See How Much I Love You (4 page)

It was in black and white. Two men appeared in the centre, shown from the knees up. They were the same height. Both smiled at the camera, as though they were the happiest people in the world. Behind them was the front of a Land Rover with a spare wheel on the bonnet. Further back there were countless Bedouin tents, lined up all the way to the horizon. Among the tents there were groups of goats lying on the ground. The two men had their arms around each other’s shoulders, in a gesture of comradeship. They were very close to one another, their faces nearly touching. One of them had Arab features: he was wearing military clothes and making the V sign with his hand. The other was clearly a Westerner, in spite of his attire. He was dressed like Laurence of Arabia, with a long white tunic and a dark turban, undone and hanging loose over his shoulders. He had very short hair and an old-fashioned moustache. In his right hand he was holding a gun in a very cinematographic gesture. What most attracted the viewer’s attention were the men’s smiles.

The picture confused Doctor Cambra. A moment later, when she held it up in her shaking hands, she realised why: the moustachioed man in desert clothes was Santiago San Román. She traced the image with her finger, not sure whether it was an illusion. But her doubts were soon dispelled. She flipped the picture and discovered what seemed to be a dedication in Arabic, in blue smudged letters. Underneath it read clearly: “Tifariti, 18-1-1976”. The date was so conclusive that it left no room for uncertainty. If Santiago San Román had died in 1975, as she had always thought, that young man could not be the guy who, on a hot July afternoon twenty-six years to this date, had approached her and her inseparable friend Nuria while they were waiting for a bus on Avenida del Generalísimo Franco.

It happened in the early summer of ’74. Montse would never forget the date, no matter how many years went by. It was the first time her parents had gone on holiday to Cadaqués and left her at home. She’d never been on her own in her life, and that summer she wasn’t either. A maid called Mari Cruz, who cooked, made the beds and looked after her, had stayed at the house on Vía Cayetana. Montse had turned eighteen barely a month before, and had graduated from secondary school with excellent marks. Still, her father thought that in order to study medicine one needed more than an outstanding student record, so Montse was denied a summer holiday for the first time in eighteen years. And, while the days blended into each other by the sea, she attended a private academy in the morning and afternoon, where she brushed up on maths and chemistry and took up German.

The Academia Santa Teresa was situated on the mezzanine of a building on Avenida del Generalísimo Franco. There was a dance academy on the floor above it, which in the summer gave full-immersion courses from eight o’clock in the morning till nine in the evening. While Montse and her inseparable friend Nuria tried to focus on their logarithms, the desks of the classroom would vibrate to the stamping heels of the flamenco dancers or the broken rhythms of a tango. In those conditions it was easy for one’s eyes to stray to the window, and one’s attention would follow the same way, focusing on a handsome guy or the shops across the road. But the monotony was soon to be broken, on a day when Montse and Nuria were waiting for the bus, having lost all hope that something would save them from the boredom of the summer and the heat.

Perhaps it was boredom that made the two friends glance at the white convertible with very big plates that stopped on the other side of the road. It was a foreign car, possibly American. Apart from the unusual model, they noticed that inside it were
two young, handsome, very well dressed guys who would not stop staring at them. Neither Montse nor Nuria dared to say something, but they both knew that sooner or later something out of the ordinary would happen. And indeed, in a dangerous, spectacular move, the car drove across the road and screeched to a halt by the bus stop. That was the first time Montse saw Santiago San Román. Although the boy was only nineteen, his brilliantined hair, his clothes and the car made him look more mature. He and his friend got out of the car at the same time and approached the girls. ‘The service on this line has been suspended,’ he said in an accent that instantly gave away that he was not from Barcelona, ‘me and Pascualín have just found out.’ The other people waiting at the bus stop exchanged incredulous glances. Only Montse and Nuria smiled, their curiosity piqued. ‘It’ll take a day or two at most,’ added Pascualín. ‘But if you don’t want to wait that long, myself and my friend here can give you a ride to wherever you’re going.’ As Pascualín spoke, Santiago pointed to the splendid car. Pascualín opened the door on the passenger’s side, and Montse, acting on an impulse she’d never felt before, said to her friend. ‘Come on, Nuria, they’re driving us.’ Nuria sat in the back with Pascualín, and Montse in the spectacular front seat, which was ample and luxurious, covered in very pale tan leather. Santiago San Román hesitated for a second, his eyes wide open, as if he couldn’t believe the two girls had taken him up on the invitation. He got nervous at the steering wheel when Montse asked: ‘And what’s your name?’ ‘Santiago San Román, at your service,’ he replied, in a ridiculous-sounding stab at humbleness.

