by Susana Aikin
There was once a situation, however, where there had been a breach of this script. It happened during a vacation on the Basque coast when I was eight years old. Father and I had stayed late on the beach to watch the sunset while Marion and Julia returned to our rented cottage with Nanny. We had walked the length of the shore toward the lighthouse, hardly realizing how far we’d gone. Now we were hurrying back to make it in time for supper. It had been a coldish summer on that northern coast, and cool gusts of wind blew from the sea, giving me goose bumps over my sunburned skin. I turned to Father, who seemed to be lagging behind, and saw him standing clutching his chest with both hands. I ran toward him while he sat down on the sand, shivering, beads of sweat on his pale face, teeth chattering behind blue lips. I embraced his cold body in a panic, while he whispered, “It’s nothing, Anna, just give me a moment,” and then he lay down on the sand. I thought of covering him with sand, of finding a large stone that would still hold some warmth from the sun, but all was growing cold as the last rays melted into the horizon. I looked around the deserted beach in despair, and then spotted a small fishing boat gliding through the waves about a mile away. I stood up and ran toward the water, screaming at the top of my voice, but soon realized my shouts were being carried inland by the wind. I took off my red dress and waved it frantically at the boat. “Help! Help! My father is dying.” Unheeding, the boat continued its dreamy cruising through the cobalt waves. I ran back toward the lighthouse in the encroaching darkness, taking turns between yelling and catching my breath, until the coastal guards spotted me from the road and came to my help. They took us to hospital, where Father was diagnosed with a severe bout of pneumonia, produced by overwork and stress.
Before being taken back home to Nanny by the guards, when I approached his hospital cot to say good night, Father said, “Anna, I think you saved my life today. You are very brave. We make a good team. You will always be my girl-boy.” I swelled with pride as if he had bestowed on me a badge of courage. From that moment on, the girl-boy thing remained as a private, secret complicity between Father and me, something that excluded Marion and Julia, because “they were just girls” while I had earned a higher place in his regard, in that remote and superior world of men.
But some apparent privileges lead down indentured paths. Years later I would come to realize the consequences of our bond. Father with his girl-boy. I understand how this twisted term had held me captive and rendered me incapable of refusing him anything. And the first time I got a glimpse of what this meant was precisely in Father’s studio, one afternoon back in the day, when it was still the stately, elegant room where he conducted business from the house.
It was my first meeting with Father as an adult. I remember gliding along the smooth, polished floor toward the plush, buttoned leather couch, and sitting opposite Father. He studied some paperwork on his lap, and took a long minute to lift up his eyes and say, “I called you in, Anna, because I need to discuss something important. Just bear with me for a moment,” and returned to his documents.
I inhaled deeply in order to quench my increasing sense of anticipation, and looked around the room at the beautiful dark mahogany furnishings, the English desk with a green leather top, the hand-carved bookshelves neatly filled with books, the oil paintings on the walls. It had to be the happiest day of my life. The day before, I had received a letter from Saint Martin’s with an unconditional offer to study literature and dramatic art starting in September, and ever since I had been mad with joy.
“Well, Anna,” started Father, stacking his papers into order on the long coffee table. “First of all, let me congratulate you for having been admitted into Saint Martin’s. I hear it’s an outstanding school. I’ll be happy to provide tuition and living expenses for you. However”—Father halted for a moment, took off his glasses, and wiped them off with one of those soft little white cloths—“I want to propose a better plan.”
My heart fell into my stomach, while a vague fear started thickening around me like a fog. Father checked that his glasses were clean, put them back on carefully, and pierced me with his ice-blue irises. “I want you to take a gap year and work for me at the office. Learn the business; equip yourself with professional skills that will allow you to take over the company in the future. Then you can go study dramatic art and take it wherever you like. If you find it doesn’t put bread on the table, as it happens frequently with the arts, then you always have something to fall back on. And who knows, maybe one day you might want to take over the whole company.”
