by Andrés Barba
“You’re so good to me,” Ramón said, and she writhed as though he’d just insulted her.
“I am not good.”
“I think you are.”
To Marina it was like something came noisily crashing down.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Where?”
“Home.”
“You want me to walk you?” Ramón asked, and when she didn’t immediately reply, he added, “I’ll walk you.”
An hour later, they were stripping off their clothes in her father’s apartment-cum-library. She’d had a curious feeling when they walked in; she thought of Sandra, then stopped thinking about her and, for some reason, thought of her own mother. It was a strange and ambiguous fact, but for the first time, she could almost see their two faces side by side, and she grasped something so simple it seemed absurd not to have realized it up until that moment—they were quite similar. Not exactly in a physical way, but similar. They were two versions of the same woman, docile and mysterious. A woman that seemed to have been born to say to men do whatever you want to me. She pictured her mother saying those words.
Ramón kissed her in such a spineless, feeble way that she was on the verge of telling him to forget it, that it wasn’t even worth it, but then in a single second everything changed, as though the fury he’d felt on leaving the exam had been triggered. They were already naked, lying on the little bed her father kept there, Ramón was already inside her. Until that moment, she’d remained detached, a witness to the scene, just as an experiment, to see what that was like, with a sort of abstract determination, feeling like this time was, in part, a farewell. Then suddenly something changed. His body began to give off tremendous heat, almost feverish. He stiffened and his mouth twisted involuntarily into a kind of sneer.
“Do you like getting fucked?” he asked.
“What?”
She sensed that Ramón’s face was burning in shame, and then that he immediately renounced that shame and was using extraordinary force with her, as though fearing she might escape, which, in turn, immediately led her to try. There was a struggle of sorts, she couldn’t remember it very well. She remembered feeling all of Ramón’s weight on her in a second, feeling the almost hermetic way he wrapped his arms around her, so that she couldn’t use hers. She remembered that, as he did, Ramón accidentally banged his head on one of the shelves and that she couldn’t help but let out a giggle that seemed to provoke a furious reaction in him, like a little boy who’s been humiliated too many times in one day and suddenly explodes with rage and starts shouting and destroying everything in sight.
“Just shut up,” she thought he said.
“What did you say?”
Ramón looked up.
“I said just shut up.” But when he repeated it, Marina thought he looked horrified at himself, looked beseeching and utterly wretched, as though he were already pleading forgiveness with his eyes. Then he buried his face in her shoulder so as not to have to look at her. She lay motionless. For nearly a minute, she didn’t move a muscle, simply allowed herself to feel all of Ramón’s weight on top of her. Bear, that was a primordial and particularly apt word: to bear it. She didn’t feel unhappy, didn’t even feel like she was there, it was like insomnia, like when you’ve been awake too long and suddenly the world around you takes on an elastic and yet overly irritating quality at the same time; she thought she stiffened and that her whole being began to exude immense displeasure. Ramón kept moving inside her with the tenacity of a little boy who sets out to break a toy and, discovering that it’s harder than he thought, loses the euphoria that drove him to do it in the first place but continues banging it on the floor. There was even a fleeting moment when he raised his head and she could see his profile, and it was like all of his features had been erased in a single stroke, the essence of what he was and the misery of the day he’d just had, it was like faces at a track meet, contorted in pain yet immersed in the unreal world of adrenalin and effort. He came abruptly, thrust her a little further up against the wall at the head of the bed, and stopped moving. He was drenched in sweat. They were both drenched.
“Get up, you’re crushing me,” she said.
Ramón reacted with immediate submission, but very slowly, and wordlessly. He sat on the bed, unmoving, still wearing the condom, catching his breath. It was impossible to know what was going on inside him, and regardless, Marina didn’t care. Everything that had just happened comprised a truth, just as Sandra comprised a truth, and her mother and her father. She was miles away. She didn’t care about his humiliation, didn’t care about his unhappiness, wanted nothing to do with his life. Nor did she want to hurt him; she simply wanted him to go.
“Get dressed, I have to go home.”
Ramón turned to her as though in an attempt to say something, to offer an excuse. He opened his eyes wide, regaining use of his conscience, and slid his arm closer until it touched hers. She dressed quickly, and Ramón didn’t watch her as she did. He, in turn, dressed slowly. Before opening the door, he turned to her and asked, “Can you forgive me?”
“Can I forgive you?” she retorted. Ramón didn’t exist. Maybe she could say something like this: You don’t exist; how can I forgive someone who doesn’t exist? And yet there he was, his skin the same as the other times, his hair curling slightly and still plastered to his temples with sweat, his burly shoulders, his ineptitude.
“Yes. Can you forgive me?”
She couldn’t remember exactly how she replied on that occasion. She remembered that Ramón left and that she went upstairs to the house. She remembered that she came in and kissed her mother mechanically and that she locked herself in the bathroom, slowly took off her clothes, and turned on the shower.
