The Skating Rink (7 page)

Enric Rosquelles:

We started training at the beginning of summer

We started training at the beginning of summer. Sorry, Nuria started
training at the beginning of summer, and we both thought that if she worked hard
in July, August and September, she would triumph at the national trials, to be
held some time in October in Madrid. No matter how corrupt the trainers, judges
and administrators, Nuria’s virtuosity or finesse or whatever you like to call
it, consolidated or perfected during those months of training, was bound to
leave them speechless, and they’d have no choice but to let her back on the
Olympic team, which was going to Budapest in November, if I’m not mistaken, for
the annual European Figure Skating Competition. To be frank, the prospect of not
seeing Nuria for at least two months (October would be spent training
intensively in Madrid, then November in Budapest) was heartbreaking. Of course I
was careful not to let it show. There was also the possibility that in October
she would be dropped from the team for good, but I preferred not to think about
that, because I knew what a blow it would be to her, and I had no idea how she
would react. I didn’t want them to drop her, I swear! All I wanted was for her
to be happy! That was the reason the rink had been built, so she would be able
to train properly and get back on the team. With hindsight, I realize I should
have hired a trainer, at least, but even if I had thought of it at the time, how
could I have justified employing someone with qualifications like that? And
where would I have found such a person? In summer, there’s a surplus of English
teachers, but not of figure-skating trainers. On one occasion, if I remember
rightly, Nuria mentioned an exiled Pole, a young guy, whose contract with the
Catalan Federation had been cancelled after six months because of a breach of
professional ethics. What had he done? Nuria didn’t know, nor did she care. I
confess that I imagined him having sex with, or perhaps raping, a skater, female
or male, in a dressing room. Assuming the worst, as usual. In any case, the Pole
was hanging around in Barcelona, and we could have sought him out, but neither
of us had time, or felt like it, so we soon gave up on the idea. I don’t know
why, but lying awake recently, I’ve started thinking about that Pole. Although
we never met, and never will, I feel very close to him, almost as if he were a
friend. Perhaps because in a way I took on the trainer’s role, and although I
could never remember the names of the different moves and routines, overall, I
don’t think I was too bad. As a trainer, I mean, or the next best thing, a
father figure most of the time. I knew how to listen, how to encourage her to
persist when she was succumbing to laziness or fatigue; I knew how to inject a
certain dose of method and discipline into our daily sessions. I took care of
all the bothersome, peripheral tasks, so she could concentrate one hundred
percent on skating. And it was my commitment to perfection (whatever the field
or the task, I have always been a perfectionist) that led me to make a
discovery, or a series of small discoveries, which taken together turned out to
be extremely disturbing. At the start, I tried to tell myself they were
illusions produced by nervous tension, although deep down I knew that I had
never been less tense. Let me explain how it happened. Sometimes I got to the
palace quite a long time before Nuria, and after putting on a canvas apron that
I kept for odd jobs, I would set about checking the refrigeration equipment and
the state of the ice. Sometimes I did a bit of sweeping, too. In one room I kept
bleach, hydrochloric acid, a pair of brooms, trash bags, gloves, rags, as well
as various tools. Occasionally I put a bottle with freshly picked wildflowers in
the place where Nuria changed. I cleaned the heads of the cassette player with
alcohol every day and made sure to rewind the cassette to the beginning of the
“Fire Dance.” Sometimes, if I had time to spare, I went out to the back of the
house and swept the steps that led to the cove, in case Nuria wanted to go down
to the beach, before or after training. There was, in short, always something to
be done, and if, as a rule, I left most of the palace’s rooms alone, my tidying
took me to a fair part of the first and second floors, as well as the
storehouse, the arbor, the sunken garden, and the gardens facing the sea. I knew
those places like the back of my hand. So I was surprised to find little things,
almost always pieces of trash, in places I was sure I had cleaned the previous
day. Naturally my first reaction was to suspect the pair of good-for-nothings
who worked for me there in the mornings, and one day I decided to take them to
task. I wasn’t too hard on them—I was in a hurry—but hard enough to make them
think twice next time. What sort of things did I find? Scraps that ranged from
hamburger remains to empty Fortuna packs (but one of the guys smoked Ducados and
the other one had kicked the habit). That was all. Insignificant things, but
they shouldn’t have been there. One afternoon I found a bloody tissue. I picked
it up, disgusted, as if it were a moribund rat, still twitching and sniffing,
and threw it in the trash. Gradually I reached the conclusion that there was
somebody else in the Palacio Benvingut. For three days I was on the verge of
insanity. I kept thinking about Kubrick’s
The Shining
; I had seen it on
video at Nuria’s place not long before, and my nerves were still on edge. I
tried to be objective and look for logical explanations, but then, having failed
to find any, I decided to face up to the problem and search the palace from top
to bottom. I devoted a whole morning to the task. I found nothing, not a shred
of evidence to suggest that intruders had been present. Gradually I calmed down
again, reassured by the absence of fresh trash over the following days.
Naturally I said nothing to Nuria and I ended up convincing myself that it had
all been a figment of my fevered imagination . . .

