I gave her the telephone number of the Minister’s lackey, which he had given to me as he left the cell the night before, and asked her to hand over the photographs and negatives to him.
“What about a guarantee?” said Gloria.
“You don’t have to bother about that,” I said.
“OK, Peter. Anything else?”
“How’s Amelia?”
“OK. She’s not easily thrown. But of course it’s hard. You’ve got yourself a treasure there, Peter, but then I suppose you know that.”
“OK. Thanks.”
“Take care of yourself, carino. I haven’t given up on getting you out today.”
“That would be nice.”
The line went dead. They must have had some central way of doing that. It was a cordless phone which they could “hang up” somewhere else. A little while later, the new warder came to fetch the phone, and I watched with mixed feelings as he took away my lifeline. I had made contact. There was a world outside. There were friends working to get me out.
It was a boring day, but actually rather relaxing and peaceful as well. Perhaps because it was only a question of time before I was free again. Amelia and Maria Luisa knew that I hadn’t come to any harm. Everything had been put in motion and now the cogs were turning calmly and steadily and predictably. It was like waiting for the quarry during an assignment. You had to dig deep inside yourself and make time stand still.
I read the newspapers, slept a bit, smoked cigarettes, exercised in the yard for half an hour and ate again. Chicken soup, this time, followed by a grilled trout, trucha a la Navarra. I asked for some coffee and was given it, and lay on my back gazing at the ceiling and actually can’t remember how the evening passed. I drank water, read the newspapers again, listened to the radio – they never brought the television – and thought about my family. I watched scenes played out on my inner cinema. Good scenes with Amelia, Maria Luisa and me in the house in the mountains above San Sebastián. Maybe you would expect a day like that to be spent reflecting on life or other profound issues. But that kind of contemplation doesn’t just emerge because you’ve got time. Time simply existed and it passed slowly and laboriously, but a day only has so many seconds. I did a sequence of push-ups and sit-ups and lay down on my back and waited for sleep which, as usual, was a long time coming.
But at last I fell asleep, with a more or less easy mind, not knowing that during these very same hours my world was being completely smashed. That my journey to hell had, without my knowledge, already begun.
5
I had a nasty dream just before they woke me up. I was on a camping trip, as if I was a boy scout again, but the camp had been made in a strange, surreal landscape with artificial mountains, fake snow and a delicately burnished, ultra-blue light which could have been created by the Hollywood dream factory or computer generated. It was darker out on the horizon, as if thunderclouds were gathering. The camp fire was a gas-burning contraption in the middle of an open cave with slimy, grey walls. I was bent over a pot which was bubbling like a hot spring in Iceland. In the distance a bird was screeching, over and over again. It sounded like a mixture of a woman’s desperate laughter and a death rattle. Oscar was there. He stood with his back to me, wearing one of his impeccable suits. He was taller than usual and was holding a book. It had a black cloth binding. He was wearing a white shirt with a lilac tie. Gloria was standing next to him. She had turned into a redhead. At first she was wearing a long kaftan, like the ones women used to wear in my youth, but suddenly she was naked, just her pubic area covered with a red square like the ones newspapers use on moral grounds. Oscar held out the book to her and she reached out to take it, but her hands were gnarled and aged, with long nails which had grown to different lengths. Oscar said, “Take the book of accounts. Everything has been entered and audited.”
Gloria thought better of it and didn’t want to accept the heavy black book. “I asked for the hour of reckoning, not the book of reckoning,” she said.
I wanted to turn to them and say that Oscar had got hold of the right book, but I knew I had to stir the bubbling pot and I didn’t dare move my head, but I saw it all anyway. I was very, very frightened. I was also full of regret because I didn’t dare tell Oscar that he had found the right book.
I struggled to wake up, because in the dream an inner voice told me that my own face would soon appear in the diabolical devil’s brew and it would be covered with running sores. The whole scene was bathed in opalescent, dark lilac light speckled with silvery, virulent streaks.
