by Luis Leante
Details, gestures, smells she thought she had completely forgotten now came back to her. For a moment she could almost hear the floorboards in the corridor creak under Mari Cruz’s short steps. The clicking of the housekeeper’s heels was part and parcel of her adolescence, as was the view from the balcony of her bedroom. She had listened to that clicking going up and down the corridor on a certain hot July afternoon, while she sat in bed pretending to read, overcome with anxiety, biting her nails. It was the first time she had missed a day of class without justification. True, she’d been to the Academia Santa Teresa in the morning, but after lunch she told Mari Cruz she didn’t feel well: she had a terrible headache. Then she asked Mari Cruz to let her know if anyone rang. But time went by and no one did. Montse wasn’t sure she’d hear the phone from her bedroom, and so she listened to the maid’s heels, alert, gauging every noise, every move. Through the window she heard the belfries of the Gothic Quarter tolling the hours one after another. All she could think of was the boy who had driven her home. Perhaps she’d been a bit cold when she’d said goodbye in front of her house. Perhaps she should have said something else when she gave him her phone number. Perhaps she had misjudged him, had misread his mysterious dark eyes. Or perhaps Santiago San Román could have any girl he wanted just by offering her a ride in his white convertible, as he’d done with her. She was afflicted by doubts and anxiety. She looked up the surname San Román in the telephone directory. Even if she found his number, she wouldn’t dare to call him, but she liked to think that she could. Every now and again she was startled by Mari Cruz’s heels. Montse went out onto the balcony at least ten times. Maybe the boy was laughing at her. No doubt he had a girlfriend and all he’d done was show his friend Pascualín how easily he could pick up girls. Maybe she shouldn’t have kissed him. Maybe she should have let him kiss her. As the afternoon wore on she grew more and more in thrall to her own nerves. It was infuriating to think that she had missed class for him, and yet she was unable to think of anything except this jumped-up nobody who had tried to dazzle her. But when she heard Mari Cruz’s heels going faster than normal, and then stop at her door, knocking on it softly and saying, ‘Señorita Montse, there’s a call for you,’ her heart almost jumped out of her chest. She ran as if half-crazed to the living room, closed the door behind her and, almost out of breath, picked up the receiver.
‘It’s Santiago San Román,’ she heard at the other end. ‘From yesterday evening?’
‘Santiago San Román?’ asked Montse, trying to conceal the affectation in her voice. There was a tense, equivocal pause.
‘I drove you home yesterday and you gave me your phone number. Well, actually, I asked you for it…’
‘Oh, yes, the guy in the white convertible.’
‘Yes, that’s right. Well, that’s me. Anyway, would you like to go for a spin?’
‘A “spin”? A spin where?’ Montse didn’t like to be cruel, but didn’t know how else to do this.
‘Around, wherever you like. Out for a drink and all that.’
‘Your friend, you and me?’
‘No, no, just you and me. Pascualín is busy.’ Montse counted to seven before replying.
‘I’ve got to study. I’m quite behind with my German.’ Santiago was not expecting that answer. He didn’t know what else to say.
‘Well, it’s a pity. I’ll call you some other time then.’ Montse swallowed and did something that went against all her principles.
‘Wait. Where are you now?’
‘Across the road from you, in a phone booth.’
‘Stay there. I’m coming right over.’
That was the last day Montse attended the Academia Santa Teresa. From then on, the summer turned into spring, the books into flowers, and the stifling heat into a light breeze that went on brushing against her skin for several months, even after the humid cold weather had come in from the coast along the Ramblas and settled on the streets of the city.
On that first afternoon the sky was an intense red that Montse had never seen before. Santiago San Román was wearing the same white shirt, rolled up to his elbows. He looked taller than the day before, darker, more handsome. She took an hour to get ready and come down, but the boy didn’t say a thing; he just waited in front of the booth.
‘Where are you taking me?’ asked Montse flirtatiously, as soon as she was close to him.