Remo Morán:

One day Rosquelles noticed Nuria’s bike in the street

One day Rosquelles noticed Nuria’s bike in the street, in front
of the Del Mar, and decided to go in and see what was up. To his surprise he
found Nuria sitting at the bar with me, drinking mineral water. Until that
day I hadn’t suspected that there might be anything between them. The
situation was awkward, to say the least: Rosquelles greeted me with a
mixture of hatred and wariness; Nuria greeted Rosquelles with a show of
impatience and, I suspect, a touch of pleasure; caught off guard, I was slow
to realize that Mister Lard-Ass wasn’t after me but had come to rescue his
blonde angel. Unsettled by his presence, I didn’t know what to say or do, at
least for the first few seconds, and in that time Rosquelles took control of
the situation: with a porcine smile he asked after my son’s health, as if to
suggest that he might be ill while I was having fun, and then he asked after
the boy’s poor mother, a “tireless martyr” to the cause of welfare for the
underprivileged. Nuria and I had never talked about Lola, and Fatso’s words
pricked her curiosity. But Rosquelles went prattling on, interspersing his
questions with chuckles and asides to Nuria such as, What are you doing
here, What a surprise running into you, I thought someone had stolen your
bike, etc, etc, all delivered in such an artificial tone of voice you could
only feel sorry for the guy in the end. And of course it didn’t take him
long to notice that Nuria’s hair was wet, and freshly washed, like mine, and
I think he put two and two together. When I tried to weigh in on the
conversation, Rosquelles, who had been so bubbly just a few moments before,
had already slumped into a kind of torpor: he was gripping the bar with both
hands, his eyes fixed on the floor, pale and shaken, as if he’d been kicked
by a donkey. It was a perfect opportunity to crush him, but I chose to
observe. Nuria turned away from me, and began to talk to him in a whisper,
so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. He nodded a number of times, with
difficulty, as if he was being garroted; he seemed to be on the brink of
tears when they left. I offered to help them put the bike on the roof rack,
but they assured me they could manage. The next day Nuria didn’t come to the
hotel. I rang her apartment (for the first time) and was told that she
wasn’t home. I left a message for her to call me, and waited. I heard
nothing for more than a week. During that time I tried to think about other
things, like maybe sleeping with another girl, but all I could do was lapse
into a state of depression and lethargy. In the afternoons I spoke with Lola
on the telephone, although her place was only fifteen minutes from the
hotel; that’s how I found out that she was planning to go to Greece for a
vacation, and that when she came back she would probably resign from her job
with the Z City Council and take up a new position in Gerona. Lola was going
out with a Basque who had recently come to the Costa Brava, a nice guy who
worked in Public Administration, and it was serious. They would be going to
Greece together, by car, and taking the boy. I asked her if she was happy
and she said yes. I’ve never been so happy, she said. At night, before going
up to my room, I’d have a drink with Alex and we’d talk about anything
except work. I’d let Alex choose one of his favorite topics: astrology, the
lemon cure, alchemy, travel in Nepal, the tarot, palm-reading.
Sometimes when he was busy with the accounts (We’re number thirty on the Z
rich list, he’d call out from his little office next to reception, and then
I’d hear him laughing to himself, a laugh of pure joy), I’d wander over to
the Cartago and ask about Gasparín. The waiters told me he rarely came
there, and I could never bring myself to walk on to the campground. No way,
mister. That was his favorite phrase. During those days, the temperature
rose to 95 degrees: a prelude to what was to follow. I must have lost two or
three pounds. At night I would wake up with a suffocating feeling and go out
onto the balcony. From up there, as high as I could go, the landscape took
on a different appearance: the lights of Z, the zig-zag coastline, further
off, the lights of Y, and then darkness, a space of darkness edged by the
glow of forest fires, beyond which lay X and, further still, Barcelona. The
air was so dense that when I raised my arm I felt as if I was plunging it
into a living, semi-solid mass, as if it was bound in hundreds of damp
leather bracelets charged with electricity. Raising both arms, like a
signaler on an aircraft carrier, felt like anally and vaginally penetrating
some atmospheric hallucination or extraterrestrial creature. Despite these
phenomena, summer continued to bring forth tourists in abundance; for
several days the streets of Z were jam-packed, and the stink of suntan
lotions and coconut oil permeated every recess of the town. Finally Nuria
came back to the Del Mar, at the usual time, as if nothing had happened,
although I noticed that there was now something hesitant in her manner. All
she said about the incident with Rosquelles was that he didn’t know anything
about our relationship and that it was better to keep it that way.
Personally I felt I had no right, and in fact no reason, to ask any more
questions. It took me a while to realize that Nuria was
afraid . . .

