The Schooldays of Jesus (19 page)

‘Obscene pictures…You have seen these pictures, señor Simón?'

‘No, but my son has. My son is a student at the Academy of Dance.'

‘And you say these pictures have been stolen from our collection?'

‘No, no, they are not that kind of picture. They are photographs of women cut out of pornographic magazines. I can show you. I know exactly where to find them—Dmitri told me.'

The director brings out a bunch of keys, leads the way down to the basement, and unlocks the cabinet described by
Dmitri. The bottom drawer holds a little cardboard case, which he opens.

The first picture is of a blonde woman with garishly red lips sitting naked on a sofa with her legs apart, gripping her rather large breasts and thrusting them forward.

With an exclamation of distaste the director shuts the case. ‘Take them away!' he says. ‘I don't want to hear any more about this.'

There are another half-dozen pictures of the same kind, as he, Simón, discovers when he opens the case in the privacy of his room. But in addition, underneath the pictures, there is an envelope which contains a pair of women's panties, black; a single silver earring of simple design; a photograph of a young girl, recognizably Ana Magdalena, holding a cat and smiling for the camera; and finally, held together with a rubber band, letters to
Mi amor
from AM. There is no date on any of them, nor any return address, but he gathers they were posted from the seaside resort of Aguaviva. They describe various holiday activities (swimming, gathering shells, walking on the dunes) and mention Joaquín and Damián by name. ‘I long to be in your arms again,' says one letter. ‘I long for you passionately (
apasionadamente)
,' says another.

He reads them through, slowly, from beginning to end, reads them a second time, getting used to the handwriting, which is rather childish, not what he would have expected at all, each
i
surmounted with a careful little circle, then puts them back in the envelope together with the photograph, the earring and the panties, puts the envelope back in the case, and puts the case under his bed.

His first thought is that Dmitri wanted him to read the letters—wanted him to know that he, Dmitri, was loved by a woman whom he, Simón, might have desired from afar but whom he was not man enough to possess. But the more he thinks about it, the less plausible this explanation seems. If Dmitri had in fact been having an affair with Ana Magdalena, if his talk of worshipping the ground on which she trod and her disdainful treatment of him in return had been nothing but a cover for clandestine couplings in the basement of the museum, why did he in his various confessions claim to have forced himself on her? Further, why would Dmitri want him, Simón, to learn the truth about the two of them when in all likelihood he, Simón, would promptly inform the authorities, who would just as promptly order a new trial? Is the simplest explanation not after all the best one: that Dmitri trusted him to burn the case and its contents without examining them?

But the greater puzzle remains: if Ana Magdalena was not the woman she seemed to all the world to be, and her death not the kind of death it seemed to be, why had Dmitri lied to the police and to the court? To protect her name? To save her husband from humiliation? Was Dmitri, out of nobility of spirit, taking all the guilt upon himself so that the name of the Arroyos should not be dragged through the mud?

Yet what could Ana Magdalena have said or done, on the night of the fourth of March, to get herself killed by a man whom she longed—longed
apasionadamente
—to be in the arms of?

On the other hand, what if Ana Magdalena never wrote the letters at all? What if they are forgeries, and what if he, Simón, is being used as a tool in a plot to blacken her name?

He shivers.
He is truly a madman!
he says to himself.
The judge was right after all! He belongs in a madhouse, in chains, behind a door with a sevenfold lock!

He curses himself. He should never have involved himself in Dmitri's affairs. He should never have answered his summons, never have spoken to the museum director, never have looked inside the case. Now the genie is out of the bottle and he has no idea what to do. If he turns the letters over to the police, he becomes an accomplice in a plot whose purpose is dark to him; similarly if he hands them back to the museum director; while if he burns them or conceals them he becomes an accomplice in another plot, a plot to present Ana Magdalena as a spotless martyr.

In the middle of the night he gets up, removes the case from under his bed, wraps it in a spare counterpane, and puts it on top of the wardrobe.

Then in the morning, as he is about to set off for the depot to collect the pamphlets he will be distributing that day, Inés's car draws up and Diego gets out, the boy with him.

Diego is clearly in a bad mood. ‘All day yesterday and again today this child has been nagging us,' he says. ‘He has worn us down, both Inés and me. Now here we are. Tell him, David—tell Simón what you want.'

‘I want to see Dmitri. I want to go to the salt mine. But Inés won't let me.'

