Learning to Lose

by David Trueba

  On New Year’s Day, Aurora felt almost constant pains and the emergency doctor sent an ambulance. She spent two days in the hospital and they discharged her with a daily dose of sedatives that made her doze most of the day. Any time she felt better, Aurora avoided taking them. Leandro would insist, you don’t have to withstand the pain, there’s no point. I’m better today, I don’t need them, she would say. Lorenzo was shocked one afternoon when he visited and saw his mother’s sedated state. Leandro took him to the kitchen. I spoke to the doctor, she only has months to live. Lorenzo dropped his head into his hands. It’s better not to tell Sylvia anything, continued Leandro.

  Benita changed the sheets every day, and spoke with Aurora in a big, cheerful voice. I’m handicapped, not deaf, Aurora reminded her when Benita would repeat the same thing three times increasingly louder. She talks to her the way people talk to the sick or the foreign, thought Leandro. Twice a week, a Colombian masseuse came to help Aurora loosen up her muscles. She gives her a slap on the thigh at the end and always says the same thing, well, now you’ve done your two- or two-and-a-half-mile walk, since that’s the passive exercise equivalent.

  Leandro spends his mornings taking walks, buying things off Benita’s lists, and reading the newspaper to Aurora. Sometimes he skips over the delicate paragraphs. Every week a precarious boat filled with immigrants crashes into the rocks on the coast and the sea spits out twenty-odd corpses onto the southern beaches. Almost every day a driver or a group of friends or an entire family loses their lives in cars. A prisoner glues his hand to his girlfriend’s with industrial-strength glue during their conjugal visit to demand a switch to open prison. There are deaths in the Middle East, meetings of international leaders, constant political arguments, cultural prizes, detailed information about the soccer championship, news on the economy and television programs. Reading the newspaper is a routine Leandro doesn’t dare break. It would feel like the world is ending. Once in a while he’ll read her an interview and she’ll say that’s very good, a simple comment that inspires Leandro to continue.

  Together they watched the Christmas reports on the tsunami that devoured the virgin beaches of Thailand and Indonesia. They looked at the cold images, almost something out of fiction, without saying anything to each other, and they, too, felt overwhelmed by nature.

  Once a week, two women from the neighborhood visit. On those afternoons, Leandro disappears. Sometimes to the chalet. Since New Year’s he never went more than once a week, he had established that limit, and when he feels the urge and is about to break his promise to himself he locks himself in his room and puts music on the record player at a deafening volume until six o’clock passes. Sometimes he masturbates looking at old photos in a book of nudes.

  On New Year’s Eve, they ate the traditional twelve grapes in Aurora’s bedroom. Lorenzo and Sylvia were there, even though they both left shortly after. Leandro stayed with Aurora to watch the New Year’s concert on television. Two days later, he asked Osembe if she was going on vacation. These days there’s a lot of work, she answered. They had added some more Russian and Bulgarian girls at the chalet, who laughed with strident peals in the adjacent rooms. Fucking Russians, Leandro heard her mutter one day. What did you say? Nothing, nothing. But Leandro wanted to understand what bothered her about the recent arrivals.

  One afternoon in mid-January, Aurora received her friends at home. She was so weak that she had barely been able to greet them when they came in. Leandro left them alone. A little while later, he was lying in bed at the brothel with Osembe. My wife is dying, he said suddenly. Osembe dropped down by his side and stroked his face with her fingertips. She’s dying and it makes me feel so bad spending the afternoon here. Why? she asked. You have to forget.

  But I don’t forget, was the only thing Leandro managed to say. I don’t make you forget? For a little while? she asked him as if feigning hurt pride.

  Leandro didn’t respond. Osembe wanted to know more. It’s her bones, he answered. You have to rub cloves of garlic all over her body, on her legs and arms. Raw, quartered cloves of garlic, rub her with them good and hard. Leandro smiled as he listened. Don’t laugh, it is very good to do.

