This Too Shall Pass (4 page)

Taking off for Cadaqués is always a sort of expedition. The three children are sitting in the backseat, Edgar, Nico, and Daniel, Sofía's boy, together with Úrsula, the babysitter. I'm driving and Sofía occupies the copilot's seat. It still seems bizarre and even a little absurd that I should be at the head of the excursion, the person who decides what time to leave, who gives Úrsula her instructions, who picks out the clothes the children will wear, who drives the car. At any moment, I think, as I peer through the rearview mirror and catch the children fighting and laughing at the same time, someone's going take my mask off and send me back there with them, where I belong. I'm a total fraud at being an adult, my efforts to progress beyond the playground at break time have all been resounding failures. I feel as if I'm still six years old; I see the same things, the little jumping dog whose head appeared and disappeared from the frame of a ground-floor window, a grandfather holding out his hand for his grandson, handsome men with their radar on, the charms on my bracelet reflecting rays of sunlight, lonely old men, couples locked in ardent kisses, beggars, suicidal old ladies crossing the street at a turtle's pace, trees. Each of us sees different things, but we always see the same things, and what we see defines us absolutely. Instinctively, we love other people who see the same things that we do, and we recognize each other immediately. Place a man in the middle of a street and ask him: “What do you see?” It'll all be there, in the way he responds, like in a fairy tale. What we think isn't so important; it's what we see that really counts. I'd hand in this pathetic cardboard crown of adulthood without thinking twice—I wear it so ungracefully anyway, it's constantly falling off and rolling down the street—if only to be once again sitting in the backseat next to my brother, Bruno, with Marisa the nanny and Elenita, who always joined us on holidays, our two dachshunds, Sapho and Corina, and Lali, Marisa's giant poodle, that ungainly, flea-bitten, hysterical dog who hated Cadaqués and the refinement of our own dogs.

—Hey, boys, what do you say we buy a Ping-Pong table for the garage in Cadaqués?

They all readily approve the idea.

—But you have to be careful of the dogs and the Ping-Pong table, OK?

—Why? What for? Nico and Daniel ask at the same time. Edgar, like a typical teenager, is messing around with his mobile not saying a word, though I can tell he's paying attention, he always is.

So I tell them how Marisa's psychopathic dog Lali used to have these sudden hyperactive fits in Cadaqués, how she'd bolt off, galloping full speed down the stairs, while Elenita, Marisa, and I chased after her shouting and trying to catch her. She'd be practically at the garage, when she'd jump out into the open space of the stairwell that was some four meters down, and crash-land onto the Ping-Pong table where my brother and his friends would be peacefully hanging out and playing. The sudden shock of such a huge black dog crashing into the table sent the children running in all directions, terrified, and as the summer advanced, Bruno was left without Ping-Pong pals. He was convinced that it was me who taught Lali to throw herself down the stairwell and onto the Ping-Pong table, just to annoy him.

—Yeah, right, Edgar says, looking at me sideways. —Grandma used to say, “Bad, Blanca, you're so bad.”

—Grandma never said that, I lie.

—She said it every time she saw you.

—She was just joking. Grandma adored me.

—Yeah, sure.

Grandma was frightened; the fearless woman began living in fear when her strength began to fail her, followed by her head, her friends, the entourage who always hovered around her (“Know what one of the toughest things about growing old is?” she asked me one day. “Realizing that nobody cares what you have to say.”), when she saw that her time was winding down, that everything was coming to an end—everything, that is, except her eager desire to live. Grandma never gave up—she fought every battle and was accustomed to winning. She never accepted that the game was over until the very last day. I told her not to worry once, sitting on the bed with her in the final hospital, a place I still visit in my nightmares (though not as often as the assisted-living home where she had spent the previous two months, where I learned how realistic the films are about the living dead—the directors don't make that stuff up). It was her third bout of pneumonia, she'd recover from this one too, I told her. I'll be fine, don't worry, the children will be fine, everything's in order. She looked at me and didn't say a word, she couldn't speak anymore—what sort of dying person is in the mood to utter a last sentence? I guess the ones concerned with posterity, though maybe all the fuss about a person's last words is just another load of nonsense—then she started to cry, without making a noise, without moving a single muscle of her face, just staring straight at me. Ana, her best friend, was in the room at the time and I suppose to protect me she said it must be the air conditioning irritating her eyes. But I know you were saying good-bye to me. I didn't shed a tear, just squeezed your hand gently and told you again to just be calm, we're all fine. A few months earlier, when your death was still something inconceivable to me, and still is now, we were at your house chatting. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you stood up to get something from the bathroom and said, without even glancing over at me and as nonchalantly as someone saying “I need some toothpaste,” that “it's been an honor to know you.” I made you repeat it twice; at that time our love had grown painful; I thought you didn't love me and I wasn't sure if I still loved you. So I burst into tears, told you not to say such silly things, and within two minutes we were back to fighting again. I think you already knew by then that the time of the ellipses, the suspension points you hated so much, was coming to an end. Here we are now at the full stop, like a dagger, like an oxygen cylinder.

Elisa waves contentedly from the other lane, in her own car with Damián. I watch them and feel a little jealous pang. I imagine them listening to music—the music they want, not what the children want to hear—talking and thinking things over. I also imagine how Elisa, who doesn't have kids, must have showered alone, or maybe with Damián, certainly without a child and his chirpy babysitter barging in to ask after the whereabouts of his Chinese costume, he absolutely has to bring it because in Cadaqués either one goes dressed as a Mandarin, or one doesn't go at all.

