3—Forgiveness.
Havana, corner Council. Alberto stops the car. I say goodbye to Mireia. One kiss another kiss take care of my life, my love forever
—Spare me, I drive.
Alberto is going to say something.
—Shut up. Let's go.
—Where?
—Where there are no houses.
Old road of Ponferrada. I put on a cassette. Cold looks when passing in front of the gas station of Castadón. I put the heating on. When you get to the straight from the Derrasa turn left. Just after passing the curve a rectangular white sign with red letters: "Monte Chaira". Later another one of similar aspect: "No littering". I force him out of the car. There is a wild cow looking at us from a triangular sign. I unzipped the jacket and pulled a gun from the holster. I took the black semiautomatic form straight, as in the espionage films. I pointed to his head with my thumb, gently pressing the striker.
—Oh baby, I'm sorry babe.
The bird began to sing.
—I didn’t want to, but I was pressured. They told me that you told them that I was involved. I have two years to graduate in law. My career was at stake.
Now Alberto sobbed like a child. I felt pity. I hadn’t even removed the lock from the gun. I noticed how his pants got wet. I said nothing. I kept the gun, got into the car, and disappeared into the city, my career as a drug dealer was over and I didn’t intend to start a worse one as a murderer. That's why I forgave his life, I would spend my last night alone. My days of freedom were numbered.
I returned home. I settled gently next to a cup of coffee. I felt lonely and ignorantly stupid. I had hit bottom and knew it. All my life collapsed in front of me, like an immense Tower of Babel, built with playing cards. And I stood there, absorbed in watching it fall without doing anything, with folded arms, playing with the cards a solitary, when the telephone rang. It was Daddy.
—How are you, daughter?
—All right.
—It was my fault, I shouldn’t have gotten into this when Mama died. I didn’t know how to educate you. She wouldn’t allow it.
—Stop it, Daddy! It is not your fault. It was Alberto who betrayed me.
—But he loves you. They pressed him for sure ... The poor man is weak. Don’t hurt him!
—No, for heaven's sake, Papa! I'm not a psychopath.
—I'll pick you up at ten tomorrow.
—It's okay ...
—You sure you don’t need anything?
—No, I'll be fine.
—If you don’t want to, you don’t have to go.
—I don’t know, it depends. We'll decide tomorrow. Now I'm tired.
I hung up the phone. I looked at the clock. I put a DVD: "Once upon a time America". It was a gangster movie. Dressed in such elegant trench coats, they walked the streets of New York as kings. The times of prohibition were on, when drinking was illegal. People did it in clandestine premises. There was a guy who looked like Robert de Niro the actor. What a class he had in that elegant outfit, next to James Woods. Those people did have style. Not like me, I was always a commie, dealing with urban junk.
That was the end of that guy. They had also locked him in the hole, but when he came out he was still more handsome and that was thirty years after. On the screen’s street it was raining. Then he opened one of those brand-new black umbrellas like a slate roof so he wouldn’t get his suit wet, as he stared at three cops in the driveway. Of course, the policemen did not wear umbrellas. They looked like penguins, with those tight caps and black raincoats. Mireia would have loved the movie, too bad she wasn’t there, by my side. I missed her.
I opened the window. It was raining harder now. I put on my nightgown and turned on the heating of nostalgia, I loved that feeling of inner warmth, as if my intestines were really ducts of copper connected to the radiators of the soul. I lowered the blind. The rain disappeared by magic. I turned on the alarm clock and got lost in a deep sleep. The movies had always been for me a magnificent sleeping pill.
4—The runaway
On October 18th, Lucia was traveling with her father to the state prison of Pereiro de Aguiar to serve her sentence. But Antonio's Mercedes never reached its destination.
—We'll find a place where no one knows you, in another region, another border where no one asks questions, —he told his daughter.
—But they will find me, they always find you, —Lucia replied.