  These conversations ended up arousing Leandro. Especially when he noticed Osembe relaxing, no longer a whore for those brief moments of trivial chatting. That turned him on more than all the lovey-dovey erotic foreplay. He lay on top of her then, as if all of a sudden he was overcome with sex. And it took her a few minutes to understand his fit of lust.

  That evening he went back home in time to say good-bye to Aurora’s friends and thank them for their visit. She was dozing in the room and Leandro approached to kiss her. Aurora opened her eyes. Are you here already? He didn’t respond, just sat on the bed.

  Are you using a different shower gel? she asked suddenly. You smell different. I used a sample that came with the newspaper. He remembered how she used to pull off the sample packets of cosmetics in the Sunday newspaper supplement. It’s a bit strong, she said, but Leandro felt he hadn’t managed to assuage his wife’s suspicions and he lied more. I rinsed off when I came home, I was sweaty from my walk.

  He had showered after making love with Osembe, he had felt invaded by the scent of her body. He wouldn’t do it again. Most days he just soaped up his crotch, he was put off by the idea of sharing the bathroom with all kinds of clients. To combat the smell of woman and strange perfumes that impregnated his skin, he walked quickly along the street, making himself sweat in a unwarranted race.

  The unexpected good weather in February tempted Leandro into extending his walks. In the morning hours, when Benita’s cleaning was most annoying, he went down and trolled the neighborhood. There was always frenetic activity. Delivery trucks, people shopping, nannies taking kids for walks in strollers loaded down with plastic bags. One morning Leandro had followed a petite young woman who looked like she was Latin American, her hair loose down her back and wearing a short denim skirt, all the way to Calle Teruel. She was pushing a baby carriage that couldn’t be hers; she wasn’t more than twenty years old, and phenomenally proportioned. She stopped leisurely in front of the windows of shoe shops and clothing stores, with the baby asleep. Leandro kept a prudent distance but accompanied her on her walk. When she turned to one side, he observed her lovely features. It was rare to find that delicateness in a neighborhood where vulgarity reigned, filled with coarse faces, leathery skins. Leandro appreciated the girl as a strange pearl, dropped there thanks to the generous capriciousness of beauty’s allocation. Following her took him almost an hour. When she arrived at what seemed to be her door, she stopped and waited. Leandro, afraid of disturbing her, walked past. She didn’t pay him much attention. She had vivacious black eyes that found Leandro invisible. She opened the glass door and disappeared inside the entryway.

  Retirees sat on benches along the street, talking about soccer and politics with clichéd ideas that were almost always wrong, in Leandro’s opinion. Their ideas were limited to what they’d heard on the radio. Some of them returned home with bags of groceries lifted high, as if they were doing exercise, and others strolled with a young grandchild by the hand or used a cane rather than give up their daily walk, their gaze lost in the distance, sometimes talking to themselves beneath their visors. Leandro made an effort to distance himself from that group of dying urban birds.

  Leandro preferred to walk at a good clip. The main obstacles were vendors or the disabled elderly who leaned on the arms of Latin American caretakers. Sometimes he got as far as the wide sidewalks of Santa Engracia, where the neighborhood grew posher and more boring. There doormen controlled their dominions, their eyes following girls from the Catholic school nearby or shooting a hostile look at a passing Moroccan. Young Central Americans handed out advertising flyers at the entrance to the metro, the area sprinkled with pedestrians’ lack of interest in their course offerings or neighborhood restaurants. The sound of traffic was constant, but Leandro was upset when he heard the grating sound of jackhammers,
a welding workshop, and a tile saw. The closest park on Calle Tenerife was far and dirty with dog shit and trash and Leandro felt more comfortable in the hustle of people racing about than those who just sat and watched the morning go by.

  Leandro walked toward the chalet, relaxing his pace so as not to arrive early. The door opens for him after he rings the bell. Mari Luz comes out to receive him, ah, it’s you, come in, come on in. She leads him to the little receiving room. Excuse me for a second. She disappears and Leandro is left alone for a few minutes, sitting on the sofa like someone waiting for the dentist. When Mari Luz returns she says, well, I’ll have the girls come through, okay?

