“Damián!”
Juan thought Nicanor was shouting to him, but Nicanor repeated the name one more time and Juan realized that his brother was still beside him and that his own legs were trembling, close to collapse.
“Don’t come any closer, Damián. She’s dead.”
The policeman, as accustomed as any doctor to breaking bad news, was a cold-blooded creature. Juan knew this, for he knew him well. Nicanor Martos, who had chosen the same career as his father and grandfather, did not have a good reputation in Estrecho when the Olmedos moved there in the mid-seventies. For the first few days, as Juan was wandering about trying to get his bearings in the new district, he saw Nicanor a few times, always on his own, walking up and down the streets in a green loden coat and expensive shoes that seemed incongruous with his greasy, acne-covered face. In those days, he was already tall and rather fat, and on his lapel he always wore the right-wing Falangist Party badge. He made it clear that he wasn’t simply looking at people, he was watching them. But then he met Damián and the rest of the world receded. He became the younger Olmedo’s shadow: he grew his hair, began wearing black boots with a flamenco heel, and bought a tight denim jacket to match his jeans, as was the fashion in Villaverde at that time. From then on they were inseparable. Damián was the only friend Nicanor had ever had, and was still the only person who really mattered to him. Perhaps twenty years had not been long enough to repay in full the debt of gratitude and admiration that Nicanor felt he owed Damián.Although he had viewed the dead bodies of the victims with indifference, his eyes were clouded as he hugged Damián.
“It’s her. She’s dead,” he said again, to make sure that Damián understood. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Juan closed his eyes but then he felt something strike his shoulder—it was his brother staggering, swaying from side to side. Nicanor grabbed hold of him and helped him over to one of the police cars, so that he could lean against it. Juan, who had grown used to holding himself upright, to controlling every syllable, every silence, in a decade of furtive love, stood motionless. His mouth was dry, his throat suddenly raw, and he realized he felt dizzy too. He made his way over to Damián and Nicanor.
“What happened?” Damián was slurring his words as if he were drunk, his features frozen and his eyes unfocused, until he turned to look at his friend, who couldn’t begin to find a way to answer him.
“Tell me what happened,” Damián insisted.“I want to know.”
“It must have taken place about five thirty this morning.” Nicanor glanced at his notebook, where he’d entered the cold, cruel data. “It seems the driver must have been blind drunk, at the very least.The doctor who examined him told the police he’d probably taken something else too, maybe coke or ecstasy, who knows. He was heading away from Madrid at over 180 kilometers an hour. He came off the road, crashed through the barrier and slammed the Audi into the cliff face. Neither of them was wearing a seat belt.The police had to use a special crane to pry the car away from the rock—it was wedged so tightly into a fissure that they weren’t able to pull it out using the normal hooks and chains. Both of the passengers were killed instantly. Charo’s airbag inflated but a piece of the car’s bodywork, or maybe it was the barrier, sliced through her femoral artery. His airbag didn’t even inflate, the collision must have been too violent.The emergency services had a difficult job getting the bodies out and they’re in a pretty bad state, so I think it’s best if you don’t see her.” Nicanor stopped, lit a cigarette, and placed his left hand round his friend’s neck, as if this were the greatest show of tenderness he could allow himself. “I’m so sorry, Damián,” he murmured, “I’m sorry about everything, that Charo’s dead, that she died like this . . .”
“Who was he?”
“It doesn’t matter, Damián, don’t think about that now.”
“But it does matter.” He looked at his friend in disbelief. “It matters to me.Who was he?”
Nicanor flicked through his notebook again, clenching his jaws so tightly it looked almost painful.
“José Ignacio Ruiz Perelló,” he said at last, after clearing his throat a couple of times.“Age forty-one, born in Valencia, living in Madrid, in the Parque del Conde de Orgaz. He was married to a woman from a very good family, with lots of money, and he was a civil engineer, with a post high up in the Ministry of Public Works and Town Planning.The people in the bar over there knew him. His wife’s got a swanky house a couple of kilometers away, one of those old holiday homes with a huge garden. Charo and he must have been on their way there when they had the accident. The wife had no idea, of course, she was stunned—Perelló had told her he was going to Lisbon for the opening of a joint Spanish-Portuguese dam on the river Tagus, or something like that. She got here before you did—she’s the woman in the mink coat over there, the one with the dyed blond hair.”
There was a long deep silence, thick, loaded with bitter memories, which was interrupted only when Damián slammed his clenched fist on the roof of the car.
“Whore!” he muttered, his fist raised. “Whore, whore!” he repeated, crashing his fist down again and again and shouting more loudly with every blow, before at last breaking down in tears. “Whore, whore, the fucking whore!”
Juan flinched with every word. His brother’s raging pierced his mind like so many long sharp needles, until he felt he couldn’t bear another moment.
“I’m going to see her,” he whispered to Nicanor, who nodded, smoking silently and not taking his eyes off Damián, ready to catch him when he fell.
Juan walked away as quickly as he could. As he reached the place where the bodies were lying, a traffic policeman stepped in front of him.
