The Summer of Dead Toys

by Antonio Hill

  more affection for her. And now she misses—”

  Before she could finish, Natàlia came running in. Somehow

  that childish noise, so normal in any other house where a child

  lives, sounded strange. As if the perfect set was tottering. “Natàlia, sweetheart . . .”

  But the little girl didn’t pay her the least attention, and

  turned to the table where she was drawing to pick up the bits

  of paper.

  “How tidy!” commented Leire.

  “Don’t you believe it . . . Now she’ll put them all over my

  studio.” She smiled. “Since I also ‘go to school,’ as she says, she

  likes to leave her things on my desk. I’ll go and see what she’s

  doing before it’s too late.”

  Leire, for whom that scene of devout motherhood was becoming unbearable, decided to get up from her chair and wait for the inspector in the car.

  There Héctor found her, when he came out weighed down with the box containing Marc’s belongings. Oblivious to his appearance, lost in thought, she was looking at the screen of her mobile as if it were a foreign object, something that had just fallen into her power by magic and was completely indecipherable. He had to attract her attention so she would open the boot. The girl stammered an apology, unnecessary apart from anything else, and put her phone in her pocket.

  “Are you feeling all right?” he asked her.

  “Of course. I see you managed to convince Castells.” The desire to change the subject was so obvious Héctor

  didn’t persist. He looked at his own mobile before getting into the car: three missed calls. Two from Andreu and one from his son. At last. He didn’t want to respond to any of them in front of Castro, and so he decided to go as far as Plaça Bonanova and then go his own way.

  “Bring all this to the station. I have some stuff to do,” he said as he got into the vehicle. “By the way, the laptop is broken. You didn’t see it the day you were there?”

  Leire was doubtful. She’d spent most of the time below, witnessing the removal of the corpse.

  “In fact,” she said finally, “we didn’t see any laptop. There was the desktop in the attic and it was examined to see if Marc had left any message on it, something that could be interpreted as a suicide note. There was nothing. And at no time did anyone mention that he had another computer.”

  Héctor nodded.

  “Well, he had one. In his room, I suppose.” He didn’t say anything else, and the notion that they hadn’t done a thorough job hung in the car’s interior. The inspector noticed it, so before he got out, he commented, “I don’t think it will give us anything. It’s still most probable that the boy fell accidentally. We’ll analyse the T-shirt and see what comes from that. Oh, and when we have something we’ll have to speak to the other boy, this Aleix Rovira. But at the station. I’m sick of visiting these brats at home.”

  “Good. Sure you want me to leave you here?”

  “Yes, I’ll take the opportunity to run some errands,” he lied. And given that it was already almost nine o’clock, it was obvious there were few errands that could be run. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He was going to ask her again if she was all right, but stopped himself. Castro’s affairs weren’t any business of his. “Good night.”

  The car moved off, and Héctor waited a few seconds before taking out his mobile again and returning Martina Andreu’s calls. She answered immediately, although the conversation was brief, the sergeant’s trademark. There was nothing new regarding Dr. Omar’s disappearance, but on the subject of the pig’s head, it had been delivered by a nearby butcher. It seemed he regularly brought him entrails for his sinister tricks. With regard to the fake doctor, he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth leaving only a few traces of blood. Yes—the results hadn’t yet arrived but it was most probable that it was his. A hasty flight or a settling of accounts by someone who had taken all his papers and left only part of Salgado’s file. Which, in truth, was rather strange. Andreu said a brusque good-bye and Héctor immediately called his son, who, not wanting to break a habit, didn’t answer his mobile. I need to talk to him, Héctor thought. After a whole day with the parents of spoiled adolescents he wanted to hear Guillermo’s voice and reassure himself that everything was OK. He left a new message, and after doing so found himself on Bonanova with nothing to do and decided to walk for a while.

