Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel

by Victor del Arbol

  The man turned toward her and scrutinized her intensely. He narrowed his gaze, observing the patio where the worshippers were chatting. He opened up a pack and put a cigarette in his mouth.

  “You don’t have much of a memory, lawyer lady. I’m Ramoneda.”

  María unconsciously stepped back with her mouth agape. She barely remembered him. She had only seen him a couple of times in the hospital, when he was in a coma and had his face completely disfigured. But as she looked carefully at the man, it wasn’t hard to find the scars left by those wounds, now hidden beneath a thick reddish beard.

  “Don’t get scared. I’m not going to do anything to you,” he said, as he stepped with his boot on the cigarette he’d been smoking.

  María nervously stroked her hair. Ramoneda realized that she was looking toward the stone patio of the church. Gabriel was sitting beside some flowerbeds with his hands in his pockets and a lost expression.

  “Well, it’s been a long time, Ramoneda.”

  Ramoneda scornfully looked her up and down.

  “You don’t seem happy to see me. I don’t blame you. I imagine that you’ve heard about what I did to my wife and the guy who was screwing her.”

  María felt like those words, spat out with disgust, almost anger, were biting into her. She headed toward the entrance of the church without looking back. Her body trembled with a bad premonition. She waved vaguely and ran off quickly.

  She had almost reached her father when Ramoneda grabbed her from behind, holding her by the shoulder. Feeling the weight of that hand, María thought her heart was going to explode.

  “I only wanted to have a little chat with you, María.”

  María didn’t turn around immediately. She pretended not to hear her name. But he repeated it with even more aggressive force, as if attacking her from behind. Finally, she turned, exasperated.

  “What do you want from me?”

  Ramoneda focused on a distant point. He seemed to be thinking about something extremely serious.

  “They told me that you’re separated from your husband. And that now you live in sin with a very beautiful girl … Greta, I think she’s called, is that right? It’s a romantic picture, watching her on the beach by your house in Sant Feliu. She’s good at fishing. But at this time of year, the beach is a deserted place. If she should have an accident, nobody would realize until it was too late.” Ramoneda’s gaze warped. He was now looking at Gabriel. “Same thing with your father. In that little town and with no nurse to take care of him. They could rob him or who knows what. It’d really be a shame. Luckily, you’re an intelligent woman, and you know how to protect your loved ones.”

  María couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “What is this? Are you threatening me?”

  Ramoneda smiled maliciously. Really it was only his eyes. His mouth barely tensed.

  “I’m just warning you. I know that they are looking for me for the disappearance of Marta Alcalá, the inspector’s daughter. I’ll tell you the same thing I told Alcalá at the time: I know nothing. They paid me to deliver some information. I did. I got paid. The end. Tell your ex-husband and old Recasens to stop baiting me like a dog. You know what happens when a dog is cornered: he turns and bites whoever’s in his reach. And if you want some advice: forget about the inspector and everything to do with him. I’d hate for something to happen to you or someone you care about … Merry Christmas, María.”

  He buttoned his coat, turned, and walked away with slow, powerful steps.

  13

  Barcelona, December 27, 1980

  María entered the restaurant. The waitresses were already putting out the tablecloths. It was early, and there were no customers yet. Piped-in piano music could be heard.

  A waiter came over. He was solicitous, sugary, and too handsome. A mature playboy, confident of the power of his graying beard and well-cut, undyed hair. His style was artificial, and his cologne turned María’s stomach.

  “Are you dining alone?” The waiter’s gaze ran openly to María’s breasts.

  “No, I’d like a table for two,” she answered, buttoning the top button on her shirt.

  The waiter blushed. He cleared his throat and escorted her to a table in the back. He handed her a menu. It was an expensive menu on thick, rough paper. Lorenzo wanted to impress her.

