* * *
Ramoneda had positioned himself on a corner from which he could keep watch on that pretty little house by the beach. It was a nice place, but he found it too placid.
“The typical bubble where the rich hide themselves away,” he said to himself, as he looked through the gate at the mimosas in the garden and a small fountain that looked antique.
Ramoneda had never had a house. When he was small his only homes were orphanages, reform schools, and institutions. And in those places there are no mimosas or fountains with marble women spilling water through spouts shaped like jugs. Only bars, dampness, reheated food, and collective sleeping quarters.
He heard a car engine approaching. It was María arriving in a taxi. Ramoneda tightened his fists. His whole body felt erect, as if an electric current was running through it.
“Not yet,” he told himself.
He waited for her to go inside the house. One by one, the lights in the rooms she went through turned on, revealing the fleeting movement of her shadow. Ramoneda heard her call Greta’s name. Then he saw her go into the bedroom, rummage through her girlfriend’s things, and drop onto the bed. She was pretty with that expression of beleaguered exhaustion. It was so easy to get to her. All he had to do was go to the front door and ring the bell. He did it for pure pleasure. He wanted to make her feel his presence.
He heard her rushing steps. He took delight in the scared, frustrated face she would make when she opened the door and found him instead of Greta, whom she was expecting. He had trouble overcoming his desire to remain in the doorway. He didn’t want to disobey Publio and lose a good job. He was only supposed to scare her.
“Soon. We’ll see each other very soon.” He tossed the cigarette butt he was smoking and headed off toward the beach.
14
Collserola Mountains (Barcelona), early January 1981
Plunged in darkness, Marta listened to the hard rain fall. The entire house was dripping inside, and it creaked like a frightened old lady. She curled up in a corner with her legs pulled in. Through the small holes between the bricks that covered the window she could see outside. It was the only way she had of knowing whether it was night or day. Every once in a while she went over and put her eye right up close so that she could see a small part of the yard. She could barely make out the top of the arbor. In front of the large sycamores at the entrance there was a black car parked. The same car that showed up every so often, driven by the old man who brought her provisions. At first she tried to get his attention by shouting out to him, but the man was too far away to hear her, or, which was more disheartening, he was simply ignoring her.
She picked up with one hand the links of the heavy chain that went around her neck and attached to the wall and went back beside the mattress. The rubbing of the ring cut into her and stung, and she couldn’t scratch herself. The chain allowed her to move in circles like a tied-up dog; so she could reach every part of the space except the door, which was barred from the outside.
She didn’t even think about escaping. She had given up on that idea long ago, and she now focused on not going crazy after so many years of being locked up in the dark.
Her captors hadn’t left her many things: bowls for food and water and a potty for her needs that was collected once a day by her jailer. It was the only moment when the door opened, letting in a crack of light that lit up the room and had allowed her to get an idea of how miserable her situation was. The guard stubbornly refused to answer her questions; but at least he had agreed, after several months of begging, to give her a small candle, matches, a bit of paper, and a pencil.
Writing was the only thing that kept her sane, but she had to use the candle sparingly. Leaning on the damp wall, she lit it for a few minutes and hastily scribbled on the bit of paper she had. Sheltered by the circle of weak, flickering light from the flame, she blew on her fingers to get the stiffness out of them. She wrote whatever thoughts came into her head. She thought about what her life had been like before that captivity, she remembered her mother, and she insistently repeated to herself that her father was still out there looking for her. She knew that he would never give up. She clung to that idea in order to survive. Then she put out the candle and looked at the paper for a long time in the darkness before putting it away in the rolled-up coat that she used for a pillow.
* * *
As the time trickled by in that darkness, Marta’s will began to break. She stayed in a corner for hours, her gaze fixed on the holes in the covered window, her mind blank. She thought that perhaps they were going to do to her what they did to witches in some Flemish villages during the Middle Ages: they walled them up into the facades of the cathedrals, leaving a small horizontal opening through which they threw them food, and they left them there until they died, often after years and years of being locked up. Was that what her jailer had planned for her?
But one night her closed-casket routine was broken.
The door opened, and two shadows were silhouetted in the doorway. One of the men whispered something into the other’s ear, the second one nodded, and he told Marta to stand up. She had never seen them before, nor heard their voices. These must be new ones.
She obeyed, dragging herself to one side. One of the men went through her clothes, flipped over the mattress, and finally found the paper hidden in her coat. She tried to snatch it away from him, but the man pushed her aside violently, looking at her with a triumphant air. The two men disappeared, taking the candle stub and matches with them as well. Luckily, Marta had hidden the pencil in her underwear, and the men didn’t dare search her that thoroughly.
After half an hour they came back. They roughly removed her chain and pushed her out of the room without saying a word. During her short journey, Marta only had time to take in some paintings covered with cobwebs, frayed curtains, and dusty furniture piled up in the corners. They made her go into a room that was used to dry sausages. It was a cold place filled with hooks and chains that hung from the ceiling beams. It smelled of pig intestine.
