Julia Navarro
Story of a Sociopath
Julia Navarro is a journalist, a political analyst, and the internationally bestselling author of six novels, including The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud and The Bible of Clay. Her fiction has been translated in more than thirty countries. She lives in Madrid.
www.julianavarro.es/en
A VINTAGE BOOKS ORIGINAL, NOVEMBER 2016
Translation copyright © 2016 by Joanna Freeman
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Originally published in Spain as Historia de un canalla by Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, S. A., Barcelona, in 2016, and subsequently published in the United States by Vintage Español, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Julia Navarro.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.
Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9781101973257
Ebook ISBN 9781101973264
Cover Design: PRHGE/Yolanda Artola
Cover image © fotog/Getty Images
Book design by Steven Walker
www.vintagebooks.com
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Contents
Cover
Julia Navarro
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Childhood
Chapter 1
Youth
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Adulthood
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Decline
Chapter 9
One Year Later
To my friends Margarita Robles, Victoria Lafora, Asun Cascante, Lola Travesedo, Asun and Chus García, Carmen Martínez Terrón, Irma Mejías, Lola Pedrosa, Pilar Ferrer, Consuelo Sánchez Vicente, and Rosa Conde, who are always close to me, however far away they may be.
And to Maia, who is eight years old and already striding through life.
To Fermín and Álex, always.
Acknowledgments
To Doctor Isidre Vilacosta, for answering my many questions on heart disease, and Doctor Pedro Górgolas, for resolving other questions on medical matters. If any errors remain, then I am responsible for them. Thanks to you both for your patience.
And thanks to the team at Penguin Random House who have, as always, smoothed this book’s path to its readers.
I’m dying. It’s not that I’m terminally ill or that my doctors have declared me a lost cause. The last time they saw me was to tell me that I was in pretty good shape, especially for someone who’s suffered a heart attack and had valve replacement surgery. My blood sugar levels are a bit high, and so is my cholesterol, and my blood pressure’s on the edge, but it’s nothing, they say, that can’t be fixed by taking a few pills every day, going on a diet, and giving up cigarettes and alcohol.
“Go for a walk. The best thing is to go for a walk. It’s the best medicine. Lots of people with your medical history would be pleased to look like you,” the doctor said, trying to cheer me up.
I’m not that much older than him, eight or ten years at the most. I didn’t say anything. Why should I? I know that I’m dying and I don’t need blood tests or cardiograms to prove it. How do I know? I know because I look at myself in the mirror every morning and see the brown patches that have sprouted on my skin. And not an inch of my skin that hasn’t lost its elasticity.
I look at my hands and what do I see? Blue threads showing through the skin. The same blue threads that crisscross my legs. They are veins, as hard as stone now.
“You are more interesting than you were when you were twenty,” the hypocrites say. Liars. Especially the women. The only thing interesting about me is my bank account and my entry in Who’s Who.
It’s been a while since I realized that other people don’t see you for who you are, but rather for what you have, for what you represent. The same gray hair, the same grayish skin: these would be looked at with indifference or even disgust if I were one of those wretched creatures who can be found in any corner of the city.
How much longer do I have? A day perhaps, a week, five, six, ten years…or maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up with a sharp pain in my chest, or find a lump while I’m in the shower, or faint in the street, and the same pleasant doctor will tell me that I’ve got cancer somewhere, in my lungs, my pancreas, wherever. Or he’ll tell me that my tired heart has given out again, and I’ll need a new valve. From one day to the next death will show her face.
But I don’t need a lump, or a fainting fit, or my heart to beat out of time. I know that I am dying because I’ve reached that age when there’s no more fooling yourself and you sense that you are living on borrowed time.
Tonight death has filled my thoughts and I’ve started to wonder what the last minute of my life will be like. I’m afraid that it will be in a hospital bed, without any power to make decisions about my own existence. I imagine myself incapable of moving, incapable of speech, communicating by signs or with glances, with nobody able to understand or share my suffering.
We don’t choose where or when we are born, but we should at least be able to decide how to confront the final moment of our lives. But that’s denied to us as well.
When I know that the hour has come when death will visit, I’ll try to work out how to greet her, how to avoid her for a while, but above all how to start the trek into nonexistence.
And so, as I await that treacherous knock on the door, tonight I am overwhelmed by memories of my life, and they all leave the taste of bile in my mouth.
I’m scum. Yes, I always have been and I can’t make myself regret being scum, for having been scum. Although if what the physicists say is true, and time is just a construct of the human mind, we should have the chance to walk backward, to live the life we could have lived but did not.
