She closed her mouth, but a mischievous smile still played on her lips. While he dressed slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed, Juan looked at her closely, as if he’d never seen her before. Close up, and with the lights on, she didn’t look much like Charo, but her face had a similar disturbing beauty—full, dark and stormy—a strange perfection in features that might have seemed ugly in another woman.The angle of her jaw, the shape of her chin, her cheekbones, the line of her nose, had all the harmony of a Renaissance painting, the balanced geometry of a marble sculpture, punctuated by deep black eyes that burned dangerously. She would never have been cast as the ingénue in a film; she would, on the other hand, have made a perfect villain, a femme fatale, for any man too inexperienced to fully understand the complex depths such a role entailed. For Juan knew that, despite everything, in spite of the fatal aura that surrounded everything she did, Charo had always been a good person. Elia probably was too, though her face lacked the strategic fleshiness—full lips and a slight plumpness of the cheeks—that had given his sister-in-law her mysterious combination of perversity and sweetness. But Elia’s body was like a copy of the one he had lost, an earlier, younger version, showing the same lack of proportion that had characterized Charo’s body before she had a child: her breasts and hips had seemed too big for her slim arms and narrow waist, the sharp edges of her shoulders and collarbones jutting out beneath taut, smooth, glossy skin. Elia, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three, was observing him now as she lay stretched out on the bed. Juan tried to imagine her in ten or fifteen years’ time, when her body had undergone the changes that had balanced out Charo’s body, making it rounder and more solid, thickening her waist, her arms, and her thighs, but pleasing him no less. He found Charo attractive whatever she looked like. Sometimes, while she was still alive, when she still had a future, Juan liked to imagine her at fifty—well preserved, carefully made up, her hair always immaculate, wearing tight, fitted dresses that showed her body still had curves, a kind of rebellious and disconcerted Liz Taylor, because that’s how it would have been, and he would still have found her attractive.
He had almost finished buttoning his shirt when he felt a sudden, surprisingly intense desire to take off his clothes, lie down and pull Elia on top of him again. He turned slightly and placed a hand on her belly. She seemed to straighten suddenly and look at him differently, half-closing her eyes to soften her shrewd expression, a kind of pleased, pleasing alertness that convinced Juan Olmedo that she had guessed what was going through his mind. “What is it?” she asked him. “No, nothing,” he answered, and though this momentary show of insight had truly moved him, he managed to get up a fraction of a second before she came towards him to make him change his mind. Elia withdrew instantly and began to play with her hair, showing him that she was not bothered by his decision. Juan smiled to himself, because this unspoken struggle, this quiet power play, had restored Charo to him much more vividly than his forensic deconstruction of her body. He knew this kind of combat well, except that Charo would have won, she always did, ever since she’d learned to control him by pulling the elusive strings of his desire. Now he was pleased he had resisted. He had never intended to dance on anyone’s grave, and he wasn’t prepared to hate her; he didn’t need or want to, and he certainly wouldn’t allow himself to. He suspected that the memory of his lost love would inevitably fade one day; Charo’s features, her voice, her words slowly receding until everything was buried beneath the fine, cold sand of the passing hours and days, the weeks and months. He was determined to experience this moment; to become this serene figure, untroubled by emotion, watching the last of the man he’d been slip away with the last memory of the woman he’d loved. The image made him feel dizzy, a vague combination of anxiety and expectation, although he knew that the sands of time would eventually bury him as well. He had always been the most intelligent of the three.Though Charo had discovered it too late, and Damián had never realized it, Juan had always been the most intelligent of the three; and that was why, that night, in that comfortably anonymous room, with its red plush wallpaper and simple double bed, he hurriedly finished dressing.
“Will you be back?”
The question rekindled the desire still throbbing in his head.
“Of course,” he replied, and he meant it.“Some day soon.”
