AGAIN, THE MATCH went out. Nestor lit a fourth, and this time his gaze slid down over the young woman’s shoulders to her hands. What was that green spherical object she was holding in her fingers? It looked like a jewel or perhaps a cameo . . . But rather than lingering over it, he lifted the flame back up to her eyes, and as it flickered out, the last pieces of the puzzle fell into place. What surprised him most was Carlos’s blindness. In the picture, Adela couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen years old. Nestor had recognized her instantly, but of course he had the advantage of having known her when she was still young. That day at Mulberry & Mistletoe, Carlos had attended to Adela, but amazingly, he hadn’t made the connection. She was the one he had been searching for everywhere, endlessly seeing her eyes or her neck in those of other women, so how could he not have recognized her? Three days earlier, at Madame Longstaffe’s house, he had said: “I never see whole people, Nestor, only parts. I only notice the little physical details that make them unique . . .” Like a man lighting his way in the dark with a match, thought Nestor, without realizing that this was exactly how he had discovered Adela.
He who sees reality in fragments will not take in the whole picture, as Madame Longstaffe might have put it.
“Of course, ‘Kill Me with the Lawnmower’ isn’t my client’s only hit. ‘Shitless in Gaza’ was huge too. What? You’re kidding. You’ve got to get out more, kid. You’re telling me you’ve never heard of it? It’s only sold two million. And just think, he’ll be writing his next hit right here,” said Solis. “Your apartment and everything in it will be his.”
Yes. Let’s hope he does take the lot, that Baggerscheit. That would be the best, thought Nestor as he stroked the frame of the picture, which, unlike the rest of the objects in the room, didn’t seem to have gathered any dust. Sell the house and everything in it, all in one go. It’s creepy how some places seem to attract coincidences, like Number 38 Calle de Almagro. One day Soledad’s body must have been taken from this apartment to a grave that Carlos had never visited, and one day Carlos’s father must have been barred from entering. But now Number 38 had opened its doors to Nestor, revealing secrets within secrets: a story of adultery between brother- and sister-in-law, the sad fate of Soledad . . . You might have thought that would be enough bad luck to last a lifetime, but twenty years later, the gods had seen fit to add a few more twists: a boy who doesn’t remember his mother’s face falls in love with a portrait of the woman who was responsible for her death. Then he happens to meet this woman but doesn’t recognize her. Honestly . . . what next? he asked himself. Surely there had been enough coincidences.
Nestor’s hand was still resting on the frame, as if on a window ledge, and it struck him that he and the woman in the picture were an odd couple: she on her side of the mirror, he on his, she looking out at him, seeing nothing, while he could see all too clearly and he didn’t much like what he saw. Destiny likes to arrange coincidences, he thought. Life is full of them, when you think about it. It must happen all the time that two people who share a common history walk past each other in the street without realizing . . . or two brothers separated at birth sit next to each other one day on a bus . . . their paths might cross, or they might not, he thought . . . There are so many amazing coincidences, but most of them go unnoticed. And sometimes it’s better that way. By the time Nestor joined Carlos and Solis, who were about to inspect a room at the end of the hallway, he had decided what he was going to do.
“This is one of my favorite rooms in the whole apartment, Mr. Solis,” said Carlos. “I know it’s not much to look at, but see that armoire? I used to play in it when I was a kid. It was full of junk—still is. When I inherited this place, the only thing I salvaged from in there was a painting I’m very fond of, the portrait of a lady.”
And that armoire is where you belong, Adela Teldi, or at least where your story belongs, thought Nestor. It was clear to him now that chance occurrences, however uncanny, didn’t become coincidences unless a witness was there to point them out. He had always considered that discretion was the wisest policy for someone in his position, with intimate knowledge of so many private lives. Most of the tricks that destiny plays on us pass unnoticed, he thought, and so will this one. Your story will stay in this apartment, Adela Teldi. You’re staying right here, my dear, as if you were still locked up in that armoire, you and your little indiscretion with its unforeseen consequences, your homemade Greek tragedy and your soap opera scandal, because that’s how I want it to be. We’ll go to your house, we’ll serve your guests, I’ll prepare my finest desserts . . . and no one will ever know about the strange connection between a respected client of Mulberry & Mistletoe and one of the firm’s employees.
“Carlos, are you there?”
“Hang on, Nestor, I’ll be with you in a minute. I just have to see what Mr. Solis wants.”
