From the balcony where she was standing, Maria could see the whole expanse of the storm. They remained in the dining room.
“I’ll be back,” Maria had said.
Behind her, in the corridor, all the children were now sleeping. Among them was Judith. When Maria turned around she saw her asleep, her body outlined in the soft light of the oil lamps hooked up on the walls.
“As soon as she’s asleep, I’ll come back,” Maria had told them.
Judith was asleep.
The hotel was full. The rooms, the corridors, and later on this hall, would be still more crowded. There were more people in the hotel than in a whole district of the town. The town, beyond which stretched deserted roads, all the way to Madrid, toward which the storm was moving since five o’clock, bursting here and there, its clouds breaking and then mending again. To the point of exhaustion. Until when? It was going to last all night.
There was no longer a single café open.
“We’ll wait for you, Maria,” Pierre had said.
The town was small, it covered about five acres, all of it was crowded into an irregular, but full, neatly outlined shape. Beyond it, whichever way you turned, open country stretched out, bare, rolling (this was hardly noticeable that night, and yet, in the east, there seemed to be a sudden drop). A stream previously dried out, would overflow in the morning.
If you looked at the time it was ten o’clock. In the evening. It was summer.
Policemen were walking under the hotel balconies. They must have been tired from searching. They dragged their feet in the muddy streets. The crime had been committed a long time ago, hours ago, and they were talking about the weather.
“Rodrigo Paestra is on the rooftops.”
Maria remembered. The rooftops were there, they were empty. They were shining dimly under the balcony where she was standing. Empty.
They were waiting for her in the dining room, in the midst of cleared tables, oblivious of her, looking at each other, motionless. The hotel was full. There was no other place for them to look at each other except there.
Whistling started again at the other end of the town, well beyond the square, in the direction of Madrid. Nothing happened. Policemen gathered at the street corner, on the left, stopped, moved off again. It was just a break in the waiting period. The policemen walked by under the balcony, and turned into another street.
It wasn’t much later than ten. It was later than when she should have gone back to the dining room, entered, moved in between them, sat down, and told them once more the surprising news.
“I’ve been told that Rodrigo Paestra is hiding on the rooftops.”
She left the balcony, entered the hall and lay down next to her sleeping child, her own, the body which, among all the other children in the hall, belonged to her. She kissed her hair lightly.
“My life,” she said.
The child didn’t wake up. She barely moved, sighed, and fell back into a calm sleep.
And the town was like her, already locked in sleep. Some still talked about Rodrigo Paestra whose wife was found naked next to Perez, both asleep after hours of love. And then dead. The nineteen-year-old body was in the town hall.
If Maria were to get up, if she were to go to the dining room, she could ask for a drink. She thought of the first sip of manzanilla in her mouth and the peace in her body that would follow. She didn’t move.
Beyond the hall, through the yellow and vacillating screen of the oil lamps, you could imagine the rooftops, covered with the moving sky, its darkness deepening. The sky was there, against the frame of the open balcony.
Maria got up, hesitant about going back to the dining room where they would still be immersed in the wonder of their overpowering desire, still alone in the midst of cleared tables and exhausted waiters who were waiting for them to leave, and whom they didn’t see.
She walked back to the balcony, smoked a cigarette. The rain hadn’t returned yet. It was slow. The sky was still brooding, it would still be a while. In the back of her, there were couples coming into the hall. They were speaking softly because of the children. They lay down. They kept quiet at first, hoping for sleep that did not come, and then they talked again. From everywhere, particularly from the crowded rooms, came the muted sound of voices, regularly interrupted by the fateful passing of the police.
After each passing, the conjugal hum started again, in the rooms, in the circular corridors, the everyday sound, slow and tired. Behind the doors, in the twin beds, in the embraces born in the cool of the storm, there was talk of the summer, of this summer storm, and of Rodrigo Paestra’s crime.