—End of story, Nico added. —I'm naked and in the shower, you can see that, right? Get out of here! Nico whined and Úrsula couldn't help laughing at him, which is her technique for coping with any situation. My second husband found it unnerving, but it has always amused me.

—Lightness is a form of elegance, I used to say. —To live with grace and joy is extremely difficult.

—You mistake lightness with indifference, Blanquita. Everyone pulls the wool over your eyes, he said.

We decided to stop for lunch at Tom's house, which is near the halfway point, to take a break on the way. Tom, Daniel's father, and Sofía had been romantically involved when they were younger, and though the relationship ended, they remained close friends. When Sofía realized that she was still unattached and getting closer to the age when having a child would become more and more difficult, she decided to ask him to help her make one. Tom had gotten married in the meantime, had two daughters, and then separated. He made it very clear that the child could have his last name and that he would see him from time to time, but that it would be Sofía's child to raise, and only hers, since he already had two daughters whom he actively parented and couldn't be responsible for any more. Sofía gratefully accepted the agreement, aware of the gift it represented, and Tom got on with his life.

He now lives in a ramshackle house in the middle of a huge plot of land, where he runs a shelter for dogs and breeds beagles. If I were someone else, one of my dreams would be to live in the countryside surrounded by animals, but I get anxious if I don't have a movie theater, a twenty-four-hour corner store, and a load of strangers in my vicinity. Anyway, I am as excited as the children at the chance to see a litter of puppies. And the break comes as an unexpected relief from the road to Cadaqués, which we'll go back to again soon enough. It still hurts to drive along the roads I used to take with my mother; the “bitch of death” expels us from so many familiar places. Maybe we should keep one of the beagle puppies, I think, as we make our way down the long, quiet, lonely dirt road that leads to Tom's house. A dusty green sign with sprightly dogs announces “Villa Beagle.” We ring the bell and there's no answer. The children perch on the fence and start to yell —Tom! Tom! There's the sound of barking in the distance, and suddenly a whole pack of dogs trots toward us, expressing all ages, breeds, and conditions. Whenever I see these animals enjoying their freedom, even if only for a moment, invented and domesticated as they are by humans and used to living confined in apartments, it immediately puts me in a good mood. To see their unbridled joy at dashing in the sun, ears flapping in the wind, tongues hanging, tails wagging excitedly. It's the thrill of being alive, nothing more than that, of accepting that gift without questioning it. The dogs crowd in a tangle around the other side of the fence and the children squeal, unable to contain their excitement. Behind the dogs, two smiling boys approach the gate. They walk with relaxed strides, as if they were opening a trail through a field of tall wheat, dressed in worn jeans, looking a little sleepy, the elastic silhouettes of youth, with the troublemaker's mischievous look in their eyes from spending plenty of time on the street, skipping school. I watch them, amused, and with a tinge of envy, as they discreetly pass a joint between themselves and call out to each one of the dogs by name, frolicking around with them. They finally open the gate to let us in and tell us that Tom is in the house, that he just woke up and he's on his way. The dogs greet us cheerfully, jumping, licking, and letting out an occasional bark that is immediately reprimanded by one of the boys. The children have never seen so many dogs in a single place, so they're a little apprehensive at first, but within a few minutes they're running around the field, laughing and screaming, with the dogs springing and bounding behind. There's one of them, though, that doesn't leave my side. He's an old, scruffy thing vaguely reminiscent of a German shepherd. He was the first dog I noticed, hanging at the back of the group, a little detached, with a tired, sad look in his eyes. He saw that I'd noticed him, and so he approached me directly. Anyone who's had a dog knows that they choose us, and not the other way round. It's the same type of recognition that can happen, on rare occasions, between two people. A sort of mute, immediate, undeniable acknowledgment. But in the case of a dog, it lasts a lifetime. I pet his head and every time I remove my hand, he brings his snout to my leg and gives me little nudges to ask for more pampering.

—What's his name? I ask one of the boys.

—Rey.

—Of course. I bet at some point in his life, for someone, he was a king.

The tall, lanky boy smiles and passes me the joint without even asking.

—His owner died of cancer a few months ago, and he came here.

I kneel and caress the dog's head again.

—You're still a king to me. You know that? You can tell from a mile away. You've been abandoned too, huh? Well, well. Life's a bitch, isn't it?

I give him a few pats on the back; his coat is strong, robust, a little scratchy, black, with reddish-blond along his belly and legs. He has the boundless, somber, and clouded gaze of an old dog, like that of a sick man's. If you like people, it's impossible not to like dogs.

In the distance, Edgar inspects the fig trees that border the meadow with the air of a landowner. They're laden with fruit that's bursting ripe. He'll never be so adult, I think, so conscious of everything around him, so serious, kind, discreet, so frugal with his words, so sensitive and responsible, as he is now at thirteen. I'll never catch up with him, that's for sure. Perhaps respect is the highest feeling you can have toward another person, more than love or adoration. Damián comes up to me and asks me in a whisper to pass the joint, Elisa doesn't like him to smoke. Sofía is flirting with the other young dog trainer, who, it turns out, is Romanian and hardly speaks any Spanish. Roger, the one who is talking to me, is Catalan, and while we smoke he explains that aside from sheltering abandoned dogs, they also have a kennel to keep people's pets when they have to travel or go on vacation and don't have anyone who can look after them. That's when Tom shows up. He obviously dressed in a rush—he's wearing torn pants.