The Summer of Dead Toys

by Antonio Hill

  With the luggage—a badly treated suitcase with a broken lock which appeared to have survived a war rather than a plane journey—in the boot, Ruth drove slowly. The city lights were shining at the end of the motorway.

  “How’d it go today with Savall?” she asked finally, turning to him for a moment.

  He exhaled.

  “Well, I suppose it went OK. I still have graft . . . work. It seems they’re not throwing me out, which is something. The guy’s dropped the charges,” he lied. “I suppose he thought it suited him better not to get on the wrong side of the forces of law and order. But I have to see a shrink. Ironic, isn’t it? An Argentine visiting a shrink.”

  Ruth nodded silently. A long tailback had formed at the traffic lights at the entrance to the city.

  “Why did you do it?”

  She looked at him without blinking, with those big chestnut eyes that had always managed to get under his skin. A look that had managed to unmask small white lies, and others not so small, as soon as he’d put them forward.

  “Drop it, Ruth. He deserved it.” He corrected himself. “It happened. I messed up. I never pretended to be perfect.”

  “Don’t go off at a tangent, Héctor. The morning . . . the day you attacked that man was just after . . .”

  “Yeah. Can I smoke in this car?” he asked, rolling down the window. A gush of warm air slipped inside.

  “You already know you can’t.” She made a gesture of fatigue. “But smoke if you want to. Carefully.”

  He lit a cigarette and took a long drag.

  “Give me one?” she murmured.

  Héctor laughed.

  “Fuck . . . here.” When he lit it for her, the flame of the lighter illuminated her face. “I’m a bad influence on you,” he added in a light-hearted tone.

  “You always were. My parents used to tell me so . . . Of course they’re not exactly delighted now either.” They both smiled, with the complicity given by shared rancours. Smoking gave them something to do without having to talk. Héctor contemplated the city through the smoke. He threw away the butt and turned toward Ruth. They were already arriving. They could have filled a much longer journey with all the things they still had to say to each other. She slowed down to turn and parked in an unloading space.

  “One last cigarette?” he said.

  “Sure. But we’ll get out of the car.”

  There wasn’t a breath of air. The street was empty; however, televisions could be heard. It was the news hour. The weatherman was predicting a new heatwave for the next few days and the possibility of storms for the weekend.

  “You look tired. Are you sleeping any better?”

  “I do what I can. It’s been a full-on day,” he said. “Héctor, I’m sorry . . .”

  “Don’t apologize. You don’t have to.” He looked at her, knowing full well he was exhausted and in this condition the best thing he could do was to stay quiet. He tried to make light of it. “We slept together, that’s all. The wine, the memories, habit. I think that at one time or another eighty percent of ex-couples do it. See, deep down, we’re typical.”

  She didn’t smile. Maybe he’d lost the ability to make her laugh, he thought. Maybe they no longer laughed at the same things.

  “Yeah, but—”

  He cut her off.

  “Yeah but nothing. The following day I split the guy’s face but that had nothing to do with you.” He continued in a more bitter tone that he couldn’t help. “So you can relieve your conscience, sleep soundly.” He was going to add something else, but stopped himself in time. “And forget about it.”

  Ruth was about to answer when her mobile rang. He hadn’t even seen her take it from the car.

  “It’s for you,” he pointed, suddenly exhausted.

  She walked a few paces away to answer. During the brief conversation he took the opportunity to open the boot and take out his luggage. He dragged it to his house.

  “I’m going,” she said and he nodded. “Guillermo comes back Sunday night. I . . . I’m happy that everything’s been sorted. At the station, I mean.”

  “Did you doubt it?” He winked at her. “Thanks for taking me. Listen,” he didn’t know how to ask her without alarming her, “have you noticed anything strange at your place lately?”

  “Strange how?”

  “Nothing . . . don’t listen to me. There have been a few burglaries in your area. Just stay alert, OK?”

