The Skating Rink (4 page)

Enric Rosquelles:

Benvingut emigrated at the end of the nineteenth century, so they
say

Benvingut emigrated at the end of the nineteenth century, so they
say, then came back after the First World War, and built his palace on the
outskirts of town, at the base of the cliff, in the cove now known as Benvingut
Cove. There’s a street named after him in the old part of town: Carrer Joan
Benvingut. And the eminent Catalan’s memory is also honored by a bakery, a
florist’s, a basketwork store and a few old, damp apartments. What did Benvingut
do for Z? Well, he came back, and served as an example: he showed that a local
boy could make good in the Americas. I should point out straight away that I
have little time for heroes of his sort. I admire hard-working people who don’t
flaunt their wealth, people who strive to modernize the land of their birth and
satisfy its needs in spite of all the obstacles that seem to bar the way. But as
far as I know, Benvingut was nothing like that. The barely educated son of a
fisherman, he came back as Z’s Mister Big, one of the richest men in the
province. Naturally he was the first to own a car. He was also the first to have
a private pool and sauna. The palace was partly designed by a famous architect
of the time, López i Porta, one of Gaudi’s epigones, and partly by Benvingut
himself, which explains the labyrinthine, chaotic, indecisive layout of every
storey in the building. And how many stories are there? Not many people know for
sure. Viewed from the sea, there seem to be two, and the palace looks as if it
were sinking, as if it were built on shifting sands and not on solid rock.
Seeing the building from the main entrance, or from the path through the
grounds, a visitor would swear there are three stories. In fact there are four.
The illusion is created by the arrangement of the windows and the slope of the
land. From the sea, the third and fourth stories are visible. From the entrance,
the first, the second and the fourth. Oh, the pleasant afternoons I spent there
with Nuria, when my plans for the Palacio Benvingut were still simply plans,
still possibilities filling my spirit with the poetry and devotion that seemed,
at the time, synonymous with love. Oh, the joy of wandering from room to room,
opening shutters and wardrobes, discovering quiet interior courtyards and stone
statues hidden by weeds! And then, at the end of the tour, when we were tired,
it was so lovely to sit by the sea and polish off the sandwiches that Nuria had
brought. (A can of beer for me and a bottle of mineral water for her!) Lying
awake at night of late, I have often wondered what prompted me to take her to
the Palacio Benvingut for the first time. As well as love—whose attempts to
please generally come to grief—
The Blue
Lagoon
is to blame. Yes, I’m referring to the film, that old movie
starring Brooke Shields. To be thoroughly honest, and to indulge your curiosity,
I should disclose that the whole Martí family loved
The Blue Lagoon
: Nuria, her mother and
her sister Laia simply couldn’t get enough of Brooke and Nick’s adventures in
Paradise. Have you seen
The Blue
Lagoon
? Even after sitting through the video five times, in the
little lounge of Nuria’s apartment, I couldn’t find any cinematic merit in it.
The joy it gave me initially, not the movie itself but the sight of Nuria’s
profile as she watched those teenagers in the wild, was gradually replaced by
anxiety and fear as we wore out the videotape. Nuria wanted to live on Brooke’s
island, at least while she was watching that damned film! With her angelic
beauty and her perfect, athletic body, she was ideally suited to the change of
scene, and would not have suffered by comparison with Brooke. I was the one who
was going to suffer, if we persisted with the extrapolation. If Nuria deserved
to live on that island, she also deserved a slim, strong, handsome, not to
mention young companion, like the boy in the film. The only member of the cast
to whom I could claim any resemblance was, sad to say, Peter Ustinov. (Referring
to Ustinov, Laia once said that he was a good fat guy although he seemed like a
bad fat guy. I felt the remark was meant for me. I blushed.) How could my
fatness, my charmless rotundity, bear comparison with Nick’s hard biceps? How
could my lower-than-average height match the blond’s six-foot-plus stature? The
mere thought was, objectively, ridiculous. Anyone else would have turned that
anxiety into a joke. But I suffered as never before. Clothes and the mirror
became benign or malevolent deities. I started trying to run in the mornings and
do weights at the gym; I went on diets. People at work began to notice something
odd about me, as if I were getting younger. I have excellent teeth! I still have
all my hair! I said to myself in front of the mirror: the sort of consolation an
analyst might offer. I have an impressive salary! A promising career! But I
would have given it all to be with Nuria and to be like Nick. Then it struck me
that the Palacio Benvingut was an island of a sort, and I took Nuria there. I
took her to my island. A large part of the façade is covered with blue tiles and
so are the two towers that rise from the annexes. Navy blue at the bottom and
sky blue at the top of both towers. When the sun shines on them, people driving
by glimpse a blue flash, a blue staircase climbing the hills. First we observed
the shining palace from the car, on a bend in the road, then I invited her in.
How did I come to have the keys? Simple: the palace had belonged to the Z city
council for years. Nervously, I asked Nuria what she thought. She thought it was
fabulous, all of it, fabulous. As pretty as Brooke Shields’ island? Much, much
prettier! I thought I was going to faint. Nuria danced up and down the salon,
saluted the statues and couldn’t stop laughing. We extended our tour of the
building and soon discovered in the gigantic shed housing Joan Benvingut’s
legendary swimming pool. Covered with filth like a tramp, the swimming pool,
which had once been white, seemed to recognize and greet me. Struck dumb, unable
to break the spell, I stood there while Nuria ran off through other rooms. I
couldn’t breathe. The project was born, I would say, there and then, at least in
essence, although I always knew I would be found out in the
end . . .

