Learning to Lose

by David Trueba

  Where did it happen, when, Leandro doesn’t understand how the wall rose up between them, that protective area where they don’t get involved in the other’s suffering, in what the other is feeling. Aurora, so open, alive, sincere, always available, happy, enthusiastic, but reserved when it came to anything that could affect him, inconvenience him. She had respected his space, his silence, his lack of implication, and she had done her best to keep anything from disturbing it. Now Leandro is ashamed of having a relationship like that. His wife isn’t going to share her fear and pain with him and it may be that she needs to, but she’ll keep it inside, she’ll act strong and self-sufficient, because that is what she learned to do at his side.

  Perhaps they’d established that way of being right when they met. Leandro was twenty-three years old and visiting an office in the former Ministry of Education headquarters to try to get financial help in postponing his studies so he could travel to Paris. He went from window to window, with a written recommendation he showed to anyone willing to read it. Aurora was hammering away at a typewriter, and she was the one who noticed him and offered to help, even though she was just a temporary secretary. Maybe Leandro already sensed he was ill-equipped to face those challenges, that he needed someone to resolve the domestic catastrophes, the smallest fears. Aurora took an interest in his case when Leandro, sitting on a wooden bench, rubbing his frozen hands together, was only expecting to get a final no to his request. He told her he was looking for a scholarship for a school in Paris and she asked him about his field of study. He said classical piano. And Aurora’s eyes, on that day so many years ago, opened enormously wide, and it seemed as if Leandro held the only key capable of opening them that way.

  Classical piano.

  Leandro always thought it had been those two words that had opened up Aurora’s heart. He said them with smug intention. Madrid, 1953, classical piano. It was like talking about life on other planets. Aurora read the recommendation written by some luminary and asked him to wait a moment. She disappeared down a back hallway and was gone quite a while. So long that when she came back, Leandro responded to her smile with, are you sure I’m not wasting a lot of your time? But Aurora shook her head. I hate my job, any interruption is a stroke of luck.

  In spite of Aurora’s good intentions, Leandro only got a few kind words and promises that never materialized. On the street, that first day, he took his leave of Aurora with a proper squeeze of her hands, and he headed off, raising the lapels of his coat. He didn’t look back to see her in the dark doorway. He didn’t want to force himself to be nice or thank her for her effort. That was how he presented himself as a romantic candidate, laden with silences, an aura of mystery, and a very hidden warmth. When he walked away from those offices on Calle Trafalgar, he knew he would see her again, that he would go looking for her behind that window to offer her the nothing he had to offer, the little he had to say. I don’t think I thanked you enough for all you did for me, he went to tell her two days later. Then she blushed like a schoolgirl.

  They strolled that afternoon along the downtown sidewalks. Leandro faded out his on-again, off-again passion for a ballerina he had met at the ballet auditions where he worked as a pianist for hire. Aurora dashed all the hopes of a young colleague of her father’s, whom her father had insisted on inviting over to eat at the house so he could moon at her over his soup with his solicitous husband eyes. After six months of reading Primer Plano to choose what movie to see, of avoiding puddles on the street or the stench of bums on the sidewalk, of listening to the radio together, Aurora handed over her savings and told him, go to Paris and give it a shot. At that point they knew they were in love, but their financial future was not at all secure. Joaquín’s letters to Leandro promised him a shared destiny.

  After the war, Joaquín’s father reappeared like the living dead, but victorious and heroic. Nothing like those who came back from the front or the internment camps like languid shadows. Rumormongers said he had been leading a double life romantically and was now purging his sins by becoming a devoted father who dragged everyone in his path to daily Mass. He magnanimously helped the less fortunate in the neighborhood and from the first day he insisted that Leandro share piano classes with his son Joaquín.

