Learning to Lose (63 page)

Sylvia chews on a lock of hair. The teacher’s moustache covers his upper lip, giving him a certain serious air, which his eyes, when you looked at them carefully, contradict. They sparkle and Sylvia is intrigued by them. She doesn’t manage to give any coherent response. She hesitates over saying, my parents
separated, but decides it sounds pathetic. She remains silent. Let’s do something to make up some of the work, okay? To see if we can help you out. The teacher stands up and searches in his drawer until he finds some photocopies. Here are four or five problems, they’re more logic games than anything else. I want you to prepare two or three pages for me, working out the solutions. Do it at home, reason it out, as if you were explaining it in class. You can use the textbook, of course, but make it clear that you understand the concepts. It’s very easy and I’ll grade it as extra credit. Okay?

Sylvia looks up, she can’t quite believe what is happening to her. Would he have done the same thing for other students? Sylvia doesn’t ask. She looks into Don Octavio’s eyes. You have three days. Bring it to me here, at my office, this is something between you and me, outside of class. The teacher obviously considers the conversation over. Sylvia stands up and grabs her backpack. Thank you. Don’t let it drop, don’t let yourself go, all right, Sylvia, we all go through good periods and bad periods, but now it’s a question of stepping up the pace these last two weeks, it’s not worth quitting.

On the street, a moment later, Sylvia feels like crying. Is her private life so on display that a teacher can sense it from a distance? With some sort of X-ray vision. What moved Sylvia was his almost accidental interest. He was walking down the hall and suddenly, seeing her alone in the classroom, realized that her grades had dropped, he must have remembered her last, lame test, and instead of continuing on his way he stopped for a moment to take an interest in her. Something must have gone through his head in that fraction of a second that made him decide to stick his head into the class and talk to her. Sylvia, like
most of her schoolmates, was convinced she was inscrutable to her teachers, just another face in the group that occupied a year of their lives and then vanished forever. Worlds that never crossed beyond the obligatory hour of class time.

What had left her on the edge of tears was the perception that everything had been abandoned, her studies, her family, her school friends, to get involved in a story that as it was ending left a dry, frustrating, barren hole. She had been on the other side and, suddenly, the teacher, in a professional way, not at all threatening, had brought her back to reality. We are here, where are you? he seemed to have been asking her. The hand he extended meant a lot. She, too, like the Guinean mistaken for an expert on television, had been invited into a world where she didn’t belong. She, too, had politely faked it, had passed the imposter test, but it was urgent that she stop feeding the farce.

On the way home, she feels her passion for Ariel dying out, or that it must die out in order to save herself. She accepts the breakup as if it had happened in that office minutes earlier. That afternoon, before the students take over the oversize tables in the public library, she will sit down with the math pages and try to do the teacher’s symbolic assignment. She will read the logic problems she has to solve, but she won’t really understand what Don Octavio expects of her until the third problem makes it clear.

“Two people, A and B, are two meters apart, and A wants to get closer to B, but with every step A has to cover exactly half the total distance that remains between A and B.” Sylvia will swallow hard, but will continue reading. “The first step is one meter long, the second step half a meter, the third step a quarter of a meter. Each step A takes toward B will be smaller, and the distance will lessen in an eternal progression, but what is
surprising is that, if we maintain the premise that each step will equal half the total distance separating them, A will never reach B, as much as A tries.”

Sylvia’s eyes will be red. Perhaps that simple exercise will help to explain the theory of the boundaries that changed the history of science at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Maybe it was true, as the text on the photocopy explained with quotes from Leibniz and Newton. But Sylvia will begin to write her personal explanation of the problem and it will soon transform into a good-bye letter. The same letter that she will not know how to write to Ariel to tell him, in the most logical and simple way, that our story is over. A will never reach B.