I woke with a start.
The fat warder was standing in the doorway. He had a peculiar expression on his face. I was drenched with sweat, my heart was hammering and it felt as if electric currents were running through my head as I struggled to wake up and send my subconscious packing. I sat up and swung my legs out so quickly that I became dizzy and everything went black for a moment.
“I’m sorry, señor Lime, if I startled you,” said the fat warder. It was the first time I had heard him speak. His voice didn’t go with his body at all. I had expected such a big man to hold a deep guttural bass with the Madrileños’ hard consonants, but he had a thin, light voice and from his accent I guessed that he came from Badajoz in Extremadura. I knew the town. One summer I had photographed the storks sitting in their nests on the old, parched, tiled roofs, just like their ancestors had sat there as the conquistadors had set forth to murder, rape and plunder the new world. The image conjured up by his mellow dialect, and the stately white birds on the roof ridges, calmed me and my heart stopped racing.
“That’s all right,” I said, rubbing my eyes and out of habit gathering my hair into its ponytail.
“May I kindly request señor Lime to come with me?” he said.
His courtesy made me suspicious.
“What’s the time?”
“A little after seven o’clock.”
“So you’re releasing me now? The judge is up early.”
“If you would just please come with me, señor Lime” he said.
“What for? Where?”
“Señor Lime. Please. Just come with me. A couple of friends are waiting. Nothing will happen to you. Of that I can assure you.”
There was a kind of desperation and at the same time sincerity in his fat face, so I believed him.
“Give me a minute alone,” I said pleasantly.
He went out of the cell, but left the door ajar. I had a pee, splashed water on my face and put an elastic band around my ponytail before pulling on my jeans and putting my shirt on over my t-shirt. I was still a bit dazed, as you feel when you’ve had a stupid dream and have been woken up before it reaches a resolution or you’ve fallen back into a dreamless sleep.
We trudged along the corridor. It was still quiet in my cell block, but as soon as we started to climb the stairs I heard the intoxicating strains of Madrid’s morning symphony. My spirits rose at the thought that I would soon be seeing my wife and child. We reached a wide corridor. It was bustling. That’s the word that struck me, because there were several people walking this way and that. I had been alone for so long that seeing several people at once had an overwhelming effect. The sound of their hurrying feet could be heard above the distant turbulence of Madrid’s heavy morning traffic, as pleasantly recognisable as one’s own face in the mirror. Some nodded, others looked away. I hadn’t been isolated for all that long, but it felt like an eternity. I realised what a terrible punishment solitary confinement is, I realised why people who endure weeks and months of it finally crack. The human being is a social animal.
We went into a big office. The judge was sitting behind a desk. Gloria and Oscar were sitting opposite him. They looked as if they had encountered Death. Gloria was red-eyed. It was years since I had seen her like that. Without her usual meticulously made-up face, she suddenly looked older. Her make-up looked as though it had been put on in a hurry. But it was more her expression. It seemed drained of the energy which her beautiful, mature f
ace always radiated. Oscar appeared to be in a stony trance, but still agitated with his usual pent-up energy.
“About time too,” I said with cheerful irony. That was our usual tone. “I thought you were going to let me rot in here for ever.”
“Sit down, Peter,” said Oscar stiffly.
Apprehension made the bile rise in my throat.
“Has something happened to Amelia?” I said.
“Just sit down, Peter!” Oscar repeated.
Gloria came over to me and took my hand and pulled me down onto a leather sofa against the wall. There were two leather chairs to match in front of the examining magistrate’s desk. It was a very masculine, but also heavy room which said that rigour and order prevailed here, and possibly justice. There was a transparent plastic bag on the desk, with my things in it: wallet, keys, Leica, mobile phone, lighter, cigarettes.
“What’s happened to Amelia and Maria Luisa?” I was shouting now. I don’t know why I was so certain. I just knew. But the shock still hit me with a vicious intensity when Gloria, quietly and with tears in her voice, uttered the worst words I have ever heard in my life.
