Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel (49 page)

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Fernando dragged his brother’s body to the bed in his bedroom. He covered it with a sheet. Then he ceremoniously took off his clothes and left them on a chair. In ancient Japan it was considered an act of mercy that a friend ended a suicide’s agony by cutting off his head. That last gesture of consideration was only for those whose life deserved to be spared suffering. Fernando had no one to help him die quickly. Nor did he deserve it. His life, like those of his family, had not been edifying. He deserved to bleed to death, remembering the unworthy things he had done. Only with a slow ritual death could he atone for his mistakes.

The Japanese practice of opening up your midsection was reserved for the high noblemen, those who felt their lives could only be ended by their own hand, in a cruel and painful, but voluntary way. It was their way of showing honor and bravery. It was
the supreme sadness of the samurai.
The man who dignifies his life with a good death. He got on his knees, pulled out his brother’s ornamental dagger from its sheath, and with a sharp, decisive blow sank it into the left side of his abdomen. He slowly moved the blade toward the right side without removing it and made a slight upward incision. Then he pulled it out, disemboweling himself.

He fell to one side, beside the corpse of his brother. He took his brother’s hand, already cold, and remembered the warmth he’d had in life, the gratitude and security he felt when he took him in his arms to play. The memories were scattered, good ones mixed with bad ones, screams and laughter, crying, joy, actions, stillness.

“Fuck, what a bloodbath,” said someone, kicking the door down.

Fernando tried to lift his head, but an Italian shoe stepped on his neck.

“All these guts are yours? They say we’ve got almost twenty feet of intestines. I see you wanted to check for yourself.”

Fernando couldn’t talk. With each breath a sputum of blood flooded his throat. Then the stranger knelt down and looked him in the face.

“Do you know me? I’m Ramoneda. In the end you did it. You gutted yourself like in one of your brother’s Japanese fantasies. But make no mistake: that doesn’t make you one of them. And I see that you’ve killed Andrés. Well, that saves me half the work. And now, tell me where the girl and the lawyer lady are.”

Fernando half closed his eyes. He stretched out his hand to the bloody katana. The stranger ripped it from his hands.

“What are you trying to do, be a hero?”

Fernando flushed with an expression of pain.

“What is this, some kind of ritual? I get it: If I cut off your head, you go to the heaven of the nut jobs, like those samurai of yours. And if I don’t, you’ll just be an idiot who pulled out his guts.”

Fernando managed to get up on one elbow.

“Please. I don’t know where they are.”

“Then I can’t help you. Just let nature take its course. Now I’ll sit down like one of those wildlife reporters, you know, the ones that film a defenseless gazelle when the lion is about to hunt it. They could scare it away, warn it. But then they would be altering the balance of things. The best thing would be for me to leave. Maybe you’ll get lucky and die before the flames reach you. Anyway, things should turn out this way, seems fair.”

Fernando looked at the can of gasoline in Ramoneda’s hands before collapsing in a corner, eyes focused on his brother’s body laid out on the bed. He didn’t care. Let the ashes of their bodies be scattered amid the ruins of that house; let the wind that came in through the window scatter them into the winter night; let their memory be erased like their bodies. Let them rest in peace.

Ramoneda lit a cigarette. Then he set a sheet of newspaper afire, threw the flame into the air, and fled, disappearing into the smoke.

Fernando stayed in a corner, held his guts weakly as the room slowly converted into a voracious ball of fire. Helpless, he contemplated the flames approaching his brother’s body, kissing his cracked lips and his empty eyes until turning him into a torch that blackened like a piece of rotten meat. The flames licked him; they already knew the taste of that body that had once managed to escape them. This time they gave him no choice. And he watched impotent as those same flames engulfed him, he who had so yearned for the warmth of a bonfire during those long Siberian days. Like a pack of hounds, the fire attacked him from every side, devouring the last embers of his life.

30

Barcelona, February 18–20, 1981

“She’s so beautiful,” said Greta, caressing Marta’s forehead as she slept.

