Learning to Lose

by David Trueba

  He wasn’t able to answer all her questions as they toured the site. Well, I think the king married several times, I don’t know if it was three or four, he said in front of the sepulchers. Yes, of course he was very religious, look at the tiny bed he slept in. Once in a while, he managed to read the caption beside a painting before she did and then he would show off, this is his father, Charles V. But it was the Spanish entrepreneurial spirit, their enlightened madness, that Lorenzo highlighted in his aimless lecture, as if he wanted, in Daniela’s eyes, to draw a parallel between him and those cruel but magnetic men filled with fruitful projects. And boy were they fruitful, Francisco de Aguirre had up to fifty children, she said, with an irony Lorenzo didn’t quite get. The monastery soon closed its doors and they were pushed to the library. Lorenzo was pointing out, not quite accurately, Ecuador on an old globe when the beadle urged them to leave. That’s so typical of functionaries, look at this schedule. How can they close such a popular monument at six in the evening, something that’s a national point of pride?

  They sat on the low wall that served as a fence to watch the sun set between the mountains behind the monastery. The view was lovely. Daniela told him about her days at school in Loja. She explained that she knew the history of Spain well because of an aggressive and authoritarian nun from Pamplona, her greatest teacher. She hit us with a thick missal, here, right on the crown of the head. But she also taught us how the light of God had led the Spaniards through the seas and jungles to spread their faith through the New World, naming the cities they conquered for saints. The soldiers had fatally strayed from their God and had given themselves over to the lust for riches, to vice, madness, and sex, and in the end they had perished sick and punished.

  That woman, Leonor Azpiroz, said Daniela with a remarkably precise memory, once hit me in the middle of class. As she passed through the rows, she discovered that my book was in poor shape, it had been through many hands before mine. It was a Spanish catechism entitled He Is with You. She made me stand up and then she slapped me. That is not how we treat school materials, she said. I remember being filled with rage, it wasn’t my fault, I had gotten the book that way, and when I got home I stomped on the crucifix we had made in arts and crafts out of clothespins. But the next day she saw the bitterness in my eyes and she sought me out to hug me, she took my face in her hands and said, little Indian girl, you have the face of a saint, don’t let that change over the first injustice you encounter in your life. She was a wise woman, a wise Salesian who could see inside you.

  Lorenzo took the opportunity Daniela’s confession afforded him to ask about her family. She told him about a sick mother who devoted herself to caring for all her brothers and sisters. Daniela had come to Spain and had the responsibility of sending money home. When they spoke on the telephone, her mother could hardly contain her emotion. I pray for you, she told Daniela.

  I have a sister, a bit older than me, who makes my mother suffer in every way possible. She takes after my father, I think. We don’t ever see her anymore. She came to Spain before I did, but she never calls or anything. She got in with a bad crowd. My mother was very generous with me about that, she told me go to Spain but don’t do it for me, do it for yourself and earn honest money, even if it’s not a lot. Be decent and God will reward you. What do you think, challenged Lorenzo, that I don’t know how some people make money, even right in the neighborhood? It’s very difficult to compete with people who break the rules.

  Then Lorenzo remembered a T-shirt he had barely noticed the day he saw Daniela wearing it. HE MAKES ME HAPPY, it read. And he’d had the feeling it was referring to him. But now it was clear it was about her firm religious beliefs. He felt he should warn her that he didn’t believe in God or go to Mass. Seeing her somewhat distant expression, Lorenzo launched into a confusing explanation, saying he believed in the existence of God, but not a God as understood by believers, but a more ethereal and personal one, like a God who lives inside each person. When he felt that his words might not be getting him anywhere, he decided to drop the conversation, saying, it’s not that I think about these things very often.

  In response Daniela told him, this structure could only be the result of true faith, the desire to honor God above all things. And Lorenzo looked up to see the immense esplanade and the monastery catching the sun’s last rays of the day. In his own way, he thought about the intrinsic Spanishness of its spartan construction, although he lacked the perspective to see it as a glacial leviathan of granite that broke with the pine-filled mountains surrounding it.

