Rage (9 page)

He decided to open the window. It was a good opportunity, given that Rosa had been there only minutes
earlier, and could always assume she had failed to close
the thing properly. Light flooded into the room as Maria
peered outside. The sky looked uncertain whether to
clear or to cloud over. The citizens' habits appeared to
be running to form for the time of day: he estimated it
must be around two in the afternoon. On the building
site, his former workmates must be just about finishing
their lunch break. Was there anything about that world
outside he still missed? A good roast beef. Three days
earlier he had eaten it straight from the oven. And a
cigarette. He had never smoked heavily, but ten yards
below him, down on the pavement, he saw a man pass
by with a cigarette between his lips and he longed to
have one. That was when he realized that what he most
missed was using his sense of smell. To be able to smell
a roast, inhale a cigarette. And the scent of Rosa.

Ever since he'd been living in the villa, he'd smelled
nothing except the odour of damp. Did Senor or Senora
Blinder smoke? In the villa, cooking took place both at midday and again in the evening, yet the smell of it
never penetrated as far as his upstairs attic. Why would
they, then, be able to sniff out the smell of his tobacco,
had he any? He determined to undertake a reconnoitre,
on one of the very next evenings, down to the living
room on the ground floor, with the intention of finding
out whether Senor or Senora Blinder were smokers
and, assuming that one of them was, rob them of one
or two of their cigarettes. In his own room, perhaps
anywhere on the top floor, he could smoke without fear
of discovery. Maybe he could even try it out right next to
the window, open just a crack, looking out on the street,
just like now.

He spent the afternoon reading. When the daylight
began to give out, he did his gymnastics exercises. Then
he went to the bathroom, washed, and returned to bed to
take his siesta. At two in the morning, he went downstairs
to the kitchen to get his dinner and, bearing in mind
that Rosa gave no sign of having noticed any change in
the quantity of food there, decided to help himself to
breakfast as well. That way he ate better and risked less.

After dining, he set off on his walk around the house.
He undertook it completely naked. He'd decided henceforth to leave his rucksack in the loft, where it would
be hard to distinguish from the mass of other bags
and boxes, and in order not to have to carry it around
with him wherever he went. He had learned to move
about in such a stealthy fashion that he seemed almost
motionless, or as if the floor itself were transporting
him. Like a man on a moving walkway. The same thing
applied when he did his athletics. He didn't jump like
a ballet dancer, in the sense of becoming suspended
in mid-air, but did the opposite: he took large leaps,
allowing the weight of his body to catapult him in a long jump, just above floor level. He was capable of jumping
more than three yards from his starting point, virtually
without having lifted off. At the end of the leap, one of
his feet would just skim the floor's surface, in order to
kick off on the next leg of his trajectory. His body thus
described a succession of interconnected curves, each
one propelled forwards by sheer force.

He returned an hour later. The window into his room
was still open. The sky was clear, and cars passed only
intermittently; there were no pedestrians. The moon
shone like a radioactive rock. He lay down. He was about
to fall asleep when he heard some faint noises from
on top of the cupboard. He refrained from moving. It
didn't even seem to matter to him that the rat hadn't
emerged, that it was, after all that had happened, still in
his room. Now he knew where the bone had gone.

"Goodnight," he said to the rat.

He heard himself and was shocked. It was a long time
since he'd listened to the sound of his own voice.

8

One evening he heard "new" voices inside the house.
Leaning over the second-floor banister, he could catch
intermittent glimpses of a man in a dark suit and a
woman who, from his vantage point, seemed to consist
in little else but a bright yellow wig balanced on the
points of two stiletto shoes which came and went almost
hysterically beneath full white skirts, and which made
her appear like an energetic fried egg. The date was
30th October, and it was Senora Blinder's birthday.
Maria couldn't manage to overhear exactly what Senora
Blinder was celebrating, but he did manage to gather that the new visitor's name was Rita, and that the couple
were perhaps the Blinders' only close friends.