It was the craziest thing Montse had ever done. Sitting next to Santiago San Román, she felt the heat and the boredom float away. They drove in silence, all four enjoying the sensation, lost in their own thoughts. And so, when they went round Plaza de la Victoria and past Vía Layetana, Montse didn’t say a thing. They drove into Plaza de las Glorias Catalanas as though they
were part of a triumphant parade. Every now and again Santiago would glance at her, or turn to look at her head-on as she lifted her hair for the breeze to run through it. After a while they stopped at the Estación del Pueblo Nuevo. The sea air smelled of stagnant water. Once the car was parked, Montse opened her eyes as though she were waking up from a slumber. ‘Why are you stopping?’ she asked, with forced self-confidence. ‘This place is horrible.’

‘Okay, but you haven’t told me where you live.’

‘On Vía Layetana,’ replied Nuria quickly, less at ease than her friend. Santiago did a U-turn and drove back the way they’d come. Suddenly Montse became talkative and started asking all kinds of questions.

‘It’s my father’s car, I don’t make enough to own a Cadillac.’ ‘In a bank, I work in a bank. Well, actually, my father’s the manager, and I’ll be the same one day.’ ‘Yes, Pascualín too; we both work at the same bank.’

Meanwhile, Pascualín and Nuria were oblivious to the conversation. As Santiago answered the questions, he dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole. ‘Pull up here, please. This is where Nuria lives,’ said Montse all of a sudden. In fact the girls were neighbours, but Nuria realised what her friend’s intentions were, and reluctantly got out of the Cadillac.

‘Will you not walk her?’ said Santiago to Pascualín, reproachfully. The convertible proceeded down the road and stopped where Montse indicated. For the first time she looked him in the eyes; he struck her as the handsomest guy she’d ever met. She let him tell more lies. Santiago, however, didn’t ask any questions. It was hard enough to have to reply to the ones Montse was continually asking him. Eventually, he said: ‘This feels like an interrogation.’

‘Do you mind my questions?’

‘No, no, I don’t mind them at all.’

It’s just that when I jump into someone’s car I like to know
who the guy is,’ said Montse, coyly. ‘Don’t go thinking, though, that I do this every day.’

‘No, no, I don’t think that at all. But the thing is, I’ve told you everything, and you…’

‘What would you like to know?’ she cut in.

Santiago hesitated before asking: ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ For the first time Montse’s confidence faltered. Now it was she who hesitated before replying: ‘No, not a boyfriend as such – but I’ve got admirers,’ she said, trying to keep her cool. ‘What about you, do you have a girlfriend?’

‘No, no; I don’t like commitment.’ Even before finishing the phrase he wished he hadn’t said it. Confused and without exactly knowing why, he placed a hand on her back and stroked the nape of her neck. Montse, also without thinking clearly, drew near and kissed him on the lips. But when Santiago tried to hold her in his arms and kiss her more deeply she slipped away, pretending she was offended.

