The Queen of the Northwest

by Javier Montes Gómez

  She felt a great relief as she felt the water slide down her bare breasts. For months, no man's hands touched her.

  She missed the callosity of their touch, but none of the four great lovers of her life, Rodriguez Carpintero, Manuel Marquina, Alberto Conde, and of course her great love, Nicolás Gallardo, were in a position to risk their reputation by sharing three hours of intimacy once a month in a private meeting with a famous preyer, had happened to become in few months of a heroine to the woman less desired by the arms of her most precious lovers. Perhaps repressed by fear of a media scandal, the truth was that not even a politician, judge, lawyer or civil guard were the best people to relate to a convict. At the end of the day, it was just rotten and stinky sex in a closed room, probably cushioned, similar to those rooms where they contain the insane in psychiatric rooms. She could almost see herself gagged with her arms tied at chest level, jumping, unable to move, with the bare and muscular body of Sergeant Nicholas by her side unable to touch him, dead with desire, feeling a fire inside of the ovaries that burn the entrails. Dying of the desire to be hooked with a harness to his gigantic phallic member, hanging from it like one of those huge cables that hold the hanging bridges. But the straitjacket keeps her immobilized.

  The water keeps sliding down her body to get lost in the soil drain. She reaches for a towel and wraps herself in it. She gets dried. She hangs it again on the clothes hanger and ducks a grey bathrobe. If she ever gets out of jail she will never wear anything of that colour again. Then she goes to the pool to get ready. Today, in addition to having an appointment with her lawyer in the afternoon she will receive the visit of Sergeant Nicholas. Her legs tremble at the thought. Her eyes betray her, her pulse quickens Damn! Again her heart is pounding. She hates that bewildering momentary sense of loss of control. It is nervous excitement. She can’t let herself to be dominated by him. She takes a deep breath, hard. Calm! Calm! Repeat mentally over and over again. It's just a dream. But people in her situation need something to believe in. An illusion, something to grasp to try to survive. Two hours later Amadeo Montero was sitting across from her in the visitation room. The bare walls, lacking in decoration, gave the room a dreadful air. It reminded her of one of those sinister laboratories belonging to the American intelligence service, where in the early 1980s experiments were carried out on human beings, usually male college students in exchange for small sums of money. A table of cheap white agglomerate stood between them.

  Amadeo was the first to speak, his words rising through the smoke of his cigarette like an army reactor. The scandal provoked by the report issued in the "Weekly Report" on her new trial had reduced the chances of winning, Amadeo explained.

  —It's best to surrender. If we waive the new trial, the prosecution will grant us a sentence reduction of eight to five years. The most consistent would be to accept the offer. Since you have no history and because of your exemplary behaviour since your entry into jail, in one month you will be granted weekend leave and five years pass quickly. I advise you to take the time to study, you should get a university degree. You could use an honest job when you go out. You will only be thirty years old, you will still have a lifetime left.

  —I will accept the bargain. I don’t want any more scandals with the press. Five years in here will be an eternity, but if I can go out on weekends, I'll take it.

  Amadeo handed her some papers with the proper documentation to make the right petitions and manage the new deal they were about to reach with the prosecution, if they went ahead with the trial it was possible that they won but if they lost she would have to do eight years of full sentence, in addition to one more year to spend six months running away from justice, the prosecution had agreed to forget that charge if in the end the agreement was made. After the corresponding rubric Amadeo said goodbye to Lucia with a strong handshake, wishing her all the luck of this world. At one o'clock the food is served. The dams occupy their seats with no number or name that seem to take time and destined to the same person. It is a sacred act, no inmate dares to take the place of another as if they were predestined for life to sit in that place.

  Each one sits on their own at the table where they feels more secure. There are no racial or band mixes here. In spite of this silence prevails. Only interrupted by the boisterous tinkling of spoons and forks as they dipped again and again in the liquid concoction that looks like a stew. Before finishing the meal no one dares to separate the look from the plate. No one comments on anything. The interim remain vigilant in case some inmate is crossed the line, but this time in the dining room seems to reign a preconceived harmony. Two round lamps of white light similar to those hanging from many factories distribute the light in the room, it seems that it is raining outside. Lucy eats in silence, in the afternoon at six she will meet Nicholás. He is a good boy and she knows it, she still retains the taste of his kisses in her memory, since the last time they were together in Chandrexa on that hard mattress. She had never felt anything like it before, never before. It was the first time anyone had made her feel a woman in the full extent of the word.

  She would never forget his warm gaze, the first time their eyes met last year's end in the tavern, she was behind the bar putting on glasses, she was drawn to him at once. Her goose bumps had gone, her heart had struck a flash, the same heart-stopping sensation she felt now every time she heard his name being pronounced in prison; Even if they had never slept together and made love, she would still feel the same when she saw him, it was like a visceral disease like an animal impulse that her mind could not control and that was not worth fighting for.

  3—The secret of Susana.

