The Return (8 page)

A week later I went back to her apartment.
The bell wasn’t working and
I had to knock several times.
I thought there was no one there.
Then I thought
there was no one
living
there.
Just as I was about to go, the door
opened.
It was Sofia.
The apartment was dark and the light on the landing went
off automatically after twenty seconds.
At first, because of the darkness, I
didn’t realize she was naked.
You’re going to freeze, I said when the landing
light came on again and showed her standing there, very straight, thinner than
before.
Her stomach and legs, which I had kissed so many times, looked terribly
helpless, and instead of feeling drawn toward her, I was chilled at the sight,
as if I were the one without clothes.
Can I come in?
Sofia shook her head.
I
assumed her nakedness meant that she was not alone.
I said as much, and smiling
stupidly, assured her that I didn’t mean to be indiscreet.
I was about to go
back down the stairs when she said she was alone.
I stopped and looked at her,
more carefully this time, trying to read her expression, but her face was
indecipherable.
I also looked over her shoulder.
Nothing had stirred in the
utter silence and darkness of the apartment, but my instinct told me that
someone was hiding there, listening to us, waiting.
Are you feeling all right?
Fine, she said very quietly.
Have you taken something?
No, nothing, I haven’t
taken any drugs, she whispered.
Are you going to let me in?
Can I make you some
tea?
No, said Sofia.
Since I was asking questions, I thought I might as well try
one more: Why won’t you let me see your apartment, Sofia?
Her answer surprised
me.
My boyfriend will be back soon and he doesn’t like it if there’s anyone here
with me, especially a man.
I didn’t know whether to be angry or treat it as a
joke.
Sounds like this boyfriend of yours is a vampire, I said.
Sofia smiled for
the first time, although it was a weak, distant smile.
I’ve told him about you,
she said.
He’d recognize you.
And what would he do?
Hit me?
No, he’d just get
angry, she said.
And kick me out?
(Now I was starting to get indignant.
For a
moment I hoped he did turn up, this boyfriend Sofia was waiting for, naked in
the dark, just to see what would happen, what he would do.) He wouldn’t kick you
out, she said.
He’d just get angry; he wouldn’t talk to you and after you went
he’d hardly say a word to me.
You’ve lost it, haven’t you, I spluttered, I don’t
know if you realize what you’re saying, they’ve done something to you, it’s like
you’re a different person.
I’m the same as ever; you’re the idiot who can’t see
what’s going on.
Sofia, Sofia, what’s happened to you?
You never used to be like
this.
Get out, just go, she said—What would you know about me?

More than a year went by before I heard any news of Sofia.
One
afternoon, coming out of the cinema, I ran into Nuria.
We recognized each other,
started talking about the movie and decided to go and have coffee.
It wasn’t
long before we got on to Sofia.
How long since you saw her?
she asked me.
A long
time, I told her, but I also said that some mornings, when I woke up, I felt as
if I had just seen her.
Like you’ve been dreaming about her?
No, I said, like
I’d spent the night with her.
That’s weird.
Something like that used to happen
to Emilio too.
Until she tried to kill him.
Then he stopped having the
nightmares.

She told me the story.
It was simple.
It was incomprehensible.

Six or seven months earlier, Sofia had rung up Emilio.
According to
what he later told Nuria, Sofia mentioned monsters, conspiracies and murders:
she said the only thing that scared her more than a mad person was someone who
deliberately drove others to madness.
Then she arranged for him to come to her
apartment, the one I’d been to a couple of times.
The next day Emilio arrived
exactly on time.
The dark or poorly lit staircase, the bell that didn’t work,
the knocking at the door: up to that point it was all familiar and predictable.
Sofia opened the door.
She wasn’t naked.
She invited him in.
Emilio had never
been in the apartment before.
The living room, according to Nuria, was pokey,
but it was also in a terrible state, with filth dripping down the walls and
dirty plates piled on the table.
At first Emilio couldn’t see a thing, the light
was so dim in the room.
Then he made out a man sitting in an armchair, and
greeted him.
The man didn’t react.
Sit down, said Sofia, we need to talk.
Emilio
sat down.
A little voice inside him was saying over and over, This is not good,
but he ignored it.
He thought Sofia was going to ask him for a loan.
Again.
Although probably not with that man in the room.
Sofia never asked for money in
the presence of a third party, so Emilio sat down and waited.

