Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel (11 page)

“What are you doing there?”

“I’ve come to see…” She hesitated, not knowing what post Lorenzo now held in the CESID, the intelligence service. “Lorenzo Pintar. He’s on the second floor.”

The policeman’s expression contorted. He knew who worked on the building’s second floor. His dark, cold eyes scrutinized María without the slightest emotion. Finally, he was satisfied and let her inside, with a justification as patently ridiculous as it was true: “You never know who’s a terrorist.”

As soon as she crossed the threshold, María was greeted by the same police routine she was already familiar with from every other police station she had visited. There was always the sound of a cell’s metal closing at the end of a narrow hallway, the echoing footsteps of a guard, the loud voices of prisoners and officers. It was a world far from the light. It depressed her.

She went up to the second floor. She had to sit and wait on the edge of an uncomfortable chair. Every once in a while she looked out of the corner of her eye at a closed door. And the longer she waited, the more a strange feeling of uneasiness grew in her, a tingling on the roof of her mouth, and without fully knowing the reason, she started to feel insignificant. That sensation grew overpowering when someone came in after her and, without going through the purgatory of waiting, crossed through the door, which was opened wide to him without his even having to knock.

María tried to distract herself by looking around her. The windows, high and unreachable, were small skylights through which occasionally peeked the gleam of a lightning bolt. The storm’s thunderclaps buried the clatter of typewriters and telephones. She imagined that during the day that racket was enough to drive you mad. At some tables in the back, there were men drinking coffee and others writing with their forearms resting on the chairs, wearily. The furnishings were old, of grayish metal. Dozens of files were piled up in drawers that made do as improvised filing cabinets.

Every once in a while someone came in from the street, dragging the rain in with them and leaving footprints on the unpolished terrazzo floor. She got up and went over to a window that overlooked the street. Once or twice she could see the dripping boots of the police on guard outside. She guessed that they submitted every person who entered to the same scrutiny, and that, to justify it, they explained that anyone could blow that miserable station house to pieces.

Finally, the door to the office she was waiting at opened. The man who came out didn’t even notice her presence. He passed by her deep in thought, meditating on something that must be profoundly worrying him.

“Lorenzo!”

Lorenzo turned. Suddenly, his face transformed into a poem. He couldn’t believe that the lovely woman he was looking at was María.

“My God, I barely recognized you,” he murmured admiringly, approaching to give her a kiss.

María stopped him by offering him a hand to shake.

“You look pretty much the same,” she replied, hesitantly. Actually he looked much older and more tired. His hairline had seriously receded, and the rest was very gray. He had also gotten fatter.

Lorenzo was perfectly aware of those changes.

“It looks like you benefited more from the separation than I did,” he said somewhat sarcastically, although it was true. “You look different, I don’t know, must be your haircut or your makeup. You never used to wear makeup or such elegant dresses.”

María faked a polite smile. Lorenzo didn’t realize that the change in her wasn’t physical, and that it wasn’t due to the bangs falling into her eyes or the blue Italian dress, or the high heels. She was a different woman now, a happy one, you could say. She radiated a different light from within. But for Lorenzo to admit that would mean implicitly admitting that he was part of the problem that kept her from being this way when they were together.

“Why did you want to see me?”

Lorenzo’s imperturbable face moved slightly, like the rubble that falls before an avalanche. He looked dubiously toward the exit, checked his watch, and remained pensive.

“I need a personal favor.”

“You need a personal favor?” she repeated, shocked.

“I know you think I’ve got a lot of nerve, showing up after so long to ask you for something, but it’s important.”

He took her into his office, an austere landscape of old furniture and metal filing cabinets. There was a frame with a strawflower in one corner that held a portrait of a woman and a boy about two years old.

Seeing that photograph, which was probably of his new family, María had mixed feelings. For some strange reason she had imagined that Lorenzo was the typical miserable loner, married to his job.

“Is that your wife?”

Lorenzo nodded.

“And that’s Javier, my son,” he added proudly.

María felt an uneasiness in her belly. It was the name they were going to give the child she had lost if it had been a boy.