Remo Morán:

I met Lola in peculiar circumstances

I met Lola in peculiar circumstances, during my first winter in Z.
Someone, some wicked or civic-minded soul, had been in touch with the town’s
Social Services Department, and one luminous midday she turned up in front of
the closed store. She could see me through the window. Like every morning, I was
sitting on the floor reading, and her face on the other side of the glass looked
calm and superb like a sunspot. If I’d known that she’d come in her capacity as
a social worker, she probably wouldn’t have seemed so beautiful. But I only
found out after getting up to open the door and telling her that the store would
be closed until May. With a smile that I will never forget, she said she didn’t
want to buy anything. Her visit had been prompted by a complaint. The picture,
as it had been painted, was more or less like this: a boy called Alex, who
wasn’t going to school; his older brother or his father (me), who seemed to have
no gainful employment and just sat reading in the front of the store when the
sun warmed it up—a suspicious pair of South Americans who seemed to be turning a
business in the middle of the tourist district into an unfit dwelling. Whatever
the reasons for making the complaint, the source of this information must have
been as good as blind. I took Lola straight across to the Cartago, which was
empty apart from Alex, who was running through a list of Istanbul’s bottom-end
options for the hundredth time. After the introductions, we offered her a glass
of cognac; then Alex got out his papers and proved that he was no longer a
minor. Lola started saying that she was very sorry, people often make mistakes
like that. I asked her to come back to the store, so she could see that there
was nothing insalubrious about it. And while I was at it, I showed her my books,
told her about my favorite Catalan poet and the Spanish poets I admired, the
same old spiel. But she still couldn’t understand why we lived in the store and
not in an apartment or a rooming house. That incident taught me several things:
first, that South Americans are regarded with a certain degree of suspicion;
second, that the Z city council doesn’t like retailers sleeping on the floor of
their business premises; and third, that Alex was taking on my accent, which was
disturbing. At the time Lola was twenty-two, and she was strong-willed and
smart, up to a point, of course, because if she’d been really smart, she
wouldn’t have gotten involved with me. She was fun, but responsible too, and she
had an amazing gift for happiness. I don’t think we were too bad for each other.
We got on well, we started going out, and after a few months we got married. We
had a child, and when the boy was two years old, we got divorced. She introduced
me to the world of adults, although I only realized that after we split up. With
Lola, I was an adult, living among adults; I had adult problems and desires, and
reacted like an adult; even the reasons for our separation were unambiguously
adult. The aftermath was long and sometimes painful, but the upside was that it
brought a degree of uncertainty back into my life, which is what I had really
been missing. Did I mention that Lola’s boss was Enric Rosquelles? In the time
we lived together, I got a sense of what he was like. Repulsive. A toy-size
tyrant full of fears and obsessions, who thought he was the center of the world,
when he was just a foul, pouting lard-ass. As it turned out, he took an instant
and instinctive dislike to me. We only saw each other three times and I
didn’t do anything to justify his hostility, which was, I discovered, irrational
and unflagging. In his underhanded way he tried to trip me up on numerous
occasions: keeping a close eye on my trading hours, checking my registration
with the Tax Department, sending out the labor inspectors, but it was all in
vain. What lay behind such persistent persecution? I can only suppose it was
some casual observation, some tactless remark I made without thinking, which
must have offended him deeply. I’m guessing that Lola was present, and the rest
of the Social Services team. I vaguely remember a party, what was I doing there?
I don’t know, I must have gone with Lola, which is odd, because we didn’t
socialize much as a couple: she had her friends from work, including Rosquelles;
and I had Alex and the deeply sad characters who drank at the Cartago. Anyhow, I
probably offended him. For someone like Rosquelles, a single slightly malicious
remark, barely tinged with cruelty, can be enough to nourish a lifelong grudge.
But his antagonism was confined to the purely bureaucratic domain. At least
until last summer. Then, incomprehensibly, he started going crazy. His behavior
went over the top, and according to Lola, the staff in his department couldn’t
wait to go on vacation. His prejudice against South Americans had a particular
focus. Day after day, night after night, I could sense the restless presence of
his shadow, the hateful fluttering of a winged pig, as if this time the trap
would spring shut. It was an interesting situation, in a way, and would have
rewarded closer scrutiny, but all I could think about at the time was Nuria
Martí. Rosquelles was clearly disturbed and foaming at the mouth, but what was
that to me? It could have been an amusing variation on the love triangle, if
death hadn’t butted in. The way I see it now, all those years of minding my own
business in Z were just a preparation for finding the
body . . .