Some nights, when Leandro comes back from the hospital to sleep at home, the doorbell rings and he’s forced to buzz up the real estate agent who escorts some potential buyers. She is a nervous woman, with an overflowing file and a cell phone that seems to be a living animal. She always apologizes to Leandro for coming at such hours. Leandro doesn’t accompany them on their tour through the house, but he can read the clients’ expression when they leave. In the distance, he hears things like, the whole place has to be redone, but once you get it the way you want it, it’ll be fabulous; during the day it has wonderful natural light, the neighborhood is a real gem, close to everything.

He was the one who gave Lorenzo the deed and the paperwork necessary to get it on the market. The real estate agency
is owned by a friend his son has known since childhood. Lalo, a bright, cheerful kid who when someone asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up would reply, an explorer in China. Fifty million of the old pesetas is what they are asking for it. He doesn’t understand euro conversions for big amounts. It’s a good moment to sell, said someone in the agency to be polite. The mortgage subrogated to the bank was, according to Lorenzo’s calculations, a big mistake. Another one. And his spending had taken a big, excessive, chunk out. Nevertheless, the day of the signing, Lorenzo only said, we’ve had to face a lot of expenses in these last few months.

I think the best thing would be for me to take care of everything, his son told him. They had transferred the money to his name. If his father refused, he could have had him declared unfit, but they never argued over it. How’s the house? asked Aurora from the hospital, does Benita still come to cook and clean for you? Leandro nodded, although the truth was that he asked her not to come anymore now that he was spending more time in the hospital. Benita had started crying and Leandro remembered something she said as she left, after giving him an affectionate hug on tiptoes, we were brought here for taming and they tamed us good, they did.

In Lorenzo’s house was a small room where his father could settle in, where he’d stored papers, an old computer, and a desk that Pilar used when she brought work home. There they could set up Leandro’s bed frame and his few boxes of belongings. They cleared a space beside the television for the piano. Sylvia refused to let him get rid of it.

A neighbor had told Leandro, at our age we’re not up for moving. He spent his days sitting besides Aurora’s bed, trying
to be friendly with the visitors who insisted on coming to say good-bye, all those who found out from others, and came to try to hold a conversation Aurora could no longer maintain. Manolo Almendros started crying after kissing Aurora’s cheek on his last visit. In the hallway he said to Leandro, I always loved your wife, I was so envious of you.

He had thought of Osembe very few times. One afternoon he was tempted to take the bus to Móstoles and plant himself in front of her door. If he passed some girl on the street who reminded him of her, he took pleasure in watching her, studying her gestures, her behavior, as if he wanted to understand something about what had escaped his grasp. In the newspaper, he read the news of the closing of the chalet. It showed a photo of the façade, taken at the same distant angle from which he had so often observed the house before deciding to enter. The climbing vine had grown with the springtime and hid the wall and part of the metal gates. According to the newspaper, the Bulgarian mafia in cahoots with a Spaniard was exploiting the women and had a system for videotaping what was going on in the rooms. Using the tapes, they had started to blackmail lawyers, businessmen, and other wealthy clients. One of the victims had alerted the police and two of the ringleaders and the madam were arrested, and seven women who seemed to have been forced into prostitution were freed.

Leandro imagined the tapes in the hands of the police. Maybe the officers or the civil servants had gotten together to watch the old guy who was such a regular. They would have laughed heartily. Hey, come over and check out this old dude, here he comes again.

Aurora is lying in bed, her mouth partially open, her face relaxed except for some slight momentary tension. The nurses
come in. Leandro watches them work. He remembers how the downward spiral all began, with his appreciation of a nurse’s bared curves. Now he admits that life requires a high level of submission. Anything else is suicide.

When they are left alone, Aurora speaks to him. Did you go out for a stroll? He nods. She suddenly mentions the canary they were given many years earlier, do you remember? When the neighbor, Petra, left for a small town. Leandro thinks it’s just a fickle memory springing from the mental chaos that sometimes makes her delusional or makes her see images superimposed on the wall. Lorenzo had started to go to school and the neighbor gave Aurora her canary, because every morning through the window she commented on how well it sang. It brightens up the whole building, she would say. It drove Leandro crazy with its singing, all it took was listening to the radio or having a conversation to set off its unbearable craziness. Poor bird. Those were the same words Aurora had said when she found it dead one morning in its cage beneath the kitchen towel. Why did she remember that? Aurora repeats the phrase, to herself, in a low voice, poor bird.

