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

by Victor del Arbol

  “Consciousness is too brittle a branch.”

  His assistant, who was jotting down some notes in a small notebook, looked at him out of the corner of his eye.

  “Why do you say that?”

  Marchán watched the cascade of drops falling into the void. Many struck the corpse.

  “No reason,” he said. He grabbed the corpse’s wallet. “This is getting more complicated,” he grumbled when he found an official ID from the Ministry of Defense. He frowned and shifted his gaze toward the dead man. It seemed that perhaps this cruelty was no fit of rage. More like a meticulous torture job.

  “Pedro Recasens, army colonel in the intelligence service … That means you were a spy, right? Whoever did this to you must have been very interested in getting some information out of you. I bet you gave it to him. Maybe you resisted at first, but in the end you gave it up, didn’t you? Nobody could blame you if you did. Not after getting one look at this butcher job.”

  “There is something more here, Inspector.” His assistant had found a folded piece of paper inside the dead man’s shirt. Unfolding the paper, he saw a note, which he read aloud: “Publio matter: María Bengoechea at 12:00.” The officer was silent for a second, as if remembering something. He lifted his gaze toward his boss. “Isn’t that…?”

  Marchán nodded, with an expression between surprised and annoyed. Yes, that was the lawyer who a few years earlier had sent his partner and friend César Alcalá to prison. That absurd and coincidental twist of fate bitterly amused him.

  Why was her name on the body of a dead spy from the CESID? What did it mean, probably a meeting date, to talk about that Publio matter? He didn’t know, but he planned on finding out. For once, the statistics wouldn’t lie. He was going to get to the bottom of that case, no matter what the cost.

  * * *

  An hour later, he couldn’t focus. Sitting at his office desk with the lights turned off, Marchán watched the rain through the window. The monotonous clacking against the glass and the diffuse silhouettes of the parked cars on the street hypnotized him. It was this damn weather, he thought, so changeable, that made him feel this inexplicable anxiety. He closed his eyes, pressing on his temple. His brain was going to explode. But it wasn’t the rain; it wasn’t the sticky humidity that had changed his mood. He knew it. And yet he had already made the decision weeks ago. And he knew that he wasn’t going to change it. Not at this point, when there was nothing that could be done about anything that had happened.

  “Then why can’t I stop thinking about it, over and over again?” He rubbed his hair, exasperated.

  He had decided to retire, fed up with how things worked, demoralized by everything he’d seen over the years: injustices like what Alcalá had suffered—a scapegoat, he was sure—and sick of his superiors’ coercion to get him to bury the case of Marta’s disappearance.

  And just now that corpse showed up, and with it the name of the lawyer María Bengoechea. And on top of it all, of course, the inevitable Congressman Publio.

  But he had made a promise to his wife. He was going to quit. Forever. He didn’t want to get himself into trouble. He didn’t want to risk his pension. When he was young he lived each day without knowing what impulse would drive him the next. But, to his regret, things had changed, and he had barely realized it was happening. He was no longer the boy whose irresponsibility would be forgiven; he was long past the age of being allowed to lose himself in daydreams. It was expected that he would work as hard as he was doing, that he would live out his time on Earth calmly, glimpsing a not-so-distant old age. Maintaining that fiction had cost him his best years. And now, when the end was in sight, he was considering ruining it all, as if it were a capricious game.

  He looked for the key to the safe that was hidden behind a shelf of files. From among his secretly kept papers he chose an envelope from the back. He emptied it out on the desk. There was all he had been able to gather about Marta’s disappearance over the years. He painstakingly reviewed every fact, every name, every place. It was strange, that feeling of knowing something that the others didn’t and not doing anything about it.

  “Shit,” he grumbled. He put the information into his briefcase and put on his light overcoat.

  The building was silent. The agents on night shift were drinking coffee from a new machine. The desks rested empty. In the background a radio could be heard, with the cryptic language of the patrolmen. Nobody yet knew about the death of Recasens. That gave Marchán the advantage of time, before they came from Madrid to relieve him of the case.

