This last phrase echoed in Sara’s ears like a prophecy, and it was accurate. She was so stunned by the impact of what he’d just told her that when Ramón stood up, she had trouble reacting. Perhaps this was why she didn’t realize that he still looked uneasy, as if he’d found his own words a little forced, even suspect. She only understood this when Ramón, already at the door, turned back as if he were reluctant to leave.
“I was born here, in this town, you know, but my mother was born in Benalup, the same as the rest of her family. Benalup de Sidonia. Does it ring a bell?” Sara shook her head, wondering where all this was going. “It used to be called CasasViejas.That’s probably more familiar, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” And then she began to understand. “Of course I know that name.”
“They changed the name of the village, because they were so ashamed of what happened there, but they couldn’t change my family’s name, even though they’d left only the women alive. It isn’t that I’m traumatized or that I’ve made some sort of vow. I don’t dream of revenge or anything like that, but there’s no bloody way I’m going to collaborate with all these law and order types. I just don’t want to. I might be wrong, but there’s no way I’m co-operating with them.”
Sara Gómez Morales looked at Ramón Martínez. She smiled, took both his hands, and squeezed them gratefully. When he had gone, she half filled a glass with the best brandy she had in the house, and sat back down in her armchair. In the following hour and a half, she got up only once, to refill her glass.When she went out, she realized it was still too hot to go for a walk along the beach, but she needed to move, so she went back inside to get her car keys. She’d had quite a bit to drink, but she didn’t feel in the least bit drunk. Doubts, and a sudden anxiety, very like fear, kept her alert and focused. She drove to El Puerto, turned round and then drove to Sanlúcar, but could find no way forward however many miles she covered.
She would have to tell Juan everything, in as neutral a way as possible, and at the first opportunity. It was the logical thing to do, the most sensible and probably the best option. In theory, there was no reason why this man’s visit should represent a threat to anyone. Sara went over Ramón Martínez’s chain of reasoning again and again, but she was absolutely certain that there was more to the visit of this sinister policeman than a simple question of an inheritance or an unpaid fine. She was sure of it, but had nothing to back up her certainty, just a few scattered clues that didn’t even amount to suspicions, held together by the insubstantial mortar of her imagination. She knew that Damián Olmedo had died after falling down a flight of stairs. She knew that his brother Alfonso succumbed instantly to sheer panic at the sight of any bald, fat policeman in a uniform. She knew that Tamara had learned that certain compassionate lies were better for everyone than the truth. And Sara also knew that she had been terribly bored during the endless afternoons of a long, damp autumn, the season of brandy and idle speculation.
But things had changed a great deal since then. They’d changed so much that she was no longer even tempted to solve the puzzle, to give it form and weight. Sara Gómez Morales found herself thinking that she wasn’t interested in any episodes from the Olmedos’ past, in anything that had happened before fate had caused them to become part of her own life. After all, she too was an expert in moving from place to place, she’d spent her life going from one home to another, constantly changing her goals, always looking for somewhere she could finally call home. And the Olmedos were as much a part of this stable future as she was herself. If they moved, Sara didn’t feel she would be able to stay, although she would always be on the other side of the line she had drawn for herself in the sand.This was the worry at the root of her fear and the reason she felt a strong urge to say nothing to Juan, to forget Ramón Martínez’s warnings, to pretend that no stranger had come to disturb the profound, sunny peace of that summer.