  Susana Seoane could never erase that distant day from her mind, just five years ago. It was a Thursday of the month of December, she walked slowly and wearily across the concrete sidewalks. In search of the shelter of the sturdy stone walls of the building where the Government Sub delegation is located. Trying to protect herself from the strong wind and rain with nothing more than a tight raincoat, typical of times warmer than that cold season. She takes a deep breath from her cigarette with that anxiety with which a bored confidante watches the slow pace of the hours on her wristwatch, waiting for the end of her turn. It was quarter past nine, another boring day was awaiting for her to take notes and listen with dying eyes to the dictates of the teachers. Maybe she should dedicate herself as her friend Lucia to sell grass. Surely she would get nice dough, but it was too risky if they catch you, you are done.

  She should be proud of herself as to how things are working out, but there are times when one gets up with absurd laziness, as if her eyelids weigh tons, it seems that monotony takes over everything around her. At every step she gets fed up with contemplating the same absurd park half-deserted, except for the vagabonds that swarm by their benches, waiting for an early alms from the attired students who cross it at full speed, without finding them, on the way to the classes; Carrying their purses holding their weight as though they contained nothing more than oxygen, just like those bottles with which divers plunge again and again into the depths of the ocean.

  On the other side of the park across the street is the San Martin Building: the tallest tower in the city, it reminds you of one of those ugly buildings built during the sixties, a clear symbol of a declining city. But that's not all, later on she finds herself in full with the shop windows of Adolfo Dominguez, the millionaire entrepreneur.

  One of the most competent and intelligent entrepreneurs in the entire province, besides famous for his designs, whose collections of clothing are sold all over the world. Garments made in China with minimal costs, are exposed in their windows at prohibitive prices for their pocket.

  Susan moves slowly down the sidewalk, she needs a dose of caffeine to wake up. The university, which is just around the corner, seems far away like the Himalayan mountains. After leaving the window of Autos Santa Rita to the left full of luxurious cars, she approaches the building of the National Police. Just as she looks at it, a familiar melody comes
out of her bag, it's the soundtrack of Mission Impossible that emits on her latest generation Nokia 8410, sounding at a frenetic pace. As she is half stunned, she appreciates the noise of music that helps her to stretch. It was Ruth, says this time she is determined to abandon her boyfriend Jose Ramon bla, bla, bla... The same proclamation as always. She listens patiently as she continues to walk past the police station. She passes under the bridge of the railway. She sets up a meeting with Ruth for a coffee at night, hangs up the phone and puts the cell phone back in her purse. Susana cuts through a street without too much traffic at that time of the morning, which was lost parallel to the police station. She does not remember the moment when she fixed her eyes on the container of domestic effluents. Perhaps after discerning out of its interior out of the rubbish the white arm of a girl. Susana looks up in terror. Is something wrong? Is she okay? There is no reply. She raises the lid of the container and notices how the veins of the brain swell with terror, is close enough to prove that the bloodless face is familiar.

  It reminds her of a childhood loss in the house of her paternal uncles, playing among the reeds, they ran through the huge farmyard, jumping on the cobbled floor of the house holding hands, she and the girl in the container: her Maternal premium Nuria Estévez Lameiros, a heroin addict girl at the age of twenty-two, died of an overdose, found by chance by Susana Seoane at nine-twenty on a cold December morning. It was an unprecedented tragedy in her life. Susana kept a very special affection to her. Poor girl!

  During her childhood Nuria had to endure in silence the footsteps of a drunken father creaking up the stairs, uttering expletives and insults against a fragile mother and abandoned to the abuses of an unscrupulous lout, she deserved better. The beatings usually happened on Sundays at dawn, when he returned drunk from the village bar after getting drunk with barrel cognac with his friends. Fascists of the worse, unscrupulous despots of any kind, ready to force their ideals by force, people of the worst kind as her father. After embarrassing her with her mother, bursting with the worst nonsense and occurrences that came to his mind, she ran all over the house.

  Nuria was hidden behind the legs of the terrified grandfather, trimmed by the heat of his protective hazel-cane. To Susana, for a long time Nuria had been the best friend of her childhood, it hurt to see her there in that state of catharsis with her eyes open, looking nowhere, as if death came upon her by surprise, without being invited; victim of a stroke caused by the effect of the drug. Susana stared at her with a puzzled look. Around her a group of people began to gather, watching the scene at a prudent distance.

  Students who didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to get to school, officials looking for something new to tell in their boring office hours and some corridor that simulated getting fit while measuring their heart rate in a heartbeat, grandparents going out into the street taking their last steps before leaving this world; They all stood frozen, staring at the girl, saying nothing, as if it were a circus show. Astonished by the impact of her vision to anyone, it occurred to her to pick up a cell phone and call the emergency service, in case there was still some breath of life in that scruffy figure. It wasn’t necessary, Susana grabbed her wrist trying to find her pulse, but it had stopped beating for hours. An agonizing pain filled her chest, poor Nuria, she was never lucky. Her father had raped her several times during her childhood. Tired of his son's continued abuses, one day the grandfather carried the hunting shotgun that hung from the wall of the room to the left of the dissected boar's head, which along with other hunting pieces decorated the room, heading for Nuria’s father put the barrel in his chest, but his pulse quivered before he pulled the trigger. The other man had managed to snatch the weapon from him, from the blow he had given to the old man, who until then had been in excellent health. He broke several ribs. From there, the grandfather was never the same.