A week passed, strange, dangling, indifferent. She didn’t know if she was happy or unhappy, didn’t miss Ramón, hardly read. In the mornings, she went to the Plaza Callao to volunteer and in the afternoons, to a friend’s pool. The two of them would lie there sunbathing, not talking much, seeing and being seen. The poolside crew, languid and dreamlike, had a hazy, chlorine-flavored soul.
Ramón was sending three or four texts a day, sometimes sweet (I miss you), sometimes self-indulgent (You know I’d never hurt you), sometimes guilt-ridden (I can’t stop thinking about it), sometimes informative (I’ve already started studying for the September exam, I think I can pass this time). It was like following the course of his lifeblood, like putting your finger on someone’s jugular and feeling their continuous, involuntary pulse. She didn’t reply to any of them, and yet she needed them, like notches marking the time left in the week before she and her parents went on vacation, to a house they had rented in Santander. She hadn’t seen her father with Sandra again. She’d seen Sandra once, alone, with a grocery bag. Sandra had recognized her by her Doctors Without Borders vest and come up to her.
“Remember me?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“I always see you on my way home.”
She didn’t feel nervous that time, didn’t even get flustered at the idea of Sandra having seen her without her realizing it, at having been the one being watched rather than the one doing the watching. Sandra seemed sadder but also sturdier. She was wearing a simple pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and concealer under her eyes, as though she’d drunk too much the night before. Still, she looked fresh and bubbly. She asked if she’d gotten a lot of donations for Doctors Without Borders that day, and Marina said not too many.
“Take down my contact info, if you want, that way at least you’ll have one.”
She made a small donation. I’m afraid I’m not a millionaire, she said by way of an excuse. And without knowing why, as she took down her address and phone number, she was certain that her father had left her. She couldn’t have said what that certainty was based on, but she suddenly had no doubt whatsoever; he’d left her, and Sandra hadn’t taken it badly, hadn’t
made a scene, hadn’t hounded him, hadn’t ever called at four in the morning or sent a text message. It wasn’t her style. She’d cried, no doubt, probably berated herself for getting involved with a married man, and that was about it. It must have happened about a week ago, maybe the day she’d gone to her place, maybe a little after that. And now she had the air of the recently dumped, a mix of dignity and dejection. She looked prettier than she herself realized, had a kind of unconscious beauty. She thought she was wearing perfume.
“I don’t know my account number by heart,” she said.
“You don’t need it, here’s the Doctors Without Borders account number, you just make a transfer into theirs.”
“Oh, right, of course.”
“I like your perfume,” Marina said.
She’d suddenly felt the need to say something nice, pay her a compliment, any compliment, and that was the first thing she’d thought of.
“Oh, thanks, a friend gave it to me and I can’t tell if I like it or not, I almost never wear it. You don’t think it’s a little strong?”
“No.”
“Maybe I’m just not used to it,” she laughed, “sometimes I feel like I’m leaving a trail of perfume down the street.”
“That’s how I felt about this cologne my father gave me one time,” Marina said, “it would get up in my nose, right here, and go straight to my brain, I thought I’d never be able to smell anything else for the rest of my life.”
Sandra laughed. She had a strong, confident laugh that somehow rectified her features, as though her face were only complete mid-laugh. It gave her a pleasant, intimate feeling to be talking to Sandra that way, to know that her father had called it off with her, to know that she’d been sad and that she was gradually starting to feel better. Her body had a sort of measured calm about it, like when sick people seem to withdraw into themselves in order to allow their bodies to repair something that’s not functioning right inside them; she thought she got it.
“You want to buy me a Coke? That way I could take a break, even if it’s just for a little while.”
Sandra smiled.
“Sure.”
She’s so lonely, she thought, but not in a pitying way. They walked side by side a little way and then sat at an outdoor café. Not for long, maybe fifteen minutes. Sandra had to go, she was meeting someone. Liar, she thought, but liked that she was lying, liked that the lie had a familiar air. They talked—about what? It didn’t matter. Words were exchanged and replies were given, the small talk of those on merely polite terms. Sandra talked about the newspaper where she worked, and she pretended not to know and to find it fascinating, confessed that she wanted to be a writer, said she was going to write her first novel that summer, spoke to her about the lake where time stood still, about the characters—making them up then and there—and suddenly, also then and there, had a brilliant idea: she quickly concocted a character, a married man who was unfaithful to his wife. Sandra didn’t bat an eye.
“Do you want to hear something that would make a good story?” Sandra asked.
“Sure.”
“It’s about a friend of mine who had an affair with a married man.”
Sandra slid down until their knees were almost touching, a somewhat strained position that she then adjusted by scooting back and recrossing her legs. She seemed to be searching for the proper way to position her body in order to tell the story, and to be unable to find it, like a boxer before a fight. She didn’t seem sad, more teasing, like she was dancing around an image.