  She ordered a bottle of white wine while she waited. When the waiter headed off, she opened her purse and swallowed down two naproxen pills. Her headaches, increasingly virulent and sudden, had become relentless. She told herself, without much conviction, that she should go to the doctor.

  “After the holidays,” she said out loud, as if trying to convince herself. She lit a cigarette and poured herself a glass of wine, while she went over the events of the last few days.

  She was afraid. She still hadn’t told anyone, except Lorenzo, about her encounter with Ramoneda. She didn’t want to worry Greta. Things weren’t going well between them, and the last thing she needed was to cause any more problems in their relationship. But she was barely able to sleep. She smoked nonstop, nervous and unable to concentrate on anything except the image of Ramoneda, his cold smile, and his murderous gaze. How had he found her? That didn’t matter; the fact was that he had. Now he knew where she lived, and she constantly felt the presence of his eyes spying on her every movement, and Greta’s, and her father’s. The pressure was going to make her head explode.

  Soon Lorenzo showed up, wearing a dark suit that enhanced his figure.

  He stood in the doorjamb for a moment, watching María with the knob in his hand, as if he wasn’t sure whether to go in or out. Suddenly he smiled, with a wide seductive smile, one of those capable of sustaining useful friendships. Before María could get up, he closed the distance between them.

  “You look very pretty,” he said with a well-pitched voice. His eyes frankly searched out María’s gaze.

  María thought that in a certain sense, Lorenzo was still attractive, elegant, although distant in spite of his apparent proximity. She retied, with a childish gesture, her high ponytail with a coquettishness that came from somewhere beyond her control, as if she wanted to prove something. That she was still young? That she was more attractive now than at twenty-five?

  “You told me you didn’t know anything about Ramoneda. How did he show up at my father’s church? That man threatened my life,” she said with some irritation at herself for having gotten dragged along into that adventure.

  Lorenzo shifted his gaze toward an imaginary speck of dust that he pushed away with his hand. He was buying time.

  His reluctant attitude put María on alert.

  “You’re not surprised?”

  “No, not really. We know that Ramoneda has been following you for several weeks.”

  María turned red with rage. She had to clench her lips to keep from shouting out an insult.

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  “Calm down, María. Let me explain it to you: We’ve been watching that asshole. But we don’t want to arrest him yet. Ramoneda is the only one that can lead us to César Alcalá’s daughter, and therefore, to Publio. We follow him and wait for him to make a mistake that can incriminate the congressman. When that happens, we’ll go for both of them.”

  María felt like live bait. She was a sheep tied to a tree to attract wolves.

  Lorenzo tried to calm her down.

  “We have a plan, and you are the cornerstone. Let me explain it to you calmly while we eat.”

  María stood up. There was nothing more she wanted to hear.

  “You used me. You put Greta in danger, and my father, and me. Forget about me, Lorenzo. I mean it; I don’t want to know anything more about this.”

  She was already putting on her coat when Lorenzo grabbed her by the hand.

  “You don’t understand, María. You can’t just come in and out of this story as if it were a game. If you decide to leave, we won’t be able to protect you from Ramoneda. Now that he’s found you,
he won’t leave you alone. You don’t know him. That man is a psychopath.”

  “Forget about me, Lorenzo. Every time you come into my life, it’s to screw me over.”

  She went out into the street, ignoring Lorenzo’s calls, and stopped a taxi.

  * * *

  When she got home it was starting to get dark, and dusk’s violent lashes drew rosy crests on the facade.

  She took a nervous quick drag on her cigarette, lowered the car window a couple of inches, and threw it out. The taxi driver gave her a reproachful look through the rearview mirror. She shrugged her shoulders. On the radio she heard Pujol, the Catalán president, giving a passionate speech about regional identity. María closed her eyes because she couldn’t close her ears. She didn’t want to fill her head with absurd voices talking about nations and flags. She only wanted to take a nice bath.