Then Sofia said: There are one or two things about life that my
husband would like to explain to you.
For a moment Emilio thought that when she
said “my husband” she meant him.
He thought she wanted him to say something to
her new boyfriend.
He smiled.
He started saying there was really nothing to
explain; every experience is unique .
.
.
Suddenly Emilio understood that he was
the “you” and the “husband” was the other man, and that something bad was about
to happen, something very bad.
As he tried to get to his feet, Sofia threw
herself at him.
What followed was rather comical.
Sofia held or tried to hold
Emilio’s legs while her new boyfriend made a sincere but clumsy attempt to
strangle him.
Sofia, however, was small and so was the nameless man (somehow, in
the midst of the struggle, Emilio had time and presence of mind enough to notice
the resemblance between them—they were like twins) and the fight, or the
caricature thereof, was soon over.
Maybe it was fear that gave Emilio a taste
for revenge: as soon as he got Sofia’s boyfriend down on the ground he started
kicking him and kept going until he was tired.
He must have broken a few ribs,
said Nuria, you know what Emilio’s like (I didn’t, but nodded all the same).
Then he turned his attention to Sofia who was ineffectually trying to hold him
back from behind and hitting him, although he could hardly feel it.
He gave her
three slaps (it was the first time he had ever laid a hand on her, according to
Nuria) and left.
Since then they had heard nothing about her, though Nuria still
got scared at night, especially when she was coming home from work.

I’m telling you all this in case you ever feel like visiting Sofia,
said Nuria.
No, I said, I haven’t seen her for ages and I don’t have any plans
to drop in on her.
Then we talked about other things for a little while and said
good-bye.
Two days later, without really knowing what prompted me to do it, I
went round to Sofia’s apartment.

She opened the door.
She was thinner than ever.
At first she didn’t
recognize me.
Do I look that different, Sofia?
I muttered.
Oh, it’s you, she
said.
Then she sneezed and took a step back.
Perhaps mistakenly, I interpreted
this as an invitation to go in.
She didn’t stop me.

The room in which they had set up the ambush was poorly lit (the only
window gave onto a gloomy, narrow air shaft) but it didn’t seem dirty.
In fact
the first thing that struck me was how clean it was.
Sofia didn’t seem dirty
either.
I sat down in an armchair, maybe the one Emilio had sat in on the day of
the ambush, and lit a cigarette.
Sofia was still standing, looking at me as if
she wasn’t quite sure who I was.
She was wearing a long, narrow skirt, more
suitable for summer, a light top and sandals.
She had thick socks on and for a
moment I thought they were mine, but no, they couldn’t have been.
I asked her
how she was.
She didn’t answer.
I asked her if she was alone, if she had
something to drink and how life was treating her.
She just stood there so I got
up and went into the kitchen.
It was clean and dark; the refrigerator was empty.
I looked in the cupboards.
Not even a miserable tin of peas.
I turned on the
tap; at least she had running water, but I didn’t dare drink it.
I went back to
the living room.
Sofia was still standing quietly in the same place, expectantly
or absently, I couldn’t tell, in any case just like a statue.
I felt a gust of
cold air and thought the front door must have been open.
I went to check, but
no.
Sofia had shut it after I came in.
That was something, at least, I
thought.

What happened next is confused, or perhaps that’s how I prefer to
remember it.
I was looking at Sofia’s face—was she sad or pensive or simply
ill?—I was looking at her profile and I knew that if I didn’t do something I was
going to start crying, so I went and hugged her from behind.
I remember the
passage that led to the bedroom and another room, the way it narrowed.
We made
love slowly, desperately, like in the old days.
It was cold.
I didn’t get
undressed.
But Sofia took off all her clothes.
Now you’re cold as ice, I
thought, cold as ice and on your own.

