At Close Quarters (15 page)

‘Not now,’ she protested, ‘I’ve got to finish this.’

‘You can do that later,’ he whispered in her ear.

‘No, really. If it dries, the stain won’t come off.’

‘You’re splashing water all over yourself,’ he said.

Ignoring her protestations, he unclasped her bra. He touched the garment to his lips and nose, smelling the warmth of perfume, creams, and a hint of sweat. He was always moved by lingerie, by the refined harmony of skin and silk. When he returned from the base, whether from manoeuvres or a twenty-four-hour guard duty, the contrast between the coarse army blankets, the hard bunks, the belts and sweated canvas, on the one side, and, on the other, the delicateness of silk or cotton quickened his breath in an
uncontrollable
manner. Hence his opposition to allowing women in the army, another of those ridiculous ideas dreamed up by guys like Olmedo which threatened an order so painfully gained over centuries. The women at the base disconcerted him; he never managed to give them precise orders and didn’t know whether to treat them the same as men. He either patronised them, which on second
thoughts seemed absurd in the army, or unleashed against them a kind of mocking, scornful severity, as if he hated them, sometimes demanding of them greater efforts than of male recruits. Because he couldn’t not think of the flesh underneath their uniforms, of the canvas hardened by the sweat of their tender skin, of the sharp smell of power mixed with perfume, of the image of a female soldier who, out on manoeuvres, against regulations, holds a machine gun in a hand with nails all painted a different colour.

One day on coming home, dazed by all those thoughts, he implored Carmen to take off all of her clothes and put on just the coarse belts he threw on the bed, a peaked cap over her blonde hair, and his shiny army boots. And she accepted, curious and excited by the game, indulging him as he tried to guess from her movements and initial caresses how she would satisfy him. But that was a long time ago. Now, seeing how cold she’d been with him over the last few months, he wondered whether she might not be hiding something shady and secret, and feared that she might confirm the saying whereby in every barracks there is a captain’s wife in love with a soldier.

‘Not now.’

She attempted to move away but he held her securely by  the hips, doubting the firmness of her ‘no’, and recalling the ambiguity of other times, in which ‘no’ had cunningly meant ‘yes’.

‘Not now, I’m telling you, I’m not in the mood,’ her hands covered in soap pushing away his.

‘But I am, I really am.’

He pressed his tongue against her neck as she stood still, withstanding the awkward pressure against the washbasin, and the wet whisper of his lips on her neck. When he opened his eyes he saw her in the mirror, looking at him with a gesture hardened by patience, her hands once again sunk in the washbasin, not even resisting or despising him, but completely indifferent. His eyes slid down the mirror towards the hands that fondled her breasts, her nipples like dark small flowers emerging in the crack between his thumb and palm.

He moved away without saying a word and sat in front of the TV in the living room, quickly changing channels, not caring what he saw, disturbed by the difference between his life at the base and his life at home. At the base, at the sound of his voice, even if it was a confused voice, the three hundred men and women of a company would obey and stand to attention, clicking their heels in unison, sticking out their chests and chins for inspection, fearful of the possibility of a missing button or insufficient
polishing
of their boots, and they would salute when they passed him, and take off their caps and shout, ‘Yes, captain!’ or ‘No, captain!’ every time he expressed a wish or a prohibition – and it was all respect and discipline, and they would obey his orders without questioning him. However, in his own home, his wife often made sarcastic comments about his patriotism, and he didn’t know what to say and searched in vain for something he’d done that day that he was proud of, but felt dazed and angry, so close to uttering an insult, and then she would say ‘no’ to him and reject him when he … when he …

How things had changed in a short time! How he missed those years, not so long ago, when being a soldier was the highest destiny a man could aspire to, to be someone who renounces easy gains and is prepared to give his life to defend his people, someone who values honour above all else! How he missed the noble, noisy, drunk camaraderie of his days as a cadet, the tumultuous elation when they were allowed to break ranks and several hundred men in uniform hurried towards the gates of the base, even if, on
reaching
the street, they looked around in bewilderment, not knowing which direction to take! What wouldn’t he give now to relive the days of taverns in whose toilets you changed into civilian clothes that fooled no one, bars with cheap wine and gin, giant servings of
patatas bravas
and huge sandwiches of spicy cold cuts! The time of sunsets spent in parks with nannies of nimble, wide hands, who indulged them on their days off, and always worried about grass stains on their white shirts and trousers! That time when there was always a brothel near the base where the whores had
ten-centimetre-long tongues … Ah, all that was so far in the past now!