She got up from the bed and came towards him, conscious of her nakedness with every step. She put her arms around him, and kissed him on the mouth as if she hadn’t been paid for it. Juan responded enthusiastically, because he liked her very much and because he was in a good mood. Later, as he made his way outside, the first breath of the damp morning air released the knot inside him, and he was able to breathe freely for the first time in hours. As he closed the car door and turned the key in the ignition, he realized that the woman, Elia, or Aurelia, had probably misinterpreted his departure. He’d left because he liked her and he wanted to preserve the desire that now coursed within him as much as his new smiling exterior, the good mood that surprised him more than anything else that had happened that night.
Over the three weeks that had passed since he first caught sight of her in the dimly lit interior of the bar, he’d thought often of the girl in red who looked like Charo from a distance. He hadn’t obsessed about her, of course—he had too much experience of obsession already—but her image had remained with him without tormenting him, and he was forced to calculate how long it had been since he last slept with a woman. Seven months of celibacy is a long time but, at the age of forty, he was too old to face a sexual debut casually, or without the sneaking fear that he might be making a fool of himself. He would have remained in this state of paralysis had Miguel Barroso not suggested going for a drink that afternoon, because his wife had gone to Seville with the kids, to spend the weekend with their grandmother, and it was a Friday, and he couldn’t think of anything better to do. Juan agreed, but it wasn’t until they got to the bar and found a very attractive young anesthetist waiting for them that Juan realized what was really going on. He’d seen this woman with his friend several times over the last few days, in the cafeteria, or in the corridor. Juan said hello to her, ordered the mandatory drink, and prepared himself for the thankless role of third fiddle in a song made for two. Miguel and the anesthetist gazed at each other, smiling, brushing against each other, completely oblivious to Juan even as a spectator. He spent the next three-quarters of an hour reading the labels on all the bottles lining the shelves on the back wall of the bar, but when he tried to leave, the woman grabbed his arm, insisting that he stay with them for dinner.When she went to the toilet, Miguel pleaded with him not to leave them alone too soon: “Shit, don’t do this to me, Juanito. What’s it to you?” So Juan phoned home and Tamara sounded delighted by the prospect of a takeaway pizza for supper. He also called the babysitter who promised she’d be right there and would take care of everything. These assurances didn’t make the evening ahead seem any more enticing: he was going to have dinner with two consenting adults who were married, almost middle-aged, whose previous experience of adultery had not diminished their enthusiasm for the courtship ritual. And this was exactly what happened. By the time the first course arrived, the prospective lovers had fired an entire arsenal of signals at each other across the table—eyelash fluttering, sighing, daring gestures, stroking the air as if it were skin—and everything they said began to sound like an endearment, until the conversation slid gradually onto even more awkward and embarrassing terrain. Then, as their desire spread across the tablecloth like spilt wine, as it strengthened with every passing minute, threatening to eclipse him completely, Juan Olmedo suddenly felt implicated in every sentence he heard, in the nervous tension that distorted his companions’ voices and made their hands shake, in the furtive activity of their legs and feet that hinted at plans beyond this table cluttered with dirty plates and empty glasses, this reassuring, cheap restaurant.
Excitement—ordinary, happy sexual excitement—running throug
h his body with the crazy discipline of a colony of ants, was the first feeling he became aware of, though not the most intense. Then, nested within its shiny, luxurious wrapper, came envy, nostalgia, loneliness, the temptation to feel sorry for himself and the arrogance that overcame it. He felt a sudden burst of vitality, an imaginary torrent of clean red blood cells activating a sophisticated system of tiny valves and ducts as fine as threads, the organic, chemical labyrinth that fired both his excitement and his awareness of it. Desire made him selfish and it made him strong. He found himself thinking that the girl in red was a woman like any other, and that his money was his own and he could spend it on whatever he chose. He no longer needed arguments, excuses or moral considerations of any kind. After coffee, he got up and quickly said goodbye; by then Miguel was quite happy for Juan to leave. Juan felt anxious, but he didn’t let it show as he left the restaurant and got into his car, only just keeping within the speed limit as he drove past the turning he took every day to get home. He was anxious and he couldn’t do anything about it, but she didn’t seem to notice as she got up from her stool and headed straight towards him when he entered the bar. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. Juan’s eyes swept her earlobe, her jaw, the curve of her neck, the glossy skin of her cleavage, and the sight calmed him.
