by Antonio Hill
In any case, the coldness in his sister never ceased to shock him: the fact that Sara had decided to end her life in such a gruesome way had gone from being a tragedy to an inconvenience in a matter of minutes. Sílvia’s face, which he read as if it were his own, had reflected this shift of feeling. Those who didn’t know her as well, however, would have sworn that his twin sister’s serious expression showed feeling for the death of a person who occupied that uncertain terrain that exists in work relationships: not loved as a friend, of course, but more than a simple acquaintance. In the words of Sílvia herself, who in her role as Director of Human Resources had sent around a communiqué to the whole company, Sara Mahler had been “an esteemed colleague whom we will all miss.” Obviously, the circular made no mention of the cause of death, although—Víctor was sure—the rumors had already begun to spread by mid-morning. And by this time on a Monday evening, gone half past eight, all of Alemany Cosmetics would know that Sara Mahler, personal assistant to the MD, had committed suicide. And that her body was in an autopsy room, in pieces.
The image made him shiver, made his stomach churn. He wanted to get home, embrace Paula. The journey felt unending; he realized they had been stationary for several minutes. A dozen cars ahead the red light went to green without a single car moving, then jeered at them with amber and, when finally a car managed to cross, returned to its original red without the least trace of pity. The taxi driver let out a string of curses that Víctor decided to ignore: it suited him to isolate himself from the problems of others. And then, with this reflection, Sara Mahler’s worried expression one of the last times he spoke to her came into his head. It had been just after the company Christmas dinner.
It’s late. Night falls so early that he feels as if it’s only six, although the clock on the desk shows it’s actually twenty to nine. When he lifts his head from the reps’ reports he’s looking over, a task he wants to finish before leaving, he notices that Sara has entered the office. She has surely knocked and he hasn’t even heard her. Tired, he smiles at her.
“Still here?” He knows his assistant usually stays until he leaves. He has never asked her to: Sara seems to have assumed it to be an inherent obligation of her post.
“Yes …” Unlike her usual self, Sara is stammering. Finally she decides, halfheartedly: “I wanted to talk to you, but it’s getting late. Better if I leave it till tomorrow.”
Yes, thinks Víctor. Tomorrow. The chat can be postponed; he wants to put a full stop to the day and go home. What he says, however, is very different.
“No, come in and sit down.” He signals the papers and smiles again, without much enthusiasm. “This can wait.”
Having her sit on the other side of the desk seems strange to him, because Sara usually remains standing. The solemnity of his assistant’s gestures worries him a little, and for a moment he is assaulted by the vague fear that she might put forward a serious problem to him at this hour. She is uncomfortable, that’s obvious: rigid, sitting on the edge of the chair. He changes his glasses and then, when he finally sees her clearly, he notices that her eyes are red.
“Has something happened? Is there a problem?”
Sara looks at him as if what she is going to tell him is vitally important. She remains silent, sad, then finally speaks.
“It’s about Gaspar.” She says it quickly but with no force.
An expression of disgust appears on Víctor’s face. He doesn’t want to talk about Gaspar Ródenas. In fact, he’d prefer never to have heard that name. He changes his tone, adds a hard note to his voice.
“Sara. The Ródenas thing”—he feels incapable of pronouncing his name—“was a tragedy. We will never understand it. It’s something that escapes human understanding. Best thing we can do is forget it.”
Although she nods her head as if she agrees, Víctor regrets having started this conversation. He looks away toward the street: he’d love to enjoy a more elegant view, like Diagonal; in the first moments of success, when the anti-cellulite cream, their star product, broke sales records, he thought of moving the offices to a more lofty location. In any case, although the inhospitable empty streets of the Zona Franca can be seen from this window, he still wants to leave the office, not bring up what to him seems a dark, gruesome subject.
“I know,” says Sara. “And I’ve tried. We all try … However …”
She stops herself; perhaps he still looks lost in thought, suddenly absent. She notices this, of course, and hangs her head.
“You don’t want to talk about this, do you?” asks Sara. A touch of disappointment makes her voice quiver.
“Not now, Sara.” He turns to her. “I understand that it was a shock for everyone. For me too. I trusted him, I promoted him.”
His tone conceals that what he says is not completely true: he’d given his vote to the other candidate. Sílvia and Octavi Pujades, Gaspar’s direct manager, had voted for him. And something in Sara’s face suggests that she knows it: a gleam in her eyes reveals that she doesn’t believe what he is saying. But Víctor lets this impression go and continues speaking, anxious to put an end to the subject.
“It’s impossible to know what goes on in people’s heads. Or what happens at home, behind closed doors. Ródenas just worked here. What he did, however horrible it seems to us, has nothing to do with us. And we should forget it, for the good of the company. So, in answer to your question, no, I don’t want to talk about it.”
