At Close Quarters (19 page)

Thanks goodness for weekends, when you could rest your stiff bones and muscles! It was wonderful to have a few hours to put up his feet or do whatever he liked. During the autumn the company asked them to work on Sundays to pick up fallen leaves, but it was now spring and there was no need to do extra time. Saturday mornings were enough for his expert, furious broom to clean the streets of cigarette butts, pieces of paper, the shiny wrappers of children’s sweets, and dog excrement. He was good at his job. His boss had never had any complaints. On the contrary, once he had set him as an example to his colleagues.

‘You should learn from Rosco,’ his boss had said. ‘The streets in his area are cleaner than the floors of the houses of some people I know.’

It was true, and yet the man was wrong to say that. How could anyone feel like polishing the surfaces in their homes after
sweeping
rich neighbourhoods all day, enduring the back and shoulder ache caused by the heavy metal broom, dragging the bin which by the end of his shift weighed a ton. In those fancy areas they planted big, ostentatious trees, with deciduous leaves, which needed pruning and were always shedding bits, much as the people who lived near them threw stuff away. Luxury generated an enormous amount of rubbish. Things were different in the poorer areas; where he lived the town council had planted a few acacias and some sober cypresses which grew by themselves,
demanding
nothing, dirtying nothing, putting up with both heat and cold thanks to their needles, simple and sharp like fishbones.

He put two logs in the chimney and lay down on the hammock. It was a cool day, though hardly cold enough for a fire. Still, he liked the feeling of warmth, the old, noble smell of wood and smoke, the playful lick of the flames. This was his only luxury. He’d been working for a few hours in the orchard that Aurora’s parents had left them, which had vines, almond and orange trees. They also grew a few vegetables for their own use. With the water from a well he’d managed to create a small oasis at the foot of the dry surrounding hillsides, where only a few bushes grew with barely enough flowers to keep a dozen hives. At sunset he liked to lie down in the shed and watch the increasing darkness as he heard the sounds of nature. Those relaxing Sunday evenings in the secluded orchard, which was hidden near the river bend, and from which he had managed to chase away drought, thorny plants and poisonous animals, made it possible for him to return to work the following day in a calm mood.

He heard a noise through the open door and looked outside. Brindle was peering inside, with an expression of enormous love. The dog’s slate-coloured eyes were asking his permission to be let in and lie at his feet, in front of the fireplace, where he would look at the flames until the warmth numbed him and his eyelids fell. Then he would make strange noises and his cold, wet, rubber-like muzzle would wrinkle in an expression that could look like laughing or crying, or he would whimper as if having nightmares, and bark at the monsters born in his own dreams. He was a mongrel of unknown age, not very big, and Rosco had named him because of his coat, an indefinable mixture of grey, brown and yellow.

‘Come, Brindle,’ he said.

He extended his arm and the dog walked towards him, expecting to be patted on the head – Rosco’s palm was even rougher than the hard, bristly fur – and the deteriorated rump. Then the dog stretched at his feet, looking at him.

Rosco liked dogs a lot. No other animal was as kind to him. They never barked at him, as they did to postmen or deliverymen. On the contrary, as he went by sweeping they would look at him and wag
their tails from behind the fences, expecting a pat, as if they were grateful for the fact that he always spoke to them warmly, called each one by its name and picked their faeces off the pavement.

Brindle yawned with his jaws wide open, showing the holes where his canines should be.

Rosco had picked him from a municipal dog’s home while looking for a dog to keep him company in the orchard and scare away the petty thieves who kept stealing fruit and green
vegetables
. Yet the dog didn’t look like he might frighten anyone. He was cowering at the back of a kennel, and was the last one to approach to get some food. When Rosco asked about him, the carer repeated a story he’d been told and opened the dog’s mouth to show the absence of canines: it had been a stray dog that had bitten a child in one of the impoverished areas of the city. The child’s father had caught it and had had its fangs extracted.

Not that Rosco believed this story. It seemed to him so cruel to leave a dog unarmed against others, mutilated in the essence of its species, that he couldn’t imagine anyone capable of doing such a thing. He made the dog climb into the car and took him to the small farm, even if he had begun to have doubts about it on the way over: what would a fangless dog do in the countryside, where there were so many things to bite?