‘Do you want to go for a walk?’
‘A walk?’ Santiago had not been expecting that question either.
‘Did you not drive here?’ He blushed. For the first time he looked vulnerable. He took Montse by the hand, and they walked down the street as if they were a couple.
‘I haven’t got the convertible today,’ he said, as he opened the door of a yellow Seat 850. ‘It’s at the mechanic’s.’ Montse got in without replying. Inside it smelled of grease and tobacco.
Yet once in it, with the windows down to let the air in, Montse felt as good as the previous evening in the convertible. She looked at Santiago out of the corner of her eye: he drove as if he’d been driving all his life. They went across the Gothic Quarter and into the Ramblas. San Román got out of the car and ran around it to open her door. She failed to conceal how much the gesture pleased her. Without asking her anything, Santiago pointed to a bar and led the way. She knew the place but had never been inside. They sat at the bar, and Santiago asked for two beers without asking her what she was having. He acted perfectly naturally; he was clearly in his element. Montse, on the other hand, felt ill at ease. She felt that everyone was watching her: waiters, customers, the passers-by on the other side of the huge windows. She tried to imagine what her friends would say if they saw her at that moment. She could barely pay attention to what Santiago was saying; his words came out in a torrent and gave her no time to reply. As she drank the first beer of her life, Montse tried to guess what lay behind his words. She drank as though she loved the bitter beverage. She accepted a cigarette and smoked it without inhaling so as not to start coughing. Everything seemed magical this afternoon. She listened to Santiago talk and didn’t ask him any questions. When they said goodbye at around ten, she let him kiss her. For the first time she trembled in the arms of a boy. She got out of the car with the combined taste of beer, tobacco and kisses in her mouth. She felt dizzy. As she opened the front door, the glass reflected San Román leaning on his car, looking at her chivalrously, perhaps smiling. She told herself she would never get in a car with him again, never again agree to see him. The experience of that afternoon was enough to gossip about with her friends for months. Nothing remotely like it had happened to any of them. She turned to say goodbye and had to squint when she saw him standing there – so handsome, so attentive to her movements, so dashing.
It wasn’t quite eight in the morning, and Montse was already standing at the corner of Vía Layetana in front of the shoe shop, waiting for Santiago’s yellow car to appear. He turned up in a red one. The night before, as soon as she’d opened the door, Mari Cruz had told her there was someone on the phone for her. It was Santiago, calling from the booth across the road: ‘Are you my girlfriend?’ he had asked point-blank.
Montse had felt a tingle reach her neck. She’d been tipsy and happy. ‘Yes,’ she’d answered, trying to sound calm.
‘Then I’ll see you tomorrow at eight at the corner of the shoe shop.’ And she hadn’t said anything, just hung up. She knew it wouldn’t be easy to get the boy out of her mind.
She held her books and folder to her chest, as she would a pillow. In her pencil case she’d put lipstick and mascara. She hadn’t dared to apply the make-up at home. She was so nervous that she had to lean on the window of the shoe shop to stop her legs trembling. This wasn’t the way she should be doing things – she knew she should have played hard to get – but she wasn’t able to control her impulses. On hearing the horn of a red car and seeing Santiago lean out of its window, she ran across the street, barely looking at the traffic. She opened the back door, threw the books on the seat
and climbed in the front.
‘Is this your father’s car, too?’ She asked it without irony or malice, but Santiago turned red with embarrassment. Montse touched her lips to his. ‘What did you put back there?’ he asked.
‘My books. At home I have to pretend I’m going to the Academy.’ Santiago smiled.
‘Clever girl.’
‘Haven’t you got work to do today?’ she asked, and this time the question was dripping with sarcasm. But Santiago didn’t notice.
