Learning to Lose

by David Trueba

  That same evening Osembe invited the girls to her room, they opened champagne and toasted in plastic cups during what seemed to be a break from work. When Mari Luz, the madam, left the room, two of them pushed Leandro onto the bed and tickled him like a game between teenagers. Four or five had to leave for clients, but of the twelve four stayed, extending the party through the whole hour. Let’s see, you have to choose the most beautiful, they said to Leandro, or, you’re very serious, this is a party. When they finished the bottle, Osembe asked Leandro if he would treat them to another and one of the Spanish girls went down for more champagne.

  They forced him to drink a long slug from the bottle. They took off his clothes. You’ve never done anything like this before, huh, grandpa? They ran their breasts over his face and laughed their asses off. At one point, the madam came up to let them know their laughter was above the acceptable levels. Leandro tried to vomit in the toilet when the drink made him dizzy, but he couldn’t. The girls put him into bed for a little nap. They covered him with towels.

  Leandro awoke with his mouth dry. Outside night was falling. His clothes were piled up sloppily on a chair. Old faded pants, a blue sweater, the shirt with the worn-out collar, a winter undershirt, socks both inside one shoe. He dressed and went out into the hallway. The little reception room was closed and through the frosted glass he saw two young men sitting on the sofa.

  The madam came out to meet him. Come over here, you had a fabulous time, huh? she said with a crow’s smile, and she stuck him in another tiny little receiving room. That’s fifteen hundred euros, she said to him, and Leandro waited for the punch line, but there wasn’t one. Shocked, he only managed to say, I didn’t organize the party. The party was the first toast, everything else was on your tab, the girls spent their work time with you. And I’m giving you a discount, if I charged you what I should … come on, okay, write out a check for a thousand euros and we’ll leave it at that, the patience one has to have …

  Leandro, leaning on the little table, filled out the check. The doorbell rang and the madam left again for a few minutes. Come on out now, Mari Luz said to him when she came back to pick up the check. This is a really bad time, it’s when all the offices let out.

  That night, after dinner with Aurora, after turning off the television when her slow, monotone breathing revealed she’d fallen asleep, Leandro gathered the bank papers. He dug in the files at the far end of the shelf, bound by slack rubber bands. He reread the deed to the house from 1955, when the apartment cost barely more than the amount he had squandered that afternoon. The signing had taken place in a notary’s office on Calle Santa Engracia. He remembers the nervous walk there with Aurora, and the building’s owner, a man who had made his fortune in an automobile-importing business backed by several important military men. It was a warm autumn day and he was concerned whether he would be able to make the installment payments. The city couldn’t have then suspected the chaotic evolution that would make its limits grow and expand. The disappearance of the night watchmen, the coal merchants, the knife sharpeners on bicycles, the large arched plazas with open workshops, the dairies, the bath houses.

  He didn’t go back to the chalet for two days. When he did, it was at his usual time. He was surprised when the bus driver greeted him, as if he were already a regular on the route, and when he recognized some familiar faces among the passengers. No one thought he was anything less than a respectable, upright elderly man, well-preserved in his slenderness. No one could possibly imagine the shameful routine I’m carrying out, thought Leandro. But that day the routine was interrupted when the madam stopped him at the door to the house and didn’t let him enter. The last check was returned, this is very serious, said Mari Luz without a hint of sympathy. Here we are again.

  Leandro tried to say something, to excuse himself on the porch. From the door to the garage, a rectangular structure separated from the house, a man let himself be seen. He looked imposing, with gray hair and light eyes. It seemed to be a scene designed to frighten Leandro. The man was stock-still, he didn’t move toward him, but he didn’t hide himself, either.

