The Scent of Lemon Leaves

by Clara Sanchez

  I was waiting for him. He nosed slowly out of the garage, looking straight ahead without blinking, his face a stony mask under his cap. It was easy to follow him. He might have been driving an impressive tank, but his reflexes were worse than mine, and still worse now that he was feeling so insecure. Bastard, I thought, I hope you start feeling like a pile of shit, a useless crock. I hope you feel your life isn’t worth living and that now you have to take some of your own medicine.

  He drove out of town and for some twenty minutes after that towards the next town, but before reaching it he turned into a residential zone that I already knew, heading for the Bremer Apartments where Sebastian Bernhardt lived, surrounded by security guards. The Butcher was probably coming to consult him about his problem, which confirmed that, in the hierarchy, the Black Angel ranked above Otto, Alice and Christensen. I felt very agitated. I was starting to understand how this community of invisible people functioned. All this time it was Sebastian who’d prevented them from doing too many stupid things, from exposing themselves unduly, Sebastian who’d found a way of bestowing on them an excessively long life so he wouldn’t be left alone in an alien world. He must have suffused them with confidence and kept them united by the bonds of the Brotherhood. He was the one who instructed the young people. He had to be the queen bee and, when the queen bee was dead, the others wouldn’t know what to do. In order to give them confidence, he’d had to make them believe that he was invulnerable and that he could make the rest of them invulnerable with a product that was exclusively for them.

  After three quarters of an hour Heim came back out from where he’d gone in. His black Mercedes glided through the streets of a planet to which they’d adapted like insects.

  I remained there in case Sebastian came out.

  Sandra

  I saw him unexpectedly on Thursday when I was leaving for my meeting with Julián. On this occasion I didn’t have to give too many explanations when I was going out, because Martín had just turned up with something to tell Fred and Karin in the library-den – their business, Brotherhood things, the usual crap. It was half-past three and, for once, I was going to get to the lighthouse on time. I left with the sensation that this story couldn’t last much longer. Julián’s money was running out. He didn’t want to complain, but sometimes he let it slip that he couldn’t afford to keep paying at the hotel and that he practically had to put petrol in the car with an eye-dropper. A man of his age couldn’t stand all this hassle for too long either, and I couldn’t go on being entangled with these people and their alien world. The time would have to come when the whole thing exploded or we each went our separate ways. I didn’t have to decide anything. It would be decided in due course.

  I came out of Villa Sol and in the street I felt something whipping my eyes, lashing my brain.

  That car!

  Inside the car was Alberto doing a crossword puzzle, resting it on the wheel. I stopped, paralysed, sitting on my motorbike.

  Alberto!

  I called him without moving my lips and he heard me without hearing. He turned his head towards me.

  It was still him. The same eyes, the same mouth. He got out of the car. He was wearing dark-blue jeans, a check shirt and a pullover thrown over his shoulders. I was pleased to see he hadn’t put on the jacket Frida had given him. He stopped in front of me and I stayed there sitting on my motorbike.

  Tousled light-brown hair, forehead and nose red from the wind and sun. He was no beauty. His wallet was sticking out from his back pocket and one of his moccasins was coming undone.

  “Your shoelace is undone.”

  He looked at it without paying attention or bending down to tie it.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, as if we’d seen each other only five minutes earlier.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m asking you because it means something to me.”

  He was only a few metres away from the house, yet hadn’t been capable of coming in to see me. It hurt so much that I stopped loving him.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “I’ll pretend I haven’t seen you.”

  My last shred of pride prevented me from calling him a pig.

  “And I’ll pretend that I never got out of the car, right?”

  “Up to you. You seem to be so sure about what to do and what not to do.”

  “Yes, I am sure. And you should be too, but you prefer to act like a madwoman without thinking about the consequences.”

  “You’re always threatening me.”

  “You’re being threatened, but I’m not the one who’s threatening you. I told you to go, to put this behind you.”

  I fancied him a lot, wanted him to be the father of my baby, and I also knew that the day I stopped fancying him I’d hate him.

  “Everyone’s saying the same thing, telling me to go, but where?”

  “Everyone? Who else is telling you to go?”

  “It’s a manner of speaking. I can’t go. I have more ties here than I have anywhere else.”

  “Come on, let’s go for a ride on the motorbike,” he said, getting on behind me.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “To the lighthouse. There’s a lovely view from up there.”

  It was then that I remembered Julián, who, precisely then, would be waiting for me at the lighthouse.

  “The lighthouse? Are you sure? You wouldn’t prefer to go to the beach or the port?”

  “The lighthouse is a quieter place. Besides, there’s an enormous cliff and I can throw you over it. Nobody would find you. It’s not true, this story that the sea throws up everything it swallows.”

  I’d started the motorbike. It was windy and it got stronger with speed. I went in the direction of the lighthouse. I couldn’t hide the fact that I knew the road very well, that I could almost do it with my eyes shut. Yet I went as slowly as I could. I loved feeling Alberto behind me. He took away the wind, he protected me. It was impossible that he could ever think of doing anything bad to me. It seemed that the whole time I hadn’t been with him was lost time, a test.

