Silent Island

by Pablo Poveda

  Bypassers turned around to look at us.

  I felt their eyes on the back of my head.

  “Stupid bitch!” I said. “Do you know the trouble you’ve got me in?”

  “Relax,” she said. “I’m just doing my job.”

  “For whom?” I asked.

  “Whoever pays for it.”

  “If you were a man — ”

  “What?”

  “I would punch your teeth off.”

  “You’re not making this easy for me, kid.”

  “Don’t call me kid” I said. I was nervous, frightened, with my balls up the throat. Blanca Desastres was the incarnation of evil. Diabolical, intelligent, cunning, and blunt. She had not approached me by chance. I had underestimated her. She spoke directly, lacked manners and femininity, but had plenty of courage. I knew she was going to get me in trouble. “Look, I don’t know what you think you know, but I don’t care. Understood? I can’t help you. I’m being accused of something I didn’t do.”

  “You’re not being prosecuted,” she said, “only lynched by the public opinion.”

  “That’s a lot better,” I responded. “And you are giving out pitchforks and torches by spreading your lies.”

  “That won’t take you to prison.”

  “Very clever.”

  “Tell me what I want to hear,” she said threateningly. “Then, I’ll leave you alone.”

  I do not know where that snotty girl had come from, but she was looking for a fuss.

  “I’ll tell you what you need to know” I said leaning against a lamppost. “Now, you’re going to be quiet and we’ll get out of here. Understood?”

  “What if I don’t?” she said blowing the bitter breath of spit and tobacco.

  I pushed her a few inches away with my finger on her shoulder.

  “I have my ways.” I said. “You don’t want to find out.”

  * * *

  When someone enters your life by works of chance, you can never be certain whether those people are made out of wood, flesh, or metal. Whether they will play the roles of angels or executioners. We are unaware of our present, despite being permanently nailed to it, although we are eager to know our future. I had a habit of thinking poorly of every person orbiting me. No one in their right mind would want to make my acquaintance, and therefore, anyone who did must have less than friendly intentions.

  From the first moment, Blanca was like a mosquito on my trouser leg, a genital itch. However, for the misfortune of many, I found her sooner than I expected, because probably I was not the only one going after her. She came to me, and I found her. Like two magnets, we found each other in that corner in a romantic and inconsequential fashion. I decided to get her out of there before we drew too much attention to ourselves. Clearly, no one would have thought we were a couple. She wore the typical ragged rags of a rebellious girl who followed fashion trends, whereas I was in tight torn jeans, rolled-up shirt, and ruffled hair.

  It did not take much to convince her. We got out of the neighborhood and went to one of those small and dirty bars with an aluminum countertop and rusty stools. The kind of bars that were so common in the trenches in the times of General O’Donnell, and sold one-euro coffee, high glasses full of gin, and ham and toast breakfasts. We went in, I looked at the bottles on the shelves and ordered whiskey and coke and a beer for Blanca while she locked herself in the bathroom.

  I took a table next to a tiled wall with a picture frame portraying the Virgin Mary and a Real Madrid Football Club crest. The tabletops were made of Formica and had original finishing touches proper of a historical period of Spain, a model that was ubiquitous throughout generations. The waiter, a hairy man in his fifties, came with our drinks. I thanked him and prayed the Virgin next to me, and the Real Madrid Football Club as well, that these charming and lively places would never disappear. Bars were my stronghold, my adult sandbox, and the only place where I could sit and have a drink without having to answer questions.

  “Not many girls come here, do they?” Blanca said as she sat down. “The bathroom is a mess.”

  “You’re picky, aren’t you?” I said quietly, recreating in the mockery that some people from Madrid had about people from the provinces.

  Blanca produced a tape recorder and placed it on the table.

  “Who do you think you are?” I said, lifting the highball glass. “No recordings. Take that away, please.”

  “No,” she said. “I need it.”

  I took a long drink from my whiskey and felt it galloping down my throat with exuberance. Nothing like an old spirit. I put the glass back on the table. I grabbed the plastic recorder and threw it to the floor

  The smash resonated loudly. Plastic debris, gears, and springs scattered on the ground. Among the noise of the people, some diners turned to have a glance at us. The TV muffled the noise, and everybody went about their business.

  “Hey! Behave yourself!” the waiter shouted.

  “My recorder!” Blanca shouted. I had enraged her and had her on my turf. “Are you crazy? You have to buy me a new one, asshole!”

  I took another drink. The second one always tasted better.

  “I’m sorry, really,” I said sweeping the pieces under the table with my foot. “I have a really bad temper.”

  I laughed.

  Oh, yes, I did.

  Her face read like a student poem, sad, ramshackle, and rhymeless. The girl took out a notebook. I had humiliated her. The recorder had been an excuse, but in her face, I found the answer. She was intimidated, and by ridiculing her in front of everyone, I had caused her to shrink physically. Instead of apologizing, I decided to play her game. I could not trust her and was aware that she would stab me on the back at the first chance, like everyone else.

  “Who are you, Blanca?” I asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  She took a drink of beer.

  “I want to write a report on the facts,” she said. “Then I’ll sell it to the news.”