—Yes, if you return! They all return, so they find them. But you won’t. You are strong. We will arrive to the south, to some lost town of Andalusia. They say that there is good weather all year long and large fields planted with olive trees. We'll find a bar and order two whiskies. I have not had a drink in a long time, but this time I'll have a drink with you, we'll do it slowly, savouring the malt, until it burns our throat and then I'll leave. We'll give each other a last hug and I'll go home. You will start a new life, away from drug trafficking, as you should have done long ago. You won’t answer too many questions, nor give clues about your past. You will cut your hair and dye it in another colour. You will be cold and contemptuous with others.
You will lead a quiet life, you will lie down early. You will find a job in a bar, a job where they pay in cash, with bosses who don’t ask you too many questions. You will take advantage of that gift you have of making friends wherever you go, working hard, keeping your eyes open and your mouth shut. There you will meet new friends. You are Galician, you will never change it. You wear Orense in your blood. You will spend the rest of your life in the south but you will still be orensana.
You'll miss your friends, the Amoebas, your boyfriend Alberto, but you're tough. You have the genes of your father. You will learn quickly to forget. You are as strong as I am. Find the appropriate contacts and get new roles, an identity card with another name, Nuria for example. Forget about your previous life. You can’t go back, write or call. Any step back will be your undoing. Believe in a new identity and live it to the fullest and who knows, in time you will discover a new life, as it should have always been.
It's dangerous, but maybe I'll see you before I die. By then you will meet a wonderful boy who may call himself Julian and be happy with him forever and leave you pregnant while celebrating the New Year. You will have several children.
Educate them good. Don’t make the mistakes that I have made with you and maybe one day in many years, when I am dead and buried, you will reunite your whole new family and tell them the whole truth, as was your childhood, the true story of your other lifetime. Who you are. Where do you come from, how did you get rich on account of the misfortunes of others? Look into their eyes and ask them if they realize how fortunate they are to be with you. All this nearly never happened. You had taken a wrong path and thanks to the wisdom of your holy father, you were able to elude justice and live a new life, forming a family. Instead of destroying the lives of hundreds of homes, bringing them pain and shame, snatching the lives of their children, in exchange for a few grams of that disgusting white powder.
Lucia decided not to flee south as her father advised her, for there she would be quickly unmasked by her Galician accent; she should be hidden in a place in the middle of nowhere, a site that looks as much as possible at the end of the world. In a place, like Chandrexa, where it would go unnoticed among the countrymen mostly deserters of the plow, glued to its tractors brand John Deere and the cattle heads, that watched as through a viking helmet with partial vaccine. Lucia would buy a discreet utility, to go unnoticed in that area of the country. Nothing as discreet as a third hand Land Rover Santana that was sold to her by a local villager. Lucia said goodbye to her father with a big hug. They both shed tears as a farewell. "Goodbye my child, take great care of yourself." "Do not cry, Father, we will find a solution." "Be tough, you don’t need anyone." "Go away, Father, please!"
He left quickly in the car leaving her there, at that point randomly chosen in the middle of nowhere, carrying on her back one of those huge backpacks. Lucia began to walk
slowly through the darkness. Her wristwatch marked 2:10 in the morning. In the distance you could see the lights of Santa Cruz, a small village, from which it descended through a winding road to the Chandrexa reservoir. She had a hard time convincing her father to bring her there. Lucia refused to leave the province. She needed time to think, to put her ideas in order. Who was going to look for her there, in the middle of the Central orensana plateau? She lit a cigarette. The devil was cold, she turned on the flashlight. Up until now a pale and white crescent had been her only guide in the midst of that gloom. Suddenly she heard the purr of an engine behind her. Who the hell would circulate at those hours of the morning on those roads of the devil? A cold sweat filled her. Who else, a car patrol of the Civil Guard. The vehicle was getting closer. She felt a bad pang inside him, as if a kind of light ray with extra sensory powers coming out of the pistol of a huge extraterrestrial tubercle committed to eliminating the inhabitants of the planet, pierced the heart of a flash. The purr of the engine announced the immediate arrival of the vehicle. Should she think fast? She focused the flashlight beam toward the right side of the driveway. A cold sweat filled her, she thinks, she thinks, damn it!