  Daniela felt cold and Lorenzo put an arm around her shoulders. Should we head back? he asked her. It’s probably best, she replied.

  They walked along the side of the highway in search of the van he had parked on the far shoulder. On Sundays we go to a church near our house, Daniela told him, the pastor is very intelligent. Lorenzo took it as a veiled invitation, but didn’t say anything.

  They got into the van. Lorenzo drove along the street that bordered the monastery and at every speed bump he couldn’t help but cast a sidelong glance at Daniela’s breasts bouncing up and down. Meanwhile, she talked to him about the parish. Every day there are more Spaniards. Sometimes Spaniards think these churches are just for South American wetbacks, but now they come in, they hear us sing, and some of them join. Do you know what they tell me? That religion here was always sad. You celebrate God with happiness, laughter, Lorenzo dared to interject. The last Mass he had been to was probably at Lalo’s father’s funeral, almost fifteen years ago.

  The highway back to Madrid goes through fields fenced with stone, and Lorenzo and Daniela stare straight ahead. Not looking at each other allows them to speak more honestly.

  Your people are more cheerful in everything, Lorenzo heard himself say. And a second later he felt he had gone too far. Appearances can be deceiving, Daniela corrected. We suffer a lot. People only see the partying and dancing and all that, but there’s another side to it. I bet you know a Colombian woman. Colombian? No, why? asked Lorenzo. You’d like them better than me, that’s for sure, said Daniela, still looking straight ahead, as if she wanted to challenge him. They are shameless, nothing stops them. Well, I don’t want to generalize …

  Lorenzo felt a stab of anxiety. He was carrying a good bit of money in his wallet, thinking that she would want to go out dancing, or to a restaurant or somewhere for some fun. Now he realized his mistake.

  A few days earlier, he had passed by his friend Lalo’s office to get paid for clearing out the apartment. Actually, he confessed to his friend, I left the amount blank, I don’t know what to put. Lalo skillfully drew up an invoice on his computer and asked Lorenzo to peek over at it. Does that seem fair to you?

  It’s a bit more than what I was thinking, Lorenzo admitted.

  Lalo printed the invoice on his computer and took the money out of a drawer in his desk. Don’t worry, that was what we had anticipated, I swear. They went for a cup of coffee. The morning was bright, but the café was dark, with windows only at the front. Lorenzo asked Lalo about the owner of the apartment. There are some personal objects that should maybe be given to him, but, of course, now that you’ve sent him to live under a bridge …

  Lorenzo’s statement sounded like a direct accusation. Lalo justified himself. Not at all, we set him up in a residence for the elderly. I don’t really know him, it was all handled by a guy in sales. It’s one of those things that when they tell you about it, about the whole mess with the neighbors, the police reports, you think it’s going to be incredibly complicated, that it’s best not to get involved, but then it turns out to be really simple. In barely two weeks it was resolved. You know what I thought afterward? That actually nobody had offered to buy the guy’s apartment and really he was wanting to sell. It’s simple, right? The best place for him is in a home. I don’t know, seems like a guy who lost his marbles. Somebody talked about an accident …

  Do you know what home he’s in? Sure, in the office I have all the informat
ion, you want it? No, well … Lorenzo didn’t want to show too much interest. When you empty out a house like that you feel kind of sorry about it, you think you’re destroying someone’s life, everything they’ve accumulated in a life.

  In my job, Lalo explained, you see things that break your heart in two. Think about it, a lot of times their apartment is the last thing people have. My boss always says something brilliant: your monthly installments can’t be paid in pity. And it’s true, life is a cycle, in the end … No matter how bad you feel about it. A living person moves into a dead person’s house; when things are going bad for one person, they’re going better for somebody else. That’s life.

  He walked Lalo back to his office. His friend explained that after the renovations in the apartment they could sell it, in that neighborhood, for four times what they’d paid. It’s just one of those things that worked out well for us, he confessed to Lorenzo. Then he got the information on the home where the former owner was now living. Jaime Castilla Prieto, the name is completely normal, he remarked. And don’t feel like you have to bring him anything, the guy is totally cuckoo, and Lalo made a vague gesture with his hand. Lorenzo shrugged his shoulders.