Am I wrong if I think and say that we would all change parts of our past? That we would do things differently from how we have done them? If we could retrace our footsteps…Maybe even I would behave differently.
There are people who say, out loud, that they regret nothing. I don’t believe them. Most people have consciences in spite of themselves. I was born without a conscience, or at least I never knew where to find one, but perhaps one will knock on my door tonight. But I will try not to let her in, because nothing can change the things that torment us.
Tonight, as I look death in the face, I’ll go over what I have lived through. I know what I did, and what I should have done.
CHILDHOOD
1
I must have been seven or eight years old, and I was walking along with the woman who looked after me and my brother. It must have been halfway through the afternoon, the time when we got out of school. I was in a bad mood because the teacher had scolded me for not paying attention while she explained something or other.
My brother was holding María’s hand, but I preferred to go at my own pace. Also, María had sweaty palms and I did not like the touch of her wet skin on mine.
I was running from one side to the other, ignoring María’s complaints.
“I’m going to tell your mother. You do this every day: you let go of my hand and you don’t even hold it when we’re crossing the street, and you
never look to see if a car is coming. One day something terrible will happen.”
María was complaining but I wasn’t paying her any attention. I knew her string of reproaches by heart. Suddenly I saw a little bundle lying in the gutter. I went over to see what it was. I gave it a nudge with my foot and to my surprise saw that it was a bird, one of the many sparrows that filled the trees of the city. I thought it was dead and gave it a little kick that put it farther from the curb. I went over to it, curious to see where it was, and I saw that it was moving, slowly, as if breathing its last. I stepped down from the curb and gave it another kick. The sparrow’s neck twisted back on itself.
“But what are you doing, there in the middle of the street? I’ll tell your mother today for sure. I can’t take it anymore.”
María took me by the hand and made me walk alongside her. I was extremely cross that she was pulling me along, and as soon as her attention wavered I kicked her in the calf.
I don’t regret the kick I gave María that day, but I can’t forget the motionless body of the sparrow. It was me who had caused it to breathe its last.
“Jerk!” Jaime said, looking at me disapprovingly. I don’t know if that was for kicking María or for having kicked the sparrow.
“Shut up or you’ll get one too,” I said crossly.
Jaime said nothing. He knew that as soon as he dropped his guard he would have to take another kick from me, or even a punch in the ribs. I was two years older than my brother, so he was always at a disadvantage.
“I’m going to tell your mother. I can’t deal with you. If you carry on like that I’m not going to pick you up from school anymore. You’re a very bad little boy.”
Bad. Yes, that was the teacher’s favorite assessment too, as well as María’s and even my mother’s.
My father told me off, but he never said I was “bad.” He knew me too well to send me away with that silly phrase, “You’re a bad little boy.”
If I could go back in time the scene would be similar:
I would be walking with María and Jaime, without minding that I was holding my nanny’s sweaty hand. I would have told her that I was in a bad mood because my teacher, Miss Adeline, had scolded me, and María would have given me some words of comfort. Something like, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious to let your mind wander every now and then, tomorrow you’ll listen and Miss Adeline won’t be upset anymore.”
I would have seen the little bundle moving on the sidewalk and would have asked María if we could have a look. “There’s something over there, look. Can we go and see?”
María would have grumbled: “Who cares what it is, let’s go, we’re in a hurry,” but she would have given in. When I realized it was a sparrow, I would have picked it up carefully. Jaime would have looked at it with curiosity and would have said, “Poor little thing!” And the two of us, our hearts touched, would have begged María to let us take the sparrow home with us. My mother was a nurse, so she would have been able to do something to save the little bird’s life. We would have kept it for two or three days, and once it was better, we would have given it its freedom.
—
But that didn’t happen and I’m not sorry.
That afternoon, when we got home, my mother was getting ready to go to the hospital. She was on the night shift that week and seemed tired, and that was probably the reason why she paid little attention to María’s complaints. She barely even scolded me: “When are you going to learn to behave? What will I do if María loses patience with you and leaves? I have to work and I won’t be able to do that without her.”
“You could find someone else to look after us,” I said defiantly.
“As if it were that easy! María is a good person. And you’re a very bad little boy! I don’t know what we’re going to do with you. Go to your room and do your homework. I’ll talk to your father and he’ll tell you what your punishment will be. And now I have to go.”
“Like you always do. You’re never here.”
I knew what I was doing. I wanted to hurt my mother, who felt guilty for not spending more time with us. I had overheard her more than once talking with my father and blaming herself for spending more time at the hospital than at home, and although my father would console her by telling her that the important thing was the love she gave us and not the time she spent with us, my mother couldn’t help feeling that she was doing something wrong. So I hit her where it hurt her most.