At last the shower. In a few seconds it filled the streets. The earth was too dry and couldn’t drink up so much rain. The trees on the square were twisted by the wind. Maria could see their tops appear and disappear behind the angle of the roofs and, when lightning lit up the town and the open country, in its livid illumination, she could at the same time see Rodrigo Paestra’s motionless and drowned shape clutching a dark stone chimney.
The shower lasted a few minutes. Calm returned as the strength of the wind weakened. A vague glimmering, so long hoped for, descended from the appeased sky. And in this glimmering, which increased as you hoped it would, but which you knew would quickly fade with the beginnings of another phase of the storm, Maria could see the indefinite shape of Rodrigo Paestra, Rodrigo Paestra’s dazzling, shrieking and indefinite shape.
Again the police started their search. They returned as the storm subsided. They marched through the mud again. Maria leaned over the railing of the balcony and saw them. One of them laughed. At regular intervals, the whole town rang with the sound of whistling. Just more pauses in the waiting period, which was going to last until morning.
In addition to the balcony where Maria was standing, there were others on the north side of the hotel. They were empty, except one, just one, on Maria’s right, one flight above. They must have been there for a very short time. Maria hadn’t seen them arrive. She moved back slightly into the corridor where people were now asleep.
This must have been the first time they had kissed. Maria put out her cigarette. She could see them fully outlined against the moving sky. While Pierre kissed her, his hands touched Claire’s breasts. They were probably talking. But very softly. They must have been speaking the first words of love. Irrepressible, bursting words which came to their lips between two kisses.
The lightning made the town look livid. It was unforeseeable, striking irregularly. But every time it made their kisses livid too, as well as their single, nearly blinding shape. Was it on her eyes, behind the screen formed by the dark sky, that he had first kissed her? How could one know. Your eyes were the color of your fear in the afternoon, the color of rain at that very moment, Claire, your eyes, I could hardly see them, how could I have noticed it before, your eyes must be gray.
Opposite these kisses, a few yards away, Rodrigo Paestra wrapped in his brown blanket was waiting for the infernal night to end. At dawn, it would be all over.
A new phase of the storm was coming up that was going to separate them and prevent Maria from seeing them.
As he did it, so did she, bringing her hands to her lonely breasts, then her hands fell and, useless, grasped the balcony. While she had moved too far out onto the balcony while they were merging into a single, nearly blinding shape, she now moved back a little from the balcony, toward the corridor where the new wind was already sweeping into the lamp chimneys. No, she couldn’t help seeing them. She could still see them. And their shadows were on that roof. Now their bodies broke apart. The wind raised her skirt, and, in a flash, they laughed. The same wind that had raised her skirt, again crossed the whole town, bumping up against the edges of the rooftops.
Two more minutes, and the storm would come, sweeping over the whole town, emptying the streets, the balconies. He must have stepped back in order to hold her better, to be reunited with her for the first time, their happiness intensified by the suffering he created b
y holding her far from him. They didn’t know, they were still unaware that the storm would separate them for the night.
More waiting. And the impatience of the waiting grew so intense it reached its climax, and at last calm set in. One of Pierre’s hands was moving all over another woman’s body. His other hand held her close against him. It was done now, forever.
It was ten-thirty. And summer.
And then it was a little later. Night had come at last, completely. There was no room that night, in that town, for love. Maria lowered her eyes before this reality: their thirst for love would remain unfulfilled, the town was bulging, in this summer night made for their love. The flashes of lightning kept lighting up the shape of their desire. They were still there, folded in each other’s arms, and motionless, his hand now resting on her hip, hers forever, while she, she, her hands unable to move as they clung to his shoulders, her mouth against his mouth, she was devouring him.
The same flashes, at the same time, lit up the roof opposite them and on its top, around a chimney, the shrouded shape of Rodrigo Paestra, the murderer.
The wind increased, swept into the hallway and moved over the sleeping children. A lamp had gone out. But nothing would wake them. The town was dark and asleep. In the rooms there was silence. Judith was good.
