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

by Victor del Arbol

  “This is all the past.”

  “And I’m still in that past!” Fernando shouted suddenly, losing control. “For me it’s not so easy as pretending I’ve forgotten, devoting myself to bringing up a daughter, or retiring to a town in the Pyrenees to sharpen knives.” He felt in his pocket in search of something. With an agitated gesture he pulled out a photograph and put it right up to Gabriel’s face. “I’m still here, anchored to her, unable to do anything else except remember. Remember and hate you, and hate my father, and hate Publio … I hate myself for letting myself get trapped by her; I’m like a mad dog that bites its tail and devours itself. Do you recognize her? Take a good look; I want you to show her to your daughter so that she understands that the name Isabel isn’t just a forensic file in one of her legal summaries. I want her to see, to understand, to touch and feel my mother. Only then will she understand the enormity of your crime. Only then will the circle be closed.”

  Gabriel squinted. He took the photograph, and when he touched it he felt all his memories taking shape. There was Isabel, with her little face framed by a picture hat that veiled her eyes, smoking with that natural expression that in her was pure elegance. He remembered in a painfully real way his nights with her, the smell of their sweaty bodies, the words said, and the broken promises. The mountains of lies. How could he explain to María that he came to truly love that woman? How could he explain to her that he then did what he did, renouncing that emotion for a different loyalty, that in his stupidity he thought was higher? How could she understand those dark years when he stained his hands with blood, thinking that his cause was just? She couldn’t. Simply because he no longer believed it. Nobody would forgive him. Nobody.

  “I won’t allow you to involve my daughter in this.” Imperceptibly, his eyes shifted for a second toward the katana. He would do what he had to. What was necessary. One more time.

  Fernando realized his intentions but was undaunted.

  “What are you going to do? Kill me? With that katana? It would be poetic, after all. Even our cowardly and wasted lives would have a dramatic, almost histrionic, ending. But you aren’t going to do it … We aren’t my brother’s samurai. We don’t deserve an honorable end. We are dogs, and we’ll die biting each other. And the one left alive will retire to a corner filled with garbage and die alone, in the dark, licking his wounds. Yes, old dogs. That’s what we are.”

  Gabriel lowered his gaze. He moved away from the table. Fernando was right. They were done for, whatever happened. But his daughter, María, was still young; she still had hopes.

  “You can’t make her bear the burden of my guilt. She is innocent; she doesn’t know anything.”

  Fernando shook his head vehemently.

  “Ignorance doesn’t exempt guilt. Doesn’t it seem strange to you that she was the one to put César Alcalá in jail? There are no coincidences, Gabriel. It was me, with the help of Recasens, who planned it all. I made Ramoneda’s wife denounce the case to your daughter, to pay her to do it. And I was the one who convinced your daughter, through Recasens, to go back to see Alcalá to get the truth about Publio out of him. I was the one who pushed her to the point that you didn’t want to take her to. To being faced with the truth … Now she has the opportunity to redeem you.”

  “And what opportunity is that?”

  Fernando paused, licking his lips. He had weighed the words he was going to say and was aware of the meaning of each and every one of them. They were the most difficult words he was ever going to say in his entire life. But there was no turning back now.

  “I can help her find Marta, César Alcalá’s daughter. But I have two conditions: the first is that César Alcalá hand over to me, and only to me, the evidence he has against Congressman Publio. I know that the inspector will not let himself be convinced. So the second condition is that you tell everything about my mother to your daughter. And that she explain it to César Alcalá. The decision will be left in the inspector’s hands.”

  Fernando stepped back slowly. Suddenly he felt very tired. He had turned into a monster as well. He had sacrificed so many people in order to destroy that man and those around him. Recasens was dead, Andrés, Marta, Alcalá … Soon he would burn in hell for what he had done. But hell was already a place he knew well.

  “Those are my conditions.”