  When we got to the level ground by the lighthouse, the only place to park, I saw Julián’s car and knew he’d be in the ice-cream parlour, and that maybe he’d seen me coming through the window. If I told Alberto I needed to go to the toilet and to wait for me a moment, I’d be able to send some sign to Julián, but I didn’t want to waste as much as a minute of being with Alberto. I left Julián to get bored and then to leave and go and do whatever he wanted to do. What I certainly wasn’t planning to do was to mess up this moment that had dropped on me out of the blue, when I least expected it.

  We walked among the wild palms, stepping on pebbles and little rocks, until we were nearly at the edge of the cliff. Immense, mostly blue but green in some patches, the sea spread out from its base to meet up with the sky, far away in the background. Only the two of us were there.

  “It seems unreal,” he said, referring to the spectacle we had before us, or to us two, or to life in general.

  “It seems unreal” were three marvellous words. He took me by the shoulders and then kissed me. It was the kiss I knew, the kiss I was waiting for. I knew it better than the first time because it wasn’t a surprise, just the pleasure of its softness and warmth. I could feel his penis pressing against me. He pulled back.

  “It can’t be now,” he said.

  I took one of his hands in mine. It was squarish, with strong fingers, rather an insignificant thing in that glorious beauty of sea and sky, but it was the only really important thing, something capable of giving sense to life.

  “What about your husband?”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Okay, the father of your baby,” he said, slipping his hand out from mine and putting it in his pocket to bring out his cigarettes. He lit one.

  “We’re not together. I wasn’t sure whether I loved him.”

  “And did he love you?”

  “I think so. I feel bad about that.�
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  He suddenly turned his back to the sea.

  “I have to go back. This will be our place.”

  I didn’t want to ask him about the girl he’d been seen with on the beach. I didn’t want to ask him about Frida either. The other one could be the girl on the beach and I’d be the girl at the lighthouse. I didn’t want to spoil my moment, my little spell of happiness.

  Julián’s car was no longer next to the lighthouse. I wondered if he’d seen us. I would have liked him to have seen us, so I could talk with him about it later, to prolong these sensations somehow. He might have left me a message under stone C, but I couldn’t check that now.

  Alberto drove and I sat behind, hugging him.

  Julián

  The waiting was worthwhile. In the end, when I was about to throw in the towel and go back to the hotel, I saw Sebastian come out accompanied by Martín and the Eel.

  Sebastian was more or less the same height as me but not so skinny. He had an elegant style. He was wearing a knee-length black coat with the lapels turned up and an artistically knotted scarf. Adapting to Sebastian’s pace, they walked slowly down the street to the cliff and entered the glassed-in restaurant overlooking the sea where I’d watched him and Alice. You could see them from outside, eating oysters and drinking champagne. They were talking and sometimes they laughed. I took up my position next to a car, got the mini-camera out of my pocket and took their photo. At one point I thought Alberto looked in my direction, but then he turned to face Sebastian again.

  I went away happy. I was getting closer and closer to Sebastian and I wanted to celebrate it with Sandra somehow, so I went off to the lighthouse feeling more chipper than usual.

  She was late and I waited sitting by the usual window. This time I asked for a Diet Coke, and the usual waitress banged it down on the table. I was used to her treating me badly. Despite what people believe, you can adapt to the tyranny and despotism of others. If you think otherwise, go and tell all those people who acclaim their dictators and torturers. The offensiveness of this harpy was becoming familiar.

  I drank my Coca-Cola slowly, making it last, as I’d have to pay for Sandra’s juice and slice of cake and my funds were at rock bottom. I didn’t want to sink all my savings into the Costa Azul hotel and this place. I’d have to keep something in case of emergency and, most important, I had to think about my daughter’s future. If only I could have paid for Sandra’s snack. I wouldn’t have felt as bad about that as I did when I saw her with the Eel, leaning against his shoulder and contemplating the terribly blue and romantic sea.

  Through the window I saw them arriving on Sandra’s motorbike, but they parked outside my field of vision. After a while, realizing that they weren’t coming in, I paid, went out and walked to our bench, and there I saw them, among the palms, facing the sea. I saw them kissing and, right then, I was very happy for Sandra, because, whatever happened, she could take that with her. At the same time I felt a huge emptiness. As is understandable, I would never have dared to look at Sandra as anything but a granddaughter. I swear I’ve never looked at her in any other way. It was the fact of being left alone, seeing myself being totally and irrevocably excluded from a joyful, marvellous life that left me feeling empty inside, lifeless. I wondered whether I should leave her a note under stone C after they left, but in the end decided not to. I left as I’d come, or rather I left worse than I was when I’d come, and yet, deep down, I was glad, because something that Sandra really wanted had happened to her.

  Sandra

  I had another relapse. When I was going back to Villa Sol on the motorbike with Alberto, I kept shivering, which I put down to the emotion of being close to him. When you’ve waited so long for something and it seems as if it’s never going to come, it’s too much when it does come. On the cliff near the lighthouse Alberto disarmed me, left me defenceless in every sense.