  It had been some time since he strolled through this part of the city and, seeing it again, he was amazed at how little it had altered. More or less all of Barcelona’s barrios had undergone some sort of change in recent years, but it was clear that the exclusive areas remained immune to most of it. No tourists en masse or immigrants, except those who worked cleaning the houses of the area. He asked himself if this happened in other cities: the existence of impermeable old-fashioned areas, protected from modernizing breezes in an effective yet not hostile way. The metro didn’t reach that part of the city; its inhabitants took the trains, which to them seemed a completely different class of transport. A snobbish detail that Ruth, for example, had struggled to overcome. He smiled remembering how horrified her parents were when their only daughter abandoned the tranquil barrio of Sarrià, a few blocks away from where he was now, and went to live with an Argentine—the slur sudaca wasn’t used then—first to Gràcia, and then, horror!, down there, near the sea. However much they had changed after the Olympics, the beaches of Barcelona and their surroundings were still fourth-rate destinations to them. “The humidity will kill you,” had been their comment. And he knew for certain that his mother-in-law took a taxi every time she came to see her daughter and grandson alone.

  Of course Ruth’s capacity for scandalizing her family hadn’t faded . . . Now separated, beginning a new life with another woman, she’d rented a loft not far from the flat she’d shared with Héctor, where she had room for her studio as well as living space. “This way you’ll still be close to Guillermo,” it had been her idea, shattering the stereotype of the vindictive ex-wife. Ruth had asked for what was fair, and he had conceded it without hesitation. In this, as in everything, they had been most civilized. I should have said that to the shrink, he thought with a smile. “Look, doctor, my wife left me for another bird . . . Yes, you heard right. How do I feel? Well look, it’s a kick in the nuts. Like they might disintegrate from the blow. And you keep this so-stupid-you-can’t-even-imagine face on, because for seventeen years you’ve been proud of how good it’s been in bed for you both (proud of being almost her first and in theory only man—there’s always some casual boyfriend from before with whom ‘we hardly did anything, don’t be stupid’) and however much she insists that things changed little by little, and she swears that she discovered orgasms with you and that she has really enjoyed herself at your side, and she tells you, with disarming sincerity, that this is something ‘new she needs to explore,’ you look at her like a zombie, more bewildered than incredulous, because if she says it it must be true, and if it’s true then part of your life, of both of your lives, but mostly of yours, has been a lie. Like on The Truman Show, remember, doctor? This guy who believes that he is living his life but in fact he is surrounded by actors who play their part and his reality is nothing more than a fiction invented and represented by others. Well, that’s how you’re left, doctor, with a Jim Carrey face.” He laughed at himself with no bitterness as he waited to cross. Although lately he hadn’t been doing it too much, inventing semi-ridiculous monologues about himself, or sometimes others, had always served as therapy for him.

  He was walking slowly, advancing toward the centre of this city that had been his home for so many years. It was a long way, but he felt like walking a little, putting off the arrival at his empty flat. Also, there was something about the streets of l’Eixample, that geometric grid of parallel and perpendicular roads, and those regal old façades that gave him peace and a certain feeling of nostalgia. He’d explored these streets, and many others, with Ruth; wi
th her he’d seen as many monuments as bars. For him, Barcelona was Ruth: beautiful without harshness, superficially tranquil yet with dark corners, and with that touch of classy elegance that was as charming as it was exasperating. Both were aware of their natural charm, of having that indescribable something that many others wanted to achieve and could only admire or envy.

  He arrived home wrecked after walking for almost two hours and flopped down on to the sofa. The recovered suitcase awaited him in a corner and he avoided looking at it. He should’ve eaten something en route, but the thought of dining alone in public depressed him. He smoked to kill his hunger through nicotine and felt guilty for it. He’d left the films Carmen had returned to him on the coffee table: a selection of classics starring her favorite actress. How long had it been since he’d watched Rear Window? It wasn’t one of his favorites; he liked the worrying atmosphere of The Birds or the obsessive passion of Vertigo much better, but it was the one closest to hand and, without thinking about it, he put it in the DVD player. While it was starting up he went to the kitchen to find a beer, at least: he thought he’d seen something that morning in the fridge. With it in his hand he returned to the dining room and looked at the dark screen. The disk was playing, he could see on the little green screen of the machine, but there were no images. However, finally a light appeared on the screen: weak, crude, strange, shining in the middle of a blurred background. Astonished, he watched as the cloud dissipated and the light gained ground. And then, not able to take his eyes off the television, he saw what he’d never wanted to see: himself, his face contorted with rage, ceaselessly hitting an old man sitting in a chair. A shiver ran down his spine. The phone ringing startled him so much he dropped his beer. He picked up apprehensively, eyes still fixed on that other him he hardly recognized, and heard a woman’s voice, hoarse with rage, screaming at him: “You’re a bastard, you fucking Argentine. Motherfucker.”

