The first week of October, Andrés came to school every day. He sat at his desk next to Tamara and did as she did, but when he opened his books he didn’t read, when he picked up his pen he didn’t write, although he heard the teacher he didn’t listen. The second week, he missed two days of school. The third week, he was only there on the Monday.This was when Tamara mentioned it to Sara, but Sara told her not to worry.
“He’s upset, it’s to be expected. He probably wants to wait until everyone at school has forgotten what’s happened, and make sure they’re not going to bother him about it.”
“But nobody’s bothered him.”
“It makes no difference.” Sara smiled. She didn’t seem at all worried. “Anyway, Andrés is very bright. He can easily make up the classes he’s missed later on.”
“But he tells Maribel he’s going to school and then he doesn’t turn up.”
“Stop worrying about it, Tam, seriously. He must know why he’s doing it.”
Tamara had often thought that adults were stupid, but she’d never been so sure as she was now. So, when Andrés didn’t show up at school the following Monday, she waited until late morning and then went and told the teacher she wasn’t feeling well—she thought she was going to be sick and her head really hurt. As she’d expected, the teacher said she could go home. Then she picked up her bike and went to look for Andrés, but she didn’t find him at the sports track he’d taken her to the afternoon they’d bumped into his father, or the old road that was so good for racing because cars didn’t use it any more, or in the pine woods between the beach and her house, or at the port, or in any of the places they went together. She cycled around town not knowing where else to look, and was riding around aimlessly—she couldn’t go home yet as Maribel would be there and school wasn’t out yet—when she saw him, sitting on a bench with his rucksack beside him, in a new part of town near the industrial estate.The place was deserted.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as she sat down next to him.“You should be at school.”
“So should you.”
“Have you come to get me?” She nodded and he got up. “You’re an idiot.”
He put his rucksack on his back and walked off.Tamara watched him cross the square and wondered where he’d left his bike. It was too far for him to have walked, especially as he now had a brand-new, lightweight, silver mountain bike. He’d got it back in July and it was exactly what he’d always wanted. “What d’you think?” he’d asked as she admired it and gave it a test ride. “Wow!” she’d said as she got off. “It’s really cool! Did your mother buy it for you?” “No, my grandmother,” he’d answered, “she’s owed it to me since my birthday. It was in January, and she said that was a very bad time of year for spending money.” Since then,Andrés had taken his bike everywhere. He’d cleaned and oiled it, and spent most of his pocket money on it. He’d bought a tiny ultra-modern pump, a wing mirror, and a new, more powerful headlight. But here he was, walking back into town without his bike.Tamara went after him.
“Where’s your bike?” she asked as she caught up with him and dismounted, wheeling her bike alongside him.
“I haven’t got it.”
“Did you take it to be repaired?”
“No,” he said, looking straight ahead. “I’ve thrown it away. I didn’t like it.”
Tamara didn’t believe him—he must be completely stupid if he thought she was going to believe that. She said goodbye and set off home. At the first set of traffic lights she looked back at him. He was still walking. She cycled on and suddenly caught sight of his bike in a dead-end street lined with low houses.A little boy who was too small for it was trying to ride it, watched by a smiling woman holding a baby. She was sure it was his, so it must have been stolen.That was the only possible explanation and Andrés was probably just too embarrassed to tell her.Tamara waited until the woman took the baby inside and then went up to confront the thief.
“Hey!” she said, trying to sound as threatening as she could.“Where did you get that bike?”
The little boy didn’t look scared. He stared at her, smiled, and proudly rang the bell a couple of times.
“My dad gave it to me,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” Tamara was disconcerted, but unwilling to give up so easily. “Well, it belongs to a friend of mine.”
Now the little boy looked scared.
“Mama!” he shouted.
The woman came out and explained that the boy’s father had found the bike in a skip, and if she didn’t believe her she could just look at the paintwork—it was all scratched.
Tamara cycled home, suddenly feeling very weary. By the time she got there, her eyes were stinging. Juan was in the sitting room looking at the paper, with Alfonso beside him watching the TV. She turned the volume down.
“You’ve got to do something, Juan,” she said, looking at the floor. “Andrés is bunking off school. He tells Maribel he’s going, but then he doesn’t turn up. He spends all morning just sitting on a bench near the industrial estate, and don’t tell me that’s normal because it isn’t normal. It’s weird.”
Tamara looked up, and in her uncle’s eyes she saw a reflection of her own alarm. So she told him everything. It was very important.The fog was thick and dirty, it filled you up and it blocked out the sun.
Sometimes the mass was dense and black, sometimes it was grey and more diffuse, splitting unexpectedly, dividing into a million black dots against the sky, then coming together again and returning to its original form—a dense black cloud that appeared alive, elastic, suspended in the air by some mysterious law.
“What is that?” Juan asked.
He had returned from the bar carrying a glass in one hand and a bottle of Coca-Cola in the other, and now stood by the table staring at the strange phenomenon.
“Mosquitoes,” Andrés said confidently, not looking at Juan. “They’re angry because they’re going to die.They know winter’s coming, and the east wind’s made them all go mad.They’re attacking a wasp.”