  It was the money he’d gotten from Lalo that was burning in Lorenzo’s pocket on Saturday. The heat in the van smelled of fuel. When Daniela told him she hardly knew the outskirts of Madrid, Lorenzo told her how, just a few years ago, it had been pastureland for sheep and cows.

  Daniela confessed that going anywhere made her panicky. She didn’t have papers and she didn’t want to meet the police in a train station or on some trip. They keep you locked away for two days and then they write you up an order of expulsion. She had come to Madrid two years earlier on a tourist visa, her only plan being to send money to her mother. Someday I want to have my own house, but not one of those enormous homes that other immigrants build with money from Spain, I don’t want to show off like they do, just something simple, pretty. Lorenzo asked her what her first steps were when she arrived in the country.

  You already know Nancy. She helped me a lot. At first I took care of an elderly woman. You know that gray-haired man who has an interview show on TV in the afternoons?

  Lorenzo nodded vaguely, but it took him a while to figure out who Daniela was talking about. Well, I took care of his mother. They didn’t give me any days off. Not even Sunday afternoons. The family hardly ever came to see the woman. And I had nothing to eat. Do you know what I lived off of? You know those chocolate cookies, Príncipe brand? Two or three a day, that was it. I had terrible anemia and one day I fainted in the woman’s house. They put me in the hospital. And the TV host came right over and without even asking how I felt, he started threatening to make my life impossible and that he’d have me kicked out of the country if I said anything. He even went so far as to tell me he was a friend of the king. Right there in the hospital, he fired me.

  All you ate were chocolate cookies? You could have died, said Lorenzo, shocked. No way, I got fat as a cow. Look at me. You’re not fat, not at all … My mami sees the photos I send her and she writes back, hey, fatty, you ate my daughter, where’s my daughter? They both laugh.

  Then I took care of a family’s three children, but the oldest one, a nine-year-old, was hyperactive. He abused me, he insulted me, he pulled my hair, he kicked me. One day I just didn’t show up, I didn’t even have the guts to quit. I didn’t want to tell the kid’s parents the things he did. One day he told me I was his slave and that I had only come to Spain to clean up his poop. It was wrong, but I just left. He had the devil inside him, I swear that kid had the devil inside him.

  Lorenzo said something to console her, it’s not the kid’s fault, it’s the parents’ fault. Then she told him about her current job. They’re a young couple, good people. And the boy is delightful. He’s like my own son to me. I barely know them, I just say hi on the stairs, confessed Lorenzo. I think he’s an administrative assistant at a company or something like that.

  Daniela shrugged her shoulders. In Spain people live really well, they like to go out, be on the streets. One day the woman I work for explained it to me: we don’t want our son to steal our social life from us. That’s why I stay some nights until they come home from eating out or going to the movies. They are sweet. They seem happy.

  Yeah, well, just like you said, Lorenzo replied, there are all kinds. But here people are happy, I do think so … Except on the metro, Daniela smiled. On the metro everybody’s so serious, they don’t look at one another, they don’t say hello. They all read or look at the floor like they’re embarrassed. Like when you’d get onto the elevator with me, and you’d lower your head and I’d think, what shoes am I wearing? Ay, I hope they’re clean.

  After they laughed, there was a silence. Daniela asked Lorenzo about his separation, about how he manages to handle his life and take care of his daughter, if he misses his wife. Lorenzo responded honestly, but not without a slight tinge of self-indulgence.

  I made a mistake, he admitted. At one point I thought my life would always be the way it was then. With my wife, my daughter, my work. I couldn’t conceive of it changing. And maybe I wasn’t careful enough. It was a mistake.

  The silence that followed seemed to end the conversation. Soon the highway emptied out into an expressway. The faster cars passed Lorenzo’s van on the way to Madrid. When passing the exit for Aravaca and Pozuelo, Daniela told him she had a lot of friends who worked around there. Lorenzo told her that in Aravaca he had met the last shepherd in Madrid. Mr. Jorge. Every Christmas we used to buy a lamb from him for New Year’s dinner. They put up a block of terraced housing behind his pen and the city government forced him to get rid of the sheep. When I was fifteen years old. You weren’t born yet.