In the last few minutes Sara has regained her usual composure. She is offended, thinks Víctor. Nevertheless, it is too late to back down, to ask her what she wanted to tell him. She doesn’t give him the option anyway. She murmurs an apology, gets up and walks to the door. She stops a moment before leaving. For an instant, Sara seems resolved to turn around, interrupt him again and let out what she had on her mind when she came in, point blank. She doesn’t. Víctor tries not to look directly at her so as not to invite her to unburden herself, but even so he notices that Sara’s face doesn’t express disappointment, or wounded pride, but sadness.
The taxi braked sharply on Nou de la Rambla, just in front of the address he’d given on getting in. Víctor paid and got out with a brusque good-bye and, although he was dying to see Paula, he stopped in front of the old-fashioned door, “with character” as she said, and took out his cell phone to call Sílvia. There were certain subjects that he didn’t wish to discuss at home and another that he didn’t wish to discuss with his sister, so to keep it brief he confined himself to giving her a recap of his interview with the inspector.
7
Kristin Herschdorfer loved Barcelona. She said this a number of times, as if her good opinion of the city might ingratiate her with the agent who had come to see her and talk to her about her roommate, when the reality was that Roger Fort wasn’t altogether comfortable in the City of Counts yet. To him it seemed big, full of people and not especially welcoming. This morning, for example, he’d circled several times to park the car near Collblanc market and then had taken a while to find Passatge Xile, the street where Sara Mahler had lived. And yet he understood that for this twenty-four-year-old girl born in Amsterdam the fact that the sun shone in January was already a big point in Barcelona’s favor. Kristin was attending a course in Spanish at the university, not very far from her house, with the intention of starting a master’s in renewable energy in September. Like the majority of foreigners, the Dutch girl was slightly bemused by the bilingualism that prevailed in the city.
“But now I have a Catalan boyfriend,” she commented with a smile, and Fort couldn’t work out if this was for emotional reasons or the need to learn the language without paying for another course. In any case, he was sure Kristin wouldn’t be short of volunteers if the chosen one didn’t turn out to be a good teacher.
“Tell me about Sara. I already know you hadn’t lived together long …”
“Since October. At first I live, lived, with two other girls in the city center, but one was crazy. Totally crazy. And there was too
much noise. I couldn’t sleep at night. So I looked for another apartment. I saw a few and in the end I moved here because it is closer to the university.”
“This is quieter than the city center, of course. And how was it with Sara?”
Kristin shrugged her shoulders.
“Well …” She twisted a long lock of blond hair and looked away. “The apartment is nice. To be honest, I don’t think I can pay for it. On my own, I mean.”
“I was asking about Sara,” the agent said gently.
Kristin seemed reluctant to talk about her roommate.
“Okay.” She smiled, as if she were going to say something unfair. “Well, it’s not nice to criticize those who aren’t here. But … Sara was a bit peculiar. How to explain it?”
It was clear that she wasn’t finding a way to do it, so Fort decided to be more specific.
“Had she shared an apartment before?” He wasn’t up to date with the salary of a PA, but the rent on this apartment didn’t appear to be very high. And, somehow, it seemed strange that such a solitary person, or at least with as few friends, as Sara Mahler would have allowed a stranger into her house.
“No. Well, maybe a while ago. When she arrived in Barcelona.” Kristin kept playing with the blond lock until she became aware of it and let it go. “I think that was the problem. I paid what she asked me, but she acted as if she were the landlady and I were a guest. I don’t know if you understand.”
Roger Fort had shared an apartment while he studied in the academy and was aware that the oldest tenant enjoyed acquired rights they wouldn’t give up easily. So he nodded, and Kristin smiled, relieved.
“And do you know why she rented out one of the rooms?”
“She didn’t tell me. She said something about becoming afraid to sleep alone in the apartment …” She lowered her voice before continuing, “Although then it was as if it annoys, annoyed, her to have someone here. I think she’d become used to living alone.”
“Yes. Apartment-sharing isn’t easy.”
Kristin shook her head as she sighed.
“I’m sick of it. I’m going to look for a studio or something like that, however small it is.”
“Was Sara very … fussy?”
“What do you mean?”
Fort tried to explain.
“Demanding … I don’t know, about housework or noise.”
“Oh yes! She was more like a bored mother. No, not bored …”
“Nagging?” he suggested.
“Yes! If I left dirty plates in the kitchen at night, she would leave me a note in the morning: “You should wash these.” If I left a sweater on the chair, she would fold it and bring it into my room. With another note.” Kristin blushed. “I’m not messy. Honestly. In the apartment before I was the only one who cleaned. But Sara was … excessively?”
“Excessive, I suppose,” said Fort.
Kristin nodded, and began to rant about Sara Mahler without the caution she’d shown at the beginning.
“Look, see that vase? The one on the table. Well, it broke. I broke it, by accident of course, while I was giving it one.”
The phrase made Roger Fort smile, although she didn’t notice and went on talking, as if the essence of her sharing the apartment with Sara Mahler was contained in the story of the broken vase.