  The good-byes were uncomfortable; neither of them had yet learned how to handle them smoothly. A kiss on the cheek, a farewell nod of the head . . . how did you say good-bye to someone you lived with for seventeen years, who had another home, another partner, another life now? Maybe that was why they ended up in bed the last time, thought Héctor. Because they didn’t know how to say good-bye.

  It had been inevitable. Something they both knew was going to happen as soon as Ruth agreed to come up to the flat after dinner, planned for a discussion of their son’s next exams, and Héctor uncorked a bottle of red that had been in the kitchen cupboard since before she left, nine months before, after announcing that there was a part of her sexuality which she wanted, and needed, to explore. At any rate, both pretended that it was a matter of a nightcap, celebrating the fact that they were a civilized couple who managed to get on reasonably well after a sudden separation. Sitting on the same sofa where they’d embraced so many nights, where Ruth had waited, so many hours awake, for her husband, and where Héctor had struggled to sleep since half the bed lay empty, they downed one glass of wine after another, perhaps to find the courage to do what they desired, or maybe to be able to attribute to alcohol what they knew they were going to do. They sought something that might cloud their minds, send their feigned sense to hell. It doesn’t matter who started it, who opened the game, because the other joined in with an impatient, accelerated greed. They slid smoothly from the sofa to the rug while they removed their clothes, separating their lips only for as long as was absolutely necessary, and coming back to seek the other’s tongue as if they were extracting oxygen from it. Their bodies were burning and her hands, seeking familiar corners, pieces of warm skin which became perfectly elastic under her touch, served only to revive the flames. Lying on the carpet, pinned down by Héctor’s hands, she thought for an instant how different it was to make love to a woman: the feeling, the smell of skin, the rhythm of movements. The complicity. The moment’s reflection dispelled the effects of the alcohol, just seconds before he fell on her, spent and satisfied. Ruth stifled a moan, more of pain than pleasure; she looked away and saw her wine-stained shirt and an overturned glass on the floor. She tried to separate herself from Héctor gracefully, giving him a last perfunctory kiss, nothing like those previous ones, as she moved away lightly to one side. He took a few seconds to move; she felt trapped. He finally sat up and Ruth tried to get up, a little too quickly, like someone attempting to flee after a landslide. The same urgency that had carried her from the sofa to the rug was now pushing her toward the door. She didn’t want to see his face, nor had she anything to say to him. She felt ridiculous as she pulled up her underwear. She picked up her clothes from the floor and dressed with her back turned. She had a feeling Héctor was asking her something, but getting out had become her priority.

  When he saw her leave he knew his marriage was dead. If up to then the possibility had remained that their relationship might emerge from its coma, that Ruth’s escapade with someone of her own sex was only that, a fleeting adventure, he knew now without doubt that they’d just buried it. He groped in the dark for a cigarette and smoked it alone, sitting on the floor, leaning back against the sofa, contemplating the upturned glass and the definitively empty bottle.

  This time the good-bye was easier. She half-turned and got into the car as he was putting the key in the door. Through the rearview mirror she saw him limping with the bag in his hand. Inexplicably, she felt something toward him that seemed very much like tenderness.

  5

  He should have gone
to bed some time ago, but age insisted on robbing him of hours of sleep and reading was the only thing that helped him get through those long evenings. However, despite having a book he liked in his hands, that night Father Fèlix Castells couldn’t concentrate. Comfortable in his favorite armchair, in the silent flat in Passeig Sant Joan which had been his home since infancy, his eyes, tired for years, seemed incapable of following the lines of the novel by Iris Murdoch, an author he’d discovered not very long ago, whose entire oeuvre he was reading. Finally, sick of trying, he rose and walked toward the bar where he kept the brandy; he poured himself a generous glass and, after taking a gulp, returned to the armchair. The only light in the room came from the lamp, and contemplating the book’s white cover, he couldn’t help shuddering. Iris. Always Iris. He half-closed his eyes and saw the message on Joana’s computer that he’d read while she was dressing, hardly able to believe it. He’d had to struggle to contain himself, to not erase it. Iris couldn’t write messages. Iris was dead.