“My friend knew from the start that he was a married man, and she also knew that he was no snake. Maybe a bit vain, but no snake, and very good-looking. They met at the office. At first he didn’t even try to flirt with her, he’d just be there, looking at her, and she assumed he was attracted to her, but he really wasn’t, not at all. One day after work, they went to have a drink. He talked a lot. My friend thought he was a little old, but she liked him, she’d just moved to Madrid and she didn’t know anyone. They ended up getting involved. They’d see each other when they could, almost always at my friend’s house, almost always after work. He never talked about his wife. One time, my friend asked him about her, and all he said was that he loved her. Anyway, one night, they’d just finished making love, and he started doing this thing, started stroking her eyebrows. It was this simple thing, silly, really—he traced the tip of his index finger along her eyebrow, from one end to the other. And all of the sudden, for some reason, she felt sick to her stomach. There was something about that little gesture that made her sick.”
“Why?”
“At first she wasn’t sure. It just made her sick. He’d take his index finger and trace the length of her eyebrow, really slowly. Then, suddenly, it dawned on her. That was something he did with his wife. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.”
“It was an expression of intimacy, someone else’s intimacy, something he did with his wife when they made love. My friend told him never to touch her that way again. And then suddenly their whole affair made her sick. What do you think? You think you could make a story out of that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Give it a try, I think it would make a great story.”
“It’s a pretty good story.”
“I have to go,” Sandra said, rising and picking up the change from the bill. “I’ll see you around soon, I guess.”
“Actually, you won’t. I’m going on vacation with my family.”
“Oh, lucky you.”
“I know, we’re going to Comillas, in Santander.”
“That’s great.”
Suddenly they were both uncomfortable, both wanted to get away. Sandra gave her a light, halfhearted kiss on the cheek, the kind of kiss you give a second cousin, and after they said goodbye, Marina pretended to be walking back to the Plaza Callao and then turned around to watch her one last time. She had a crisp, determined walk. Her perfume hung in the air. It smelled like some kind of water flower. Something thick and verdant.
The house was on the outskirts of town, and it was magnificent. An old manor house, twenty minutes from the beach. They brought five suitcases, four full of clothes and one full of books. Her father made the most of his summers, reading classics and other hefty volumes he didn’t have time for during the year. Marina thought all three of them seemed more pensive than usual on the drive up. Her father and mother got into an argument because her mother forgot to buy a bottle of water when they stopped at a gas station, and their squabbling dragged on for almost an hour. From the back seat, she watched her father’s tense hands gripping the steering wheel, and half of each of their faces, split by the rearview mirror. They rarely argued, maybe that was why they both found it so hard to give in when they did. Marina thought her mother seemed to be getting stupider, had become virtually incapable of reasoning, and that her father had fallen into an exasperating loop, simply repeating the same argument over and over. The bickering began afresh when they got to town and couldn’t find the road that the rental house was on. Finally they arrived, in such foul moods that all three of them would have turned around and gone straight back to Madrid had anyone suggested it. Aren’t you ever going to forgive me? Ramón texted.
The first three days were hard; it was as though, upon waking, they donned invisible shackles and obeyed some command, like an arduous obligation—the vacationers’ to-do list, the trips to the beach, the grilled sardines at lunch, the Cantabrian bowling in the afternoon. Her father devoted himself almost entirely to his books, and her mother made her play sidekick when she went out to buy sobao cakes and Santoña anchovies. But the house they’d rented was so pleasant that it began to have a mysterious effect on them, a favorable effect. At first they hardly realized. They were not a loud bunch, didn’t talk much. When they did, their conversations sometimes had a slightly schizophrenic feel, as though each of them, independently from
one another, were periodically relaying an unrelated series of isolated thoughts. It seemed like the house had secret passageways linking them together almost against their will. After four days, something in them loosened. Sometimes they would catch themselves staring at one another without realizing it, and then they smiled, sort of dreamily.
“We’ll never be able to come back here. This place is so wonderful that we can never come back. It would never be the same,” her mother said. Even her optimism was fatalistic. Her father would laugh, and for a moment, she’d stop seeing the face that had kissed Sandra. She’d see the face of her father, looking somewhat worn, and humbled, and vain, and affable. Suddenly, he showed clear signs of the passage of time, had a different look, vanquished somehow. The way she’d loved him up until then proved unworkable now, like a sunken bridge on a distant continent, or in a fable. He had been born in Santander, lived there until he was eighteen, so being back brought to mind anecdotes that he recounted without warning, when he was mid-chapter, as though they were plaguing him. He would raise his head from his book and say, “I remember one time . . .”
Her mother insisted on planting a little vegetable garden in the yard and threw herself into tending it with the tenacity and impatience that only a city woman can. She would take her cup of tea outside each morning as though secretly hoping that a plant that had nothing on it the day before might today bear a lustrous, ready-to-pick tomato. Marina would go out to help her, and think about Ramón. She thought about him as though out of some physical need, as though being there amid all that tranquility made her body impatient, abruptly aroused. Sometimes, when she got into bed at night, she’d masturbate absentmindedly. She’d suddenly feel cocky and grown-up, as though she were doing an expert job, and through sheer force of will, she’d conjure up the memory of Ramón’s head in her hands, which she would take and trap between her legs. Then she’d drift off to sleep in the lovely sway of the breeze coming in through the window, the sound of the breeze in the trees, like a giant, gentle hand caressing the surface of the earth.