  Gabriel didn’t know all the details about his daughter’s work, but he knew enough to know that Fernando’s proposal would lead to tragedy.

  “You know where that girl, Marta Alcalá, is?”

  Fernando avoided answering directly.

  “What I know is that Publio will end up ordering them to kill her, just as he did with Recasens. And if he doesn’t find out where the inspector is hiding the evidence, he’ll kill your daughter too. We both know him, and we know he is very capable of doing it.”

  21

  Collserola Mountain Range (Barcelona), February 3, 1981

  From the other side of the house a slight moan was heard, like the groan of a dying dog. The man approached the turntable and put on a classical record to drown it out. He felt bad, like a father who has to punish his daughter, but it was necessary.

  He started to dance to the rhythm of the music. His naked body swayed, synchronizing his motion to his breathing. Suddenly, his gaze hit the portrait that hung on the wall, and he stopped his dance. The woman seemed to be observing him with a benevolent reproach from the sepia frame, and her lips seemed to be speaking to him. The man closed his eyes for a second, remembering her burning whispers. When he opened them again the only murmur he heard was the dripping of the sink faucet.

  He looked out the window and slightly pushed aside the thick blanket that kept the moon from entering. He did it carefully. The pearly light illuminated his peeled skin like a flashlight. He uneasily contemplated the cleared path that led to the house.

  “When are they coming?” he wondered. “I’m ready.”

  But as in the days before, the path was empty. He could only wait, wait and despair. The dryness of his pupils meant he had to use eye drops, and he always looked like he was crying. But it only looked that way. The fire had burned away his tears, along with his heart.

  He put on the kimono and hugged himself. He was cold. His skin had no scent. It was like hugging a dead person. He touched his body in the semidarkness. He was awake, painfully awake. He felt his shaved head.

  He listened to Marta dragging herself around in the other room. He didn’t kid himself about the possibility of her falling in love with him. That wouldn’t be very realistic. Besides, love was a weakness he found insufferable. The only thing he expected of her was obedience. Blind obedience, complete annihilation, majestic admiration. He wanted to become her god and achieve her absolute devotion.

  When he first saw her, he thought she would be the perfect candidate. Her skin was so delicate, and she displayed a serenity so similar to the one he remembered in Isabel, that he could barely repress his desire to kidnap her right then and there. But he had to contain himself. A good strategist considers all the possible scenarios, looks for the best moment, has all his logistics prepared, and elaborates a plan for after the attack. He prepared himself conscientiously for months, risking more than necessary.

  He trusted that she would put up a fight; it could be no other way. But he was also sure that he would know how to subjugate her. The stages of his relationship with her were predetermined: first terror, then incomprehension, defeat, abandonment, resignation, and finally giving in. Yet she wasn’t making progress. Cruelty, violence, and terror were not enough to convince her that outside of him she had no possible existence. In all that time she hadn’t given up fighting. At first violently, then plunged into a deathly silence, and later trying to seduce him to gain his trust. Stupidly, he had succumbed to her charms and had let himself be tricked.

  Before, he used to allow her to walk around the house, even go out to the small backyard. There was no danger there; the tall fence protected them from indiscreet looks
and was impossible for her to scale. That freedom seemed to improve, at first, her mood. She behaved like a real courtesan with him, without showing signs of her own thoughts, as he had taught her. She was only attentive to his desires, to serving him. Sometimes, even, when he demanded his right to lie with her, she didn’t oppose him with animal resistance, biting and kicking, nor did she remain passive with mute recrimination. She could soften him with a look of supplication or complicity, depending on the moment, and he was happy to stop forcing her. But it was all an illusion. She had revealed herself to be as fine a strategist as he was. It took her more than a year to gain his trust. Then, one night, she tried to escape through one of the windows that wasn’t bricked up. He managed to grab her just as she was reaching the gate.

  He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. No more niceties. No more freedom. She would live out the rest of her days naked, tied with a chain around her neck, and eating off the floor. If there was one thing he could not abide, it was betrayal.