‘Of course she won't. I thought you understood. Dmitri isn't in the salt mine. He has been sent to a hospital.'

‘Yes, but Dmitri doesn't want to go to a hospital, he wants to go to the salt mine!'

‘I am not sure what you think goes on in a salt mine, David, but first of all the salt mine is hundreds of kilometres away and second of all a salt mine is not a holiday resort. That is why the judge sent Dmitri to a hospital: to save him from the salt mine. A salt mine is a place where you go to suffer.'

‘But Dmitri doesn't want to be saved! He wants to suffer! Can we go to the hospital?'

‘Certainly not. The hospital where they have sent Dmitri is not a normal hospital. It is a hospital for dangerous people. The public isn't allowed in.'

‘Dmitri isn't dangerous.'

‘On the contrary, Dmitri is extremely dangerous, as he has proved. Anyhow, I am not going to take you to the hospital, nor is Diego. I want nothing more to do with Dmitri.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't have to tell you why.'

‘It's because you hate Dmitri! You hate everybody!'

‘You use that word far too sweepingly. I don't hate anybody. I just want nothing more to do with Dmitri. He is not a good person.'

‘He is a good person! He loves me! He recognizes me! You don't love me!'

‘That is not true. I do love you. I love you a great deal more than Dmitri does. Dmitri doesn't know the meaning of love.'

‘Dmitri loves lots of people. He loves them because he has a big heart. He told me. Stop laughing, Diego! Why are you laughing?'

Diego cannot stop laughing. ‘Did he really say that—that if you have a big heart you can love lots of people? Maybe he meant lots of girls.'

Diego's laughter fires the boy even further. His voice rises. ‘It's true! Dmitri has a big heart and Simón has a tiny heart—that's what Dmitri says. He says Simón has a tiny little heart like a bedbug, so he can't love anybody. Simón, is it true that Dmitri did sexual intercourse to Ana Magdalena to make her die?'

‘I am not going to answer that question. It's stupid. It's ridiculous. You don't know what sexual intercourse is.'

‘I do! Inés told me. She has done sexual intercourse lots of times and she hates it. She says it's horrible.'

‘Be that as it may, I am not going to answer any more questions about Dmitri. I don't want to hear his name again. I am finished with him.'

‘But why did he do sexual intercourse to her? Why won't you tell me? Did he want to make her heart stop?'

‘That's enough, David. Calm down.' And to Diego: ‘You can see the child is upset. He has been having nightmares ever since… ever since the event. You should be helping him, not laughing at him.'

‘Tell me!' the boy shouts. ‘Why won't you tell me? Did he want to make a baby inside her? Did he want to make her heart stop? Can she have a baby even if her heart stops?'

‘No, she can't. When the mother dies the child inside her dies too. That is the rule. But Ana Magdalena wasn't going to have a baby.'

‘How do you know? You don't know anything. Did Dmitri make her baby turn blue? Can we make her heart start again?'

‘Ana Magdalena was not going to have a baby and no, we can't make her heart beat again because that is not the way the
heart works. Once the heart stops, it stops forever.'

‘But when she has a new life her heart will beat again, won't it?'

‘In a sense, yes. In the life to come Ana Magdalena will have a new heart. Not only will she have a new life and a new heart, she will remember nothing of this sorry mess. She won't remember the Academy and she won't remember Dmitri, which will be a blessing. She will be able to start afresh, just as you and I did, washed clean of the past, without bad memories to weigh her down.'

‘Did you forgive Dmitri, Simón?'

‘I am not the one whom Dmitri injured, so it is not for me to forgive him. It is Ana Magdalena's forgiveness that he should be seeking. And señor Arroyo's.'

‘I didn't forgive him. He doesn't want anyone to forgive him.'

‘That is just boasting on his part, perverse boasting. He wants us to think of him as a wild person who does things that normal people are afraid to do. David, I am sick and tired of talking about that man. As far as I am concerned he is dead and buried. Now I have to go off on my rounds. Next time you have bad dreams, remember that you have only to wave your arms and they will evaporate like smoke. Wave your arms and shout
Begone!
like Don Quixote. Give me a kiss. I will see you on Friday. Goodbye, Diego.'

‘I want to go to Dmitri! If Diego won't take me I'll go by myself!'