  She found Greta with a needle, mending a net spread out over the beach. Her skirt was gathered, and her thighs were covered in sand. She seemed to have all the time in the world ahead of her. At her side, in a faded bucket, two fish with gray backs opened and closed their mouths as they died.

  María sat in the sand beside her. She slid her cheek close to Greta’s hair and gave her a lukewarm kiss on the neck.

  Greta looked at her strangely. Lately, María hadn’t been very affectionate.

  “Is something going on? You got up early today,” Greta said.

  “I couldn’t sleep … But at least I gave the nightmares the slip one more night,” said María with a tired smile.

  “I didn’t know you had nightmares.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  Greta waited for her to say something more, but María made an ambiguous gesture, as if she had already said more than she should.

  “Didn’t you have to see a client in Barcelona?” Greta asked her.

  “A boring interview,” María lied. The small, pointless lies were already part of a routine they had both grown accustomed to.

  She went to sit down in the stern of the grounded boat, shrunken into her tunic, looking at her hands as if she had just discovered something malignant and monstrous in them.

  “Do you know what the sailors say? That everything we toss into the sea comes back to us, sooner or later, with the tide.”

  Greta listened slowly, as if she didn’t quite get what María was saying. She calmly folded the tackle and put it in a bucket. Then she lifted her head and drilled María with her impenetrable eyes.

  “Why are you bringing that up now?”

  María carefully examined her partner. She had her there, in reach of her words, at the tip of her fingers, but sometimes she felt as empty as a starless night. She had come to the conclusion that her years of marriage to Lorenzo had left her dry, making her unable to devote herself to someone again. Of course she loved Greta, but she did it in a hypocritical way, cautiously, without giving herself fully.

  “No reason,” she said, changing the subject. “Going down to Barcelona put me in a bad mood; I guess that’s what’s wrong with me.”

  Greta was silent. An insidious silence that broke abruptly. She was serious, pensive, visibly uncomfortable.

  “That must be it … Or maybe your mood turned sour because you’ve been seeing Lorenzo behind my back. Don’t you think I deserve to know?”

  María looked at her with some surprise. Then she shifted her gaze onto the deserted beach.

  “You ended up finding out anyway. What does it matter?”

  Greta searched during a few interminable seconds for some crack in María’s marble gaze. But María didn’t bat an eyelash. Her grin was cold and inscrutable.

  “Is that why you’re so distant? You barely sleep; you get up early. You’re always hiding something in those silences of yours. I don’t know what’s going on with you, María. I don’t know what you’re running from … But someday you are going to have to stop running. You can tell me; it won’t kill me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “That you miss being with that idiot…”

  “Don’t blow things out of proportion, all right? It’s no big deal. I didn’t want you to get upset; that’s why I didn’t mention it.”

  “That’s the problem, María. I have the feeling that lately nothing is a big deal between us.”

  María was starting to get exasperated. She sighed loudly.

  “Nothing’s going on with me; I just need a little time to sort things out. And the last thing I need now is for you to stage a ridiculous jealous scene … You don’t know what’s happening; you have no idea.”

  Greta didn’t say anything, but her heart was pounding furiously, compelled by violent emotion. Her penetrating gaze bit through María’s skin.

  “Well, enlighten me.”

  María felt hurt by what her partner suspected. She leaned over the boat and grabbed a fistful of fine sand and let it sift through her fingers. How absurd Greta’s fit of jealousy seemed to her right then. And yet she should have understood that Greta thought something like that. She would have done the same.

  After all, she was lying to her. Maybe not in the way Greta suspected, but one lie only leads to another, bigger one to cover up the first. Perhaps the best thing was to let Greta believe that fiction, to get her away to a safe distance for a while.

  “Maybe I’m reconsidering some things,” she replied evasively.

  Greta carefully observed María. She knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t saying everything she was thinking.

  “What things?”

  María opened her hands and slapped her thighs in resignation.