Leandro sits on the mattress. The woman in the next bed is sleeping and her daughter went down to have something to eat. Why are you remembering that now? Aurora smiles. It sang so beautifully. Leandro took her hand. We’ve had fun, he says. We’ve been very happy. Aurora doesn’t say anything, but she smiles. Going through old papers, I found the letters I sent you from Paris. It’s incredible how pedantic and conceited I was then. I don’t know why you waited for me. I would have run off after reading the nonsense I wrote you, with those airs of grandeur. Leandro wonders if she can hear him. I’ve failed you
so many times. I ended up far below your expectations, didn’t I? Aurora smiles and Leandro caresses her face. I’ve been a disaster, but I’ve loved you so much. Aurora can see him crying, but she can’t reach her hand up to touch him.

That same afternoon, Leandro receives his student. Luis jogs up the stairs. Climb stairs like an old man when you’re young and you’ll be climbing them like a young man when you’re old, that’s what they used to say to me, explains Leandro as he leads Luis to the room.

Boxes now hold most of the papers and books that used to fill the walls. We are moving. Your wife … says the young man, but he doesn’t dare finish the sentence. Leandro clarifies, I’m moving in with my son, she’s still the same. I don’t know if we’ll be able to continue the classes there, I’ll let you know. Luis hears noises in the kitchen. Leandro nods his head, they’re helping me pack things up. Lorenzo had sent over two Ecuadorian guys. One of them is funny, his name is Wilson and he looks toward the living room with one eye while the other looks toward the kitchen. When Leandro saw him, he thought of a young friend who’s an orchestra director and also has a wandering eye and brags about being the only director who can lead both the string and wind sections at the same time. When they stopped for a moment to rest from the packing, Wilson said to Leandro, do you know you’re a lot like your son? And, seeing Leandro’s surprised expression, he added, no one’s ever told you that before? No, not really, maybe when Lorenzo was younger. Well, you are a lot alike, you both hold your tongue, you are men of few words, huh, isn’t that right?

Leandro nods toward his student, there are things in these boxes you might be interested in, if you want them, they’re
yours. The boy approaches to have a look at the pile of scores, a few music-history books. That one is a masterpiece, Leandro says when he sees him pick one up. Don’t even look at the LPs, I should throw them out, they’re just relics. My father says that CDs don’t have the same sound quality, explains the young man. Your father likes music? The boy nods, somewhat unsure. He was a student of yours, at the academy. They gave us your phone number when we were looking for a private tutor. Really? What’s his name? The boy told him his father’s full name. Leandro pretended to remember him. He always says that you were a great teacher, that you had them play in front of a mirror, so they could correct themselves. Leandro nodded with a half smile. And that you talked to them in Latin and, I don’t know, you told them things about the composers.

Leandro interrupts him. Go ahead, take whatever you want, I can’t fill up my son’s house with all this useless junk.

The news of Wilson’s death came as a cruel blow. Lorenzo had tried to reach him on the cell when he was running more than an hour late for a moving job. But no one answered. He assumed something came up and called the clients to apologize. He invented a story that they’d had a little accident with the van and he would get back to them in an hour. He had no way to reach their regular helpers. He was tempted to stop by Wilson’s house, but he didn’t. Throughout the morning, he tried Wilson’s cell phone repeatedly. An hour later, someone called
him back. Are you looking for Wilson? He died last night, they killed him. Lorenzo received the brutal information in the middle of the street. He had left for the market with a long-overdue shopping list. He didn’t ask for details, but he headed over to Wilson’s house.

Some friends were gathered there, along with his cousin Nancy. They told him the circumstances surrounding his death. They found him on the floor of the place he rented out at night, his head smashed in by brick blows. There were fingerprints everywhere, but the police still hadn’t arrested anyone. Although on the radio they said the murderer was found, someone explains.