“Can I help you, sir?” Inside the uniform was a very young man, no more than twenty-three or twenty-four, with the look of a recently qualified cadet, still trying to follow the rules to the letter, but without much experience of imposing them on others.
“I’d like to see the woman.”
“Are you a relative?”
“Yes, I’m her brother-in-law. My brother can’t see her. He’s completely devastated. He’s the one over there, the one pounding the car.”
The policeman raised his eyebrows with a look that seemed almost comical.
“I know she’s been identified, but I’d like to see her anyway.”
“Right. But I have to warn you, the body is in a very bad state.”
“I can imagine.”
“Yes, but the thing is we couldn’t get her out . . . with her legs.”
“I don’t care. I’m a doctor, I work in a hospital. I can assure you I’ve seen worse things than this.”
“Well, if you say so.”The policeman seemed more shocked than Juan as he leaned over Charo’s body and lifted the blanket, turning his head away.
Juan crouched down and tried to examine the body as a forensic pathologist would, noticing out of the corner of his eye that the young policeman had decided to avoid a second viewing of the corpse. The woman, aged about thirty-five, about five foot seven inches tall, weighing about sixty-five kilos, with dark hair and eyes, Caucasian, had indeed died as a result of a severed femoral artery.The right leg had been cut clean through. And that was all. Part of her left leg, to just above the knee, remained attached to the rest of her body. Her right thigh. Her left thigh. Her legs the color of caramel. Shards of shattered bone, bloody pulped flesh, shreds of skin. Her thighs. Her knees that were no longer there. Juan instinctively tried to loosen his shirt collar, but could find nothing to loosen—the top two buttons of his shirt were already undone, but still he felt he couldn’t breathe. Her head and torso were in good condition—she had simply bled to death and her deep crimson lipstick stood out obscenely against her pale, white face, tinged with mauve. Juan Olmedo opened his own mouth, gasping for air, as he stared into the dead woman’s eyes. Her black eyeliner had run, creating dark shadows under her eyes and some of her mascara had come off her lashes, sprinkling her cheeks with tiny black specks. Charo had c
arefully re-applied her lipstick, ignoring the rest of her make-up, before leaving Madrid, as she had always done the minute she was dressed when she left her brother-in-law’s house to return to her own. Juan recognized the color: it was very different from the pale pink, almost beige, lipstick she wore at family meals. He understood its meaning, and for the last time felt Charo’s legs, legs that were no longer there, around his neck.Then, without moving his shoulders or leaning towards the corpse, so that no one behind him would notice what he was doing, he put out his hand and quickly undid two of the buttons on her maroon blouse, revealing the edge of a lace bra of the same color. Juan couldn’t bear to look at it. He closed his eyes and bent his head forward, resting his forehead for a moment on the lifeless chest, the unbearably cold skin.
“Hey!” A second later he heard a gruff voice—not that of the young policeman who had left him alone with her—and footsteps approaching. “What d’you think you’re doing? Who are you?You can’t touch the bodies.The judge hasn’t arrived yet.”
“I’m sorry,” said Juan in a loud voice, hurriedly doing up the buttons of her blouse.“I didn’t realize.”
He stood up quickly and didn’t stop to see the furious expression of the older policeman, who was still berating him as he covered Charo’s body with the blanket again. He had already decided what he was going to do next. Nicanor had left Damián by the car for a moment and seemed to be heading in Juan’s direction, perhaps because he had seen everything, or perhaps because he had seen nothing and wanted to find out what had happened, but this didn’t seem reason enough for Juan to change his plans. He walked up to the ambulance team, talked to one of the paramedics, identifying himself, and requested a sedative for his brother. He then returned to the car. Nicanor was back with Damián, who was staring blankly into space, his arms hanging loose at his sides. He looked pitiful and useless, like a dirty, shriveled balloon.
“Here.” He handed Nicanor a foil packet containing two pills. “They’re sedatives. If he shows signs of needing them again, give him one of them, but only one. It’ll do him good.Take him home and stay with him. I’ll get there as soon as I can. I’ve got to stop off at the hospital to check they’re OK and pick up a few things. I was on duty when—”
“All right,” Nicanor interrupted, nodding. “That’s fine.”
Juan looked at them both for a moment, and was once again amazed at how alike they looked. Damián was shorter than Nicanor, wider and more heavily built, with curly hair and a very thick neck. He’d always looked a lot like their mother. Juan had no idea who Nicanor looked like, but he was sure that if any of the strangers around them were asked to guess which of the three were brothers, they would point out Nicanor and Damián rather than himself.And Juan, who had always resembled his father, thought that in some ways they would be right. He didn’t much like Nicanor, or Damián for that matter. Even now, he didn’t feel guilty for having slept with Damián’s wife for ten years. His brother’s wife. His wife.The ephemeral mistress of a stranger. But still, he took a step forward and embraced Charo’s only official widower.
“I’m so sorry, Damián.”
“I’m not.”