Lorenzo turned on a table lamp and sat behind the desk, inviting her to have a seat as well. On the desk there was a file with names in red. María managed to discreetly read one of them. Lorenzo closed the file, and she looked away.

Uncomfortable, María shifted her gaze toward a bamboo stalk, twisted and knotted like an umbilical cord. Noticing that the green spot in that gray office had drawn her eye, Lorenzo picked it out of its water-filled container.

“I bought it because it is absolutely imperfect. Errors sometimes lead to the wondrous. It is a paradox that explains my job very well.”

“Being a spy suits you to a tee.”

Lorenzo smiled.

“That’s not what we call it. In the casa we like to think that we are public servants for the Defense Department.”

He asked for a couple of coffees with more vehemence than was necessary; he wanted to show that he was the king in that court, and that María had lost a good catch.

“How’s it going with that friend of yours … Greta?” He smiled with that coldness of his that was so hurtful, which María had stupidly mistaken for self-control and self-confidence when she had first met him, but which really was a reflection of the glacial temperature of his soul.

“Fabulous,” she replied.

She knew that to Lorenzo’s male ego it was unforgivable that she had left him for a woman. He would never be able to understand that she left him because of his own faults. It was that stupid pride of his, that show of masculine independence that had chipped away bit by bit at her initial love for him, until there was nothing left, except the desire to run away.

María lit a cigarette and pensively observed the smoking tip and the bluish loops that came apart in the air. She noticed Lorenzo’s disgusted expression. He was so methodical, so proper, that even the simplest rebellions, like lighting a cigarette, drove him crazy. There is no such thing as a small transgression; wasn’t that what he had said on their wedding night, as she smoked a cigarette lying in bed? It wasn’t even a joint. It was a goddamn cigarette. But he had looked at her as if she had just committed a terrible crime and was holding the murder weapon in her hands.

“I see you’re still smoking. You should watch out for lung cancer. It’s a lottery, and it’s not always won by the person with the most tickets.” He laughed idiotically at his own cleverness.

“Don’t start,” murmured María, to quiet the inner voice that was filling her head with bitter memories. She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray.

Lorenzo arched an eyebrow, making María quite uncomfortable.

“I wouldn’t have called you if this wasn’t important, trust me. Although sometimes, I’ll admit I’ve wanted to know how your life is going.”

“My life is going perfectly. Better than ever.” When she put her mind to it, María could be exceedingly cruel and cutting. She wasn’t like one of those hot-blooded dogs that lunged at their prey and pulled them apart with their teeth. She applied the same practice to her feelings as a detached surgeon used in the operating room, fully aware of the geography she was dissecting, mercilessly and without faltering.

Lorenzo took the gibe calmly. He looked toward a small door that was half open onto a private vestibule.

“How is your father?” he asked unexpectedly.

María was surprised. Gabriel was the last person she expected Lorenzo to ask after.

“Not very well,” she said sincerely. “Why do you ask?”

“Pure courtesy, to break the ice.”

“Okay … well, why don’t you quit beating around the bush and just tell me why you called.” María was starting to get nervous. “You never ask for favors, and much less from me, so you must be really in it up to your neck. What’s this all about? You said it had something to do with César Alcalá.”

“Do you remember Ramoneda? The guy César Alcalá almost killed.”

María nodded halfheartedly. She didn’t like remembering that.

“Vaguely,” she lied.

Lorenzo leaned back on the armchair and started playing with a letter opener he held in his hands.

“Maybe you don’t know that he woke up from his coma a few months after the trial.”

María immediately got on the defensive.

“I don’t see how I would know that. I haven’t had any further contact with Ramoneda or his wife since the trial.”

Lorenzo explained himself with unnecessary bluntness. “When Ramoneda woke up from the coma, the first thing he saw was the ass of a male nurse mounting his wife. What do you think he did? He closed his eyes again and pretended he was still sleeping. His wife and the nurse, thinking he was still in a coma, did it several more times, convinced that he couldn’t see or hear them. They fucked next to poor Ramoneda’s hospital bed, and he pretended he was unaware. A few weeks later he disappeared from the hospital without a trace.”

