Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel (10 page)

But he knew what was going on. And not reporting it made him an accomplice. If he did, if he told the police what he knew, what would happen to those people? And above all, what would happen to Isabel? It was stupid to pretend he didn’t know. No. He was just a simple teacher. He wasn’t a politician, nor was he interested in waving any flag beyond freedom for him and his son. But wasn’t that an inevitable fight? Could he really hope to continue preaching the principles of freedom, of culture, of justice while hiding his head in the sand like an ostrich? Was he that blind, that hungry, that he had sold his free will for a salary and a roof over his head, even knowing what kind of repulsive beings Guillermo Mola and his crony Publio were? No. He would not denounce Isabel.

And yet that didn’t ease his mind. He felt a deep bitterness in his soul. He knew that she had used him, that she had put him between a rock and a hard place. She had discovered his weakness for her and exploited it fully.

*   *   *

During the following weeks, Isabel tried to avoid him. Marcelo struggled to focus on Andrés’s education, but it was inevitable that when he saw her walking through the house, acting for all the world like a good fairy, he felt somewhat repulsed. Finally, one afternoon he managed to come up alongside her near the arbor in the garden.

“I need to speak with you, Isabel.”

Isabel wore leather gloves that allowed her to touch the rose thorns without getting pricked. She took off one glove, feigning that the teacher’s hurtful gaze didn’t make her feel accused or ill at ease.

“I think it’s best if we don’t speak. Unless it is about Andrés.”

Marcelo had to make a real effort to behave in a civilized fashion and not make a fool of himself.

“Of course it is about Andrés, and about you, and about your husband … and about me, Isabel. I can’t keep pretending nothing is happening.”

Isabel cocked her head fleetingly toward the house, as if she feared that Guillermo or his watchdog, Publio, could hear her. Marcelo found that brief, intensely anxious gesture of her face as lovely as a shooting star. Even in those circumstances he couldn’t help admiring her.

“You don’t have to do anything, Marcelo. In fact, I’ve regretted having gotten you involved, several times these past weeks. You are a good man, but I need to trust in someone who can protect Andrés. And I can only trust that task to you. Although you don’t have to remain here, if you don’t wish to.”

Marcelo felt confused. She was talking and smiling; truly smiling, not as a trick to win over his reticence.

“I didn’t say … that I didn’t want to do it … I was only hoping that…”

Isabel placed the leather glove back on her hand and leaned over the rosebush with her pruning shears.

“I know what you were hoping, Marcelo. And believe me when I say I am flattered. But I won’t buy your loyalty with lies. Do you remember the man who escorted you that night? I am in love with him. And he with me. When all this ends, we plan to start a new life.” She looked up, her gaze as clear and clean as the roses she held in her hands. “And I believe that you should do the same. You will have my eternal friendship and gratitude. That’s the most I can offer you.”

Marcelo swallowed hard. He felt vile, dirty, and sad.

“Having your friendship will always be better than having nothing,” he said, forcing the most painful smile of his life.

*   *   *

Months passed, and nothing happened. Guillermo Mola was still alive; the routines of the house hadn’t altered. Even Isabel seemed happier and less pensive than usual. Marcelo came to believe that perhaps the group of conspirators had seen the wrong in what they were plotting and that, simply, they’d aborted the plan.

But toward the end of 1941, something happened that shattered that apparent placidity.

It was ten in the morning. Marcelo was working on handwriting with Andrés, who traced in his tiny hand some irregular verbs on the chalkboard. The door to the study opened suddenly. In the threshold appeared one of Publio’s Falangists. In his contorted face, Marcelo read the worst of omens.

“I come for Mrs. Mola. Publio sent me. Have you seen her?”

Marcelo said that the lady of the house had not been there all morning.

“Is something going on?”

The Falangist gave him the news: they had made an attempt on Guillermo Mola’s life as he left the church where he took communion every morning.

“Luckily,” he added smugly, “they only wounded him. Don Guillermo is out of danger.”

