traces of the party, Patty had disappeared, then reappeared, surprise, surprise, with a gram of white powder that made their minds very clear and sharp indeed after it was razor-bladed into lines on the glass top of the table. Unbelievable stuff—stuff Teresa knew how to appreciate. Then, as clear-sighted and alert as though the day had just begun, they walked unhurriedly off toward the dark vineyards beyond the terrace. With no particular destination.

  “I want you real awake for what I’m going to tell you,” said Patty, recognizable again.

  “I am very fucking awake,” said Teresa. And she was prepared
to listen. She had emptied another glass of tequila as they walked, and then had set the glass down at some point on the path. And being awake—she thought, without knowing what made her think it—was very much like being all right again. Like finding yourself unexpectedly at home in your own skin. Without thoughts, without memories. Just the immense night and the familiar voice speaking in a secretive whisper, as if someone might be crouching in the shadows, spying on them in that strange light silvering the broad vineyards. And she could also hear the chirping of the crickets, the sound of her friend’s footsteps, and the swishing of her own bare feet—she had left her heels on the terrace—on the loose soil of the path.

  “. . . And that’s the story,” Patty concluded.

  Well, I have no intention of thinking about your story now, Teresa told herself. I don’t plan to consider or analyze anything tonight as long as the darkness lasts and there are stars up there, and the tequila and coke have got me feeling like this for the first time in so long. I don’t know why you waited until today to tell me all this, or what you intend to do about it. I listened to that story of yours like I’d listen to a novel. And I prefer it that way, because otherwise I’d be forced to acknowledge the existence of the future. So let’s agree that you told me a nice story, or rather finished telling me what you started whispering about when we were rackmates. Then I’ll go back and sleep, and tomorrow, in the daylight, I’ll start a new day.