The Case of Lisandra P. (13 page)

“You don't want to see justice done. What you want is to get your revenge.”

“My revenge for what?”

“You're jealous, Francisco.”

“Jealous of what? Tell me. Some guy whose wife cheated on him for nearly three months? Please, Eva, use your head.”

“Jealous of the husband she cheated on yet didn't leave. May I remind you that you are the one she left. Not him. Some lovers
have the distinctive gift of returning a wife to her husband more loving than ever. Moreover, he could make love to her whenever he wanted; that must be hard to bear, or am I wrong? Did you know that your relationship would go no further? That's why you allowed it to deteriorate. Or am I mistaken?”

“Yes, you're mistaken, across the board. That's absolute nonsense. I don't even know why I told you all that, maybe so you would drop the matter, but it seems it's a specialty with you, not to want to look truth in the face. Go ahead, think whatever you like, I don't give a shit. Fuck off!”

Eva Maria climbs down off the stool. She turns around to face Francisco.

“In fact, if I sat at the counter, it's only because I left the house in a hurry, without taking my bag, and I figured you might treat me to a little coffee at the counter. You see, you don't always guess right.”

Eva Maria does not tell Francisco that she could see Lisandra's window from there, but not from her usual spot. Eva Maria doesn't tell him that she wanted to see if the cops were preparing the reenactment for the following day. She would have liked to have seen what that Commissioner Perez looked like. Eva Maria leaves the bar. She turns around. She looks one last time at Francisco as he sweeps up the broken glass. She shouldn't have given him such a hard time, she went too far, but he annoys her with his certainty, his conviction. She wanted to teach him a lesson, to prove to him that even the tiniest bit of bad faith can make anyone seem guilty. But she knows very well that he isn't guilty. She likes Francisco. She always has. She feels sorry for him, pities him more than anything. Life allowed him a glimpse of the sublime, only to snatch it away again. Eva Maria knows that Francisco is not Lisandra's murderer. His way is to dwell on things, rehash them, not to lash out. He will
never get over that affair, but he would never have pushed Lisandra out the window. All he can do now is to transform his sorrow into hatred for Vittorio, into an absolute conviction. One absolute conviction pitted against another, that is the way of the world. Eva Maria climbs onto her bike. She looks up at the window. Darkness reigns. Back to square one, yet again. Time to decide whether to stop. Or to go on. Eva Maria cannot drop Vittorio, just like that.

Eva Maria lights a cigarette. You don't make it up, the sort of thing Francisco just told her. She now has a very important element for the investigation, and Vittorio didn't know about it, otherwise he would have told her. The police want to cover up this business about a lover, because they are firmly convinced of Vittorio's guilt, they don't want to be hampered by a testimony that might allow doubt to creep in, and besides, this so-called lover has an alibi, so it's nothing to make a fuss over. Or else—yes, maybe that's it—they're saving it for the trial, this business about a lover, it's their trump card; they'll take it out at the last minute so that Vittorio won't have time to prepare his defense. Lisandra had—or used to have—a lover; Dr. Puig knew about it and killed her out of jealousy. “Simplistic” it may be, but it happens too often not to be convincing. That Commissioner Perez. The neighbor. And now Francisco. All these people who want to make Vittorio pay for the wrong reasons: she finds it disgusting. Eva Maria suddenly pictures the offhand manner in which Commissioner Perez must have analyzed the crime scene; convinced as he was of Vittorio's guilt right from the start, he certainly didn't try to interpret the elements in any other light. She absolutely must inform Vittorio's lawyer about Francisco; she has to call him. What was his name again? She can't remember. She strikes her hand against the
wall. It won't come to her. The sound of that unfamiliar, formal voice had destabilized her; she had not retained the lawyer's name—surprise had blocked her memory. And fear, too. Every time she heard an unfamiliar voice on the phone, she dreaded it was someone about to tell her they had found Stella's body. Eva Maria opens her desk drawer. A green file: “His lawyer . . .” “Vittorio Puig's lawyer . . .” “his lawyer . . .” The lawyer's name did not appear anywhere in the press clippings. Eva Maria closes the file, the drawer; she's going to have to wait until her next visit—five more days until she can find out more. Eva Maria is smoking. Francisco and Lisandra, Lisandra and Francisco—their affair is not the key to Lisandra's murder, she is sure of that; at most it is a symptom, but not the key. And Eva Maria is looking for the key. The murderer. Eva Maria reaches for her glasses. She opens her notebook. She rereads. Attentively.