‘I’m on holiday.’ They spent the muggy July morning driving around Barcelona. As the hours passed the sun started to bleach the colours of the streets and the buildings. Santiago wasn’t in a hurry; he drove as calmly as if he were sitting at a bar. Today it was Montse who did the talking. She was euphoric. Everything attracted her attention: the siren of an ambulance, a beggar at a zebra crossing, a couple of lovers, a man who resembled her uncle. Santiago listened to all of it and smiled without interrupting her. They went across the city from north to south and then back, stopping for lunch at a bar for tourists with an outdoor terrace. When Santiago suggested going to the amusement park, Montse could barely hide her eagerness.
Before getting out of the car she put on the lipstick and applied mascara, looking at herself in the rear-view mirror. From the Montjuic viewpoint she surveyed the harbour as though she were an empress. Things were happening so fast she had no time to think. ‘You look like a princess,’ Santiago said, and Montse felt butterflies in her stomach. She let him hug her and, as her gaze flew from boat to boat, thought of the boys she had met in the past. None was like Santiago. They all seemed immature, childish. She let him hold her tight. Had it not been for the shiver she felt, she would have thought it was all a dream. But it wasn’t. No one would understand what she was feeling just then. The little house in Cadaqués flashed into her mind. It now seemed she had wasted many summers there, thinking it the centre of the world. ‘Can you swim?’ she asked out of the blue.
‘No, I’ve never had a chance to learn. You?’
‘Me neither,’ she lied.
They ate candyfloss at the amusement park. They shot at silhouettes in the shooting gallery. They climbed into the bumper cars. They strolled like a couple of lovers from ride to ride. Santiago made suggestions, and Montse went along with them. On the rollercoaster they held each other so tight that their arms ached. They lost themselves in the crowd, trying to go unnoticed among the few tourists. She kept on talking nervously. ‘I’d like to smoke,’ she said. And Santiago ran to a tobacconist’s to buy a packet of Chesterfields. Every time he had to pay for something he took out a roll of one-hundred-peseta notes which he wielded as if he were a bank teller. ‘Now tell me, are you really rich?’
‘Of course, richest man in the world, with you here.’
At noon Montse called home to tell the maid she was having lunch at Nuria’s.
‘Don’t you have to call your parents?’ she asked Santiago.
‘Never. I don’t owe them any explanations. I’m independent.’ ‘You’re lucky!’ They ate at an expensive restaurant. Santiago tried hard to make Montse feel at ease. Later, when she opened the door to her building, with the books pressed to her, it seemed as though the world was spinning. She turned to say goodbye and felt him push her gently against the door. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What do you think?’ They kissed. Montse felt a pair of hands reaching where no one had ever reached before. Her books fell to the floor with a thud. She had to make an effort to tear herself away. In spite of her tiredness she found it difficult to fall asleep. She thought she wouldn’t brush her teeth, so as to keep Santiago’s kiss in her mouth, but the taste of cigarettes was too strong. Daydreaming, she scribbled in her diary. In the morning she only hoped her family wouldn’t find out.
Montse phoned her father early the next morning. She spoke to her sister Teresa and her mother as well. She told them she found the classes at the Academy boring and, lying, said she wanted to come to Cadalqués. At half past nine she was standing by the shoe shop, nervously holding her books. Santiago appeared in a white car, though not the convertible. Montse got in as if this were part of a daily routine, smiling, wanting to be near him. ‘I don’t believe for a second that you work in a bank, or that your father is the general manager.’ The boy tensed up, stepped on the accelerator, and drove into the traffic. ‘Santi, you’re a liar. And I haven’t lied to you at all.’
‘Nor me, Montse, honest. I’m not a liar, I swear.’ She realised she was putting him on the spot. She leaned back on the headrest and gently placed her hand on his leg.
‘Tell me something, Santi. Have you loved many women?’ Santiago San Román smiled, trying to relax.
‘No one as much as you, sweetheart.’ Montse felt as though petals were raining down on her. Her ears tingled and her legs trembled.
‘You’re a liar,’ she said, squeezing his leg, ‘but I love it.’
‘I swear I’m not lying to you. I swear on…’ He trailed off. Judging from his face, a dark thought must have crossed his mind.