“I’m interested in this copper washbowl, kid, and that old lamp too, but what I’d really like to see is that portrait you found in the armoire.”
NESTOR WASN’T LISTENING to any of this. No doubt Carlos and Juan Solis were making good progress in their negotiations, but all our chef could think about was his discovery, and how it wasn’t all that hard to cheat destiny. If the gods can play tricks, so can I, he concluded with a certain self-satisfaction. And then, predictably employing a gastronomical simile, he vowed that this little indiscretion would never be divulged, because coincidences, he thought, are like soufflés: they come to nothing unless someone takes the trouble to beat, stir, or otherwise agitate the egg whites.
From where Nestor was standing, he could see Solis, who was still measuring and estimating the value of the place, like the shrewd real estate agent that he was. He even went over and measured the painting of the woman. It’s not as if the secret’s bound to come out, thought Nestor, seeing the agent so interested in the portrait. This house will be sold, and soon it will all be forgotten. Luckily, Carlos seems to have found himself another woman who’s made him forget the one in the painting. And that’s a blessing, because now he’ll never know that since he was a child, he’s been in love with . . .
“A very nice picture, son, but it’s not worth much. I’d advise you to sell it with the apartment. You’re in luck, because Baggerscheit loves blondes. I hope you don’t want to hang on to any of the other furniture or fittings.”
“Just the picture,” said Carlos. “It has sentimental value. It’s part of my childhood.”
“Oh do grow up,” said Nestor, butting into the conversation. “I thought we had agreed that you were through with fantasizing about ghosts.”
“Oh, there you are, Nestor,” said Carlos with a start. “Where have you been?”
But instead of answering the question, Nestor simply said: “I’ve seen her, Carlos, and she belongs in that yellow room. The picture shouldn’t be moved. Leave it where it is.”
Carlos didn’t understand. He didn’t understand at all. He even found his friend’s reaction funny. “Hang on, what’s happening? Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with her too.”
“Come on, she’s not that gorgeous,” said Solis. “How much do you want for her?”
“The thing is, I don’t think I want to sell her. I’ve already told you, the picture is part of my childhood. You don’t sell things like that, even if they don’t mean as much as they used to . . .”
But both Solis and Nestor seemed determined to make an issue of it:
“Come on, kid, sell it while you can. Don’t be silly. Where else are you going to find a buyer like this?”
“Think about it, cazzo Carlitos. You don’t even know who the woman is, and you’re being offered a nice sum of money. What difference does it make to you now? It was just some fantasy you had.”
“He’s right. If you’re smart, you won’t let a chance like this go by, because Baggerscheit,” said the agent, stressing each syllable of his millionaire client’s name, “he’ll take the lot, childhood memories and all. At a fair price, of co
urse.”
2
CHLOE TRIAS AND THE GHOSTS
THE NIGHT BEFORE leaving for the Teldis’ house, Chloe thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pack some clothes. Maybe she wouldn’t get a chance to wear her bikini, but she might as well take it, just in case. Everybody is hungry for sun in March, even apathetic girls like Chloe Trias. But then she suddenly realized that when she’d walked out of her parents’ house and slammed the door behind her two or three months earlier, she’d left her bikini behind. She’d have to sneak back and get it. Just as long as she didn’t run into her olds—what a fucking drag that’d be.
Chloe examined the house from outside. There were lights on in five of the downstairs windows, so there must have been something special going on. Upstairs, however, two dark balconies laden with dim, forgotten objects revealed that the Triases had become “a childless couple,” as they liked to say wryly. Since Chloe’s departure, they had rearranged the house in response to the new situation, so the large ground-floor rooms were full of people, while the windows upstairs were shuttered. It was one way of enduring the absences.
Chloe knew this. She understood. The gravel near the front door crunched under her feet, but luckily that sound, so evocative of childhood, no longer reminded her of the games she used to play there as a girl with her brother, Eddie. All things fade away in time. Any pain can be anesthetized by carefully covering it up with layer after layer of insignificant memories. Many years had passed since the day Eddie left, so Chloe felt no nostalgia as she walked up the path and heard the gravel crunch. There was only one part of the house that was dangerously charged with memories, and she had no intention of going there. She looked up. The darkness of the windows was reassuring.