He would have preferred to follow her immediately, wherever it was that women like her took men like him, but he didn’t dare say a word. He didn’t want the girl in red to know it was his first time with a prostitute, and he would rather forget his one previous experience, his spectacular failure, aged twenty, when faced with a pair of magnificent legs and a lacy, black body stocking. He could still remember Damián’s taunts, the ridiculous refrain that ran through Juan’s mind for months—“What’s dignity got to do with your prick?”—every time he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, every time he and Damián bumped into each other on the stairs or in the hallway, every time he passed Mingo’s bar and saw them there, Nicanor and Damián laughing like idiots, sitting at a table strewn with bottle tops, chanting that stupid, annoying little question, “What’s the answer to this: dignity and your prick—what do they have in common?” But in those days, Juan’s dignity and his prick were so closely linked that they sometimes ended up being one and the same. He would have liked to forget this, not because he feared being unworthy of a Juan Olmedo who now seemed more authentic, purer, better than the one produced by the past twenty years, but because the claustrophobic memory took him back to a youthful insecurity that he wasn’t quite sure he’d ever overcome. He was no longer intimidated by naked women, but he was wary of this girl even before she undressed. He followed her to the bar and asked her what she’d like to drink before ordering one for himself, using the same tone, movements and words he would have used with any other girl in any other bar. Secretly, he wanted to tell her not to behave like a prostitute; he wanted to fuck her and he didn’t mind paying for it, but he didn’t think he could endure any purring, moaning, endearments or pouting. He didn’t dare say so, but he didn’t need to—she was very well trained. She must have learned to guess exactly what her clients wanted, because she gave him exactly what he needed, which was the reason for his good mood.
He got up late on Saturday and as he had breakfast, he noticed that his mood hadn’t deteriorated during the night; on the contrary.Alfonso in the meantime was playing with the TV remote control—a source of enduring fascination ever since he’d learned to use it—altering the volume and changing channels, switching endlessly from one lot of cartoons to another, or turning the sound off and on. Tamara was upstairs in her room with Andrés, trying unsuccessfully to get to the end of a difficult computer game that exasperated her so much that Juan could hear her screaming and stamping on the floor just above his head. But despite the noise, the chaos surrounding him like a storm, he was able to enjoy his breakfast in peace, savoring memories of the night before: the delicate skin at the edge of her armpits, the smooth channel between her breasts, the almost invisible line of pale down on her flat, taut stomach, her toenails painted silver, the small red spiral tattooed on her right buttock.These images accompanied him during the day, as he did the shopping, prepared lunch, chose a film for them all to watch, sweetening his exhausting weekend as father, mother, house-keeper, tutor, and occasional therapist. On Monday, he resisted the tug of desire that made the memories sharpen and plague him more frequently, replacing the details of her body with moving pictures, the reactions of his own body instead of her touch, smell, weight. He was expecting to feel bad about it at some stage, to discover that he’d made a mistake, to hear the harsh voice of his betrayed youth; he thought he might regret what he’d done, realize that it made no sense to fantasize about a whore, however much he liked her, however good she was. He expected all of this, yet nothing happened, and on the Tuesday as he left work, his prick and dignity by now quite dissociated, he decided to put up with the confusion and headed for Sanlúcar.
“I was expecting you yesterday,” she said.This time she didn’t even have to walk across the bar to get him.
“Well, I’m here today,” he said, hearing a new confidence in his voice.
