The Wind From the East (37 page)
Read The Wind From the East Online
Authors: Almudena Grandes
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Contemporary Women
To prove it to her, when they sat opposite each other at a small orange table, in the kind of place she’d longed for when all he could afford was one and a half rum and Cokes, he anticipated her desires even before she’d looked at the menu.
“Would you like some pancakes, a hamburger, a triple-decker sandwich?”
“I wasn’t referring to that kind of debt . . .”
“Nor was I. I just want you to know that I can afford it all now,” he said, looking into her eyes, and he saw how they suddenly grew dark and she drew away from him, her expression instantly changing from a mischievous grin to a vague grey shadow.“That was it, wasn’t it? That was what was wrong.”
“No,” she answered after a pause. “Or yes. I don’t know. I’ve never been very clever, as you know. Anyway, I’d like to have a piece of cake. Chocolate cake. And a rum and Coke.”
“And to change the subject,” he added, still looking at her, her eyes drawing him in, reminding him that he could spend his whole life looking at her.
“Well, yes. I’m a bit of a coward too,” she said, laughing, and he laughed too.“But I’ve got other things going for me.”
“That’s for sure.”
When the waiter brought her cake, she ate it slowly, following a strict system. She would lift a piece of chocolate icing with her fork and put it in her mouth, dissolving it on her tongue, then she cut the section of sponge directly beneath the icing and ate that, chewing delicately, savoring every last morsel. She didn’t speak during this operation, only pausing to take long, frequent gulps of the rum and Coke, as if it were water. She seemed to be enjoying the cake so much he was sorry when the plate was empty.
“Would you like another one?”
“Not more cake.”
She smiled sadly, with almost painful intensity, before looking at her watch and saying it was time to go.When they got outside, the air was warm, but although it was still quite light, Juan felt as if he had just entered a long, dark tunnel, defenseless, confused, and more alone than ever. Charo walked by his side, looking down at her feet, placing them in a straight line so that she stepped only on the cracks in the pavement, playing one of those silly games children enjoy.Then she changed tack suddenly and ran ahead, stopping a few meters away. She turned and watched him as he caught up with her. He didn’t hurry, and saw her lips part and close again, uttering a word that was lost in the noise of all the traffic and the people hurrying past, sometimes turning to look—such a young woman standing there in the middle of the pavement, her glorious body tense with fear, or sorrow, her eyes fragile with sorrow, or fear, and uncertainty.
“Kiss me, Juan,” he heard at last as he reached her.
He looked at her lips. They’d lost their earlier bloody perfection—her lips, always promisingly fleshy, were now their own natural color, and even more powerful, more dangerous than before.The pencil line that had traced their outline a few hours earlier was still there, but smudged. Juan followed it with his eyes, reconstructing it, and his whole life seemed to flash through his mind with the same, fleeting insistence of a condemned man’s memories just before his death.As he stared at the blurred dark line, he saw himself, drowning in his own jealousy, working doggedly for his exams, and he saw his brilliant results, and the look of amazement on his classmates’ faces when he announced he was going to do his residence outside Madrid, as far away as possible from a city that was her, simply, only her. He had searched the map for the most remote places he could find, and chose Cádiz so that he could gaze at the ocean, the challenge of an unknown, endless expanse with America on the far side rather than the reassuring, familiar company of the Mediterranean. He remembered Cadiz, the year 1983, the light and happiness of the first few months, his obsession with finding her in other women, and seeing Charo herself at Christmas, in the summer, on a few long weekends. She seemed stranger, more alien, more different every time from the woman he carried with him, sewn to his skin, who repelled all intruders, every woman who dared invade her territory.Those poor women of flesh and bone could never compete with the essential perfection of her dazzling incorporeal form. It was this, the shimmering idea of her, that enabled him to see Charo in white and not suffer, to be a witness at her wedding and not believe it, to raise his glass in a toast to the happy couple and feel it was not the beginning of something.
Charo took a step forward. Juan could hear his mother weeping, her voice faltering on the other end of the line, then the words of his sister Paca, who was more composed: “Papa’s dead.” It was one morning in March 1986. “He seemed fine, hadn’t been complaining of anything when he went off to work.At the door to the shop, just as he was unlocking it, he collapsed and fell to the ground.A vein burst, or something, that’s what they said, the aorta, I think, you know about that sort of thing.And he died, Juanito, by the time the ambulance got there he was dead.” He did indeed know. “An aneurism,” he said to himself as his eyes caressed the soft, smooth skin of Charo’s lips, now parted, in a pause that would never last long enough. He knew now something he hadn’t wanted to know then, the worm that gnawed at the corners of his anxiety and the guilt that condemned him for not having lived with his father during the last years of his life. He had loved the man, loved him deeply. He’d felt annihilated by the grief he felt as he sat staring out through the train window at the fields; later, embracing his mother as if he wanted to enclose her completely, crying and growing weary of crying, surrendering to the void that opened up inside him when he ran out of tears, all the time torn between the temptation to return and the certainty that it would be better for him to stay away.At the beginning and end there was Charo, and she came before the fears of his mother when she confessed that she didn’t feel she could look after Alfonso on her own, she came before the old feeling of responsibility that he’d given up as his brother and sisters learned to make their own breakfast and get themselves to school. It was Charo who was behind the exemplary speech of the model son offering to request a transfer, to find somewhere to live close to Estrecho and wear a pager so they could always get hold of him. Charo was everywhere, whether she was far away or near, Charo, who had looked at him again during the long nights that followed his father’s death, Charo, who was looking at him now, standing on the pavement on the Gran Vía, with dim, blurred eyes that were not the eyes of a happy woman.
