She turned in her seat and looked at him, and Juan looked at her without seeing her, watching two fat tears sliding down her cheeks, her face different, yet the same, the exhausted, dusty face of a girl tied to a chair, her sweat-soaked hair sticking to her face, her eyes wide with fear and surprise, showing that at last she understood, that after all this time, she understood everything.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Charo asked, shifting in her seat as if she were uncomfortable.
For a moment, Juan Olmedo considered starting up the engine and driving quickly past his brother’s house, leaving the estate through the opposite entrance to the one they’d entered by, heading out of town on the first road he found, just driving, not stopping until he found a hotel three or four hundred miles from Madrid. But only for a moment.
“Tell me at least if you were in love with me.”
“You know I was, Charo.” Then it was she who didn’t want to say any more, so he went on speaking, because he wasn’t ashamed to tell her. “Of course I was in love with you. Like a fool. Like an animal. Desperately in love.”
Then he started up the car. A couple of hundred yards further on, he saw Damián, standing outside his house chatting to Nicanor. He double-parked, in front of a gap just big enough for Charo to get out, but she didn’t move.
“Look at him, so pleased with himself,” she said simply.“I bet Atletico won. Flash your lights, go on, he hasn’t seen us.”
Juan flashed the lights several times and Damián spotted them at last. He raised both hands, the left with three fingers up, the right with only one, before heading towards them.
“Three-one, no?” said Charo, smiling at the approaching figure. “What a dickhead.” Still looking in Damián’s direction and smiling, she said to Juan:“When’s your next night shift?”
“Wednesday.”
“I’ll come and see you on Thursday, at five.” Her husband was now beside Juan’s car, putting his hand out to open the door. She went on:“So you can get some sleep.”
“Well!” As he looked inside the car, Damián’s face was still jubilant. “What are you two doing here?”
“We’ve just been to the cinema,” Charo explained innocently.“We both wanted to see the same film and as you and Elena both left us on our own . . .”
“That’s good.The match was shit hot.Three-one against Bilbao, and it could have been more, because we played bloody brilliantly, really, bloody brilliantly.You’d have enjoyed it, Juanito. How was the film?”
“Well, you know, a silly romantic comedy. Nice, but I think Juan enjoyed it more than me.”
“I told you, he’s always been sappy.”
Charo gave Juan a kiss on the cheek before getting out of the car and he drove home, stunned, euphoric, but above all confused, shaken by a current of wild happiness that was dangerous, but also strangely pure. In the following days, he lived at the center of a storm, a fast, rosy whirl-wind that, after all those years, still induced a painless pressure that burned like a fever. This passion receded from time to time and in isolated moments of clarity, when he could see himself objectively, he again heard Elena’s voice, a rigorous analysis, both compassionate and cruel, that made him compare what was best for him with what he longed for. He knew he would always follow his desire.The sound of the doorbell made him jump out of his skin, and the telephone’s ring made his stomach leap up into his throat, and during his shift on Wednesday night he was so concerned that a little girl who’d broken her arm falling out of a bunk bed should be comfortable and was so nervous when resetting the bone before putting it in plaster, that the nurse who was working with him stared and asked him if he’d had a vision of the Virgin Mary or something. “No, but I think I’ve got an appointment with her tomorrow afternoon,” he said, and the nurse laughed and said maybe he shouldn’t put any more limbs in plaster for the time being. “You’re likely to cripple someone today,” she added before she left.
On Thursday, at five to five, he prepared himself for disappointment, but she arrived on time.When the doorbell rang, he had to count to ten before standing up, and his legs were still trembling when he opened the door and found Charo standing there, with her impeccable red lips, and her body dressed all in white.
“Aren’t you going to offer me a coffee?” she asked as she came in and dropped her handbag on the floor.
“No,” he said, pressing her against the door, a hunger in his hands that was over ten years old.
“That’s good.”
That night, when he was alone again, Juan Olmedo had reached certain conclusions.The first and most painful, the one he would rather not have had to accept, was the crushing superiority of the real, flesh-and-bone woman, over the manageable, idealized version that he had created so meticulously over the years.While the universe shrank to fit the narrow confines of his bed, and Charo screamed with pleasure, Juan Olmedo would have given her everything, down to the last drop of his blood. Hours later, he still shivered as he remembered it.“I’m done for,” he thought to himself, smiling. Completely done for, in love with her to the tips of his fingers, as he had always been and with a woman he didn’t trust, who he would never trust. In those moments he thought that this last conclusion was more important than the one before, but time would prove that it was not so. Because from that night on, the only rule, the only aim in his life, would be defined by the color of a lipstick.
The return of the west wind during the last days of February, ruining the promise of an early spring, was unwelcome to everyone except Juan Olmedo.While his niece complained loudly that her anorak felt heavy, more annoying and cumbersome than ever after almost three weeks of sun and light jackets, he looked up at the cloudy sky with pleasure and welcomed the gusts of wind that left their damp imprint on every window. The return of weather more appropriate to the season seemed to pacify Alfonso. Over the past few weeks he’d shown the kind of demanding, capricious, violent mood swings that Dr. Gutiérrez at the daycare center had warned Juan about when she predicted the effects of a combination of the east wind and good weather.The cold wind calmed Alfonso, but also made him a little depressed and gloomy. Juan wasn’t worried because he was used to Alfonso’s abruptly changing moods. What he hadn’t been prepared for was how emotionally fragile he felt himself while the east wind blew, abandoning the seagulls to their bewildered fate.
