The Scent of Lemon Leaves

by Clara Sanchez

  “A folder, you say?” He laughed like a lunatic.

  As I feared, the whole place was swamped with folders, papers, not to mention about an inch of dust.

  “If you let me look for it, I’ll recognize it.”

  “Let’s do a deal. You let me look for it and come by here tomorrow.” He cackled again. Either the divorce had unhinged him or his wife had divorced him because he was unhinged.

  “Do you live alone?” I asked to cut the tension.

  “Be very careful about what you ask.” He moved over to me in an intimidating manner. “Then you won’t be complaining about my answer.”

  Bloody hell! He was a complete mess.

  “Very well,” Karin intervened in her foreign accent. “Tomorrow at this time we’ll send somebody to fetch the folder.”

  She then let fly with a few words in German, with a seriousness and cadence that not only threw the teacher but me too.

  “I didn’t get a word of that,” the teacher said.

  “I said,” Karin told him, gazing at him very sternly with her difficult face, “that you should stick your tongue up your backside and go and have a shower. This place stinks of manure.”

  I was very embarrassed by Karin, by the crazy teacher and by humanity in general, but very relieved too, because a dodgy situation like this was exactly what I needed to make Karin stop thinking that I was acting strangely.

  “If my sister could only see the state that this house is in,” I said as we got into the four-by-four. “She hasn’t got one good bit of furniture in her house, but she looks after it as if was Alice’s.”

  “There are some things that can’t be tolerated,” Karin said angrily. “Does he think that his horrible folders are the only ones that matter? He was laughing at your folder. It had better turn up, for his own good.”

  I suddenly felt frightened by Karin’s instant loathing of the poor crazy teacher.

  “Karin, he wasn’t laughing at my folder. No one can laugh at a folder. He’s just gone bananas, that’s all.”

  “He made sexual advances towards you, in very bad taste.”

  “He was only trying to frighten us. I’m sure he wouldn’t harm a fly. Thanks for standing up for me, but really, he’s inoffensive.”

  “Tomorrow someone will go to pick up the folder and ask him to behave himself. It’s not just for you but for his students too. What sort of education can he be giving those young people?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Karin. People change a lot when they’re at work. And who’ll go to pick up the folder? Fred?”

  “We’ll send Martín. Martín knows how to deal with scum like that.”

  The night had taken a spectacular turn. Now I was worried about the life of this scruffy man we’d just approached in his house and who was in great danger, without his having done anything to deserve it. Who was to say that some of the unsolved murders happening in this zone weren’t the work of the Brotherhood?

  “We should be more charitable. My sister told me that his wife has left him. He was head over heels in love with her and he can’t handle it. He’s gone a bit mad.”

  “Madness is a terrrrible blot on society,” she said evilly, dragging out her Rs.

  It looked like Karin was dying to get stuck into someone, and that poor man was the one who was copping it.

  I parked near a bar and, while Karin sat there having a decaf with milk and analysing all the people around her, I phoned my sister from a public phone box and told her what the tenant was like, adding that he might end up causing her problems. My sister listened to me as I spoke, less chatty than usual.

  “You sound different,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” I told her without knowing how to respond to this remark.

  “It’s your voice. You sound older. It must be the pressure on your diaphragm.”

  “Well, I haven’t given it much thought. I think I’m pretty much the same as usual.”

  “You’re not,” she said, coming out with her authoritarian voice. “Your voice is kind of sadder too. You haven’t got into some kind of mess, have you?”

  “What sort of mess would I be getting into here? I’ve got my troubles.”

  “Well, let’s see if you take the trouble to provide a father for your baby.”

  I was going to say what business was that of hers, that she should stick to her own affairs, and that I was doing her a favour by taking on the job of keeping an eye on the tenant and watching the house, but of course I didn’t say it. I just wanted to listen to her voice, which is as old as I am. She’s only two years older than me and to be honest I wouldn’t know whether I like her or not. I’d simply grown up with her and was missing her, which was why I’d phoned. Now she’d started telling me that Mum and Dad had been fighting again I wanted to hang up. My body was telling me to get out of there fast.

  “You’re a stirrer. Mum’s criticizing me now for not letting you stay in the house until you got it into your damn head to come back. You’ve managed to get her angry with me.”

  She made me remember the way I was before meeting Fred, Karin, Julián, Otto, Alice, Martín, the Eel. It reminded me that there’s a life in which nothing out of the ordinary ever happens, tragic or otherwise. Karin was a few steps away, sitting on a stool with the cup in her hands, watching people who, luckily, she could no longer load onto a carriage of a train en route to a concentration camp.

  I would have said more to my sister, would have sent her a sign that, yes, I was mixed up in a mess, in a mess and a problem of conscience, but then she would have started asking me for all sorts of details, and I didn’t want her to know. I just wanted her to intuit, to guess. So I asked about my brother-in-law and my nephews with a huge sense of distance, as if I was eighty years old all of a sudden and was trying not to let the past escape me.

  “Tell them not to worry about the motorbike. I always put the chain on.”

