Learning to Lose

by David Trueba

  Leandro was surprised. He wasn’t expecting to hear that. She downplayed the incident. Leandro didn’t have cash on him and he offered to write a new check. Anything not to leave a trail on his credit card. I told you before I prefer cash, the woman warned. Just two blocks away there’s an ATM. In that case, I’ll come back some other day, threatened Leandro.

  Okay, okay, we’re not going to start losing trust in you over some little accident, are we now?

  Mari Luz accepted the signed check that Leandro extended with a trembling hand. She had left the room while he was writing it. She would have hesitated if she had seen how shaky he was. She brought him the returned check from the bank and added a mechanical, almost insulting, I’ll go call Valentina right away. He said, today I’d rather have a different one. He said, it just like that, without thinking about it too much. I just feel like a change today. Okay, I’ll have the girls come through. Have a seat. Would you like something to drink?

  Leandro shook his head and sat on the sofa after taking off his coat. It was hot.

  He didn’t give much thought to choosing. He asked the first one who came in to go up with him. She was Slavic, with shoulder-length blond hair, willowy, not much chest on her. They went to a room. She promptly undressed and then she undressed him. The shower ritual was different this time, and the girl indicated he should sit on the bidet. There she washed his penis and asshole with shower gel, as if she were finishing up the day’s dishes. She spoke good Spanish although her voice was dissonant, running out of steam halfway through her sentences. She tried to act nice. She switched with him and sat astride the bidet, rubbing her shaved pubis with a hand full of white foam.

  Lying on the bed, the girl started to grate on Leandro. Her voice was too high-pitched, not very sexy. It broke into an absurd, almost ridiculous, crowing, every sentence like the shriek of a broody hen. The girl was too skinny and he could see the outline of her bones. She ran her blond hair over his chest, nibbled on his nipples, and caressed the flaccid skin around his old belly.

  After the days of abstinence during which he had resisted breaking away to the chalet, his visits had become almost daily. A relapse. On Sunday he stayed home out of an insurmountable sense of shame, and Aurora had a couple of visits that allowed him to lock himself in his room. Seeing Osembe again after two weeks was pleasant. She was affectionate, and asked why he’d been away. He explained that his wife was sick and Osembe didn’t make him feel ridiculous, there, naked in bed at a brothel, talking about his wife’s illness. Osembe devoted herself fully to his pleasure. That afternoon he returned home with his guilt tempered by the feeling that he’d had a really good time. Besides, he told himself, I won’t go back for a good long while. But he returned the next evening. And the one after that. And Osembe went back to her old way of satisfying him. The latter half of each encounter turned into a brief chat where they each shared some private details.

  On Monday they used the Jacuzzi again, even though Leandro was uncomfortable about its cleanliness and the fact that the tub wasn’t white. He enjoyed being close to Osembe. The foamy water played off her skin and offered him stimulating glimpses. Back on the street, he felt the evening’s cold go right through him. He thought he was getting sick.

  He imagined himself in bed, feverish. Then he thought how there’d be no one to take care of him. Now it wouldn’t be like those old bouts of flu or stomach virus that he spent in bed with Aurora anxious to offer him something to eat, his medicines at the right time, more heat when he needed it. Now he would be a neglected patient. And it seemed like just punishment.

  But he didn’t get sick. And after lunch the next day he left Aurora dozing with the murmur of a cheery afternoon radio program in the background. Before entering the chalet, from the sidewalk across the street, he saw a man bringing in boxes from the supermarket and then some bags from the dry cleaners. Maybe they were laundered sheets, he said to himself. He didn’t go in until fifteen minutes after seeing the man leave in a dark van. The chalet presented its usual lowered shades like closed eyelashes, the same air of discretion, silence, almost neglect. But that afternoon he got angry with Osembe.

  She received him sleepily but solicitously. She was almost naked; maybe she had just finished with another client. She washed him clumsily between giggles and Leandro thought she had taken drugs or was drunk. They lay on the bed and she was excessive. Sometimes she let out silly laughs and said affectionate things that sounded mocking with all her laughter. With two fingers, she shook Leandro’s penis for a while as if it were a talking doll. In its flaccidness it looked like a perverse, insulting puppet show.