‘I have to go now,’ she said, ‘it’s getting late.’ She opened the door, got out of the car, and only stopped when Santiago San Román shouted to her worriedly:

‘Do you want to meet up some other time?’ Like a capricious child, she walked back to the car, left the books on the bonnet, scribbled something in her notebook, tore out the page, put it under the windshield wiper, picked up her books again and, after a few steps, turned and said:

‘Give me a call first. There’s the number. I’ve also written down the address and the number of the flat, so you don’t go around asking the neighbours.’ That was all. She walked to the doorway and, with some difficulty, pushed open the enormous iron door. Santiago San Román didn’t even get a chance to reply. After Montse had disappeared, he was still looking at the empty space where she had been. The girl did not have enough patience to wait for the lift. She ran up the stairs two steps at a time, hastily opened the front door, dropped the books on the
floor and ran to her room, ignoring Mari Cruz’s hello. From the balcony of her room she just caught sight of the car driving into the traffic and disappearing towards the harbour. Still, she could see that the page was no longer under the windshield wiper. She pictured it folded in four, hidden in Santiago’s shirt pocket: an immaculate, nicely cut white shirt, without a crease, its sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and with a distinction that contrasted with the social class he so tried to hide.

Doctor Montserrat Cambra was walking down the corridor of the casualty ward in a considerable state of confusion. She held the pocket of her coat as though she were afraid that someone might snatch the picture she had just stolen from a dead woman out of it. For a moment she didn’t even know where she was. Then she thought everyone was watching her. However, none of the staff she passed looked at her. She walked into the doctors’ room and closed the door behind her. She had difficulty breathing. She sat down and swallowed a pill. It was the last in the box. The coffee that Belén had poured her hours before was still on the table. She downed it in one, without even noticing it was cold. She picked up the receiver of the phone on the table, dialled reception and said in a trembling voice:

‘Doctor Cambra speaking. Please listen carefully. When the husband of the woman from the airport comes in, I need you to let me know. Don’t forget. It doesn’t matter if I’m busy. Let me know. It’s important. Thanks.’

After hanging up, she put her hand in her pocket and touched the photograph. She sat down without taking her hand out. She experienced the absurd sensation that the picture might disappear at any time. Then it would all vanish as in a dream: another dream turned into a nightmare.

T
HERE’S SOMETHING GHOSTLY ABOUT THE
S
MARA
H
OSPITAL
at four o’clock in the afternoon. Outside, the scorching sun and the dry, biting wind make it impossible for life to go about its business normally. Inside, the dark empty corridors seem entangled like a spider’s web that reaches far into the building. From a distance, the Smara Hospital looks like a mirage emanating from the redoubtable
hammada
of the Sahara.

Dressed in an olive-green uniform, Colonel Mulud Lahsen walks into the lavatories, dusting off his clothes and removing the turban from his mouth. His chauffeur waits for him in the car, under the sun. Mulud Lahsen does not take his glasses off even though the corridors are dark. Suddenly, after walking over the threshold, it seems as though he’d left the desert far behind. It smells of disinfectant. The colonel wrinkles his nose; after so many years he has never got used to the intense smell. He knows the hospital like the palm of his hand. He’s seen it grow from the foundations up, when there was nothing but sand and stones in the site. He strides confidently through the maze of corridors. He stops at the director’s office without having crossed a soul. He doesn’t knock before going in. The director is a small, restless man. Sitting behind his desk, he has his eyes fixed on a mountain of papers. He wears tortoiseshell glasses. What little hair he has left is grey. His skin is tanned and hardened by the sun. On seeing the colonel by the door, he smiles broadly. They go through a lengthy greeting of Arabic
formulae, looking each other in the eye and shaking hands.

Colonel Mulud Lahsen is tall and heavily built. In comparison, the director of the Smara Hospital looks like a child.

‘Mulud, Mulud, Mulud,’ says the director when the greeting is finally over and they let go of each other’s hands.

‘With that coat and those glasses you look like a doctor.’

The director smiles. They’ve known each other since they were children, long before they had to leave their country.

‘You’re the last person I was expecting today,’ says the director.

‘I would have visited earlier, but I’ve been away.’

‘So I’ve heard. How’s the minister?’