“A wasp?”
“Yes. It’ll manage to kill quite a few of them, but the rest of them will finish it off.”
Juan Olmedo sat down at the table and pushed the Coca-Cola towards him, waiting for Andrés to lose interest in the mosquito cloud, which was still expanding and contracting outside the window. Then suddenly it vanished, along with its invisible trophy.
“That’s it,” the boy said.The mosquitoes had disappeared, leaving the windy beach behind.“They’ve killed the wasp.”
“What’s going on, Andrés?”
The boy turned back to the window, as angry with himself, with Juan, with everything, as the mosquitoes and the dying wasp and the east wind. He didn’t really understand what was happening to him. When he thought back over the past few months, he remembered odd details, fragments of conversations, isolated images, but he didn’t dare put them into a logical, coherent sequence.Yet in his heart of hearts, he knew what they meant, the way the elements all belonged to the same story and linked together to acquire meaning, even though he was unwilling to link them. He’d also known he couldn’t avoid it, and that even if he didn’t tell his mother or Tamara the truth, he’d eventually have to tell Juan. He sat up straighter in his chair. Juan was watching him expectantly, little suspecting that whenever Andrés saw him, or heard him, or whenever somebody mentioned Juan’s name, he remembered the words that had somehow issued unbidden from his lips:“I suppose you’ll be getting her to scrub floors on her knees again, won’t you?” This was all he’d said, and then he’d blushed as he’d never blushed before, the redness thickening around him like a dark clot, gagging him and making it difficult to breathe. He still felt this way as they sat in the little bar at Punta Candor, the town’s furthermost beach.When the doorbell rang and he went to answer, he was at home on his own.“Mama’s not here,” he’d said, about to close the door in Juan’s face. “She’s gone out to do some shopping.” But Juan quickly stepped in. “I haven’t come to s
ee her,” he said, “I’ve come to see you.”Andrés didn’t want to go with Juan. He didn’t feel like a walk or a Coke, and he certainly didn’t feel like talking. He knew what would happen, he knew it, yet he offered only a feeble excuse: “I’m watching TV,” he said stupidly.“You can watch it later,” Juan replied,“we won’t be long.” So Andrés fetched his jacket, telling himself it made no difference, if it wasn’t Juan, it would be someone else—his mother, Sara, his teacher, the headmaster—and he’d had enough, he was tired of wandering around all day, his mind held hostage by a few words, a few images, a few details that he didn’t want to put in their proper order. His mother’s lover was still looking at him, calmly, expectantly.“I suppose you’ll be getting her to scrub floors on her knees again, won’t you?”Andrés decided to tell him everything.When he spoke, his voice sounded strange, as if it belonged to someone else.
“It was me,” he said, and stopped. Juan Olmedo nodded slowly, his face quite expressionless, as if he were determined not to be surprised or shocked by anything Andrés said.“It was me who told my father everything.”
“I’m your dad, aren’t I? And you’re my son. Nothing can change that.” The first time, Andrés didn’t dare tell him.The first time, he didn’t even know that his father had come from Chipiona to see him. It was his grandmother who phoned:“Why don’t you come over for tea?” she’d said. “I have a surprise for you.” Andrés thought it must be the bike—she’d promised him one so many times since his birthday in January that his mother grew cross every time he mentioned it. “Why on earth do you want a new bike? You already have one that works perfectly well.When it breaks, I’ll buy you a new one.You don’t need to go asking other people for one.”These days, all his mother ever thought about was saving her money, and there were some things she’d never understand. Andrés had been taken aback when he’d found his father at his grandmother’s house. They were both in the living room, all smiles, as if they thought he’d be delighted. “What about the bike?” he’d asked. “What are you going on about a bike for?” his grandmother said, getting up to give him a kiss. “Your father’s here! Aren’t you pleased to see him? Surely you love him more than a bike!” “Well, no,” thought Andrés, “I don’t.” But he didn’t say so. He sat down beside his father and agreed to have a chocolate milkshake, because he knew he had no choice. He’d last seen his father over two months ago, the afternoon he and Tamara had gone to the stationery shop, and he was pretty sure that was about the longest he’d ever spent with him, the longest conversation they’d ever had, and even then, his father had said just enough to make Andrés feel deeply ashamed. He’d always loved his father from a distance, loved a version of him that was secret, hidden, and which the man himself had destroyed, publicly, in one fell swoop.
“He . . . I . . . He said he missed me, that everything was going to be different.”