  It was he who entered the pool, who turned her over and saw her little face, blue with cold, who futilely tried to blow a little air through frozen lips that had already closed forever. When he turned around, with a shaken face and the little girl in his arms, he met the terrified gaze of his nephew. He wanted someone to take him out of there, save him from that horrifying sight, but Marc seemed rooted to the ground. Only then did he notice something surrounding his body and, almost unable to believe it, saw that there were numerous dolls floating in the same blue water.

  He groped for the glass of brandy and took another gulp, but couldn’t chase away that chill which knows no seasons. Iris’s drenched little body, her blue lips. The dolls lying around her, like a macabre court. Images he thought he’d forgotten, but now, since San Juan, since that other recent tragedy, plagued him more than ever. Nothing could be done to combat them: he tried to evoke pleasant thoughts, of happy moments . . . Marc alive, Marc safe and sound, though with that distant, eternally sad expression. He’d done what he could, but the well of melancholy remained, immune to his efforts, ready to overflow at the smallest sarcastic comment on Enric’s part. How many times had he told his brother that irony wasn’t the way to bring up a child? It made no difference: Enric didn’t seem to understand that sarcasm could hurt more than a slap. That home needed a woman. A mother. If Joana had been with them things would have been different. And Glòria had come too late: her arrival had contributed to softening Enric’s bitterness, but the damage, to Marc, was already done. The subsequent adoption of Natàlia served to seal the new family circle, excluding that timid and sullen, solitary and unaffectionate boy. His sister-in-law had tried, although perhaps more out of a sense of duty than from genuine affection for Marc. It wasn’t

  THE SUMMER OF DEAD TOYS 55

  fair to criticize Glòria, he thought: she’d done what she could in those years, which hadn’t been easy for her either. Her inability to conceive naturally had meant a torment of medical tests culminating in a lengthy adoption process. These things moved slowly, and although Eric’s position had managed to speed up part of the application, for Glòria the wait had been interminable. She was so happy after she brought the little girl home. In Fèlix’s opinion, she was the perfect mother. When he saw her with her daughter, Fèlix felt at peace with the world. It was a fleeting sensation, but one so comforting he sought it out whenever possible. Its effect on him lasted for hours, dispelling other ghosts: it was thanks to moments like these he could continue forgiving the sins of the world. He could even forgive himself . . . But not now: that effect had vanished after Marc’s death, as if now nothing could console him. The image of his nephew, lying motionless on the patio flagstones, came to mind every time he tried to relax. One night he even saw him fall, arms outspread, trying to find something in the air to grasp, and he felt his fear as he neared the hard ground. Other nights he would see him at the window and glimpse the shadow of a girl with long blonde hair; he would try to warn him from below, he would shout his name but not get there in time. The shadow would push the boy and he’d shoot out with an almost superhuman force before falling at his feet with a dull thud, an unmistakable and fatal crunch, followed by a guffaw. He lifted his head and there she was: as drenched as when she was taken out of the water, laughing, finally getting her revenge.

  THURSDAY

  6

  Héctor had never much trusted those who presume to know how to treat human neuroses. Not that he considered them frauds or irresponsible: he simply believed it improbable that an individual, equally subject to emotions, prejudices and manias, might have the capacity to delve into the winding paths of the minds of others. And that idea, rooted inside him for as long as he could remember, wasn’t breaking down in the least now that for the first time in his life he was attending the clinic of one of them as a patient.