They had done it … and they had failed. He had to hold himself up with the back of the chair and slowly slide sideways into a seat. Andrés kept at his studies, pressing hard on the chalk with his tongue between his teeth, not understanding what was going on. What would now become of that boy? And his mother?

Then he saw the sinister figure of Publio through the window. He was standing in the middle of the garden, his hands in his pockets, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on … Why was he staring so insistently at the study?… Was he looking at him?

Marcelo grew white. Publio, the man who made stones tremble with his very presence, was waving at him with his squinty eyes and wolf’s smile.

6

Barcelona, December 1980

It hadn’t stopped raining, but now it was coming down in that tedious way that pushed the day into a lethargic depression. María was melancholy and taciturn, like the afternoon. She watched the umbrellas of the passersby headed toward the market of the Born, swaying like the waves on a choppy sea.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you? You’ve been in a bad mood all day,” said Greta. They were strolling through the Ribera neighborhood, repressing their desire to take each other’s hand or kiss like the other couples did beneath the balconies that stuck out along the avenue with its gargoyles and art nouveau canopies.

“Nothing,” lied María. “This weather just sets me on edge.” They sat on a bench. A small stream of dirty water descended parallel to the sidewalk. María contemplated the body of a swollen dead mouse as it drifted to a sewer drain. Slowly she turned up to the sky, which was like a shroud. An all-out storm would have been better, a downpour that dragged the suffocating miasmas of those narrow streets out to sea.

Greta lit a cigarette and passed it to her. Beneath a coat their hands intertwined. María’s fingers were cold.

“Are you like this because of your father? They had to admit him to the hospital sometime. And you don’t need to worry so much. It’s just a routine checkup.”

María shook her head.

“That’s not what’s worrying me. After all, he’s been fighting this cancer for four years, and he hasn’t given in. He’s strong.”

“Then what…?” Greta leaned on her shoulder. Her face was red, and it wasn’t just her blusher. She wore a striking plaid raincoat that dripped onto her knees.

“It’s been three years since they pronounced the sentence against César Alcalá.”

Greta was surprised. She hadn’t even thought about it. That was something that seemed very distant from her life; although it seems that wasn’t the case for María.

“Yeah, so should we be sad about it or celebrate it?”

María scolded her partner, half in jest.

“Don’t be sarcastic … All I’m saying is that I woke up today with a strange feeling, like a knot in my stomach, and I remembered that it was the anniversary. That nagging feeling hasn’t stopped pestering me all morning.”

Greta nodded without saying anything. She took a long drag on the cigarette and brushed aside her wet bangs. She looked at her fingernails, as if searching for some imperfection in her immaculate manicure.

“Do you think about him?”

María shook her head emphatically.

“No. Of course not. We can’t think about all the people we’ve accused or defended in court. We do our job, and we move on.”

“But the case of Inspector Alcalá wasn’t like the others, and we both know it.”

Greta was right. Their lives had not been the same since. Now they were prestigious lawyers and had their own firm on the Passeig de Gracia.

“Things have gone well for us since then,” added Greta with a deliberate look. “Haven’t they?”

María avoided that interrogatory gaze. With the excuse of looking through her purse for pills for her headache, she pulled her hand away from Greta’s.

“Yes, things have gone well for us. We have a nice house, a nice car, we vacation in the summer, go skiing in the winter…” She let the list hang in the air, as if she had forgotten something important.

“And we have each other,” added Greta pointedly.

All of a sudden the bells of Santa María sounded the quarter hour. A flock of pigeons took off under the rain, and María shifted her gaze, letting it wander. To her right there was an indigent in the middle of the plaza of El Fossar de les Moreres, with his hands stuck into the pockets of a long, dirty, gray coat, looking alternately left and right. He took a few steps toward one side. He stopped. He looked around and retraced his steps, scratching his few days’ growth of ashy beard, without deciding on one side or the other.

María noticed him. There was something about him that was familiar.

“Look at that beggar. He is watching us out of the corner of his eye.”

Greta watched the homeless man. He didn’t seem any different to her than the others milling about.