She appeared in the doorway dressed in the soft dressing gown she wore at home.

‘Come here,’ she said, extending a hand towards him, trying to be kind in a way that covered her previous rejection, that concealed it with a sudden offer.

He saw her smile joylessly and, for a second, thought about not accepting the offer of reconciliation. Then, weakened by desire and her outstretched hand, he stood up, accepted her hand and followed her down the corridor back into the bedroom.

‘Come here,’ she said when it was no longer necessary, when he was lying down and she was on top of him.

He felt his previous irritation dissolve among the kisses, the caresses, the hands moving slowly, in preparation, as they whispered in each other’s ears the most submissive and daring offers.

‘Wait, not yet, can’t we do something else first?’ he asked, gently pushing her by the shoulders.

Carmen remonstrated for a moment but then slid down and, with one hand, seemed to weigh up his scrotum, elastic with fullness, deftly fondling the smooth skin, as if she could calculate the intensity of his desire. Satisfied, she traced with the tip of her finger the line that snaked up the shaft. She studied with curiosity its shape, its palpitations, and then closed her eyes and took him in her mouth.

‘Enough,’ he said a little later, strangely lucid and distant, without having reached the expected climax. He missed the intense happiness which those same gestures would have provoked a few years earlier, when both gave themselves with the blind desire to be immortal, when their lovemaking had not lost its emotional content and was not yet reduced to the pleasant satisfaction of a physical need.

‘Have you been out today?’

‘No.’

His father looked him up and down, trying to find fault with his uniform. Not finding it, he turned round and put a yellow tack next to Baghdad on an enormous map, three metres by one and half, which was mounted on a cork plank on the wall. For several years, with rigorous punctuality, he’d been sticking into it coloured drawing pins flagging the cities where terrorist attacks had taken place: yellow for Islamist attacks; red for nationalist attacks; blue for unclaimed attacks and attacks by strange unclassifiable organisations. There were tacks everywhere.

‘You have to go for a walk, as the doctor said.’

‘I’m not in the mood to go for a stroll with that Indian. She can’t even talk. Or maybe she pretends she doesn’t understand when I give her an order. I don’t trust her. Any time she could push me down an embankment. Or drown me.’

‘That’s absurd.’

‘It’s not absurd. If you want me to go out, come for a walk with me,’ he complained from the armchair he liked to sink into, in front of the television and the terrorism map, proud of his stubbornness, happy to be able to still impose his own rules.’

‘You know I can’t, I’ve got a lot of work.’

‘But they’d give you the time off. Since when does a soldier not cover for a colleague who needs to get out for a couple of hours to take a walk with his elderly father?’

‘Time off? No one would give me a hand.’

‘In that case, at least find me a Spanish servant, not that Indian. I don’t trust her.’

‘Let me remind you that you didn’t trust the Spanish ones either. And Evangelina is the most trustworthy and careful one you’ve had. The problem is she doesn’t let you get away with anything.’

His father turned his face to the TV, annoyed at his comment. Evangelina was the best maid he’d had in years: tidy,
indefatigable
, patient with his old man’s whims, even with his latest, dirty habit of rolling up pellets of bread and dropping them all over the dining room. She was also a good cook, something that the two men, living on their own, especially valued. His father didn’t
like her because she wouldn’t humour him and his funny little ways, which were those of a former officer used to giving orders; because she didn’t pamper him or let him stay in bed till noon in an unaired room; didn’t buy him wine or any food not allowed by the doctor; and didn’t have that servile attitude with which
previous
cleaners had, in fact, appeased him, so that he would not make trouble while they watched the soaps. Evangelina woke him up at the right time, made him take his medicines punctually, took him by the arm to go for a walk, shook him out of his laziness.

‘All right, all right,’ Ucha conceded. ‘It’s half past five now. I’ll lie down for an hour. I was on guard duty last night, and it’s the same tonight. We’ll go out for a walk at seven.’

He went to his room and took off his uniform before lying down, tired and nervous, and a little tipsy from the white wine. He thought of the last pledge of allegiance at the San Marcial base, of his professional insecurity, of Olmedo’s death and the detective’s questions at the cocktail party. His near future looked very
uncertain
; with eyes closed, he went over the things he could salvage.