“It’s not very nice, is it? I mean it’s cheap. Ugly. Not something to cry over.”
“Sara cried about the broken vase?”
“Almost … She looked at me as if I had run over her mother. I told her I would buy her another one. A nicer one. And she answered that I didn’t understand. That it wasn’t about the money but the affection she has for things. Afterward she spent the night glueing the pieces back together. You see? You notice if you’re close.”
“Did she often get angry?”
“Not get angry. She would make a face. And she was always here,” she added, now being blunt. “She hardly ever went out. Apart from going to work, of course. She was at home the rest of the time, in her room, in front of the computer. I’d say she was addicted to Facebook. My boyfriend says she was looking for … you know, sex, although I don’t think so. I don’t think she liked sex.”
She elaborated on seeing Agent Fort’s surprised face.
“She told me. Not in those words exactly, but she told me. Albert, my boyfriend, stays over sometimes. And one morning, when he left, Sara told me she had heard us. You know …” Kristin blushed a little. “She also asked me to please try not to make noise. But she had a look of disgust on her face. Seriously,” she insisted, as if it was inconceivable to her.
“Didn’t she have boyfriends? Or girlfriends?”
Kristin shook her head.
“Not that I know of. Although I didn’t hear about much. With one thing and another, I don’t have much free time …”
“And didn’t it surprise you that she didn’t come home on Wednesday night? If she rarely went out?”
“Oh, it would surprise me a lot. No.” She corrected herself. “It would have surprised me a lot. That’s right, isn’t it? But I wasn’t in Barcelona. Albert and I went to a house his parents have in the mountains and we didn’t come back until Sunday. And then I heard the message from the police and called.”
Roger Fort cleared his throat.
“You spoke to me.” He paused briefly. “I don’t want to be unpleasant, but do you believe Sara was capable of taking her own life? Did you ever see her sad, truly sad? Depressed?”
Kristin pondered her answer and took a while to respond.
“Well …” she said finally. “I’d think about suicide if I’d been her. Although, of course, then I wouldn’t be her exactly.” Seeing the agent’s perplexed face, Kristin elaborated. “I mean Sara was fine. She didn’t seem happy, but not sad either. It was as if she was always worried, yes. Sometimes about silly things, like the vase or because the lift wasn’t working properly. But I can’t imagine her jumping …”
And for the first time in the conversation, the young woman seemed to realize that her roommate, the woman she had described as fussy, over-the-top, solitary and frigid in one breath had thrown herself onto the tracks of the metro. Kristin reddened and her eyes filled with tears that she made no effort to hold back.
“I’m sorry …” she murmured. “It’s strange to be here talking about Sara while she’s … Excuse me.”
Kristin got up and shot off to the bathroom. From the other side of the door, Agent Fort heard her sob inconsolably, like a little girl. He waited patiently for her to emerge, but seeing that she’d be some time, he rose from his chair and took a walk around the apartment.
It was an impersonal space, he decided. Neutral furnishings. A painting that must have been there for years. The sofa, perhaps the newest piece of furniture, was encased in an insipid brown cover, certainly the same one that had hidden the previous sofa. It was clear that Sara hadn’t been too worried about décor. Fort moved toward the shelves with the vase; the cracks where it had been broken were visible. Kristin was right, it didn’t look expensive. It was a rectangular white ceramic vase, the kind sent with a bouquet of flowers. He was already moving away when something caught his eye. There was something inside. He took it out and saw it was a correspondence slip with the Alemany Cosmetics logo on it. It was signed, and it took Fort a while to decipher the names. Sílvia and … one beginning with “C”: César. Yes. Sílvia and César. So the vase, no doubt with a bouquet inside, had been a present from the company, thought Fort as he wandered around the apartment toward Sara’s room. He was just outside the bedroom when he heard the bathroom door opening.
“I was going to take a look at Sara’s room,” he told her without turning his head.
Kristin took a couple of steps, but hesitated before crossing the threshold.
“This is only the second time I’ve gone in without her being there,” she said by way of an excuse. “Sara told me very clearly when I arrived.”
Roger nodded. Sara must have been a fairly
imposing woman to have her rules still stand even after her death. He had only seen her passport photo, so he went over to the ones pinned on a corkboard, on the wall beside the computer screen, thinking his sister had had an identical one when she was a teenager. He’d never understood the value of a train ticket, a cinema stub, or any of the small objects his sister kept on that kind of juvenile altar. It seemed it might be a female custom, because Sara Mahler, at the age of thirty-four, did the same.
He was surprised to see a smiling Sara, not alone. On the contrary, the photos showed a somewhat stout girl, radiant, with very black hair; beside her, in different images, almost all the first-team players for Barça, the manager included.
“Oh yeah,” said Kristin. “She was passionate about football. I think that’s why she rented this apartment, because it’s close to Camp Nou. She was a real fan of his,” pointing to the image in which Sara appeared with Pep Guardiola.
“Did she often go to the ground?”
“No. Some matches, but not many.”