  “Why?” I insisted. “Why here?”

  “This is an interesting place,” she said. “There is a lot of talk about you in Madrid.”

  “About us?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “It’s like nothing ever happens. You only hear about corruption scandals here. What about the rest?”

  “The rest of us survives,” I said. “That’s enough.”

  “You know?” she said, warming up. “This whole story is rotten.”

  “Look,” I told her, “we don’t need you.”

  “You need an outside opinion,” she argued. “You all are involved. Starting from you.”

  “Wow,” I said offended, folded my arms, and leaned back on my chair. “Just what I needed. The posh girl giving me advice.”

  “It is true,” she replied.

  “You’re wasting your time,” I replied. I was starting to get angry. I ordered another whiskey. “Why don’t you talk to my boss?”

  “He is in it too,” she said.

  “Ortiz? The poor wretch. He has enough on his plate with his family.”

  The girl pulled out some printouts. It was an email exchange between Ortiz and the editor-in-chief from El País. In it, Ortiz rejected a collaboration to investigate the events occurred in the city. Brief in words, he deemed everything a misfortune without any relevance.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because someone is stopping him,” said the girl. “Your boss is going to betray you.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked her. It was her who had taken me into her turf without my realizing it. I did not know if she was trying to help me or just convince me that I was on the wrong side. Luckily for me, the only absolute truth in my head was that I could not trust anyone nor anything. Even my own feelings. “Now what?”

  “Help me,” she said. “And I’ll help you.”

  “You can’t help me. You don’t know anything. This is my business.”

  “Why are you so arrogant?” she asked. “It is because I am a woman, rig
ht?”

  “Not at all,” I replied. “I love women.”

  “Of course, you do,” she said. “Who do you think you are? Bukowski?”

  “No,” I replied, sick of her insolence. “You are my problem. I can’t stand you.”

  She laughed.

  “I can’t stand you either,” she confessed. “But I’m not here to find a boyfriend.”

  “This conversation is over,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Get out of here.”

  I was being a jerk. Somehow, alcohol brought me down to earth. I recalled that Hidalgo’s stiff body was somewhere in a box, dressed as a penguin. I recalled one of those nights when we ended up in a bar at noon and started drinking without a care in the world. Drunk and wearing sunglasses, he told me that he expected to die before me. And so, he did. I suddenly got sad, collapsed, and felt flooded by anguish. Blanca said something as she stormed out of the bar. I did not hear what she said. I was already lost in my thoughts, and her words became part of the background music.

  When I came out of my lethargy, she was no longer there, but had left a present for me.

  A business card with a phone number.

  * * *

  It got dark. The city was covered in a deep indigo sky that refused to go completely black. A light breeze caressed my face. And my body — leaning toward the sea — decided to walk against the fresh current. When I got to the train station, I waited for a bus that arrived momentarily. The street was deserted. The vehicle drove along the highway, and after a couple of roundabouts, I got off.

  At the door of the funeral house, there were reporters, familiar faces, and people I had met at the university. Everybody gathered in circles and talked about the disgrace; at the same time, they hugged one another for having lost someone they had barely met. His ex-wife Lola was there among the circles. She was wearing black with her latest boyfriend, a man whose gray hair was slicked back. Possibly a businessman with a yacht and a house in Tabarca. Everybody looked nostalgic and distressed, but the truth is that no one had even phoned him in the last years of his life. If Hidalgo and I used to get drunk together, it was because something more than a friendship united us; he was alone — just like me — and that made us stronger and unrestrained. The social disaster that we dragged behind us was but a problem of relationships. We ended up finding each other. It was a matter of time.

  Only I could honestly say that I knew Hidalgo.

  I was not dressed for the occasion, nor was I in the best conditions to greet anyone. Anyway, I have never known what the right way to say goodbye is. Maybe, that was my problem. I never knew how to say goodbye.

  I took off my sunglasses and combed my hair with the fingers. I walked around the building and entered through the back door, following an employee who led me to the main room. I did it, I was inside. I went up the stairs until the third floor, making sure I would not run into any other journalist. When I got there, I saw Hidalgo in a coffin, lying with his hands on the belly, and well-dressed for the occasion. I needed a hug that I would not get. I thought of asking a stranger, but it did not sound like a good idea, although I suppose no one would have refused.

  I recognized Ortiz and the idiots who worked for the competition, so I had no choice but to say goodbye from afar. I was mourning in a corner next to the staircase when a girl sat on the first step. She was dressed in black, with dark jeans and a tight button-up shirt. She was slim, her hair was brown and fell onto her shoulders. She wept in silence. She wanted to go unnoticed while being there, next to him. I watched her for a while, trying to recall her face, but I did not know her at all. She cried like nobody else. Who was she? How did she know Antonio? I tried to refrain myself from approaching her and harassing her with questions. I was distressed too, and unlike Blanca Desastres, that girl transmitted tenderness and kindness. “Be diligent,” I told myself.

  I got close to her, dragging my butt over several steps. She noticed me and looked back discreetly.

  I dragged myself two steps closer on the stairs, and she got more uncomfortable. She stopped sobbing.

