At Close Quarters (2 page)

More than a month had passed since the first time he’d seen her when, one morning, after the bus had left, he installed a tripod with a camera in a corner of the study. For unknown reasons – perhaps a child being ill, or a journey – the left-handed woman had not appeared for three days, and Samuel had suddenly feared she would never return, that she would vanish without a trace, like a bird that darts through the clear blue sky and doesn’t leave behind anything but a memory of its shape and elegant flight. He imagined dozens of reasons why such a catastrophe could occur at any time: her child might not have adapted to the new school and he might need to go to one in the centre; her husband, if she had one, might be transferred to another town, taking all the family with him; she might move to another, more central area of the city; or she might get a job whose hours didn’t allow her to take the kids there: no doubt she could do that, as she looked like quite a capable woman. These stolen – that was the word that sprung to mind – images of her would then be like mementos she would not know she’d left him.

At ten o’clock he took three test shots and checked the framing. He double-checked that the flash was off, opened the wide-angled lens even if that meant losing resolution, and programmed the camera to take one picture every sixty seconds for half an hour, starting at five twenty. Then he left for work, but all that day
experienced
a crushing feeling of unlawfulness, like the poacher who sets a trap in private property at sunset and later, during the night, cannot sleep for fear that, in spite of all his safety measures,
something
unforeseen might happen and the trap might snap shut its iron teeth on innocent ankles.

Against his habit, he let his employees close the shop and went back home before half past seven. As he was parking the car in the garage he saw three men across the street staring at the ground. One of them was explaining something with emphatic gestures
as he pointed to the fence of the house they were standing by. The pavement was wet, and some water was trickling down into the gutter, as if they had just washed away a stain. Impatient to see the photographs he’d programmed, Samuel did not attach much importance to the scene, and went up to the study without even taking his jacket off. Before switching the lights on, he picked up the tripod and the camera, sighing in relief. He would never do it again, not once, not ever, he said to himself trying to control his shaking hands. Although it wasn’t forbidden to photograph a thoroughfare, he could not help feeling that foul play, fraud or immorality were involved. It was astonishing how many ways there were of acting disgracefully without breaking any article of the law, but he had always tried to do the right, ethical thing and did not expect the penal code to make provisions for every rule of conduct.

He connected the camera to the computer, downloaded the files and started looking at the pictures. At twenty past five a few mothers were already waiting for the bus. Since the wide lens took in all of the corner and the junction, the figures looked distant and small, as if they’d been captured from a much greater height. The left-handed woman appeared in the fourth picture, walking down the pavement, turning to look at a car that had no doubt gone past at great speed, leaving a fuzzy trail behind it. The picture at five twenty-five showed her looking up to the windowed balcony, and Samuel had such a vivid impression that she was staring straight at the camera, to have her photograph taken, that he jumped back in his chair, startled for a moment. It was as if she knew, as if she had guessed everything.

The bus had arrived a little earlier than expected, and the photographs showed the children getting off and walking away with their parents until the street was deserted.

He clicked through the uninteresting images quickly, until one of them caught his attention. Three boys, of about fourteen or fifteen, were walking down the street in front, passing a football around. Their outlines, distant and slightly blurred, suggested a
confident, perhaps rowdy attitude, and one could guess they were being noisy. They were wearing trainers and the kind of sports clothes that looked two sizes too big and which Samuel never knew whether to call modern or downright sloppy. Then
something
seemed to give them a scare at the fourth house on the street, and without looking Samuel knew what it was: the fearsome pit bull that barked furiously when anyone touched the fence, ready to defend its territory. He too had been caught unawares a few times, and preferred to walk down the opposite pavement. Once the postman had told him he was afraid of dropping post into the letter box of that house.