Sitting in a chair by a table, a man with a burned body looked at her with eyes that barely had any lids. He moved and made gestures, but he was a dead man. Only cadavers had that greenish tone she saw on the dry skin that peeked out from beneath his cotton clothing. He held a paper in his hand. He was smoking a cigar that gave off a dizzying odor. It turned Marta’s stomach to see the boldness with which that ghost looked her over. She knew all too well that crazy, destructive expression. And she knew what was going to happen.
“Please, sit down,” the man instructed when they were left alone. Since Marta did not obey, he pushed a chair toward her. “Please,” he insisted with unbending politeness.
Finally, Marta gave in. She sat down in front of him on the edge of the chair, to one side, pressing her hands against her lap.
The man held a piece of paper with his fingers that had no nails.
“What is the meaning of this? Don’t you have enough problems already?” It was the wrinkled paper she had been writing on over the last few days.
Marta bit her lip to keep the tears from escaping. She wanted to cry, but she wasn’t going to break down in front of that monster. She looked away. Light streamed in, and she had to squint to give her eyes time to get used to it.
“If you want paper and pencil, all you have to do is ask me for it,” said the man. He opened up a drawer and put a sheet of blank paper and a pen in front of her. “You have plenty of light here, so start writing.”
Marta looked at the blank page as if it were an abyss.
“What should I write?” she asked with the humility that years of beatings had forced her to adopt.
“First write down all your sins and the sins of your family.”
Marta’s lower lip started to tremble. How many times had she been through this already?
“Why are you doing this to me?” she whined weakly.
“Write,” insisted the man, tapping his disfigured index finger on the blank s
heet.
Marta looked at the paper. She slowly looked up and held the man’s gaze. She saw his expression harden and the evil glisten in his eyes. She had been before him hundreds of times, but she never got used to his horribly disfigured face. He was one big greenish wound. His burned body barely had any consistency; his skin, his flesh, his bones stayed together with nerves of air that could come apart with a sigh.
“You enjoy this, don’t you?”
The man leaned forward. The nauseating smell that emerged from his lipless mouth slapped the girl in the face.
“There is no consolation for what your family did to me, Marta Alcalá. Not even revenge consoles me, but I can pay you back the same pain they gave me. I know what kind of a woman you are. You think you’re better than me. You consider me a barbarian.” He picked up the pen and offered it to her. “I understand that I repulse you, I understand it, I really do. You are that kind of woman that lifts any man’s ego: pretty, educated, voluptuous … You know that you dominate men; you think that your legs and your tits can do anything. But with me your charms aren’t going to get you anywhere. The only thing I see is a lamb, a lamb that must atone for the sins of others. And believe me, I will squeeze you until I get everything that is in you out. I’ll leave you empty, Marta, as empty as I am. And yes, I will enjoy doing it. So don’t provoke me, because nobody is coming to rescue you. Write the name of your murderous family, write their sins.” His voice was glacial, calm, and threatening. Like his flinty gaze.
Marta grabbed the pen. Her fingers trembled. She held the pointy end in the air for an instant.
“Start writing!” shouted the man suddenly, hitting the table with the palm of his hand.
Marta cowered. She took the pen and in a faltering hand wrote: I, Marta Alcalá, granddaughter of Marcelo Alcalá, declare that my grandfather was the vile murderer of Isabel Mola … Then her hand stopped.
“Continue.” The man grabbed her by the neck. He was choking her.
… And that my father, César Alcalá, as well as I myself, are also guilty of that crime, since we also bear that disgraceful last name …
The man seemed satisfied. He let up on her neck, and, bringing his drooling mouth up to Marta’s ear, he spat words, sharp as needles, at her.
“Everyone has given you up for lost, nobody knows you are here, and that means you are mine. I can do what I want to you, beat you, torture you, I can order my men to rape you … Maybe you’ll breed another depraved wretch to add to your family.”
Suddenly, Marta felt a hard blow to the back of her neck, and she fell facedown onto the floor.
That was when the gates to hell opened.
Out came blows, shouts, and insults. That monster forced her to remain crouching. When her legs fell asleep and her toes bled and she fell to the floor, he dragged her by her hair and forced her to start again. Then he shook her, passing her from one hand to the other. He touched her breasts over her clothes, stuck his hand in her crotch, and spat obscenities in her face. The man was talking, threatening, he changed rhythm and turned kind and indulgent, and then became aggressive again. But Marta didn’t hear most of what he was saying. She saw his lipless mouth move, but the words vanished as soon as they hit the air. Her mind was off wandering somewhere else.
When he grew tired of that dark dance, the man took her clothes off. Marta did not resist him. She was nothing more than a rag doll. She let him do it.
The man observed her calmly. He recognized that she was beautiful, in spite of the bruises that covered a good part of her body and the dried excrement on the inside of her thighs. He approached her slowly. Pushing her long hair back, he forced Marta to look him in the eyes.
“You still don’t understand your situation? I will remove your eyes with a spoon, I’ll burn those pretty black nipples of yours, I’ll fuck you in each of your pretty holes until I’ve had enough … And still I won’t let you die. Not until I decide.”
