The lawyer was fifty-one but radiated an athlete’s vitality. He was the most attractive man Lucia had ever seen and produced in her an instantaneous, devastating passion, a primeval, wild heat that soon turned into a fascination with his personality and the work he did. For several minutes she was completely lost, trying to focus on her questions, while he waited, tapping his pencil on the desk in exasperation. Afraid he would dismiss her on some pretext or other, Lucia explained as tears welled in her eyes that she had lived outside Chile for many years and that her obsession with investigating the topic of the disappeared was a very personal one, because her own brother was among them. Disconcerted by this turn of events, Urzua pushed a box of tissues in Lucia’s direction and offered her coffee. She blew her nose, ashamed at her lack of control in front of this man who must have come across thousands of cases like hers.
Lola brought instant coffee for her and a tea bag for him. As she was handing Lucia the cup, she laid a hand on her shoulder and left it there for a few seconds. This unexpected kind gesture brought on another flood of tears, which succeeded in softening Carlos, and after that they were able to talk. Lucia stretched out her coffee as long as she could: he had information she could not obtain elsewhere. He answered her questions for more than three hours, trying to explain the inexplicable, and finally, when they were both exhausted and night had fallen outside, he offered her access to the material in his archives. Lola had left some time earlier, but Carlos told Lucia to come back another day, when his secretary would provide her with the information she needed.
There was nothing romantic about the situation, but Carlos was aware of the impression he had made on Lucia and since she seemed attractive he decided to accompany her home, even though on principle he avoided becoming involved with complicated women and still less with tearful ones. He had enough emotional traumas with the misfortunes he had to deal with every day in his work. At Lucia’s apartment he agreed to taste her recipe for pisco sour. Later on, he would always jokingly say that she befuddled him with alcohol and captivated him with her witch’s arts. That first night passed in a mist of pisco and mutual surprise at finding themselves in bed together. The next morning Carlos left very early, saying goodbye with a chaste kiss, and after that she heard nothing more from him. He did not phone her and never returned her calls.
Three months later, Lucia Maraz turned up at Urzua’s office unannounced. Lola the secretary, who was at her post typing as furiously as on the previous occasion, recognized her at once and asked when she was going to go through the archive material. Lucia said nothing about Carlos’s ignoring her calls, because she presumed Lola already knew. Lola showed her into her boss’s office, gave her a cup of instant coffee with condensed milk, and told her to be patient, because he was in court. Less than half an hour later Carlos arrived, shirt collar unbuttoned and jacket in hand. Lucia stood up to greet him and told him straight out she was pregnant.
She had the impression he did not remember her at all, although he assured her she was mistaken, of course he remembered who she was, and had very fond memories of that night of pisco sour: his delayed reaction was due to his surprise. When she explained this was probably her last chance to become a mother, he coldly asked her for a DNA test. Lucia was on the verge of leaving, determined to bring the child up on her own, but was halted by the memory of her own childhood without a father, and so agreed to his demand. The test proved Carlos’s paternity beyond any reasonable doubt, and his mistrust and annoyance gave way to genuine enthusiasm. He announced that they should get married, because this was also his last opportunity to overcome his terror of marriage, and because he wanted to be a father, although he was old enough to be a grandfather.
Lena predicted that the marriage would last no more than a few months due to the fifteen-year difference in age and because as soon as the child was born Carlos Urzua would vanish; a lifelong bachelor like him would not be able to bear the howls of a newborn. Lucia prepared herself for that eventuality with a philosophical sense of reality. In Chile at that time there was no divorce law—and there would not be one until 2004—but there were complicated ways to annul a marriage with false witnesses and obliging judges. This method was so common and effective that the number of couples who remained married for life could be counted on two hands. She suggested to the future father that once the child was born they should separate as friends. She was in love but understood that if Carlos felt trapped he would end up hating her. He flatly rejected what seemed to him an immoral idea, and so she was left with the belief that over time and thanks to the habit of intimacy he could come to love her as well. She set herself the goal of achieving this at all costs.