An hour later he awoke violently, in a daze, lying in the same position in which he’d fallen asleep. The sun slanted in through the window like a hard, shiny bar of warmth, and he had to face the wall to let his eyes adapt. Then, when he moved, he felt it. The pain was there, as if a skewer passed through his head from temple to temple and his head was being roasted over acid flames, causing him the kind of confusion and pain that grew with any activity. It suddenly spread from his temple to his neck, and he tried to stand in order to stop it cold. The more he let it settle in him, the greater his efforts to expel it.

Very slowly he put his feet on the carpet, wishing there were someone by his side to lower the blinds, put a fresh hand on his forehead, and fetch a glass of water and a couple of painkillers from the kitchen – not because he had asked them to but simply because they cared about him and wanted to alleviate his agony. Head lowered, he slowly opened his eyes and saw his bare feet on the carpet, his sad weak knees, and the white thighs that put him
in mind of a different, older kind of man. Stooping as if he were about to be beaten, he stood up and walked towards the kitchen. He took two pills from the bottle and, without waiting for them to dissolve completely, drank the effervescent liquid and waited for it to take effect.

‘Are we going now?’

His father was by the door, fully dressed, impatient to go out, sure he wouldn’t refuse. Ucha thought of telling him he would not come out after all, that the white wine, or the stress he’d been under, had given him a headache. But he imagined his father listening in silence and disbelief, turning his back to go and sit in front of the TV, imagined his reproaches later on, and he just couldn’t do it.

In a quiet voice, resigned, he accepted:

‘Let me get dressed and then we’ll go.’

As he approached his house, he saw the woman, an old lady, who had been stealing flowers from the plants by his fence for a few weeks. She’d just torn off some purple begonias and delicately gathered them into a beautiful bunch with the white flowers of the solanum and a red branch of bougainvillea.

He’d noticed the small thefts – the flowers cut gently and
surreptitiously
, without cruelty – and wanted to put a stop to it. Yet now, seeing the old lady, he didn’t much mind; he thought that what she might do with the flowers was no worse than what he did by leaving them there as decoration to be seen by only a limited number of people: Marina when she brought her children to the bus stop every day, neighbours, friends who visited him, and a few passers-by.

He slowed down to make time for the woman to leave before he arrived at the entrance and only then went in. It was Saturday. He would devote most of the afternoon to working in the garden, which looked rather abandoned. He’d been forced to drive one of the company vans all week, as one of his staff was in hospital with appendicitis, and he preferred not to hire a replacement.

The garden was like a shield against chaos: in it, nature’s wildest impulses were tamed into harmonic wholes of colours and shapes. He sometimes told himself that as long as he managed to keep it tidy and beautiful his life would be under control. He’d seen that the garden is the first thing to deteriorate in an abandoned house, the first place invaded by confusion and ruin before windowpanes
get broken, roofs start leaking and woodworm ruin the carpentry. A garden, like a musical instrument, shines brighter the more you use it. Unlike utensils, furniture and electrical appliances, which wear out with use and the passage of time, a garden improves with the years, and the seasons gather in its trees and bushes, provided there’s a hand to guide its drive to endure. A garden, he concluded, is like a stage where, in the course of the year, a theatre company, that may not be very disciplined but has ample improvisation skills, floral dresses and vegetable props, puts on the wide-ranging theatre of nature, from the Victorian melodrama of autumn to the
commedia dell’arte
of spring, from the Scandinavian tragedies of winter to the fantasies of colours and smells, water and dreams that take place on midsummer nights.

He changed his clothes and shoes and went out onto the patio with a very clear idea of what he should do and in what order.

When he’d bought the house, he planted a cherry tree and a lemon tree next to each other pretty much at the same time, and now they grew together, like two good friends, still in their youth, of different build and breadth, vying with one another in height and fruit-bearing. But they got along well, did not steal the sunlight from each other, and nor did their roots fight in the soil for nutrients or water. The cherry tree did not boast about its greater height, or of its small red succulent fruit, or the changing colours of its perennial leaves, or of its docility when children climbed on it. For its part, the lemon tree didn’t brag about the sweet fragrance of its monthly flowers, or about its cleanness or that its fruits remained on the branches for a long time once they matured, neither dropping nor rotting.