  Three afternoons a week, an old professor, who had lost his post at the conservatory for socialist sympathies, came over. Too old to be sent to the firing squad, too stubborn to change ideas now, was how he had described himself once in a very rare glint of intimacy with his students. Don Alonso tried to discipline the two boys in front of the piano. They learned as much from their lessons as from his taciturn sadness, the bitter gratitude with which he received his payment from Joaquín’s father at the end of class, the careful way he put away the worn scores in his leather satchel that was coming unstitched. Leandro always thought of Don Alonso, and his exercises for the left hand, affectionately. He remembered one afternoon when the professor told them about music schools in Russia, about the discipline of their conservatories, the natural selection of talent from the entire country, and he spoke in such a quiet, guilty voice that it was as if he were telling them about an orgy in forbidden brothels. He also remembered the silences, deep as wells. Even though Leandro and Joaquín, at eleven and twelve years old, were devoted almost exclusively to life’s joys, they still noticed their professor’s downbeaten integrity.

  That parallel life with Joaquín, seated in front of the piano, had perhaps given Leandro false expectations. Their families were quite different, their economic realities even more so. As Joaquín started to squander money on entertainment, Leandro was working to help his widowed mother. And the thousands of hours shared on the street and later in the cafés, all the conversations and the confidences, would be left behind when Joaquín went to Paris.

  From Paris, Leandro wrote two long letters to Aurora. They were few compared to what she was expecting, but they were very expressive in their bitterness. Leandro didn’t earn a spot at the conservatory, nor did he manage to establish himself in the city. Joaquín had a celebrated teacher, an Austrian émigré who spoke leaden French, for whom Leandro auditioned. He had the courage to take on Mozart’s Jeunehomme piano concerto and she asked him why he was playing that piece. Leandro answered the same thing he still thinks today, that it is perhaps the most beautiful piece ever composed for piano. The woman’s declaration at the end of his audition was devastating. We didn’t choose this profession to make beautiful things sound conventional. Leandro went back to Madrid after three months. His mother’s health had worsened and he missed Aurora. Joaquín told him something that even then sounded like a compassionate lie, you can achieve the same thing in Madrid as I can here.

  Aurora and Leandro began an official courtship, happy and intimate, isolated from the world and its limitations. They were waiting for Leandro to finish school before marrying and living together. He could string together two or three jobs and get a salary that would allow them to pay the rent comfortably. She kept her secretarial job until she got pregnant. When Leandro’s mother died, they sold her apartment and bought another one in the Plaza Condesa de Gavia. By then Aurora had already grown accustomed to Leandro’s reserve. It was enough for Aurora to know that he felt much more for her than he was ever able to express. Then she was fueled by her baby’s energy, by the newborn’s vitality.

  By then Joaquín was flying solo. He had an agent and had moved to Vienna for some master classes and to assist Bruno Seidlhofer and give his first performances. His letters were increasingly shorter and more infrequent. There he spent time with pianists such as Friedrich Gulda, Alfred Brendel, Ingrid Haebler, Walter Klien, Jörg Demus, Paul Badura-Skoda. Yesterday I saw Glenn Gould play, he wrote to Leandro, in a concert where he destroyed Bach, as usual. Or he went to the Staatsoper to see Clemens Krauss or Furtwängler conduct and to see pianists like Fischer and Alfred Cortot, who they had listened to countless times on a recording from the 1930s of the twenty-four Chopin preludes that Don Alonso had taught them to
revere. Shortly after, Joaquín would sign a contract with the Westminster record label and Leandro would become an old childhood friend in a Madrid he visited as little as possible, especially after his public declarations against the regime became frequent and well-known in his adopted Paris.

  Returning home that morning, Leandro just led the attendants up the stairs as they carried her. On each of the steps that he had traveled over thousands of times, he sees the shadow of what they once were and thinks that Aurora’s legs will never again walk up to their apartment, loaded down with a child in her arms or shopping bags. Leandro helps her get undressed and comfortable in bed. A little later, he will place a tray of food on her lap and settle into the nearby armchair. They will listen to the radio news of the day. Aurora will not share the details the doctor gave her with him. Neither will Leandro confess his pressing need to leave, to go back to the chalet where Osembe works. After two weeks of abstinence, he will see her again that evening.