  He headed toward the exit.

  The street was dark, and dirty, without sky, without stars, as if the city were a monstrous mass, deaf and mute. There were no cars or pedestrians. Only the wet asphalt where a streetlight’s beam shone, and trees on the sidewalks with no leaves on their branches. Marchán went down into the metro. The atmosphere was warmer, laden with underground air. There were few passengers on the platform. The people around him formed a ring of absent, tired gazes, their heads bowed. It was in the genetic makeup of those gray beings to look the other way, to keep walking without making any noise.

  He himself headed home with his head bowed, clinging to the pole, letting his gaze wander over the map of stations on the Green Line, which he already knew by heart. He asked himself anxiously if it was worth it to risk everything he had earned over the years.

  “And what is it you are going to lose, moron?” he asked himself.

  A whole world: his small apartment in a residential neighborhood with a shared garden and paddleball court, the do-it-yourself magazines he subscribed to, the woman he lived with and no longer loved; that same woman who in a few minutes would help him off with his overcoat and serve him a glass of whiskey while asking him how his day at the office went. And he would say, “Good, darling, very good,” and he would go to bed early so he wouldn’t have to explain. Perhaps he would make love to her slowly, like a jellyfish brushing a rock, and he would have to close his eyes and think of a calendar model to get the least bit excited.

  He shook his head with an ironic smile.

  “Idiot,” he murmured. “I’m a poor idiot.”

  The fleeting lights of the car ran over the metro tunnel. Nothing seemed worthwhile. Nothing.

  * * *

  The Victoria Café served some really good tuna pastries for breakfast. It was already pretty full despite the early hour. The clientele ran the gamut of hung-over night owls, prostitutes with their smudged makeup wishing they were in bed polishing off the last drink with their pimps, prison guards about to start their shift, and workers from the nearby factories. They were all multiplied in the gigantic mirrors, framed in gold leaf, which hung on the walls and confused the real perspectives of the space.

  In a seat upholstered in green sat an old woman named Lola who read palms. Lola barely had any customers; nobody seemed interested in the future these days, and she blended in, only drawing attention when her flatulence stunk up the cafeteria.

  “You want your future read?”

  María had no future, but she let her look at her hand anyway. The old woman examined the grooves in her palm.

  “Your destiny … your destiny is tragic,” she said, twisting her mouth as if what she saw was surprising and painful, even for her, an old hag who’d seen everything.

  María pulled her hand away, uncomfortable, while the old woman repeated herself like the cawing of a grubby green parrot.

  “Your destiny is doomed. You are just a link in a chain of pain that imprisons someone.”

  “Hey, old lady, don’t bother the customers, or I’ll have to kick you out,” shouted a waiter above the racket of the café. Lola backed away reluctantly, like a shadow, without taking her eyes off of the lawyer.

  María went to sit by the window, at one of the small round breakfast tables for one, with a porcelain teapot, a large mug, and a pastry on a little plate with flowers, beside the folded morning newspaper.

  Someone turned on the r
adio. The Ser station announced the upcoming Billy Joel concerts in Madrid and Barcelona. Then the voice of Juan Pardo sang the jingle for Cheiw Junior gum, “five pesetas a piece.” After that the news began: a curious statistic stated that in the last year 955 people had died of mental illness; 28 percent of women had joined the workforce, according to the minister of labor; the magazine Popular Mechanics announced the arrival of an innovative Volkswagen called the Golf …

  That whirlwind of events bewildered her. It was nothing more than noise. And yet it was the day-to-day heartbeat of life. She ate her breakfast leisurely, turning her head every once in a while toward the window, whose top half was covered by a lace curtain that filtered the light from outside. Through it she contemplated the silhouettes in front of the prison’s large gray door. It was still too early for visits, but people were already lining up.