  “Maybe I’m questioning everything; maybe I’m asking myself how you could accuse me of wanting to get back together with the man who abused me for years. What kind of trust do we have between us? Or maybe you’re right: lately we argue too much, we get angry over nothing … Maybe it would be better if we took a break. To be alone for a while.” She lowered her head and swallowed hard before concluding. “I want to be alone for a while.”

  * * *

  The next morning, at the prison, César Alcalá could tell María hadn’t had a good night. The lawyer’s face clearly showed her lack of sleep, and her eyes were swollen from crying. The inspector stretched out his hands so that the guard could take off his handcuffs, and he sat on the other side of the table, in front of her. He waited for María to take her eyes off the insipid painting that hung on the wall.

  “Bad night?”

  “Actually, a bad life,” María said sarcastically.

  César Alcalá didn’t show any signs of getting the joke. He remained before her with his head erect and his hands on the table. Every once in a while he massaged his wrists where the cuffs had left a mark.

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  María told him everything. The words burbled up out of her mouth as if she’d been waiting for the chance to talk. When she finished, she was out of breath and crying. César Alcalá had been listening as if in a confessional. He let María calm down.

  “Ramoneda again. He’s like a bird of bad omen. When he shows up, something bad is around the corner,” he said, his throat dry. “Tell me something, María. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Ramoneda shows up in your life now, just when you’ve been coming to visit me? No. There’s nothing casual about it. And that stool pigeon wouldn’t come out of the woodwork, knowing that half the police force is looking for him, if he didn’t have the backing of someone powerful.”

  María finished the sentence. “Someone like Publio. They are afraid you’ll talk to me, that you’ll tell me what you know.”

  César nodded.

  “It’s true. I won’t, though, not as long as they have my daughter.”

  For days now the lawyer had wanted to bring up a delicate question. Now seemed the best time.

  “And what if they don’t have Marta…? What if…?”

  César cut her off.

  “I lost my father in order to not lose my dau
ghter. She is alive. I know it. Talk to your bosses. Tell them nobody wants to sink that bastard Publio for once and for all more than me. But if they want my help, first they have to bring me my daughter, safe and sound.”

  “They’re working on it, César. Ramoneda is the one who can lead us to your daughter. And they are using me as bait to get him to come out of his cave. We all have a lot at stake…”

  “Then we’d better not mess up,” said Inspector César Alcalá coldly, ending the conversation.

  * * *

  When María returned home that night, Greta was no longer there. She knew that Greta had left her before she went into the bedroom and saw the note on the chest of drawers. Greta had difficult handwriting, like a doctor’s.

  “I’ll be away for a few days. I’ll let you know where.”

  María dropped onto the bed.

  Greta’s closet was open, with some hangers missing clothes and gaps in the row of shoes. Her travel bag was gone, too, and some of the necklaces on her dressing table.

  Why didn’t she care? Why was she unable to react? She was like a bag torn at the seams and all her strength escaped through the opening, while she was unable to do anything to stop it. She simply lay there, covering her eyes with her forearm and listening to the murmur of the waves through the window. If only she could do nothing more for the rest of her days. Stay there, fossilized, waiting with her eyes closed and her mind blank.

  Then the front door intercom buzzed, and María jumped up in bed. At that time of the night it could only be Greta. Maybe she’d had a change of heart; they’d had other arguments, and in the end they’d always gotten back together. She ran to open the door. She’d tell her the truth about Lorenzo and César Alcalá; she’d tell her about Ramoneda. The truth. In that business the truth was like a fractured light that projected long shadows over feelings as disparate as guilt, curiosity, and the sense of duty. But together they would find a solution. Yes, that is what she should have done from the very beginning, tell the truth and assume the consequences together, as a couple.

  To her surprise, the entrance was empty. Then her bare foot stepped on something. On the floor smoldered a cigarette butt. In the distance she made out the unmistakable figure of Ramoneda, heading off toward the rocks that broke the waves on the beach.