“Kiss me,” she said again and grabbed him by the lapels. But she didn’t draw him towards her, didn’t pull, and Juan looked at her and was frightened by what he saw—the haughty princess, the prettiest, the strongest was about to shatter into pieces in the middle of the street.
He had never stopped to wonder whether she was happy; he had never thought it was any of his business. And yet, as Charo’s lips began to tremble, he realized that her happiness did matter to him, and that he would never be able to stand seeing her cry, not ever. She was looking at him as if she was hanging from a bridge clinging to an old, threadbare rope, and he could almost hear the sound of it snapping. Suddenly, a car hooted, and an unexpected image rose unbidden before his eyes. Elena was a pediatrician, she had red hair and the finest backside in the hospital. Juan hadn’t thought of her at any time that afternoon, but now he could see her—Elena, who spoke German, and played the cello, and practiced naked on Sunday mornings sitting on the edge of the bed, and wanted to marry him and live in the country, and have two kids, one with red hair, the other dark, like Juan. He felt a sudden stab of longing for this life, a placid future that would now never be, and the voice of his girlfriend—a happy, reasonable woman, efficiency personified—made its way from some hidden corner of his mind to suggest an alternative reading of the situation, making a last, desperate attempt to save him. “She’s your brother’s wife, isn’t she? She left you and then got involved with him, and now they’re married. OK, the lady felt capricious and tricked you into going to the cinema so that she could give you a blow job. Great, that’s what you got out of it, but what’s going to happen now? Well, nothing. I’ll forgive you when you tell me about it, you know I will. These things happen. I mean, this isn’t going to change your life, or did you think it would? What were you thinking, Juan? For God’s sake, you’re almost thirty.”
Charo gripped his lapels hard for a moment before suddenly letting go, dropping her arms by her sides, fists clenched, and closing her eyes. Then it was Juan who took a step forward and put his arms around her, almost fearfully, and kissed her. He knew he was risking his life with that kiss, betting everything on a single card—and not the best one, maybe not even a good one at all—but it was the only one he’d ever had.
They walked back to the car park with their arms around each other and neither of them spoke. As he was waiting for his exit ticket, Juan glimpsed his reflection in a mirror and noticed the same metallic pallor that he could see on his sister-in-law’s face, the same reddish shadows around the eyes. He suddenly felt very tired. He drove slowly, sorry that the Sunday traffic was so light, looking at Charo each time they stopped at the lights. She was brushing the glow of normality back onto her cheeks by the light of the street lamps.
“Shall I drop you off here?” he asked, trying out his brand-new adulterer’s caution for the first time as they reached the entrance to the estate.
“No,” she answered, smiling. “You can take me right in.Your brother isn’t the least bit jealous. He’s so sure he’s the ideal man, the dream husband, it wouldn’t even occur to him that I might look at anyone else. If someone told him I was cheating on him, his first thought would be that I’m an idiot. Then he’d get angry, of course. But at the moment it wouldn’t even enter his head. Seriously. And I bet he doesn’t know that his prick is smaller than yours. The day he finds that out, he’ll slit his wrists.”
The car stopped without Juan being aware of having taken his feet off the pedals.
“It’s stalled on you,” said Charo, and laughed.
“And it’ll stall on me again if you say that sort of rubbish.”
“It’s not rubbish, Juan, it’s the truth. I told you before, I’m not that bright. I spend my life making mistakes and I always realize it too late. When I met you, I thought you were too nice, too studious, too serious. Do you remember? I found it too much the way you were always on top of me, pawing at me.” She smiled and turned her head to look straight ahead so that her gaze was lost in the growing darkness of the street.“In those days I thought tough guys were right for me. And I thought your brother was one, but I was wrong about that too. Damián isn’t hard, or soft, he’s something else entirely. He simply isn’t interested in anything, or anyone.That’s why things go so well for him, because he doesn’t care about anything. And sometimes . . . Now, when I see you with Elena at your mother’s house, all serious like you used to be, so concerned for others, such a good son and a good brother . . . well, I don’t think you’re too good any more.And I wonder how you are with her, when you’re alone, when nobody sees you, and I imagine that you treat her the way you used to treat me. The truth is I’m jealous. I’d love to have a husband who couldn’t keep his hands off me right now, but I’ve made such a mess of everything. So that business about the size of your prick isn’t important. You don’t have to worry, I’m not going to lie to you about that. I’m not all that clever, but I’m not stupid.”
She turned in her seat and looked at him, and Juan looked at her without seeing her, watching two fat tears sliding down her cheeks, her face different, yet the same, the exhausted, dusty face of a girl tied to a chair, her sweat-soaked hair sticking to her face, her eyes wide with fear and surprise, showing that at last she understood, that after all this time, she understood everything.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Charo asked, shifting in her seat as if she were uncomfortable.
For a moment, Juan Olmedo considered starting up the engine and driving quickly past his brother’s house, leaving the estate through the opposite entrance to the one they’d entered by, heading out of town on the first road he found, just driving, not stopping until he found a hotel three or four hundred miles from Madrid. But only for a moment.
“Tell me at least if you were in love with me.”
“You know I was, Charo.” Then it was she who didn’t want to say any more, so he went on speaking, because he wasn’t ashamed to tell her. “Of course I was in love with you. Like a fool. Like an animal. Desperately in love.”
Then he started up the car. A couple of hundred yards further on, he saw Damián, standing outside his house chatting to Nicanor. He double-parked, in front of a gap just big enough for Charo to get out, but she didn’t move.
“Look at him, so pleased with himself,” she said simply.“I bet Atletico won. Flash your lights, go on, he hasn’t seen us.”
Juan flashed the lights several times and Damián spotted them at last. He raised both hands, the left with three fingers up, the right with only one, before heading towards them.
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