The Skating Rink (15 page)

Gaspar Heredia:

The police came to the campground twice

The police came to the campground twice, on routine visits, and both
times the Peruvian, Miriam from Senegal, Caridad and I pretended to be campers
playing pétanque. For such occasions the Peruvian kept various sets of boules in
a dog kennel beside the court, and he’d whip around on his bike, if necessary,
past the bathrooms and my tent, urgently inviting us to come play. As time went
by, we got to like pétanque, and took to playing in the evenings as the sun went
down. Our games grew longer and more impassioned. The Peruvian, the receptionist
and Miriam made up the day-shift team; while El Carajillo, Caridad and I
represented the night-shift. Each team had its pointers, placers or precision
players (we never knew what the official term was) and its shooters, knockers or
blasters. We usually played under a light, just as it was starting to get dark,
sometimes on the road that led into the campground rather than on the courts, or
beside the bar, or next to the bathrooms if Miriam still had some cleaning to
do. Caridad soon proved to be an outstanding shooter, as did Miriam, while El
Carajillo and the Peruvian were born pointers. The receptionist and I just made
up the numbers. Alex Bobadilla occasionally replaced the receptionist, with more
enthusiasm than skill. In the end we decided to make a selection from our teams
and participate in the championship that was held in the campground each year to
cap off the season. El Carajillo, the Peruvian and Miriam were selected. The
rest of us, including the other two cleaning ladies, who were too busy to play
because of their various jobs, were happy to applaud, criticize and drink beer.
Around that time, the Peruvian and the receptionist set a date for their
wedding, and there was a feeling of confidence and calm in the air, as if
everything was going to work out in the end, though everyone knows that nothing
ever does. Our team came in third. We won a cup, which Bobadilla and El
Carajillo displayed prominently on a shelf in reception. The weather started
getting cooler and I began to anticipate the day when my job would come to an
end. To be honest I had absolutely no idea what would happen then. Caridad said
that living at the campground was like being on vacation. Indefinitely. For me
it was like being back at school: I was starting from scratch. We called the
tent our house, as a joke I guess, or just to be cute, or maybe because it
really was our house. In the morning, when I finished work, we went down to the
beach, hopping over the broken slabs of the sidewalk, Caridad still half asleep,
both of us wrapped in towels because it was still cool, and then we’d swim and
eat and lie in the sun till we fell asleep. We’d wake up at two or three and go
back to the campground. The color soon returned to Caridad’s cheeks. All the
staff, even Rosa and Azucena, grew fond of her, despite their initial
misgivings, maybe because she was always ready to give them a hand, cleaning the
bathrooms or doing various odd jobs, even helping out at reception during the
day so that the Peruvian and the receptionist could go and have a cup of coffee.
With the first signs of autumn everyone started making plans, except for us.
Miriam was going to look for jobs in private homes; the sisters would be
returning to El Prat; the Peruvian hoped to find work in an office or a realty
agency as soon as his papers were in order, and El Carajillo would spend another
winter shut up in the reception office, keeping watch over the empty campground.
When they asked us what our plans were, we didn’t know what to say. The plural
pronoun embarrassed us. Live in Barcelona, probably, we’d say, throwing each
other sidelong glances. Or travel, or go and live in Morocco, or study, or go
our separate ways. All we really knew was that we were hanging in a void. But we
weren’t afraid. Sometimes at night, as I walked through the darker parts of the
campground, among empty sites and family-size tents strewn with pine needles, I
thought of the skating rink and then I was afraid. Afraid that I might come
across something from the rink, snagged, hidden in the darkness. Sometimes the
air and the rats scuttling along the branches of the trees almost made that
presence visible, and without breaking into a run I’d quickly retrace my steps;
I had to hear Caridad’s steady breathing on the other side of the yellow
tarpaulin that protected our tent before I could calm down and continue on my
rounds . . .

