Learning to Lose (17 page)

Almendros always reminded him of a cartoon that made them laugh. Two cavemen dressed in animal skins beside their cave, and one says to the other: here we are without pollution, without stress, no traffic jams or noise, and look, our life expectancy is only thirty years. Almendros laughed in spasms. Wasn’t it Maurice Chevalier who said old age is horrible, but the only known alternative is worse?

The last afternoon with Osembe, as he fought to maintain his erection, Leandro told her about the news of the sit-in in Nigeria, two hundred women protesting ChevronTexaco. Osembe didn’t seem impressed. Where did you read that? In the newspaper, he answered. They only mention bad things about my country in the paper. And she seemed mad, as if no one believed
in the beauty of her homeland. My country very rich, she insisted. But she also told him she’d lost a brother in an explosion when he was stealing gasoline from a refinery with some other boys. They pull half a million barrels of petroleum a day from the heart of that country. The politicians steal everything, she said.

Leandro spent the morning repeating to himself, I’m not going, I’m not going, I’m not going. But he went. At a quarter to six, he was already on the sidewalk in front. He usually rang the bell at six sharp and he now considered that time reserved for him. Waiting nearby, he saw Osembe arriving in a taxi. A black man was in the cab with her. He didn’t get out. She rang the bell and they opened the door for her.

Do you have a boyfriend? Leandro asked her that evening. My boyfriend is in Benin, she said. Does he know what you do for a living? Osembe nodded. I did this there sometimes, too, the tourists have money. Leandro was surprised he allowed it. He knows that with him it’s different. If you aren’t from Benin, why does your boyfriend live there? Leandro asked her. Osembe told him about the violence, about a massacre in Kokotown and how she had moved to Benin before coming over to Europe. Leandro imagined she had arrived in a makeshift boat, but Osembe burst out laughing, showing her teeth, as if he’d said something ridiculous. I came on a plane. To Amsterdam. I worked in Italy, first. A friend of mine used to work in Milan. She made a lot of money.

Osembe had come to Spain four months ago in the car of a friend, someone who took care of her. Leandro thought of the man in the taxi. I saw you arrive this evening, he told her, there was a man with you. I don’t like to take taxis alone, a friend of
mine was raped by a driver. But Leandro insisted on asking her about the man with her, and she ended it with, I don’t want a black boyfriend, they’re lazy, I want a boyfriend who works. Black guys are good for fucking, they have big dicks, but they don’t make good husbands.

Leandro laughed when he heard her categorical, steely opinions. Are you laughing at me? I’m not smart, right? She usually responded to his personal questions vaguely. They spoke lying on the mattress, letting the hour slip away, and when she felt that his questions were pushing the envelope, she put up a barrier, brought her hand to Leandro’s penis, and started up the sexual activity again, as a way of capping the conversation.

Leandro knew that the first place where she had worked in Spain was on a highway on the Catalan coast. And from there she came to Madrid by car. Arriving at this chalet, she said, was an accident. They needed an African girl for a good client, a Spanish businessman who was getting into the diamond business in Africa and had to close the deal with an exporting company. After dinner he brought his new partner to the chalet. In Spain it seemed to be a tradition to close business deals with an invitation to a whorehouse. The steakhouse, the after-dinner drink, a cigar, and some hookers. One day Almendros had told him that his daughter worked at a large agricultural mediation company and that after meals she took their out-of-town customers to a trusted brothel. It disgusted her, but it was something imposed, something inherited from her predecessor, and the men didn’t seem to mind that it was a woman who accompanied them and took care of the bill.

They had me come in for the man who wanted an African woman. He was drunk, but he paid well and came back two
more times, but he had trouble keeping it hard, his cock, because he had had a bad hernia operation, explained Osembe. He was affectionate, but very drunk. They asked me if I wanted to stay. Here you work with good people, it’s not like the street, where you do it in cars, sucking guys off in the front seat or in the park, you know? Here there’s even a doctor who comes to see us. I don’t have AIDS or any disease, she told him in an almost threatening tone.

