99 Days

by Jessica Galera Andreu

  Whatever. I dressed in record time and ran to the street, where Marcos was waiting for me, riding his motorcycle.

  I practically jumped on him and held his face before he put on his helmet so that I could kiss him with the rapturous cravings that so often took hold of me. He lived every day in a quiet way and without the pressing need of someone who has to take advantage of something because it's over. But it was much more difficult for me. I was unable to get rid of that idea completely and although in his smiles I forgot even my name, every moment of silence in his house or every moment of darkness while he slept plunged me into desperation and helplessness difficult to weather.

  Mounted on his motorbike, we reached the beach. The cold that was hitting that night had left it completely deserted and the two of us were the only crazy people there. When I took off my helmet, Marcos carried me to the sand, making me laugh with continuous jokes and joking comments. He released me gently and I remained on my knees, while he took something out of the backpack he had brought with him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “It's a surprise but I warn you that this is only the first chapter. There will be another one.”

  He stood up and began to place some little candles around me.

  “Surprise? It's supposed to be me...”

  He shook his head as he clicked his tongue.

  “This has to be mutual, Claudia. Not only you surprising me at every moment and giving me incredible moments.”

  I smiled as I watched him place the candles. From my perspective I couldn't tell if he was forming some kind of drawing or word but Marcos seemed delighted with it, so I let him do it.

  “And how is it that this is just the first chapter?”

  “There will be another one, I've already told you, but not yet. It would be too hasty,” he replied, as he began to light the candles with a lighter.

  “Hasty...” I mumbled. “Don't leave for tomorrow what you can do today, Saavedra.”

  Marcos looked at me fleetingly and smiled.

  “Be patient.”

  I remained silent, unable to express in words what my mind cruelly reminded me: that there was no time, that things had to be done and said now, without absurd prologues. And as if he were able to read my mind, he stopped for a moment and looked at me.

  “It's not about living fast, Claudia, but about doing it with intensity.”

  When he had finished, he stretched out his arm and I stood up, holding his hand. We began to walk, away from the orange gleams of the little candles, which contrasted enormously with the dark sky.

  “Where are we going?”

  “How are you, Delgado? Because I'm going to make you sweat a little.”

  I smiled as we reached a rocky slope, at the base of which the waves were breaking hard. Marcos advanced in front of me, climbing, and I followed him as skillfully as I could.

  “You know what?” he asked me.

  “Tell me.”

  “My grandmother used to say that I was the personified sea.”

  “The sea?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. It was a strange comparison. Or at least peculiar.

  "Yes," he said, "I was unruly like the rough waves on a stormy day; serene at the same time, like the tide dying in the sand; deep in my thoughts and values; mysterious, by the amount of things I didn't tell him, and blue... by my eyes. My grandfather was a sailor and I suppose the comparison with everything related was more familiar to her.”

  I slipped at that moment and he stopped, alarmed. Luckily, I had managed to hold the step on a ledge and everything was a fright.

  “Claudia, are you all right?”

  “It's a good thing I didn't think of wearing a heel. You never know with my all-terrain superboy.”

  “I'll make a note for next time. My girl is clumsy.”

  He turned and gave me his hand to climb to the highest part of that place. I kissed him when I got there, quickly but intensely, like everything in Marcos' own life, at least for a while.

  “It's a nice comparison.”

  Marcos looked at me.

  “Your grandmother's. The sea and you.”

  “True.”

  When we had reached that peculiar peak, I noticed that Marcos had set the sails on the beach below us in the shape of an enormous arrow pointing to the sea. He hugged me from behind and placed his chin on my shoulder, his cheek against mine.

  I was unable to move. Marcos was preparing for the time without him, for his absence. He was always the first to tell me that he did not want to live permanently tied to his inexorable truth, to his fatal destiny but I assumed that he did not want me to lose sight of reality and abandon me completely, because then the blow would be harder, all this would end and I should go on.

  “My grandmother used to say that a person never died as long as there was a place on Earth where you could go to look for it.”

  The wind rose strongly and swayed my hair against her face. Between the air and the tide, reaching the drawing that Marcos had made, many of those little dots of light disappeared, melting into the darkness.

  "And it doesn't matter if you can see me or not," he added. “I'll always be there.”

  That night I couldn't understand that I was incapable of crying, but the truth is that I didn't do it. I just embraced him with all my strength, trying to keep him next to me by pressing his body against mine and preventing life, fate or whatever from being taken away from me.

  ***

  Marcos squeezed his eyes as he perceived the flash. It was 11:30 in the morning and he was still in bed, face down, with the sheet covering him up to his waist. When he managed to see something beyond his own dream, he found that I was holding a camera with which I captured his image again, blinding him momentarily.

  “What are you doing?” he muttered in a hoarse voice.

  “I'll take your pictures. I want many photos, hundreds of photos, thousands of photos, millions of photos.”

  He smiled, placing his arm over his eyes to prevent the light from disturbing him.

  "I think it's fantastic that you want all those photos," he replied, "but I have my dignity and these are not forms."