Gaspar Heredia:

The opera singer was never an official resident of the campground

The opera singer was never an official resident of the campground;
her name did not appear on the register at reception, and she never paid a
peseta to sleep there, or anywhere else for that matter. The cleaning ladies
didn’t know about her, nor did the receptionists; just El Carajillo and me. Her
name was Carmen, and from the beginning of spring to the middle of fall, she
spent her days in Z, sleeping wherever she could, wherever she was left in
peace, under the ice cream stands on the beach, or in the apartment buildings’
enclosures for trash cans. El Carajillo knew her well and seemed to like her,
though he didn’t give much away when I tried to find out more; they must have
been about the same age, and sometimes that’s enough to create a bond. She
supported herself by singing in the cafés and streets of the historic center.
Her varied repertoire was all she remembered of her glory days, so she said.
Naples was the name of her absolute triumph, the culmination of a splendid and
terrible period, which she never recounted in detail, beyond saying that she
sang both Mozart and José Alfredo Jiménez. Her efforts were rewarded with
hundred-peseta coins. The relationship between Carmen and the girl seemed to be
based on a strange pact of loyalty rather than friendship. Sometimes they seemed
to be mother and daughter, or grandmother and granddaughter, sometimes they were
more like statues accidentally set down side by side. The girl, who went by the
name of Caridad, smuggled the old lady in every night under El Carajillo’s
indulgent gaze. They shared a tent next to the pétanque ground, and were both in
the habit of going to bed late and sleeping in. It wasn’t hard to pick out their
tent from a distance: all around it, like the turrets of a miserable fortress,
were little foot-high pyramids of rubbish, or rather of sundry used and useless
objects which they hadn’t quite thrown away. To be honest, it’s a miracle that
we weren’t continually flooded with complaints. Maybe Caridad’s neighbors didn’t
think it was worth it, since they were just passing through, or maybe they had
given up. In reception there was a list of clients who were behind in their
payments; Caridad was at the top of it (with two months’ due) and according to
the Peruvian she would soon be asked to leave. Wouldn’t it be better to offer
her a job? That’s what the receptionists thought, but it was Bobadilla’s
decision, and apparently he was scared of her. According to the Peruvian, you
could often tell she was carrying a knife. I didn’t want to believe him but was
haunted, in spite of my skepticism, by an evocative image: Caridad wandering
through the town (which I hardly knew, since I rarely left the campground), with
a kitchen knife under her tee-shirt, lost in blurry-eyed contemplation of
something that nobody else could make out. The knife had a history, as I later
discovered. Caridad had come to Stella Maris with a boyfriend, before the
beginning of the season. They spent the first days looking for work. It was a
month of record rains, according to El Carajillo (I was in Barcelona at the time
and I vaguely remember the sound of the rain beating against the window of my
room), and that was when Caridad started coughing and looking ill. She and her
boyfriend had no money and basically lived on yogurt and fruit. Sometimes they
got drunk on beer and spent the whole day cooped up in their tent, whining and
whispering sweet nothings. Then they found work washing dishes in the kitchen of