Returning to night shifts did him good. He’d had a feeling it would, which was why he’d never thought of using his lottery winnings as a way of getting out of working nights for a year. And however much the extra money would come in handy now that he had so many expenses, it wasn’t just a question of money. The thought of being awake and working while all around him the world was unplugging itself with drowsy fingers didn’t appeal in itself, but the pleasure of an inverted routine—leaving the hospital at eight in the morning, going to bed when everyone else was getting up, sleeping three or four hours then still having almost the whole day left—more than made up for it. In the early days, he’d greeted the unaccustomed pleasure of having free time in the middle of a Tuesday or a Friday almost as if it were a prize. Later, that feeling became stronger when every night shift was followed by a morning in bed with Charo. Now he didn’t have anything like that to look forward to, but he was still sure that working some night shifts would do him good. He had everything planned, although things didn’t turn out exactly as he’d expected. Because Dr. Olmedo, always conscious of his new domestic responsibilities, swapped better-paid night shifts at the weekends for shifts during the week, and this meant that when he got home, he was never alone.
What began to happen on those mornings and afternoons that had promised to be so tranquil, so indulgently peaceful, was so disconcerting that he ended up blaming the east wind, blowing savagely outside as if it were trying to unstitch the sky. He had been sure, or thought that he was sure, that he wasn’t attracted to Maribel. This was what he’d thought when he saw her for the first time—that she was an attractive woman he didn’
t feel attracted to. He appreciated a certain level of strategic padding in women, and over the years he had gradually increased what he allowed himself to consider an excess, but Maribel was a step beyond this. Her face was too round, her cheeks too chubby and too rosy, like a bouncing baby bursting with health, which was emphasized by her clear eyes and her innocent, even guileless expression. Her body followed the same pattern: her tight clothes revealed the firmness of her flesh, and the healthy flush that colored her cheeks also gave her arms, her legs, and her cleavage, a fresh, almost appetizing look, like a newly washed apple. One day, to his surprise, Juan Olmedo found himself thinking that she must have great breasts, and admitted without surprise that she had a fantastic backside, although her calves were as thick and muscled as a cyclist’s; but his interest went no further than these basic observations. Maribel didn’t interest him because there was nothing interesting about her, neither her appearance, nor her story, nor her aspirations. This was why he hadn’t even let himself be bothered by the discovery—even though it was logical, given the situation they were in—that his cleaner seemed to be entertaining the mad idea of seducing him. He even felt a little sorry for her when he saw her arrive all done up, looking plumper than ever in her new clothes. He felt sorry for her, and for Andrés, but he never thought about his own reaction, because he was sure he didn’t find Maribel attractive. Or at least he thought he was sure.
“Good grief, what are you doing here?” Maribel had a bit of a shock the first time she saw him coming down the stairs in pajamas in the middle of the day.“Are you ill?”
“No, no,” he assured her. It was only then that he realized she would always be there on his days off, but he wasn’t bothered by it, and apologized for not having told her in advance.“I’ve just finished a night shift. I’m sorry, Maribel, I should have warned you, but I didn’t think.When I get back from work you’re usually already gone. I’ve been working all night so I don’t have to go back until tomorrow.”
“Oh, yes, I remember you said something at the beginning, when I started working here. So is it always going to be like this?”
“Well, yes, more or less. I’ll be doing one night shift a week, occasionally two, because I want to try to have Saturdays and Sundays off, so that Tamara isn’t left on her own with Alfonso.”
“Right,” she said. She thought a moment and then smiled. “Well, just let me know in advance.” And before he’d had time to wonder why she was smiling, she went on to explain:“I’ll need to know whether to cook lunch for you or not. Because you’ll be eating here, won’t you? The thing is, when the children aren’t here I don’t cook anything. I just have a sandwich and that’s it.”
“Well, don’t put yourself out for me. I’ll try to bother you as little as possible.”
She said nothing, only smiled again, and again he didn’t wonder why she was smiling. He went to the kitchen, made himself a coffee, got dressed, walked into town along the beach, bought a paper, had a beer, got back home at three, had lunch on a tray in front of the TV—“It’s only steak and fries and salad, I’m sorry I didn’t have time to make anything else,” she apologized—and lay on the sofa, reading, until his niece got back from school.
A week later, he was already up when Maribel let herself in with her key, at around twenty to one.
“I’ve brought some stew I made at home,” she announced, taking a Pyrex dish from her plastic bag.“Stews are always much tastier if they’re made the day before. I hope you like it. I can cook some rice later to go with it.”