He enjoyed it as much as the first time, and as much as he would the third, the fourth, the fifth, and all the other times he would go to her during the autumn and winter that followed.The physical euphoria—beneficial, real, solid—lasted throughout, but his good mood turned out to be less enduring.A couple of months after he’d met her, Elia had become an essential part of his daily life, as essential as the washing machine or the boiler. By then, Juan Olmedo had discovered that she wasn’t dangerous at all—not that bright, a bit of a gossip, sweet, sentimental and very jealous, she was just a good girl who’d appeared by chance in his troubled life. She was uncomplicated and could absorb Juan’s inner turmoil without offering even a pale reflection of it; he didn’t know whether to be pleased or sorry about this, but one thing he was sure of was that Elia closed a circle. Alfonso, Tamara, the hospital in Jerez, his friend Miguel, a house in a small town, a beach on which to discover that crabs walk sideways, and her; points on the map of a moderate life, which could have been worse and was the best he could have chosen at that point in time. Not a great comfort on a winter’s night, but then winters in the south are just as warm as spring in the north.
When he realized that he’d followed them to the entrance of the most famous, most elegant banqueting suite in all Estrecho, he was furious with himself for having been deceived yet again. Damián announced loudly that they’d arrived, but then walked straight past the large glass doors, the crystal chandelier and regal staircase with its ornate banisters that were the envy of every bride from Cuatro Caminos to Tetuán, and headed down a different staircase, this one narrow and foul-smelling, that led straight off the street under a neon sign, GAMES ARCADE, with half the letters missing.The clicking of snooker balls, and the sharp metallic crash of the foosball, guided them towards a huge basement.The air was thick with smoke and aggression, at odds with the sweet tinkling that came from a row of slot machines. This was home to a throng of cocky teenagers, switch-blades bulging in their back pockets, a louche, contemptuous smirk on their lips and a girl, almost always much younger and heavily made up, hanging around them to light fags, watch over beers and hold snooker cues when the boys went for a piss. At the back of the room, above a black door, a pink neon sign indicated the entrance to the bar.
Damián and Nicanor walked through the middle of the room, ignoring the admiring glances of the players who seemed to part down the central aisle like a guard of honor. On that evening in late May, as he followed Damián and Nicanor, Juan had had the uncomfortable but familiar feeling of being out of place, a third-year medical student who felt nervous in front of this gang of louts even though they probably hadn’t even finished school yet—that is, if they hadn’t been expelled. These hardened habitués were, nevertheless, banned from going through the black door, where a badly spelt handwritten sign stated that there wa
s no entry to anyone under eighteen.Aware of thirty pairs of eyes following his every move, Damián, who had just turned nineteen, pushed the door open with the arrogance bestowed by his great age, while somewhere upstairs a wedding march began. It was eight thirty and Juan, here for the first time and having therefore never yearned for the forbidden black door, felt a sudden stab of melancholy, a shameful remnant of childish vulnerability, as he heard the familiar, saccharine chords. Meanwhile, a wizened old vixen with dyed-black hair scraped back into a bun and huge hoop earrings, smiled, welcoming him to this most miserable circle of hell.
“Conchi’s place,” as they called it, was as long and narrow as a railway carriage, a dank tunnel with curving walls. Despite the pretentious decor—a confused mix of nautical motifs and hunting prints in gilded frames that you could tell were plastic even from a distance—it was a dive. Parts of the domed ceiling were covered with egg cartons painted gold, a legacy from the previous manager of the premises, who had tried unsuccessfully to turn the snooker hall into a nightclub, also installing a small dance floor at one end. His successor, Conchi, had shown more imagination and better judgment by making it a kind of improvised illegal brothel, under the inoffensive guise of a games arcade. She ran this thriving business with her husband while the landlords of the building turned a blind eye. Nicanor told Juan all of this in a hoarse whisper while Damián pretended to dance with the skinny old bird. Forced to hear the murky secrets of the place, Juan could easily imagine what a wonderful source of customers the snooker hall was, packed with frustrated teenagers who spent years fantasizing about what went on behind the forbidden door.This was the recent past that his brother was trying to distance himself from, affecting a casual familiarity, a calculated combination of indifference and interest.The smirking Nicanor was attempting to do the same, but with less success. He hadn’t yet donned a policeman’s uniform, but he followed his friend Damián around like a faithful dog.
The Wind From the East Page 16