  Leandro felt exposed and ridiculed. He tried to control his desire, to convey his displeasure. But she applied herself in a laborious fellatio. She nibbled on Leandro’s penis and several times he felt the border where pain and pleasure brush past each other. She filled her mouth with saliva and rinsed and dampened his half-erect member. The sounds were unpleasant and worked against her diligent efforts. What’s wrong today? she said. Don’t you like me anymore, darling? she asked. Then she just wagged Leandro’s penis with an aggressive hand, as if it were a tiring and absurd task, like shaking a dead bladder.

  Leandro grabbed her hard by the wrist. Relax, he said. That’s enough. She resisted, but he forced her to lie down beside him. He waited a second for their breathing to calm after the struggle.

  I want to see you outside of here, Leandro told her. That’s not allowed. Give me a phone number. You’ll make more money. It will all be for you. Don’t talk, Osembe told him, and moved her head as if warning him to be careful. Don’t you see you’d make twice or three times what you are making? How much do they take out here?

  Leandro traveled over Osembe’s body. In response to his delicate nibbles, she laughed or let out muffled screams. Leandro slid down to her sex and tried to tame her. He felt he was failing in his attempts to give her pleasure, didn’t notice her pink folds moistening. She seemed made of stone. I’m so stupid, he thought.

  He stood up, dressed without his usual shower, and left the room without leaving a tip. Osembe didn’t say anything and Leandro suspected she was dozing on the bed.

  Downstairs he paid in cash. He answered with a concise yes to the madam’s did everything go well? He had felt a desire to hit Osembe, to slap her, to make her mad or irritated, to finally see, maybe, a real glimpse of her as a person. But he was glad he hadn’t. Any conflict in those places always ended unpleasantly.

  Along the street, he struggled to contain his fury. The people he passed seemed terribly ugly, unpleasant, awkward. The hedge of flowers seemed tacky and lacking personality, the sidewalk poorly drawn. He preferred the gray streets of old Madrid. The shape of cars seemed ridiculous; the climate, inhospitable; the chipped tree trunks, depressing. The city transmitted life, but a grotesque, obscene life. The stores weren’t very tempting, with rickety signs or cheap neon. The advertising on bus stops was invaded by the same frigid beauty, and most of the cold faces he saw were demoralizingly common.

  I’m not going back, he told himself. From the first day, he had been attracted to Osembe’s haughty disdain, the cruelty in her empty and indifferent gaze. But the smoothness of her skin was addictive. He knew he would never have her, that she would never think of him or worry in the least about her dirty old customer, that the loyalty of his visits would never soften the absent heart of that chalet. The sexual pleasure she conceded him was the product of an automatic professionalism; the hands that ran over his body only caressed the money it gave them. Money she’d spend on manicures, hair salons, cosmetics, clothes, jewelry, because from everything he could make out about Osembe, she was a girl removed from the seriousness of her destiny, the complacent survivor of a shipwreck.

  If someday he let that stupid vice ruin his life, he would have the consolation of knowing he had done it consciously, that he hadn’t been tricked into going to the chalet or into those arms. It was a chosen downfall, a voluntary and obsessive descent th
at deserved no mercy, that wasn’t sustained by romantic justifications.

  When he got home that night, his anger turned into peace and devotion. He read to Aurora beside the bed, he made broth for her, and he kissed her on the cheek when he said good night. He wondered if he would have done all that with the same disposition if he hadn’t just come from staring his moral misery in the face, seeing how low he had sunk. He wondered if there had to be a fundamental contrast in life’s events. If what was good was only good because of the lurking presence of the bad, the lovely beside the ugly, the right beside the wrong.

  I’m going to get better, don’t worry, Aurora said when she noticed Leandro was down in the dumps. He turned off the light. In the dark, he felt dirty and disgusted with himself. She was making a huge mistake in her interpretation of the reason behind his sadness. I’m not suffering over you, but over me, he thought, wounded.