  7

  Around noon on Saturday, Lorenzo is setting the table for the midday meal. Sylvia is surprised. It’s early. Are you going to the stadium? No, but I have plans, he answers cryptically. She cooks some pasta and two steaks and they eat in front of some celebrity gossip show and the start of the news. Sylvia tells him that she is going to spend the afternoon at her grandmother’s house.

  Have you talked to your mother lately? Sylvia nods. Do you have exams soon? In two weeks. Are you studying? I do what I can.

  Two hours later, Lorenzo waits for Daniela in front of her door. When he sees her, he notices she’s got makeup on, a bit of violet eye shadow and lip liner. She’s wearing tight elastic pants and a fuchsia T-shirt beneath a jean jacket. Her damp hair falls over her back. A large canvas bag hangs from her shoulder. You look very pretty.

  One Monday Lorenzo had waited for that uncertain hour of the morning when everyone is occupied with chores and the unemployed stand out with their slow gait along the sidewalks and their overly persistent gazes into shop windows. He went up the stairs to the floor above and rang the bell. Daniela opened the door. Behind her you could hear the television and the boy’s gurgling in front of cartoons. Once again she wore that challenging expression, somewhat put out, but pleasant. She stepped forward across the doorway, as if that ensured she was not committing any wrongdoing in their home.

  Pardon the intrusion, but I think I have something for your friend. Wilson? Lorenzo nodded. Tell him to call me. It’s a little job he might be interested in. I’ll tell him, thanks.

  The conversation ended quickly, but she remained there, with the trace of a half smile. Lorenzo took the plunge. And one other thing, would you like to go to El Escorial this Saturday? I’d love to take you, remember I promised you I would? I don’t know, this Saturday … Daniela lets her thoughts drift. You don’t have to … You can bring your friend, if you want. I don’t know if she’ll be able to. Ask her, I’d love to. Okay, I’ll let you know.

  Lorenzo apologized again for having come up and then disappeared down the stairs. Half an hour later, his cell phone rang. It was Wilson. He hadn’t gotten more than sporadic construction jobs, nothing regular, every morning he waited early in a plaza in Usera for the vans that picked up daily workers. I get in line there, I stick out my chest to show off my muscles, and lower my face to hide my crazy eye. Lorenzo explained that that afternoon he was going to start emptying out a house and the money would depend on how long it took them to do it.

  The job opportunity came up during a dinner with friends at Óscar’s house. Lalo had mentioned an apartment that the real estate agency he worked for had just bought. It belonged to one of those old men who obsessively hoarded trash, upsetting his neighbors. Why do they do that? someone asked. I remember an old lady in my neighborhood who lived with a million cats, she was like that, too. Diogenes syndrome, said Ana. It’s a psychological disorder called Diogenes syndrome. It’s becoming more and more common. Óscar said that it must be some kind of social rejection, something you did when you hated your environment. Craziness. Fear of the void, said Ana, they’re all old people who live alone. Well, we have to empty it out this week, and you can’t imagine how creeped out we are about what we might find there, there must be at least six tons of garbage, said Lalo. I’ll take care of it, said Lorenzo, to everyone’s surprise.

  Lorenzo explained he was planning on setting up a small moving and transport business and if it paid well, cleaning out this apartment could be the perfect job to start with. When he noticed his friends’ looks, he felt offended. Isn’t that a decent job? Sure, man, of course, it’s just a little surprising. Surprising? I have to make a living somehow. I don’t know if you guys noticed, but I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

  Yeah, of course. And they avoided one another’s eyes, as if it were a contest to see who could hold out the longest without saying anything. Lorenzo didn’t want the conversation to die out like that. He insisted. I’ll take care of cleaning it up and emptying it out, and depending on the hours it takes we’ll negotiate a price. But you’re going to do it yourself? asked Lalo. The place must be infected.

  That was when Lorenzo remembered Wilson and he turned it into, I know some Ecuadorians who can lend me a hand. He felt his friends breathe easier, as if the delegation of work elevated him in the business hierarchy, steering them clear of the degrading image of their friend hunched over, picking up the accumulated crap from a mentally unbalanced old man. Lorenzo was improvising out loud. I’m thinking about setting up a fleet of vans, something small, but the market is definitely there.

