“Then he kept on saying he wanted to come back, he’d really like to live with us again, so we could be together as a family. He was always talking about the money Mama got from her grandfather’s land. He said it didn’t sound like much, but it would be enough for him to start a business. He could get a loan for the rest, or find a partner or something.”
“What would you like best—one of those shops where they develop photos, or a stall selling roast chicken? They’d both be pretty cheap to set up, especially the roast chicken stall, because all you have to get is the roasting machine, and you could just hire that, you wouldn’t even have to buy one. If we did the photo place, I could go halves with my brother-in-law—he knows all about it because he worked in one of those shops for years. He’s always saying that if he had the money he’d set one up.” Andrés listened, enthralled, the way he used to listen to fairy stories when he was younger, knowing that ogres didn’t exist but still believing in them a little, knowing that magical princesses weren’t real either, but dreaming of the most delicate maiden with golden hair.“Of course, the roast chickens would be a good business in summer, with all the tourists who don’t feel like cooking, but in winter, well, I don’t know. Another thing I thought we could do is set up a little shop, one that’s part of a chain. The problem is, all the cheap ones sell clothes or sweets or perfume, and you’d be less interested in that, wouldn’t you?” Andrés nodded. “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and it’s important you like whatever we choose, because it’s obvious—if your parents own a shop, you’ll end up running it when you grow up.”They spent a long time like this—the father talking, the son listening—viewing their magnificent castle in the air, opening all the doors and windows, exploring all the nooks and crannies, looking out from the balconies and seeing a different world: a house, a family.“I’m your dad, aren’t I? And you’re my son.That’ll never change.” The fantasy acquired color and depth, and seemed so real that Andrés felt as if he could climb inside and live there forever. And then his father asked for his help: “Could you do me a favor and tell Mama about our plans? We can’t do any of it without her.”
“I even tried to convince my mother that he was right, I don’t know if she told you.” Juan shook his head. Andrés went on, his cheeks burning: “It all sounded so great—we’d live together, they’d have the shop, and everyone would be happy. First of all, I said to Mama that she could set up a business with the money from her inheritance instead of buying a flat. She said I was crazy and asked what kind of business I thought you could set up with four million pesetas. I told her that some people thought you could, and she said maybe, but they must be the sort with plenty of money who could afford to take a risk.‘What if I set up a business and it didn’t do well?’ she asked, so then I told her I’d seen my dad and he had lots of ideas, and he said he was sorry about us.Well, she went straight to the phone and started yelling.”
Andrés could hear her from the kitchen.“Haven’t you done enough to me already, you bastard? And now you go filling your son’s head with nonsense.There’s no way I’m going to agree to meet you, I’m not interested in anything you have to say. I don’t believe a word, do you hear me? I never want to see you again, and I want you to stay away from Andrés. Just go to hell!” And she hung up and went in search of Andrés. She found him in a corner, crouched by the fridge.“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded, still furious but with tears in her eyes. “Have you forgotten what your father’s like? He’s never taken the slightest interest in you, never given us a penny, never even called you on your birthday! I don’t understand you, Andrés, I really don’t understand, sweetheart. How could you believe all his lies? Don’t you realize the only thing he cares about is the money? He’s trying to find a way of taking it from us.” But Andrés withstood the torrent without flinching. He was prepared for every word she spat out, every tear that slid down her cheek. His father had predicted the scene; he’d given his son both the poison and the antidote. “She won’t want to listen at first,” he’d told him,“because she’s got a thing for that bloke, the doctor.They’re seeing each other, aren’t they? I knew it. She’s a fool, I bet she’s getting her hopes up. As if he’d marry her! Stupid woman, she’s crazy—even her mother says so and she loves her more than anyone, because who’s going to love her more than her own mother? He’s taking advantage of her. He’ll mess around with her until he’s bored and then he’ll be off. He’s a pig, I’m telling you, sleeping with a poor woman who’s only working there to earn her living. I bet he gets her to go down on her knees to scrub the floors, doesn’t he?” He stopped and looked at Andrés, whose face was burning.“I’m your dad, Andrés,” he went on, putting an arm around him and hugging him,“I’m your dad and you’re my son and that’ll never change.”
“I told him I was sorry, I hadn’t been able to do anything, and he said I wasn’t to worry, we had plenty of time. I just had to keep talking to Mama and telling her that I wanted him to come back. He said that sooner or later she’d give in, she’d always been crazy about him, everybody said so. He thought she was still looking at apartments and hadn’t decided which one to buy, so I . . .”Andrés stopped. He wasn’t sure if Juan was looking as calm as before because everything seemed blurred.“I told him. I told him everything.”