  * * *

  Marta heard the door open. Not a single fiber in her body flinched, although her heart was beating wildly. The man walked in and stopped beside her. He took off his clothes calmly, folded them carefully, and placed them on the wooden bench. Then he dragged her by a link of the chain to the mattress, and he lay down beside her, wrapping himself in the warmth of her body. He took Marta’s hand and brought it to his chest, forcing her to touch those wounds.

  Marta didn’t realize that he was crying until she felt the tears fall onto her hand. She held her breath to keep from vomiting at the touch of that skinned body filled with horrible burns that turned his thorax and legs into an enormous scaly black scar.

  “Why are you crying?” she said, immediately regretting, and surprised by, her words.

  He let Marta’s body go as if he had suddenly died. The truth mattered little inside those bricked-in walls.

  “Because very soon they will no longer need you. And Publio won’t let me keep you. I will have to kill you.”

  Marta’s eyes kept shining in silence as always, shining so much that she seemed about to cry. There was nothing more invasive than that gaze.

  “And why don’t you let me escape?”

  He rolled over, leaning on one shoulder. In spite of the darkness, he could see the fear in Marta’s face.

  “Your fate is tied to mine, whether you like it or not.”

  Marta plucked up her courage.

  “Really, I’m already dead. You killed me.”

  His face contracted. He got up and went in search of a bucket of water and a sponge.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore … Now wash me for dinner.”

  Marta was forced to once again carry out the revolting ritual of sponge-bathing that monster’s body. She had to do it slowly, with slight circular motions, as if she were polishing a delicate crystal cup. And as she did it, she again discovered every corner of that tormented geography that had grown before her eyes over the years. When she finished, the man released her from the chain.

  “Make dinner,” he said, leaving the room.

  Marta cried in gratitude when she felt the relief of the clamp falling to the floor. She stood up, staggering on starved legs, and walked with resignation toward the dirty light of the hallway.

  The kitchen was as wretched as the rest of the house. In one corner was the butane burner with a Formica cupboard detached from the wall and a shelf painted blue, where the scratched cups, plates, and dish towels were lined up next to bottles of wine. On the table covered with an oilcloth marked with cigarette holes there were several jars with handwritten labels: COFFEE, SUGAR, SALT, PASTA.

  Marta pushed aside the jars and lit a candle that was held up by an empty olive jar. She placed a plate and a clean spoon beside two paper napkins. She served wine from one of the bottles on the shelf. Then she went over to the burner, where a pot of boiling water was steaming. For a second she weighed the possibility of throwing it on him. But the man was watching her vigilantly from a prudent distance, playing with a knife blade. She didn’t have any real possibility of succeeding. And besides, she knew that they weren’t alone. In some part of the house were the guards. She poured in some noodles, added a little salt, and checked that everything was ready.

  “Ready,” she said.

  He came over slowly, took Marta by the back of the neck, not violently but firmly, and whispered in her ear.

  “Ready what?”

  Marta swallowed hard.

  “Ready … Great Sir.”

  “This is something else, isn’t it?” he said, slapping his thighs. His skin barely hurt that night, and that led to a certain feeling of well-being.

  Marta retired to one side. Until he finished she was not allowed to eat, and her dinner would be his leftovers. That was how things worked.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  Marta heard that sinister voice. Then she was struck by it all. The loneliness and the horror. In the darkness she felt that her past life, which she could barely remember, was vanishing as if it had never existed.

  “Nothing.”

  He half closed his eyes. She too had been eaten away by the mechanisms of disappointment. In her eyes there was only sadness and resignation. He imagined that he would end up that way soon, too. Every once in a while, as he moved forward to slurp the spoon, the fragrance of her body made its way to his nose. It was a sad aroma, like a slight drop of rain floating on the dry leaf of a stunted tree.