When his grandmother had finally stopped going on about how well he was doing at school, his father took out his wallet and started searching through it. Andrés thought he must be looking for money, and he was surprised because his father had never given him a penny, but what he showed him was even more of a revelation. It was a photograph. Not a very good one—maybe the flash hadn’t gone off, or it simply hadn’t illuminated the corner where his father was posing, a white bundle in his arms. “Bet you’ve never seen this before, have you?” Andrés shook his head. He’d never seen it and didn’t even recognize the place where it had been taken, the furniture, his father’s wide smile, the clothes his mother was wearing as she stood beside her husband, looking happy, fat and very young. “That’s you,” said his father pointing at the white bundle, “you were a week old.What do you think of that?”Andrés held the photo and took it to the window as if he wanted to see it more clearly.“I’ve always been very proud of you, you know,” his father went on. “And I didn’t even know how well you were doing at school.Your mother never calls, she never tells me anything. I have more of these,” he added as Andrés handed the photo back to him without a word. “If you like, I can bring them another day, so you can take a look. In one of them, you and me are on the beach, playing soccer. You must have been about two. And in another one, I’m taking you on my horse around the fair. That’s my favorite. Would you like to see them?” Andrés nodded, without really knowing why. Maybe he was just being polite, or maybe he really did want to see them, to see if what his mother had told him was true—that at first, when he still lived in town, his father used to take him out, buy him presents, and play with him.Andrés couldn’t remember any of it, all he could remember was absence, eyes that looked past him without recognizing him. He still felt very uncomfortable with his father; he needed to see the photos to know more about him.“I’ve got to go,” he said after a while,“my friends are waiting.” “OK,” said his father,“but let’s arrange to meet another day? And I think you deserve a present for getting such good marks at school.”
“He gave me a new bike, a really brilliant one. He’d never given me anything new before. He talked a lot about when he and my mother were going out, and about when I was small, when we all lived together. Mama’s never talked about that, and it was nice to hear about it.”Andrés glanced up. Juan Olmedo was still looking at him as calmly as ever.“He was my father, wasn’t he? He is my father.”
It was such a lovely bike, really light, and it shone in the sun as if it was made of silver. “Do you like it?” his father asked, and laughed when he saw how emphatically his son nodded. “Actually, it’s my bike too. My girlfriend bought it for my birthday last week, and I’ve hardly used it. I really wanted a motorbike, but she said she didn’t trust me, I’d kill myself on a motorbike and anyway, they’re much more expensive. But I’m glad she gave it to me, because now I can swap it for your old one, OK?” It was such a lovely bike, really light, and fast too.Andrés was so happy that he leaned the bike against a tree and hugged his father. “Thanks, Papa,” he’d said. His mother had told him that “Papa” was the first word he had ever said, but Andrés didn’t think of this as he hugged his father, and he didn’t realize it was the first time he’d called him that since he’d been old enough to remember.The bike was so beautiful and light and fast and silver that Andrés couldn’t think of anything else.They took turns riding it around a square in town that was deserted during the siesta, and timed themselves against the clock.Andrés had fun in a way he never had with his mother—not exactly more fun, just different, the type of fun only fathers and sons share. But just before they parted, his father said something else:“I wish I could have bought you a new bike myself,” he’d said. “I wish we’d gone to a shop to choose it together and all that, but I’m broke. I’ve done everything wrong, and I’m sorry. I’ve ruined everything—my family, my wife, my son—and now I’ve got nothing.Anyway, that’s life, I suppose.” He looked at Andrés, smiled, gave him a kiss and rode away on his heavy old bike. His words echoed in Andrés’s ears as he watched him leave.
“He said he was sorry about everything, about having left us and not taking an interest in me. He said he’d tried to put things right once, but my mother had made it too difficult. I believed him, I thought he was telling the truth. After all, he’s my father, isn’t he? I’d never had a father, and it was nice to have one. It was fun to go out with him and joke around and play soccer.”
“Do you have a soccer ball?” his father had asked one afternoon. Andrés fetched his ball and they’d practiced taking penalties at the sports ground Andrés had cycled round with Tamara only three months earlier, when he didn’t know his father and would never have imagined they could get to know each other so quickly. It was the beginning of July and his father had said how lucky it was that the holidays had come and Andrés could go out whenever he pleased without having to tell his mother where he was off to.“When you go back to school, we won’t be able to see each other so often,” his father said, slipping a little anxiety into his son’s mind. He never spent very long with Andrés—maybe only an ho
ur or two—but as the summer wore on, he saw him more frequently. It suited them both, Andrés’s absences were short enough that no one, except Tamara, really noticed, and when she asked where he’d been, he always said he’d been out on his new bike, and Tamara seemed satisfied with his answer. His father often told him that he couldn’t stay long “because of that bitch,” meaning his girlfriend.“She’s a pain in the ass. I work all day long but she still doesn’t stop nagging me. She doesn’t even pay me, because she says the bar belongs to both of us, and that if I want to live there, I have to work there too, but then she goes and keeps my tips. Only gives me a thousand pesetas from time to time, as if I was a little kid. I can’t stand her, you know, I really can’t stand her.”“Why don’t you leave her?” Andrés asked. “Where would I go?” his father replied helplessly, suddenly looking very small. “I’ve got nothing, no qualifications, no training, and the way things are nowadays, what work would I get?” He sounded so forlorn that it didn’t occur to the boy to think that his father was only thirty-three, he was young and healthy, and that other people’s fathers took whatever work they could find without complaining about it.“If only your mother would listen to me,” he said at last,“it would be different. I could come back to live with you, take my time looking for a job, or start a business with all that money she got. How much is it, by the way? Where does she keep it—at home? Oh, in the bank, right. Well, well.”
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