Do you like this job? Leandro realized he had asked a stupid question. I know it’s not right, she said. I know it, but it is just for a short time. Leandro had seen on some lame television program how these women were extorted by networks that paid for their trip to Europe and then demanded one or two years of prostitution. Exploited by threatening their family members back home in their country, they were forced to work until their travel debt was paid off, with their passport held hostage by some compatriot until they earned ten thousand euros to buy their freedom. There were also stories of kidnapping, savage rapes, and blackmail with superstitions or voodoo, where they made a ball with menstrual blood, pubic hair, and nail clippings and then threatened to enslave them with supernatural control. Osembe laughed at the stories he told her. Did you read that in a novel?

They know the girls and they know where their families live, that’s enough. Forget about witchcraft. Besides, I don’t believe in that, I’m Christian. Aren’t you Christian? Leandro shakes his head. She is very surprised. You don’t believe in God? Leandro was amused by the question, her almost shocked tone. No. Not really, he replied. I do, I believe God is watching me and I ask him for forgiveness and he knows one day I’ll quit all this.
In long sentences Osembe’s tongue crashed against her upper lip. She had trouble making certain sounds, but her intonation was very pleasing. And it doesn’t bother you to have to be with an old guy like me? asked Leandro. You aren’t old. Of course I’m old. There was a silence. She kissed him on the chest, as if she wanted to show him some sort of false loyalty. I guess my money is the same as anyone else’s, sighed Leandro. You like money, huh, what do you spend it on? I don’t know, clothes, things for me, I send some home. I have brothers and sisters, five. And me and my boyfriend are going to open a store in the New Benin Market or on Victoria Island if things go good for us.

I want to see you outside of here, said Leandro when he finished getting dressed. Give me a phone number. She refused. It’s not allowed. All the money would be for you. Osembe shook her head, but with less conviction. Think about it. She said, no, it can’t be. Leandro was convinced their conversations were being listened to, that Osembe knew she was being watched. Someone knocked on the door—that was how they announced the time was up. Osembe jumped from the noise, then reacted with an enormous, relaxed, honest smile.

On the street, Leandro felt stupid about the conversation, his attempts to get to know her, to see her away from there. What did he want? Intimacy? For her to tell him her life story, her particular dramas? Share something, get closer? He could pay to have his desire sated, but that was it. Then he had to go back home, call the boiler repair service again, cry helplessly when another day passes and they don’t show up, no matter how much he explains that his wife is in bed, sick with a bone disease. He organizes the bills, reads the newspaper, receives a visit from some relative, eats, drinks, washes himself, peeks out onto
the street, at other people’s lives, trying to reach bedtime peaceful enough to be able to sleep, perhaps dream of something, be it pleasant or unpleasant. And one day disappear. Leandro knew full well that he was seventy-three years old and was paying obscene amounts of money to put his arms around the body of a Nigerian in her twenties. It was a chaotic part of his routine, a time bomb in his daily life.

The repairman is talking to him, this boiler’s got some years on it, but once I change this valve, it’ll be like new again, you’ll see. Leandro shrugs his shoulders. It breaks down every winter. He’s been curt with the repairman ever since he arrived. It is his tiny revenge for the humiliating wait of the last few days, with the house turned into an inhospitable freezer, like a cheap motel. The man, his fingers like blood sausages, smiles. Things have to break down, otherwise what would we live on? And besides, now they make things more sophisticated so that not just anybody can fix them. Take cars, for example. Have you noticed? Before, anybody could stick a hand in the motor and patch up the damage, but now you open the hood and you have to have two college degrees just to find the distributor cap. And in the garage there’s no repair less than fifty thousand pesetas. Since the euro came in, doesn’t sixty euros seem like nothing? Well, that’s ten thousand pesetas, which used to be a fortune. Now it’s seems like pocket change. Doesn’t it seem that way to you? Doesn’t it? Huh? Doesn’t it seem that way to you?

No, it doesn’t seem that way to me.

Lorenzo decides to wait on the street. He walks down the police station stairs, scanning the sidewalk. They’ll be ten minutes, they had told him. Lorenzo was following an impulse. It had seemed logical for him to stop by the station and check in on the detective, ask if he had made any progress. He’d gone to an interview near there, for a job as a bread deliveryman, but the schedule was dreadful. Starting the day at five in the morning. I have to think it over, he had said. And, with a certain superiority, the man had smiled at him. Don’t think it over too long, I’ve got a line of people waiting. The previous afternoon, at the kitchen table, he had gone over his accounts. He drew up an amount for set monthly expenses, and added a cushion for unexpected ones. He had stopped receiving unemployment compensation two months earlier and managing his money was going to be essential in the coming months. He couldn’t remember ever having so little in his bank account.