  Leandro went to sleep with Osembe’s dried saliva on his skin. He wished to wake up dead, liberated. But he woke up healthy and hale, in good spirits even. And that same evening he was beneath the body of a flat, bony Ukrainian woman, who said her name was Tania and whom Leandro had chosen to get back at Osembe, even though he suspected she wasn’t bothered in the least by this gesture. What was he expecting? Jealousy? He quickly regretted it as he watched himself fake it in order to seem like something close to a satisfied customer. At least with Osembe he didn’t feel conditioned into a role.

  Leandro had to focus to come at the end. I can dress myself, he says when she offers to help him with her horrible rook’s voice. Leandro looks at his soft, pale body, the body of an old man, the age spots around his chest. Why do I do this? Why am I destroying myself this way? I didn’t work all my life, read, study, live with a lovely, dynamic woman, struggle to have a decent, emancipated life to end up a despicable wreck in an uptown whorehouse. Am I going to ruin my life? he asks himself. He places his head between his hands on his knees, like a boxer who’s been served a knockout punch, minutes before losing everything.

  He senses the inner warning that keeps him from crying. The voice that reminds him that guilty lamenting isn’t sincere, either. He is too familiar with resorting to guilt. He was old friends with remorse, but he dealt with it by remembering that everything is transient.

  Outside a bird sings and the murmur of paid sex in some nearby room arrives from the hallway. Tania had gone to the bathroom and was standing, waiting for him so they could leave the room together. No one should walk alone; everything was choreographed to avoid unwanted encounters. Would Osembe know he was there? And what would that make her feel? Indifference, surely. Maybe a stab of annoyance at losing easy money. But all the customers were the same, she had told him one day. Although he did have an unusual facet. His age, his decrepitude, this elderly lust, the persistence in his ways, his guilt infinitely more pronounced than in any other slave to an out-of-control sexual appetite. She’d have trouble finding someone worse than him.

  He runs his fingers through his hair in front of the mirror. Again the sensation of being in a schoolboy’s room. No one would suspect the immense desolation he hides. He sees a dead man at the back of his eyes. Leandro gives himself an intelligent stare that helps him control any emotion. Cold.

  In the hallway between rooms, Leandro hears a door opening, something unusual. Osembe sticks out her head. She is wearing a cream-colored dress that ends halfway down her thighs, is tight at the hips, and opens into two wide straps on her shoulders, revealing cleavage. The dress is somewhat unpleasant in its artificiality, but it highlights her splendid body. Her eyes are filled with tiny red veins.

  You’re cheating on me today, huh? Leandro doesn’t feel like answering. He starts to go down the stairs. She puts her long raspberry-colored fingernails on his shoulder. Tomorrow is my birthday. If you come we’ll have a special party. Want to?

  Leandro understands the scene as a pathetic triumph. He shrugs his shoulders. Is it a provocation? Or maybe a small victory?

  The madam relieves Tania at the bottom of the stairs. She guides Leandro to the door. I hope there won’t be any problems with the check, right? Leandro firmly assures her that there won’t be. But she shows her smile with a twisted, worn tooth.

  Don’t let me down, old man, don’t let me down.

  The phrase has a dose of both disdain and threat to it. Leandro feels insulted and leaves the chalet with strength, without giving in. It is the end. He will never go back to that place. He even shoots a glance back at the metal door to fix it in his memory. At the large veiled window, too. Soon it will all be a shadow. He feels someone’s gaze behind a venetian blind, senses a presence behind the strips. Never again. No one is so stupid as to let themselves be beaten when the enemy has showed its weapons and its obvious superiority. It would be suicide. He heads off with a lively step, reborn. He is fleeing.

  And he knows it.

  11

  On Sunday Lorenzo has lunch at his parents’ house. He has made an overcooked rice dish that sticks to the spoon when he serves it. The two men have arranged themselves around Aurora’s bed and when she praises the food after barely eating a few grains of rice, Lorenzo feels the need to insult his own cooking. Well, we could use it as paste and wallpaper the room, too. Sylvia is having lunch with her mother, who is passing through the city. And, as always, Lorenzo felt a stab of jealousy. He feels awkward about not being able to take his daughter to restaurants except for the place downstairs where the fixed-price menu costs nine euros. He knows that Santiago will show up and try to win over Sylvia with the same air of power and confidence that captivated Pilar. His important manner, his chitchat, his gifts of books that she now reads in spite of never having shown an interest in reading before.