“Amelia and Maria Luisa are no longer with us, Peter. They are dead, Peter. They died in a fire last night. It’s so damned unjust and so damned wrong and so damned dreadful.”
Then she burst into tears and even though I vomited down her back she kept on hugging me and holding me in her arms.
*
Time evaporated. I don’t know how long I was out, but there’s a hole in my memory like the empty nothingness of the universe. They told me later that I hadn’t fainted, but vanished behind my own eyes as if the light had been switched off and, like a robot, had ground to a halt. I don’t know if it was an unpleasant experience because I can’t remember anything about it. Just darkness and silence. It lasted ten minutes. Ten minutes as if in a deep sleep. They were afraid that I would never return to the living, but linger among the living dead. They feared that I was turning into a zombie before their very eyes. In a way that’s probably what I really wanted, but we cling to life. I look back upon the episode as my body’s back-up. Like a computer, when the programme crashed, it closed itself down in order to save fragments from the wreckage and protect the vital parts. I died a little, is how I think of it.
When I came back to unmerciful reality, I was sitting on the sofa with a glass of water in my hand. I swallowed the contents in one gulp. It was cold, but my mouth and my throat remained dry. They stood round me like a tableau of wax figures, set rigid in time, frozen in the moment of eternity. Gloria looked completely depraved. Like a woman who had been startled by her husband while indulging in foreplay with her lover. She was half-naked to the waist, wearing only her black bra and her jacket. I could smell myself and my vomit that was lying like a foul shadow on the floor. Someone must have wiped it up. Gloria’s blouse had been stuffed into a plastic bag.
I was given more water.
“Are you OK?” Oscar asked.
“For heaven’s sake, Oscar!” Gloria said.
“No. I’m not OK, Oscar. But I’d like to know what’s going on,” I said.
My voice was unnaturally composed. It was as if I was standing outside my own body, listening to myself speak.
The judge cleared his throat. He sat stoutly with an aloof expression on his face. He had small pig’s eyes.
“Señor Lime,” he said, and nudged a piece of paper in front of him as if it was unclean, as if it had been used to wipe up my vomit. The smell surrounding me and inside me was like the manure heap on my uncle’s farm when I was a boy. I could feel my face going red then pale then red again, but the judge didn’t bat an eyelid. Gloria sat down beside me and took my hand while the judge intoned:
“My condolences. Here are your release papers. And your belongings. No further action will be taken. You have the right to seek compensation for wrongful arrest and detention from the State of Spain. I will leave you the use of my office so that you can confer with your friends in peace and quiet. Again, my deepest sympathy. Please sign the receipt before you leave.”
He edged out from behind the desk and slid out of the room.
“What’s happened?” I asked again. I sat quietly and listened to the story. There were no tears. I was empty and silent inside. Gloria did the talking. Matter-of-fact and precise, like a lawyer quoting a police report, she put cold words to my life’s tragedy.
At 1.30 a.m. there had been an explosion in our flat. It had been so forceful that the windows had blown out. The explosion was followed by an intense blaze, which had spread through the whole building. It was gutted. The roof had collapsed. All the flats were burnt out. Only a couple of hours earlier the fire brigade had got the blaze sufficiently under control to be able to send in firefighters equipped with breathing apparatus. Thirteen bodies had been recovered so far, eleven people were injured. The two families on the ground floor had managed to get out, along with the families on the second and third floors. The bodies had been taken to the central institute of forensic medicine. The police had opened an inquiry. Their preliminary theory was that there had been a gas explosion caused by a leaking pipe in the kitchen or bathroom of our flat or the flat below.
She might as well have been a newspaper reporter, and later it appeared just like that in the broadsheets, while the tabloids spread it on thicker, writing about a tragic blaze and following up with leaders about the antiquated, hazardous gas fittings still to be found in Madrid’s oldest neighbourhood. Plus all the gossip, of course.
