Marcelo had to make a real effort to behave in a civilized fashion and not make a fool of himself.
“Of course it is about Andrés, and about you, and about your husband … and about me, Isabel. I can’t keep pretending nothing is happening.”
Isabel cocked her head fleetingly toward the house, as if she feared that Guillermo or his watchdog, Publio, could hear her. Marcelo found that brief, intensely anxious gesture of her face as lovely as a shooting star. Even in those circumstances he couldn’t help admiring her.
“You don’t have to do anything, Marcelo. In fact, I’ve regretted having gotten you involved, several times these past weeks. You are a good man, but I need to trust in someone who can protect Andrés. And I can only trust that task to you. Although you don’t have to remain here, if you don’t wish to.”
Marcelo felt confused. She was talking and smiling; truly smiling, not as a trick to win over his reticence.
“I didn’t say … that I didn’t want to do it … I was only hoping that…”
Isabel placed the leather glove back on her hand and leaned over the rosebush with her pruning shears.
“I know what you were hoping, Marcelo. And believe me when I say I am flattered. But I won’t buy your loyalty with lies. Do you remember the man who escorted you that night? I am in love with him. And he with me. When all this ends, we plan to start a new life.” She looked up, her gaze as clear and clean as the roses she held in her hands. “And I believe that you should do the same. You will have my eternal friendship and gratitude. That’s the most I can offer you.”
Marcelo swallowed hard. He felt vile, dirty, and sad.
“Having your friendship will always be better than having nothing,” he said, forcing the most painful smile of his life.
* * *
Months passed, and nothing happened. Guillermo Mola was still alive; the routines of the house hadn’t altered. Even Isabel seemed happier and less pensive than usual. Marcelo came to believe that perhaps the group of conspirators had seen the wrong in what they were plotting and that, simply, they’d aborted the plan.
But toward the end of 1941, something happened that shattered that apparent placidity.
It was ten in the morning. Marcelo was working on handwriting with Andrés, who traced in his tiny hand some irregular verbs on the chalkboard. The door to the study opened suddenly. In the threshold appeared one of Publio’s Falangists. In his contorted face, Marcelo read the worst of omens.
“I come for Mrs. Mola. Publio sent me. Have you seen her?”
Marcelo said that the lady of the house had not been there all morning.
“Is something going on?”
The Falangist gave him the news: they had made an attempt on Guillermo Mola’s life as he left the church where he took communion every morning.
“Luckily,” he added smugly, “they only wounded him. Don Guillermo is out of danger.”
They had done it … and they had failed. He had to hold himself up with the back of the chair and slowly slide sideways into a seat. Andrés kept at his studies, pressing hard on the chalk with his tongue between his teeth, not understanding what was going on. What would now become of that boy? And his mother?
Then he saw the sinister figure of Publio through the window. He was standing in the middle of the garden, his hands in his pockets, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on … Why was he staring so insistently at the study?… Was he looking at him?
Marcelo grew white. Publio, the man who made stones tremble with his very presence, was waving at him with his squinty eyes and wolf’s smile.
6
Barcelona, December 1980
It hadn’t stopped raining, but now it was coming down in that tedious way that pushed the day into a lethargic depression. María was melancholy and taciturn, like the afternoon. She watched the umbrellas of the passersby headed toward the market of the Born, swaying like the waves on a choppy sea.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you? You’ve been in a bad mood all day,” said Greta. They were strolling through the Ribera neighborhood, repressing their desire to take each other’s hand or kiss like the other couples did beneath the balconies that stuck out along the avenue with its gargoyles and art nouveau canopies.
“Nothing,” lied María. “This weather just sets me on edge.” They sat on a bench. A small stream of dirty water descended parallel to the sidewalk. María contemplated the body of a swollen dead mouse as it drifted to a sewer drain. Slowly she turned up to the sky, which was like a shroud. An all-out storm would have been better, a downpour that dragged the suffocating miasmas of those narrow streets out to sea.
Greta lit a cigarette and passed it to her. Beneath a coat their hands intertwined. María’s fingers were cold.
“Are you like this because of your father? They had to admit him to the hospital sometime. And you don’t need to worry so much. It’s just a routine checkup.”
María shook her head.
“That’s not what’s worrying me. After all, he’s been fighting this cancer for four years, and he hasn’t given in. He’s strong.”
“Then what…?” Greta leaned on her shoulder. Her face was red, and it wasn’t just her blusher. She wore a striking plaid raincoat that dripped onto her knees.
“It’s been three years since they pronounced the sentence against César Alcalá.”
Greta was surprised. She hadn’t even thought about it. That was something that seemed very distant from her life; although it seems that wasn’t the case for María.
“Yeah, so should we be sad about it or celebrate it?”
María scolded her partner, half in jest.
“Don’t be sarcastic … All I’m saying is that I woke up today with a strange feeling, like a knot in my stomach, and I remembered that it was the anniversary. That nagging feeling hasn’t stopped pestering me all morning.”