‘He’s got a fever,’ says the colonel with a broad smile.

‘The health minister with a fever? Doesn’t he know we have plenty of beds in our hospital?’

They both laugh. The colonel takes off his sunglasses and leaves them on the desk. His eyes are bloodshot.

‘He’s that pigheaded, you know him.’

‘Yes, yes, I know him all too well.’

As he speaks, he takes two glasses out of a drawer and places them on the desk. Then he walks across the room and lights a cigarette on the gas stove. He fills up a kettle and puts it on the hob.

‘How’s everything here?’ asks the colonel.

‘Fine, fine, as usual. We’re finishing installing the new machines. Everyone’s trying to get them to work.’

‘Is that why the hospital is so quiet?’

‘Yes. Well, in fact, we haven’t admitted anyone today. The nurses are finishing tidying the library, and trying to work out how to operate the dialysis machine. All the reagents and instructions are in German.’

‘No one’s been admitted…’

‘Today we discharged a boy who had a toothache.’

‘No one else?’

‘In fact, yes. I had almost forgotten. We’ve had a foreign
woman for three weeks. As I see her every day I forget she’s not really a member of staff. She almost died.’

‘A woman? A foreign woman?’

The director leaves the preparation of the tea for a moment and approaches the colonel. Very carefully he lifts his eyelids.

‘Let me see those eyes.’

Colonel Mulud patiently submits to the examination. His eyelids are opened wide, and the conjunctiva examined.

‘I sent you a message the day she arrived. In the report I explained all the details of her admission. I was surprised you didn’t reply, but then so many papers get lost en route.’

The director goes on speaking as he carefully studies Mulud’s eyes.

‘You have very serious conjunctivitis,’ he tells the colonel.

‘It’s the wind.’

‘And the sun. Yesterday I would have given you some drops, but we’ve run out. If you come back in a fortnight, perhaps I’ll be able to do something for you. I don’t like the look of this eye.’

At that point the colonel searches his jacket and takes out a letter. He unfolds it on the desk. The director stares at the piece of paper and instantly recognises his own handwriting.

‘So you got the report in Rabuni.’

‘I found it the day before yesterday among the papers I had to forward to the Ministry. As I say, I had to go away for a while. But what you say here attracted my attention.’

‘It’s an unusual case for me too. That’s why I wanted to know what procedure to follow.’

‘You say the woman will live.’

‘Yes, though a week ago I wouldn’t have been so sure.’

The two men go quiet for a moment. The director wipes his glasses with a flannel until they sparkle.

‘It’s difficult to say what happened, but now you’re here I’m glad to be able to discuss it with someone.’

‘Tell me. I’m intrigued.’

‘Well, you see, about a month ago an army patrol turned up
with this half-dead woman.’

‘A patrol, you say?’

‘Two men in a four-by-four. They said they’d left from Smara that morning with a group towards the Wall.’

‘Do you remember any names?’

‘No. I’d never seen them before, and they didn’t identify themselves.’

‘It’s all very strange. No patrol has informed me that they found a woman or brought her to this hospital.’

‘From what they said, they were part of a convoy travelling to the free territories. They didn’t explain much, but I understood they’d left at dawn and, thirty kilometres later, found a woman in the middle of the desert. She was one of us, a Saharawi, and signalled to them from a distance to attract their attention. When they went over, she said another woman had been left for dead about a day’s walk to the north. From what she explained, the woman had been stung by a scorpion.’

‘One of us, alone in the desert?’

‘That’s what they said.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘She was not in the vehicle. She stayed where they found her, about thirty kilometres away from Smara. And on her own, as they said, because the convoy continued towards the Wall.’

‘It’s all very strange.’

‘I thought so too. That’s why I sent the letter to the ministry. I thought you’d reply a lot sooner.’

Colonel Mulud ignores the last remark. He’d rather have an explanation. Eventually he asks:

‘Didn’t any of the soldiers give any more details about the women?’