  Publio had said that it would all end soon. Would she want to go with him when it was all over? Deep down in his heart he knew the answer was no, that he would have to kill her as he had killed the women who’d shared his wait before her. Yet he still had a faint hope. He got up and went over to the window. It had rained, and the drops of water slid on the timbers like shiny insects trapped by the moonlight.

  “I’m finished. You can eat.”

  Marta calmly drained the noodles in the colander. She wasn’t hungry, but she forced herself to dish up a bowl. She sat at the table and served herself a little wine.

  “Go get dressed,” he ordered her when she had finished eating. Marta trembled. She knew what that meant, but there was nothing she could do about it. She went to the room and returned a few minutes later.

  He looked at her carefully. The resemblance was remarkable, especially when she put on those clothes. She was splendid in her Japanese lady costume. The kimono was blue and had lovely embroidery and strange flowers in black thread. She really looked like a beautiful oriental princess, with her pale face, her eyes made almond-shaped with henna, and the outline of her lips marked in thick pencil.

  “Is it hers?” asked Marta.

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “The clothes stored there, in the locked room … Do they belong to that woman in the picture? Is that why you force me to do this?”

  He stared at Marta. His mouth cracked for a tenth of a second in an expression of displeasure. He closed his eyes. The past was a desert lying in wait that grew at every moment. Wind whistling through the ruins of an abandoned city, filled with corpses drying in the sun among cracked stones. That hot, deadly air, filled with dusty flies, was the only thing he had in his head.

  * * *

  The first time he killed, he wasn’t even aware of what he was looking for. He was barely seventeen years old. He found a bar with the gates half lowered. The neon sign was already turned off. The bartender greeted him with an irritated expression. He served him and left the bottle on the bar. Then he started to push crap from one side to the other behind the bar with a grimy broom. With all the lights on, that place showed its true face. The carpet was covered with stains and cigarette burns. The linoleum floor was sticky and chipped. The walls were dirty and cracked. He didn’t mind. He hadn’t come for the interior decorating. He hadn’t come for anything. Including company. He ignored the whore who approached him, a servant on in years who stretched like a hungry cat when she saw him come in.
Old Dalila headed off, ruminating in her toothless mouth the failure of her fallen, well-worn flesh.

  A weak, feverish young woman took her place, with the indelible traces of heroin in her yellowing mouth and gaunt face. She sat beside him without saying anything, aware of her scarce possibilities, but still decided to give it a go. The girl, with desperate heroics, showed him her black pussy with fallen, cracked lips. He rejected it with a sad expression. The young woman insisted. She took his hand and brought it to her cold crotch. He let her place his fingers on the tangle of pubic hair like an exhausted butterfly. The young woman smiled, the smile of a stray dog happy with a caress. Finally, he agreed to go with her. There was something in her face, with its small eyes and dull skin, that he found attractive.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, trapping his flaccid penis delicately yet firmly.

  He wasn’t drunk; he hadn’t even drunk enough to pretend that he was. He was just unable to get a workable erection.

  “You can call me Great Sir.”

  The young woman smiled, opened her legs, and pressed against his thigh, pointing to a door. Her eyes were now of the forest, and she smiled maliciously.

  “Okay, Great Sir. That is my room.” They went up a worn marble staircase that led to the upper floor. They went into the room. It was clean. A Bellini nude decorated the wall. A lovely nude of a woman who covered her pubis modestly. He smiled at such feigned innocence. He went over to the open window. He didn’t want to be there, but there he was. The young woman had taken off her shoes and was lying on the bed, faceup, with her right leg leaning over the left protecting her crotch. Her dress slid along her skin to the inner thigh, showing the lace of a garter and the insinuating presence of her bare sex. A fallen strap over her shoulder indicated the path to a pointy breast protected by a light filled with warm nuances. He approached the wide bed, with iron headboard and canopy. His hand naturally found the route between the woman’s legs up to her dry sex that opened to his fingers without hesitation.