The Case of Lisandra P. (18 page)

Eva Maria stuffs her hands into the pockets of her coat. She is sure she has seen Pepe somewhere before. But where? This feeling of déjà vu is getting to her. Eva Maria looks all around her in the bus. He is gifted, the old man who can read body language. But others, these passengers, like her, have their hands in their pockets, and surely not all of them have lost a child. Eva Maria is satisfied that the way she carries herself means nothing. Pepe could not have concluded anything from it other than that she felt cold. Which is true. “Crime of passion.” So he, too, thinks Vittorio may have killed Lisandra. Pepe didn't know whether Lisandra was telling the truth, whether Vittorio really had a mistress, and since the only modus operandi of jealousy is suspicion, one can never know whether the words of a jealous woman are the truth or wild imaginings. But Pepe also knows that Lisandra might have been right. He knows that it was perfectly possible Vittorio had a mistress. Eva Maria is sure that he didn't—if Vittorio had had a mistress, the police would have found out. Pepe had said that the police didn't always find out everything. Which was true. But if Vittorio had a mistress, he would have told her, Eva Maria. Pepe had replied that it wasn't always the easiest thing to confess. Eva Maria gets off the bus. He is gifted, the old man who can read body language, but there is one thing he missed. Eva
Maria is almost smiling. With petty triumph. Never for a moment did Pepe imagine that Lisandra herself might cheat on Vittorio.

 • • • 

A woman who has a lover doesn't act the guard dog at her husband's door while he's working. A woman who has a lover uses the time her husband is at work to go and be with her lover.

 • • • 

He may be good, the old man who can read body language, but he's fallible. Lisandra was cheating on Vittorio—in any case, she did cheat on him, at least once, at least four times. Eva Maria remains convinced of that. Francisco wasn't lying about their brief affair at the hotel; everything he told her, you don't go making that up. Lisandra really was “unfaithful,” even if Pepe believes the opposite. Eva Maria did not set him straight. She didn't tell him about Francisco; there was no point inflicting a new image of Lisandra on him when he thought he knew her so well, might as well let him keep the image he wanted to keep. Eva Maria is pensive. One question keeps nagging her. Why, if Lisandra was so obviously in love with Vittorio, did she cheat on him? Such behavior doesn't correspond to a jealous soul. Eva Maria shakes her head. After all, what does she know about jealousy? It's a feeling that is completely foreign to her. Maybe these two states of jealousy and infidelity are not so incompatible in the end. Maybe Lisandra wanted to try it with other men so she could forget Vittorio, so she could lessen his hold on her, regain a bit of autonomy and independence, which were so vital and so sorely lacking in her life. Or maybe it was to find out whether it would help her problem, the way the books seemed to suggest. “A repressed unfaithful individual.” And the choreography—that was what she liked to do with Vittorio. And the cologne was to remind
her of Vittorio, to make it seem as if it were him, to motivate her for the task. Eva Maria thinks about the black vultures who inhabit the craters of volcanoes, who are loyal the way few men are. One solitary partner, the same one, their whole life long. Eva Maria tells herself that Lisandra should have been born a black vulture. Eva Maria slows down. She looks at her house, a few dozen yards from here, and suddenly she thinks of her husband and wonders if she ever truly loved. Can one love if one is not jealous?

 • • • 

A woman who has a lover doesn't act the guard dog at her husband's door while he's working. A woman who has a lover uses the time her husband is at work to go and be with her lover.

 • • • 

He's gifted, the old man who reads body language, and what if he wasn't fallible? Simply ingenious and clever. Machiavellian. And what if Pepe was perfectly acquainted with Lisandra's penchant for lovers? He was in a good position to know.

 • • • 

One month without seeing her, you can imagine how worried I was, so I went by her place. I never do that as a rule, go by an absent student's place, but in this case I couldn't help it, no doubt because it was Lisandra. I liked her a lot.

 • • • 

And what if he loved her, period. Quite simply.

 • • • 

But Lisandra . . . kept to herself; in any case, that was what I believed then.

 • • • 

And what if one day she went and stood in front of him, like she'd done with Francisco, to invite him to sleep with her. How could he resist?

 • • • 

She was graceful; she had the grace of ten women put together . . . She had what might have been the most harmonious body I've ever seen.