  Finally, I addressed her.

  “We’ll miss him,” I said. “Poor Antonio.”

  I listened to her breathing.

  She sighed.

  If she knew him well, she would know that only his closest friends called him Antonio. The late rector hated being called by his first name. He justified himself by explaining that a surname had a background history behind, a whole genealogy, whereas a first name was something that their parents could have chosen out of whim. In reality, he hated being compared to an old TV character. I excused myself by telling him that I found it difficult to remember surnames.

  “I guess so,” she said. Her voice was soft and childish. Her brown eyes were like two chestnuts — “Was he your friend?”

  “I was his only friend,” I said, forcing her to reply.

  However, she outsmarted me and did not answer. She was ready for my impertinence.

  “He had a big heart,” she said.

  “Where do you fit in all this?” I asked.

  “What?” she said, surprised but without turning her head.

  “Who are you?”

  “I knew Antonio,” she said. “He was my friend too.”

  “How did you meet him?” I insisted.

  “He was my teacher,” she responded.

  I guess she was lying. It was unlikely. Hidalgo served as a teacher shortly before becoming the rector. Then I recalled the words at the restaurant. He mentioned something about a project in progress, I wonder whether it was her.

  “Impossible,” I rebuked her.

  “Whatever.”

  “Are you the girl from Joaquín Orozco street?” I asked. A shot in the dark. I was following my intuition. I had to tie ends.

  She reacted the way I expected her to, poorly. Her face got paler, the muscles of her back tightened, and she sat up straight. I took her by the arm, and she fixed her gaze on my hand. “Wait, I want to help you.

  She released herself and ran from me at a nimble pace.

  That gave her away. It was her. I could not afford to get her out of my sight. I thought that she could not go very far since I knew where she lived. Both of us had something to hide. It was just a matter of time before I caught the girl off guard.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, walking out through the back door. “I’ll call the police.”

  “Don’t you understand?” I whispered. “Antonio was my friend.”

  “Get off me, lush!”

  “I know someone wanted to make him disappear off the map.”

  “Are you a cop?” she asked at the time she turned around. At last she deigned to speak. “Journalist?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not a cop.”

  “Then you’re a journalist.”

  “Yes,” I replied reluctantly. “But that doesn’t matter now.”

  “It does matter,” she responded. “Who sent you?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Was it them?” she asked. “I won’t give in to their games.”

  “Listen to me, damn it!” I said exasperatedly. “I have no idea what you are talking about, I swear.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she continued. “They’ll have to kill me first.”

  “I’m not here to kill anyone,” I said, trying to reassure her. “No more deaths, understood?”

  She burst into tears again and threw herself into my arms.

  “Antonio...” she said, sobbing. “Antonio...”

  I held her tightly, giving her a hug that she probably needed more than I did.

  “My name is Gabriel and was a good friend of Antonio’s”, I explained, listening to my voice resonating in my chest. “I don’t know who you are, but I believe you. I want you to know that I believe you. Antonio didn’t kill himself. He wouldn’t. He tried to tell me something, he warned me. I need your help. I need to find who did it.”

  The girl stepped away from me.

&
nbsp; “You don’t understand anything,” she said. “Stay away.”

  “I can’t. I have to do this.”

  “Why? Let the police take care of it.”

  “No,” I replied. “This is a personal issue.”

  “Leave it. Find another story to write.”

  “Someone is trying to implicate me. I won’t let them. I have nothing to lose.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked with curiosity.

  “Find the culprit,” I said. “That’s what I do.”

  She held my gaze for a few seconds, like a suspecting feline, and gave me her hand to shake.

  “My name is Clara,” she said. “Clara Montenegro. You have my word.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Why are you doing this?”

  “It’s a long story,” she replied. “We had better meet elsewhere safe.”

  “As you wish. How will I find you?”

  “I will call you.”

  Another name to the list.

  The girl said goodbye. A taxi showed up and she immediately disappeared leaving a cloud of smoke behind. I thought of doing the same — going home and putting an end to that fateful day — but I had no cash on me. I went back to the bus stop and waited for one to ride downtown. I waited a while before I saw a bus at the distance. The driver stopped. The vehicle was empty. I bought a ticket, walked to the back, and sat next to the window.

  Then I saw him, coming out of a patrol car.

  It was Inspector Rojo, and he recognized me.

  I do not know why, perhaps out of fear or inability to assimilate what was happening around me, but I started laughing. I took out my sunglasses and laughed, laughed out-loud while I looked at the police officer.

  He looked at me with a serious gesture.

  Without a word, I left him behind. I knew that it would not be long before I heard from him again.

  7

  The following day, I left home earlier than usual. I was tired, nervousness kept me from falling asleep. Like I was at the center of a volcanic eruption, everything around me seemed to explode in smaller pieces. I was not aware of the things that were going on until I saw myself engulfed in them.

  A quick glance at the sky revealed that that day would be hotter than usual. Just what I needed. Not only did I find myself in a troublesome situation, but the weather was about to do its part to turn my existence into a real hell. On my way to a café near my place, a shadow caught up with me.