Remo Morán:
The old lady is a colleague of yours
The old lady is a colleague of yours, said Lola that afternoon when we met in her office. That’s how it began. But earlier, at midday, I had received a postcard signed by my son and sent from somewhere on the Peloponnese. It had obviously been written by Lola; for one thing, the boy hadn’t yet learned to write. My ex-wife often does oddball things like that: talking as if she had Down syndrome, or like the evil child in a movie, pretending her feet are frogs and speaking for them as she wiggles her toes: Hi, I’m a frog, how are you? Actually, come to think of it, most of the women I’ve known could turn certain parts of their body (hands, feet, knees, navels, etc) into frogs, or elephants, or chickens that went cluck cluck and then pecked, know-it-all snakes, white crows, spiders, wayward kangaroos, when they weren’t transforming their whole selves into lionesses, vampires, dolphins, eagles, mummies or hunchbacks of Notre Dame. All except Nuria, whose fingers were fingers and whose knees were always knees. Maybe we didn’t have enough time, or trust each other enough, maybe our senses of humor were too different, but whatever it was, Nuria, as distinct from the others, remained herself under all circumstances, like a monolith. It’s not just that she didn’t turn into a mouse, sometimes it was even hard to imagine her becoming what she was generally held to be: Nuria Martí, the Olympic skater, the prettiest girl in Z. Anyway, I had received a postcard of a satyr with an erect penis, and on the other side my son had made some very funny and slightly barbed remarks about the image. It was obvious that Lola had written the card, and that she was having a good time. I was pleased that she had remembered me. About four hours later the telephone rang, and I was surprised to hear Lola’s voice on the line. At first I assumed she was calling from Greece, and my first thought was that something had happened to the boy. But no, there hadn’t been any kind of accident, and she wasn’t phoning from Greece. They had been back for almost a week, the trip had been great, the boy got on really well with Iñaki, a pity it was only two weeks. She was calling because she needed to talk, she had a favor to ask, not really urgent, but odd (she stressed the word). Normally she wouldn’t have asked me, but the rest of her colleagues were on holiday, she was sorry, but the only people left in the Social Services office were her and a young girl who had just started as a child welfare agent, so what could she do? The only thing she could think of was to call me. She didn’t want to talk about the problem on the phone. Before hanging up I asked if she’d been too busy to call me earlier. Why? she asked. So I could see my son, I replied. He’s off at camp. She sounded nervous or annoyed. At seven-thirty I walked to the Social Services office, which is in a working-class district, back from the waterfront, and a fair way from all the other government offices. The building, which is really a tiny house built in the seventies, looks run-down to say the least. After what seemed an excessive delay, Lola opened the door herself, and led me to a room at the back that looked onto a cement courtyard full of washtubs. The washtubs, which were no longer in use, held potted plants. The lights were switched off in the corridor and the rooms. There was no sign of the child welfare agent, so I presumed we were alone. In her office, Lola looked tired and happy. For a moment I thought that was how I would look too if we hadn’t split up. Tired and happy. Suddenly I wanted to caress her and make love. But instead of asking if I could, I sat down and got ready to hear what she had to say to me. First we talked about the trip to Greece and about our son. Then, when we’d both had a good laugh, as we usually did, we talked about the old woman. The story went like this, as Lola told it to me: an old woman of no fixed address, who sometimes begged in the streets of Z, and called on Social Services from time to time, had come to the office the previous afternoon with a problem. She lived with a girl; the girl was sick, and the old woman didn’t know what to do. The girl didn’t want to go to the hospital; in fact, she didn’t even know that the old woman was trying to help her. She wasn’t from Z either; she’d arrived at the beginning of summer, probably from Barcelona, and didn’t beg, although she sometimes kept the old woman company when she did her rounds. According to the old woman, the girl was bleeding from the mouth and nose every day. She also ate like a bird; if she went on that way she’d die for sure. The old woman thought that the girl wouldn’t put up a fight if Lola went to get her and take her to the hospital. She was very emphatic about going to fetch her: if Lola or someone she could trust didn’t actually go and get her, the girl would just stay in the ruins. It took me a while to understand that by “the ruins” she meant the Palacio Benvingut. That was when I began to get interested. The old woman and the girl had been living there almost since the beginning of the season. In the old woman’s words, both of them were “ready for anything,” the girl even had a knife, a big kitchen knife, but don’t go telling. Lola didn’t ask her what she meant by that, or who she was trying to keep a secret from. The old woman’s a bit loopy, she explained. In the end she agreed to go, and the two of them arranged a day and a time. When it was all sorted out, the old woman (amazingly, given her age) jumped for joy a couple of times and laughed so hard Lola thought she was going to have a heart attack on the spot. As if she’d won the lottery for the blind. Soon afterward, however, Lola realized that, in her hurry, she’d forgotten that her diary was full of binding engagements, which would make it impossible for her to go to the Palacio Benvingut, but she didn’t want the old woman to feel like she was being put off. Why are you so interested in her? I don’t know, said Lola, she’s a charming old thing, she brings me luck, I met her not long after getting pregnant. Ah, I see, I said. Incomprehensibly, my eyes filled with tears and I felt alone and lost. I’ll go if you want, I said, like a man condemned to death bidding his family farewell. That’s what I wanted to ask you, said Lola. It was a simple task: I had to turn up between ten and eleven the next morning at the Palacio Benvingut and drive them to the hospital. Lola would take care of the rest; she’d be free by the time we got there and she’d wait for us at the entrance. That was all. You don’t think this girl with her knife is dangerous? I asked, but not seriously, more as a joke and a way to keep the conversation going. No, said Lola, it sounds like she’s a physical wreck. And what was that about you or someone you trust? That’s just the old lady carrying on, said Lola. I’m sure you’ll find her interesting; she’s a real character, and a colleague of yours, by the way. A colleague? Yes, said Lola, she used to be an artist too, in the old days . . .