  When we got back, Fred ticked us off for being some four hours late. He said he was on the point of getting the forces out. Forces? Karin sent me a complicit smile and I sent one back. She wanted to play naughty little girls, with Fred as our protector. Deep down, he was happy to see his wife so exultant. She asked me to bring her handbag over and she opened it. She showed the little packet to Fred with a smile that really was diabolical this time. I was about to chip in, to tell Fred that Karin had put Alice in her place, but some sixth sense prevented me. There were things, some details that were for her and me alone. Karin opened the packet, fumbling because of the deformity of her fingers.

  She said it in Norwegian but I got it. Three. Alice, in her infinite stinginess or generosity, I couldn’t be sure, had given her three ampoules. Less is nothing. Three more shots of energy. She probably wouldn’t wait till she started feeling off colour but would inject one tonight so it would take effect while she was sleeping and – hallelujah! – she’d throw the used syringe into the rubbish bin in the bathroom, and perhaps Frida would see it and get a bit confused. I should forget about Frida. I couldn’t be on top of everything. I’d done what I had to do, in full knowledge of the risk involved.

  Julián

  I got up very early to have some breakfast and take my pills so I could be at the laboratory first thing. I had the syringes, just as I’d taken them out from among the stems of the flowers, wrapped in toilet paper and then in a bit of cellophane. I didn’t want to take them out of the packet and let the air get to them in case it affected whatever small traces of the product that might remain. I was hoping that they’d be highly skilled experts in the laboratory and able to do the tests with such a small sample, and I also hoped they’d want to do it.

  I’d asked Sandra to meet me at half-past three at the usual place. Had she lifted up the stone and got my message? If only I could have the result of the tests by then.

  I couldn’t. I was first greeted by an assistant and then, when she saw what it was about, the boss of the laboratory came out to talk to me, a man nearly as old as I am. There w
ere a couple of patients in the waiting room and I’d told the assistant that I would like to speak in private, so she ushered me into a mahogany office that looked as if it had been torn away from some lawyer’s practice from the previous century. I took out the wrapped-up syringes.

  “They’ve been used,” I said as he unwrapped them, “and I’d like to know if there’s anything left that might be tested.”

  “What kind of product are we talking about?”

  “That’s the bad bit. I don’t know. I have no idea and I’m very worried. It’s about a son of mine. I’ve caught him injecting himself several times. I don’t want him to end up a drug addict.”·

  “What age are we talking about?”

  “Thirty-eight. He’s an adult now, but a son is a son. I can’t pretend it’s not happening.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Do you live here?”

  “No, we’re staying here, having a holiday. I thought that the sea and the sun might help him to stop taking things, but it hasn’t worked.”

  “Very well. I’ll do what I can. I’ll see if I can find a drop to use. Your address?”

  “Right now we’re in the middle of changing hotels. My son creates difficult situations for us. I’ll come back whenever you say.”

  “It will be ready tomorrow afternoon or the day after, depending on the difficulty involved.”

  “Very well, I’ll drop by tomorrow and see if we’re in luck.”

  I was nervous. I knew this experienced man was going to find something truly surprising. Salva most probably hadn’t had access to the product. He would have known of its existence but had never had a drop of it within his grasp, although he might have learnt where they produced it. It could be one of many Nazi experiments. They were very interested in immortality, and the Führer himself had ordered expeditions to discover the elixir of eternal life, just as he’d ordered searches for the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail. It could be a full-blown genetic experiment.

  For the time being I had nothing urgent to do before my appointment with Sandra, so I decided to sort out one thing that was still pending: a visit to the Tres Olivos old people’s residence to make further enquiries about my friend’s belongings. I spoke with the same lioness as on the previous occasion. She was even more feisty, if possible, than what I remembered. She was insultingly brunette.

  “Back here again?”

  It said a lot in her favour that she remembered me. It meant that she paid attention to details, and we old people are very dependent on the small needs and details that need attention.

  “You have an enviable memory.”

  “I have no choice. Otherwise this place would be bedlam.”

  “Listen, I came a long way to see my friend and, when I arrived, it turned out he had died and only left me a note. Would you recall what happened to his belongings?”

  “I think I told you. The clothes went to the parish church and we burned his papers.”

  “You burned them? All of them?”

  She was getting prickly. She didn’t like going round and round the same old track.

  “Is there no box of his things still here?”

  She didn’t say a word, but just stared at me, saying it without speaking: I’ve already told you all I’m going to tell you.

  “Salva deserves a bit more care from us, even though he’s dead.”

  “I’m in no doubt about that,” she said, “but just look at what’s going on in that dining room. They also need me to take care of them.”

  Then a bizarre question occurred to me, or at least one that was right off the track of our conversation.

  “Excuse me, but who finances the home? Is it state-funded?”

  Then she began to look at me differently.

  “It’s private, with a small grant from the government, but it’s subject to the same monitoring as any state-run home. Everything’s in order. Nothing could be done for Salva and he knew it. He was very well aware of his situation till the end. He was an exceptional person. I felt his loss greatly.”