Gaspar Heredia:

The bosses were unlikely to show up at the campground

The bosses were unlikely to show up at the campground after midnight,
and anyway El Carajillo was there to cover my back. He didn’t mind my starting
late, especially if there was a good reason for the delay. Of course I told him
that I’d finally found Caridad. When I described the mansion on the outskirts of
Z, El Carajillo told me it was the Palacio Benvingut and said it would take guts
to sleep in that creepy pile. He reckoned the opera singer must have been
keeping Caridad company so they could protect each other. One of them, at least,
was tough, he was sure of that. What did he mean? I don’t know. The palace
reminded El Carajillo of Remo Morán. He claimed hoarsely that Morán was like
Benvingut, or would be; one day he’d go back to America with his son and that
faggot Alex (Where the fuck’s he from, anyway? he asked—Chile, I replied
sleepily) and build a palace to dazzle the local criminals, idiots and
tax-payers. Just like Benvingut did here. With black stone, if he can get it. I
wish I’d had him with me in the war, he concluded with his eyes shut, although
it wasn’t clear whether the remark was meant to be sarcastic, insulting or
complimentary, or all three. I was careful not to mention the fat guy, the
skater and the ice rink that time. Was it because I distrusted El Carajillo? No,
I was afraid he wouldn’t believe me. Or at least that was how I explained it to
myself. I stayed awake all that night, in spite of El Carajillo’s peaceful
snores inviting me to fall asleep. Leaning my head against the window, I watched
mosquitoes orbiting the lamp at the entrance until the sun came up. I skipped
breakfast, climbed into my tent at eight and slept through till five: a long
sleep stained with fugitive nightmares. When I woke up, the tent smelt of sour
milk and sweat. Someone was calling me; I heard my name repeated, clearly now. I
crawled out with my hair stuck to my scalp and my eyes gummed up. The Peruvian,
sitting on a stone outside, laughed when he saw me. Come with me to the
storeroom, he said, we’ve got a problem. I followed him without asking any
questions. We have to find the tent that belonged to the drug addict who used to
shit all over the bathroom, he explained once we got into the storeroom, where
both of us were bathed in a dim light, yellowed by cobwebs and all the old
mattresses. Whose tent? I asked, not realizing what was going on. Why don’t I go
freshen up and then you can explain it to me? The Peruvian said no, we had to
find the fucking tent, and then, straight away, with an energy that struck me as
excessive, started rummaging through the hundreds of disused objects piled up
everywhere and hanging from the wooden ceiling criss-crossed with wires:
barbecue grills, gas lamps, tarpaulins, frying pans, army blankets and, against
the walls, a panoply of ditch-digging tools and cardboard boxes, some still
fresh and clean, others gone soft and moldy, full of useless fuses kept there
for some arcane reason known only to Bobadilla. I went out without saying a
word, washed my face, chest and arms, put my head under the faucet until all my
hair was wet, and then, without drying myself, because I didn’t have a towel
handy, returned to the storeroom. You should know where it is, said the
Peruvian, kneeling in front of a pile of green and white traffic signs of
various kinds, arranged vertically under what seemed to be a deflated raft. I
asked what the hell we were looking for and that was how I learned that
Caridad’s friend had come back to the campground. The debts are paid off now,
said the Peruvian, and the guy wants his tent. For a moment I thought that
Caridad had come with him, but the Peruvian went on to explain that the guy was