 • • • 

And then she was young, so young. Could Pepe have been Lisandra's lover? His tall, slim body still had the strength, more than enough. And what if this Mariana whom Pepe had spoken about was none other than Lisandra herself? That, too, was possible. And what if that crazy adventure had occurred only recently? And that, like with Francisco, Lisandra had grown weary of him? What if she had broken it off? And what if Pepe had disrespected the contract, the way Francisco had? That would explain why Lisandra hadn't been to class for a month. And what of Lisandra's jealous laments? His own, Pepe's own demons, his own madness expressed through Lisandra's words. And the reconciliation with his wife, a sentimental enough story, the better to throw her off the track. Eva Maria removes her coat. She hangs her bag on the coatrack. Her gestures are hurried. She opens the door to the bathroom. And what if she'd been misled by that man? It's not the case that because his insight was virtually divination he was necessarily a good person. On the contrary, his extreme acuity about people made him formidable. He could control, bewitch, skew things. Perhaps he had manipulated her all through their conversation. He didn't seem the least bit surprised when she showed up at his place to question him about Lisandra, and he engaged with her endeavor with astonishing understanding and zeal, like an
arsonist helping firefighters to extinguish a fire he himself ignited. And that feeling of déjà vu? Her sixth sense? Her sixth sense that was trying to get her to focus on Pepe:
Watch out, girl, there is something going on here, pay attention, don't let this guy just slip by.
What if he were the lover Eva Maria had been looking for all this time? Supposing on the evening of the murder Pepe went to Lisandra's place to try to get her back, a desperate, last-ditch attempt. He knocked on her door. Lisandra opened, a glass of white wine in her hand.
What are you doing here?
Pepe gave her no time to react, he pushed his way past her through the open door. Lisandra was alone. Pepe went into the living room where the tango music was coming from, and he saw this as a good sign: maybe if she was listening to tango it meant she was thinking about him. And he opened his heart, naïve as he was.
Lisandra, I can't live without you. I told my wife everything. That I love you. That I want to live with you. Lisandra. Look at me. And don't tell me you don't love me. Not after what we have had together. Don't take yourself away from me. You are my reason for living. It is only when you are near me that I don't hear the seconds ticking by. Come back to me, Lisandra.
And what if Lisandra had told him to leave? Coldly, the way she had ended her relationship with Francisco.
But I don't want you to leave your wife. I never asked you to. Don't act all surprised. Don't act as if we have some big love story together. Don't let your imagination play tricks on you. We were fucking, that's all. And you know it very well, it was just a way to kill the boredom, to follow through on the principle that underlies any attraction between a man and a woman who spend too much time in each other's presence. To remove the tension. That's all that happened. It went further than expected. The context was favorable. But Pepe, a favorable context, an opportunity, that's not what life is made of. And at your age . . . I can't be teaching you anything new. “Don't bring my age into it.” And yet that's the root of the problem. If you want my opinion, you've chosen the wrong
sorrow. It's not me you want to hang on to; you want to hang on to an equivocation, not love—what you want is to go on not thinking about death. It's true that I was attracted to you, but that's over. I'm sorry. I never force attraction, just as I never compel it. You and I fucked just as I fucked others, and it was no more important with you than it was with the others.
And the more Lisandra spoke, the louder Pepe put the volume on the record player, to drown her out. She shouted,
Stop, stop that at once!
Her gaze fell on one of the little porcelain cats in her collection on a shelf in the library—maybe it had been a present from Pepe—and she picked it up and threw it to the floor. Thus triggering the irreversible. And what if Pepe was Lisandra's murderer? He still had the physical strength, more than enough. An old volcano is sometimes more dangerous than a young one. Go after another body. Catch it. Shake it. Push it out the window. “A crime of passion.” What if it was his crime? “It's not every day that casual fucking of this caliber comes knocking on your door.” Francisco's right, an insane person can drive you insane, but so can a young one. Francisco was too young to know it, but young people can drive their elders crazy. Particularly where their bodies are concerned. Above all when youth flaunts its sexuality in front of old age. Their skin is too smooth, their thighs are too firm, and their breasts are too haughty for old age ever to agree to let them go without pride taking a severe beating. And wounded pride can turn criminal. Eva Maria flushes the toilet. When will the range of possibilities ever stop expanding? It's all just supposition and guesswork. No tangible proof. No material proof. Hearsay, from this person, from that person. Eva Maria's head is splitting from all the words. And she feels sick. She can't think anymore. But what about that feeling of déjà vu? Was it Pepe's voice that reminded her of someone? Was Pepe one of Vittorio's patients? Had he been using this subterfuge in an attempt to see Lisandra one last time,
or worse, to reveal everything to Vittorio—the fact that he loved Vittorio's wife, was crazy about her, crazier about her than about any other woman he had ever loved, because he knew she would be the last one? Had Pepe's voice been on one of the cassettes? Pepe's secrets? Had there been a man telling Vittorio the story of his passion for a married woman, hoping to get him thinking, already planning to tell him in the last session that this married woman was none other than Vittorio's own wife? No, that wasn't the case.