For a week Montse’s books travelled in the back seat of a number of different cars. She had the feeling of seeing the world from above, of gliding over the city, only to put her feet back on the ground when she went back home. Every evening, before saying goodbye, Santiago would push her into the huge central shaft of the spiral staircase, and she would let him explore her body. They would kiss for hours, until their stomachs ached. Thousands of questions popped in her mind, but she didn’t dare ask them for fear of breaking the spell. Santiago’s background was obvious. He sounded like an outsider, behaved impulsively, contradicted himself. Although he tried to hide his hands, his broken, grease-stained nails looked more like a factory worker’s than a banker’s. But whenever Montse hinted at it he would squirm, and she didn’t feel like giving him a hard time. Later, lying on her bed, she tried to take a step back and see things clearly. Every night she promised herself she would speak to Santiago the next time she saw him, but when it came to the crunch she was afraid of frightening him away.
Almost twenty-six years later, lying on that very bed, she was turning the same thoughts over in her mind. The pictures of Santiago in military uniform had sent her back in time. She seemed to have been looking into that gaze of his only a few hours ago as they had said goodbye huddled in the staircase shaft. She looked at her hands and felt old. Remembering these things was like digging up a dead person. She took out the picture she’d found in the hospital and placed it on the blanket, next to the other photographs. It was him, no doubt about it. She tried to recall her feelings when they told her that he had died. She could perfectly remember the faces of the tobacconist and her husband. Had it been Santiago’s idea? Had he tried to take his revenge on her by faking his own death? Had it been some macabre joke or a rumour no one bothered to confirm? Montse’s eyes stung from staring so hard at the pictures. She decided to go through with her plan, and took her mobile out of her bag. She looked up the number she’d quickly scribbled in her diary and dialled it. Her stomach was a bundle of nerves. It felt like lifting a tombstone to make sure the body was still there. She waited impatiently as the rings went on. Eventually someone picked up. It was a man’s quiet voice.
‘Mr Ayach Bachir?’
‘Who is this?’
‘My name is Dr Montserrat Cambra. May I speak to Mr Ayach Bachir?’
‘It’s me. I’m Ayach Bachir.’
‘Oh, hello, I’m calling from Santa Creu hospital.’
‘The hospital? What now?’
‘Nothing, rest assured, nothing’s happened. I just wanted to have a word about your wife.’
‘My wife is dead. We buried her two days ago.’
‘I know, Mr Bachir. I signed the death certificate.’
There was a silence at the other end of the line. Montse found it almost unbearably painful. She took a deep breath and continued.
‘You see, I only wanted to tell you that, when they gave you back
your wife’s belongings, something was left behind in the hospital. It’s a photograph. I’d like to give it back to you in person and have a word with you.’
‘A photograph? What photograph?’
‘One of the ones your wife was carrying in her bag.’
‘They gave me those back.’
‘I’m sorry to insist, but one of them was mislaid,’ lied Montse, still firm. ‘I know this is not a good moment, but if you don’t mind I’d like to give it back to you. I can come to your house if you like.’
Again there was a pause.
‘To my house? What did you say your name was?’
‘Montserrat Cambra. I got your address from the hospital files. I’ve got your file right here,’ she lied again. ‘Carrer de Balboa. Is that correct?’
‘Yes, that’s where I live.’
‘So if you don’t mind…’
‘I don’t, that’s very kind of you.’
Montse breathed out, relieved, as though she had just walked over quicksand.
‘I’ll come by tomorrow then, if that’s convenient, of course.’
‘It is convenient, yes. Any time. You’ll be welcome.’
Montse hung up and put the phone in her bag. She tied the letters together with the red ribbon and returned them to their place. Her hand touched something inside the drawer. It was a blackened silver ring. She took it out and looked at it against the light, as though it were a prism. Her heart quickened once again, and she realised that a tear was rolling down her cheek and into the corner of her mouth.