Enric Rosquelles:

Apart from my mother and a few aunts and cousins

Apart from my mother and a few aunts and cousins with an
exemplary sense of solidarity and familial duty, my only visitors have been
Lola and Nuria (who also have an exemplary sense of friendship and
solidarity), but their presence meant more to me than a crowd of others. The
first to come was Lola, and I was so surprised and overjoyed to see her that
I burst into tears in the visiting room. Our misunderstandings, conflicts
and professional disagreements were forgotten. As soon as I saw her, I knew:
it didn’t matter to her that I was a pariah; a true social worker will
always be wherever there is suffering, and there’s no doubt about it, Lola
is a social worker through and through. The only member of my numerous team
who never sucked up to me (I won’t deny that I occasionally criticized her
in public, and she infuriated me, and I considered confining her to a desk
job); the only one who dared to visit me when I was in disgrace. That’s the
way it is, and it’s not too late for me to learn my lesson: beware the
acquiescent, for they will betray you in the end. I must remember that when
I’m released. Because I will be released, don’t you worry. But getting back
to Lola, she came to see me, as cheerful and energetic as ever, and when I
had dried my tears, she said she knew I couldn’t have killed the old woman
(who, as it happened, was one of her—one of our—clients), and the truth, she
was sure, would come out in the end. Things in Z were terrible: the Social
Services Departmewnt was being run by some bootlicker from Fairs and
Festivals, who to make things worse was trying to make an impression (though
on
whom
remained a
mystery) by reorganizing, that is screwing up, my old client services
system, as a result of which many of the staff were seriously considering a
career move. Some could already sense that Pilar was going to be defeated in
the next election, and others resented having been passed over in the
restructuring. I suspect that Lola was in the second group, because she also
told me that she would soon be moving to a position in the municipality of
Gerona, where she would be earning more and would have full control, so they
assured her, over her own programs. I felt that the bit about full control
was a kind of veiled reproach, since most of our quarrels had begun over
programs designed by Lola, which I then changed, adjusted, corrected or
simply tossed into the trash, but since her visit I’m willing to accept any
kind of reproach from her, veiled or not. Indeed, I’ll say it once and for
all, Lola was the best of my colleagues, and if, in the wake of my
dismissal, she leaves too, I can only fear for the homeless, the kids with
problems, and all the people at risk in Z. Of course I wished her the best
of luck in her new job and we even joked about what I would do,
professionally, when I got out of this hole. The rest of the conversation
revolved around my current situation and the hodgepodge of legal and illegal
concepts that were being applied to it. A few days later Nuria appeared, and
her visit, which I had so often imagined, desired, anticipated and feared,
illuminated this wretched cave even more powerfully than Lola’s calm
friendship. We didn’t talk much, both of us were hoarse, but we said what we
needed to say to one another. Nuria was much thinner. She was wearing men’s
clothes, trousers and a black jacket, which hung about her loosely, as if
they had belonged to her father. Her eyes were red, which made me think she
had been crying before she came. I asked her how she was. Lonely, she said.
I spend my nights crying and thinking. Pretty much like me. As she was
leaving I noticed that she was wearing men’s shoes too: big black shoes,
with hard soles and metal plates reinforcing the heels, like skinhead boots.
Both Lola and Nuria brought me gifts. Lola’s gift was a novel by Remo Morán.
Nuria’s was the supreme skating book,
Saint Lydwina or the Subtlety of
Ice
, by Henri Lefebvre, in French, published by Luna Park in
Brussels. For prisoners as for invalids in hospital, there’s no better gift
than a book. Time is the only thing I have in abundance, although my lawyer
assures me I’ll soon be free. The murder charge doesn’t stand up, so the
only charge I’ll have to answer is that of embezzlement. To pass the time
until the day of my release, I’m reading and trying to reorganize this place
a bit. The governor, a career civil servant, who seems slightly confused,
perhaps by my presence or by the unfamiliar milieu, has asked me to help him
tidy up this pigsty. I’ve told him he can count on me, I’ll help however I
can. He is Castilian, single, more or less my age, and I think we understand
each other. In a couple of days I wrote up a report on the state of the
facility, focusing on sanitation problems and overcrowding, including
evaluations, proposals and justifications. A prisoner who works in the
library typed it up, and when the governor read it, he congratulated me
enthusiastically and suggested that we revise it together, with a view to
entering it for a competition organized by the European Prisons Project.
It’s not a bad idea . . .