But there, at the center of it all, was Alfonso. Clumsy, defenseless, and always alone in his poor, small, empty world. Alfonso, who would never harm a soul, who was barely capable of harming himself, but who suffered just like everyone else, and when he cried he told them,“Look at me, look how my tears are falling, it’s because I’m crying, look, look at me.” Sara didn’t know this man called Nicanor, but the thought of him coming face to face with Alfonso scared her. She couldn’t forget the terror that had paralyzed him in that hamburger bar in El Puerto. And she couldn’t imagine what the police could want with a child like Alfonso, a thirty-three-year-old child who couldn’t even wash his own shirts.The image of Alfonso alone, in a strange place as a stranger bombarded him with questions,Alfonso furiously tugging at his own hair until he pulled it out, as he did when he felt lost in certain situations, when he sensed he should understand what was going on but couldn’t, filled Sara’s eyes with tears.They make me do tests, he’d told her, I hate tests, I hate them. This was the most worrying aspect of Ramón Martínez’s account, and the key to the quandary Sara now found herself in. Juan Olmedo was protected by life, by his knowledge, his position, his experience, his ability to make decisions, but his brother Alfonso was condemned to wander the world defenseless and alone, lost in the vast desert of a loneliness so absolute it stretched like a thick, impenetrable jungle around him, a loneliness like a moonless night on a bleak plateau, a loneliness like hunger, like pain, like the gaze of a torturer. Alfonso was always alone, even when they were all around him, listening to him, spoiling him.Alone and in the company of sounds that only he could hear, shadows that only he could see, unable to understand the keys to a world that was real, yet terrifyingly alien.
When at last Sara Gómez Morales returned home that evening, it was almost dark, but a permanent illusion swam before her eyes—the image of a bare, white room in which Alfonso Olmedo sat huddled and whimpering like an orphaned puppy, cowering at the furious threats of a faceless man who punched the walls with his fists. Sara knew she’d have to tell Juan everything. Everything, in as neutral a way as possible, and at the first opportunity. But when she reached her front door, just above the hole the children had made in the frame by inserting one drawing pin after another, she found a handwritten note, in Tamara’s clear, round hand. We’re at home, playing Monopoly. Come over if you want.
Sara smiled to herself as she crossed the street.The door of the Olmedos’ house was open. In the sitting room, half a dozen children were staring at the board, looking after their houses and hotels and piles of cash. Alfonso was sitting on the sofa, watching the game with a look of concentration intended to convey that he understood what was going on, when really it was beyond him. Sara sat down beside him and asked where Juan was.
“He’s gone to have grilled sardines at the bar,”Tamara explained.“We didn’t feel like going—we’re fed up with sardines, but he loves them. Maribel’s gone with him, because she said what she’s fed up with is pizza.”
“I’m not surprised,” Sara said sympathetically.
“Well, we’ve ordered some,” said Tamara laughing. “It’s just about to arrive.”
“I’ll play with you.” Alfonso was looking at Sara, nodding.
“But I’m not playing.”
“Yes, you are,” he insisted.“We’ll play together, you and me. Let’s have the horse.”
By the time Juan and Maribel got back, Sara and Alfonso had fleeced all the other players at the table. Mortgaged to the hilt,Tamara had given up. Andrés and another girl who lived on the development called Laura were still making a last stand, selling them streets and houses at a ridiculous price. All Alfonso understood was that his team was going to win, so he was clapping and shouting delightedly. He seemed so happy that Sara thought she’d never forgive herself if she ruined everything for what appeared to be so little, a distant shadow, a strange visit from another world to which nothing could force them to return.
Over the following weeks, the feeling of impunity, the certainty that her neighbors were at least as safe as she was in her new life, alternated with moments of sudden, alarming lucidity in which Sara forced herself to think about the fact that the police wouldn’t waste their time or pursue any matter unless there was a definite reason. She was sure that her neighbors weren’t in any real danger, but if they were under suspicion, some day things might change, in which case her warning might prove to be important. Nobody who knew him would ever dare think that Juan Olmedo was capable of committing a crime, much less his brother Alfonso. No one except Sara, because she had her own reasons for keeping quiet.This was the third factor that she considered during the final weeks of that summer—she didn’t want the police anywhere near her. Although there was no connection between her own past and that of the Olmedos, although she’d never met them before moving here, although she had her own guarantees, and however much she’d carefully rehearsed all her answers, she didn’t want anyone snooping around her asking questions.