  Let’s handle it like this, explained the madam, don’t come back until you have the cash in hand. And it’ll all be taken care of, that way there are no misunderstandings, you know how the banks can be. Leandro turned, but the woman held him by the forearm, authoritatively. But do come back, don’t leave this debt outstanding, eh. We wouldn’t want to have to come to your house for it …

  The notary reads him the terms of the loan and as he closes the document he says, with his lethargic enunciation, Don Leandro Roque, do you know that you are signing a borrower’s loan in the form of a reverse mortgage using your ownership of the apartment on Calle Condesa de Gavia as a guarantee? I know. I will ask you for the power of attorney signed by your wife, who is not present due to illness, which is confirmed by a document signed by a medical professional. The notary then recites what he sees, as if he were advancing through a jungle, hacking out a path with machete blows to reach the clearing of the signature.

  Leandro had gone through the pitiful step of putting some documents in front of Aurora’s face, documents he only vaguely explained. Aurora signed without asking questions, with her weak hand that could barely hold the pen. Then she asked for the bedpan and Leandro solicitously slid it beneath her body, purging himself, he thought, of some of the malice he was causing. Her urine hitting the plastic gave Leandro reasons to justify his behavior.

  The next morning, Leandro went to the hospital to get the certificates he needed. He was surprised the doctor had him come into his office, he had insisted to the nurse that all he needed was a signature and he didn’t want to be a bother, but the doctor wanted to greet him.

  How is your wife feeling? Weak, but in good spirits, Leandro heard himself say, seated on the edge of the chair without taking off his coat. The nurse will bring the paper as soon as she stamps it with the hospital seal. The doctor looked into his eyes. I have a problem with your wife, you know? Leandro shook his head, sincerely intrigued. Your wife is very brave. Women in general are braver than us, right? Maybe … yes, said Leandro. Your wife doesn’t want anyone in her family to know what is really going on with her. I don’t want to alarm you or your son. Hers is an attitude I understand and respect, but I don’t think it’s fair. What do you think?

  Leandro nodded. For a second he had a feeling the doctor knew everything about him. That he could X-ray him with a single glance, bare his soul, and point out the black recesses with the tip of his pen. He felt uncomfortable, helpless. What strange power doctors have, even over the healthy.

  I don’t know what you know about your wife’s state, or what she’s told you. Well, Leandro rationalizes, some bone thing, I guess with her age and what you told me about osteoporosis … The doctor interrupts him. Your wife has truly resilient cancer that would have finished her off months ago if not for her reserve of strength, I don’t know where she gets it from. Anybody else would be depressed, grieving, and finished, but either she fakes it really well or, honestly, you are married to an exceptional woman. There is no chance she’ll ever walk again, I already told your son, she let me go that far. What she won’t let me tell you is that she has very little time left, and it’s not going to be fun. She’s going to burn out like a candle. Her lucidity, even, will start to break down.

  And do you know why I’m telling you all this? Because I believe that if those around her know how serious her case is, they’ll put all their efforts and means into at least making the little conscious time she has left enjoyable, happy, full. These are the hard things about this profession, frankly, sometimes I’m forced to break a promise I’ve made to a patient, but I guess you’d agree with me when I tell you that in the end each person has to be responsible for the decisions they make. What can you do? I only have one answer: try to make her happy.

  He leaves the notary’s office and the air is crisp. The bank director offers to share a taxi with him and they set out f
rom the outer curve of Bernabéu Stadium toward the bank. On the radio is the monotonous litany of the schoolchildren who sing out the Christmas lottery numbers. Someone makes a predictable joke about the jackpot. Leandro wants to get out. It’s as if he feels oppressed by all the fake kindness that gilds reality.

  It’d be good for me to have some cash in the house for an emergency, explains Leandro as he gets out of the taxi at the entrance to the branch. Sure, of course, Marga can help you. Leandro fills out a paper that quickly transfers into several bills. The manager accompanies him to the door. I suggest you keep an eye out, she explains, there are muggers around here, and they prey on retirees and the elderly. I think it’s so unfair that they go after the most helpless. They hit them or push them and then they steal their money. And the woman waits there, defending him with her watchful gaze from any possible attack while he crosses the street.