The next day I came back to see her again.
This time I stayed much
longer.
We talked about when we used to live together and the TV shows we used
to watch till the early hours of the morning.
She asked me if I had a TV in my
new apartment.
I said no.
I miss it, she said, especially the late-night shows.
The good thing about not having a TV is you have more time to read, I said.
I
don’t read any more, she said.
Not at all?
Not at all—have a look, there’s not a
single book here.
Like a sleepwalker I got up and went all round the apartment,
looking in every corner, as if I had all the time in the world.
I saw many
things, but no books.
One of the rooms was locked and I couldn’t go in.
I came
back with an empty feeling in my chest and dropped into Emilio’s armchair.
Up
till then I hadn’t asked about her boyfriend.
So I did.
Sofia looked at me and
smiled for the first time, I think, since we’d met again.
It was a brief but
perfect smile.
He’s gone away, she said, and he’s never coming back.
Then we got
dressed and went out to eat at a pizzeria.

Clara

She had big breasts, slim legs and blue eyes.
That’s how I like to
remember her.
I don’t know why I fell madly in love with her, but I did, and for
a start, I mean for the first days, the first hours, it all went fine; then
Clara returned to the city where she lived in the south of Spain (she’d been on
vacation in Barcelona), and everything started to fall apart.

One night I dreamed of an angel: I walked into a huge, empty bar and
saw him sitting in a corner with his elbows on the table and a cup of milky
coffee in front of him.
She’s the love of your life, he said, looking up at me,
and the force of his gaze, the fire in his eyes, threw me right across the room.
I started shouting, Waiter, waiter, then opened my eyes, and escaped from that
miserable dream.
Other nights I didn’t dream of anyone, but woke up in tears.
Meanwhile, Clara and I were writing to each other.
Her letters were brief.
Hi,
how are you, it’s raining, I love you, bye.
At first those letters scared me.
It’s all over, I thought.
Nevertheless, after inspecting them more carefully, I
reached the conclusion that her epistolary concision was motivated by a desire
to avoid grammatical errors.
Clara was proud.
She couldn’t write well, and she
didn’t want to let it show, even if it meant hurting me by seeming cold.

She was eighteen at the time.
She had left high school and was
studying music at a private academy and drawing with a retired landscape
painter, but she wasn’t all that interested in music, or in painting, really:
she liked it, but couldn’t get passionate about it.
One day I received a letter
informing me, in her usual terse fashion, that she was going to take part in a
beauty contest.
My response, which filled three double-sided pages, was an
extravagant paean to her calm beauty, the sweetness of her eyes, the perfection
of her figure, etc.
The letter was a triumph of bad taste, and when I had
finished it, I wondered whether or not I should send it, but in the end I
did.

A few weeks went by before I heard from her.
I could have called, but
I didn’t want to intrude and also at the time I was broke.
Clara came second in
the contest and was depressed for a week.
Surprisingly, she sent me a telegram,
which read: SECOND PLACE.
STOP.
GOT YOUR LETTER.
STOP.
COME AND SEE ME.
The
stops were written out.

A week later, I took a train bound for the city where she lived, the
first one leaving that day.
Before that, of course—I mean after the telegram—we
had spoken on the phone, and I had heard the story of the beauty contest a
number of times.
It had made a big impact on Clara, apparently.
So I packed my
bags and, as soon as I could, got on a train, and very early the next morning,
there I was, in that unfamiliar city.
I arrived at Clara’s apartment at
nine-thirty, after having a coffee at the station and smoking a few cigarettes
to kill some time.
A fat woman with messy hair opened the door, and when I said
I had come to see Clara, she looked at me as if I were a lamb on its way to the
slaughterhouse.
For a few minutes (which seemed extraordinarily long at the
time, and thinking the whole thing over, later on, I realized that, in fact,
they were), I sat in the living room and waited for her, a living room that
seemed welcoming, for no special reason, overly cluttered, but welcoming and
full of light.
When Clara made her entrance it was like the apparition of a
goddess.
I know it was a stupid thing to think—and is a stupid thing to say—but
that’s how it was.

