“I bought it because it is absolutely imperfect. Errors sometimes lead to the wondrous. It is a paradox that explains my job very well.”
“Being a spy suits you to a tee.”
Lorenzo smiled.
“That’s not what we call it. In the casa we like to think that we are public servants for the Defense Department.”
He asked for a couple of coffees with more vehemence than was necessary; he wanted to show that he was the king in that court, and that María had lost a good catch.
“How’s it going with that friend of yours … Greta?” He smiled with that coldness of his that was so hurtful, which María had stupidly mistaken for self-control and self-confidence when she had first met him, but which really was a reflection of the glacial temperature of his soul.
“Fabulous,” she replied.
She knew that to Lorenzo’s male ego it was unforgivable that she had left him for a woman. He would never be able to understand that she left him because of his own faults. It was that stupid pride of his, that show of masculine independence that had chipped away bit by bit at her initial love for him, until there was nothing left, except the desire to run away.
María lit a cigarette and pensively observed the smoking tip and the bluish loops that came apart in the air. She noticed Lorenzo’s disgusted expression. He was so methodical, so proper, that even the simplest rebellions, like lighting a cigarette, drove him crazy. There is no such thing as a small transgression; wasn’t that what he had said on their wedding night, as she smoked a cigarette lying in bed? It wasn’t even a joint. It was a goddamn cigarette. But he had looked at her as if she had just committed a terrible crime and was holding the murder weapon in her hands.
“I see you’re still smoking. You should watch out for lung cancer. It’s a lottery, and it’s not always won by the person with the most tickets.” He laughed idiotically at his own cleverness.
“Don’t start,” murmured María, to quiet the inner voice that was filling her head with bitter memories. She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray.
Lorenzo arched an eyebrow, making María quite uncomfortable.
“I wouldn’t have called you if this wasn’t important, trust me. Although sometimes, I’ll admit I’ve wanted to know how your life is going.”
“My life is going perfectly. Better than ever.” When she put her mind to it, María could be exceedingly cruel and cutting. She wasn’t like one of those hot-blooded dogs that lunged at their prey and pulled them apart with their teeth. She applied the same practice to her feelings as a detached surgeon used in the operating room, fully aware of the geography she was dissecting, mercilessly and without faltering.
Lorenzo took the gibe calmly. He looked toward a small door that was half open onto a private vestibule.
“How is your father?” he asked unexpectedly.
María was surprised. Gabriel was the last person she expected Lorenzo to ask after.
“Not very well,” she said sincerely. “Why do you ask?”
“Pure courtesy, to break the ice.”
“Okay … well, why don’t you quit beating around the bush and just tell me why you called.” María was starting to get nervous. “You never ask for favors, and much less from me, so you must be really in it up to your neck. What’s this all about? You said it had something to do with César Alcalá.”
“Do you remember Ramoneda? The guy César Alcalá almost killed.”
María nodded halfheartedly. She didn’t like remembering that.
“Vaguely,” she lied.
Lorenzo leaned back on the armchair and started playing with a letter opener he held in his hands.
“Maybe you don’t know that he woke up from his coma a few months after the trial.”
María immediately got on the defensive.
“I don’t see how I would know that. I haven’t had any further contact with Ramoneda or his wife since the trial.”
Lorenzo explained himself with unnecessary bluntness. “When Ramoneda woke up from the coma, the first thing he saw was the ass of a male nurse mounting his wife. What do you think he did? He closed his eyes again and pretended he was still sleeping. His wife and the nurse, thinking he was still in a coma, did it several more times, convinced that he couldn’t see or hear them. They fucked next to poor Ramoneda’s hospital bed, and he pretended he was unaware. A few weeks later he disappeared from the hospital without a trace.”
María turned to face him, dismayed.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Not long after, the bodies of the nurse and the wife showed up in the Garraf dump. They were naked, tied together with a rope. He had his severed testicles in his mouth. That guy is a real psychopath.” Lorenzo paused and gauged María’s reaction with his gaze before continuing. “Thanks to you, César Alcalá is in prison, and Ramoneda is on the streets.” He said each word with smug maliciousness and then carefully watched María’s response. He thought that she would be shocked, that she would bombard him with insults, that she would justify her actions.
But María just stared at him.
“It’s true,” she said laconically.
It was Lorenzo who was shocked.
“That’s it…?”
María didn’t bat an eyelash.
“I did what I had to do. Legally you can’t reproach me for a thing, not you, not anyone. But I know that what I did wasn’t just.”
“Have you suddenly become a saint or a Buddhist in search of forgiveness?” said Lorenzo, a little irritated.
María remained unperturbed.
“I haven’t changed that much. And you’re still the same arrogant jerk. You don’t care about what Ramoneda’s done, or that the inspector is rotting in jail. I know you too well, Lorenzo; your morals are as tarnished as the soles of your shoes, so tell me: why are you telling me all this?”
At that moment the secretary came in with a tray and three cups of steaming coffee. She left the tray on a side table and discreetly left the office.
“Who’s the third cup for?” asked María.