on his own and hadn’t even asked about his girlfriend’s whereabouts. He had come
to spend a few days at the campground and had paid off the debt, including the
days that Caridad had been there without him. In the place where I had left the
tent, I found a box of those flags that are strung up at the entrances to
campgrounds in a show of internationalism; successive seasons of exposure to the
weather had practically destroyed them. The Peruvian began to pull out the flags
and name them one by one, nostalgically, like an ex-jailbird reciting the names
of the prisons in which his youth had been consumed: Germany, Great Britain, the
United States, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark,
Canada . . . Except for the United States, I’ve lived in all
these countries, he said. A few yards away, against a rickety wardrobe, was the
tent. I cleaned it a bit with one of the flags that the Peruvian had been
flapping like a bullfighter’s cape, and suggested we rest for a while. The
Peruvian looked at me curiously; we were both sweating and the fine dust
floating in the air of the storehouse stuck to our skin, forming little lumps.
We remained silent for a good while, enveloped in that yellow light, whose
color, I realized then, was mainly due to the old newspapers standing in for
windowpanes. Between us, like a plank buoying up two castaways, was the tent in
which Caridad had slept and dreamed and made love. I would have hugged it if the
Peruvian hadn’t been standing there impatiently. We picked it up, one on each
side, and I went with him to reception because I was curious to see what
Caridad’s boyfriend looked like. But he had gone by the time we got there and I
didn’t feel like waiting for him to come back. The Peruvian and the receptionist
noticed something odd about my behavior. According to the receptionist,
Caridad’s friend wouldn’t be long, he must have been having a beer or choosing a
campsite, but my instincts were telling me to make myself scarce. I went into
the street and fell into step with the rest of the passersby, wondering if I’d
run into Caridad in town, wondering if I’d have the strength to go out to the
old mansion on the outskirts. When I got to the Paseo Marítimo, I tried to
follow my previous route, walking alongside the gardens as I had done the day
before. At the end of the esplanade where the hang gliders had been, a Catalan
brass band was setting up. When I asked if the hang-gliding competition was
over, the reply was affirmative. What happened to the last pilot? My
interlocutor, an old man who was walking his little dog, shrugged his shoulders.
They’ve all gone, he said. For a while I leaned against the trunk of a tree,
with my back to the café terraces, listening to the band’s first chords; then I
left the Paseo and plunged into the streets of the port district. I recognized
some bars from the night before. In a place with table soccer and video games, I
thought I saw Caridad’s black hair; but it wasn’t her. I escaped from the bustle
by walking up the streets that climb toward the church. Suddenly I found myself
wandering on quiet sidewalks where the only sounds came from open windows and
televisions. I went back down toward the waterfront via an avenue full of linden
trees and badly parked cars. There wasn’t the slightest breeze. Before I reached
the first terrace, I heard Carmen’s voice rising over the general racket. She
seemed to be warming up, just for fun. I looked in at the door of a seedy bar in
one of the streets coming off the Paseo, and there she was, sitting among the
scattered clients, drinking a caffe latte and a glass of cognac. I ordered a
beer and found a place next to her. She didn’t recognize me at first, but when