The first time he opened an account he was still a minor. During the summer, he had worked at a sample trade fair. His father had gone with him to open up a joint account. When Lorenzo deposited his thirty thousand pesetas, Leandro had surprised him. Here, he said, so you’ll have something more to get you started. And he gave him a check for 250,000 pesetas. It was some sort of secret gift. Don’t say anything to your mother, the last thing she wants is for you to quit school to work, she doesn’t want me to encourage you. But, gradually, Lorenzo’s life imposed the need for him to make his own money, to be independent. He soon acknowledged his failure at school, his
lack of concentration. Óscar told him that his father was hiring at the photosetting company, and he took the job as a salesman. He worked with publishing houses, stores, printers. From the looks on their faces when he told them the news, it was obvious his parents didn’t understand his choice. What’s the rush? Lorenzo assured them that he would keep studying. And he did, for almost two years. More to keep them happy than out of interest in his studies. He met Pilar when he was seventeen. She was still in college. One day, Lorenzo found himself three years into a serious, tranquil, devoted relationship, and with a job that guaranteed him a stable, fixed income. Then he took the last step, said good-bye to his parents’ house, to his youth. He became self-sufficient.

When he discovered there was so little in his bank account, he felt a shiver. He circled four job listings and started calling. In one of them, they were looking for younger people, under thirty. Another one was in Arganda, too far from home. Another was for a real estate agent, a job Lorenzo looked down upon, nothing sadder than showing homes on commission. The fourth was the bread delivery job.

His crime had had a paralyzing effect on him. It was as if he were waiting to be arrested, as if he were waiting every morning for his door to be kicked down and the police to say, come with us. Then he would say good-bye to Sylvia with a devastatingly remorseful, sad look. That’s why it didn’t seem like such a bad idea to show up at the detective’s office. I could always collapse, confess everything, cry over my guilt. At least that’d get me out of this gray area, where I don’t know if I’m a real suspect or just a sidetrack in the investigation.

But now he regrets coming. He’s out on the street, he didn’t leave his name with anyone, the detective hadn’t seen him, and
he decides it’s best not to go back up. What’s he going to do? Ask awkward questions? Isn’t excessive interest a sign of guilt? Better to stay on the margins. He hasn’t returned to the scene of the crime as the clichés dictate. But the scene of the crime has returned to him, hundreds of times.

Lorenzo knew that every Thursday, for many years, Paco and Teresa would dine at Teresa’s parents’ house. Teresa’s uncles and aunts and a couple of old friends were also invited. Paco would join the weekly card game. They would go down to the basement, where there was a bar and a game table, where the heating pipes were exposed and on the walls hung some ad posters from the business. They smoked cigars and drank expensive whisky. They joked around, and sometimes one of them would get wound up, but nobody really talked about anything of importance. Teresa’s father, whom Lorenzo had seen only on one fleeting occasion, was a distrustful person, with a cutting sense of humor. Paco sometimes admired him and sometimes despised him, but if he could merge those two emotions the result would have formed an obvious complex. Teresa’s father was a confident man who would repeat to anyone listening, I wish I had married my daughter so I could have myself as a father-in-law.

The money was the first reason to attack Paco’s house. Lorenzo knew he would find the toolbox in the garage. Maybe Paco didn’t even remember that he had seen him take a wad of cash out of there one day. Paco bragged that he got money back each year on his taxes. He wasn’t afraid of under-the-table money, just ’cause it’s dirty doesn’t mean it stains your hands. And if Lorenzo raised any objection, he defended his position. Everybody’s the same, lawyers, notary publics, plumbers, don’t come to me with your scruples, here the only people who pay all
their taxes are people with fixed monthly salaries. Lorenzo knew that the house alarm didn’t cover the garage, that the job could be quick. Their Thursday evening outings left him more than three hours to find the toolbox.