  It doesn’t sound like such a bad idea to me, said Óscar. Oh, man, I was imagining you with lumbago, messed up after a week, admitted Ana. Well, let’s talk about it on Monday, said Lalo, feigning enthusiasm.

  Wilson waited in the van while Lorenzo went up to Lalo’s office at the real estate agency. His friend handed him the keys to the apartment. He wrote down the address on a slip of paper. He was still uncomfortable. I’ll need an invoice and all that. Of course, of course. You’re sure the owner’s not still in there … No, man, no, everything’s been past the notaries. The apartment is ours. As far as the money, you’ll let me know … Do you need something for the initial expenses?

  Lorenzo and Wilson went up the stairs to the apartment. The peephole had been pulled out and sealed with black masking tape. Before they managed to open the door, trying each of the keys Lalo had given them, a female neighbor emerged from the opposite apartment. We’re from the agency, Lorenzo said to reassure her. I can’t believe you’re going to cart away all that shit. The smell is unbearable.

  It was nothing compared to the stench that came out once the door was opened. We need masks, said Wilson. The amount of objects piled up in the apartment made it almost impossible to walk through. On top of the sofa and the television, the regular furnishings of any home, there was a layer of junk, accrued garbage, stuff piled high until the whole apartment was submerged. There was furniture of different sizes, chairs, old newspapers, plastic bags filled with who knows what.

  You think there are rats? wondered Wilson. Or worse. And the place isn’t bad. Wait and see how much dough they ask for once it’s cleaned up, answered Lorenzo. By then he had already transformed into a professional. I’ve got to buy masks, garbage bags, gloves, shovels, coveralls, add a couple more employees. And after lifting up some boards and seeing a stampeding army of cockroaches, he added an insecticide bomb.

  It took them two entire days to empty the apartment. The sewer smell was intense and unpleasant. They parked the van on the sidewalk and filled it with overflowing bags of garbage, drove to a nearby dump and emptied it there, and then went back to start again. The junk seemed to never end. Newspapers and magazines that went back to 1985, as if dating the start of the old man’s dementia. During one of their breaks, the neighbor chatted with Lorenzo and Wilson and the two other Ecuadorians who had joined their team, told them the little she knew about the man. First his appearance had started to get sl
oppy and then little by little his house went downhill. Women? No, she couldn’t remember any. She was sure he used to work for the post office, but in the last few years he didn’t seem to have any schedule. He was just as likely to head out early in the morning as to not leave the house for days. No noises or fuss. But when neighbors started to criticize his behavior, complaining about the smell and the dangerous accumulation of junk, he tore out his peephole and covered it up. Another day he threatened the president of the building with a knife. And the police got tired of coming over with social workers, until finally they issued the eviction order. Then the real estate agency showed up and, no one really knows how, managed to buy the apartment.

  Beneath one of the dressers was a huge wooden box filled with photos of women, cut out as if by a child. It must have taken years because there were so many. The women in the photographs weren’t nude or particularly beautiful; they didn’t really seem to have been specifically chosen. They were all women, though. They were precisely cut out. He took no shortcuts in his useless high-detail task. They looked like old paper dolls. There was also a collection of metro tickets, held together in bundles by crumbling rubber bands that broke at the touch. In drawers were pins, empty bottles, and advertising flyers. In the kitchen, there was only enough silverware and dishes for one person. One cup, one plate, and one set of fork, knife, and spoon. A radical declaration of solitude. Hundreds of rags and plastic bags balled up. The senseless obsession for saving seemed only to grow in relation to the uselessness of the objects. Whole collections of nothing. There wasn’t much organic garbage and the worst smell came from the broken toilet with its relentlessly dripping cistern. The bathtub was a pool of rust, the toilet was missing a lid, and yet there were mountains of empty bottles of shower gel and soap. In the kitchen, one slip of paper was stuck to the door of the fridge, with a telephone number and the name Gloria.