  Leandro walks toward his house with the bulging envelope in the inner pocket of his coat. The money seems to beat to the rhythm of his heart, as if it were alive. He goes up the stairs too quickly, and when he gets to his apartment he is worn out. Benita is putting away the cleaning supplies, although she always forgets the glass cleaner on the arm of the sofa and the duster on top of a radiator. I left some potatoes and meat in the pan, you just have to heat them up. Someone called asking for you but didn’t want to leave a message, said that you would know who was calling, asked if I was your wife. Do you know what I answered? I wish … sorry, it just came out that way.

  Leandro wasn’t paying much attention to Benita but he smiles along. She raised her voice too much because she was deaf in one ear from her husband’s beatings. But her laughter doesn’t distract Leandro. He is upset about the call.

  Aurora begrudgingly eats the stew Benita cooked. Leandro doesn’t tell her anything about his conversation with the doctor. He goes through the daily routine of bringing the radio over so she can listen to the classical music program. The only change from his usual behavior is that when the hostess announces a Brahms piece, he explains to Aurora that the composer had written it while he was having an affair with Clara, Schumann’s wife. Schumann was a marvelous pianist, he says, and he tells her two anecdotes about the composer.

  He knows how much she enjoys his commentary. Leandro doesn’t want to feel bad about having rationed out the few, simple pleasures his wife had asked him for in all those years as a couple. And he had been so miserly.

  Leandro remembers in detail the night, years earlier, when he came home from the academy and she asked him how his day had been, and he replied with a laconic good. Then his wife broke the silence with a slight moan and Leandro realized she was crying. Even though he asked her why, she didn’t answer right away. She only said that she was expecting something more than a good when she asked about his day. Aurora had gone to her room. She never repeated the complaint so overtly. Leandro knows that the countdown set by her illness couldn’t make up for an entire life. He trusted that the sum of all the good moments made a profitable balance of their years together, but she’d never be able to forgive him for what he had denied her, his stupid stinginess of emotion. She hadn’t deserved it, she had worked to create a livelier, full atmosphere.

  Leandro separated out the money he would bring to settle the debt at the chalet. And with that, I will fill in this hole in my life. Like someone covering up a crack, like someone blocking a well, like the displaced earth that in time will get mixed back up with the dirt around it. It will be his Christmas present, his renunciation, his last visit to the chalet.

  15

  Lorenzo hadn’t been back to that upper part of the Tetuán neighborhood since the days he played soccer with other kids on the open stretches of ground. He had seen the outskirts of the Plaza de Castilla grow, but the side street he was now on had barely changed. Humble, clustered houses, some low-lying housing, almost redbrick shanties, that revealed the poor neighborhood it had been. From some streets, he could see the plaza’s leaning towers and beneath the clock of the old water tower on the canal a defiant glass building owned by a bank or a big company. When he and Pilar were looking for a house, they even considered the rich strip on the other side of the plaza. But by then the prices were already prohibitive and he had an immediate feeling of nostalgia looking at them. Nostalgia for a kind of life and city that they would never enjoy.

  Finally they found the apartment on Calle Alenza. Pilar was pregnant and they had ruled out leaving Madrid. Lorenzo didn’t know if moving to Saragossa had been hard for her or easy, if it was something she accepted as part of Santiago’s delusions of grandeur, his social climbing, or as another advantage of distancing herself from her past with Lorenzo.

  He looks at his watch. It is three minutes past eleven and the cold off the street isn’t conducive to much waiting. Lorenzo is in front of the place, which is lined with people. It must have been an old workshop. A wide elevated platform barely ten inches above the sidewalk is crammed with chairs arranged on either side of a central walkway. Old, not particularly elegant folding chairs. The entrance is a glass and aluminum door, almost completely covered by taped-up posters, advertisements, photocopies. On the door an ugly sign composed of orange adhesive letters reads: THE CHURCH OF THE SECOND RESURRECTION. There is a muted television screen showing images of religious acts. The largest poster on the door says: GOD IS CALLING, ARE YOU GOING TO ANSWER? And the somewhat naïve drawing depicts a cell phone.