  Smoke frosted the windows. The tops of the trees shook with a violent gust of wind. It was starting to rain. The tinkling against the glass transformed into an intense, dull melody that completely blurred the street beneath the rain. In front of the café, a carriage pulled by a draft horse stopped.

  María was surprised to see something like that in the middle of Entenza Street: the animal, of huge stature and robust musculature, tolerated the downpour stoically. His long red mane fell soaked over his tall, nervously trembling back. His feet were covered with long hairs, and from them water dripped, creating tiny rivers that ended in a puddle beneath his swollen belly.

  Lately she lost track of time; things got mixed up in her mind; she was starting to forget things, simple things like a phone number or an address. But at the same time details and moments she thought she’d forgotten forever took on new relevance. That horse, for example. In some part of her childhood there was also a horse. She didn’t remember the animal, just his name: Tanatos. The word sprang to her lips, one of those lovely words that are worth savoring in your mouth. He had the enormous eyes of a brute. Impenetrable eyes. Like the animal she was looking at now. The meekness with which he withstood the stillness and the lashing of the rain was extraordinary. In the café everything was noise, voices, and laughter. Nobody noticed the storm or the draft horse. Nobody noticed her either, except for that crazy old palm reader who watched her insistently.

  She closed her eyes. Sometimes she had the feeling she lived in a place that was invisible to other mortals; an inhospitable, dark, cold land. Only that animal seemed to realize. The cart driver appeared in the street, crossing with two long strides, and jumped into the stirrups. He lashed the reins over the draft horse’s back, and a thousand shards of water flew in every direction. The animal slowly began to move, without anger but without it being his decision, and he headed up the street, dragging behind him the tail of the storm. María felt an indefinable anguish that somehow linked her to the fate of that beast of burden.

  Suddenly she heard a voice beside her.

  “Are you Miss Bengoechea?”

  Standing beside the table was a man. The storm had soaked him, and he looked like a dripping scarecrow. The hair plastered to his forehead made his head seem to bulge, and his shirt stuck to his body, showing a prominent belly. The interior light partially illuminated his forehead beaded with raindrops. It was a broad forehead, run through with deep wrinkles. His temples were graying, and the shadow of his nose projected onto his dry lips, framed by a well-shaped blond goatee.

  He sat down without asking permission.

  “Do I know you? Because I don’t recall having asked you to sit down,” said María, in a quite curt tone.

  He smiled, taking her rudeness as if it were nothing.

  “I won’t take much of your time, and you’ll be interested in what I have to say.” There was something indirectly threatening in his words, in the way he rested his crossed hands on the tablecloth, and in his way of looking at the lawyer.

  “Who are you?” María scrutinized the man, who was old but not of any identifiable age. He just leaned back in the chair and opened his hands with resignation.

  “I wanted to meet you personally. You are a stubborn woman, isn’t that right?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  His gaze focused on María’s hands, then slid up to her neck and stopped at her eyes with determination.

  “Five years ago you put César in jail. It was a difficult challenge, but you did it. You won your share of fame. Since then I’ve been curious to know what kind of person you are: a social climber or an idealist? And now, I finally get to meet you.”

  María couldn’t believe her ears. She looked around her as if searching for someone to corroborate that she was indeed hearing what she thought she was hearing. But everyone was deep in their own business and paying no attention to them.

  “Who are you, and what do you want from me?” she asked again, shocked.

  Someone went over to an old jukebox and introduced a coin. The machine let out a couple of metallic squeaks, as if coughing, and then a song by Los Secretos sounded, “Ojos de perdida.” The man sitting next to María smiled nostalgically, perhaps sadly. It was hard to tell. His gaze was fixed on the jukebox for a few seconds, as if he could see the musicians in the record grooves. Then he turned back to María.

  “My name is Antonio Marchán. I’m an inspector in the police force.” He pointed through the window at the door to the prison. “And that man that you are going to see, César Alcalá, was my partner and friend for more than ten years … That’s why I wanted to meet you in person.”