  The Benemérita did nothing, they simply said that he had fallen down the stairs anyway, even if they had told the truth, Susana doubted that the bastard would receive any punishment. Susana remembered Nuria's adolescence as a traumatic time for her, family problems had gone to worse. The beatings of her father to her mother had multiplied. After her grandfather passed away, she had nowhere to hide except in the street; From then on, Susana lost track of her studies, surrounded by her best friends. Now she regretted not having helped her more, surely if she had known of his life and had cared more for her ... Today she would still be alive, Susana from that day began to generate a hatred within her towards the world of drugs and all that it surrounded it.

  It was sad that her friend ended up surrounded by garbage bags, trying to hide from the cruelty of a world that was always hostile to her. A world whose divergences, contrast of cultures and beliefs usually doesn’t harbour a place for the weakest. So often in need of shelter to hide. Susana would never be able to erase from her mind the eyes of that frightened girl, tucked between Don Tomasino's legs, waiting to avoid her father's wrath. The slapping, obscene touches so painful, she never managed to overcome and that led her to practice fellatio with strangers in dark places to find money to afford a miserable dose of the worst quality. When Nuria got high on heroin, she made it to a quiet, painless place, a sort of extrasensory nirvana, where an immense peace invaded all her senses, flooding them with an intense aroma of calmness and full spirituality, colourless, transparent and calm of Sedative effect. But without intuiting it, it drew her closer and closer to a slow and desolate death.

  During the funeral, Susana hid her eyes behind dark glasses, having spent the night in tears, shedding tears for her old friend. It hurt to have lost her in that stupid way, without being able to at least say good-bye before she had gone on a last trip without a return to a place that even the most enlightened never return. A place where maybe someday they will meet again never to separate again. Ruth was holding Suzanne's arm at her friend's funeral while the men lowered the coffin with ropes. Accompanying the act with the prayers of the priest and the hypocritical cry of relatives who always turned their back on her while she lived and now shed tears filled with theatre after her death; In a vain attempt to reassure their consciences. On their way back to the car they found Lucia, who had arrived late for the funeral, since she had just returned from a plane trip from Central America.

  —I am sorry. I could not get there earlier, —she said apologetically, turning to Susana.

  She was wearing a very low-cut khaki dress, quite inappropriate for the occasion, in Mexico the weather was warm and she had not had time to go home to change. On the way Don Silvio had lent her an astrakhan coat to protect herself from the cold. Susana took off her sunglasses and stared at her with anger that it would take time for Lucia to clear her mind.

  —You could have been anything you had proposed and you have chosen the worst option embarrassing your family and friends. I will never forgive people like you and your bloody camels! You have taken my cousin to the grave. Damn you! I hope you rot in the depths of hell. Why, why did you choose the path of terror? Look me in the face and tell me motherfucker!

  Through Lucía's head all sorts of things happened, but in the face of Susana's reaction, she decided to turn around and disappear. From that moment her friendship with Susana was over forever.

  This had happened many years ago. Now sitting in front of the laptop Susana wrote an article about the shameful agreement that The Quenn had reached with the prosecution, only sentenced to five years in prison. It was possible that in three for good behaviour she will be released on parole And then what? So much effort to lock her between those bars for what? Susana considered herself privileged to work for such well-known magazines as "Interviú", "GQ" or "El País Semanal" and to be able to do it from her own studio without fixed schedules, haste or any kind of pressure. It was true that although working for them provided great freedom, she also spent part of the salary she earned by paying his informers. One of Susana's best collaborators was her friend Ruth, whose work on the report "The Queen’s network" broadcast by Telev
isión Española in the program "Weekly Report" was crucial in the final success of the broadcast; Had put Lucia against the ropes and left in diapers the precariousness of a corrupt judicial system in a chaotic city. It pained him deeply that while La Reina wandered by Chandrexa escaped justice, she did it using as cover the personal details of her cousin. Lucia could never compare to Nuria in anything. That Lucía and Nuria never became the same person was an ignominious truth no matter how much that fanatic came to believe that by simply seizing her cousin's signs, she could suddenly erase her past and create a new identity. That was something that couldn’t be real. How the hell can one seize someone's soul without leaving a trace of her own existence? Without dragging their sins as a heavy burden through the long journey of life. Lucia had a past, whether she wanted it or not: she would have to pay in jail for her crimes, once she had served her sentence and closed her debt to society, she would be offered the opportunity that every human being deserves to start over.