The bedrooms of dead children are shrines to their absence but also a refuge for the cowardice of the living. Few have the courage to live with their memories and weave them into the present. Only the strongest parents can keep a photograph of the dead child in the sitting room, facing the questions of people who don’t know, enduring the sight of that perpetually fresh smile, indifferent to the passage of the years. The rest of us grow old while they, by contrast, seem to grow younger, filling us with guilt for not having made the most of their brief time among us, for not having guessed that they would disappear, leaving everything unfinished, not just their lives and their dreams but also, more wrenchingly, the things that happened on the day of their death: a silly argument, say, that will never be resolved, an argument about nothing, really. And all we can remember are a few hurtful words that can never be taken back now: “If only” I hadn’t said this or that . . . “If only, if only . . .” But nothing can bring the dead back to life or accomplish their destinies.
That is why most of those who remain prefer to forget those who have gone, without completely betraying them. They shift the departed out of their daily lives while keeping them present in some part of the house: a guilty but reassuring shrine, like Eddie’s bedroom.
Just as deep wounds heal, leaving a layer of hard, insensitive scar tissue, when children die or run away, the loss heals eventually, absence fading into nothingness. While the photos of Eddie, his books and belongings, and Chloe’s things too, had gradually disappeared from the rest of the house, their rooms had been preserved intact, beds made and clothes in the armoire, as if they were still children and might come home from school at any minute. They were at once absent and present. Not a bad way to deal with it, really. After all, you have to go on living.
Chloe crept past the door of the sitting room on tiptoe, so as not to have to say hello to anyone. She knew exactly what was going on beyond that inch of wood: the holy ritual of her parents’ canasta night. There would be two card tables covered in green cloth, one on either side of the window. Her mother would be presiding over the noisier table while her father directed proceedings at the other—the perfect couple, an advertiser’s dream, as Karel Pligh had described them one day. And he couldn’t have put it better. They were the perfect imitation of a successful couple. She was good-looking and so was he. Both were moderately unfaithful, moderately unhappy, and moderately prone to insomnia.
As she crept up the staircase, Chloe couldn’t help stopping for a few moments in front of one of the wooden banisters, the fifth to be precise, which was darker than the rest. This was an old ritual—as a child she had been convinced that she could see the face of a gnome in its grain and that by scrutinizing his expression she could tell how the day would turn out. He’s laughing! Great: I’ll pass my math test. He’s frowning: better not tempt fate . . . As she came to the banister, Chloe realized she was now too grown-up to read the grain, yet, prompted by an old superstition, she stroked it fondly, like a talisman that had lost its power. One more step, and another, and another, and Chloe had reached the top of the staircase without the old wood creaking and betraying her presence. She crossed the landing and passed her parents’ bedroom without stopping. Hers was farther along, and she was thinking about the clothes she wanted to take to the Teldis’, just a bikini and a pair of T-shirts. It would only take a couple of minutes to grab what she needed and get out of there. Easy: everything would be in its place, clean and ironed, because her pretty plastic TV mother made sure it stayed that way: “This is Chloe’s room, these are Chloe’s teddy bears, those are Chloe’s nice clothes—everything’s just as it was, nothing has changed.”
But before she reached the door of her bedroom, Chloe hesitated. The voices of the canasta players drifted up from the sitting room, amplified by the stairwell: an indistinct murmur from which a strident voice emerged now and then. There’s always one especially raucous chicken in the coop.
“Bunch of assholes,” she said. “Just as well I don’t have to see their ugly faces.”
At which point an ugly and all too familiar face appeared in a doorway downstairs. Spying between the banisters, Chloe could see Amalia Rossi, her mother’s old Italian friend, coming out into the hall, and she must have had more to drink than usual, because she was saying: “Let me go, Teresa, I’m practically one of the family, after all. Why shouldn’t I go upstairs? What’s the problem? Is it my fault if your caro sposo has been in the smallest room for an hour? You don’t want me to pee on the carpet, do you? Come on; don’t be silly! I know the way. I’ll just pop into Clo-Clo’s room.”
And up she came, the bitch. Chloe could hear her steps on the stairs. She passed the silent gnome and kept coming. There was no alternative: Chloe had to go back down the passage to the door at the end, a door she never opened (when it came to memories, she wasn’t brave, either), and try to hide, pressed up against the jamb. Maybe she wouldn’t be obvious, but there wasn’t much space. Carosposo would have to be completely drunk not to see her shoulders protruding. So when the heavy breathing drew nearer, all she could do was open the door. Fucking hell, it’s Eddie’s old room. That stupid bitch! Now what? Well, what else could she do, now that she was inside, but shut the door and switch on the light . . . It had been a long time, fucking ages.