Eva Maria picks up the telephone. After all, it was the last place Lisandra went, it might be important; she mustn't leave anything up to chance.

“Good morning, señora, I'd like the number for a toy store in San Telmo: Lucas Juegos.”

“One moment, please, I'll check that for you . . . 361-7516.”

“Thank you. Have a good day.”

Eva Maria hangs up. Dials again. It rings for a long time. Finally a man's voice replies.

“Lucas speaking!”

“Good morning. I'm sorry to bother you. I'm calling because some time ago now, already a few weeks ago, a young woman stopped by your shop. She bought two little porcelain cats. And I would like to know—forgive me, I know this is a rather strange call—but I would like to know whether you noticed anything odd about her behavior, I don't know, if she said anything in particular to you.”

Only silence on the line.

“Or maybe you weren't there?”

“Yes, yes, I'm the only one here . . . Two little porcelain cats, you said?”

“Yes.”

“No, to be honest, I don't remember; I'm sorry, but I can't keep track of all my customers.”

“Of course, I see. I'm the one who's sorry; forgive me for disturbing you.”

The wrong track again. Simply an idea of Lisandra's to thank Pepe for listening to her, give him a little present. Eva Maria stifles a cry. Of course! That's it, of course, that's where she saw Pepe.

Eva Maria tears into the bedroom in a rage. She opens her desk drawer. She recognizes him at once. Pepe. There. On the photograph before her eyes. The old man at the funeral, of course; that's where she's seen him. Eva Maria reaches for her glasses. She leafs through the photographs. It's him all right, crushed with sorrow; he looked much older than the man she has just left but it was him all right. Eva Maria thinks back. He and his wife had stood for a long time by the coffin; she had assumed they were Vittorio's parents. This is not how you come to mourn the passing of a mistress. With your wife's hand held tight in your own. The old woman looked as upset as Pepe did. To have wanted to slip a mistress between this touching couple seems sacrilegious now. Eva Maria is sorry she even thought of it. She was wrong. Pepe had never been Lisandra's lover. Eva Maria wonders whether the old woman can also read body language, if it's a thing that “runs in couples” the way you say “it runs in families.” Eva Maria looks closer. She picks up her magnifying glass. A face as smooth as her hair is white. A candid gaze. The same wisdom. But suddenly it's another face that draws Eva Maria's attention. She holds the glass closer to the photograph. What was she doing there? At the back. This lovely young woman, too calm. Eva Maria leafs through the photographs.
Feverishly. There she is, there. And there. Her face too impassive to be attending a funeral, almost detached. Something about her physique, about her attitude, intrigues Eva Maria. It's not the fact that she's beautiful, no, that's not it. It's that she
made herself beautiful.
The young woman had done herself up. Her eyes more made up than mourning, her lips more colorful than distressed, she'd made herself beautiful, the way you do to go to meet your lover, not to go to a funeral. Her outfit reflected more of a desire to be stylish than to show traditional restraint; only the black coat was in keeping with the occasion, but in other circumstances that black would have been sexy. Eva Maria goes from one print to the next. The young woman's gaze is veiled, it's true, but with a strange sort of veil. A veil of absence, when you're hoping to see someone who is not there, but not a veil of death, when you've lost all hope of seeing someone who won't come ever again. And on this photo, her gaze is riveted on the police car: who was she staring at so intently, with what Eva Maria sees as desire? Did she think Vittorio was in the police car? Behind the tinted glass windows? Eva Maria is worried by the presence of this too-beautiful woman. She looks every bit the mistress who has come to signal to her lover,
I'm here, I'm still here.
Of course she would still be there. She couldn't go see Vittorio in prison without running the risk of betraying them; if there is proof that a man has a mistress then he seems even more likely to have killed his wife. Of course she would be there, that made-up doll, hoping to see Vittorio at the funeral, from a distance, hoping to exchange a gaze with him that would keep them going for days, weeks, a smile, a handshake. Had she prepared a few words, a love note, a letter, a photograph of herself naked, something, some lover's idea? This too-beautiful woman worries her. Eva Maria had not noticed her in the photographs until now. To notice her, she would have had to suspect, for even just a second,
that Vittorio had a mistress. Now at last Eva Maria is forced to consider what she should have thought of right from the start: what if Vittorio really did have a mistress? What if Lisandra had been right? Eva Maria can't think straight anymore. Because she knows what she has to think next. Eva Maria gets up. She heads to the bathroom. She opens all the cupboards. She slams them shut. She opens the dresser where she keeps her underwear. She rummages among her bras, tosses them on the floor, opens the drawer below, rummages, gives a kick to the open drawer. The wood splits. Eva Maria leaves her room. In a rage.