door to the apartment open

loud music in the living room

window open in living room

chairs on the floor

lamp overturned

vase on the floor, broken

water spilled

figurine broken (porcelain cat)

wine bottle

two broken glasses

lying on her back

head to one side

icy forehead, trickle of blood

eyes open, puffy

She shakes her head. Turns the page.

wearing a pretty dress

high heels

Eva Maria nods. She underlines.

wearing a pretty dress

high heels

Clearly Lisandra had dressed to seduce. And such a desire to look good is rarely for oneself alone. So who was Lisandra out to charm that evening? A lover? Eva Maria gets undressed. She climbs into bed. Her little notebook by her side. Eva Maria tries to imagine the tribulations of an adulterous soul. What if Lisandra had invited her most recent lover home, determined to cheat on her husband in their own apartment, on their own dresser, on their own floor, in their own bathroom, in their own bed. That would explain the bottle of white wine, the two glasses, and the tango, so conducive to romantic couplings. And what if things went wrong with this man? That might explain the loud music, sound masking a deadly argument. And it's not that easy to find lovers who have Francisco's nobility of soul. He's a good guy, Francisco, Eva Maria knows that, everyone knows that. With Francisco, Lisandra did not go wrong. He had been the right person to do what she wanted, insofar as Eva Maria could understand what it was that Lisandra wanted to do with him. Eva Maria thinks of Francisco's hands as they folded a towel before him, as he was drying the glasses—maybe initially Lisandra had succumbed to the charm of his hands? Eva Maria could see why. Manly hands, but also light, agile, skillful hands. Eva Maria imagines them on her breasts, on her buttocks, his fingers sliding wherever she let them. Francisco is a good guy, but not all men are as gentle, as good; some volcanoes are dangerous and others
are not dangerous at all. Perhaps his successor had been even more undisciplined than he was; there are those who stay in the room in hopes of impetuously declaring their love, and there are those who hurl things out of windows out of anger and spite; it can move from here to there, the cursor of passion. With another man Lisandra might have gone wrong, and if her choice had landed on a gray volcano, the most dangerous kind, a man who couldn't stand for Lisandra to be constantly calling the shots where his life was concerned, where his prick was concerned, well, such a man might have been capable of killing her. Those who are insane can take others down with them. Francisco was right. Was Lisandra a nymphomaniac? Eva Maria tries to imagine the tribulations of an adulterous soul. She never cheated on her own husband; she was never that hung up on sex, and besides, since Stella's disappearance, sex hasn't existed—a bed is only used to sleep in; a man is useless, or useless for that, in any case. There was her sexuality before the death of her child, then her sexuality after. A dead child returns to its parents' living bodies when they couple, and it inflicts the painful memory of their dead treasure's procreation, and that painful memory takes hold, plays over and over, and becomes abstinence. Or at least that was how it was for her. Eva Maria tosses in her bed. Turns. That posture, even more assertive from behind, skirt lifted, ass held out: what was the purpose of such posed embraces? Artificial embraces, on command: what was the purpose of such unvarying playacting? It was no ordinary adultery. Lisandra might have been a nymphomaniac, but it wasn't just that; there was something else going on. And what if the most important thing was not to find out
who
Lisandra was deceiving Vittorio with, but
why
she was deceiving him. Was it simply that Lisandra was cheating on Vittorio because there were things she could no longer do with him? That she no longer dared to do with him? Force of habit, the weight of everyday life had crushed the very
delicate temperament of eroticism. Her skirt pulled up over her bare ass. That is not how you wait for your husband to come home. “What are you doing in that getup?” he would have asked, one hand on his satchel, the other holding a loaf of bread, and all that was left for the bitch in heat to do was to pull down her skirt and roll up her sleeves and make dinner. She would blush, not from the heat of the oven, but from the slap given to her lustful appetite. Her husband's appetites being located above his belt, below her own belt Lisandra could sense her cunt weeping.