Rosa went back and forth, in and out of Maria's field of
vision, carrying trays of canapes. She made the trip with
frustrating frequency, as if instructed only to serve one
canape at a time, no doubt annoying and interrupting
the guests as well, in spite of the fact that their voices
couldn't have sounded more cheery.

At a given moment, everyone vanished; Rosa went
into the kitchen and the Blinders, together with their
guests, went to take their places at the dining table.
Maria managed to catch odd snatches of conversation,
before he began to hear retching sounds coming from
behind him. He retreated to an alcove which looked
out onto the avenue, and opened the window. A young
- or at least relatively young - man was vomiting outside
the front door to the villa.

He closed the pane and, as if the pane were the viewfinder of a camera, ran the image past his retina again:
there could be no doubt, the man was the same as the
only photo of a stranger on the table of family portraits.
The bell began ringing insistently.

Intrigued, Maria crept down to the first floor. The
tone of the mutual greeting was kept to one of welcome
and false conviviality.

"Alvaro!..." said the father.

"How did you get here?" enquired the mother.

"Sit down..." (The father.)

"Have you eaten?" (The mother.)

"See, I remembered it after all." (Alvaro.) "Many happy
returns... Doctor... Sara... how are you? Hi there, old
man. I promise I'll bring you your present tomorrow,
Mum. And what about Peru, Doctor, have they decided?
Are we selling them arms or not?"

"Alvaro, please..." (The mother.)

They then spent over an hour discussing football.
Nothing could interest Maria less than football. In any
case, he stayed put just to listen in on the conversation:
he was hardly ready to leave the parry just because the
topic they were chatting about didn't interest him overmuch; he didn't get that many opportunities to listen
in on something that, while phoney, at least sounded
agreeable.

It was obvious that the alcohol was flowing. The
voices... their subjects... even the silences... had grown
denser. Someone had put on a CD. How long had it
actually been since music played in that house? Maria
had never heard as much as a single chord, not even
from a neighbouring villa. He had the impression that
this was the first time in generations that music had
made itself heard here. He had already drawn his own
conclusions as to what kind of people the Blinders were,
so the wholly unlikely and inappropriate sounds now
emanating (from a CD by Cristian Castro) confirmed
his assumption that music was about as relevant to the
Blinders as literature to a boxer. It wasn't even one of
their discs: it belonged to Rosa.

Maria repeated with the CD what he'd done with the
conversation: he stopped to listen to it. The difference
between the two was that whereas the topic of football
hadn't interested him in the least, at least he really
liked Cristian Castro's songs. Better still: if he weren't
mistaken, he himself had made a present of that very
CD to Rosa. At least, he was sure he'd given her a disc
by Cristian Castro, but he hadn't had time to copy it
before giving it to her - nor, as a result of all that had
happened, to listen to it on his own, when he got in
from work - so he couldn't be entirely certain whether or not this was the same one. The fact of the matter
was that Cristian Castro's voice caused him to drop his
guard, even to drop off to sleep.

This was when something extraordinary happened.

(This isn't what follows. What follows is merely an
infidelity.)

Made drowsy as he was by the music, Maria didn't
notice that Senora Blinder had escaped from the table,
or from the dinner party, still less from the dining room,
and that she'd just hooked up with her male guest
halfway up the staircase, in the shadows.

There was nothing in principle to suggest, from the
attitudes adopted by either party, that the two of them
were lovers. Quite the opposite, in fact: it was evident
that they had been good friends for many years, to
the point where they had almost nothing left to tell
one another, but it was also plain that they were fed
up with longing for each other in secret. Desire and
its repression were such a powerful force between
them that when they met halfway upstairs (one going
up and the other coming down), it was as if they were
strangers.

When Maria had realized how close they were to him,
he had moved back. Now he decided to advance a little
again. He couldn't see them, but he could hear them
absolutely clearly.

She gave the impression of being somewhat agonized.