  She let me go into Salva’s room, which was empty, with the blankets folded on the mattress. From his window I could see a vegetable garden and then the horizon with its mountains. Here Salva was thinking, here he wrote me the letter and here he spent the last days of his life. I opened up the wardrobe and cupboards without any luck. They were empty. I looked under the mattress with the same result. Yet Salva was far-sighted, very far-sighted and I had to assume that, if he wanted to leave me some kind of information, he would have found some place and it was up to me to discover where it was. Salva hadn’t been paralysed by the knowledge that his death was nigh. He knew death, had looked it in the eye and had challenged it. The Salva I knew wouldn’t have been daunted by death.

  I was convinced that Salva had considered the possibility that they’d get rid of his things and that I wouldn’t find anything on my arrival. Then again it was also possible that his legacy wasn’t in his room but outside, in some part of the garden or some place where papers were usually kept. In the library perhaps. I closed the door with the sensation that I was seeing something without knowing what it was.

  I didn’t expect a library with so many books, some five thousand – a donation, the librarian told me, from a historian who’d spent his last years here in the home, abandoned by everyone. “There are a lot of people here,” the librarian said, “who breathe their last without anyone remembering them, and the friendships they make here, and we ourselves, are their only consolation. Then the family protests because they’ve left us their library or they’ve made some financial donation.”

  I asked her what books Salva tended to read.

  “Salvador… he was a highly intelligent man and his head was very clear. He was the only one who didn’t bother you with his stories. Mostly he read history and some books on medicine. In general what most interests elderly people who lived through the civil war is history, and also the fascicles – and she showed me several shelves full of well-thumbed examples – on how to look after yourself and prolong your life. I think Salva read them all, because there came a time when this library didn’t have what he wanted and he went off to the university. Until he got bad, really bad, he spent his days there, taxis here and taxis there. The man must have spent a fortune on taxis.”

  It seemed to me that the finances of the elderly people (as she called us) certainly mattered to her, but this wasn’t the right time and she wasn’t the right person to be asking about Salva’s money. I went to the history section and picked out two volumes on the Second World War. If he’d jotted down anything, or left some special sign, he would have done it in the part that was most familiar to me, some section on Mauthausen.

  Not much space was given to the camp, and neither did I find anything underlined. I checked the chapter titled “Spanish Republicans in the Death Camps” but found nothing significant there either. It would be a question of checking, going from book to book, but I was afraid that some problem on the road might prevent me from getting to the lighthouse on time, which would be inexcusable. Then again, it was also possible that Sandra and I had made more progress in our enquiries than Salva had been able to imagine. It was unlikely that he’d actually got hold of this liquid. That would have been his dream. Basically, the only things Salva had bequeathed to me were suspicions. Furthermore, if I was a believer, I’d think that Salva, in the afterlife, had sent me Sandra so I could finish the job he had started.

  Then again, it was also possible that I was overrating Salva. When I thought of him, I always saw the forty-year-old man who’d turned into a Nazi-hunting machine. Like any other human being, his faculties were diminishing, and perhaps he knew less than I’d believed. Even so, he’d been able to discover all by himself that there was a brotherhood of Nazis in this area and that they were still testing on themselves an experiment of self-rejuvenation that dated back fifty years. Or maybe it wasn’t so many years. We’d taken it for granted that the Nazis were content wit
h not being discovered, growing old and dying in peace, but they still might have continued working on some inventions for their own use and for sale.

  On my way back to the town, I wasn’t sure whether or not to go to the bar. Today they had pasta with tomatoes and grilled salmon, all very heavy stuff, and besides, my visit to the home had killed off any hunger I might have had. If, as they said in the home, Salva had asked them to send me that envelope after his death, he should have told me everything in the most minute detail and sent me any information that could help me, and not left me with these half-truths, I thought yet again, but this time quite exasperated by his perplexing behaviour. I got a sandwich and a big bottle of water and went straight to the lighthouse. I ate half the sandwich and took my pills on the bench surrounded by wild palms, where Sandra and I used to sit when the weather was good. Then I started to feel cold so I got in the car. I’d use the time until she arrived to have a quick nap.

  Sandra

  By two, according to a timetable that was half European and half Spanish, we’d already eaten the customary light lunch. We’d had time to go to the gym and have a drive along the beach. Karin told me she’d spoken with the manager at the gym and there was no problem about my enrolling for the childbirth classes. As she was saying this, I realized that I’d almost forgotten the baby inside me and wondered if I wasn’t an unnatural mother, and whether I’d got into the fix I was in so I wouldn’t have to be thinking constantly about what lay in store for me. It’s not that I’d forgotten that I was pregnant, which was impossible, because that would be like forgetting how to walk, but I’d stopped giving it any importance. But, all things considered, in real and practical terms, whether I thought about it or not, the gestation was running its course and neither of us was standing still. Each of us, in our own worlds, was doing what we had to do. The future was an unknown, as people tend to say. When they told me I was pregnant, I imagined nine months in a world apart, the world of pregnant women, full of new and intimate things. And now look at the life I was leading. Of course I wasn’t leading the life of the pregnant woman, and maybe no one leads that life. Maybe that life doesn’t exist.