María agreed. Lying in the bed covered with white sheets, Alcalá’s daughter looked like a strangely beautiful angel. Her pearly skin showcased her delicate nose and parted lips from which emerged two incisors. Beneath the bruises and the deep dark circles under her eyes gradually emerged the face of a seventeen-year-old girl. But as she groaned in her sleep, moved by dark nightmares, that hint of innocence disappeared behind a long gray shadow.

The nurse came in and checked her IV drip. When she went out, she chatted cheerfully with the policeman who was keeping watch over the door to the room. The officers had asked María a lot of questions, and the first journalists were starting to arrive, having caught a whiff of sensationalist news to fill their front pages with. That very morning the firemen had found the bodies of the Mola brothers in the ruins of the house on Tibidabo. Unable to deal with the avalanche that was about to hit her, María had asked for Greta’s help, and Greta had come to the hospital without a single reproach.

María nervously checked the clock on the wall.

“Still no news?”

“Any minute now.”

“The judge will give an arrest order against that congressman, you’ll see,” Greta said reassuringly, taking her by the hand.

María smiled tiredly. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t feel happy. She had found out too many things, and she had lost a lot in the search.

“And what about César, do we know anything?”

María made sure that nobody could hear her.

“He’s safe. I am keeping him informed on his daughter’s status, but it’s best if he stays hidden for now. I trust that if they end up charging Publio with the evidence he contributed, the district attorney will offer him a deal. Maybe the government will give him a pardon. But it’s still all up in the air.”

Greta stroked her arm. But María moved away, barely managing to disguise her need to be alone.

Why didn’t she feel anything? There was no stifled crying, no feeling of happiness or satisfaction. Just tiredness. She couldn’t help thinking about the image of Fernando with the bloody sword, and his look of incomprehension, of impassioned insanity. She wasn’t even able to touch Marta, to talk to her or to look her in the eyes. She felt guilty about everything that had happened to her. She felt that she and her father had caused that family’s pain, a suffering that had lasted through three generations, forty years of sadness.

María and Greta went to dinner that night at a restaurant on the beach, in the Barceloneta. Through the large picture windows of the dining room the beach was illuminated with Chinese lanterns. The sea breeze rippled the foam on the waves that slid tamely toward the shore.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” asked María. “You’ve been doing it all day.” It made her feel uncomfortable to be the object of pity.

“It’s not pity,” replied Greta, reading her thoughts. “It just that I miss you, and it hurts me to not have been by your side in all this.”

María was pensive, holding a glass of red wine up in front of her eyes.

“I didn’t really do anything. I was simply used by several people. And I didn’t have the opportunity at any point to choose to do anything else.”

“That’s not true. You could have let things follow their course and not interfere. But you didn’t do that; you got the inspector his daughter back.”

“It’s only fair after I snatched her away from him. I wonder what that girl will think when one day she wakes up from her horror and asks her father why she had to go through all that. What will César tell her? That a maniac kidnapped and tortured her because he believed that her grandfather Marcelo was his mother’s murderer and he was seeking revenge. Then he’ll tell her that this madman was wrong, that the man who was guilty was somebody else, a senile old man with a daughter who was a blind and arrogant lawyer. And he’ll tell her that he couldn’t rescue her sooner because that lawyer kept him from doing so by locking him up in prison.”

Greta stroked her hair.

“It’s not fair for you to blame yourself this way. You are twisting things around. You aren’t responsible for your father’s actions or that woman’s death; you had nothing to do with her son’s insanity. César committed a crime, and you did what you had to do … Just like now. Everything is over … You should come back home with me and rest for a few days. We can walk on the beach, read, listen to music, the things we used to do, you and I.”

María felt a stab of pain. She felt alone, she knew she was alone, and she was frightened. She hadn’t told Greta anything about her illness. Nobody could ask her to face the fact that her life had completely fallen to pieces because of her father and a tumor that might leave her confined to a hospital bed forever or send her straight to the cemetery. She didn’t want to share that feeling with anyone. She took refuge in it and isolated herself from the world she no longer felt a part of. People who have no more faith in their destiny stop fighting, they quit trying to shape their lives, and they just become passive spectators.