A weedy embankment plunged toward the bottom of an abrupt ravine. Damn luck! She took a momentum and threw herself right into the emptiness of a jump, at that moment, for a few thousandths of a second, she felt as if she were floating in the air, time seemed to stop: if someone shot her she could count the bullets, one by one , Before she plunged down by her own weight to the ground without achieving her goal. But instead he felt a heavy blow to the side. The weight of the backpack had made her lose her balance, causing her a hard fall. She felt a sharp pain in her ribs. My God, if I've done anything wrong in my life, I think I'm paying more.
The Nissan Patrol of the Civil Guard stopped at the edge of the road, two policemen were lowered from inside. Lucia stood there still, more motionless than a mummy, trapped in a ditch. Fortunately, the weeds were very thick in the area and provided a kind of camouflage, which barely protected him from the light beam of the agents' lanterns.
—You sure you heard something? —said one of the guards.
—I thought I heard a blow, my corporal.
—It isn’t, Guillermo, do you see too many scary movies? —Asked Nicholas
—It could be, my corporal. But so far I've always thought I had a good ear.
—I don’t doubt it, my friend. It must have been some animal, possibly a wild boar or a chamois, —said Nicholas.
—I don’t know! But since they've put those filthy eolics on top of the old hill, I doubt that those bugs will come so close to the village.
—You're not the only one who hates wind energy, which is destroying the natural beauty of the landscapes of our land, but that's the disgusting world. Well, it's fucking cold. Are we leaving or are we still looking for your friend the boar?
—Whatever you say, my cap, —said William.
When the officers left, Lucia breathed in relief, had a good blow. At least she didn’t seem to have any broken ribs. She also noticed a sharp pain in her left ankle, it seemed only a small sprain. She opened the backpack, looked inside for a T-shirt, which made tatters improvising a bandage that she applied to the painful area tying it with a strong knot. She climbed as far as she could until she reached the road again and continued on the march still panic-stricken. "Little by little," she thought, "maybe they will catch me next time." A few minutes later she finally reached the bridge. The sky was clear enough for being at the end of October, only a couple of dark clouds were trying to hide several constellations. She heard the roar of the Návea River at her feet. She was surprised that on the map it was known as the Queixa River, when everyone in the area knew it as the Návea River. To the right of the bridge, the landcape still retained much of its scenic beauty, prior to the construction of the hydraulic dam and the forest track that led to the old Ironworks.
Across the bridge the landscape was dreadful compared to yesteryear. The proximity of the dam had caused the overflow of the river and the desertification of its banks, turning a paradise proper of waterfalls and streams into a quagmire of stagnant waters and filth.
Lucia headed for the forest, through the forest track that bordered the riverbed. As she walked, they returned to her memory like tiny particles, pictures of the moments of happiness shared last summer with her friend Mireia, during the days they had spent together in the house that she had inherited from her grandmother who was in front of the old Smithy, now abandoned; Where Mireia's grandfather worked for years as an improvised alchemist and inventor. The business was going well for him. It got to have more than ten employees in staff; Was reputed to be able to transform iron into gold, though no one ever came to try such nonsense. Her grandfather worked hard at the smithy, while her grandmother was in charge of household chores. The house had been erected at the same time as the blacksmith —avoiding in any way ostentatious— using stones stolen from the river. The wood to carry out the carpentry work was brought from the city, avoiding to cut down any of the native trees that rose to the sky, exerting of improvised sentinels. It was necessary to use all kinds of means of load to transport the materials, being the shot with bulls the most effective to cross the thick weeds. The passage of the cars was opening the way, which eventually would end up communicating the house with the rest of the civilization.
