“She says it’s not important.”
For the first time in her life, Sara thought about this woman, tried to put herself in her place, and only then did she begin to understand Vicente’s point of view. In the long pauses in the conversation, she became aware of the exact magnitude of an astonishing chain of errors, and of the true price of things, all those pretty, often expensive, sometimes very expensive things, that had no importance, not just because they were part of an honest, transparent game—“You like it, so I buy it for you. You’re happy, so am I. I love you, you love me, and money is for spending”—but also, above all, because they had never compromised him.The money in itself had never been significant to him, because it had never committed him to anything, just as all the half-promises and understandings had never committed him to anything; the ambiguous nature of a relationship that was public but also secret, an engagement that was also adultery, a confused love that had grown and become more complicated, thriving on its contradictions, adopting the sophisticated lifestyle of the educated bourgeoisie, providing the best seats for Arcadio Gómez Gómez and Sebastiana Morales Pereira at bullfights where they wept when the loudspeakers played the rousing opening of the Internationale. But none of this was important, because neither Vicente nor his wife found any valid reason to consider it important.
“At first she was beside herself. She hit me and shouted at me, then she started smashing things,” he said, his voice sounding strange, almost unrecognizable, as he covered his face with his hands. “Then she flung herself on the floor, grabbed my legs and started crying. She said she was going to kill herself, that she wanted to die.You can imagine. And then she said it wasn’t important.That she was prepared to wait for as long as it took me to get over it, she wouldn’t cause trouble, she’d let me live my life. But I mustn’t leave her, whatever I did, because I’m the only man she’s ever loved, and she’d go mad if I left her, she’d kill herself.” He suddenly took his hands away from his face, and leapt up after Sara, grabbing her by the arm.“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. I’m going home, I suppose,” she said. Standing in the living room that she had made her own by filling it with books, plants, and some of her own belongings, Sara had gathered up her coat and bag like a guest who’d just realized she’d outstayed her welcome. She shook her head so as not to meet his eye, but at a certain point she had to. “I don’t want to end up crying too. Not today. I think you’ve had quite enough people crying on you today.”
“Listen, Sara,” he said, holding her by the wrists. He pushed her gently until she was leaning against the wall and didn’t let go. “I’m crazy about you, you know that. The fact that I haven’t been able to . . . sort this out, doesn’t change a thing. I’m crazy about you,” he said again.“You know that.”
And the worst part was that she knew this was true—she knew he was crazy about her. And she knew that Vicente González de Sandoval was much more than a weak man. He was also a conscientious lover, a generous man, an amusing travel companion, a good friend, admirable in many ways and adorable in many others, the boyfriend she had always wanted. Because of this, although she tried, she could never leave him. Because each time she saw him again, paler than ever, even more shrunken inside his shirt than the last time she’d told him she couldn’t go on, her heart told her that she wouldn’t be able to control herself, to rid herself of the need to go to him. It was love, and it was glorious, and damaging, and glorious all over again, all at the same time. Then, sooner or later, two plane tickets would appear, and everything would start all over again. First it was NewYork, then Cairo, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Havana, and finally Athens, where, one morning, Sara Gómez Morales couldn’t get through her breakfast.
She was pregnant. She couldn’t believe it, but it was what the pieces of paper said.They had turned almost grey because she had folded and unfolded them so many times.They gave the results of her two tests: the first one, which was going to be negative, but was positive, and the second, which was going to be negative too because the first one just had to be wrong, but was also obstinately positive. Between the two tests Sara, unable to accept that forgetting to take a little yellow pill could cause such a catastrophe, found that she was paralyzed. She didn’t want to think, and she didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, and when she made all the arrangements for an abortion—on her own—she wasn’t even aware of taking a decision.
And indeed, she hadn’t made the decision.Without thinking or discussing it, without analyzing her situation, she was simply playing a part, taking one more step in the banal, dog-eared script of a life that seemed so familiar it must be hers, the truest life, the only real one.This point was the convergence of Doña Sara’s pearl necklaces,Arcadio Gómez Gómez’s cape turned inside out, the apron with which Sebastiana vainly tried to shield herself from the ugliness of the world, Señora González de Sandoval’s undignified resistance, and her husband’s weakness of character. They all held up before Sara’s eyes the image of an exploited, betrayed woman, abandoned to her humiliation with the unbearable burden of an innocent child who had no future. Better the fate of Señorita Sevilla of the Robles School of Typing. Sara could almost hear their voices, their thick, sour pity, the good advice they whispered in her ear—better the fate of Señorita Sevilla, condemned always to be Señorita and never Señora, with her plastic hair bands and six pairs of polished shoes, her average fate as an average single woman, averagely capable, averagely content, averagely happy.