  FRIDAY

  14

  “I’m in Barça this weekend and want to see you. T.” That was the message Leire had read as soon as she came out of the Castells’ house. She’d answered the message positively, without hesitating, almost without thinking, carried away by the desire to see him. Something that now, after a long conversation with her best friend, she regretted with all her heart; something that, combined with the stifling summer weather and the terrible yowling of a cat on heat crossing the nearby roofs, wouldn’t let her sleep.

  María was a dark beauty, with a Barcelonian father and Italian mother, and she wreaked havoc in the male population. Five foot ten inches of perfect curves, she had a smiling face, a huge sense of humor and a trucker’s mouth.

  “Holy shit!” she burst out in the middle of a restaurant as soon as Leire explained her intention of telling Tomás, the T of the message, that their last encounter had left behind a gift in the shape of an embryo. “What, has pregnancy affected your brain or something? Must be the baby hormones that make people stupid.”

  “Don’t be nasty.” Leire finished off the tiramisu, which she’d devoured after a generous plate of spaghetti carbonara. “Are you going to finish the lemon mousse?”

  “No! And you shouldn’t either . . . You’re like a piranha.” But she pushed the dish toward her. “Listen, I’m serious. What do you gain by telling him?”

  Leire held the spoon in mid-air before attacking the mousse. “It’s not what I gain or don’t gain. It’s that he’s the father. I think he has a right to know there’s a child with his genes in the world.”

  “So, where is this child now? Who’s carrying it in their womb for nine months? Who is going to give birth to it, screaming like a madwoman? He just dropped four swimmers and went off travelling, for fuck’s sake! And if he hadn’t been left with no plans for the weekend, you’d never have heard from him again.”

  Leire smiled.

  “Say what you want, but he wrote me a message.” “One second, what do you mean by that? No, don’t blush—

  answer me.”

  “Nothing.” She put a spoonful of mousse in her mouth. It

  was delicious. “Leave it. Maybe you’re right. When I see him,

  I’ll decide.”

  “When I see him, I’ll decide,” repeated María in a mocking

  tone. “Eh, earth calling Leire Castro. Houston, we have a problem. Anyone know where Leire ‘One-Date-Only’ Castro is? Is

  this the person who always tells me love is a perverse invention of Hollywood’s to subjugate the women of the world?” “All right. Give me a break, please.” Leire snorted. “It’s the

  first time in my life I’ve been pregnant. Excuse me if I don’t

  know how to behave.”

  María looked at her affectionately.

  “Listen, one more thing and we’ll change the subject. I have

  things to tell you as well.” She stopped before asking, “Are you

  sure you want to have it?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “No. Well . . . I’m sure it’s in there,”

  pointing to her stomach, “and that it’s going to be born in less

  than seven months.” She finished the mousse and licked the

  spoon. “What about you? What’s happening with Santi?” “We’re going on holiday!” exclaimed María, radiant. “But wasn’t he going to work for an NGO? To build a clinic

  in Africa?”

  “Yes. And I’m going with him.”

  Leire could barely suppress a snort. The vision of María

  building anything, let alone a clinic in an African village,

  seemed even more ludicrous than her getting baby clothes

  ready.

  “I’m only going for a few days.”

  “How many?”