A couple of hours later, the aroma coming from the kitchen smelled so good that he felt embarrassed about eating the food alone, so he asked Maribel in a tone that was respectful, almost formal, in order to dispel any possible misunderstandings, if she wouldn’t like to set the table for the two of them in the living room instead of eating on her own in the kitchen. She nodded, and as she went to and fro, first carrying a tablecloth, then plates, glasses and cutlery, Juan Olmedo noticed that, instead of her usual espadrilles, she was wearing high-heeled shoes that considerably improved the look of her thick calves. He smiled to himself, observing the contrast between the smart shoes and her pink, bleach-spattered housecoat, which was so tight that the row of buttons strained across her front, offering tiny glimpses of flesh.What he was never able to identify later was the exact moment when the tightness of the uncomfortably stretched fabric ceased to be a threat and began to seem more like an enticement. Nor did he ever manage to pinpoint precisely the origin of the pressure that seemed to weigh down on them as they sat down to lunch, making the air they shared seem dense, solid, unbreathable. Although he always switched on the television, forcing himself to watch the screen and eat in silence, although he made sure he complimented her admirable cooking—“This is delicious, Maribel, wonderful, really, I’ve never had such a delicious stew”—without turning to look at her, there came a time when his stubborn silence began to deafen him, and his head started to feel as if it were lined with cork. He realized that the strict, excessively cool stance he had adopted as a sign of respect towards her was having the opposite effect, making him seem haughty and almost contemptuous. So he decided to ignore the possible consequences of these lunches with her and enjoy the benefits, looking at Maribel, joking with her, laughing at her jokes, and watching her eat, as she raised her fork to her mouth, parted her lips, took a mouthful and chewed with her mouth closed, then swallowed, while his desire, as yet unacknowledged, twisted these innocent actions into something more obscene.As they chatted, the tension in the air didn’t diminish but it changed character, becoming warmer, friendlier, and Juan Olmedo had to admit that, despite all his prejudices, he was enjoying her company.
One month ended and another began, with the east wind still reigning supreme. The sky was so unchangingly blue that it looked like a painted vault, and the sun shone constantly although the wind still threw the occasional tantrum, as if it needed to remind them of its existence. The weeks passed and Juan Olmedo was enjoying chatting to Maribel, seeing her arrive, watching her from a distance, not wanting to admit that this might one day become more than a game.Although he was still convinced he wasn’t attracted to her, he had begun to notice certain things. The new confidence, for instance, that had gradually replaced Maribel’s previous, desperate efforts to attract him, an assurance that grew with the passing weeks.While he acted like a haughty fly, moving every so often to avoid the fine, glossy threads being spun into an increasingly thick web around him, Maribel, like a fat, cunning spider, stuck doggedly to her task. She was in no hurry. From time to time, Juan needed to prove to himself—and to her—that he was fully in control now that he was playing at home, on his own turf. He had the feeling once more of being a motionless object around which a woman circled, but this time it caused him no anxiety, no pain, no dark premonitions. He didn’t find it alarming, quite the opposite. Being desired felt good, he reflected, intrinsically good, and this was the best he could expect from the situation with Maribel—a clear expression of her desire and a pure, innocent, harmless bit of fun. She would probably be the first to tire of it, he thought.
But there were other mysteries he couldn’t unravel, details he couldn’t quite understand. He wasn’t attracted to this woman, but whenever she got down on all fours right by his feet, searching for the remote or picking up a toy—any excuse really—not only did he start ogling her rear, but more than once he actually raised a hand, as if he were about to slap it. He forced himself to lower his hand immediately, because he wasn’t attracted to her. But when, at the end of January, he began to notice that she was losing weight, he was sorry to see that the gaps between the buttons on her housecoat were getting smaller, threatening to deprive him of the sight of the bare flesh beneath. He wasn’t attracted to Maribel, but at lunchtime on the last Tuesday in February, when the east wind blew up an unbearable storm before finally taking its leave, he was distracted from his plate of stuffed squid—which was delicious, like everything else she’d c
ooked for him—by the strong acid fragrance of a peeled orange. And when he looked to his right, he saw that she was sucking a segment between her lips and a trail of sweet, sticky juice was sliding slowly down her neck, losing itself in the furrow between her tight breasts.This image, the obliging slowness with which the pale, fragrant juice slid into her cleavage, made his tongue hurt, his poor, tortured tongue, and all he wanted to do was sink his teeth into her flesh, to taste it, lick it until every last trace of the orange was gone.
This seemed excessive, especially in view of the fact that he certainly wasn’t attracted to her, so he was tempted to blame it on the east wind. But although he greeted the arrival of the west wind with joy, hoping that with its return everything would go back to normal, the west wind did not return the compliment.
“What a morning!” said Maribel, shaking her umbrella as he opened the door for her. He wasn’t attracted to her, but for weeks now, even though he hadn’t got any sleep during his night shift, he always woke up a little before one o’clock.
“And I’d brought you some arranque for lunch! I mean, it’s March already, and it’s been so warm lately that I thought . . . But no way, winter’s going to stay with us for a while.”
“It doesn’t matter, Maribel,” said Juan, smiling, savoring this new proof of her solicitude. “I love arranque and I haven’t had any since at least September. I’ll enjoy it just the same, even if the weather is cold.”
The Wind From the East Page 29