  I lay beside him and kissed him on the lips, causing him to put his arm away and caress my hair, still wet after my recent shower.

  "You look gorgeous just up," I whispered. “You look gorgeous when you go to bed, gorgeous when you sleep, when you get angry, when you laugh. You always are.”

  Marcos held me by the waist and stretched me over the bed, placing himself on top of me.

  “You're an angel, you know that?”

  I smiled as I took a picture of the two of us. I couldn't even see the frame, but it didn't matter how well done it might be.

  “Why am I telling you you're handsome?”

  “No, I already knew that.” Then he laughed with charming shyness. Bullshit. “You're an angel because you appear in my life right now and I can only think that if you're the beginning of what's to come, that can't be bad.”

  I stopped smiling and stroked his face.

  “Are you afraid?” I asked in a trembling voice.

  He shook his head.

  “No to death. I've been sick too long not to have assimilated what's to come. I am afraid of other things; above all, of the suffering of my own, my mother's and my father's, my brother's suffering. But if you are there, with them, if you are able to transmit to them what you transmit to me, I know that they will be fine, because you are magical, Claudia; because you find the words and the way to make everything seem better. And I am much calmer like that. I would love for you to meet them, for you to meet my mother.”

  “Mmmmm...” I joked, as if I thought so. “A mother-in-law, huh?”

  “Put a mother-in-law in your life, what do you think?”

  “The mothers-in-law whose children you are handsome are the worst. They want them only for themselves.”

  “No way, my mother's a sun.”

  “A sun that still adores its fo
rmer daughter-in-law, isn't it?”

  “Carmen is very clear about Nerea's role in my life. My ex. A friend. That's it.”

  I sighed and read in Marcos' eyes his illusion that he knew his mother. And after all, that was something you would do in any normal relationship, wasn't it?

  So I nodded, smiling.

  “I'd love to meet your parents. Your mother... especially.”

  ***

  And since everything in our life worked on impulse, the next morning Marcos and I were preparing to visit his parents, who lived only half an hour from that paradisiacal place. Although the distance was not excessive, he had managed to borrow a car from a friend of his, since the drop in temperatures in those last days of spring would have made us cold on his bike, although I would have loved to have an excuse to catch me in his waist again. As if I needed it...

  Considering that Marcos and I had studied together for five years, I had never noticed the fact that I didn't know his parents. But I didn't know them. It was around 11 a.m. when we parked in front of a little stone house on the outskirts of the city. Its façade seemed old and worn by inclement weather, but something about it gave off a nostalgic and welcoming air. Perhaps they were the pair of old, rusty bicycles that had been leaning against the wall. Marcos had told me that that house had belonged to his paternal grandparents, although during the time in which he was studying in the institute, his parents moved to the village, leaving that old and enormous house for sporadic visits in summer, since it was much closer to the beach.

  Marcos gave me his hand, while he put his backpack on his shoulder. We didn't even think about sleeping here, but the initial idea was to return at nightfall but I managed to convince him to pick up some clothes, just in case. As he had told me, visits to his parents in recent times had not been overspent because of his mother's inability to understand Marcos' decision regarding his treatment. Apparently, his father had been able to fit in better, but I assumed her posture was normal.

  “And how are you going to introduce me?” I asked Marcos, a little more nervous than I thought I would be.

  "Weren't you the one talking about not naming things?" he replied, smiling.

  “Yes, but I'm afraid that between you and me we can afford a series of eccentricities that others won't understand.”

  Marcos stopped and pushed me lightly against the wall to kiss me.

  "I love that complicit code between the two of you," he muttered.

  Every time I became a victim of such an outburst, my stomach would turn over and God knows I would have done everything right there, but, for heaven's sake, I was at his parents' house, so I just pushed him gently and recriminated his behavior with a loving gesture.

  "They can see us" I said.

  He smiled again and we continued walking hand in hand to the door, whose doorbell we rang. A few seconds later, a woman with blond hair and picked up in a tweezers looked out. Her face showed the fatigue and the sorrows of a life that had not behaved well with her according to many of the things that Marcos had

  told me along the way, and not only that day, but in previous days. Marcos told me a lot about his mother, with unconditional love, almost with veneration.

  The woman hugged him tightly, knocking his backpack over his shoulder and began to sob, while he smiled and covered her head with kisses. He could not imagine how hard it would be for her to accept her son's decision and the subsequent outcome of events.

  “Marcos, my life, why didn't you tell me you were coming?”

  “I wanted it to be a surprise, Mama. I'd like to introduce you to Claudia, my girlfriend.”

  He looked at me and smiled, winking at me.

  “Your girlfriend?” she asked, confused.

  “That's right. Claudia, this is my mother, Carmen. Claudia studied with me in high school.”

  "Delighted," I said.

  We greeted each other with two kisses and in a few seconds we were inside the house, perfectly furnished and supporting from inside the sensation that I had already had from outside: it was a place that beat nostalgia. There was something special about those houses that had seen us grow; not only Marcos' parents', but also my parents', my friends' parents', their grandparents'. A special atmosphere that somehow allowed me to imagine the six or seven-year-old Marcos running through the corridors and inventing mischiefs, as was happening to me in my parents' house.