The following days were pleasant and unpleasant.
We saw a lot of
movies, almost one a day; we made love (I was the first guy Clara had slept
with, which seemed incidental or anecdotal, but in the end it would cost me
dearly); we walked around; I met Clara’s friends; we went to two horrific
parties; and I asked her to come and live with me in Barcelona.
Of course, at
that stage, I knew what her answer would be.
A month later, I took a night train
back to Barcelona; I remember it was a terrible trip.

Soon after that, Clara explained in a letter, the longest one she ever
sent me, why she couldn’t go on: I was putting her under intolerable pressure
(by suggesting that we live together); it was all over.
After that we talked
three or four times on the phone.
I think I also wrote her a letter containing
insults and declarations of love.
Once when I was traveling to Morocco, I called
her from the hotel where I was staying, in Algeciras, and that time we were able
to have a civilized conversation.
At least she thought it was civilized.
Or I
did.

Years later Clara told me about the parts of her life I had missed out
on.
And then, years after that, both she and some of her friends told me her
life story all over again, starting from the beginning or from the point where
we split up—it didn’t make any difference to them (I was a very minor character,
after all), or to me, really, although that wasn’t so easy to admit.
Predictably, not long after the end of our engagement (I know “engagement” is
hyperbolic, but it’s the best word I can find), Clara got married, and the lucky
man was, logically enough, one of the friends I met on my first trip to her
city.

But before that, she had psychological problems: she used to dream
about rats; at night she would hear them in her bedroom, and for months, the
months leading up to her marriage, she had to sleep on the sofa in the living
room.
I’m guessing those damn rats disappeared after the wedding.

So.
Clara got married.
And the husband, Clara’s dear husband,
surprised everyone, even her.
After one or two years, I’m not sure exactly—Clara
told me, but I’ve forgotten—they split up.
It wasn’t an amicable separation.
The
guy shouted, Clara shouted, she slapped him, he responded with a punch that
dislocated her jaw.
Sometimes, when I’m alone and can’t get to sleep, but don’t
feel up to switching on the light, I think of Clara, who came in second in that
beauty contest, with her jaw hanging out of joint, unable to get it back into
place on her own, driving to the nearest hospital with one hand on the wheel,
and the other supporting her jawbone.
I’d like to find it funny, but I
can’t.

What I do find funny is her wedding night.
The day before, she’d had
an operation, for hemorrhoids, so I guess she was still a bit groggy.
Or maybe
not.
I never asked her if she was able to make love with her husband.
I think
they’d done it before the operation.
Anyway, what does it matter?
All these
details say more about me than they do about her.

In any case, Clara split up with her husband a year or two after the
wedding, and started studying.
She hadn’t finished high school, so she couldn’t
go to a university, but she tried everything else: photography, painting (I
don’t know why, but she always thought she could be a good painter), music,
typing, computers, all those one-year diploma courses supposedly leading to job
opportunities that desperate young people keep jumping at or falling for.
And
although Clara was happy to have escaped from a husband who beat her, deep down
she was desperate.

The rats came back, and the depression, and the mysterious illnesses.
For two or three years she was treated for an ulcer, until the doctors finally
realized that there was nothing wrong, at least not in her stomach.
Around that
time she met Luis, an executive; they became lovers, and he convinced her to
study something related to business administration.
According to Clara’s
friends, she had at last found the love of her life.
Before long, they were
living together; Clara got a job in an office, a legal firm or some kind of
agency—a really fun job, Clara said, without a hint of irony—and her life seemed
to be on track, for good this time.
Luis was a sensitive guy (he never hit her),
and cultured (he was, I believe, one of the two million Spaniards who bought the
complete works of Mozart in installments), and patient too (he listened, he
listened to her every night and on the weekends).
And although Clara didn’t have
much to say for herself, she never got tired of saying it.
She wasn’t fretting
over the beauty contest any more, although she did bring it up from time to
time; now it was all about her periods of depression, her mental instability,
the pictures she had wanted to paint but hadn’t.