Remo Morán:

You can’t have a pact with God and the devil at the same time

You can’t have a pact with God and the devil at the same time, the
Rookie said to me, his eyes brimming with tears. He’s forty-eight years old, and
life has treated him “worse than a rat.” Now that the beaches are almost empty,
being there with him is like being in a desert. He’s not collecting bottles and
cans anymore. He’s begging. At some mysterious hour he leaves his desert and
wanders from bar to bar in the historic center, asking for a contribution or a
little drink, before heading back to the beach where, so he says, he is planning
to stay forever. One day he turned up at the hotel, while Alex and I were going
over the accounts at a table in the empty restaurant. He looked at us from a
distance, with pitiful, imploring eyes, and asked for money. We gave him some.
The next day he turned up again, at night, at the door of the restaurant, but
this time there were clients: a group of elderly Dutch tourists who were
celebrating the end of their vacation. A waiter picked him up by his collar and
belt and threw him out, just like in the movies. The Rookie offered no
resistance; pathetically compliant, he fell in a heap. I saw it all from behind
the bar, where I was washing glasses. Later I told the waiter that was no way to
treat people, although the Dutch tourists had been heartily amused. The waiter
replied that he was only following Alex’s orders. When the party was over, I
asked Alex why he had been so hard on a poor beggar who’d done nothing to us. He
didn’t know, but he distrusted the Rookie instinctively. He didn’t like him
hanging around the hotel. And he didn’t want me seeing him either. What is it
you don’t like about him, I asked. His eyes, said Alex: they’re the eyes of a
madman. At night, when I go to the beach, I see him sleeping under the metal
frames of the ice cream stands. There’s a sweet, rotting smell on the beach, as
if inside one of the shacks, closed to the public until next summer, the dead
body of a man or a dog had been left among boxes smeared with melted ice cream.
We talk, me standing up, him lying on the sand huddled among newspapers and
blankets, his face turned to the seawall or hidden by his strange tubular
fingers. You must know a better place to sleep, I say. I must know a place, says
the Rookie, sobbing . . .

Gaspar Heredia:

One night there was a commotion on the terrace of the bar

One night there was a commotion on the terrace of the bar and the
waiter came to fetch the night watchmen. El Carajillo, who was half asleep, said
I should go first and see what was happening; he’d come if it was serious and I
needed backup. It must have been about three in the morning. When I got to the
terrace I saw two huge Germans facing each other, separated only by a table
strewn with the remains of a meal and broken glass. It seemed they were about to
come to blows, and the few spectators sheltering behind trees and cars were
anticipating an outbreak of murderous violence. Both Germans were holding empty
beer bottles in their right hands, like gangsters in a movie; but although this
fight, or at least the insults and threats, had been going on for some time,
oddly they hadn’t yet broken the bottles, as if brandishing them was threatening
enough. As I approached, it became clear that both of them were fairly drunk:
their hair was messed up, they were foaming at the mouth, their eyes were
bulging and their arm muscles were all clenched. They were already absorbed in
the fight awaiting them and supremely indifferent to anything else. They were
insulting each other unremittingly; although I couldn’t understand a word, the
guttural, sarcastic, vicious sounds issuing from their mouths left little room
for doubt. Those German words could be heard throughout the campground, against
a background of almost perfect silence, marked only by faint, distant-sounding
moans of protest from the few campers who were still awake, especially those in
tents near the edge of the terrace. The complaints, and for some reason this was
disturbing, were as unintelligible as the German insults. The night breeze
carried them to me, muted, immaterial and dreamlike, creating, or at least this
is how it felt, a kind of dome enclosing the campground and everything in it,
whether living or dead. Suddenly, to make things worse, a voice in my head
revealed that only one person could break that dome: me. So as I walked across
the terrace toward the Germans, knowing that El Carajillo wouldn’t come to back
me up, and that none of the witnesses present would step in should the Germans
decide, as it seemed more and more likely they would, to warm up for the real
fight by hammering me, I sensed that something was going to happen (or maybe
that’s just how it seems to me now, maybe then I was just a bit afraid), that
with each step I took toward the gesticulating pair I was taking half a step
toward myself. Walking toward the Corsican brothers. Toward the definitive No
way, mister. I prepared myself to take a beating and see what would happen next,
and in that frame of mind I approached the Germans and told them, in a friendly
and not very loud voice, to leave the terrace and go to bed. Then what had to
happen happened: the Germans turned their mugs toward me, and from the middle of
those mugs, their blue eyes swam like pilot fish through the alcoholic haze and
fastened first on me, then on the trunks of the trees that were slowly breaking
up the terrace, then on the empty tables, then on the lamps hanging from some of
the trailers, and finally, as if discovering the key to the scene, on an
indefinite point behind my back. I should say that I too was aware of something
behind me, something following me, but I chose not to turn around and look. To
tell the truth I was pretty nervous, but after a few moments I noticed a change
in the Germans’ attitude, as if an inspection of their surroundings had made it
instantly clear to them what a serious game it was they were about to play;
their eyes retreated into their sockets, moderating the expressive violence that
had seemed a natural prelude to blows. One of them, probably the less drunk of
the two, stammered out a question. Strange overtones of innocence and purity
resonated in his voice. Maybe he asked what the hell was going on. I told them
again to go to bed, in English this time. The Germans, however, weren’t looking
at me, but at something behind my back. For a moment I thought it might be a
trap: if I turned around, that pair of brutes would fall on me howling war
cries. Curiosity, however, overcame me: I looked over my shoulder. I was so
surprised by what I saw that I dropped the flashlight; it broke open on the
cement and the batteries (how could there be so many?) went rolling across the
terrace and disappeared into the dark. Caridad was behind me, holding a broad
kitchen knife, whose blade seemed to be concentrating the sepia glow of the
clouds, filtered through the branches above her. Luckily she gave me a wink;
otherwise I would have thought she was intending to plant that knife in me. She
looked for all the world like a ghost. With a chilling delicacy, she displayed
the knife as if displaying one of her breasts. And the Germans must have seen,
because now their gazes seemed to be saying, We don’t want to die, we don’t want
to be wounded, we were joking, we don’t want anything to do with this. Go to bed
I said, and they did. I watched them walking away through the campground,
propping each other up, just a pair of ordinary drunks. When I looked at Caridad
again, the knife had disappeared. Gradually, as if emerging from sleep, the
campers, who had watched the action from their tents, began to gather in groups,
light cigarettes and comment on the performance. Soon they came onto the terrace
and offered to buy us drinks. Someone picked up the batteries from my flashlight
and gave them to me. Suddenly I found myself drinking wine and eating cockles
under the canopy of an enormous tent, like a house, decorated with little paper
Catalonian and Andalusian flags. Caridad was beside me, smiling. An old lady was
patting me on the arm. Another lady was praising the mettle of Mexicans. It took
me a while to realize that she was referring to me. It seemed that no one had
seen Caridad’s knife except the Germans and myself. Their sudden departure was
being credited to my determination to maintain order in the campground. The
dropped flashlight: my anger and haste, as I stepped up to whip their asses.
Caridad’s presence: the understandable concern of a girl in love. The events on
the terrace had been obscured by the trees and shadows. Perhaps it was better
that way. When we got back to reception, El Carajillo was fast asleep, and we
sat outside for a while, quietly enjoying the fresh air, watching a restless,
orangey light play on the road: it made the place feel a bit like a submarine. A
little while later Caridad said she was going to bed. She got up and I saw her
walk through that light back into the campground. Given its size, the knife
should have made a visible bulge under her shirt, but I couldn’t see anything,
and for a moment I thought that the girl with the knife was just a figment of my
imagination . . .