"All of a sudden, I felt such a vast emptiness, so very
vast, that it made me feel as if I was entirely swallowed
up by it," Rita Blinder was saying. "I don't know if that
makes it like a religious experience, most likely it does.
I feel as if I exude the symptoms of religious withdrawal.
First I feel utterly empty, then utterly filled, but with a
longing to enter a retreat. I keep thinking of something which Epictetus said... you do know who Epictetus is,
don't you?"

A silence.

Maria visualized the man nodding vaguely.

"Epictetus," Rita Blinder went on, "said that when
God is no longer able to supply us with faith, or love, or
anything else, he gives us a sign of retreat. He just opens
the door and invites you in with: `Come'. And you reply:
`Where to?' Then He tells you: `Nowhere in particular.
Only back to where you have come from, to things you
warm towards and places you have an affinity for, back
to the elements."'

Another silence.

Maria imagined Senora Blinder fixing the man with
her gaze, anticipating some kind of a response from
him. He could as good as see the man casting about
desperately for something to say. He could hear the
man clear his throat.

Finally he heard him say:

"Sometimes I think I know everything, and at others
nothing. My dearest, this is one of those occasions when
I feel I know nothing. Believe me. The honest truth is
that I don't know what to say to you."

There was a pause and then what followed was a deep
sigh, emanating from Senora Blinder. She sucked air
into her lungs as if her head had only just surfaced above
the water - and she started to descend the staircase. The
man, despite the fact she had met him on his way up,
followed her down.

That was when Maria heard the sound of shattering
glass. He looked right, towards the stairs going down
to the service wing, from where the noise had reached
him as if echoing from a tomb. He followed the sound,
and heard a slam, the sounds of a struggle, then the sound of another slam. Again, silence. Maria was now
on the bottom step of the service stairs, at the start of
the corridor. He leaned his face forwards and Alvaro
just entered his line of vision.

The door to Rosa's room stood open. Alvaro, his back
turned towards Maria, was propping himself up against
the wall with one shoulder. He was struggling to unstick
the shoulder but his legs weren't helping. In fact, his
knees were buckling. Finally he managed to achieve
lift-off and, making the most of his sudden success, he
zigzagged his way to the kitchen, where another struggle
erupted.

Maria could hear Rosa's voice saying:

"Alvaro, enough. Stop!"

"Come here a minute... Just a little minute..."

"Leave me alone!"

"Don't be naughty..."

Maria didn't dare to approach any closer to spy inside
the kitchen, but it was hardly necessary: Alvaro was bent
on abusing Rosa, that much was obvious. He clenched
his fists. He even tightened his toes against the edge of
the step. What could he do if Rosa didn't manage to get
the guy off her? Had he already abused her previously,
abused her, his girlfriend, on previous occasions?

Rosa left the kitchen, smoothing down her uniform,
and ran to the end of the passage, where she hid herself
behind a door. Alvaro came out a second later.

"Rosa!" he called.

His feet described a large circle, and the rest of him
followed in a surprisingly straight line behind Rosa,
as if he were bent on drawing the outline of a helium
balloon on the floor.

Maria remained rooted to the spot, paralysed with
rage. Then he returned upstairs again, in order to take up his position above the living room, but although
the music had stopped, he couldn't hear anyone inside
talking; he leaned forwards again to get a better look
and saw Rosa setting off in the direction of the kitchen
carrying a tray. An instant later he saw her again. This
time Rosa was bearing four glasses on the tray (rather
than five, leaving him to think that Alvaro had been
excluded from the toast), along with a bottle of brandy.
Maria could hear her leaving the room.

He went up to the second floor, ran into the east wing,
and peered between the curtains and through one of
the windows looking out onto the garden. The Blinders
and their friends were seated around a little white table;
Rosa deposited the glasses on the table and went back
indoors. No sign at all of Alvaro.

He came across him a short while later, purely by
chance. When passing one of the bedroom doors on his
way back to his attic, he heard snoring. He thought that
whoever was inside must have seen him on the way back
to his room: until just a few minutes ago, he had been
almost next to the bedroom. Then he looked inside.
Alvaro was sleeping face down on the bed, fully dressed,
down to his shoes and tie. He gave the impression of
having collapsed there.