“We should go home. It’s getting late. And my head’s hurting again.”

“When are you going to go to the neurologist?”

“Don’t be a nag, Greta. It’s nothing. It’s just a migraine.”

Greta reminded her of the times she had gotten dizzy in the last month, her sudden blackouts, and those spots that every so often spattered her iris like lightning bugs flying before her eyes, fogging her vision.

“All that is just a migraine?”

“I’ll find some time to go to the doctor, I promise,” answered María, looking behind her. The beggar was watching her. Slowly, he lifted his hand and waved at her. From a distance María thought that she even heard him say her name. Again she felt almost certain that she knew that poor man. But she couldn’t place his face or associate it with any concrete identity or memory. “Can we leave? I don’t like it here.”

*   *   *

That night, the telephone rang three times before María picked it up and left it on the cradle without answering. She was in her home office, reviewing an eviction sentence for which she was preparing an appeal. No more than five seconds passed, but when she brought the receiver to her ear all she heard was the hum of the line. Not giving it any thought, she hung up and continued going over her work.

Ten minutes later the phone rang again. This time she picked it up on the first ring.

“Yes?”

“Do you mind explaining why you didn’t answer the phone before?”

María was paralyzed at the sound of that voice. Confused, it took her a few seconds to react.

“Lorenzo…?”

A weak chuckle was heard on the other end of the line.

“You sound like you’ve heard a voice from beyond the grave. Just because you haven’t wanted to hear from me in all this time doesn’t mean I died.”

“What do you want?” asked María very slowly, suspicious. It had been more than three years since she’d heard from Lorenzo, and hearing his voice again stirred up old hurts that would always dwell in the depths of her being.

“I’m in Barcelona. I thought we should get together.”

María felt a very strong pressure at the nape of her neck, as if a claw was pushing her forward against her will. Suddenly, the feeling that had always inhibited her when she was with Lorenzo returned. The feeling of ridiculousness and the fear of going too far.

“I’m very busy these days. Besides, I don’t think you and I have anything to talk about.” She felt comforted by her own determination.

A snort was heard on the other end of the line, followed by a deliberate silence.

“I don’t want to talk about us, María.”

“Then what do you want to talk about?”

“About César Alcalá, the inspector that you put in jail three years ago … Could you come see me right now at my ministry office? You’ll find it on the second floor of the Provincial Police Headquarters.”

María was slow to react.

“What do you have to do with that man?”

“It’s complicated, and I don’t think we should talk about it over the phone. It’s best that we see each other.”

Just then, Greta came into the office to check some information. It took her a few seconds to lift her head from the papers she was carrying in her hand. Then she noticed María’s paleness, how she hung absently onto the telephone.

“What’s going on?”

María shook her head very slowly, as if denying a thought that disturbed her.

“I have to go to Barcelona. A client wants to see me.” She didn’t have any reason to lie to Greta, but her intuition told her that for the moment it was best not to mention Lorenzo.

“Now? It’s almost ten
PM
.”

“Yes, it has to be now,” said María, grabbing her coat and car keys. “Don’t wait up.”

She knew that Greta hadn’t believed a word, but she didn’t make any real effort to be more convincing. There’d be time for explanations later. Now she was too shocked to think.

She drove quickly along the coastal highway, going through small towns that were deserted at that time of the year. In spite of the cutting cold that came in through the lowered window, María couldn’t completely wake up. Suddenly, all the anguish she had felt throughout the day took on weight and dimension.

Beneath the yellowish light of the street lamps the street’s appearance changed with undulating sadness. In the distance she saw some pedestrians walking through the rain. They were like small insects running for shelter in the night. María stopped in front of the door to the Provincial Police Headquarters to make certain that this was where Lorenzo had said to meet him.

She was approached by a policeman enveloped in shadows who was doing the rounds on his watch. Water dripped everywhere, darkening his face. The barrel of the automatic rifle slung across his shoulder shone with rain. He was one of those haughty public servants, sure of himself beneath the tight chinstrap with his weapon at the ready. His Spartan face was as theosophical as it was superficial.