‘They were in a hurry. For them it was just a hassle. I suggested they write a full report, and they gave me a withering look.’

‘But it was their duty.’

The director pours the tea into the glasses. The sound of the
falling liquid fills the room. For a moment words are swept aside, and both men are engrossed in the contemplation of the shiny tray.

Aza was convinced she was going to die. As she fled, she was trying to avoid running in a straight line. The sun was in front of her, so she had a slight advantage, but her legs moved more slowly than her mind dictated. She ran in a tortuous zigzag, looking for an elevation on the ground, a little mound, a slope where she could dive for cover. In a daze of anxiety, she ended up going in the worst direction. She was so nervous she couldn’t decide what to do. Before she even realised, she was running on soft sand. Her stride became shorter and clumsier. With each step she sank up to her calf. She knew she only had a very small lead, and didn’t even want to turn round to check on it. She ended up walking with her eyes fixed to the ground, in a straight line. Her shoulders felt weighed down, and her legs were burning; besides, her
melfa
was getting in the way, although she didn’t want to cast it aside and leave it behind. Then she heard a clear metallic sound that she knew well. Someone was loading a rifle – and was taking his time. She summoned all her strength and ran a bit further. At that moment a gust of wind blew around her, but even in those conditions she heard, as if right next to her, the report of the rifle. The
melfa
got tangled in her legs and she fell forward onto the sand. It all happened so fast that at first she didn’t know whether it was her own clumsiness or the bullet that brought her down.

All she could hear now was the whistling of the wind as it whipped up huge clouds of dust. Her whole body ached, but her mind was regaining awareness. Lying on the ground she couldn’t see her pursuers, which meant they couldn’t see her either. She moved a bit and touched her back without rising. She was unhurt: the bullet had missed her. Almost instinctively she clung to the ground and started digging into it. The sand was
very soft, and the wind helped. Her mind reacted surprisingly quickly. In a frenzy, she started digging with her feet, her legs, her whole body. After a few minutes she had hollowed out a considerable space in the sand. She rolled into it and started to cover herself. She placed the
melfa
over her face and covered it with some difficulty. The wind took care of the rest. After a while she was completely buried, with her face barely a few centimetres from the surface. She could hear the sound of the wind and even, depending on which way it blew, the voices of Le Monsieur and his men.

Many times Aza had heard her elders tell stories about the war. She had heard them so much that she’d stopped paying attention, but she’d never entirely forgotten them. The Saharawi shepherds who, in the seventies, had become warriors and fought the same way and using the same tactics as their ancestors. When laying ambushes for the Moroccans, the Saharawis had often buried themselves. Aza’s uncle had told her many times how, buried in the sand, he’d felt an armoured vehicle pass over him. You needed a lot of sangfroid, as her uncle had often said as well. Aza tried to remember those stories as she was in the sand, and regretted not having been more attentive, she had not anticipated how useful those guerrilla tactics might be.

Her heart felt like a bomb about to go off. Aza knew her worst enemy would be anxiety. She tried to think of pleasant things. She thought of her son and her mother. She remembered the seafront in Havana, with those old cars miraculously winding up and down the street. The desert wind started to resemble the wind of the Caribbean, whose fearsome waves broke against the rocks of the jetty. She recalled the day of her wedding. Though breathing with difficulty, she calmed herself little by little, until her thoughts blended in with the voices of the despicable men who thought they had killed her. Then she recognised Le Monsieur’s voice, speaking in French with the mercenaries who followed him everywhere. Now and again he uttered curses in
Spanish. She knew they were desperately looking for her, no doubt thinking she’d been gunned down. When her body did not appear they began to blame one another. They came so close she could hear their laboured breathing. And above their voices, she heard Le Monsieur, insulting them all and threatening to cut their throats. Aza feared her heart would give her away. She was trying to breathe deeply but very slowly. A few grains of sand slipped through the cloth of the
melfa
covering her face. She knew she wouldn’t be able stand the horrible situation for long. However, she would rather suffocate, buried, than fall into the hands of those criminals.