  When Pilar announced she was leaving him and there was another man in her life, Lorenzo wasn’t surprised it was Santiago. It’s not that unusual, he said then, taking great pains to hurt her as much as possible, for a secretary to get involved with her boss. He didn’t manage to offend Pilar with his comment. And maybe that irritated Lorenzo even more. In the days following, he did something that he’s still ashamed of. He is not even sure if Pilar knows the story. Maybe Santiago never told her.

  Lorenzo had barely met Santiago on the few occasions he passed by Pilar’s office near the Plaza de la Independencia. Before Santiago was her boss, Pilar used to joke at dinners with friends, I think I have the most boring job in the world. But Marta, Óscar’s wife, who worked at the Ministry of Justice, shot back, I’m the secretary to a subsecretary, where does that leave me? A sub-subsecretary? And they all laughed, as if their laughter would banish Pilar’s endless job frustration.

  Lorenzo waited one day near the office, and when he saw Santiago emerge from the building he confronted him. Do you want to talk? Let’s have a cup of coffee. Santiago’s civilized air only riled him up more. Lorenzo gave him a shove, which he received without response, holding on to the wall. He said something else. Something conciliatory. Lorenzo shouted at him. Why are you doing this to me? Huh? Why are you doing this to me? Santiago reflexively covered his face with his hands. What do you think, I’m going to hit you? Lorenzo recriminated. And he angrily slapped Santiago’s arms as if he just wanted to make him feel inferior. It sent his brown plastic-framed glasses to the ground, almost by accident. They didn’t break. Someone passing by on the street stopped to look. Santiago picked up his glasses, put them on, and started to walk away, with firm steps but not running. Lorenzo didn’t follow him. He only repeated, I’m not going to hit you. But Santiago didn’t turn around to look at him, he was far away.

  Lorenzo never understood what he had wanted to do, what he was looking for in that confrontation. He was only trying to force Santiago to notice the injury he had caused him. You are happy at my expense, because you stole everything from me. In time he was ashamed of his violence, his stupidity. It humiliated him. Santiago had to know the cost of his happiness, the price the other man had to pay. Lorenzo wanted to present himself to S
antiago as something more than just Pilar’s ex, as a real, wounded person.

  But his discomfort that Sunday as he eats with his parents doesn’t date back that far. It has more to do with the previous afternoon.

  On the esplanade of the monastery at El Escorial, surrounded by groups of tourists on their way back to buses parked nearby, Lorenzo asked Daniela, did you like it? She confessed to mostly being impressed by how enormous and old it was.

  Spaniards are crazy, right? Lorenzo thought to say. Something like this erected in the middle of nowhere just because some demented king wanted to purge his guilt.

  He told Daniela about the origins of the monastery, Saint Lorenzo’s martyrdom, the very building being shaped as a torture grill, Philip II’s shame for winning the Battle of San Quintín on the saint’s day, all Internet facts he had read hastily on Sylvia’s computer.

  Daniela told him she had felt the same feeling of smallness on a school trip to visit the Church of the Company of Jesus in Quito, in the middle of the city’s historic center. The effect on her of the sun coming through the windows and the very explicit paintings depicting the fate of the infidels, which convinced the natives of the greatness of the Catholic God. Then she went back to visit after the fire, with the blackened walls, and it was even more impressive.

  Lorenzo made general comments, mixing up dates and names, in some sort of well-intentioned speech that seemed more like a presentation by a flunking student. When he tried to say something about the Spanish arrival in Ecuador and the missionary spirit that erected enormous churches and convents, Daniela corrected him with a certain sweetness, Hernán Cortés didn’t have anything to do with any of that, I think you mean Pizarro. Yes, of course, Pizarro, well, it’s the same thing. He also pretended to know the names of Sucre, and the date of independence declared on the slopes of the Pichincha volcano. He even straight-out lied, insisting that of course he had heard of Rumiñahui. A long time ago, in school.