  Marcos also introduced me to his father, Alejandro, a tall man with gray hair and a kind look. At last I was able to find out where he had got those blue eyes.

  “Son, if you had warned, I could have called Luis," said his mother again. “Your brother is dying to see you.”

  "If he's dying to see me, he can come to my house whenever he wants," answered Marcos.

  "Is that so?" said Carmen. “At times we think we have a restraining order.”

  Marcos shook his head.

  “You don't have a restraining order. The only thing I asked you to do is not to be there every day at all hours; you have a thousand things to do and a thousand matters to take care of. I don't need you to stay all day around me, as if I couldn't stand on my own. You see, I can.”

  Carmen sighed.

  “How are you, my life?” she asked as she surrounded his son's waist.

  “I'm better than ever.”

  “Yes, of course...” she murmured with a certain anger.

  “Would you like something to drink, Claudia?” His father intervened kindly.

  “A glass of water would be nice, please.”

  Marcos and I took a seat on the sofa in front of the TV turned off, while Carmen sat on the sofa situated perpendicularly. The woman kept watching his son, as if in that simple vision she could decipher his true state of health or mood, convinced that Marcos' 'best ever' had been a lie, a disguise.

  “Are you eating well?”

  “Mom, don't start. I'm not an 18-year-old child who has just become independent.”

  "I know, Marcos. Alejandro, call your son," exclaimed the woman, looking down the corridor. “Perhaps he'll have time to come and see you. Are you going to sleep over tonight?”

  “It's not the idea.”

  “But you brought things.”

  Marcos smiled at the sharp observation of his mother, who seemed not to overlook any detail.

  Throughout the morning we chatted in a relaxed way, even making Carmen's worried grimace become a nostalgic and even happy grimace, telling me a thousand anecdotes of her offspring, especially Marcos himself. His father commented each one of them with details that Carmen had forgotten and the evening was much more pleasant than she could have expected. As ridiculous, or not so ridiculous, as it might be, I had feared that her mother might reject me, because Marcos himself had told me that Nerea, his ex-wife, was still calling her, worried about his health, and so she still had to maintain a good relationship with her son's former partner. A little later, just in time to eat with us, Luis, Marcos' brother had arrived home with his wife, Diana, and a little girl, Daphne, about five or six years old, who ate her uncle with kisses, just like he ate her. Nothing had changed, at least not for the worse, but when I saw Marcos joking with that little girl and hugging his brother, I had to leave the living room, apologizing for it and asking for the bathroom. There, I burst into tears. That was the home of a united family, whose members professed unconditional love. For a moment I imagined a thousand dinners at Christmas, a thousand birthdays or occasions to celebrate. Soon in all of them there would be an empty chair and an irreparable absence. The light that Marcos gave off was too strong for his absence not to be noticed. He would never have children or many of those things that his brother had or would have, two years older than him and whom he had come to know - only by sight - in high school.

  When I came back from the bathroom, Marcos looked at me and approached me, hugging me and kissing me on the forehead, perfectly aware that I had been crying.

  “Can you really do magic?” asked little Daphne.

  I frowne
d and looked at everyone's faces, trying to understand the little girl's question: everyone had the same serene, smiling grin; everyone except Carmen, who could barely keep herself whole.

  “Daphne...” her mother murmured, as if reprimanding her.

  "Uncle Marcos says you can do magic" the little girl clarified to me.

  I looked at him, he winked at me and kept talking, as he sat Daphne on his lap and she hugged him tightly.

  "Claudia is the only person capable of making you see an aurora borealis in these lands," he explained, looking at me. “The only one able to make time stand still and the only one able to make the sun appear in the middle of a storm, suddenly and without further ado. What do you think, Daphne?”

  "I want to see it!" cried the girl.

  Marcos shook his head.

  "Claudia's magic is only for me," he replied, as if he were another little boy, arguing over the possession of a toy.

  "Why is that?" wanted to know, Daphne.

  "I was joking, precious," he said to the little girl, kissing her on the head. “Someday you'll discover how magical Claudia can be. But not yet.”

  Marcos kissed me on the cheek and... Maybe it was because I cried a few minutes ago, but between those words, which filled me with emotion, I didn't feel the need to do it again. I didn't know exactly how to take that but I had the impression that Marcos was managing to normalize in me a situation that would have devastated me at any other time.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent in the same relaxed climate that I had in the morning. We ate there and I felt extremely fortunate to be able to experience all that, to see Marcos's games with his niece, the complicit relationship with his brother, the continuous handshakes that his father gave him on his shoulder, leg or cheek.

  At about six o'clock in the afternoon, Marcos was playing in the backyard with his brother Luis and his daughter, while Alejandro watched the improvised basketball game with laughter and comments.

  Diana and I helped Carmen prepare the snack. Luis' wife was a charm with which I also shared many common tastes. Diana left the kitchen the moment Carmen came in and I finished making the sandwiches. Marcos's mother stopped, her hands resting on the worktop and snorted, head down.