‘You can go, but they won't let you in. The place where he is kept is not a normal hospital. It is a hospital for criminals, with walls around it, and guards with guard dogs.'

‘I'll take Bolívar along. He will kill the guard dogs.'

Diego holds open the door of the car. The boy gets in and sits with his arms folded, a pout on his face.

‘If you want my opinion,' says Diego quietly, ‘he is out of control, this one. You and Inés should do something about it. Send him to school, to begin with.'

He was wrong about the hospital, as it turns out, completely wrong. The psychiatric hospital he had pictured, the hospital in the remote countryside with the high walls and the guard dogs, does not exist. All that exists is the city hospital with its rather modest psychiatric wing—the same hospital where Dmitri used to work before he joined the museum staff. Among the orderlies there are some who remember him with affection from the old days. Ignoring the fact that he is a self-confessed murderer, they pamper him, bringing him snacks from the staff kitchen, keeping him supplied with cigarettes. He has a room to himself in the part of the wing marked Restricted Access, with a shower cubicle and a desk with a lamp.

All of this—the snacks, the cigarettes, the shower cubicle—he learns about when, the day after Diego's visit, he comes home from his bicycle rounds and finds the self-confessed murderer stretched out on the bed, asleep, while the boy sits cross-legged on the floor playing a game of cards. So surprised is he that he lets out a cry, to which the boy, raising a finger to his lips, whispers, ‘
Ssh!
'

He strides over and gives Dmitri an angry shake. ‘You! What are you doing here?'

Dmitri sits up. ‘Calm yourself, Simón,' he says. ‘I'll be gone shortly. I just want to be sure that…you know…Did you do as I told you?'

He brushes the question aside. ‘David, how does this man come to be here?'

Dmitri himself responds. ‘We came by bus, Simón, like normal people. Calm yourself. Young David came to visit me like the good friend he is. We had a chat. Then I put on an orderly's uniform, as in the old days, and the youngster took me by the hand and we walked out, the pair of us, just like that.
He's my son
, I said.
What a sweet boy
, they said. Of course the uniform helped. People trust a uniform—that's one of the things you learn about life. We walked out of the hospital and came straight here. And when you and I have settled our business I will catch the bus back. No one will even notice I was gone.'

‘David, is it true? A hospital for the criminally insane, and they let this man walk out?'

‘He wanted bread,' says the boy. ‘He said there was no bread for him in the hospital.'

‘That's nonsense. He gets three meals a day there, with as much bread as he wants.'

‘He said there was no bread so I took him bread.'

‘Sit down, Simón,' says Dmitri. ‘And will you do me a favour?' He takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights one. ‘Don't insult me, please, not in front of the boy. Don't call me criminally insane. Because it is not true. A criminal perhaps, but not insane, not in the slightest.

‘Do you want to hear what the doctors say, the ones who were told to find out what is wrong with me? No? All right, I'll skip the doctors. Let us talk about the Arroyos instead. I hear they had to close down the Academy. That's a pity. I liked the Academy. I
liked to be with the young ones, the little dancers, all so happy, so full of life. I wish I had gone to an academy like that when I was a child. Who knows, I might have turned out differently. Still, it's no use crying over spilt milk, is it? What's done is done.'

Spilt milk
. The phrase outrages him. ‘There have been a lot of people crying over the milk you spilled,' he bursts out. ‘You have left some broken hearts behind you and a lot of anger.'

‘Which I can understand,' says Dmitri, puffing leisurely on his cigarette. ‘You think I am not aware of the enormity of my crime, Simón? Why else do you think I volunteered for the salt mines? The salt mines are not for crybabies. You have to be a man to cope with the salt mines. If they would only give me my marching papers from the hospital I would be off to the salt mines tomorrow.
Dmitri here
, I would say to the mine captain,
fit and well and reporting for duty!
But they won't let me out, the psychologists and the psychiatrists, the specialists in deviant this and deviant that.
Tell me about your mother
, they say
. Did your mother love you? When you were a baby did she give you her breast? What was it like, sucking on her breast?
What am I supposed to say? What do I remember of my mother and her breasts when I can barely remember yesterday? So I just say whatever comes into my head.
It was like sucking a lemon
, I say. Or
It was like pork
,
it was like sucking a pork rib
. Because that's how it works, psychiatry, isn't it?—you say the first thing that comes into your head and then they go away and analyze it and come up with what is wrong with you.