CAN SOMEONE’S SMELL survive for seven years after his death? It can. Shrines to dead children never smell of must or mothballs, however long they have stood empty. Even their most inaccessible corners remain free of mildew, and the air stays fresh, without a whiff of neglect. Or that was how it was in Eddie’s room, at least. It is no simple feat to create the illusion that such a room is still inhabited. All the talents of a brilliant set designer had been deployed, and Chloe was drawn in, captivated by the lifelike effect created by the curtains and the bedspread with its ink stain, which seemed to say: “Come in and see for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen; nothing has changed—smell, touch, look.” You could quite easily imagine that the occupant of this room had just slipped out for a beer with his friends. And yet on closer inspection, the fixity of death was subtly apparent in certain details, particularly the excessive tidiness. Everything was precisely in its place: Eddie’s bookshelves, from which he would often choose a marvelous story to read to her. His
collection of model cars, lined up with morbid precision on the shelves, and next to them his sporting trophies, encircled by a scarf. And there was something artificial about the objects laid out on what had once been Eddie’s desk: the papers and folders neatly piled up, the pen and pencil strewn at romantic angles yet not quite offsetting the overall theatrical effect.
Yet what struck her most on entering her brother’s bedroom was neither the deceptive smell of life nor this excessive neatness but the size of everything. The years had gone by outside, but Eddie’s room had been frozen in time, with the curious effect that all the objects in it had shrunk, as Chloe discovered to her amazement: the bed, the bedside table, and the sofa, where Eddie used to lie with his legs up on the backrest—everything was so much smaller than she remembered. And like Alice bewildered in Wonderland, Chloe discovered that a bedroom remembered from childhood can produce the same amazing effect on a girl as a mysterious little cake that says EAT ME. She must have grown too big; that must be it. She must have become enormous, because it wasn’t like this before. Before, her brother was big and she was small, but now the room as a whole seemed the right size for her, she thought, sitting down on the tiny chair where she always used to sit. Gathering her courage, she began to explore, opening an armoire to find Eddie’s clothes: his little shirts and shoes, all so small by contrast with her oversize memories. The clothes were too neatly folded under their plastic wraps, but apart from that, it wasn’t funereal. Small, yes, but not dead, because the smell of Eddie was still clinging to the fabric. It was so real that Chloe recoiled in wordless shock and bumped into her brother’s old desk.
And as with the rest of his things, the desk at which she had so often seen him writing no longer seemed massive but just right for her. Feeling like Alice, she sat down on the chair, her feet resting comfortably on the ground, and she could reach out and touch Eddie’s notebooks, which he never used to let her read. She opened one and, for the first time, started leafing though his drafts: twenty pages written in a tight, childlike hand, followed by a passage with so much crossing out it was illegible. The bit that was so hard to read must have been something secret; perhaps the pages he didn’t want to show her the day he died. “Please, please, Eddie,” she had implored him so many times. “Tell me what you’re writing. I bet it’s a story with adventures and romance and crime and stuff, isn’t it . . . ?” But her brother’s reply was always the same: “No, Clo, not yet. One day I’ll let you read what I’ve written, I promise you. This is nothing, nothing important.” And now, trying to read her brother’s notebooks, all Chloe could make out was a handful of disconnected ideas, sketches of plots, and lots of isolated, unfinished sentences that didn’t make any sense. “Nah, this is rubbish, Clo-Clo. I guess before I can make up a good story, I’ll have to have tons of experiences, get drunk, fuck hundreds of girls, kill someone or something . . .” And hearing her brother’s voice in her memory, Chloe tried to smother it, because she didn’t want to remember the last things he had said before leaving forever. That’s right: I don’t want to, I don’t fucking want to remember. Fuck you, Eddie. If you hadn’t had that stupid idea of going off on a motorbike at two hundred kilometers an hour looking for stories, you’d be with me now. I hate you. You had no right to go away like that . . . Chloe reached out toward her brother’s bookshelf and the pile of folders. Like a spoiled child who was not getting her way, she swiped at the papers and knocked them off the table, mixing up all of Eddie’s scribblings, his attempts to put together beautiful words, his incoherent notes full of clumsy sentences . . . all those futile attempts that, as Chloe saw it, had cost him his life.
Little Indiscretions Page 14