Lucia and Mireia used to bathe naked at dusk, taking advantage of the last rays of the sun and the solitude of the place next to the stream, which was formed near the bridge —where the rivers Edreira and Queixa— joined the smithy with the house. They allowed themselves to be flooded by the torrent of water, cooling their bodies under the waterfall, uttered cries of enthusiasm soaked in that liquid delight. During these baths, a shepherd's step was frequently seen, collecting livestock, which, instead of rejoicing in the refreshing clarity of the image of the naked bodies of those beautiful young women, passed by impassively, perhaps taking them for a couple of whips. On one occasion Mireia came out to greet him. The shepherd, when he saw her naked, was frightened and turned away from her, and vanished with the cows, whipping them to the village. From that day the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages baptized that pool with the nickname, of the pool of the "Naked Girls". During the last of those baths, they decided to brace for almost an hour until the members, frozen in the cold current no longer answered. Only then were they placed under the torrent, reaching for a few seconds a kind of temporary illumination, leaving the mind devoid of a single thought and feeling the bodies inert and insensitive to any kind of flotation, as if a halo of well-being protects them from any evil thought. It was then that the pastor, overcoming the shyness of previous days, approached them by stopping at the edge of the track; He greeted them by raising his arm as if accepting the extravagance of strangers.
They smile at him, hugging each other in the last rays of the sun, returning their greeting, they wave their arms. The shepherd lay there for a few moments, motionless, as they ran toward the towels. Then turning around, he disappeared, chasing after the cattle: if the summer lasted much longer he would end up sitting down to chat with them without any modesty. Only the time and routine of the known generates enough confidence to end up uniting beings from different worlds.
Lucia reached the house where she had spent so many pleasant moments with her friend Mireia, it is a shame to have no key. The cold was deepening. The backpack was horrible, it seemed to carry a country loaded behind her back, my God! Eight years in a little baggy sausage! How stupid! Right now a search and capture order would have been written for her. Luckily, in the photo of the police file she had very long hair. As soon as she had the chance she would cut it. That would confuse them. Her father had burned the rest of the photos except for the ones when she was very young.
She went into the forest taking advantage of the moonlight, turned off the flashlight in an attempt to save batteries. She would seek a place on the top of the mountain, far from the sheph
erds' eyes, where to set the tent. Lucia climbed over the dark forest. The weight of the backpack was shredding her back. Her heart beat faster and faster. Despite the fear of walking through that impassable spot almost in the dark, she pulled out her forgotten, from years ago, youthful spirit of hiker, tearing a branch off a tree. She used it as an improvised cane.
Tomorrow the shoelaces would kill her but that was the least, she should reach the top of the hill as it were, even if she had to crawl to achieve it. She felt the branch of a Tagus tearing her shirt as she passed, climbing unmolested despite the pain, his heart beating fast; She ascended the hill until the inclination of the land forced her to walk on all fours; She clung to the bushes to continue her way through that jungle undergrowth, when suddenly a muzzle appeared, after that appeared a pig-shaped body staring at her from the front. The shock was mutual. Lucia sank down under the weight of her backpack and fell to the ground. The blind panicked animal disappeared down the hill; Fucking animal! She had been scared to death. So far Lucia had never seen a wild pig at all, except in the comics of Asterix and Obelix, when the gallant Gaulish warriors gave themselves with their people those terrible feasts with the flesh of the pig. Lucia's nerves were in tension, she thought she wouldn’t be able to see the light of the day. She looked into the eyes of an owl, looking at her from the top of a tree. From there, those strange beings who frightened her would be her only friends, apart from herself.
Once a Hindu guru told her that there was nothing to look for inside oneself. If you look inside you, you would only find viscera, blood, heart, kidneys ... because we are only that, organic matter. You just have to let yourself be dragged by the forces that surround us, enjoying each moment and savouring the precious moments of life that fate bestows on us, in our short existence and experiencing to the utmost the tributaries of sensations that run through us while we live. Except because his life was a real quagmire. Lucia agreed with this guru, who claimed to flee from his own experiences, because knowledge wasn’t achieving happiness, had to risk - making a reflection of an ontological character, to try new ways, to absorb fears, own as People, instead of confronting them directly. Observe them, as if these fears were not proper. Analyse them from a state of distant consciousness to them, in order to get to understand them better and get around safely.
The Queen of the Northwest Page 3