Gaspar Heredia:
After the fat guy and the skater left
After the fat guy and the skater left, I decided to stay at the mansion until dawn. Not inside, and certainly not in the old storehouse where the skating rink was, but somewhere in the gardens that surrounded the building. A bit of stealthy, watchful exploration soon revealed a suitable place under a leafy hospitable tree, where I settled down to wait for the first light of day. I didn’t intend to fall asleep, accustomed as I was by then to working the night shift, but at some point, without realizing it, I must have dozed off. When I opened my eyes, my legs were numb and the sky was purple, with orange streaks that looked like lines traced by skywriting planes. I was right in front of the mansion’s main door, so I decided to look for a more discreet observation post. I was vaguely hoping Caridad would come out so I could talk to her. I remember that as I looked for a place to continue my vigil, my heart was racing. Otherwise, I was c
alm, I think. A few hours later, when the sky had turned a faded blue, and huge dark clouds were massing on the horizon, I saw Carmen come out of the main door. She had the calm bearing of a housewife on her way to market; with a bag slung over her arm and her hair combed back, except for a sort of fringe covering part of her forehead and her left eyebrow, she stopped on the porch, looking pleased with herself, and glanced to the left and the right before proceeding confidently down the steps. In the garden she stopped again and her hawk-like gaze settled on my hiding place. With a gesture, she bid me follow her. I stepped out into the open, and together we walked slowly up the private road, as if we were enjoying a morning stroll. Carmen was not surprised to find me; on the contrary, she had been expecting me to turn up earlier. She took it for granted that I was “betrothed” to Caridad, who sooner or later, probably sooner, would return my affection, and then everyone could live “happily ever after.” As we climbed the hill and gradually left the mansion behind, she compared the freshness of the morning to the sturdy good health you need to survive without love—or even with love—in hard times like these. Once again she mentioned the apartment that the council would provide for her, and, to my surprise, invited me to come and live in it. We’ll need a security guard, she said with a giggle. I began to laugh. In the pines clinging to the crags I noticed some enormous-looking birds, which seemed to be laughing as well. As we came around a bend in the road and Z appeared before us, the singer’s good humor suddenly vanished. To compensate, she started talking about Caridad: she didn’t know much about her, but more than I did, so I listened carefully. Amid mumbled interjections, and sounding increasingly serious, she said how friendly and gentle Caridad was, how logical and clever. Then she focused on the only thing that seemed to be a real cause for concern: her lack of appetite. Caridad had simply stopped eating. As long as I’d known her, from when she was living at the campground, her diet had consisted entirely of pastries and strawberry-flavored liquid yogurt. Sometimes she’d have a coffee or a beer, mainly when she went out with Carmen to do the rounds of the cafés, but that was exceptional and, anyway, it didn’t agree with her: it made her even more sullen and taciturn. On more than one occasion, Carmen had tried to get her to eat a ham sandwich, for example, but it was useless. Caridad, or her mysterious stomach, would only ingest donuts, madeleines, palm cakes, buns, spiral pastries, coconut cookies and other sweet things. What did she have for breakfast? Nothing, not even a gulp of water. And for lunch? Caridad got up at one or two in the afternoon, so she didn’t have lunch either. An afternoon snack? For a snack she would have a donut and a madeleine, which she took from a box secreted in one of the mansion’s rooms, where the two of them kept their provisions, safe from rats and ants. Nothing else? Perhaps a thimbleful of liquid yogurt before dinner. And dinner? Dinner, which they usually ate together, consisted of two or three donuts and a few mouthfuls of liquid yogurt. Caridad was really crazy about donuts. And liquid yogurt. Naturally, she had lost weight, and now you could even count her ribs, but Caridad’s willpower and her bird-like diet were indissolubly wedded. However she looked at it, Carmen couldn’t understand how Caridad had survived so long on such piffling nourishment, but she had, she was surviving, and she was even “prettier every day.” When we reached the streets of Z, I offered to buy her lunch. Carmen ordered churros and hot chocolate. The waiter, a sleepy teenager who was in no mood for kidding, said they didn’t have any, so she made do with a beer and a ladyfinger. Talking too much made her thirsty. I ordered a coffee with milk and two donuts. Before we said good-bye, she asked me if I had ever been inside the mansion. I said no. Wise choice, she said, but she didn’t believe me . . .