  Don’t exaggerate. Daniela smiled. I’m thirty-one. I’m not so young anymore. Well, you look it, said Lorenzo. Look, this is where the president lives, he pointed as they passed the Moncloa Palace. Do you like the president? Daniela asked him. Bah, all politicians are the same … No, no, corrected Daniela, in Ecuador they’re worse. There isn’t a decent one there … They’re four families, they all have to go. They’re rats. Rats? Corrupt.

  As they entered Madrid, Lorenzo suggested they go out for dinner. Daniela said, you’ve already spent a lot of money. And then added that she was tired. You don’t want to go out dancing? I bet you’re gonna go out dancing with your friends now, joked Lorenzo. No, no. Really, no, she added. And he couldn’t get her to change her mind.

  When they arrived at her door, Lorenzo turned off the engine and the headlights. Thank you so much for the trip, Daniela said to him.

  The combination of the two long lines of her eyes with the line of her mouth was lovely. Her hair fell over one side, breaking the almond shape. She put her hand on the door handle and Lorenzo leaned over, governed by a force he couldn’t control. He took her by the shoulders and tried to kiss her on the lips, but she only offered her cheek, no-man’s-land. But the kiss lasted until she moved her neck away.

  I knew you were going to do that, Lorenzo. It was the first time Daniela had spoken his name. I didn’t come for this, I don’t want you to think …

  It was Daniela who apologized, as if she judged herself for having aroused Lorenzo. He felt uncomfortable, he tried to be tender. I like you, forgive me if … but I like you and I … Men only want one thing, Daniela told him, and then they cause a lot of pain …

  Daniela spoke sweetly and her features became more beautiful to Lorenzo’s eyes. When he kissed her, his forearm brushed her breast and it gave him a shiver. Lorenzo wanted to hold her, to reassure her, but she took control of the situation with an authority that left Lorenzo paralyzed.

  I’m not upset, I just want you to know that I …

  And Daniela’s silence seemed to explain it all.

  Thank you for a very nice evening, she said, and hopped out of the van. She walked toward her doorway. Lorenzo felt a stab in his chest, like a cruel pinch. He was slow to start the car up and drove like a
sleepwalker toward his house. When they had gone through one of the rooms at the monastery, among the biblical tapestries woven in gold, Daniela had turned toward Lorenzo and said, in a very soft voice, like a whisper, thanks for what you’ve done for Wilson. Then, feeling her breath very close to his face, Lorenzo had wanted to sleep with her, take off her clothes, make love to her.

  He understood his mistake, his precipitation. He sensed wounds in Daniela that he had been oblivious to, but the rejection still made him feel bad, desolate.

  It was Saturday night, but Lorenzo went home early. He felt he was driving in the opposite direction from the rest of humanity.

  When he got home, the soccer game was already over. He watched an American movie beside his daughter for a little while. Her Saturday got screwed up, too, he thought, but he didn’t ask any questions.

  Sunday ended with the same feeling of emptiness it had started with. On Monday he sleeps in. He finds a note from Sylvia underneath two oranges placed next to the juicer. “I won’t be home for lunch.” He hears chairs moving in the apartment upstairs and thinks it’s a coded message from Daniela, communicating her disdain.

  Wilson calls while Lorenzo’s having breakfast. He’s got a moving job and asks if he wants to join him with his van. Yeah, sure, great. Tomorrow at eight, then. Lorenzo writes the address down on Sylvia’s note. You’ll have to get up early, sorry, because I can see now that you’re not an early riser, says Wilson on the other end of the line. I got up a while ago, says Lorenzo in his defense. Your voice is weak, you sound like you’re still in bed. You know what my old lady used to call it? Pillow voice.

  Lorenzo showers and shaves listening to the radio. In the news they don’t mention him. In front of the mirror, he says, I am a murderer. It’s strange how easy it is for him to forget it, leave it behind. Buried in the day-to-day. I am a murderer. Looking at his freshly shaved face, he wonders, have I changed? And he repeats it to himself.