  María assimilated the blow with apparent indifference. Yet it was hard for her not to show the nervousness that overtook her. She pretended to be searching in her purse for her lighter.

  “And you came just to tell me that?” she said, after clearing her throat as though she were having trouble swallowing.

  Marchán was direct. Almost brutally so. It wasn’t an action designed to upset the lawyer, although he didn’t like her. It was his way of doing things. Saving effort. He put a photograph of the corpse of Pedro Recasens on the table. The only one in which his destroyed face was at all identifiable.

  “He showed up dead yesterday on the piers of the Zona Franca dock. They cut him to bits before killing him. I am going to ask you two questions, and I hope you have two, equally concise, answers. First: why did Recasens have your name jotted on a piece of paper that said, ‘Publio matter’?”

  María felt dizzy. It wasn’t her usual dizziness and pain at the nape of the neck that she now felt almost daily. It was that photograph, the abrupt way that Marchán had just given her the news. She leaned back and breathed deeply. The inspector kept looking at her. He was relentless, trying to catch her by surprise so she wouldn’t have time to come up with any excuses. He was a good inspector. Brusque but good at his job. Without time to improvise a response, María told a half-truth. What the circumstances allowed her to say. Yes, she knew Pedro Recasens. Her ex-husband, Lorenzo, had introduced them. Yes, she knew that he was a CESID agent; so was Lorenzo. They had both asked her to visit César in prison. She couldn’t say why. If Marchán wanted to know the details, he’d have to talk to Lorenzo. She couldn’t compromise herself any further.

  “And what can you tell me about the Publio matter? What is it?”

  María clenched her jaw. For a moment she weighed talking openly with that policeman. Perhaps it was her chance to get off her chest the fear and tension that had been accumulating ever since she knew that Ramoneda was lurking around. But Lorenzo had been clear: no talking to the police. If Marchán intervened in that case, she could kiss good-bye the chance to trap that psychopath who had threatened her and her family. If Ramoneda had already escaped the police once, nothing was stopping him from doing it again. As hard as it was for her, she could only trust that Lorenzo would keep his promise of catching him. Besides, César didn’t want the police to get involved either. If he found out, maybe he wouldn’t want to keep talking to her. And then all would be lost.

  “I don’
t know anything about it.”

  Marchán scrutinized her intensely. He could tell when someone was lying to him. And that woman was lying. The question was, why?

  “You said you had two questions. That was the last one. I’m in a hurry, Inspector.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think, María: I think you’re lying. And that leaves you in a difficult situation. Lying about a homicide is a crime.”

  María didn’t let herself be intimidated by that old trick. Putting someone between a rock and a hard place was what she had been doing all her life in criminal courts. She knew how to slip out of that trap like a cat.

  “Well then accuse me formally or arrest me. But I have the feeling you don’t want to or can’t do either. Frankly, I don’t think you see me as a suspect. You want information, and I can’t give it to you. I told you that the person to see is my ex-husband, Lorenzo.”

  Marchán rubbed his cheek. That was almost funny to him.

  “If I get in touch with your husband, before we leave this café he’ll show up here with two of his men and take me off the case.” He stood up, taking the photograph of the dead man. “At least tell me one thing: was Recasens thinking of helping César find his daughter?” María nodded. Marchán was silent for a moment, as if searching for the way to say what he was going to say. “And did he seem sincere to you? Was he really planning to do it, to try to at least?”

  María said yes. Recasens seemed sincere. Then she formulated a question that was hard to answer.

  “Do you think they killed him because he found out something about Marta’s kidnapping?”

  “It’s a possibility,” responded the inspector, buttoning his overcoat. He was about to say good-bye when he timidly asked, “How is Alcalá?”

  María realized that the policeman was blushing, perhaps eaten away by shame. She remembered each one of the witnesses who testified in favor of Alcalá during the trial. None of them could help him, but at least some of his colleagues stood up for him. And Marchán wasn’t among them. Maybe the inspector felt the bitterness of not having been able or not wanting to stand up for César.