The boys, however, had no doubt quickly recovered from the fright, and later appeared shooting the ball against the fence, an adolescent display of bravery in response to the barking. The quiet emptiness of the street was interrupted in the next image, in which a woman who was passing by looked at the scene with a
disapproving
face. Obviously, there was no one at home to reprimand the boys and calm the dog, which sixty seconds later was seen with its front paws on the metal edge of the fence, its threatening, toothy jaws wide open.

And then, all of a sudden, the time between one take and the next seemed to have condensed into horror. The pit bull was on the outside, biting one staggering boy in the arm, while the two others ran away in terror. Shaken, Samuel clicked ‘next’: the ferocious tenacity of the dog that would not let go of its prey, not even when faced with some passers-by who either fled the scene or cautiously, fearfully, approached it, trying to help; the pit bull sinking its teeth between the fallen boy’s shoulder and neck while a woman, visible through a window, spoke on a mobile phone, her face a mask of despair as blood stained the ground … At last, two policemen had shot the animal, which lay on the pavement by the boy, one of the officers crouching down beside him.

The headlights of the ambulance took up the centre of the last shot, before the sequence came to an end. It had all taken barely fifteen minutes, but when it was finished Samuel was shaking. He
had tried to capture some images of harmony, of the woman he liked so much, and had ended up with a horror scene.

For several days he didn’t know what to do, although he couldn’t stop thinking about the pictures. He put away the tripod and the camera in a cupboard as if they were dangerous, even harmful, just as he would have hidden a bear trap or a gun. On the one hand, he wanted to delete the pictures from the hard drive without printing them, as though they had never existed. What did he want them for? What use were some images in which one saw a completely unknown adolescent die? Only the boy’s initials, MGS, had appeared in the papers the following day, next to a picture of the pit bull looking at the camera with a peaceful, innocent expression which belied any streak of aggression. But then, he imagined an inquiry would be conducted, and if the law required it, he was in a position to provide evidence that would cast light on what had happened, so that everyone could face up to their legal
responsibilities
. Keeping the images could help avoid a miscarriage of justice.

The house had remained locked since then, and he heard a neighbour say that its owners, distressed by the tragedy, had moved away. One morning a bunch of flowers appeared on the pavement against the fence; no one touched it, and it wilted until another morning it was gone, without anyone knowing who had brought it or taken it away.

After two weeks, however, the street returned to normal. The tragedy was fading in people’s minds and they resumed walking down the pavement they had at first avoided, the street cleaner swept the fallen leaves where the boy had lain, the postman put letters through the letter box, unafraid now the dog had disappeared.

Until he decided what to do with the photographs, he separated the ones of the left-handed woman, created a file called ‘Dog’ and embedded it in a folder called ‘Various’, among other subfolders, committing the order to memory. Never again, he vouched, would
he take furtive pictures of the woman who brought her child to the bus stop. Yet neither would he stop watching her from behind the window.

At the end of October, when it had all become a habit, a
pleasant
, secret rendezvous, something happened that altered that routine. The bus had already taken the children away, but the woman remained a few seconds on the wide pavement
straightening
the small child in its pram. And when she stood up, Samuel saw a glittering something fall to the ground. She didn’t notice, though, and walked off and across the street leaving the small object lying on the flagstones.

Samuel acted on such a quick impulse that it was only when he was opening the gate that he realised how risky it was to pick up the object and run after the woman to return it. She would thank him, surely, but some inevitable questions would also arise: how did he know it was hers? Where had he been at the moment she had dropped it, seeing that the street was deserted? Why was he returning it, supposing it was valuable? And, above all, who was he, what was his name, who should she thank for that unusual gesture of decency and kindness? And at that point he wouldn’t know what to reply, wouldn’t be able to speak without lying, without concealing from her that he was a solitary man who, hidden behind a window, watched a woman whose name he didn’t even know any more than her occupation, address, or civil status, but whom he could safely say he liked a lot, in a naive, almost adolescent way.