she did it was like she’d been expecting me. Hi, cutie, she said, I’m going to
introduce you to a friend. Next to her was a small thin man of indefinite age—he
could have been forty or sixty—with a large pear-shaped head, who held out his
hand most politely. He was wearing baggy blue drill trousers and a yellow
T-shirt. When we sat down again, after the formalities, Carmen announced that
she would be beginning her performance any minute. I had the impression she was
letting me know in case I wanted to leave, but I stayed put and said nothing.
Then her companion spoke: Song is the best cure for summer heat, he said
ceremoniously, in a tone of voice that seemed to betray both shyness and
contentment. To reinforce his declaration he showed us his long rabbit-like
teeth, stained with nicotine. Shut up, Rookie, you’re always talking crap,
Carmen said as she stood up and, after briefly clearing her throat, launched
into a cabaret number, with her head and bust perfectly still, as if she had
suffered a sudden seizure or been transformed into a statue from the waist up,
her feet advancing cautiously on their stiletto heels, her fluttering hands both
marking the rhythm and adroitly collecting the coins proferred by members of the
audience. Her circuit was short, like the song, which garnered two or three
weary-sounding compliments from people who seemed to know her repertoire. When
she came back to us Carmen had three hundred pesetas in her hand, which she
slammed down on the table like dominoes, next to her caffe latte and cognac,
while bowing discreetly in the direction of the door, where there was no one to
be seen. Bravo! That’s the way! said the Rookie, and gulped down the remainder
of his drink, a Cuba Libre from the look of it. Hold the bullshit, shut your
trap, replied the singer resonantly, flushed from her efforts. All her
movements, her acknowledgement of the empty door, for example, seemed to be
dictated by a sense of etiquette that left no room for improvisation, as if
every bow and gaze complied with a code that the singer was obeying to the
letter. The Rookie shifted contentedly in his seat and called for another Cuba
Libre. Beside him, Carmen sipped her caffe latte while surreptitiously watching
my hands. A wall clock surrounded by soccer banners showed the time: 9 p.m. With
a haughty air, the waiter put another Cuba Libre on our table. That’s the
fucking way! whispered the Rookie, and knocked back three-quarters of the glass.
Down with contempt, down with spite, he added. You’ve lost your bearings too,
haven’t you, cutie-locks? I asked what she meant by cutie-locks. The Rookie
laughed very softly and tapped on the table with his knuckles and his
fingertips. She’s not going to come, said Carmen. Who’s she? Caridad, who else?
The singer and the Rookie looked at each other meaningfully. I have to go, I
said. Off you go, boy, murmured the Rookie; his eyes were glassy and smiling,
but he wasn’t drunk. For a moment he seemed to be a doll, or a dwarf who had
suddenly decided to grow. I didn’t get up from my chair. I don’t know how much
time went by. I remember the sweat dripping from my face like rainwater, and at
one point I looked at the Rookie and saw that his face, with its rugged,
healthy-looking skin, was completely dry. The bar had filled up, and without any
warning, Carmen got up and repeated her number. This time she seemed to sing a
little more loudly, but I couldn’t be sure; I thought it was louder, and sadder
as well. I realize now that I didn’t want to leave because I knew that once I
got out into the street, I would have to choose between going back to start my
shift and going on toward the outskirts of Z. In the end fear won out and I
walked quickly back to the campground, as if someone was following
me . . .