  When we got to the car near the house we found Martín waiting, leaning against the bonnet of the car. It was clear that he wasn’t exactly amused about being kept waiting, but it was also clear that Alberto was a little above him in rank, so he couldn’t tell him off.

  We didn’t say goodbye. Alberto didn’t give me a chance. As soon as he got off the motorbike, he went over to the car without looking at me. He started talking with Martín and I rode off to the house. We didn’t have that moment, tiny as it is, that’s always there at the end of everything, and that helps you to remember it all over and over again.

  When I got to the gate of Villa Sol, I felt that, given the state of agitation I was in, I couldn’t go inside, so I went off towards the beach. I needed to walk fast, to run and use up the energy that wouldn’t let me forget about Alberto. I couldn’t lock myself up inside four walls with this feeling, because I’d die if I did.

  I walked fast along the shore for two hours and, when I couldn’t go on, went back to the Norwegians. On the motorbike, my legs kept trembling. I could have tried to see Julián, at the hotel, or in the port where he said he spent quite a lot of time, but I didn’t want to talk about anything that wasn’t Alberto, or to be obliged to think about anything that wasn’t Alberto.

  I didn’t take any notice of what Fred and Karin were doing when I came in. I couldn’t get what they were saying to me either. I went upstairs and lay on my bed. I was sweating. I crossed my hands over my breasts and concentrated on the kiss at the lighthouse.

  9

  Don’t Be Afraid

  Sandra

  All through my pregnancy I’d been developing something like a sixth sense. I noticed the changes in the weather and especially if something out of the ordinary was going to happen, something that was going to change me. The baby either seemed more active or went completely still, and this scared me. I had the impression of having been loaded up with sensors without my knowing it. It only took some setback or worry for all the sensors to light up and that was the only thing the child knew in his world. The sensors and the baby were on another plane, on another frequency that anticipated what was going to happen a few hours before it did. Very early in the morning I opened my eyes, totally awake and with a feeling of anguish. I didn’t feel like getting up so early, because I didn’t want to feel tired during the day, getting exhausted as I went along with all of Karin’s whims until it was time to meet up with Julián. I started to read but couldn’t concentrate. I had no objective reason for feeling so anxious, at least not beyond the people I already knew and with whom I’d learnt to wake up and go to bed, and yet this dawn was very disagreeable. It brought back the days when I was a little girl waking up to my parents’ senseless fighting, after which life turned bitter, as if they had power over the sun, the sky and the plants.

  It was also true that I’d been coughing in the night and that the cough itself had probably got me worked up. It could have got worse a few afternoons before, at the door of the hairdresser’s when I’d gone outside without putting on my anorak. Maybe it was time to start thinking about a name for the baby. A name is basically useful for calling out to somebody in the street, in order to make the person turn his or her head. Names are nothing in themselves. It all depends on who’s bearing them. Ernesto, Javier, Pedro, Jesús, Francisco and a thousand others. But I still didn’t know what his face was going to be like, or his voice. Any name might do.

  I woke up around ten. I’d gone out like a light as I was running through names. That was fine. The less time I had to see and hear Frida, the better. I got up slowly, put on some trousers to go downstairs and have some breakfast, and, when I opened the door, everything smelt of snow-capped pines. It was still an hour before the squeaky-clean forest sprite departed. Karin and Fred would have had their breakfast quite a while earlier and they weren’t around. They must have gone out for a drive along the seafront, or shopping. I had the house all to myself, not counting Frida, who would be keeping an eye on me somehow, even if I couldn’t see her. I got up to go and have my milk coffee out in the garden. The plants gave me very positive thoughts, but when
I looked away from them something negative was lurking. With Karin and Fred absent, I could go and check out the house. I could go down into the cellar and have a look at the black sun now that I knew what it was. It symbolized, according to Julián, what’s hidden behind the shining sun, what we don’t see, and its rays were bent to form the swastika and runes. The Nazis believed in these things, in what they invented themselves and what they made use of for their fantasies. Basically it was all about having the upper hand and doing whatever they pleased, and all of the ones I was getting to know had this same trait.

  I didn’t want to be hanging around there with Frida, so I tidied myself up a bit and started up the motorbike. I might come across Julián in the town or I could go and have a walk along the beach. But just as I was about to head out, Frida appeared. She’d done two small plaits, one on either side of her head, and was wearing rubber gloves.

  “You can’t go out,” she said.

  I stayed there staring at her doughy face. I looked her in the eye.

  “You have to stay here till they come back. They want to talk to you about something important.”

  I saw the malign spark flashing in her sky-blue eyes, which would be able to hold my gaze for three or four hours.

  “Thank you,” I said, going back inside.

  I collapsed onto the sofa and picked up the velvet bag with the knitting and the little pullover, which seemed condemned never to have sleeves or a neck. I started to knit. I knitted and coughed, coughed and knitted. I took off my anorak. What did Karin and Fred want to say to me? Frida’s face had been fiendishly impenetrable. With those rubber gloves on she was scarier than ever. She could chop me into pieces and then take them off and throw them in the rubbish together with my remains.