Greta nodded without saying anything. She took a long drag on the cigarette and brushed aside her wet bangs. She looked at her fingernails, as if searching for some imperfection in her immaculate manicure.
“Do you think about him?”
María shook her head emphatically.
“No. Of course not. We can’t think about all the people we’ve accused or defended in court. We do our job, and we move on.”
“But the case of Inspector Alcalá wasn’t like the others, and we both know it.”
Greta was right. Their lives had not been the same since. Now they were prestigious lawyers and had their own firm on the Passeig de Gracia.
“Things have gone well for us since then,” added Greta with a deliberate look. “Haven’t they?”
María avoided that interrogatory gaze. With the excuse of looking through her purse for pills for her headache, she pulled her hand away from Greta’s.
“Yes, things have gone well for us. We have a nice house, a nice car, we vacation in the summer, go skiing in the winter…” She let the list hang in the air, as if she had forgotten something important.
“And we have each other,” added Greta pointedly.
All of a sudden the bells of Santa María sounded the quarter hour. A flock of pigeons took off under the rain, and María shifted her gaze, letting it wander. To her right there was an indigent in the middle of the plaza of El Fossar de les Moreres, with his hands stuck into the pockets of a long, dirty, gray coat, looking alternately left and right. He took a few steps toward one side. He stopped. He looked around and retraced his steps, scratching his few days’ growth of ashy beard, without deciding on one side or the other.
María noticed him. There was something about him that was familiar.
“Look at that beggar. He is watching us out of the corner of his eye.”
Greta watched the homeless man. He didn’t seem any different to her than the others milling about.
“We should go home. It’s getting late. And my head’s hurting again.”
“When are you going to go to the neurologist?”
“Don’t be a nag, Greta. It’s nothing. It’s just a migraine.”
Greta reminded her of the times she had gotten dizzy in the last month, her sudden blackouts, and those spots that every so often spattered her iris like lightning bugs flying before her eyes, fogging her vision.
“All that is just a migraine?”
“I’ll find some time to go to the doctor, I promise,” answered María, looking behind her. The beggar was watching her. Slowly, he lifted his hand and waved at her. From a distance María thought that she even heard him say her name. Again she felt almost certain that she knew that poor man. But she couldn’t place his face or associate it with any concrete identity or memory. “Can we leave? I don’t like it here.”
* * *
That night, the telephone rang three times before María picked it up and left it on the cradle without answering. She was in her home office, reviewing an eviction sentence for which she was preparing an appeal. No more than five seconds passed, but when she brought the receiver to her ear all she heard was the hum of the line. Not giving it any thought, she hung up and continued going over her work.
Ten minutes later the phone rang again. This time she picked it up on the first ring.
“Yes?”
“Do you mind explaining why you didn’t answer the phone before?”
María was paralyzed at the sound of that voice. Confused, it took her a few seconds to react.
“Lorenzo…?”
A weak chuckle was heard on the other end of the line.
“You sound like you’ve heard a voice from beyond the grave. Just because you haven’t wanted to hear from me in all this time doesn’t mean I died.”
“What do you want?” asked María very slowly, suspicious. It had been more than three years since she’d heard from Lorenzo, and hearing his voice again stirred up old hurts that would always dwell in the depths of her being.
“I’m in Barcelona. I thought we should get together.”
María felt a very strong pressure at the nape of her neck, as if a claw was pushing her forward against her will. Suddenly, the feeling that had always inhibited her when she was with Lorenzo returned. The feeling of ridiculousness and the fear of going too far.
“I’m very busy these days. Besides, I don’t think you and I have anything to talk about.” She felt comforted by her own determination.
A snort was heard on the other end of the line, followed by a deliberate silence.
“I don’t want to talk about us, María.”
“Then what do you want to talk about?”
“About César Alcalá, the inspector that you put in jail three years ago … Could you come see me right now at my ministry office? You’ll find it on the second floor of the Provincial Police Headquarters.”
María was slow to react.
“What do you have to do with that man?”
“It’s complicated, and I don’t think we should talk about it over the phone. It’s best that we see each other.”
Just then, Greta came into the office to check some information. It took her a few seconds to lift her head from the papers she was carrying in her hand. Then she noticed María’s paleness, how she hung absently onto the telephone.
“What’s going on?”
María shook her head very slowly, as if denying a thought that disturbed her.
“I have to go to Barcelona. A client wants to see me.” She didn’t have any reason to lie to Greta, but her intuition told her that for the moment it was best not to mention Lorenzo.
“Now? It’s almost ten PM.”
“Yes, it has to be now,” said María, grabbing her coat and car keys. “Don’t wait up.”
She knew that Greta hadn’t believed a word, but she didn’t make any real effort to be more convincing. There’d be time for explanations later. Now she was too shocked to think.
She drove quickly along the coastal highway, going through small towns that were deserted at that time of the year. In spite of the cutting cold that came in through the lowered window, María couldn’t completely wake up. Suddenly, all the anguish she had felt throughout the day took on weight and dimension.