“But I don’t want to work in an office, I want to study acting,” I said, and felt my voice trembling, as the unsteady flutter of my heart radiated to every region of my body.
“What is one year? Nothing. At my age you will see it as a drop in the ocean of time. But it’s a perfect slot to learn the workings of the business. I’ll pay you well. I promise, Anna, you’ll have no regrets. Why don’t you start on Monday?”
“Can’t we do it the other way around? I m-mean . . .” I stammered.
“No, Anna. This is the way we do it. It’s my condition if you want me to foot the bill later on.” The phone rang and Father walked over to the desk and picked up. He lifted a finger indicating that I wait while he spoke into the receiver. “Maloney? I’ve been trying to reach you. Do you have a moment to talk about this contract?”
The meeting was over. I fought back tears as I carefully folded the admission letter from Saint Martin’s and put it back in my pocket. Nothing I could say would change Father’s mind. He’d already made his decision. In fact, he’d probably made his decision a long time ago. I walked out of the study.
On Monday I started to work for him.
* * *
Delia’s voice trails from downstairs. “Thinking about it is not going to help. Let’s just get on with it, shall we?” I let her words reverberate in my ears for an instant, while the inexorable notion grips me once again: There’s no turning back from what we’ve started here, we need to push forward till the end.
I take a breath and walk downstairs.
CHAPTER 11
Delia sits in her chair by Father’s studio, slowly fanning herself. I feel the intense draw of her dark glance as I approach. Something in me shrinks and wants to slink away, like a cowed dog in the face of unknown shadows. There’s the uneasy foreboding of some ordeal ahead, some albatross I should beware. But ignoring my disquiet, my legs just carry me along like soldiers, blind and undeterred.
I stand in front of Delia. “How do we proceed with the cleaning?” I ask.
“Someone needs to give access to the space, if Julia won’t.”
“Like me for instance?”
“It could be you. Were you the last person to close this door?”
“I think so. I had to get Father’s documents when he was in hospital.”
“Was that the last time anyone was in this room?”
“No, actually. The agency inspected the whole house, this room included.”
“That doesn’t count. You were the last person from the family to close this room, so you can be initiated to clear the way.”
“Initiated? Can’t I just walk in there?”
“You know the answer.” Delia eyes me carefully from behind her fan. “There’s no use stalling, time’s running out. We need to be done before the moon comes up.”
“The moon?”
“Yes, and today is full moon,” Constantine adds, his voice full of a sort of eagerness. “Actually, a day before full.”
I look at him, intrigued. But before I ask any questions, Delia says, “You should know this is for your own protection.”
“Why exactly would I need protection?”
“You don’t want to absorb any negative energy released in the cleansing, all right?” I nod like an automaton. All of a sudden I feel collapsed, something inside me has folded in, like an empty bag falling on itself. I’m incapable of putting up resistance.
Still, I need a moment to myself. “Can I
go wash my hands before we start?” I ask.
“Yes, that’s a good idea. Wash your hands. Thoroughly.” I look at Delia, unsure if she’s joking or for real. But those eyes now posing like black ravens are unknowable.
And of course there’s no running water to wash hands with.
I walk toward the bathroom by the library, anyway. I close the door behind me and feel instantly safe. What is it with bathrooms today? I think. This one is a rhapsody in dark blues. I brush the palm of my hand along the narrow walls of indigo mosaic tiles and avoid looking at my reflected image in the slim mirror. I sit on the toilet seat instead and lean my elbows on my knees, bury my head in my hands. I need to shoo away my unease. I stare at the night-blue tiles on the floor paved in crisscross patterns. I’ve seen this image countless times, I know it by heart.