  He observed the youth sitting on the other side of the desk, trying to control his skepticism so as not to seem rude, although at the same time it seemed strange that this kid—yes, kid—fresh from university and dressed informally in jeans and a white checked shirt, should have in his hands the file of a forty-three-year-old inspector, who, if he’d had an unlucky break in adolescence, could even be his father. The notion made him think of Guillermo and his son’s reaction years before when his tutor at school suggested that it wouldn’t be amiss for them to take him to a psychologist who—his exact words—“might help him open up to others.” Ruth wasn’t a big fan of shrinks either, but they decided they’d nothing to lose, although they certainly both knew Guillermo socialized with whoever he felt like and didn’t bother with anyone who didn’t arouse his interest. He and Ruth laughed for weeks at the outcome. The psychologist had asked their son to draw a house, a tree and a family; Guille, who at the age of six was going through a phase of adoring comics and was already demonstrating the same skill for graphic art as his mother, threw himself enthusiastically into the task, albeit with his usual selective disposition: he didn’t like trees so didn’t bother with that one, but instead drew a medieval castle as the house, and Batman, Catwoman and The Penguin as the family. He didn’t want to imagine what conclusions the poor woman drew on seeing the supposed mother imagined in a leather suit with a whip in her hand, but they were both sure that she’d kept the drawing for her thesis on the dysfunctional modern family, or something like that.

  He’d smiled without noticing; he saw it in the inquiring look the psychologist was giving him through metal-rimmed glasses. Héctor cleared his throat and decided to feign seriousness; he was almost sure, however, that the boy opposite him still read comics in his spare time.

  “Well, Inspector, I’m glad you feel at your ease.” “Sorry, I suddenly remembered something. An anecdote about my son.” He regretted it instantly, sure that this wasn’t the most opportune moment to bring it up.

  “Ah-ha. You don’t have much faith in psychology, right?”

  There was no hostility in the phrase, but an honest curiosity.

  “I haven’t formed an opinion of it.”

  “But you mistrust it from the outset. Fine. Of course most people feel the same about the police, wouldn’t you say?”

  Héctor had to admit that was true, but he qualified it.

  “Things have changed a lot. The police aren’t seen as the enemy any more.”

  “Exactly. They’ve stopped being the body that strikes fear into a citizen, at least an honest one. Although in this country it took time to change that image.”

  In spite of the neutral, impartial tone, Héctor knew that they were sliding down a rocky slope.

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked. He was no longer smiling.

  “What do you think I mean?”

  “Let’s get to the point . . .” He couldn’t help a certain impatience, which usually translated into a lapse into his childhood accent. “We both know what I’m doing here and what you have to find out. Let’s not beat about the bush.”

  Silence. Salgado knew the technique,
although this time he found himself on the receiving end.

  “Fine. Look, I shouldn’t have done it. If that’s what you want to hear, then there you have it.”

  “Why shouldn’t you have done it?”

  He tried to stay calm. This was the game: questions, answers . . . He’d seen enough Woody Allen films to know that.

  “Come on, you know. Because it’s not good, because the police don’t do that, because I should’ve stayed calm.”

  The psychologist jotted down a note.

  “What were you feeling at the time? Do you remember?”

  “Rage, I suppose.”

  “Is that a regular thing? Do you usually feel rage?”

  “No. Not up to that point.”

  “Do you remember any other moment in your life when you lost control in that way?”

  “Maybe.” He paused. “When I was younger.”

  “Younger.” Another note. “How long ago . . . five years, ten, twenty, more than twenty?”

  “Very young,” stressed Héctor. “Adolescent.”

  “Did you get into fights?”

  “What?”

  “Did you usually get into fights? When you were a teenager.”

  “No. Not as a regular thing.”

  “But you lost control one time.”

  “You said it. One time.”

  “Which time?”

  “I don’t remember,” he lied. “None in particular. I suppose I went through an out-of-control phase, like all boys.”

  A new note. Another pause.

  “When did you arrive in Spain?”

  “Pardon?” For a moment he was on the verge of answering that he’d arrived a few days previously. “Ah, you mean the first time. Nineteen years ago.”

  “Were you still in this out-of-control adolescent phase?”

  Héctor smiled.

  “Well, I suppose my father thought so.”