Marta didn’t answer. She covered her pubis and chest as best she could. Her eyes had a vacant look, devoid of light or hope.
That wasn’t the look the man had wanted to produce in her. He was hoping for a bovine tremble in her pupils, coming to terms with all the terrors she could imagine. A panic that would throw her into the void, that would push her to say what he wanted to hear. He was methodical and cold, violence was a means to an end; only when he had gotten the results he wanted did it become pleasurable.
But Marta was ruining his plans. She didn’t struggle; she had no hope; she didn’t beg or act haughty. She was like an empty sack that absorbed the blows, transforming them into air. The man knew that sooner or later he would have to kill her. Keeping her alive had become too dangerous. But he was beginning to fear that not even that would satisfy him. And what he would not accept was a defeat of that magnitude. Nobody escaped him when he put his mind to it. Nobody. Alive or dead.
He opened the door and made a gesture to the men waiting outside. Marta sighed in relief. Perhaps it was all over, for the moment.
But she was wrong. They took her to a filthy bathroom. In the toilet floated a pestilent mass of fecal water. The shower tiling was falling off, and a rusty faucet dripped. In the chipped bathtub cockroaches and flies floated in the stagnant water.
“Want a bath? You smell like dead dogs,” said one of the men. The other laughed. Marta stepped back, but they pushed her in.
“They say that drowning is a slow terrible death where your lungs fight to breathe until they literally explode,” said one of them, as he immodestly pissed into the clogged toilet.
Without another word, the man holding Marta stuck her head beneath the toilet’s water. Once, twice, three times. And each time, just when Marta felt she was about to die, they took her out, as if they had calculated to the second how long she could hold out. They seemed to enjoy seeing her smeared in excrement, how she spat bile to be able to breathe, coughing and vomiting at the same time.
“That’s enough, the boss doesn’t want her to die on us,” said one of them, when they’d gotten their fill.
“The hair. We have to shave it,” said the other, grabbing an electric razor.
Marta watched in terror as the man approached her with the buzzing machine. And then she started to cry inconsolably and beg.
“Please … Not my hair … Please.”
The two men looked at each other, disconcerted. She had tolerated all kinds of humiliations without caving, without begging once … and all of a sudden she collapsed because they were going to shave her head? Their surprise turned into mocking laughter.
“We want to see how pretty you are with your skull shaved,” said the one with the razor, attacking her without a thought.
When she was a little girl, one of Marta’s greatest pleasures was hiding in her mother’s bedroom. She had an enormous closet with a beautiful selection of dresses, shoes, and jewelry laid out with exquisite care. That was the adjective that best defined her mother: exquisite. Marta loved to sit at the foot of her mother’s bed and watch as she took her time straightening her long black hair in front of the mirror of her dressing table. She had lovely hair, shimmering locks that fell elegantly to the middle of her back. Marta also had long silky hair. That was her mother’s legacy. Ever since she was a child she took care of it with special bubble baths; she thinned it out with a long brush with blunt bristles; she trimmed the ends. Her mother was proud of her hair, and she was too. Sometimes they bathed together and they laughed soaping up their heads, and then they brushed each other’s hair, singing softly. They were like two cats that lick and groom each other, making their bonds of love stronger and stronger. In Marta’s hair were buried her mother’s caresses, the scent of the oils in that bedroom, the nights shared between them. Marta kept the best of her childhood in her long locks.
They took that from her too. As she listened to the sound of the electric razor destroying her mane, she cried in silence. She watched the locks fall to her bare feet, like the past raining down.
/> Once again in the darkness of her room, she touched her shaved skull and felt more naked than ever. She lay down on the floor in the fetal position, shivering with cold. She bit her hands to keep the guards from hearing her cries, and she remained that way for hours, thinking about her loved ones, about every trivial detail of her former life.
She remembered her father, the advice he always gave her as they sat at the table with her mother. “Marta, don’t put your elbows on the table, don’t slurp your soup, don’t leave the table until your mother says you can be excused.” She and her mother looked at each other through the pitcher of water and smiled complicitly. Her father was too strict, but he never had any idea of what was going on at home.
She thought about her house, about the last time she saw her father. He was shaving in the bathroom. Above his head an old electric water heater hung threateningly. You had to shower quickly, before the muffled gurgling of the pipes announced that the hot water was running out. He dressed carefully. That last morning he put on his gray suit and matching shirt, the one he wore when he had to go to trial. Then he tied his tie with a knot too thick to be stylish but which he liked. He combed his short black hair to one side without drying it, letting wavy bangs hang over his wide forehead. He put a few drops of Agua Fresca cologne behind his ears and on the insides of his wrists. He sighed deeply, ran the palm of his hand over the cracked surface of the mirror to wipe off the steam, and looked at himself.
“Do you think your father looks presentable?” he asked her through the split reflection in the mirror.
“Yes, Papá. You look wonderful,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, taking with that last kiss a bit of cologne stuck to her lips.
Those embers that no longer warmed her were all that she had left of her previous life. She tried to rock herself to sleep with those memories. She knew that her father would never stop looking for her, that he would move heaven and earth until he found her.
Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel Page 18