a bar on the Paseo Marítimo, but two weeks later Caridad came back to the
campground in the middle of the day, and never went back to work. Soon after
that the fights began. One night they chased each other down to the reeds. El
Carajillo heard something and left the office and walked around the swimming
pool to see what was going on. He found Caridad lying in a heap, covered in
scratches and hardly breathing. She wasn’t dead, as he thought at first; her
eyes were open and she was looking at the grass and the sandy ground. It took
her a while to realize that someone was trying to help her. Sometimes cries came
from their tent, and it was hard to tell for sure if they were cries of pain or
joy. The boy was pale and always wore long-sleeved shirts. He had a motorbike,
on which they had arrived at the campground, but after that they hardly used it.
Caridad liked walking, walking aimlessly, or remaining absolutely still; and
maybe he preferred not to spend money on gas. Both of them were under twenty and
they both had a look of utter hopelessness about them. One night Caridad turned
up on the terrace with a knife, alone; the next morning her friend left Stella
Maris and didn’t come back. Or that was the most popular version of the
story—the one Bobadilla heard when he came in the afternoon to cast an eye over
the accounts and give them his blessing. Caridad didn’t spend much time at the
campground. One night El Carajillo saw her come in with Carmen but didn’t say
anything. The following night he said he would turn a blind eye, on one
condition: that the old woman didn’t sing. The relationship between the two
women was compounded of chance and necessity: Carmen paid for the coffees,
Caridad provided a place to sleep; during the day they kept each other company
and wandered all over Z. The old woman sang her heart out, while Caridad
observed the people, the umbrellas, the tables covered with drinks. Both of them
hated the beach and the sun. One time the old lady, who was the only one who
spoke, confessed to me that they swam at night, in the rock pools, completely
naked. Moonlight is good for the skin, cutie! In the early hours of the morning,
as I listened to El Carajillo snoring, I imagined Caridad kneeling naked on the
sand, waiting for a cough that seemed to be rising out of the sea. I never
managed to make her smile, although I tried everything I could think of. Before
starting work I would buy beer, sandwiches and potato chips at the local
supermarket so I could invite them to join me for a meal on the terrace at
night. Once I waited for them with a tub of ice cream and three plastic spoons.
The ice cream had pretty much melted but we ate it anyway. The old lady thanked
me for those attentions by pinching me on the arm and calling me nicknames.
Caridad seemed to be watching a film projected in the sky. As the days went by,
summer brought a full contingent of tourists to Z, and I had less and less time
to spend with them. As the campers arrived, the women seemed to withdraw, fading
from the world. One night I found out that Bobadilla and the Peruvian had kicked
them out. El Carajillo got away with a reprimand, and that was the end of it.
Their tent was in the storeroom, held as security until they paid off their
debt. That night I slipped into the storeroom unobserved and searched with my
flashlight until I found it, bundled in a corner. I sat down beside it and put
my fingers into the folds of the cloth. There was a smell of petrol. I thought I
would never see them again . . .