A couple of years ago, he’d tied a branch with a piece of twine to alter its direction, because it was growing horizontally and got in the way. One day, when the branch had already accepted the new direction, he cut the twine, forgetting however to untie the knot round the branch. And as it grew the twine had cut into it, as a small ring would around a girl’s finger if she never took it off. The branch appeared weaker than the others. Samuel picked up
the knife and prised the twine from inside the bark. A deep,
circular
mark remained where it had been, and it seemed the branch would snap along the indentation as soon as the first gust of wind hit it.

‘Maybe I should prune it,’ he mumbled to himself, convinced that the tree would not recover from the deep scar caused by the twine and his forgetfulness. But on closer inspection he saw that the spring leaves on the branch were no smaller than the others, and neither did the flowers seem scarcer, so with the profound feeling of sympathy one has for the wounded whose scars are healing yet they carry on without complaining, he decided to give it a chance.

However, the maple tree wouldn’t make it, also because of his negligence. A few months back, in early November, he was
spraying
the soil with nitrates when the phone rang. It was Marina with something or other to tell him, but the conversation went on for longer than expected, and he had forgotten the bag of nitrates leaning against the trunk. That night and the following days it rained, and the water carried an enormous amount of acid into the roots of the tree, scorching it. When the leaves fell off, Samuel hoped that that would be it, and that the toxins would not reach into the heart of the wood. But little by little the roots too dried up, from their extremities all the way up to the trunk.

He put on his gloves and started digging energetically around the basin, cutting the roots he found as he dug deeper. He took a break as he wondered how many men and women had died like that, from an excess of acid that someone, out of negligence, had spilled near them. By the time he finally managed to pull it out he was covered in sweat and had dug a deep hole in the ground, where nothing would grow for a while. Scorched earth. He would leave it to air out before deciding what to plant in it.

He still needed to prune and pull out some weeds, but he’d run out of time. He put his tools away and went in to wash before going to Marina’s.

There was a patent sadness in the way Jaime looked at the flat – the new pictures in which he was no longer present, the plants on the balcony with lots of pots where the calm green of the leaves contrasted with the intense colours of the flowers, the new arrangement of the furniture, with the highchair in between the chairs at the table, the sofa where they’d made love so many times – as if he were suddenly discovering that it was a good place to live, but he had been locked out for ever. For a moment his face registered the kind of regret an exile feels when he understands the intensity of his longing and, at the same time, the tenuousness of the reasons that made him leave in the first place.

‘Have you got any diapers at home?’ Marina asked from the children’s bedroom.

‘Yes,’ he lied.

‘You sure?’

‘Throw in a couple just in case.’

He went to the room and saw her filling the travel bag with clothes, diapers, bibs and several toys. How easily she packed everything, how decisively she chose the right garment, whereas he, when he had the children every other weekend, had to gauge, calculate, go over what they needed, only to realise that he was always missing something essential.

‘Well, that’s it,’ she exclaimed, doing up the zip. ‘I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything.’

The children were in the living room, and Jaime thought this was a good moment to broach the subject.

‘I got a letter from the bank this morning. About the investment fund.’

Marina listened without much interest. She had received it too, being the joint account holder. But she had hardly paid it any attention; there had been another, upsetting letter that day.

‘And what does it say?’

‘It offers two possibilities.’

‘Which ones?’ she asked impatiently. She suddenly remembered her father and feared that his predictions about Jaime would come
true. Perhaps he was mean by nature, and not even she could alter his character.

‘One. It can be renewed for another three years, on the same conditions. Two. We can get the money now, along with the interest.’

He’d said it. The plural could not be a simple slip of the tongue, as they’d been separated too long for it to be a speech habit.

‘
We
can?’ she asked while folding some clothes, avoiding his eyes, as she could no longer look at him. ‘But that’s not your money, Jaime,’ she said, ashamed of having to say it, of proving her father right.

‘Legally it is. It says so in the letter.’

‘But it’s not about what the bank says, but what we say. You know that money … I don’t want to argue about it. It’s very unpleasant,’ she said, refusing to continue.

‘No arguing,’ he accepted. ‘But we need to clarify it.’

‘Fine. You know that that money is not a joint asset. It was my father’s and he put it in my name when he was sent to Afghanistan. Just in case.’

‘But back then we were married, and so …’

‘Of course we were married! But that doesn’t change anything, Jaime, not a thing. That money is my father’s business and mine. I never would have thought of claiming half of any inheritance money of yours.’