María turned to face him, dismayed.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Not long after, the bodies of the nurse and the wife showed up in the Garraf dump. They were naked, tied together with a rope. He had his severed testicles in his mouth. That guy is a real psychopath.” Lorenzo paused and gauged María’s reaction with his gaze before continuing. “Thanks to you, César Alcalá is in prison, and Ramoneda is on the streets.” He said each word with smug maliciousness and then carefully watched María’s response. He thought that she would be shocked, that she would bombard him with insults, that she would justify her actions.

But María just stared at him.

“It’s true,” she said laconically.

It was Lorenzo who was shocked.

“That’s it…?”

María didn’t bat an eyelash.

“I did what I had to do. Legally you can’t reproach me for a thing, not you, not anyone. But I know that what I did wasn’t just.”

“Have you suddenly become a saint or a Buddhist in search of forgiveness?” said Lorenzo, a little irritated.

María remained unperturbed.

“I haven’t changed that much. And you’re still the same arrogant jerk. You don’t care about what Ramoneda’s done, or that the inspector is rotting in jail. I know you too well, Lorenzo; your morals are as tarnished as the soles of your shoes, so tell me: why are you telling me all this?”

At that moment the secretary came in with a tray and three cups of steaming coffee. She left the tray on a side table and discreetly left the office.

“Who’s the third cup for?” asked María.

Lorenzo put the letter opener on top of the file that he had been studying a few minutes earlier and paused pensively. He was enjoying the moment.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said. He shifted his gaze toward the door partially open toward the vestibule, and he stood up. “Colonel, please come in.”

The door opened wide, and a man who must have been about sixty appeared. Maybe he was a bit younger. He was tall. Thin. Lorenzo had addressed him by his military title, but he wore civilian clothes, as did Lorenzo himself. He was dressed elegantly, or perhaps immaculately would be more apt, because if you took a closer look you would discover that the outfit was the result of a meticulous combination of carefully ironed and well-cared-for clothing and accessories, but which were out of style. That man had once been something that he was no longer, but he still maintained a dignified appearance.

He came toward María with firm but discreet steps.

“I very much wanted to meet you in person,” he said.

María felt a rush of warmth toward that stranger who leaned over her, impregnating her with his characteristic scent of Royal Crown cigarillos. His eyes were like a gray afternoon, trapped in onerous melancholy.

“María, this is Colonel Pedro Recasens. He is my superior,” said Lorenzo with a solemnity that rang a bit ridiculous. Recasens took a seat beside María and scrutinized her like an eagle, getting a little distance to gain perspective.

“I am very sorry to hear about your father’s health. He truly was a master at forging weapons.”

Now it was María who observed him with the precision of an entomologist.

“Do you know my father?”

Recasens sketched a half smile. His gaze ran fleetingly over Lorenzo and returned to meet María’s eyes.

“Vaguely … We met once, many years ago, although it’s unlikely that he remembers me.”

María’s initial warmth was cut short by distrust. Suddenly, she was alarmed by his ironic smile and condescending gaze. His small eyes, crowned by thick gray brows, were like depth probes that dissected what they saw, analyzed it quickly, and extracted consequences that were reflected in his concentrated face, in his straight mouth with thin lips and yellowish teeth.

“I have done my research on you. You’ve become a very prestigious lawyer.”

María turned violently toward Lorenzo.

“What does this mean? Have you been spying on me?”

Lorenzo asked her to listen to what Recasens had to tell her. María noted a barely perceptible shift in his behavior. She sensed him slightly more receptive, friendlier.

“What I am going to propose to you is an assignment that transcends the logical, which is why I’ve had you investigated,” interjected Recasens.

María felt the urgent need to get away from that man, but the stranger held her for a moment, touching her forearm. It wasn’t an imposing or hostile gesture, but through his fingers she felt the authority of someone accustomed to being the one to decide when a conversation ends. María felt uncomfortable, but at the same time unable to take her gaze off Recasens’s magnetic eyes.