  “Twelve,” she lied. “Well, maybe more, I don’t know yet. But

  it will be nice: we’ll be doing something together. Look, I’m

  sick of boys who only talk about football, their bosses, and

  how their last girlfriend hurt them; sick of metrosexuals who

  steal your moisturizer and sick of separated guys who want

  you to entertain the kids at the weekend. Santi is different.” “Yeah.” Their taste in men was an inexhaustible source of

  disagreement, but a fundamental part of their friendship.

  They had never liked the same type of man. To Leire, Santi

  was a boring pedant who needed a good stick of deodorant.

  And María, she was sure, would have thought Tomás was

  cocky, thinking he was George Clooney by wearing a suit with

  a white shirt and having perfect teeth. She raised her glass of

  water and said out loud: “A toast to sexual tourist solidarity!” María imitated her with her glass of red wine.

  “To sexual tourist solidarity! And to the little swimmers

  that make their mark!”

  “Bitch!”

  The sheet was wrinkled from so much tossing and turning. Leire closed her eyes and tried to relax in the darkness. A warm darkness, because there wasn’t the slightest breeze: the open window just inundated the room with the wailings of the cat. She’d only been in that apartment for a few months and during the first few weeks she’d been startled awake by those squeals, which sounded like a baby crying; she’d ventured out on to the tiny terrace in search of the source of the pitiful sob, not able to ascertain where it came from until one night she met the eyes of that insomniac cat, as immobile as a statue, watching her impassively to the beat of the feline yowl. Now she was used to it, although deep down that animal scream still bothered her, that pure instinct demanding sex without the least decency. At this moment, however, she thought closing the window would only muffle the wails and on the other hand increase the heat.

  She lit a cigarette, although she’d already consumed her usual five that day, and went out on to the diminutive terrace, barely a metre square, with two window boxes hanging from the railing and a little round wooden table. She looked around for the cat an
d there she was, suddenly quiet now, watching her like a small buddha with whiskers. The first drags calmed her a little—a false peace, she knew, but peace all the same. As if wishing to remind her of her existence, the animal wailed again from the opposite roof and Leire looked at her with more affection than before. She finished her cigarette and threw it to the ground, reproaching herself but lacking the will to go searching for the ashtray. The cat watched her and cocked her head, with a gesture of frank disapproval. “Hungry?” Leire asked her in a low voice, and for the first time since she’d lived there the idea of putting a little milk in a bowl occurred to her. She did so and returned inside, sure the animal wouldn’t approach if she saw her outside. She waited by the door for a few minutes, with the light on inside, hoping the cat might overcome her fear and jump on to the terrace, but she didn’t make the slightest move. Suddenly Leire felt exhausted and decided to go back to bed: it was twenty past four in the morning, and with a bit of luck she might still sleep for at least two and a half hours. Once in bed, she stretched out her hand and picked up her mobile. Two new messages from Tomás. “Arriving tomorrow, Sants station, express, 17.00. Dying to see you. T.” “Oh, I’ve something to propose to you. Kisses.”

  She rested her head against the already cool pillow and closed her eyes, determined to sleep. In that sweet moment before losing consciousness she thought of Tomás’s smile, her pregnancy test, solidarity for sexual tourists and the bowl of milk on the terrace, until abruptly a discordant detail, a note out of place, kept her from falling asleep. Suddenly alert, she sat up in bed and tried to remember. Yes, she was sure. She visualized the attic from which young Marc Castells fell, the window, the sill, the body on the ground. And she knew something didn’t fit, that the sequence of events couldn’t have been as it was reconstructed. Something jarred in that scene, something as simple as an ashtray in the wrong place.

  15

  Breakfast was one of Ruth’s favorite times. She had it in the kitchen, sitting on a high stool, and gave it the necessary time. She liked the ritual of preparing the toast and orange juice for herself, the combination of the aroma of coffee and that of warm bread. It was a pleasure she’d never managed to share with either of her partners: Héctor could barely touch a piece of toast in the morning, and it seemed the same was happening with Carol. What’s more, given that they usually looked surprised or incredulous at the attention she paid to every detail, she enjoyed it much more when she was alone.