  No, no, is Valentina free? Leandro reserves Osembe’s real name for himself. If not, I’ll wait, he says with obvious command of the situation. But he isn’t prepared for the response from the madam, who turns her made-up mask to one side before answering. Ah, didn’t I tell you? Sorry, but Valentina doesn’t work here anymore. What?

  You heard me, the black girl doesn’t work here anymore.

  3

  If someone is watching me from a distance, at this point they must be completely confused. When nothing I do makes sense to me, the most logical thing to think is that it must be even more inscrutable to someone observing from the outside.

  This is what Lorenzo thinks as he attends the procession of the Ecuadorian saint Marianita de Jesús through the nearby streets of the Plaza de la Remonta. He barely knows anything about her, her tears of blood shed a hundred years earlier, her life of affliction and martyrdom to become, through suffering, sainted by God. For weeks now, after that strange face-off he’d had with Detective Baldasano, and after he had gotten over his fear of being arrested at any moment, Lorenzo has been convinced that someone is following him, spying on his calls, watching his every movement. This feeling, which at first made him feel panicky, only intrigues him now. It sometimes forces him into an exercise of identifying with his pursuer, trying to share his perspective. One Lorenzo separates from the other Lorenzo, as if he had to draw up a full report on his own activities and the result is only a confused jumble of actions without any particular connection. What is he doing? Where is he trying to go? What is he looking for? The game becomes fun when he himself doesn’t even know why he is where he is. Daniela had said, let’s go see the procession, my mother would like it if I sent her photos.

  The members of Daniela’s church aren’t there. Neither is the pastor with the sweet voice and the nose so hooked that it looks like a padlock on his face. Daniela had bought a disposable camera, wrapped in yellow cardboard. Lorenzo takes a picture and turns the little wheel, advancing the film with a ratchet noise. Daniela is in the foreground and behind her is the saint’s image raised aloft. Smile a little, he says, and she does, her mouth taking on the shape of a double-edged blade. Lorenzo looks around him for a moment. Yes, it is definitely hard to explain what he is doing there. There are few Spaniards. A couple of discreet men, one with gray hair and the other stocky, who accompany their Ecuadorian girlfriends. Before, when he saw one of those couples, he looked at the Spanish men with suspicion, a certain disdain even. Is that me now? he wonders.

  Lorenzo spends long hours at his parents’ house, at his mother’s side. He knows she has only months to live and what at first was infrequent anguish and pain is now almost routine. Week after week, Aurora’s hours of consciousness decrease. Her dying shows at the height of her cheekbones and in her emaciated mouth. As if her skeleton were gaining final authority inch by inch. He understands that she wants to hide the gravity of her condition from everyone; she never liked being the center of attention. She always accepted a supporting role beside her husband. What was important was his career, his peace of mind, his space. Kids, don’t make too much noise, Papá is listening to music or preparing his class, she would say to Lorenzo and his friends. Let’s go take a walk so your father can be alone for a little while, she would say at other times. Let your Papá read in peace, your father isn’t feeling well lately—phrases Lorenzo remembered well. Later she also assumed a supporting role with regard to him, as her son. His education, his life, his fun were important to her, but she was never possessive or scheming. Now she made a great effort to keep her illness a personal struggle that didn’t affect others. She seemed to be saying, relax, don’t worry that I’m quietly dying little by little, go on with your things, don’t change your plans for me.

  Lorenzo liked to stand beside his mother’s bed, organize her night table, where her glasses and some books were jumbled among the medicine boxes and the glass of water. What would his pursuer say? Here we see a son watching his mother die without a big display of pain, a son sorrowfully witnessing the ritual of letting go of the person who gave him life, unable to do anything to repay her.