His father had suddenly become very jumpy, very on edge. He’d called the waiter, paid for their drinks, patted Andrés on the shoulder and left without even waiting for his son. “No, no, it’s OK, don’t worry,” he said when Andrés finally caught up with him,“I just suddenly realized I had to go. I forgot I had to be back in Chipiona by now. See you the day after tomorrow, OK? Come to the bus stop with me, I haven’t got the bike today.” His father’s tone was back to normal and he was smiling again. “Well, this apartment makes things a bit more difficult, doesn’t it? Because of course when Mama signs the contract . . . I suppose she could sell it later on, but . . . It’s a shame. I think I should go and have a word with her myself. What do you think?” Suddenly Andrés’s whole world seemed to have collapsed around him. Everything seemed vague, unreal, a sham. He’d been living in a dream for over a year now, enjoying the benefits of a life that would never be his. He hadn’t understood this until his father appeared, and began talking about concrete things—a photo lab, a machine for roasting chickens, a little shop, a business, real things that were within his reach; a life without pools or gardens, without the posh accent of the capital. His father stood on solid ground, he knew the texture of the earth and the stones, not like Andrés—he was treading on sand, walking along a fickle beach that gave way beneath his feet. He’d been as stupid and naive as his mother. He could no longer believe in Sara, or in Tamara. It bothered him when they took an interest in him, asking him things—what film to watch or what pudding to have. “What do you care?” he thought to himself as he chose the film or said he’d rather have ice cream than cake.“What do you think you’re going to get from me?” Juan Olmedo, who was so polite, such a good person, got his mother to scrub the floor on her knees, and his father knew it—he’d said so. Suddenly everything was turned upside down. How could he have been so stupid? Why did he believe that the arrival of Sara and the Olmedos had really changed his life? How had he let himself be deceived by their easy friendship and affection? He wasn’t like them, he never would be, and one day they’d grow bored of him,Tamara would start going out with one of the idiots in their class, and Sara would find another little boy to keep her amused. “When did you say your mother’s signing the contract? What time does she finish work? Where does she normally leave the development—it has a few entrances, doesn’t it? Does she normally walk home along the road?”“No,”Andrés answered,“she usually goes past the fish farm, round the back of that bar—the one that’s been closed for years.”
“He said he was my father, and I was his son, and nothing could ever change that, and I believed him. He said he wanted to wait for her after she finished work, to talk to her and make her ch
ange her mind.That’s what he said.” Juan Olmedo was looking at him with the same expression as before but Andrés could no longer see him, trapped in the repetition of that single thought, the treacherous truth that had completely annihilated him:“It’s all my fault. But he’s my father and I’m his son, and he kept on saying that nothing could ever change that.”
“But it’s not true,Andrés,” said Juan, speaking for the first time in a long while.“It’s not your fault, it can’t be.You’re only twelve years old and he tricked you, that’s all.You didn’t know any better.Your mother is the only father you’ve ever had.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Of course it is.” Juan spoke softly, slowly. “It’s the only thing that matters.”
Andrés couldn’t reply. He collapsed over the table, clutched his head in his hands and burst into tears. It was a long time since he’d cried like this, until he was exhausted. Not even on that September afternoon, when he was busy keeping his eye on the time as he swam at the pool, thinking he ought to leave if he didn’t want to be late for his father, and the security guard had arrived, looking white as a sheet, and told him his mother had been taken ill and Juan had driven her to hospital. He’d fallen apart when he’d seen her lying there in her hospital bed, pale, with all those tubes stuck into her, so small and alone. He remembered how she’d smiled and opened her arms to him. But even then, he hadn’t been able to shed all his tears. All his feelings of guilt and betrayal had remained locked inside, haunting his days as he rode off on his bike, trying to find his father, and all his nights. And then there was that terrible morning when they finally caught him, when he was arrested and put in prison, and Andrés had thrown his bike into the skip. He wouldn’t have known what to say even if he had found his father.And he didn’t know what to say when he saw his grandmother, looking thinner and more hunched than before, as she hugged him in the middle of the street. He didn’t know what to do, or where to go in all the hours he spent wandering about town, longing for the intensity of pain rather than this deadening numbness. Sometimes, he would even kick a bench or punch a rubbish bin, just to feel something. He needed to be alone because he was not the person he used to be.When he was with his mother, he performed the actions and rituals of a distant normality that now seemed like someone else’s life. She pretended that she didn’t notice, watching him as he ate listlessly, or sat in front of the television and stared at the ceiling, or smiled at the wrong time. But she never said a word.Time expanded and contracted around him, like the cloud of doomed mosquitoes. Had he been four or five years older, he would have left, gone as far away as possible. But he couldn’t do that, so he’d succumbed to paralysis. Until Juan Olmedo rang the doorbell that afternoon, and drove him to the beach, and bought him a Coca-Cola in a bar, and gave him an opportunity to talk.
Andrés had cried until he could cry no more, but he didn’t know whether telling Juan everything had made him feel better or worse. His eyes were swollen and his cheeks felt numb. Outside, it was almost dark, and the dim, yellowish light inside the bar seemed to submerge them both in a miniature sea.
“He’s my father,” he said for the last time, his voice now meek and weary. “And I’m his son. It’s true, whatever you say. But we—you, Sara, me and my mother—I don’t know what we are.” He stopped and looked at Juan.“That’s the problem—I don’t know what we are.”