THEY SETTLED IN THE RAMSHACKLE HOUSE Carlos had inherited from his parents, in a neighborhood that had deteriorated while Santiago expanded toward the slopes of the nearby mountains where the well-off preferred to live, far from the toxic smog that often covered the city. On her mother’s advice, Lucia postponed research for her book, as the topic was so grim it could affect the mind of the child in her womb. No one gains from starting life in the belly of a mother who is searching for dead bodies, declared Lena. This was the first time she had referred to the disappeared as being dead; it was akin to placing a gravestone over her son.
Carlos agreed with his mother-in-law’s theory and was firm in his decision not to help Lucia until after the birth. He maintained that the months of pregnancy ought to be ones of happiness and gentle rest, but Lucia’s filled her with boundless energy, and instead of knitting booties she dedicated herself to painting the house inside and out. In her spare time she took several practical courses and then upholstered the living room furniture and replaced the kitchen plumbing. Her husband would return from the office to find her clutching a hammer and with a mouthful of nails, or dragging her belly behind the dishwasher, blowtorch in hand. With equal enthusiasm she attacked the yard, which had been abandoned for a decade, and with pick and shovel converted it into an untidy garden, where rosebushes thrived alongside lettuce and onions.
She was busy with one of her building projects when her water broke. At first she thought she had wet herself without realizing it, but her mother, who was visiting her, called a taxi and rushed her to the maternity clinic.
Daniela was born at seven months. Carlos attributed this early birth to Lucia’s irresponsible behavior, since only a few days earlier, while she was painting white clouds on the sky-blue ceiling of the baby’s room, she had fallen off the stepladder. Daniela spent three weeks in an incubator and two more under observation at the clinic. This still-raw little being, resembling a hairless monkey and connected to tubes and monitors, gave her father an empty feeling in the stomach similar to nausea, but when finally she was installed in her crib at home and determinedly grasped his little finger, he was won over forever. Daniela was to become the only person Carlos Urzua would submit to, the only one he was capable of loving.
Lena Maraz’s pessimistic prophecy did not come true, and her daughter’s marriage lasted two decades. For fifteen of those years Lucia kept the romance alive without the slightest effort on her husband’s part, a great feat of imagination and tenacity. Before the marriage, she had known four important loves. The first was the self-styled guerrillero she met in Caracas, dedicated to the theoretical struggle for the socialist dream of equality, which as she quickly discovered did not include women; and the last, an African musician with rippling muscles and dreadlocks decorated with plastic beads, who confessed to her he had two legitimate wives and several children in Senegal. Lena dubbed her daughter’s tendency to adorn the object of her infatuation with imagined virtues her “Christmas tree syndrome”: Lucia chose an ordinary fir tree and decorated it with baubles and tinsel that over time fell off until all that remained was the skeleton of a dried-out tree. Lena put this down to karma: getting over the Christmas tree stupidity was one of the lessons her daughter had to learn in her current incarnation to avoid repeating the same
mistake in the next one. Though a fervent Catholic, Lena had adopted the idea of karma and reincarnation in the hope that her son, Enrique, would be born again and could live a full life.
For years, Lucia attributed her husband’s indifference to the tremendous pressures of his work, little suspecting he spent a good deal of his time and energy with casual lovers. They lived together in a friendly way, but with their separate activities, separate worlds, and separate rooms. Daniela slept in her mother’s bed until she was eight. Lucia and Carlos would make love whenever she crept into his room so as not to wake the child; this left her feeling humiliated, as it was almost always on her initiative. She made do with crumbs of affection, too proud to ask for more. She managed on her own, and he thanked her for it.
Lucia, Richard, Evelyn
Upstate New York
Stuck in their motel room smelling of creosote and Chinese food, Lucia, Richard, and Evelyn could have found the final hours of Sunday endless, but in fact they flew by as they told each other about their lives. The first to succumb to sleep were Evelyn and the Chihuahua. The young Guatemalan girl took up a tiny amount of space in the bed she had to share with Lucia, but Marcelo sprawled over all the rest, stretched out with his legs stiff in front of him.