She looked at me, and I saw a spark of sadness in her gaze, and then a burst of anger.
“Go to your room!”
On my way there I took the opportunity to give Jaime the kick I had promised him, and he gave a howl that drew my mother’s attention.
“What’s going on here?”
“Thomas kicked me!” my brother said, in tears.
“María, please, take charge of the children…I have to go. And you, Thomas, go to your room, and we’re not going to take you anywhere this weekend.”
“What do I care? It doesn’t matter to me! And I don’t want to be with you anyway. You’re not a good mother. You’re not like my friends’ mothers. You’re never here.”
My mother didn’t even look at me. She left the house and slammed the door. I suppose it was her way of controlling her anger and not giving me a smack on the head.
Yes, that afternoon should have been different:
“Mama, Mama! Look, we’ve found a sparrow and it’s hurt, will you help us make it get better?” That was what I would have said while my brother, Jaime, tugged at my mother’s dress.
“I’m in a rush, but I’ll have a look. Let’s see…Its leg is broken, but it’s nothing serious. Go and find a thin piece of wood, one of your pencils would be good. Look, we’ll put a splint on it and in a few days it will be better and ready to fly away. Thomas, go and ask María for a shoe box and some cotton balls. We’ll put it there so that it’s nice and warm.”
“Can we keep the sparrow forever?” Jaime would have asked.
“No, its mother will be looking for it and she will be worried. Also, birds should be free. When it’s better I’ll go with you back to where you found it, and we’ll let it go so that it can go back to its nest.”
“Thank you, Mama,” I would have said, and would have leaned over to give her a kiss.
My mother would have stroked my head and said to us: “How good you are. That’s what I like, that you feel sympathy for suffering creatures, even ones as small as this little bird.”
—
Yes, it should have been like that. But what happened was that I spent the rest of the afternoon in my room without bothering to do my homework, taking all the toys out of their boxes and strewing them around the room in the knowledge that María would have to pick them up, which would make her doubly annoyed, not just because of the extra work but because she had a bad back as well.
When my father came home a little before dinnertime, María was complaining.
“What’s happened, María? Have the children been naughty again?” my father asked.
“Jaime is a little angel, sir, he never makes any noise, but Thomas…He’s a very bad little boy, sir, he just thinks up ways of annoying other people.”
“Come, come, María. There are children who are more lively than others, but that doesn’t mean they are bad. Tell me, what has Thomas done?”
María told him what had happened that afternoon and he called me into his study. As I knew that María would complain about me, I had already taken my revenge. While she was speaking to my father I had gone to the kitchen and poured the contents of the salt shaker into the soup she was making. She’d have to start again from scratch.
My father was a lawyer. He worked a great deal. He left the house early in the morning and didn’t come back until it was night. It was unusual for him to have dinner at home. I never complained that he didn’t spend more time with us. I thought his work was important and I felt very proud of him. He was always elegantly dressed, even on weekends wh
en he took his tie off. But my mother, whenever she took off her makeup and got into her housecoat, seemed to me to hunch over, to become insignificant.
“Didn’t you feel sorry for the sparrow?” my father asked me.
I thought before replying. I knew that I had to find the right words to get him on my side.
“I thought it was dead and…well, I didn’t realize. I didn’t think.”
Thinking. That was my excuse. My father always excused me by saying that I was a scatterbrained child who never stopped to think, and that was why I got into trouble.
“But you have to think, Thomas. I’ve told you that before. If you’d stopped to look you could have saved the sparrow’s life. Your mother would have helped you. As for kicking María, I can’t allow you to do things like that. María is an adult, and adults need to be treated with respect. And you kicked Jaime as well: Aren’t you ashamed to have hit someone smaller than you?”
I lowered my head. Knowing my father, I was sure that he was trying to work out which punishment to give me that wouldn’t be too severe. Finally he found it.
“Look, you’re going to have to read a story that I’ll give you, about a boy who is always causing mischief, but one day something happens that makes him change his behavior. And then, when you’ve read it, you can come and talk to me about it. You’ll learn something this way.”
“Mama said that you wouldn’t take us anywhere this weekend,” I whispered in my most innocent voice.
“Well, Mama was cross. She works a lot, poor thing, not just at the hospital but also here, looking after all of us. I’ll talk to her.”
At this moment, we heard María start to scream.
“He’s a devil, a real devil! Lord, who would do such a thing?” she said, coming into my father’s office.
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