Sometimes she felt as if her initial anxiety had been foolish.The days passed, August was stiflingly hot and as crowded as ever, the tourists arrived and left, filling pavements, café terraces and restaurants like a predictable tide, and nothing happened. Letters were delivered, the phone continued to work, Ramón sat in the same office, and nothing changed. Or so it seemed until reality came to contradict Sara Gómez Morales in a way she didn’t foresee.
She had noticed a poster stuck to a lamp post at the entrance to the supermarket. She’d been to street markets in El Puerto a couple of times, but this one was going to take place in Sanlúcar. Sara liked to browse these small, overpriced markets, and she always bought some trifle—an ashtray, a picture frame, a vase—paying more for it than she would have in a shop, but she never minded because it was all part of the fun.The children had accompanied her once but they’d been terribly bored, so, on the last Tuesday in August, she went to Sanlúcar on her own. She brought plenty of money with her and was in a good mood, but found nothing she liked. By the time she’d finished examining all the stalls it was already half past nine in the evening. Before she’d left,Tamara had invited Sara over to have pizza with her and Andrés, but Sara was also fed up with having pizza for dinner.
She drove to Bajo de Guía, found a parking space straight away in a car park full of cars with foreign number plates, and joined the river of people moving slowly between the beach and the crowded restaurant terraces, parallel to the mouth of the Guadalquivir. She was sure she wouldn’t get a table, but she didn’t mind eating at the bar. She didn’t pay too much attention to the people she passed, but when she got to Joselito Huerta, the last restaurant on the seafront and purveyor of the best sea bass in town, she caught sight of Juan Olmedo. Her neighbor, who must have taken the precaution of booking, was sitting at one of the best tables by the beach. Sara was just congratulating herself on this happy coincidence, when she saw him burst out laughing and realized he wasn’t alone. Sitting opposite him, a young woman with long hair and wearing a red dress was poking her tongue out at him.As he responded by throwing a ball of bread down her cleavage, Sara recognized Maribel. She instantly backed away and, hidden behind an ice cream stand, she watched them from a distance.Though apparently innocuous and childish, their relationship seemed very close and self-sufficient, but she didn’t detect any other signs of intimacy until a waiter placed a tray of king prawns on their table. Maribel took one, peeled it and put it in Juan’s mouth. Before he began chewing, he kept her fingers in his mouth and sucked them. Maribel parted her lips and started to breathe through her mouth. Sara was watching this scene with amazement rather than disbelief, when the stall-holder asked her if she wanted an ice cream. No, she said, and walked slowly back to her car, turning round once or twice until she could no longer see their heads in the distance.
As she drove home, Sara felt clumsy and incapable, but not cheated or let down by this discovery. It explained so many things, including the recent harmony that had reigned in their lives. She felt ambivalent, alternating between a painful understanding of the impulse that had pushed Juan down the slope of a secret relationship with someone from a very different social class, and a no less sympathetic fear of the future that awaited Maribel beyond the kind of affair that never ended well. Nevertheless, inspired by a silly vestige of romanticism that she never would have believed herself capable of, Sara also knew that whatever it was and however long it lasted, it was a good thing, and if it was good for Juan and Maribel, then it was good for all of them.Too good to spoil with bad news. So she decided to shut the news away in a corner of her memory where other secrets languished.
Some trains move very slowly, creating the illusion that they are at rest, inoffensive, peaceful. But they are still moving, and sooner or later they catch up with the naive hare that thought it could outrun them, running the creature over quietly, cleanly, quickly, economically, with no crushed bones, screams of pain, or the messy inconvenience of bloodstains.These trains then go on their way, tooting their whistles happily to passers-by; healthy, pretty, well-dressed children and young girls, who wave at them cheerfully as they travel onwards, soon forgetting the hare that stands up on its broken legs and struggles on, in a vain and desperate attempt to proclaim that it isn’t hurt. Such is their character, their nature. The condition of trains.The condition of the hare.