  Lorenzo watches the people who go in. Mostly Latin Americans, women in their Sunday best, men who have tamed their thick manes of hair with shiny gel. Some have tattoos peeking out from beneath their clean, brightly colored shirts. The doorway is crowded with kids playing on the sidewalk, their complexions dark and their accents local, dotted with the strong Madrid j.

  By then Lorenzo begins to worry that Daniela isn’t going to show up. A man approaches the door to call the kids in, and when he sees Lorenzo he comes up to him cordially. The service is about to start, join us if you’d like. Lorenzo goes into the last row, still standing.

  Days earlier he had watched, beside Detective Baldasano, his house being searched. His state of mind had been much less calm. He was surprised at how unscientific it all was, seeing four men spread out through the rooms, particularly insistent on going through Lorenzo’s clothes, deep in his closet. The work lasted barely twenty minutes, during which Baldasano looked out the living room window onto the street. He put out his cigarillos under the kitchen tap. The policemen took some of Lorenzo’s clothing in sealed plastic bags and left the apartment in a disorderly fashion. Baldasano insisted on inviting him for a coffee in a nearby bar. Do you know the Rubio? It’s right around here.

  There was a fish tank with shellfish in the window and a lobster that looked more like a pet than something available to customers. He ordered a coffee with milk. The kitchen spat out the smoke of reheated oil. The bar concealed tapas: potato frittata, anchovies, potato salad, meatballs, and soft empanadillas sweating grease beneath the glass display cases. Baldasano waved from a distance to another man who was sitting at the end of the bar and flipping through a sports newspaper. Maybe another cop. Lorenzo tried to locate their pistols, near their armpits. They both wore thick jackets, but not coats.

  Baldasano smoked his short cigarillos. His skin was lined along the chin and he had a scar hidden on his neck. The first thing he did was reassure Lorenzo. I just wanted to have a chat with you, I don’t want you to think that a search incriminates you in any definitive way. Lorenzo felt nervous, but he adopted a passive attitude.

  The detective explained to him that every investigation proceeds by fencing in the territory. More than following leads we rule out possibilities. In Lorenzo’s particular case, he had called him in mostly just to close, once and for all, the trail that led to him from Paco’s corpse. Of course, you have to understand that our evidence rules out bands of marauders or the robbery motive. We are convinced it was someone in his circle, someone who knew him, who knew for example th
at on Thursday nights he wasn’t home, and that makes the investigation more complicated. The idea of organized crime doesn’t hold water.

  Lorenzo realized that the strategy was quite simple. It consisted of pressuring him to see if he’d collapse.

  Closing the circle, continued the detective, one arrives at the conclusion that we are dealing with a hired killer. Someone who had something against Mr. Garrido. Economic problems, romantic problems, who knows. Maybe everything was precipitated by the victim’s unexpected return home. Or it was a paid job, these days you can hire a Romanian or Bulgarian thug for chump change. And the guy who killed him was a big lug, he wore a size twelve shoe, I can tell you that.

  Yeah, Lorenzo felt obliged to say.

  From the time when you were close friends, I’m sure you can remember people, powerful people that Mr. Garrido didn’t get along with, who he owed money, something that could give us a lead.

  A long time ago … Lorenzo produced two or three names of large companies at random, debts from the final months of the business that suddenly came into his head. The detective didn’t take notes. All he did was brush the ash of his cigarillo on the base of the ashtray. Bit by bit his interest in what Lorenzo was saying languished.

  Mr. Garrido had a relationship with a married woman. The wife of an acquaintance. Something sporadic, but ugly. You know, these things … You and your wife just separated, too. Was there also … ? Lorenzo shook his head at the vulgar gesture Baldasano made with his hands. We weren’t good, things weren’t going well for me, and my wife and I grew apart and then she met someone else. Yeah, the detective hastened to say, out of the frying pan, into the fire.