But since then Brindle had never let him down. Somehow he had managed to keep thieves at a distance, and had become a warm, unconditional companion. Rosco liked his character. Brindle never barked, as if he were ashamed to open his mouth and show the holes in his jaws. He would follow him always two steps behind, loyal and calm, unlike those conceited dogs that run ahead to pee on every tree and at every corner, making a show of their virility and territory.

Now he stirred with pleasure and made himself comfortable on the floor, showing a small erection.

‘You’d like a bitch, wouldn’t you?’ The dog opened his sweet, elderly eyes, and perked up. ‘I might get one for you. Now we’re going to get some money, we might go to one of those pet shops
in the city centre where they show them in the windows. None of that business at the dog’s house. You and me, we’ll go and I’ll get you a nice, clean, pretty bitch. You can choose it. Just bark. Then I’ll bring her over and you both can do what you like. You’ll see how good that feels. How’s that for a plan?’

Brindle looked at him, understanding not a word but
understanding
the friendly tone. He stirred again and placed his head over his front paws.

The mention of a companion made him think of his wife, Aurora, an affectionate, calm person, who was used to working for others without asking much in return, who caused no trouble and only raised her voice to complain of her own fatness. She was nimble, strong, capable of bending over to touch the floor with straight legs – but fat. And how could she not be? It was inevitable for poor women to get fat, he told himself; not so for the rich, who were elegant and thin, who dieted, went to the gym, applied tons of firming creams and wore gallons of perfume. And why should they eat if they did nothing all day, and barely knew how to handle a broom and a mop, or adjust a vacuum cleaner? They spent their days lying on the sofa, watching TV or in front of the computer, or driving around in their cars – in every house where she’d worked there were two cars parked in garages larger than her flat – to go shopping or have a coffee while they smoked those cigarettes whose butts they tossed onto the pavements. But Aurora could not afford not to eat and watch her figure. She worked tirelessly, running from one place to another, which built up her appetite so much that when she returned home she opened the fridge and started eating like a wolf. No wonder she was fat. She often
complained
of backache, and he then told her to lie down on the bed. He would sit on her thighs and give her a massage the best way he knew how, since no one had ever taught him. He would slide his fingers down her tired muscles and work down her vertebrae one by one, with the help of some cream so that his rough hands didn’t trouble his wife’s nice abundant flesh. She liked it so much that they always ended up making love.

He sometimes wondered what would happen if everyone in her line of work called a strike, how long would it take for the world to become flooded in shit. He imagined all cleaners, servants, maids, drudges, skivvies, organising themselves and going on strike to demand decent salaries and social security, like any other worker. In a few days, rubbish bins would overflow, floors would be dirty, furniture covered in dust, beds unmade, glassed smudged, clothes unironed, and every house sunk in chaos; their owners would not be able to take it anymore and they’d give in and grant them all they’d asked for.

Major Olmedo, however, had never been like that. He wasn’t a demanding person, Aurora had told him, and so she made a point of doing good work for him and his daughter Marina. Olmedo had hired her to clean both flats even though he knew she’d been fired from the cleaning company when they found out she’d stolen a pair of earrings from one of the houses, whose owner had a jewellery box so full of them that one wouldn’t have thought she’d miss a pair she never wore. Aurora had looked so beautiful when she showed up with them on! Too bad she could only keep them for a couple of days, before they threatened to report her to the police if the earrings hadn’t turned up by the following day. Olmedo had known all that and yet he was the first one to hire her after she was fired. He gave her the keys to his flat and left her alone, and he never found anything missing, not a bit of soap, a yogurt, a handful of coffee, not even a few grains of salt or a
miserable
potato.

A short time later, one day as he was leaving the garage and Rosco was sweeping the street, Olmedo got out of the car.

‘Rosco,’ he said, in that calm tone of voice he had, perhaps because he was a soldier, and when he gave orders it didn’t feel like he was doing so, ‘I’m pleased with Aurora’s work at my house and my daughter’s. We trust her completely.’