They had disappeared from the balcony as suddenly as they had come. He must have led her away without letting go of her—how could he—into the shadow of the sleeping corridor. The balcony was deserted. Maria looked at her watch once again. It was almost eleven. Because of the wind that was still growing stronger, one of the children—it wasn’t that one—uttered a cry, isolated, turned over and fell back to sleep.
The rain. And again its ineffable smell, its lifeless smell of muddy streets. Just as it did on the fields, the rain was falling on the dead shape of Rodrigo Paestra, dead of sorrow, dead of love.
Where could they have found a place to be toegther that night, in that hotel? Where would he take off her light skirt, that very night? How beautiful she is. How beautiful you are, God how beautiful. With the rain, their shapes had vanished from the balcony.
Summer was everywhere, in the rain, in the streets, in the courtyards, in the bathrooms, in the kitchens, summer, everywhere, summer was everywhere for their love. Maria stretched, went back in, lay down in the hallway, stretched again. Was it done now? Perhaps there was no one in another dark, stifling corridor—could anyone know all of them?—the corridor extending from their balcony, for example, right above this one, in this miraculously forgotten corridor, along the wall, on the floor, was it done?
Tomorrow would be there in a few hours. You had to wait. The shower was longer than the previous one. It kept coming down with force. And also on the skylight, echoing horribly throughout the hotel.
“We waited for you, Maria,” Pierre said.
They appeared with the end of the shower. She saw their two shadows move toward her while she was lying next to Judith, two huge shadows. Claire’s skirt had risen above her knees, bulging around her hips. The wind in the corridor. Too fast. They hadn’t had much time between leaving the balcony and arriving there, next to Maria. They were smiling. So that hope had been foolish. Love hadn’t been fulfilled that night in the hotel. More waiting. The rest of the night.
“You said you would be back, Maria,” Pierre said again.
“Well, I was tired.”
She had seen him looking for her on the floor of the corridor carefully, almost walk past her, and stop in front of her; she was the last one, just where the corridor ended, engulfed in the darkness of the dining room. Claire was following him.
“Well,” Maria repeated—she was pointing at Judith—“she would have been afraid.”
Pierre smiled. He stopped looking at Maria and discovered an open window leading onto a balcony at the end of the corridor.
“What weather,” he said.
He brushed away his discovery of the window at the very moment he made it. Was it fear?
“And it will last all night,” he said. “It will end by daybreak.”
She could have told just from his voice, trembling, shaky, affected by desire for that woman.
Then Claire also smiled at Judith. At the small, lopsided shape, wrapped in a brown blanket. Her hair was still wet from the rain on the balcony. Her eyes in the yellow light of the oil lamp. Your eyes, blue stones. I’ll eat your eyes, he was telling her, your eyes. The youthfulness of her breasts showed clearly under her white sweater. Her blue gaze was haggard, paralyzed by frustration, by the very fulfillment of frustration. Her gaze left Judith and moved back to Pierre.
“Did you go back to a café, Maria?”
“No. I stayed here.”
“A good thing we didn’t leave for Madrid,” Pierre said. “You see.”
He turned again toward the open window.
“A good thing, yes.”
In the street alongside the hotel, a whistle rang out. Was it over? There was no second whistle. The three of them waited. No. Once more, just a pause in the waiting period. Steps made heavy by the mud in the streets moved toward the northern part of town. They didn’t talk about it.
“She isn’t warm tonight,” Claire said.
Maria stroked Judith’s forehead.
“Not really. Less than usual. It’s comfortable.”
Maria could have told just from Claire’s breasts that they were in love. They were going to lie down there, next to her, separated while torn and tortured by desire. And both were smiling, equally guilty, terrified and happy.
“We waited for you,” Pierre repeated.