“I wonder how the cats are,” Lucia said to Richard around ten, when they too finally began to yawn.
“They’re fine. I called my neighbor from the Chinese restaurant. I don’t want to use my cell phone because they can trace the call.”
“Who’s going to be interested in what you say, Richard! Besides, you can’t tap cell phones.”
“We’ve already discussed that, Lucia. If they find the automobile—”
“There are billions of calls crossing in space,” she interrupted him. “And thousands of vehicles disappear every day. People abandon them, they get stolen, they’re dismantled for spare parts or are turned into scrap, they’re smuggled to Colombia—”
“And they’re also used to dump dead bodies at the bottom of a lake.”
“Is your conscience bothering you?”
“Yes, but it’s too late for me to change my mind. I’m going to take a shower,” announced Richard, heading for the bathroom.
Lucia looks really good with her crazy hair and those snow boots, he thought as the boiling water scalded his back, the perfect remedy for the day’s fatigue and the flea bites. They might argue over details, but they got on well; he liked her combination of sharpness and affection, the way in which she flung herself fearlessly into life, that expression of hers somewhere between amused and mischievous, her lopsided smile. In comparison he was a zombie stumbling into old age, but she brought him back to life. He told himself it would be good for them to grow old together, hand in hand. His heart began to pound when he imagined what Lucia’s weird hair would look like on his pillow, her boots beside his bed and her face so close to his that he could lose himself in her Turkish princess’s eyes. “Forgive me, Anita,” he murmured. He had been alone a long time and had forgotten that rough tenderness, that empty feeling in the pit of the stomach, the rushing blood and sudden surges of desire. Can this be love? he thought. If it is, I wouldn’t know what to do. I’m caught. He chalked it up to his fatigue; doubtless his mind would clear in the light of day. They were going to get rid of the car and of Kathryn Brown; they were going to say goodbye to Evelyn Ortega, and after that Lucia would return to being simply the Chilean woman in the basement. But he didn’t want that moment to arrive. He wanted all the clocks to stop so that they would never have to part.
After the shower he put on his T-shirt and trousers, since he didn’t have the nerve to get his pajamas out of the backpack. Lucia had laughed at the amount of stuff he had packed for just two days and would think it ridiculous he had included his pajamas. Now that he thought about it, it was ridiculous. He returned to the room refreshed, aware it was going to be hard to sleep; any variation in his routines gave him insomnia, especially if he did not have his hypoallergenic ergonomic pillow. He decided it would be better never to mention that pillow to Lucia. He found her lying in the narrow space the dog had left free.
“Move him off the bed, Lucia,” he said, approaching with the intention of doing so himself.
“Don’t even think it, Richard. Marcelo is very sensitive. He’d be offended.”
“It’s dangerous to sleep with animals.”
“Why’s that?”
“For health reasons, to begin with. Who knows what diseases he might—”
“What’s bad for your health is to wash your hands obsessively, the way you do. Good night, Richard.”
“Have it your way. Good night.”
An hour and a half later, Richard began to feel the first symptoms. His stomach was heavy and he had a strange taste in his mouth. He locked himself in the bathroom and turned on all the faucets to drown out his intestines’ explosive roar. Opening the window to let out the smell, he sat shivering on the toilet, cursing ever having eaten the Chinese food and wondering how it was possible he was the only one of the three to be suffering. His churning stomach caused him to break out in a cold sweat. Shortly afterward, Lucia knocked on the door.
“Are you all right?”
“That food was poisoned,” he muttered.
“Can I come in?”
“No!”
“Open up, Richard, and let me help you.”
“No! No!” he shouted with what little strength he had left.