Lorenzo put the letter opener on top of the file that he had been studying a few minutes earlier and paused pensively. He was enjoying the moment.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said. He shifted his gaze toward the door partially open toward the vestibule, and he stood up. “Colonel, please come in.”
The door opened wide, and a man who must have been about sixty appeared. Maybe he was a bit younger. He was tall. Thin. Lorenzo had addressed him by his military title, but he wore civilian clothes, as did Lorenzo himself. He was dressed elegantly, or perhaps immaculately would be more apt, because if you took a closer look you would discover that the outfit was the result of a meticulous combination of carefully ironed and well-cared-for clothing and accessories, but which were out of style. That man had once been something that he was no longer, but he still maintained a dignified appearance.
He came toward María with firm but discreet steps.
“I very much wanted to meet you in person,” he said.
María felt a rush of warmth toward that stranger who leaned over her, impregnating her with his characteristic scent of Royal Crown cigarillos. His eyes were like a gray afternoon, trapped in onerous melancholy.
“María, this is Colonel Pedro Recasens. He is my superior,” said Lorenzo with a solemnity that rang a bit ridiculous. Recasens took a seat beside María and scrutinized her like an eagle, getting a little distance to gain perspective.
“I am very sorry to hear about your father’s health. He truly was a master at forging weapons.”
Now it was María who observed him with the precision of an entomologist.
“Do you know my father?”
Recasens sketched a half smile. His gaze ran fleetingly over Lorenzo and returned to meet María’s eyes.
“Vaguely … We met once, many years ago, although it’s unlikely that he remembers me.”
María’s initial warmth was
cut short by distrust. Suddenly, she was alarmed by his ironic smile and condescending gaze. His small eyes, crowned by thick gray brows, were like depth probes that dissected what they saw, analyzed it quickly, and extracted consequences that were reflected in his concentrated face, in his straight mouth with thin lips and yellowish teeth.
“I have done my research on you. You’ve become a very prestigious lawyer.”
María turned violently toward Lorenzo.
“What does this mean? Have you been spying on me?”
Lorenzo asked her to listen to what Recasens had to tell her. María noted a barely perceptible shift in his behavior. She sensed him slightly more receptive, friendlier.
“What I am going to propose to you is an assignment that transcends the logical, which is why I’ve had you investigated,” interjected Recasens.
María felt the urgent need to get away from that man, but the stranger held her for a moment, touching her forearm. It wasn’t an imposing or hostile gesture, but through his fingers she felt the authority of someone accustomed to being the one to decide when a conversation ends. María felt uncomfortable, but at the same time unable to take her gaze off Recasens’s magnetic eyes.
“I imagine that a lawyer such as yourself is up to date on the country’s political events.”
María said that politics didn’t interest her much. She read the newspapers, watched television. That was about it.
Recasens nodded. He took a sip of coffee and put the cup down on the little table, taking his time.
“Does the name Publio ring a bell?”
“I think he’s a member of congress, but I don’t even know for which party.”
Recasens smiled.
“Actually, nobody knows. Publio is only active in his own party.”
Lorenzo laughed at his boss’s joke, but the colonel shut him up with an icy look. María didn’t miss that detail. She was starting to like Recasens.
“I’m listening,” she conceded.
“I imagine you are familiar with the circumstances surrounding the case of César Alcalá. There was a photograph of a girl who at that time was twelve years old. Ramoneda’s wife talked to you about that photograph, although later you said nothing about it in the trial.”
María tightened her hands against her lap.
“I remember the defense’s allegations, but I didn’t go into details.”
“I’m not judging you, María. You were the lawyer for the prosecution. Your job was to show Inspector Alcalá’s guilt and not raise mitigating factors. You did well. But that’s over now. One thing is justice, and another, very different, thing is the truth.”
“And what is the truth, according to you?”
“You have the details here,” interjected Lorenzo. He took a bulky envelope out of a drawer and left it on the desk.
Colonel Recasens watched María intensely.
“I’d like you to study this material closely. Take your time. Then we can talk again. That’s all I’m asking…” The colonel checked his watch and stood up. “I have to catch a plane. We’ll be in touch, María. I trust you will do what your upstanding conscience dictates,” he said, extending his hand warmly.
He bid Lorenzo farewell with a cold gesture and headed toward the door. Before leaving he stopped for a second. He stuck his hands in his pockets and turned to look at María.
“Have you ever heard the name Isabel Mola?”
María thought about it for a moment. No, she had never heard that name. The colonel examined her face, as if trying to figure out if she was telling the truth. Finally, he seemed satisfied, and his eyes relaxed a bit.
“I understand. Read that information. I hope to see you soon.”
When they were left alone, Lorenzo and María were plunged into a meditative silence, as if each of them were going over the conversation in their heads.
After a few minutes, Lorenzo spoke up.
“The bad thing about cops is that they have too much memory. They don’t easily forget the name of someone who’s screwed them. I’d be careful with Alcalá, María. He might have a score to settle with you.”
María was surprised by the comment, and even more surprised by how gently Lorenzo had dropped it into the conversation, looking toward the window, as if it were idle chitchat.