“Are you sure they were home?” I asked.
“Absolutely, Peter,” said Gloria. “I’m afraid they’re already quite sure.”
“I want to see them,” I said.
“Of course,” said Gloria.
“We can go there right away,” said Oscar, “But it won’t be pleasant.”
“It can’t get any worse,” I said.
Oscar wasn’t good at expressing emotions, but he coped very well. He was visibly shaken, white as a sheet and stooping, as if someone had put a huge boulder on his shoulders. He dragged his feet as he walked across to me, lit a cigarette and stuck it in my mouth. He put his arm round me and there we sat, not saying a word, his strong heavy arm on my shoulders and Gloria’s hand in mine, and I smoked my cigarette and tried to comprehend that Amelia and Maria Luisa had been taken from me. I couldn’t bring myself to think the word: dead. It didn’t seem right. It was too detached and almost normal. People die at some time or other, but my two had been taken from me. Stolen and carried off. I can’t describe the sense of emptiness, grief and irrational anger at their having deserted me. I was also filled with guilt at not having long ago had the gas fittings removed and electric heating installed. But gas water heaters still hissed and reeked in thousands of kitchens and bathrooms in the old parts of Madrid.
I had been sad when first my father and later my mother died. But they were both nearly 80. They had lived long lives. It was only natural that they had passed away and left the stage to my older brother and me. They had both died after long illnesses, so we had the impression that they were tired and had enjoyed their fill of life. Maria Luisa and Amelia had been snatched away. It was so damned unjust.
Oscar’s big Mercedes 600 was parked in the yard and he helped me into the back seat next to Gloria. The police sentry in his ungainly bulletproof vest lifted the barrier and we drove into what could have been freedom, but freedom for what? To be unhappy? To take my own life? To go back to the bottle? Two television crews and a small group of photographers and reporters were waiting. Cameras were hoisted onto shoulders the moment the mascot on the bonnet of the black Mercedes came into view.
“What is it, Oscar?” I said, when he braked hard so as not to drive into the waiting pack.
“You know what it’s like. They get to know about these things instantly,” he said.
“How can they?”
“You’re part of the package. Of course the rumour spread that you’d been arrested
as soon as we began ringing round. Damn it, they knew where you lived. They can put two and two together. There are rumours about the photographs. I had the feelers out, for God’s sake.”
His voice was hoarse and angry.
“Oscar. Give it a rest. Peter’s not a fool,” said Gloria.
The television cameras and camera lenses approached the tinted windows as if they were going to nuzzle them. Or penetrate them. Rape the people sitting inside. I could hear the reflectors in the equipment working and heard the journalists shout out, asking how I was feeling, if I had a comment, say something Pedro. It was strange to be sitting on the other side in my grief, when I really ought to have been alone and private. It was strange to be on the other side of the lens. As a young man, one of the waiting wolves outside the restaurants used by the famous and royal in Kensington in London, I had elbowed my way forward to reveal and unmask a human face in all its vulnerable nakedness. Had my face been just as distorted, my mouth open like a fish gasping for air, my eyes the same blend of schadenfreude and excitement? How many times had I seen the victim trying to shield their face even though there may have been nothing to hide? As if an infringement of privacy was both painful and, in itself, created a sense of guilt. I was too desolate to be angry. I just felt so heart-broken.
“Drive me up to Santa Ana, Oscar,” I said.
“The whole pack’s there, Peter,” he said.
“Just do what Peter says,” said Gloria.
“OK.”
Using the horn, he edged his way through the pack of reporters which parted like water in front of the sharp bows of a large ship. The most persistent ran behind the car for a short distance. When he was clear of them, he accelerated and turned up a side street and drove across the Puerta del Sol and the short stretch up past the office for the bullfights, and negotiated the half kilometre to Plaza Santa Ana via the back streets.
Lime's Photograph Page 9