Beneath the yellowish light of the street lamps the street’s appearance changed with undulating sadness. In the distance she saw some pedestrians walking through the rain. They were like small insects running for shelter in the night. María stopped in front of the door to the Provincial Police Headquarters to make certain that this was where Lorenzo had said to meet him.
She was approached by a policeman enveloped in shadows who was doing the rounds on his watch. Water dripped everywhere, darkening his face. The barrel of the automatic rifle slung across his shoulder shone with rain. He was one of those haughty public servants, sure of himself beneath the tight chinstrap with his weapon at the ready. His Spartan face was as theosophical as it was superficial.
“What are you doing there?”
“I’ve come to see…” She hesitated, not knowing what post Lorenzo now held in the CESID, the intelligence service. “Lorenzo Pintar. He’s on the second floor.”
The policeman’s expression contorted. He knew who worked on the building’s second floor. His dark, cold eyes scrutinized María without the slightest emotion. Finally, he was satisfied and let her inside, with a justification as patently ridiculous as it was true: “You never know who’s a terrorist.”
As soon as she crossed the threshold, María was greeted by the same police routine she was already familiar with from every other police station she had visited. There was always the sound of a cell’s metal closing at the end of a narrow hallway, the echoing footsteps of a guard, the loud voices of prisoners and officers. It was a world far from the light. It depressed her.
She went up to the second floor. She had to sit and wait on the edge of an uncomfortable chair. Every once in a while she looked out of the corner of her eye at a closed door. And the longer she waited, the more a strange feeling of uneasiness grew in her, a tingling on the roof of her mouth, and without fully knowing the reason, she started to feel insignificant. That sensation grew overpowering when someone came in after her and, without going through the purgatory of waiting, crossed through the door, which was opened wide to him without his even having to knock.
María tried to distract herself by looking around her. The windows, high and unreachable, were small skylights through which occasionally peeked the gleam of a lightning bolt. The storm’s thunderclaps buried the clatter of typewriters and telephones. She imagined that during the day that racket was enough to drive you mad. At some tables in the back, there were men drinking coffee and others writing with their forearms resting on the chairs, wearily. The furnishings were old, of grayish metal. Dozens of files were piled up in drawers that made do as improvised filing cabinets.
Every once in a while someone came in from the street, dragging the rain in with them and leaving footprints on the unpolished terrazzo floor. She got up and went over to a window that overlooked the street. Once or twice she could see the dripping boots of the police on guard outside. She guessed that they submitted every person who entered to the same scrutiny, and that, to justify it, they explained that anyone could blow that miserable station house to pieces.
Finally, the door to the office she was waiting at opened. The man who came out didn’t even notice her presence. He passed by her deep in thought, meditating on something that must be profoundly worrying him.
“Lorenzo!”
Lorenzo turned. Suddenly, his face transformed into a poem. He couldn’t believe that the lovely woman he was looking at was María.
“My God, I barely recognized you,” he murmured admiringly, approaching to give her a kiss.
María stopped him by offering him a hand to shake.
“You look pretty much the same,” she replied, hesitantly. Actually he looked much older and more tired. His hairline had seriously receded, and the rest was very gray. He had also gotten fatter.
Lor
enzo was perfectly aware of those changes.
“It looks like you benefited more from the separation than I did,” he said somewhat sarcastically, although it was true. “You look different, I don’t know, must be your haircut or your makeup. You never used to wear makeup or such elegant dresses.”
María faked a polite smile. Lorenzo didn’t realize that the change in her wasn’t physical, and that it wasn’t due to the bangs falling into her eyes or the blue Italian dress, or the high heels. She was a different woman now, a happy one, you could say. She radiated a different light from within. But for Lorenzo to admit that would mean implicitly admitting that he was part of the problem that kept her from being this way when they were together.
“Why did you want to see me?”
Lorenzo’s imperturbable face moved slightly, like the rubble that falls before an avalanche. He looked dubiously toward the exit, checked his watch, and remained pensive.
“I need a personal favor.”
“You need a personal favor?” she repeated, shocked.
“I know you think I’ve got a lot of nerve, showing up after so long to ask you for something, but it’s important.”
He took her into his office, an austere landscape of old furniture and metal filing cabinets. There was a frame with a strawflower in one corner that held a portrait of a woman and a boy about two years old.
Seeing that photograph, which was probably of his new family, María had mixed feelings. For some strange reason she had imagined that Lorenzo was the typical miserable loner, married to his job.
“Is that your wife?”
Lorenzo nodded.
“And that’s Javier, my son,” he added proudly.
María felt an uneasiness in her belly. It was the name they were going to give the child she had lost if it had been a boy.
Lorenzo turned on a table lamp and sat behind the desk, inviting her to have a seat as well. On the desk there was a file with names in red. María managed to discreetly read one of them. Lorenzo closed the file, and she looked away.
Uncomfortable, María shifted her gaze toward a bamboo stalk, twisted and knotted like an umbilical cord. Noticing that the green spot in that gray office had drawn her eye, Lorenzo picked it out of its water-filled container.
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