I’m an expert in idling inside bathrooms, my ultimate refuge from the blustering mundane. It all began after I started working for Father. I couldn’t stand the office, with its mercantile banality, its ridiculous power games, the stifling smell of endless yards of wall-to-wall carpet, the long empty hours among functional furniture. I could only spend so much time immersed in this world before I felt I would explode. Like holding your breath underwater. Then I discovered bathroom breaks, the only venue to get away, to reconnect with reality. I used to smuggle a book into the bathroom, and lock myself in; a book of poetry mostly, poems being the most efficient way of getting a quick shot of sap, instant flashes of piercing beauty capable of replenishing the deadened mind. A few stolen stanzas from Rimbaud’s “The Drunken Boat,” or Neruda’s “The Song of Despair.” I stretched out my time inside the stall for as long as possible, until someone came looking for me or needing the toilet, and summoned me with a soft, cautious knock. After all, I was the boss’s daughter, and everyone walked on eggshells around me, all smiles and graces, and delicate raps on the door.
The offices of MBE—Maquinaria Británica en España—Father’s company, were located in the modern, upcoming quarter of Madrid called Nuevos Ministerios, a neighborhood of stylish apartment buildings with sleek façades and tall windows, where an increasing part of the international community was taking up residence or renting workspace. The company imported all sorts of heavy machinery for public works. The office was on the ground floor of a building surrounded by evergreen and rock gardens, an open space of over four thousand feet, with plush beige wall-to-wall carpet under modish desks and state-of-the-art electric typewriters, fax machines, telephone equipment, and even a computer or two. Father’s personal office was at the far end, a large room surrounded by windows, some looking out to the gardens, and others looking out to his employees’ desks. Opposite his mahogany corner table was an elegant sitting area behind which hung a large replica of a Kandinsky picture, a colorful juxtaposition of geometric forms, where circles, triangles, and linear elements interacted in a show of explosive vitality.
I had always thought bringing artistic images into a dreary mercantile reality was brilliant. In the beginning, every time I walked into the office, I couldn’t but admire this combination of functional and artistic. But when I started working there I soon noticed that my perception became immune to all art and its stimuli, and that the territory of the endless beige carpet swallowed the whole space. Its whorl of sawdust yellow pulled at my eyes each time, abstracting my mind from all but my muffled footsteps walking across its tedious landscape. I learned to dread the beige wall-to-wall like nothing else in that office.
Besides Father, of course.
It was 1990 and Father’s business was reaching its golden age. Contracts and orders poured in endlessly. At that time there were around thirty employees in the office—secretaries, engineers, accountants, salesmen, and administrative assistants. Everyone welcomed me politely the first day I came in to work. But Father took me immediately into his office, where I spent that day and many of the following, sitting around and bored to tears watching him interact for hours on the phone, aligning stacks of papers around his desk, and giving orders to everyone in short, clipped sentences. For the first four weeks he insisted I remain by his side and just observe him conduct business.
“Oh, if someone had given me this chance from the start, instead of having to learn everything from scratch,” he kept saying. “There’s no university in the world that can teach you the true golden nuggets of business. You are very privileged, Anna, believe me!”
Olga Morris was still working for him those first months, and her desk was just outside Father’s office. She scurried in frequently, bringing papers and documents for him to sign, or just messages from clients she had talked to on the phone. She gave me friendly side-glances with her long-slit crocodile eyes and offered to make me coffee. But I always declined, intent on keeping her at arm’s length. Every ninety minutes or so she brought Father a cup of coffee she made in the office kitchen, pouring boiled water over Nes-café instant coffee and adding Carnation powdered nonfat milk. She brought it over to his desk together with little pink sachets of saccharine, a product she had introduced, pitching it as a healthier alternative to sugar. The resulting beverage was gruesome, a thick, dark brown liquid tasting of dishwater with burned-coffee dregs. But everybody drank it by the gallon, and so did I after a while. It was the only drug available, the only escape from the relentless drill of pounding performance. Of course, there were cigarettes. Nearly everyone in the office smoked. Huge ashtrays sat on every desk, full of ashes and cigarette butts. Swirls of smoke rose from most lips toward the ceiling. Father was the worst of them all. He smoked constantly. He smoked Pall Mall, an expensive, imported brand. Sometimes he lit a second cigarette, not realizing he already had one smoking away in the ashtray. At the end of the day the whole place reeked of stale stubs.