“It doesn’t matter what we are.” Juan sounded so sure he might have spent all his life preparing this answer.“What matters is how we are.And we’re fine. And we’re going to go on being fine.That’s all that matters.”
Neither of them spoke on the journey back. Juan stopped the car and Andrés got out without saying a word, but as he closed the door, he said goodbye and thank you. He felt exhausted. Somehow he got the key into the lock and turned it. Inside it was warm, and smelled of cooking, and as he came in, his mother called out to him in the absent, sing-song tone she used when she was busy. Andrés went into the kitchen and found her making ratatouille. He put his arms around her, pressed his face against her apron and told her everything.
Perico the teddy bear died, disemboweled by his best friend, at four thirty in the morning. Having committed the crime, Alfonso Olmedo threw the remains to the floor and ran off. His brother Juan was too scared, too confused and too drunk to be able to think, so he sat motionless by Damián’s corpse for some time, unable to decide what to do next. He’d always worried about Alfonso. He couldn’t remember a time when his concern for him had ever disappeared entirely, and yet, as happens to parents of young children, his anxiety eventually became a habit, a duty he no longer paid much attention to. This is why children drown in swimming pools while their families are sunbathing, why they get lost in shopping centers, their mothers not noticing that they’ve let go of their hand for a moment; this is why they become addicted to alcohol or heroin while their parents boast to their colleagues about how well they’re doing at school.
Juan Olmedo dialed the number for the police, but he hung up before anyone answered. His whole body started to shake more violently than before and he broke into a sweat.Then an absolute awareness of his situation emerged from some remote part of his brain. He hadn’t pushed his brother. Damián had fallen down the stairs all on his own, cracking his skull on the bottom step. Juan hadn’t pushed him, but no one knew this, and there was no one else around because it was late, and they had both been very drunk. He thought things over again, slowly this time. Even if Juan hadn’t intervened, even if he hadn’t touched him, Damián would still have died.And Juan would have been calling for an ambulance so that another doctor could certify that Damián was dead and take charge of the corpse, so that he could feel he’d done everything he could after the accident. The accident. He took several deep breaths, then picked up the phone again. Instead of dialing the emergency number, he called the hospital where he worked. He wanted to be on familiar ground, to feel protected and understood, comforted by his colleagues. He felt a sudden, terrible thirst, an overwhelming desire to drink in order to regain control of his body and focus his mind. He knew that one more drink would, for a time, mitigate the effects of all the others he’d drunk earlier, so he swallowed it down fast, without searching for a clean glass or getting ice from the freezer. Only then did he go looking for Alfonso.
He couldn’t remember a time when his concern for his younger brother had ever disappeared entirely. Later, he could not even remember having forgotten about Alfonso. But as he carefully stepped around Damián’s body, getting blood on his shoes so that he left bloody footprints on the stairs, Juan Olmedo realized that he’d have to explain the sawdust as well. Alfonso had reacted very badly to Charo’s death. He’d stopped eating and sleeping, become listless and lost all his hair. There was no knowing how he would react this time. Juan had spent his life watching him, observing him, trying to guess what he was thinking or feeling, what he wanted or feared, but he’d never managed to establish any systematic pattern to his behavior. The specialists treating Alfonso had warned Juan that he never would.Alfonso’s reactions could only be predicted in basic, rudimentary processes of stimulus and reward, but when he found himself in a situation outside these parameters, when he was facing something new and unfamiliar and didn’t know whether he would receive a punishment or a reward, he gave in to the most random impulses, and these were rarely logical. The hospital was nearby, so the ambulance wouldn’t take long to arrive. When Juan entered Alfonso’s room, he was already composing his version of events, the one he knew he must memorize so that he could repeat it later, word for word. But despite his apparent calm, the instinctive, mechanical efficiency that felt as if it belonged to someone else, he couldn’t help feeling deeply moved, and sorry, when he found Alfonso lying motionless, face down on his bed. His brother didn’t look up but as Juan approached he huddled against the wall, cringing as if he were about to receive a blow.
Juan didn’t merely want to reassure him and comfort him. Earlier, as he empti
ed his glass in one gulp and cursed himself for having smashed Damián’s skull against the step when he was sure that fate had already done the dirty work for him, he realized that the only real risk he faced was the deliberate, simultaneous murder of Perico the teddy bear. This was why he had come in search of Alfonso. He wanted to make him doubt what he had seen, confuse him, convince him that all he’d been doing was examining the wound, and that this was why he’d lifted Damián’s head and held it before laying it gently back down on the step. It shouldn’t be too difficult.Alfonso was docile and obedient—he believed whatever he was told by the people he loved.That evening, however, when he finally turned round and held out his arms, it was Juan who started to cry, and Alfonso who stroked his back and wiped away his tears, while Juan stammered that it was horrible, Damián had fallen down the stairs and he thought he was dead. Then the doorbell rang and the eldest Olmedo brother went to answer, appearing so distraught and incoherent that the doctor, who knew him, wondered for a moment whether he shouldn’t deal with Juan first before seeing to the wounded man.
The Wind From the East Page 61