Every time Le Monsieur’s voice drew near, her body tensed up and her jaw locked. He got so close that for a moment she thought he would tread on her. The voices would alternately move away and return. The men were obviously walking in circles around the area where they’d seen her go down. It was an extremely tense atmosphere, and the mercenaries soon started arguing with each other. Aza knew men like that, and they were perfectly capable of killing one another because of an offence or a few insults. But the voice she heard most often was Le Monsieur’s. He was shouting himself hoarse. In the meantime, the wind was working in Aza’s favour. Not only had her footsteps been erased, but also the sand kept accumulating on the imperceptible mound that her body made on the surface of the desert, so that she became better and better hidden.

As the voices grew distant, Aza weighed up her chances of survival. It had been ten hours since she’d last drunk any water, which of course didn’t help. Also, after running away from the mercenaries, she had started sweating, and moisture was seeping out of her pores. In spite of the wind, the sand was burning hot in the sun. Any Saharawi knew full well what it meant to be stranded in the desert without water. She’d seen cases of death by dehydration, and it was a terrible end. For a moment she wondered whether it would be worse to be shot
or die of thirst. But she was so scared that she was incapable of deciding. If the men went away in both vehicles, her chances would be slim. She anxiously thought of the washing-up bowl filled with filthy water near the hellish oasis. And, listening to the maddened voices of her pursuers, she reached the conclusion that it was preferable to withstand the terrible effects of thirst to being captured by them. Her mouth felt dry and full of sand. She strove not to lose control of her body and mind. She closed her eyes and pictured herself in her
jaima
,
7
with her son next to her. She tried hard to distract herself. For a while her heartbeat almost went back to normal.

When she heard the engines of the truck and the four by four, her body tensed up once again. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed – perhaps several hours. The wind had dropped. However, she could still hear the roaring engines, as though the mercenaries were driving in widening circles and then closing in on themselves until they were very near her. Aza thought of the Spanish woman who had stayed in the Toyota. Although she hadn’t heard any more shots, she was sure that the woman would soon die. Aza herself had seen the scorpion that had stung her, but she hadn’t had enough time to warn her. If those men had not already killed her, the poison would spread through her veins and cause cardiac arrest. She pitied the woman. The noise of the vehicles was unnerving. The more upset she felt, the drier her throat became. Now and again she noticed the sweat on her skin. She didn’t remember ever having been so thirsty. She tried not to think about what would become of her if those bandits didn’t find her and she stayed at the mercy of the desert. She knew that the feeling of thirst started after the body lost half a litre of water. After two litres, the stomach shrank and it was no longer capable of holding the amount of water the body needed. She’d seen cases like that, especially in old people.
People suffering from this condition stopped drinking long before the body had met its needs. Doctors called it ‘voluntary dehydration’. Still, that wasn’t the worst case scenario. If the body lost five litres, symptoms of fatigue and fever would appear, one’s pulse would quicken and one’s skin would turn very red. After that came dizziness, intense headache, absence of saliva and circulatory problems. In a less hostile environment, you reached that phase in three days, but in the Sahara you could get there in twelve hours of intense heat. Buried in the sun, with her mouth all doughy, she knew she was sweating, but found it impossible to estimate how much water she’d lost. She had a momentary panic attack. It felt as though her skin had stuck to her bones and was beginning to harden and crack. She even felt that her eyes had sunk into their sockets as the hours had gone by. However, she drew some comfort from the fact that she could still hear very clearly what was going on, even in the distance. What she feared most was delirium, and so she tried to calm down once again so as not to be overwhelmed by the heat. Aza couldn’t get the idea out of her head that death was not caused by thirst, but by excess heat: the blood thickened in one’s veins and couldn’t carry the internal body heat to the surface of the skin. Indeed, what ended up killing you was the heat, as your body temperature rose unexpectedly and irrevocably.