  It would be interesting to know what those eyes were thinking when they watched him make some ridiculous purchase at the supermarket. Some cans of sardines, eggs, beers, canned goods, the yogurts Sylvia liked. What would they think of a man sleeping alone for months now, left by his wife, who doesn’t pull down the covers on her side, who just folds the corner of his bedspread and gets into the bed without touching the pillow that was hers, as if there were a glass barrier that kept him from taking complete possession of what was still a marriage bed in spite of the definitive absence of the other half? That inhospitable house that’s like a cave when Sylvia’s not there, and she’s there increasingly less and less. On some days when she left the house, she was resplendent, as if she had become a mature, beautiful, independent woman. Other days she was the same old lazy girl, curled up like a cat on her pillow in the childish warmth of her room with some reddish, ardent pimple on her forehead or chin.

  He related to her in the same vacillating way. Days of monosyllables and evasive responses, and then afternoons filled with jokes, sharing the kitchen table or watching a soccer game on TV and arguing because she defended, for example, the quick Argentinian winger he criticized for his lack of connection to the team and his futile feints. He was a father with a teenage daughter he knew almost nothing about, who would be the last in knowing what all her close friends, and maybe even her mother, surely knew. But he hadn’t told her about his relationship with Daniela, either.

  It was undoubtedly the most confusing chapter in his life up to that point. If they were dating, it was a very strange relationship. They walked separately down the street, they said good night at the door with a kiss on each cheek. The evenings they went out, they took long walks, Daniela strolling, almost dragging her feet. They would go in some café or a store where she’d try on shoes or a skirt, and then they’d leave without buying anything, either because of the price or her stubborn insistence that everything looked bad on her, I have fat legs, my feet are too small. Although sometimes a conversation would provoke her splendid smile, it was difficult to breach the distance, to bring down the invisible wall that separated them. One would have thought they were just friends if not for the languid expression Lorenzo adopted as he watched her leave and his sadness on the way home.

  On weekends they spent hours together, sometimes with her friends. Then more time was spent looking at store windows or trying on a pair of pants or a shirt. She only let him treat her once in a while. They would troll through the bazaars, eat at cheap restaurants. On Sunday mornings, they went to her church and chatted with the other attendees while the kids ran between chairs. Afterward they organized the bags of food, like little ration sacks they handed out to those who came to pick them up, some with honorable expressions attached to accepting charity.

  On other days, they walked alone through the paths of Retiro Park and she stopped to greet some Ecuadorian acquaintance who looked at Lorenzo as if he were judging a usurper. If he mentioned something about the cutting stares her fellow countrymen gave him, she only said, pay no mind, they’re men.

  It took me a long time to be able to tolerate those dominating looks from men, Daniela explained to him one day. You think I don’t feel those ey
es that grope you in front and in back? Making you feel like a dirty whore they have the right to enjoy. Men are always very aggressive.

  Lorenzo felt forced to defend them. He said that violence wasn’t always behind those looks; sometimes they can be admiring.

  If a man wants to flatter you, she explained, he only has to gaze into your eyes, he doesn’t have to linger on your breasts and hips and hound you. The same men that give you challenging looks when you’re with me would rape me with their eyes if they found me alone.

  Daniela’s attitude, sensitive to any kind of sexual approach, in spite of the sensuality she exuded almost effortlessly, forced Lorenzo to apologize if his arm brushed hers or if their knees bumped under the table or if he touched her thigh when going to switch gears in the van. In the bazaar, when she tried on a necklace or some earrings, he would tell her, they look good on you, but when they parted he only dared to say, sleep well. In her way, Daniela’s most affectionate gesture toward Lorenzo had been one afternoon, when coming through the door and walking toward him, she had shown him her cell phone and said, did you know I included you in the four numbers I can call for free?

  Work wasn’t much easier to define. Wilson had a small entourage of three or four Ecuadorians that he directed authoritatively during moves and pickups. Lorenzo had made a business card with his name and cell phone number beneath a succinct definition of the word transport. Often, though, his work was just taking Wilson to the airport and picking up a group of newly arrived Ecuadorians in the van. It was some kind of profitable collective taxi. Lorenzo drove around the terminal to avoid police surveillance and Wilson rang his cell phone as a signal when the passengers were ready. They dropped them off around the city and made sixty or seventy euros off the books. Wilson smiled at Lorenzo with his mismatched eyes and explained, when you come to a strange land, you always trust a fellow countryman.