Even Claire raised her eyes. Then she lowered them and only a vague, indelible smile remained on her face. Maria would have known just from seeing her eyes lowered on that smile. What glory. On what glory were those eyes closing? They must have looked, looked all over the hotel for a spot. It had been impossible. They had had to give up. Pierre had said Maria is waiting for us. What a future ahead of them, the days to come.
Pierre’s hands were dangling beside him. For eight years they had caressed her body. Now Claire was stepping into the misfortune that flowed straight from those hands.
“I’m going to sleep,” she announced.
She took a blanket that had been put on a table. She wrapped herself in it, still laughing, and, with a sigh, stretched out below the oil lamp. Pierre did not move.
“I’m sleeping,” Claire said.
Pierre also took a blanket, then lay down next to Maria, on the other side of the corridor.
Did Rodrigo Paestra still exist, there, twenty yards from them? Yes. The police had again walked by in the street. Claire sighed again.
“Ah, I’m already asleep,” she said. “Good night, Maria.”
“Good night, Claire.”
Pierre lit a cigarette. The sound of regular breathing rose in the freshness of the corridor, in its odor of rain and of Claire.
“It’s very pleasant,” Pierre said softly.
Some time went by. Maria should have told Pierre again: “You know, it’s crazy, but Rodrigo Paestra is really there, on the roof. Opposite. And with daybreak, he’ll be caught.”
Maria said nothing.
“You’re tired, Maria?” Pierre asked even more softly.
“Less than usual. The storm I suppose. It feels better.”
“Yes,” Claire said, “we’re less tired than the other nights.”
She wasn’t sleeping. A gust of wind put out the last light. Lightning again at the end of the corridor. Maria turned slightly, but you couldn’t see the roof from where they were.
“It will never stop,” Pierre said. “Do you want me to put the light back on, Maria?”
“It’s not worth it. I like it like that.”
“I like it too,” Claire went on again.
She stopped talking. Maria knew it: Pierre was hoping she would fall asleep. He was no longer smoking and lay motionless against the wall. But Claire was talking again.
“Tomor
row,” she said, “we’ll have to reserve rooms in Madrid by noon.”
“We should, yes.”
She yawned. Pierre and Maria were waiting for her to fall asleep. It was raining hard. Can you die if you want to from having to bear the brunt of a storm? Maria seemed to remember that it was Rodrigo Paestra’s dead shape that she had seen on the roof.
Maria knew that Pierre wasn’t sleeping, that he was aware of her, Maria, his wife, and that the desire he felt for Claire was becoming corrupted by the memory of his wife; that he was becoming gloomy for fear she had guessed something; that he was disturbed at the thought of Maria’s new loneliness, tonight, compared to what had been before.
“Are you sleeping?”
“No.”
They had spoken very softly once more. They were waiting. Yes, this time, Claire was asleep.
“What time is it?” Maria asked.
With the end of the rain, there came the policemen whom Rodrigo Paestra must have also heard. Pierre looked at his watch in the light of the cigarette he had just started.
“Eleven twenty. Do you want a cigarette?”
Maria did.
“It’s already lighter,” Pierre said. “Maybe it’s clearing up now. Here, Maria.”
He handed it to her. They sat up a little, just long enough for him to light it, then they lay down again. At the end of the corridor, Maria saw the dark blue screen of the balcony.
“Nights like this are so long,” Pierre said.
“Yes. Try to sleep.”
“And you?”
“I would like a manzanilla. But it’s impossible.”
Pierre waited before answering. A last cloudburst, very light, fell on Rodrigo Paestra. You could hear singing and laughing in the street. The police, once again. But in the corridor all was quiet.
“Won’t you try to drink a little less, Maria? Just once?”
“No,” Maria said. “No more.”
The earthy smell came up from the street, endless, the smell of tears along with its complement, the smell of wet, fully ripened wheat. Was she going to tell him: “It’s crazy, Pierre, but Rodrigo Paestra is there. There. Right there. And with daybreak he will be caught.”
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