Confused and surprised, he’d stammered out a few words thanking him and praising his wife. But Olmedo interrupted him. Having a cleaner, he then explained, can be the best or the worst
investment one can make. The best if your employee is an honest person who, in exchange for a few bank notes, cleans the rubbish you produce and washes your clothes and irons your shirts and makes you feel comfortable at home. But it can turn into the worst investment if you let someone into your house who rummages through your personal things and does nothing when you’re not there and steals your food and sleeps in your bed and tries on your clothes or your jewels and might spit on the food you eat.

Everything was clear after that conversation and later it all went well. Aurora cleaned his flat on Mondays and Thursdays. She barely saw the major, who left for work in the mornings before she arrived and, if anything in particular needed doing, left a note on the fridge. But Rosco did see him often, when he was sweeping the street and Olmedo greeted him, and made a comment about the weather or his work.

‘Easy now, Brindle,’ he said patting the dog on the flanks. His head had suddenly perked up. ‘We’ll go home in a minute, I know it’s late.’

If they had asked him who, of all the people he knew, he thought would be the last person that might get killed, he wouldn’t have hesitated to answer Olmedo. The man was always on the lookout, noticed any bag lying on the pavement or at the foot of a tree, any bicycle chained to a traffic light or any cardboard boxes sticking out of a bin. And on some occasions Rosco had seen, under his open jacket, the gun that he carried. Still, that was in the street. Perhaps he relaxed at home, and perhaps he’d been caught unawares the evening of his death after someone had rung his intercom and asked him for a word. The major had opened the door after a few seconds of silence.

Rosco was a few metres away, picking up some garbage, and heard it all. He didn’t make much of it back then, or two days later, when Aurora told him she’d have to find a new place to work, because the major had committed suicide and, wherever the dead might be, they don’t need anyone cleaning their flat. He only remembered it a few weeks later, when he saw the tall man
return to the garage on Olmedo’s bike. He was a detective hired by Marina, and he had asked Rosco about Olmedo. He wanted to know whether anyone had come to see the major on the evening of his death. Rosco had almost replied yes, but he’d had a brainwave and remained silent. What did those people think, that because he was a street sweeper he had to be at their beck and call on top of cleaning up their shit? He was a lot smarter than was necessary for his job, at least smart enough to understand that being honest is not enough to make money, to earn other people’s respect, and not be cheated by tricksters and conmen. The detective’s concern squared with what Aurora had told him: that Marina seemed very worried, that there was something strange about Olmedo’s death, that she had even received an anonymous offensive letter, which Aurora had read with her own eyes.

Now, at last, all those hours working in the streets had paid off. A single phone call had been enough to make him feel in control of the situation. With the money he was going to get in exchange for his silence – he was waiting for the call to arrange the meeting place – he’d be able to finish a project he’d been dreaming of for a long time: he’d expand the well in the orchard and buy a better pump to extract water; he’d replace the reeds and rusty wires with a white fence to eliminate that look of poverty; he’d even have a doghouse built at the entrance for Brindle. He’d buy his children that computer they wanted so much. And he’d buy Aurora a big pair of gold earrings like the ones she’d stolen that had looked so good on her. A pity she’d only worn them once. After that she wouldn’t need to look for another job and could take a rest. Her rest would be like the inheritance the major had left them.

‘What is it, Brindle, why are you in such a hurry? Or do you smell a hare? But you can’t catch them, can’t you see you’re missing your fangs,’ he said kindly, almost fondly.

The dog stood up and looked alternately at him and towards the door, as if he wanted to go out and was waiting for his signal.

‘Sit,’ he said, pushing him to the floor and patting his neck. ‘We’ll leave in a minute, as soon as the fire dies down.’

Brindle lay down at his feet once again, no longer looking at the fireplace. He fixed his eyes on the door and pricked his ears. Yet Rosco didn’t notice, as he’d closed his eyes and was relishing the warmth from the flames on his eyelids. It felt good to be there,
surrounded
by the night, in silence, and if it were not because Aurora and the boys were waiting at home he would dine by the fire, a tomato with a pinch of salt, a handful of almonds or dried figs and the juice of one lemon. Then he’d fall asleep on the hammock, alone in the countryside, even if the desert hills that surrounded the orchard were barely worthy of that name.