Later, Sara would never be able to pinpoint exactly the moment when she woke up, but she knew it wasn’t because of a kiss from a handsome prince. Simply, at a certain moment, she looked up and in the mirror saw the typing teacher, and didn’t recognize herself in that face. So she looked in another direction, and saw the poor wretch that inhabited the popular songs her mother used to sing when she did the cleaning, and found this image as gloomy and useless as the other. She concluded then that she was not, could not be, the grey woman weeping at night as she rocks the humble cradle of her sins, nor the single woman with a modest wardrobe who uncomplainingly rubs the feet of another woman’s husband a few days a month.This wasn’t her, it couldn’t be. She’d never faced up to such a simple, obvious truth.This wasn’t her. It could never be her. She imagined the screenplay of her life ripped to shreds at the bottom of a wastepaper basket, and heard herself say aloud, “It’s over, Sara, it’s over.”
It was so unfair. She knew it was unfair, but nobody had ever bothered to be fair to her. She knew from bitter experience that children don’t always adapt, that they couldn’t endure everything, but she decided that her body would be the home to which her child could always return, whether empty-handed or loaded with gold. She knew she could be making a mistake, but it was her own risk, a risk that wasn’t in the script and would crush with a single blow the average future that awaited her. She knew no one would understand, and of course no one did understand, neither her parents, nor her brothers and sisters, nor her godmother, to whom Sebastiana appealed in a final desperate attempt, giving Doña Sara the opportunity to hang up the phone violently, terminally. At work they didn’t understand why she was leaving so suddenly.The last call she made from her office was to lie to Vicente. “I’ve had an abortion,” she told him,“but I shouldn’t have done it, it was a mistake. I feel terrible and I never want to see you again.” As overwhelmed as any man would be, even a strong one, at the mere mention of the word pregnancy, he could find nothing to say, so she said goodbye, just goodbye, and hung up.
By that morning, she had it all planned. For weeks, she’d been doing sums, covering whole pages in columns of figures that all tallied, meek, cheerful accomplices on the bottom line. She had saved a lot of money because she hadn’t spent a penny on herself for years.There was also her new flat, in the district of La Vaguada, which she’d been furnishing over the past two years out of a vague prudent instinct while she waited for her parents to make up their minds to move.They didn’t wan
t to live so far out of town, but they had no choice, because their daughter was now the head of the family.When she explained things to them, with a smile that did nothing to hide her determination to impose her own will, they did not even try to object. In fact they were more worried about other aspects of their daughter’s decision.
“But at least tell him,” pleaded Sebastiana, screwing up her face and tugging at her bun. “He’s the father, and he’s got money.You should let him know and he’d help you.”
Sara smiled, shook her head, and kept going, hanging pictures, positioning lamps, unrolling rugs, seeing Arcadio out of the corner of her eye shaking his head even more emphatically at this new development that was completely beyond him. She was more affectionate than ever towards him, and to her mother, and every day she assured them that it would all work out. It was easy, all she had to do was wait, this was what all the others had done—her mother, her sisters, her sisters-in-law, the wives of the men in her life, simply wait, furnish a nursery, buy a cradle, and shawls, and a pram, it was so easy. She was more worried about other things, vaccinations, colic, chickenpox, how far her savings would stretch, getting a good job again afterwards; or the first bad mark in math, a bloodied knee, a cruel, painful question. Perhaps, by then, she might be able to answer, she might know where the father was, perhaps not, but anything was better than having two mothers. It was easy, all she had to do was wait, wait and look after herself.
But she wasn’t like other women, she never had been. One afternoon, after lunch, she felt a terrible, searing pain in her middle as she carried the plates to the kitchen. They slipped from her hands while her body screamed. She sat down and tried to calm herself, gripping the arms of the chair so hard her knuckles were white. She ordered the pain to stop, because she was only five months gone and she hadn’t waited long enough. It would stop, it had to, but it didn’t. She’d had an ectopic pregnancy, the young man—he looked so young—in the white coat told her in the murky dawn beneath the hospital lights.The fetus wasn’t where it should be, in the uterus, but in a Fallopian tube, which was what had caused her to go into labor prematurely. Sara stared at him unseeing; she heard him but she didn’t listen. She was inside a body that didn’t feel like hers, her own treacherous, enemy flesh.A betrayal. But the young man went on talking:“You’re still fertile,” he said,“the left ovary won’t function any longer, but the right one hasn’t been harmed and one is enough, you can have more children.” “No,” said Sara, and he looked at her strangely. “I won’t be having any more children,” she added, but didn’t say why. Children have no price, she thought to herself, that’s why Vicente can’t buy them for me.
She didn’t say this to Vicente when he came to her house one afternoon, a couple of days later. By then she feared that nothing would ever change, that life would always be an armchair, a tartan blanket, sitting utterly and irrevocably still.
“What are you doing here?” she asked without getting up.
Arcadio and Sebastiana were standing at the door. They quickly slipped from the room, as if Sara’s curt greeting had chased them away.
“I’ve come to see you,” he said.And it was still him, with his old assurance, the calm confidence of a master of the universe.
“Who called you?” asked Sara, jerking her chin in the direction in which her parents had disappeared.“Him or her?”