Later, recalling the scene, he wondered how he had managed to control himself, restrain every impulse, simply move back a few feet and watch as the red car drove away; then turn on his heels and go into the small quiet bar that had had to open its doors with an urgency that was unusual along such a deserted road. But, instead of killing his brother, this was exactly what he did. He usually drank whisky, but this time he ordered a double brandy and carried it out back to a rather unwelcoming terrace with a plain cement surface, three metal chairs—two painted blue, one green—where it was as cold as the barman had predicted. He thought the cold would do him good. He sat down on the green chair and drank half the brandy in one gulp. It didn’t make him feel any better. The deafening noise of a car horn sounding repeatedly on the other side of the building cracked his defenses, and he let himself go.The tears fell gently at first, sliding slowly down his dry face, but this miserable, concise, controlled weeping was choking him. He hadn’t wanted to collapse entirely, not in public, but now the sobs broke out involuntarily, allowing his lungs to take in air again, and the unbearable pressure inside his head gave way at last as a warm salty tide flowed down his tight, distorted face, his mouth open in a soundless cry.
When it was all over, Juan felt empty, but at least this made him feel he was back inside his own body. He looked up and only then did he notice the woman with the dyed blond hair and mink coat—the woman Nicanor had pointed out to him earlier. She and the young policeman were standing at the door to the terrace. Juan stared at them in surprise, unable to believe that the noise inside him had been so deafening that it had prevented him from hearing the arrival of two strangers who should never have seen him weeping. They stared back at him, both equally astonished, as if they couldn’t relate this explosion of grief with the sober, calm, severe figure of the doctor who had taken charge of the situation when his brother had completely collapsed.
“Hello,” Juan Olmedo greeted the blond with a feeble remnant of his usual voice, before lighting a cigarette.
Looking pale and exhausted (in a way that Charo never would again), the woman had deep shadows under her eyes and her lips trembled. On the outside, she looked the very picture of a traditional, middle-aged woman, the kind who would stifle even the most searing inner pain in order to behave like a “proper lady.” But thanks to years spent working in hospitals Juan was a shrewd observer of the suffering of others, and he realized that she was drawing on the last of her strength. He felt no surprise when she came towards him, very slowly.
“Could I have one?” she asked, jerking her chin towards the smoke from his cigarette.“I’ve run out.”
She lit the cigarette with her own lighter, took a long deep drag, and glanced round the small, bare space, looking very lost.Then she chose one of the blue chairs and moved it next to his.
“Do you mind if I sit here with you?”
“Of course not.”
The policeman muttered that he had to go, and left them.The two sat in silence, smoking their cigarettes right down to the filter, stubbing them out on the ground almost at the same time. She turned towards Juan.
“I’m the wife of—”The muscles in her neck tensed and her lips trembled. She was obviously about to cry but managed to squeeze a few more words out: “Well, I’m sure you . . .”
It was still only eight o’clock in the morning and although the sun was shining brightly by now, it provided no warmth. But Juan Olmedo was grateful for the light, the immaculate reflections in the dirty windows of the bar, the rows of empty bottles huddling in a corner of the terrace, the metal buckles of the woman’s leather handbag sitting on the cement floor. He witnessed her grief, comforting her automatically with an arm around her shoulders, as he did on weekend shifts every time he had to face another mother of a young boy killed on a motorbike.
“We were very happy, you know,” she whispered several times. “I thought we were happy.”
Juan didn’t say a word, but he stayed with her until another woman, who looked very much like her—also with dyed blond hair, also wrapped in furs—came to fetch her. He paid for his drink, got into his car, and drove to his brother’s house. That day was no worse than the next, which in turn was no worse than the one after that, and yet the woman stayed in his thoughts, during the silent family reunions dominated by Damián’s rage, with Alfonso, confused and desperate, wandering up and down the stairs, while Juan spent hours holding Tamara in his arms, the television playing pointlessly in the background, as the child cried, very quietly, still too weak to ask any questions. Even at the worst point during the funeral—the wooden box being lowered into its trench in the earth, tearing Charo away from him forever—he couldn’t stop thinking of that lonely woman, doubly abandoned. So he wasn’t surprised to find her one morning in the hospital corridor, when his own thoughts were still dominat
ed by the shapeless grey form of a body covered with a blanket.
“Hello, do you remember me?”
It was less than three weeks since they had met, but in that time she had lost a lot of weight, too much, even considering her situation—seven, maybe eight kilos, Juan estimated. She looked as if she hadn’t had a proper meal since that day, and from the dark rings beneath her eyes and puffy red eyelids, she probably hadn’t slept for more than six hours in a row. More than grief-stricken or even devastated by her loss, the widow of Charo’s last lover actually looked ill, with a face gaunt from total exhaustion and a body that could barely support its own weight.
“Of course,” answered Juan. Though it was painful even to look at her, he asked the standard question with which he greeted all his patients: “How are you?”
“Bad.” She smiled gloomily, making no attempt to soften the bluntness of her response.“Very bad, to tell you the truth.That’s why I’m here. I’d like to have a quick word with you, if that’s OK.”
“Of course. Would you mind waiting for a quarter of an hour, then we can go and have a coffee.”
The Wind From the East Page 8