Lucia struggled with the door, but he had bolted it. At that moment, he hated her: all he wanted was to die right there, crap stained and full of fleabites; to die alone, completely alone, without any witnesses to his humiliation. He wanted Lucia and Evelyn to disappear, for the Lexus and Kathryn to vanish into thin air, for his stomach cramps to calm down, to get rid of all the mess once and for all, to shout out in helplessness and rage. Through the door, Lucia assured him there was nothing wrong with the food; it had done nothing to Evelyn or her; it would pass, it was just nerves; she offered to make him tea. Richard did not answer: he was so cold his jaw seemed locked shut. Ten minutes later, just as she had predicted, his intestines settled down, and he could stand and examine his green face in the mirror, then give himself another lengthy hot shower, which calmed his convulsive trembling. A bone-chilling wind was blowing in through the window, but he did not dare shut it or open the door, because of the disgusting smell. He intended to stay in there as long as he could, and yet realized that the idea of spending the night in the bathroom was impractical. Weak at the knees and with his teeth still chattering, he finally emerged, closed the door behind him, and dragged himself over to the bed. Barefoot, her hair disheveled, and wearing a loose T-shirt that reached down to her knees, Lucia brought him a steaming cup of tea. Feeling humiliated to the core, Richard apologized for the foul stench.
“What are you talking about? I can’t smell anything, and neither can Evelyn and Marcelo—they’re both fast asleep,” she replied, handing him the cup. “You can rest now and tomorrow you’ll be just like new. Make room, I’m going to sleep with you.”
“What did you say?”
“Move over, I’m going to get into your bed.”
“Lucia . . . you couldn’t have chosen a worse moment; I’m ill.”
“My, but you’re playing hard to get, aren’t you? We’re off to a bad start: you’re the one who’s supposed to take the initiative, and instead you insult me.”
“I’m sorry, I simply meant that—”
“Stop being such a crybaby. I won’t disturb you. I sleep all night without moving.”
With that she slipped between the sheets and in no time was stretched out comfortably in the bed. Sitting up, Richard blew on his tea and sipped it, taking as long as possible. He was completely at a loss as to how to interpret what was going on. In the end, he lay down quietly beside Lucia; he felt weak, achy, and enchanted, completely aware of the un
ique presence of this woman: the shape of her body; her comforting warmth; her strange mop of hair; the inevitable, exciting contact of her arm on his, her hip, her foot. What Lucia had said was true: she slept on her back with her arms folded across her chest, as solemn and silent as a medieval knight sculpted on his marble tomb. Richard thought he was not going to close his eyes in the hours to come, that he would stay awake breathing in Lucia’s unknown, sweet smell, but he had barely completed the thought before he fell contentedly asleep.
MONDAY DAWNED CALM: the storm had finally dissipated miles out in the ocean, but snow covered the land like a thick down blanket that muffled all sound. Lucia was asleep alongside Richard in the same position as the previous night, and Evelyn was sleeping in the other bed with the Chihuahua curled up on the pillow. When he awoke, Richard noticed the room still smelled of Chinese food, but it no longer bothered him. During the night he had at first been worried as he was not accustomed to being with a woman, much less sleeping with one. But to his surprise he quickly fell asleep, drifting off weightlessly into sidereal space, an empty, infinite abyss. Earlier in his life, when he drank too much, he often fell into an abyss, but that was a heavy stupor far removed from the blessed peace of the past few hours in the motel with Lucia beside him. He saw from his cell phone that it was already a quarter past eight in the morning; he was astonished he had slept so many hours after the embarrassing episode in the bathroom. He got up cautiously to go and bring fresh coffee for Lucia and Evelyn. He needed to get some air and ponder all that had happened the previous day and night. He was in turmoil, shaken by a hurricane of new emotions. He had woken with his nose pressed to Lucia’s neck, an arm around her waist, and an adolescent’s erection. Her intimate warmth, tranquil breathing, and tousled hair: everything was so much better than he had imagined, and produced in him a mixture of intense eroticism and the overwhelming tenderness of a grandfather.
In the Midst of Winter Page 15