I don’t know why they didn’t have children, maybe they didn’t have
time, although, according to Clara, Luis was crazy about kids.
But she wasn’t
ready.
She used her time to study, and listen to music (Mozart, but then other
composers too), and take photographs, which she never showed anyone.
In her own
obscure and futile way, she tried to defend her freedom, tried to learn.

At the age of thirty-one, she slept with a guy from the office.
It was
just something that happened, not a big deal, at least for the two of them, but
Clara made the mistake of telling Luis.
The fight was appalling.
Luis smashed a
chair or a painting he had bought himself, got drunk, and didn’t talk to her for
a month.
According to Clara, from that day on, nothing was the same, in spite of
the reconciliation, in spite of their trip to a town on the coast, a rather sad
and dull trip, as it turned out.

At thirty-two, her sex life was almost nonexistent.
Shortly before she
turned thirty-three, Luis told her that he loved her, he respected her, he would
never forget her, but for some months he had been seeing someone from work, who
was divorced and had children, a nice, understanding woman, and he was planning
to go and live with her.

On the surface, Clara took the break-up pretty well (it was the first
time someone had left her).
But a few months later she lapsed into depression
again and had to take some time off work and undergo psychiatric treatment,
which didn’t help much.
The medication suppressed her libido, although she did
make some willful but unsatisfactory attempts to sleep with other men, including
me.
She started talking about the rats again; they wouldn’t leave her alone.
When she got nervous she had to go to the bathroom constantly (the first night
we slept together, she must have gotten up to pee ten times).
She talked about
herself in the third person; in fact, she once told me that there were three
Claras in her soul: a little girl, an old crone enslaved by her family, and a
young woman, the real Clara, who wanted to get out of that city forever, and
paint, and take photos, and travel, and live.
For the first few days after we
got back together, I feared for her life.
Sometimes I wouldn’t even go out
shopping because I was scared of coming back and finding her dead, but as the
days went by my fears gradually faded away and I realized (or perhaps
conveniently convinced myself) that Clara wasn’t going to take her own life; she
wasn’t going to throw herself off the balcony of her apartment—she wasn’t going
to do anything.

Soon after that, I left, but this time I decided to call her every so
often, and stay in touch with one of her friends, who could fill me in (if only
now and then).
That’s how I came to know a few things it might have been easier
not to have known, stories that did nothing for my peace of mind, the kind of
news an egotist should always take care to avoid.
Clara went back to work (the
new pills she was taking had done wonders for her outlook), but before long she
was transferred to a branch in another Andalusian city—though not very far
away—maybe to pay her back for such a long absence.
She moved, started going to
the gym (at thirty-four she was no longer the beauty I had known at seventeen),
and made new friends.
That’s how she met Paco, who was divorced, like her.

Before long, they were married.
At first, Paco would tell anyone
prepared to listen what he thought of Clara’s photos and paintings.
And Clara
thought that Paco was intelligent and had good taste.
As time went by, however,
Paco lost interest in Clara’s esthetic efforts and wanted to have a child.
Clara
was thirty-five and at first she wasn’t keen on the idea, but she gave in, and
they had a child.
According to Clara, the child satisfied all her yearnings—that
was the word she used.
According to her friends, she was getting steadily worse,
whatever that meant.

On one occasion, for reasons irrelevant to this story, I had to spend
a night in the city where Clara was living.
I called her from the hotel, told
her where I was, and we arranged to meet the following day.
I would have
preferred to see her that night, but after our previous encounter Clara regarded
me, and perhaps with good reason, as a kind of enemy, so I didn’t insist.