Greta was aware that María no longer belonged to her, if indeed she ever had. It wasn’t only her haggard appearance. It was something else. The way she moved her hands, the tone of her voice, kind, serene, but distant. Her composure when laughing at a bad joke, not allowing the happiness to overflow. And as hard as she tried to penetrate that darkness and bring her a little bit of light, she couldn’t do it.

Their eyes kissed each other, their fingers caressing secretly under the napkins. They dined calmly, like friends who had once shared more. But between the words encroached disturbing looks and silences, signs of a distance they both pretended wasn’t there.

The confirmation of the vastness of that distance came when they parted. Before getting into the car, Greta moved her lips in search of a kiss that María had intended for her cheek. María gave in, but more as a reward for kind behavior, not a loving impulse. They looked at each other sadly. María turned and walked away, protected by her long brown coat, beneath the streetlights of the seafront. Greta stayed inside the car, watching the curve of her legs, the elegant steps of her cream-colored heels, and the smoke of the cigarette that trailed behind her. And she said to herself that María was a woman from another time, with the elegance of a black-and-white movie. Abundance in the midst of absence.

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Her steps were also being admired by another pair of eyes. Those eyes weren’t flooded with tears at losing her. They squinted like a feline following its prey amid the vegetation, waiting for the right moment, calibrating its strength, sniffing at the air.

Ramoneda took a long drag on his blond cigarette. With a sharp flick he sent the butt toward the water and adjusted his jacket. It was a new jacket, bought for the occasion. The other one had gotten ruined in the fire at the house on Tibidabo. His hair had gotten a little singed, too, and he had burns on his hands, over which he wore some clumsy bandages he had applied himself.

He let María pass him on the promenade, turning toward the sea just when she looked at him. He enjoyed the game, like a cat with a mouse before chomping it down. He knew that she would walk to the hotel. The bodyguards lagged behind. They didn’t like protecting that woman, and she didn’t like feeling confined. That made things easier. The night wasn’t especially cold, and she liked to stroll leisurely. He was in no hurry either. He started to follow her from a distance, stopping every once in a while, switching sidewalks and even streets to keep from raising suspicions. He had learned to perfect his job, to be methodical. Besides, she deserved some respect. She was the important piece, the main prey to catch.

He didn’t have a set plan; he would simply follow her until they reached the right place and moment. And if that didn’t happen, he would attack her in the hotel, although he’d prefer a more discreet place. For example, that building under construction he could make out beside the main post office.

*   *   *

María felt cold, as she had when she’d passed that guy smoking on a bench and looking out at the beach. She wrapped her neck up with her coat collar and buttoned the top button. She was in no rush to get back to the hotel. In fact, she didn’t want to arrive too early. She asked herself why she had been so cold with Greta. She could have gone home; the work she had to get done that night was just an excuse. Really she hadn’t wanted to get into the car with her because she didn’t want to cling to anything. She was so afraid to love something, to expect or desire anything, that she preferred not to have anything. She wondered why she was that way, why she had always been afraid to be happy, to take what was offered to her. It was a question that made no sense at this point. She had no use for constructive or Freudian answers.

She couldn’t blame her father or Lorenzo. They weren’t the ones who had destroyed her life. It was her fault; it was in her own nature to be unable to enjoy things, feelings, or the company of a loved one. That didn’t make her a dispassionate woman; quite the opposite: she now felt, with a tremendous effervescence, her fear that she might not survive the operation, the whirlwind of guilt and satisfaction at having been able to reunite César with his daughter. But none of that filled her completely. She felt like something static around which things happened, barely brushing her surface.

She no longer had many personal pleasures, like that nighttime stroll. She enjoyed the solitude and harmony of the silence, the conjunction between the night and her mood. She didn’t need to convince herself everything would go fine, or show disheartenment or fear in front of Greta or anyone else. She only needed to walk, lose Marchán’s bloodhounds, go up the street to the hotel, smoke a cigarette, and listen to the sound of her heels.