There was a small, trendy hotel next door to the office, the Hotel Aristos, with a bar and cafeteria on the ground floor where all the employees went for midmorning coffee, a sacred Spanish tradition impossible to eradicate, despite Father’s ongoing efforts. Everyone visited the bar in twos or threes around eleven, drank coffee and ate a bocadillo, a local sandwich made with ham or cheese on a baguette. It was in this context that the real personalities and relationships revealed themselves. So, at midmorning coffee break, that first day, Silvia and Margarita, the two main Spanish secretaries, and Conchita, the receptionist, took me out for coffee to the Aristos and expressed their delight at having me on board.
“Hopefully you’ll have a mellowing effect on your father,” said Silvia, a dyed platinum blonde with a long face and pouting lips. Marina, the bilingual secretary who worked under Olga Morris, also came in and nodded curtly in my direction, but didn’t join us. “Watch out for that one, she’s a sourpuss,” Margarita said. She was a shy, introverted woman with red hair and pimply skin. Soon after, Montes and Lopez, the head engineers, trickled in and shook welcoming hands with me, making chauvinist jokes.
“We work better around gorgeous women, don’t we, Lopez?” Montes said, his small green eyes shining with lascivious glee. “Our professional performance is enhanced to no end.” Lopez, a somber, more power-game oriented character, nodded in agreement but was looking ahead at a group of administrative assistants, one of whom was having an affair with him, as I would later find out. Even Ventura, the grim, withdrawn accountant, came in with his assistant and managed a wide jaundiced smile in my direction. But there were others whose hostile fronts I immediately sensed. There was a group of administrative clerks and assistants to the engineers, most of whom were young workers in their twenties, and who toiled the longest hours for the lowest pay. They seemed to be a more restless, discontented crowd than those whose families were dependent on their monthly paychecks. They probably felt disenfranchised and resented Father’s domination. This younger crowd eyed me with distrust from the first day, and made no attempt to bridge their hostility.
Olga Morris was head secretary and Father’s personal assistant, in charge of all correspondence with clients and suppliers. At least
twice a day, she came in with a pad and pencil and took dictation from Father, then went back to her desk, typed it out on a big, clattery electric typewriter, and brought it back in to be approved and signed. I soon noticed that it wasn’t so much dictation Father was giving Olga Morris, but more the spelling out of ideas or concepts for her to translate into actual language and jot down on her pad.
He would say something like, “Let’s write a letter to Krupp acknowledging their performance report on our recent sales.”
Olga Morris cocked her head and waited. Father would stack and restack papers on his desk. “You know, along the lines of . . .” A tightness would come over his face, as he fussed around looking for some paper or another.
After a few awkward seconds, Olga jumped in. “Should it say, Dear Sir, Following last week’s receipt of your excellent report, I am writing to thank you for the positive outlook on our sales stats, and to reassure you that our company will continue on the same line when it comes to . . .” and she would recite the letter in one clear string of thought.
Father would look up in relief and say, “Yes, Olga, that’s perfect. Whenever you can have it ready,” and reassume his super-efficient stance.
In the beginning it didn’t strike me as important, but as the days went by I started realizing that Father had extreme difficulty with written language, something he had learned to conceal very well, but was now apparent by the way he struggled with the wording of memos, sets of instructions, and letters. This was the reason why someone like Olga Morris was so essential to him, and before her a long line of super-efficient secretaries, perfectly bilingual, capable of coding the written elements of the business. This realization shocked me at first, but later intrigued me to no end. How did he manage to handle such a complex business operation without a basic command of the written language? I marveled at his capacity to get around his shortcomings, his power to rule over others and conduct an extremely efficient enterprise despite this basic lacking.