He slowly opened the gate and walked out onto the empty pavement. He saw her for a few seconds at the end of the street, before she turned the second corner, pushing the stroller in that peculiar way of hers, without leaning forward much but neither completely straight, halfway between the heaviness that goes with great effort and the lightness of excessive energy. He took a few steps and, sure enough, found the shiny object. He quickly picked it up and went back inside.

It was a slim gold bracelet with small flattened links and delicate
oval charms. The clasp had come undone, perhaps having caught a snag on the stroller. In between the links was a plaque of about two centimetres with a filigree engraving on its flipside which read
Marina
.

‘Marina,’ he said out loud. ‘Marina. It’s a nice name. Like placing a grain of salt on your tongue and listening to the crystals dissolve.’

He had to find a way of giving it back; he couldn’t keep it. Besides, it was the perfect excuse he needed.

Samuel put away the bracelet in a drawer and left for work. He was in a daze all day, swinging between the joy of a suitor who presents his beloved with a jewel and the caution of someone who fears he will be accused of stealing it. On coming home that evening he took another look at the bracelet and imagined the moment he would approach her and the words he would say. He supposed she would be grateful, given that he was returning an object of value. There was only one thing that worried him: she might ask him how he knew it was hers, and then he would have to hide the fact that he spied on her from the window balcony, and claim that, purely by chance, he had seen her drop the bracelet and that she had vanished by the time he came down to pick it up. If that part of the story sounded convincing enough, the rest might hold.

By the time parents and children started arriving the following morning, he’d been waiting for a while behind the window. He had the jewel between his fingers. Marina – he had no doubt that was her name – was among the first to arrive, and for a second she studied the ground, no doubt looking for the bracelet but without much conviction, as if she imagined that if she had lost it there someone else must have found it by then. A little later the bus appeared and took the children away. Samuel waited until the mothers too had left, and only then went out. Marina was already walking across the street, and he quickened his pace to catch up with her before she turned the corner. He had to hurry, but at the same time didn’t want to look clumsy or say something silly in haste. His hesitation made him walk more slowly. It had always
been the same with women, he ran after them fighting an impulse to retreat. Instinct and feelings pushed him towards them, but he never entirely cast off the suspicion that everything would be easier if he closed his eyes to the mysterious feminine world and spent his free time cultivating his garden, sitting at his computer, or hanging out with friends.

Marina disappeared round the corner before he had a chance to catch up with her. Fearing he would lose sight of her, he ran to the junction and was relieved to see her only ten or twelve metres ahead. If he was going to approach her, now was the time, he couldn’t take any longer without further complications. He walked faster and, bracelet in hand, almost came level with her, but then she abruptly stopped at a doorway and started looking for her keys in the bag hanging from the stroller.

Samuel stopped too, surprised that, although she lived so close by, he’d never seen her around except at the bus stop. Marina looked at him questioningly, perhaps thinking he too wanted to go into the building. A delicate scent, which reminded him of the lilacs in his garden, wafted from her or perhaps from the boy who was staring at him from the stroller with a sort of neutral curiosity.

‘Excuse me,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

He put out his hand with the bracelet before he could find the words to explain himself.

‘Yesterday, by chance, I thought I saw you drop it and …’

‘My bracelet! Where did you find it?’

‘Yesterday, by chance,’ he repeated, handing it to her, ‘at the school bus stop. I thought I saw you drop it, and came down to get it, but by the time I picked it up you’d already left.’

‘You came down?’ she asked, not knowing what he meant.

‘Yes, I live in the house on the corner and I was … looking out the window when I thought I saw something shiny fall off the stroller,’ he cautiously explained, fearing he would trip himself up. He realised that he was striking up a conversation by deceiving her, but told himself that, if he was granted another opportunity
to speak to her, it would be the last time he would do such thing. ‘I thought it was a toy or something, but then, when I picked it up, I saw it was a bracelet. This morning I was waiting for you to give it back. And so I came out and managed to catch up with you. Only just,’ he added with a smile, pointing to the door.