Take a lover. Take a lover.
All right. But it wasn't as simple as that. And that business with the cologne? It must mean something; it was no coincidence that Lisandra had asked Francisco to wear the same cologne as Vittorio, no, it could not be a coincidence. So what was it? A symbol for something that must be terribly important to her. Something suddenly occurs to Eva Maria. Could Vittorio have been impotent? She had never talked about sex with him. She would have liked to, then she could have recalled the advice he would have given her and tried to approach the matter from that angle, to see whether any such impotence or frustration surfaced anywhere in his words. And that might be why he didn't tell her that Lisandra was cheating on him, not to have to give himself away. And what if Vittorio knew that his wife was cheating on him? Maybe they had even planned it together: the hotels, the identity of the lovers, the limits beyond which they must not go, perhaps the number of times per substitute lover, a number they must not exceed, the gestures; and the cologne was intentional, the better for her to imagine Vittorio, that was why she asked her lovers to wear it. Eyes closed, too. No, it couldn't be; Vittorio would have told her about it; he would immediately have suspected that the crime might originate there. And he would have told her everything; but then, like all men, Vittorio cared more about his freedom than his male pride. So he knew nothing about it. But then what?
How far back did the truth go? And what if the truth, instead of stopping with Vittorio, went beyond him, and what if Vittorio himself had been used by Lisandra? Maybe he already wore that cologne at her request. Maybe Lisandra had given it to him as a simple Christmas or birthday present, her gesture already concealing the desire for some lost paradise. And what if the key to the entire drama lay not in what came after Vittorio but in what came before him? The man she had come to weep about so helplessly in Vittorio's office, for example, the first time they met? What if he was the one behind all this? This so-called Ignacio. But how to find him? Eva Maria feels as if she has a tree in her head, and buds of suspicion are constantly sprouting, all of them valid, all of them pointless. But perhaps it's none of all that. Poetical, fantastical, Lisandra had come up with the dream-fuck plan, and she set it all out, everything she fancied, in the order she fancied. After all, it was an alluring idea. To give rhythm to the gestures of love, a kind of choreography. Lisandra was a dancer. And what if she found eroticism in extreme habit? But something suggests to Eva Maria that no one on earth enjoys habit to that degree. Eroticism also stems from surprise. With her hand on her cunt, Eva Maria feels a warmth she has not known in a long time. Tonight, in her bed, she feels like making love. An image springs to mind. Or perhaps she summoned it. Eva Maria pauses for a few seconds. Somewhat surprised. Somewhat bashful. She did not expect to be thinking about him. But she figures it is surely part of the game, and in the end it hardly matters, after all, whether it's him or someone else. With her hand on her cunt, Eva Maria blushes. She doesn't feel it. Her senses are elsewhere. Eva Maria had not had an orgasm in a very long time. She turns on her side. Eva Maria has not fallen asleep this quickly in a long time.

Eva Maria screams. She is suffocating. She cries out, frozen in her bed. Estéban comes into the bedroom. Eva Maria opens her eyes. She rushes to hold him.

“Stella, my dear, you are here; I was so afraid.”

“It's me, Mama, it's me, Estéban.”

Eva Maria pushes him away.

“Go away!”

Eva Maria hits him. In the chest.

“Go away! Go away!”

Estéban gets up. He leaves the room. Eva Maria goes on sitting there. Her hair is dripping. Another nightmare; she can't take it anymore, all these nightmares. Eva Maria tries to remember. Stella falls, there was a robin, and a radiator; what else? Eva Maria cannot recall. There was Francisco—yes, that's it, Francisco was there, too, or Vittorio; she can't remember. Eva Maria takes her head in her hands. She wonders what matters more with nightmares, the things you remember or the things you forget. Eva Maria rubs her mouth. She recalls the huge peacock in Vittorio's office. That, too, must have been in her nightmare. Francisco or Vittorio? In any case, there was a man, standing, from the back, wearing a jacket.