“Neither,” answered Vicente, taking a low stool on which Sebastiana used to rest her feet, and placing it in front of Sara’s armchair. He sat down, his head on a level with her knees.“It was me who called. I called straight away. I wanted to speak to you but your father answered the phone and I found out you hadn’t had an abortion. I thought it would be better to wait a while, until the child was born, or until you were willing to talk to me again. Since then, I’ve called every week. That’s how I found out about this.”
“Right,” she said, with a sarcastic laugh. “My father’s like that. He always gives in to people who give orders.”
Vicente didn’t respond to this barbed comment, and instead searched for her hands beneath the blanket, but he didn’t find them, so he rested his head on her knees and went on speaking without looking at her.
“I’ve been feeling awful without you, Sara, these last few months. I’ve been wretched without you.” He paused but still she said nothing, so he went on, hoping that Sara, who had broken out into a sweat despite herself, would realize that he was telling the truth. “I’ve got it wrong so many times, I know. I’ve behaved like a fool. I’ve made mistakes, so many mistakes, but I can change.”
He shifted position, sitting up and looking at her. She returned his gaze, and saw that he was smiling. She realized that he thought his power over her was still intact, and that he was hoping she would smile back, but she couldn’t force herself to smile, and when she saw his lips, she shuddered at the memory of the love she’d felt for him, a reckless, endless love that was still trying to survive, even if only in the warm recesses of her memory. She realized she would have liked to please him, to smile at him, but she couldn’t.
“It’s amazing!” she heard herself say.“What strength of character! If only I’d known, I’d have got pregnant deliberately, and sooner, when there was still time.”
He moved away from her as if he had a sudden bad cramp. Now when he looked at her, his face was different. She’d never seen him look like that before, so scared, fearful, eyes moist. She wondered what had happened, why she wasn’t the one on the verge of tears, as usual, why it suddenly seemed as if he were the one with everything at stake.
“Get out,Vicente,” she said, her voice steady.“Get out. Leave me alone. Please.”
But she couldn’t watch him leave. She put her face in her hands, elbows resting firmly on the arms of the chair, and waited until she heard the front door shut. Immediately afterwards, her eyes still closed, she heard her mother’s voice.
“What’s wrong with you?” demanded Sebastiana, crossing the living room and shaking her until Sara looked her in the face. “Have you lost your mind? Go after him right now, and throw yourself at his feet, you fool.You’re such a fool!”
“Were you listening behind the door, Mama?”
“Well, of course I was, what do you think? I don’t know what’s wrong with you lately, but somebody’s got to take care of you.”
“Leave me alone, Mama.”The voice—someone else’s—that had taken up residence in her throat, was so harsh that it easily silenced her mother. “Leave me alone, all of you. Please, just leave me alone.”
Andrés never liked Bill. He knew the others—Tamara, Alfonso and his mother—didn’t like him either, but they didn’t have to put up with him ruffling their hair. Because of this, and because each time Bill did it, it seemed like a mocking, even threatening, gesture, Andrés disliked him more than anyone else did.This was why he was the most pleased of all when Sara decreed, without a hint of regret or sadness in her voice, that the intruder was being dispatched.
He wasn’t too sure what exactly it was that now seemed safe and sound, free at last of the American’s worrying presence. He wouldn’t have known how to describe the safe new place that formed the backdrop to his life—a new world, a new family, a new landscape. He knew, however, with complete certainty, that he liked it, whatever it was.And he knew that Sara liked it too. She was the only one who seemed to realize what was going on. Andrés may not have been able to find the words to express what he was feeling, but he often thought of the Olmedos, of Sara and his mother, as people stranded together in an alien land, people who were lost but who, when they met, had been saved, because they found they could understand one another, speak the same language, laugh at the same jokes. They’d found a place to stay where they no longer felt lost, even though it wasn’t the place they had originally come from.
Perhaps he was more sensitive to movement than anyone else, because he had always stayed in the same place, the same small town where he was born and had grown up, a comfortable, narrow horizon
that had now surprisingly unfolded like a huge sheet that could cover the sea and whose edges were out of sight if he looked straight ahead. But he wasn’t looking straight ahead, only glancing out of the corner of his eye, when he discovered something even more worrying than Sara’s involvement with the American, something that would confirm his suspicions.
“Do you know something, children?” Sara said at the end of Maribel’s birthday lunch, after the songs and presents, when they were still sitting at the table but no one could eat any more cake.
“In the paper yesterday,” she went on, with the mischievous look she used when she had good news tucked up her sleeve, “I noticed that they’re showing that film about gladiators in Chipiona, the one we didn’t get to see last summer because we couldn’t get tickets, do you remember? Do you want to go?”
Then there was shouting, please, please, could they go, they’d do their homework tomorrow. Maribel was sitting at the end of the table with Sara at the opposite end; Juan was next to her and beside him was Alfonso with the children both sitting opposite them.Waiting to see what his mother would say, Andrés noticed Juan and Maribel glance at each other first, rather than looking at him and Tamara as they pleaded to be allowed to go. The glance lasted only a split second, but Andrés noticed it, and he noticed that they both smiled an identical smile.After another infinitely brief moment, they looked at the children.Their expressions were identical, and it was obvious they would let them go to the cinema.
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