“Why do you say that?”
Lorenzo slowly shifted his gaze toward her with a bitter expression.
“You always do what you have to, María. No matter what the consequences. That’s why we split up, right?”
“Don’t be a hypocrite, Lorenzo. You know perfectly well why we split up, so don’t play innocent with me.”
Lorenzo looked at her sadly, with a sadness that almost seemed sincere. But before he pulled the trick off, he stood up.
“Sometimes I think about what we had, María. I know you hate me, and I don’t blame you. I’ve thought a lot about what happened, and I’ve forgiven myself. I’m not like that: I don’t hit women; it’s just that you … I don’t know, you made me lose it sometimes.”
“I’ve thought a lot about all that too, Lorenzo. And I wonder why I didn’t cut your balls off the first time you raised a hand to me.”
She went out into the street. It was pouring rain and pitch-black. More than ever she wanted to be at home, holding Greta, asking her partner to kiss her tenderly. Slowly she turned toward the window of Lorenzo’s office. There he was, leaning on the sill, observing her. She headed off thinking that the only thing that linked her to that figure blurred by the rain was a vague feeling of resentment and sadness.
7
San Lorenzo (the Pyrenees of Lleida), two days later
His hands could no longer hold any tools, and even though his mind still gave the correct instructions, Gabriel’s fingers refused to obey him, like the rest of his body. Yet against all prognoses, he was still fighting the cancer. Even though it was a fight he maintained without faith, out of pure inertia.
Sometimes Gabriel thought he could make out in the face of the new nurse his daughter had hired an expression of repulsion, when she had to lift his arms or put him in the bathtub. He didn’t blame her. He repulsed himself. He couldn’t even control his bowels anymore, and he usually woke up at night with a dirty diaper, liquid shit staining the sheets and his legs. He didn’t ring for the nurse on the intercom out of embarrassment. He stayed very still, tolerating his own filth all night long and holding down his nausea, unable to cry because his eyes refused to allow him that consolation.
It was in those moments that he felt most inclined to accept his daughter’s proposal.
“You’d be much better off in a clinic, and I could visit you more often.”
That would cost a lot of money. But she could pay for it. María had come a long way since that famous case, and she came up to see him every once in a while with a brand-new silver Ford Granada. She acted like the Three Kings every time she showed her face in San Lorenzo: she brought him books about swords, forging techniques, and tools for his workshop, as if any of that would still be useful to him.
She usually visited him with Greta. Gabriel wasn’t stupid, in spite of his appearance and his erratic language that suggested otherwise. He saw them hug and kiss each other when they thought no one was watching. It wasn’t his business, Gabriel told himself. And anyway, his daughter seemed happier since she’d gotten rid of that jerk Lorenzo.
Perhaps María was right. He no longer opened the forge, that mannish nurse who took care of him was very unpleasant, and he could barely do anything for himself and that only with the help of a walker.
But then, when he felt tempted to give in, he turned his head toward the room where he stored his wood, and the door hidden behind the woodpile, tightly shut. That reminded him why he could never leave that house.
Besides, he had to take care of his wife’s grave. That was his promise, and he would fulfill it until his final day.
He couldn’t get to the cemetery on his own anymore, but once a week the nurse t
ook him there, and with her help he changed the flowers and weeded. That gesture of remembrance toward the dead was the only one that seemed to affect the nurse, who usually treated him more considerately during the days following.
The last time he visited the cemetery, in the afternoon, the clouds were stretched like little red filaments over the hill. In the distance, the silent stone ruins of the Roman fortress that overlooked the cemetery took on a coppery color. There was a sign with an inscription in Latin at the entrance to the fortress: SIT TIBI TERRA LEVIS, it read. May this earth rest lightly on you. You had to pass by it in order to get inside the ruins. Gabriel always closed his eyes to avoid seeing it, to avoid thinking about what it meant. But there it remained, as the years passed. An obstinate sentence.
Seated beside his wife’s grave, Gabriel looked in that direction, but his eyes didn’t stop there. They went much farther, to an unknown place in his memory, perhaps to those summers when he’d hiked there with his small daughter and his wife.
He smiled sadly as he remembered. During those years now long past, as he spread out the tablecloth for a snack among those ruins and listened to his daughter running among the centuries-old stones, and his wife singing softly to herself as her hair swayed in the soft breeze, he may have felt something close to peace, to the absence of regrets. But one fine day, that bubble burst. His wife found the suitcase hidden behind the woodpile, the letters, and the newspaper clippings. And the past, that past which he thought he’d forgotten forever, returned as if it had never left. It came back thirsty and took its revenge.
Why hadn’t he burned the pages from the diary? the Roman ruins seemed to be asking him. Why did he insist on saving something that he wanted to forget? Not even after his wife had found them and committed suicide had he been able to do so. Not even now, when his daughter had been about to find the things he had hidden, did he dare to destroy them. Why? Why not burn all the memories, turn them into ash, and scatter them to the wind? He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t able to do it. If he forgot, he would no longer be completing his penitence. He had no right to do that.
Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel Page 9