She hesitated for a moment, almost telling him that her father had anticipated his reaction and, a few hours before his death, had made her sign some papers that never made it to the bank, in which case they would not be having this unpleasant conversation.

‘I’m not claiming it for myself! It’s for the children. I’d like to open a branch in Valencia and, in the long run, they will benefit from that.’

Marina had not expected such a reply and looked at him as if she didn’t recognise him. Starting at his mouth, the anxiety was spreading over his whole face, which when he got angry became ugly and looked older, contrasting with his athletic, youthful body. The angel turned into a vulgar, irate, miserable mortal. In spite of
the financial reasons he put forward, she suspected his problem was not so much greed as bitter spite born out of jealousy: perhaps he suspected that the money would make things easier for
everyone
including Samuel, or he imagined that the children would associate the trips, gifts and little luxuries with the appearance of the man who had replaced him. ‘That’s what it is,’ she told herself. ‘His resistance to let go of the place he once belonged to; his absence from the pictures of birthdays and anniversaries, which will now be counted back up from zero; his absence, too, from that bed in which, if he hasn’t lied to me, at one point he was happy.’ So she wasn’t surprised at the turn the conversation took.

‘Did you ever really love me?’

It was the first time she’d heard him say that. Jaime had asked the question as if he’d suddenly realised the feeling existed, as if everything that had been spoken of in those terms had been a lie. He then took his fingers to his eyes and seemed to look in astonishment at their wet tips, as if he’d never cried and suddenly wondered what that moisture in his eyes was.

‘Yes, I did,’ she replied.

‘And do you think you’d be able to again?’ he said after a few seconds.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Not even if I told you that … not even if I assured you that … if I swore to you that never again …’

‘No, Jaime,’ she interrupted, unwilling to listen to him any longer, and refusing him the manipulations of nostalgia. No, he was like a kid who’s not funny any more. She’d heard enough, and his desire to be absolved struck her as artificial and sentimental. There was nothing for her to forgive, because the past no longer hurt her. She only wanted him to leave, and leave her alone in the knowledge that there comes a time when a man and woman can no longer live together, and not even children, compassion, or the most profound religious conviction about sacred vows can remedy the sad failure. Besides, she doubted his sincerity. He’d lied so many times he was no longer trustworthy.

Jaime must have noticed her impatience and the way she avoided his eyes, because he got up from his chair and picked up the bag. In the living room the children were playing with an
electronic
gadget that made strange clicking noises. He put the baby in the stroller, picked up the elder one and opened the door. On entering the lift, as if choosing that moment not to give her the chance to reply, he turned round and said:

‘I’ll think about the fund. I’ll let you know my decision.’

Marina went back in and lay down on the sofa. Without the children, the house felt strangely silent, empty, hollow. She was very tired of all the conflicts surrounding her father’s death: her own inability to explain it to her elder son when he asked about his grandfather; the depressive indifference Gabriela had sunk into; Jaime’s attitude, halfway between complaint and threat; the tense expectations about the conclusions of the detective’s investigation; the fear that someone might threaten her at her door or leave another evil, dirty note in her letterbox. Samuel was about to arrive, but she would have preferred not to see him, however kind and calming he always was. If she could, if she were brave enough, she’d go away for a few days on her own, without the children. She’d travel somewhere in the north, in a cold, arid landscape, where no one would know her, and where they spoke a language in which she couldn’t communicate.

The bell rang, surprising her. Samuel had keys, and anyone else would have rung the intercom first. She got up and noiselessly approached the door. Through the peephole she saw a stranger and Samuel, who was about to put his key in the lock. She opened first and looked at them wonderingly, until she understood it was all a coincidence. The man was coming to see her, he’d entered by chance behind Samuel and had rung the bell right before Samuel got his keys out. And then she recognised him: he was the police inspector who, along with the judge, had told her that her father’s death had been a suicide. There, in the corridor, the man looked greyer and blander than at the station: the kind of person that never gets noticed, of medium height and medium build, and so
entrenched in middle age that she couldn’t tell if he was nearer thirty or fifty.

‘Marina Olmedo?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘I hope you remember me. Inspector Mejías,’ he said as he showed her the badge in his leather wallet.

‘Yes, I remember you. Is anything wrong?’

‘Nothing important, don’t worry,’ he clarified. ‘Just a small detail we need to tell you about. It’ll only take a few minutes of your time.’